The Hob's Bargain

Merewich sighed and shook his head. "Wandel, the folk here who aren't related to someone in Beresford are married to someone who is. Kith will take you over and bring us back news—regardless of what lies between you. Perhaps someone there will know what has happened to the Beresforders. All we ask is that you agree to come back next year and tell us what's happening."

I'd never known that there was something between Kith and Wandel. I would have spent more time wondering what it was, but the vision would no more let me waste time fretting over it than it would give me time to mourn for Beresford.

"You think there is something in the tale the girl told, then, that the earthquake was just a minor part of what has happened? " Wandel took his tankard back and drank deeply.

"Hmm." Merewich rubbed his hand on the table. "I know her grandmother was a witch. She saved my oldest boy. He'd fallen and hit his head on a rock. Four years old and the joy of my life. I took him to her, but I knew it was too late—there was a soft place on his temple that shouldn't have been there. She looked at him, then she looked at me. Without saying a word, she took him and set him on her dining table. She laid her hands on that soft spot and closed her eyes. When she took her hands away, his skull was whole again. Forty-two years ago, and you're the first soul I ever told that to. I'd thank you not to repeat it."

He drank from Wandel's tankard again. "Do I believe her to be mageborn? Yes. Do I think she believes what she says is true? Yes." He looked the harper in the eye. "Her grandmother showed me that mageblood doesn't make a person evil."

Wandel pursed his lips. "Today I saw a cobble knocked askew on the King's Highway."

"Eh?" said Merewich softly. "I'll tell Albrin we'll be borrowing Kith for a few days."

A day or two after this conversation I awoke stiff and sore from sleeping on the hard earth and stared into the darkness around me. Over the past few days, either I'd grown used to magic or the magic had faded, but I couldn't feel it humming in my bones anymore. The dirt in the cellar was just dirt, cool and dry. Best of all, no visions clouded my mind.

I hadn't changed clothes since I'd put on Caulem's tunic and trousers, and it struck me that he'd never have let them get this dirty. The cellar stank of sweat and sloth.

I bowed my head and bit my lip, wondering what Daryn would think if he could see me huddled in the corner of the basement. And I could almost see Gram, shaking her finger at me.

"You just get up now, Missy, and clean yourself. Then you start planning what you can do to help these people. For the fear and ignorance of a few, you will not let the rest suffer. They will need you soon, and you will be there for them, as I was and my father before me."

I couldn't be certain if it was my imagination or the sight, but Gram's words hit home. Cantier had carried me to rest in his house though he had no love of the bloodmages. Kith had been there for me when I needed him… as had the priest, for that matter, and I barely knew him—he'd been in the village less than a season.