The Hob's Bargain

Up on the side of The Groom, the scar of the original road wound steeply to Beresford. The King's Highway was much more gradual because the king's bloodmages could clear through the thick thorn bushes that grew between the mountains as ax and scythe never could. I'd heard the farmers swear the stuff could grow a finger-span in a day and take root where only moss would thrive; but even after centuries, not a single sprig pushed up between the stones of the King's Highway.

Wandel looked at the path lying before him and began humming a soft tune. It was one of his favorite songs, having to do with a man whose house lay in the path of the road. He'd been so stubborn and tricky the mages had finally gone around his house. To this day, Wandel swore, there was a valley where the road traced a neat half-circle around a bare spot of ground where a hut might once have stood.

Goes to show you, the harper liked to point out, that a person could be more stubborn than the worst curse of nature.

Wandel was on the last small incline when he stopped the mare. He slipped off his horse and walked to the side of the road. One of the paving stones was kicked out of place, leaving a deep hole and several loosened stones around where it had been.

"Lass," he said to his mare, "in all my years of riding the Highway, I've never seen a cobble out of place before. "

He remounted slowly, and watched the ground as he traveled; but there was nothing more amiss with the road. Not even when it disappeared under the still waters of a lake that occupied the valley where Beresford had been.

"Another rockfall," he said softly to himself or the mare. "Half the mountains in this region are cliff-sided, with boulders falling every spring. I thought Silvertooth might not have been the only one to fall. At any rate, something dammed the river and flooded the valley, which is why the water level in the river has fallen so drastically."

The lake in the valley was deep—only the drooping tops of trees broke the surface where Beresford should have been. The water was mucky with rotting vegetation and worse.

Tight-mouthed, Wandel turned his mare and rode back the way he'd come. By the time he rode into the yard of the inn, he was dusty and looked tired. The innkeeper's boy gave the harper a curious look as he took the Lass, but was too well trained to ask the questions on the tip of his tongue.