We sat for a while. His tail snuck around my waist. I pried it off and set it politely between us with a pat. I hadn’t realized just how strong his tail was. If he hadn’t let me, I’d never have gotten it off.
“Is the rock uncomfortable?”
I quit twitching my hips. “Quite. So how do I call a hooglin?”
“Noeglin,” he corrected. “Hmm, this might be a problem. I’ll try to describe it, and we’ll see what happens. Think of a creature formed from the stench of the swamp. They aren’t too intelligent, nor yet too—” He broke off abruptly and pointed.
In the dark, only its movement allowed me to see the creature scuffling about the edges of the swamp. It had a dark, furry pelt and looked almost bearlike, but was much smaller. It might have been the size of a herd dog.
“Pikka,” said the hob when it was gone. “They’re a true animal, but I’d be careful just the same. They’ve a nasty temper—I’d rather face a bear than a pikka. Most times a bear will leave you alone.”
“They use magic?” I asked. Otherwise, why would they come back after the bonds were lifted? I’d certainly never heard of a pikka before.
The hob nodded. “For stealth, mostly. A pikka can slip into a herd of sheep and eat a lamb lying beside its mother without disturbing any of the sheep.”
“Caefawn,” I asked, “where are they all coming from—the fairies and such? Spirits are immortal, and I know how you survived—but what about the pikka and earthens?”
“The guardian spirits like the earth spirit, mostly, I suspect.” His tail slipped off the rock, almost as if it were accidental. I gave it a suspicious look. His eyes crinkled, but he kept his mouth seriously straight as he continued. “I suppose a few of them were here anyway, just hiding. The only time you’ll ever find a dwarf is when he wants you to. The earthens are a manifestation of the earth spirit—not really creatures in their own right. Most of the things the village has been seeing lately are under the earth spirit’s guardianship. Except, of course, the winkies that tangled the nets and made Cantier so angry. They belong to the river guardian.”
“The mountain had only you?”
“Of my kind,” he replied.
There was something in his voice. Pain, I thought, or at least sorrow, so I changed the subject. “Hooglins are formed from the stink of the swamp….”
The hob settled more comfortably on the rock. “Noeglins are mischievous. One of their favorite tricks is to creep up behind some poor unsuspecting traveler and scare the bejeebers out of him.”
“Like a hob-of-the-bog?” I suggested.
He cleared his throat, so straight-faced I worried he was offended until he spoke. “Well, hobs don’t generally eat their victims…unless they’re hillgrims. Hillgrims taste really good raw, but they’re best when cooked for a day in a pot with onions and butter.” His tail now rested on the rock again, this time on my right (the hob sat on my left).
“How can they eat if they don’t have a body?” I looked at his tail suspiciously, but it lay virtuously still.
“Very few creatures are pure spirit,” he said seriously. “Ghosts are, and poltergeists. But all things are tied more strongly to either body, soul, or spirit. The ones you can call are tied strongest to the spirit. Sometimes, like the noeglins or the earth guardian, they can put off and on the physical body as easily as I shed my cloak.”
“So you call them spirits, even though they have a body?”
“And a soul, most of them.” He nodded. “There are three types of living creatures: mortals like humans and dwarves, soulfuls like hobs and cats, and spirits like the guardians and noeglins.”
“Cats?” I said.
A flurry of sticks flew at us out of a growth of bog-weed. They hurt when they hit—and most of them hit. Caefawn snarled, startling me, for he sounded like a wolf and I’d been thinking of him as though he were human, despite his talk of eating hillgrims. Overlaying the smell of the bog was a acrid smell. After a moment I couldn’t smell anything else.
“Right,” the hob said after the deluge was finished. “There’s a noeglin. You need to keep him from hurting you and get him out into the open.”
“Come here, you nasty noeglin,” I coaxed. A speaker’s voice seemed to have some power with the earth spirit and the ghosts. Maybe it would work with a noeglin.
“Here I be,” said a soft, sibilant, hate-filled hiss. Then, like the ghost, it attacked my mind.
It was easier to fight than the ghost had been, though the noeglin didn’t attack in precisely the same way. I tried to block his advance into my head. It seemed to work best when I envisioned something solid.
So I held a mental door before the noeglin, a stout barn door that stopped it where it was. Before it could try something else, I put doors all around it, trapping it there, though I could see it hanging over the swamp like a misty clump of rotting weeds.
I don’t know what part of it I held trapped, no more than I could have said what part of the ghost I’d caught. These were creatures of spirit, not body—so I thought I’d ask the self-appointed expert.
“How can I hold it in my mind and yet it is still there?” I asked, pointing at the noeglin.
“Bloodmages take a bit of an enemy’s hair or skin and attach it to a vole or mouse by magic,” said the hob soberly. “When they kill the mouse, they can kill their enemy, too. Sympathetic magic. You can hold a small bit of it in your mind and affect the whole of it.”
The noeglin wriggled suddenly, spouting a series of sounds that boomed and hurt my ears. “Me go,” it said.
“It wants you to let it go,” translated the hob unnecessarily.
I opened one of the doors, releasing the noeglin from my control. The spirit sank tiredly into the dark mud of the swamp, taking the noxious odor with it.
“How is it that it—and you—speak the same language I do?” I asked, when the noeglin was gone.
“’Tis a gift of the hobs to speak whatever tongue they hear, a gift the guardian spirits share when they will,” he said. “As for the other—another human wouldn’t have understood the noeglin. But you are a speaker, and what good would your gift be if you couldn’t understand the spirits you call? Now about the will-o’-wisps—”
SPEAKING TO THE SPIRITS, ONCE I KNEW I COULD DO IT, was easier than the visions. Calling them was simply a matter of knowing what they were. Caefawn had started with ghosts because they were relatively powerless, and I already knew what they were. He seemed to think it was his duty to stuff my head full of every kind of spirit I was likely to meet. He made me memorize the names and characteristics of any number of them. Most of the creatures, he said, he’d never seen.
Spirits had no body in their natural state—which is what made them spirits, I suppose. Ghosts, ghasts, noeglins, and poltergeists were lesser spirits who were often hostile. He hadn’t found any ghasts here, but I met most of the rest of the very weak and horrid. Poltergeists, he said, were both powerless and mindless—not worth the effort of approaching them.
The weaker benevolent spirits like dryads and naiads he’d shown me as well. The dryad had been soft-spoken and solid-seeming; he reminded me of the ancient oak he called home. The naiad had been shy, leaving as quickly as she’d responded. Caefawn hadn’t seen her, though he’d been sitting beside me the whole time.
Some of the spirits we’d looked for, like the will-o’-wisps, we couldn’t find. I could tell it made Caefawn sad, though he didn’t say anything.
One or two of the creatures had attacked me. Sometimes their attacks were physical, like the noeglin throwing sticks. More often they were mental. As I learned to defend myself, the hob would find a new, stronger, more contentious thing to call.
Caefawn said that most of the stronger spirits, like the earth guardian, would know when I was about and come on their own if they chose. I could summon the lesser spirits whether they willed it or not. Some of them I could dominate if I chose—but it made me increasingly uncomfortable to do so. It felt wrong, even evil
, to do more than defend myself. Gram always said that if something felt wrong, it probably was.
“SO WHAT’S IT TONIGHT?” I ASKED CHEERFULLY. I WAS starting to feel brave in the night. Facing off with noeglins and ghosts had made me less afraid of the darkness. Silly me.
Still, it was easier than facing the villagers. Someone had decided it was best to tell the village about the necessity of appeasing the earth spirit. Predictably, it was seen as my fault. As of yesterday, none of the patrollers except for Ice would talk to me.
“There’s a fetch abroad here,” Caefawn said. “They weren’t very common Before, and you might not get another chance to meet one.”
There were stories about fetches. I decided missing my only chance to meet one might be a good idea. “Isn’t it dangerous to meet a fetch?”
“Yes,” he said, stopping beside one of Soul’s Creek’s little waterfalls. “But so are ghosts and noeglins.”
We were half a league or so above my old croft. I leaned against a tree, panting a little. The hob was hard to keep up with, even when he was obviously slowing down for me.
“Are we here?” I asked hopefully.
“As close as we need to be,” he answered. He waited, gathering his thoughts. “I wouldn’t willingly take you to meet the fetch. They have too much power over humans, and I’m not certain how much your talents will help you against it. And it’s too far from the mountain for me to help much.”
I’d learned a lot about the hob. Away from the mountain his magic—which mainly concerned things of the hunt, like hiding or tracking—faded, though his great strength and speed seemed to stay with him.
I frowned at him. “You’re scaring me.”
He nodded solemnly. “Good. You’ll be more wary that way. I don’t think it would be a good idea to try to control it—I’m not certain you’re good enough. However, you don’t want to let it wander around the valley for long—it’ll start to take victims.”
I shook my head. “So what am I supposed to do with it?”
“You’ll have to decide that yourself.” Caefawn sat down on the ground, wrapping his tail around one of his ankles for a change.
We waited in silence for a while, a peaceful silence. I could hear Soul’s Creek running behind me. A nightjar cried out.
“Tell me about names,” I said.
“Names?” he asked.
“My gram always said the wildlings guarded their names, and I know Caefawn isn’t your name. You enjoyed it too much when you gave it to me.”
He snickered. “I’ll tell you what it means sometime. Right. Names, then. Names have power.”
“What power? Should I worry that everyone and their dog knows my name?”
He shook his head. “You don’t have a name, not really. Birth names are weak things, tied to the body, not the soul. There aren’t many in your village who have real names. The priest does, and he knows enough to keep his real name secret. Real names are given in a ceremony with earth, air, fire, water, and magic. If someone knows your real name, it gives them power over you—an advantage. Focusing a spell on someone with their real name makes it harder to fight or unspell. If you knew the real name of the earth spirit, you could call him and he would have to come.”
“If real names are so dangerous, why would anyone want one?” I asked.
He laughed. “Real names add power to your magic as well. When you know enough about your magic to know what you are choosing, you can decide if you want a real name and I will help gift you with one.”
“Hmm.” I considered what he said, shifting against my tree because my shoulder was going numb. “What did you say I should do with the fetch if she comes?”
“Anything you want to,” replied a low feminine voice in sultry tones.
I turned, but it was too dark under the trees to see anything more than a shadow. The voice sounded familiar. Knowing what little I did about fetches, I would have bet that its voice sounded just like mine—though I don’t think I’d ever sounded quite so sultry. There was an old saying, “If you ever meet your fetch, if you don’t die today, you’ll die the next.”
I felt outward with the sight. At some point in our excursions, I’d discovered that the sight and this spirit-speaking were very close. It was the sight that allowed me to see the spirits when even the hob couldn’t. Calling and seeing were just two sides of the same thing, like talking and listening. Not that I was good at controlling either one, but I was getting there.
A woman dressed in boy’s clothing walked out from the shadows of the trees where I’d been watching. Her face was strong, though not pretty. Her dark hair was drawn untidily back into a thick braid. I’d thought it might be like looking into a mirror, but it wasn’t. I’d thought it might be like looking at Caulem animated by the shaper, but it wasn’t like that either. She was a stranger; if I hadn’t known she was a fetch, I wouldn’t have noticed she looked like me.
“What do you see?” I asked Caefawn.
He shrugged with his ever-present grin, though his eyes were wary. “Nothing, but I heard it speak.”
“Leave this valley,” I said, turning back to the woman.
“He brings you here to me,” she purred. I never purr, at least not in public. I began to feel a little indignant, but she continued. “So kind of him. He never told you what happens to a human who meets their fetch, did he?”
A few days ago, I would have believed her. Believed the mere sight of her would kill me. But I trusted Caefawn. He wouldn’t have brought me here if death was the only thing to win.
“I’ve heard the stories,” I agreed mildly. “But you cannot harm me, a speaker.” The look on her face told me that what I said was true, and that she wasn’t happy I said it. Me, I was happy. I’d hoped that, as with the ghosts, my magic would serve to protect me.
“Not if I don’t believe you can hurt me,” I continued, watching her face closely to see if I was right. I was.
“We don’t believe in you anymore,” I said cheerfully. This one was as easy as the noeglins had been. “If someone meets you and talks with you, when he is home, he’ll dismiss it as his imagination. It’s been too long since your kind has been here. You’ll have to find other prey.”
She laughed. Not good. She approached me, gripped my hand with hers. I could see the pale scar the hillgrim had left me winding down her forearm. The hair on the back of my neck lifted, and I met her eyes. She smiled and looked at her arm as I’d just done, drawing my gaze with hers. The skin on her arms began to dry. It cracked and pulled back, curling away from the flesh. I stared at it, unable to break her spell.
The skin broke along the lines of the hillgrim’s scar, and for a moment, just an instant, I thought the arm I stared at was mine. I cried out with the sharp pain of it and with revulsion at the ugly wound. The pain made it more real, so when I shifted my gaze away from her arm to mine, I wasn’t surprised to see that my scar had split, too. Yellow pus oozed out like a tear and dropped to the ground. The distinctive odor of rotting flesh filled the air. I felt the hob’s hands on my shoulders, but I couldn’t pull away.
“Break it,” he said hoarsely. Good, he was scared, too, how comforting. “Break her hold.”
Very helpful, I thought, but he was right. I thought of how I had broken the ghost’s hold in the garden and tried thinking of Daryn again. The fetch giggled and ran her tongue into the same ear Daryn had. Her saliva burned, and I couldn’t hear out of the ear.
Passion didn’t work. I’d try something else, then. Caefawn had enveloped me in his arms from behind. I could feel his heart beat against my back like a drum, like hoofbeats.
A vision came, and I grabbed it with both hands, unsure whether it would help me or her.
Duck’s hooves drummed against the ground shaded with golden light from the sunset’s fading glow. I sat him without saddle, reins resting loosely on his neck.
I remembered the day clearly, several weeks after we’d come back from Auberg. Memories shifted to accommodate the vision
, subtly strengthening both sight and memory.
I laughed as the wind caught my hair and spilled it out of its loose braid. Free, I was free. Free of hiding what I was. Free of being less than I could be. I gloried in my strength, my freedom. The price had been too high, but it was paid. Now there was no one to hold me in subtle chains of wifehood, womanhood. No one to belittle my warnings because I was a woman, and women are given to such fits and starts. No need to hide what I was behind the image of what I should be.
I let out a war cry and shook my hair in the wind. Letting the cool fingers of air wash my other self behind me. The weak woman who cowered in her cellar was gone forever. The woman I was now had grown beyond her.
I stretched out my arms until they felt like wings as Duck ran down the mountain.
I came to myself slowly. I looked at the fetch and said, softly. “Go away.”
Her eyes faded from brown to sea-green; her face shifted subtly, leaving behind cheeks more rounded, lips softer, jaw narrower than they had been. She snarled at me, and her face looked less than human. Then she was gone.
“About time,” growled Caefawn.
I sank to my rump on the cold grass, which was damp from the spray of the small waterfall. My arm hurt as if it had been savagely ripped open, but there was nothing wrong with it. The hillgrim’s scar was as it had been, and my wrist was unbruised. I covered my face with my hands and took deep, slow breaths until I felt like myself again.
THE HOB WATCHED AREN PUT HERSELF TOGETHER again, one layer at a time. First she put aside the fear, then the rush of danger. She did it so thoroughly he could barely smell the remnant emotions on her. She had such control. He wondered if she’d learned it, or if she’d always been that way.
“Why is it that strong feelings broke her hold on me, just as it broke the ghost’s hold in the garden?” Her voice was soft and calm.
“How do you control the spirits?” He asked not because he couldn’t have told her the answer, but because she’d learn it better if she found it herself.
Patricia Briggs Page 20