The Hob's Bargain

him. But it was too late. I’d used what little power I’d had to hold the spirits. Sweat dripped down my forehead as if I’d run a league rather than waited here for the bloodmage.
    â€œMy dear,” he crooned after he’d determined there was no danger in the widow’s house. “You are a treasure.” He stepped to me and locked his hands on my face.
    He took my mind.
    Oh, not all of it. Some cool part of me observed what he was doing. It was not so different from what I had done to the spirits I’d taken. Perhaps, in a different time, he would have had the sight and been a spirit speaker.
    He broke something within me, part of a deep tie between spirit and…soul, I suppose. I almost heard it give, like a bone crushed by a hillgrim. It broke, and I was his.
    He stepped back, pulled his mind away, and left me an observer in my own body. He patted my cheek, but I felt it only remotely. “We’ll wait here for Kith. I’ve called him, so it shouldn’t be long now. I have three other berserkers I managed to save. They were out hunting, but I’ve called them back to me. I’ll need a few more men from here, too. With a guard attachment I should be able to reach a more civilized place again and sell my skills.”
    My eyes, drifting without direction, caught on the hob’s ear piece, still laced through the bloodmage’s fingers like a talisman.
    â€œYou may call me…Caefawn,” said the hob.
    The knowledge that Caefawn was dead brought tears to my eyes.
    â€œWhat are you crying about, child?” asked the bloodmage with little interest.
    I would have answered him if I could have, but the broken part of me seemed to have lost the ability to turn thoughts to words. I stared at him silently, and he shrugged. He started to do something more to me, but the sound of hoofbeats stopped him. He left whatever it was he was trying half-done.
    It was one of his berserkers. He and his horse were covered with mud. His coloring was lowlander, but he was bigger than even Koret, and very young. But his eyes held the same old knowledge Kith’s did. It made me sad even through my terror.
    â€œFennigyr, I felt your call.” His voice was emotionless, and he moved with the same bone-weariness his horse did.
    â€œWell? Where are the others?”
    â€œGone. Renwyr took off after a white horse, and I lost Stemm in a mudslide. I’ve been looking for them, but then you called.”
    â€œThey’re not dead,” the bloodmage said after a moment. “One of them is hurt, though. We’ll have to find them later.”
    Frantically I tried to figure out what the bloodmage had done to me, how he’d separated my soul from my spirit. Caefawn had told me that people (and his definition of “people” was considerably broader than mine) were composed of three parts: body, spirit, and soul. The mage had separated my soul from my spirit and body.
    It was my spirit now that controlled my body, like a different sort of ghost. Not precisely without intelligence, but it was an intelligence obedient to the mage’s will, just as the ghosts had obeyed me.
    Horse hooves clattered on the road. My head turned, and I could see Torch approach at an easy canter. Kith sat so still that he appeared less real than the fetch had. He’d crossed the stirrup leathers (sized for me) in front of him. His face, I saw as he neared us, was as frozen as stone.
    â€œFennigyr, I heard your call,” he said. “What do you wish?”
    â€œDismount,” said Fennigyr, pursing his lips in thought.
    She (I couldn’t think of her as me, though I suppose she was) picked up the staff of cedar from the road and began drawing flowers in the dust, turning her attention away from the men.
    I could hear them talking, but I was forced to stare at the dust flowers. The restriction reminded me of a vision. A vision, I thought, looking at the cedar she held in her hand. Oh, she was looking at it, too, but not the way I was. I focused on the cedar and pulled at it with my mind. Caefawn told me to use it as an anchor. I hoped it would help me to bridge the division the bloodmage had drawn. I could feel a weakness in his spell, perhaps where he’d begun to alter it when the berserker distracted him.
    â€œAh, Kith,” Fennigyr said, “you were my best, my favorite. Did you know? I always liked the men with a little less bulk and more speed. I had