The Hob's Bargain

I stood stiffly in her embrace. "Oh, sister," I said, fear tightening my spine. Belief and fear were her weapons: fear of death and pain. "You mischose your time." And I took her with the knowledge I had gained this night. I stole her essence and locked it with the gates of my mind. It was easy because I feared myself far more than I did her.

I was becoming a bloodmage. I'd come to understand it wasn't just the deaths that made bloodmagic so foul, but taking without repayment or consent.

I gave her the same direction that I'd given the other spirits this night, and she replied, "I am with you." Then she faded into nothing.

I mounted Torch and he caught my fear, dancing and snorting until I thought I'd never get him headed home. I could hold nothing more. The meeting with the fetch left me shaking in spasms close to sobs. I was so powerful that I didn't even need to fear a creature such as she.

What I held imprisoned in my mind tainted me until I wanted to wash in the waters of the river, though I knew I would never be clean again—because I wanted the power I held, wanted to roll in it and throw it into the faces of those who'd killed Touched Banar. Here, I wanted to say, here is what you should fear, not the poor god-stricken man whose worst deed was less than a dust mote to my mountain.

The trapped spirits moaned, but the fetch laughed with my laughter while tears slid down my face.

Torch was swaying with weariness when I brought him back to the stables in the dark. I wasn't any better. The spirits under my control wailed and shrieked pleadingly until I wanted to scream at them to be quiet.

Instead, I curried and rubbed Torch until he was clean and dry. I led him to his stall and grained him. I sat down on a bench and leaned against Duck's stall. Daryn's red gelding blew gently in my hair before wandering back to the shadows of his straw-filled box.

Though I fought against sleep, fearing the trapped creatures would escape, my eyes closed…

… running through the trees in the dark, faster than humanly possible, the pounding of feet, pulse, and the mad joy of the chase. Ah! This was more gloriously fun than anything he could remember in a long time. Ducking roll to dodge an arrow from nowhere that sent him halfway to the bottom of the mountainside he'd been climbing—all the better to avoid capture.

Careful not to go too fast and get ahead; they might give up…

Intense red-hot agony as an arrow took Caefawn in the knee. His fall twisted the arrow inside the wound, which popped and cracked heartrendingly.

Daryn sat on Ducks back, shaking his head.

"You should have told me your nature before I married you. I would have known then that you would be the death of me, for that is the nature of all your breed."

I tried to talk, to explain that it was not my fault, but somehow the mounted figure turned into Poul cradling a wrapped infant in his arms.

"My son," he said proudly, dismounting and walking closer so that I could see what he held.

When I reached out to open the blankets, there was nothing but the tiny skeleton I'd last seen in Auberg.

Ani came from behind me, pushing me away. "Let me tend the child now, you'll make him cry."

I tried to explain that there was only a skeleton inside the blankets. But before I could finish, she turned back to me. The flesh peeled away from her face.

Poul cried out in horror and ran from her, leaving me alone with his dead wife. My sister.