"Not if I'm the one you sacrifice," I said. Stupid, I thought, to die for the people who want you dead. Stupid woman. But if the villagers' dislike of me would aid their survival now, I was willing. "Few would regard my death as—"
"Death?" hissed the hob in surprise, ears flaring wide with a rattle of beads as he turned to look at me.
I looked from his dumbfounded face to Merewich's shocked countenance. I sat down where I was and began to laugh, though there was little enough humor in it. I don't know why I hadn't figured it out. He'd said he was the last one, the last of the mountain's children—and she, the mountain, was insisting he do something about it. He felt like a sacrifice to her cause, and so he asked us for another. "I take it you don't mean to burn me or cut out my heart as a tribute to the mountain?"
The hob bounced to his feet and sputtered.
Koret nodded his head gravely, though a dimple showed through his beard if you knew where to look for it. "I knew a man who traded from one island to the next. Spoke ten or twelve languages fluently. Managed to buy a pig when he thought he was bargaining for timber. Last I saw him, that pig was nigh on to a hundredweight and running his ship."
"Of childbearing years," said Cantier. "Looking for a wife."
"I could agree to a wife," said Merewich thoughtfully.
The hob sank back to his former seat and buried his face briefly in his hands. His shoulders shook. When he raised his head he said, eyes bright with merriment, "I see I have brought a moment of great import down to mere farce. I'm lucky I didn't end up with a hundred-pound pig. Well, enough. Time to make the bargain more clear."
He paused, and I sensed there was magic being wrought. "One year from today we will meet again. If you all agree I have helped the village survive, you will present me with a woman of childbearing years to wife. Think on it long and hard, gentlemen, before you agree. Death might seem worse, but mating with a creature outside of your race is no light thing."
"I agree," replied Merewich. "But something of this import requires the consent of us all. Koret?"
"Agreed."
Only Cantier, the wily old fisherman, shook his head. "Nay, can't see it, myself. Not without knowing who it is that will agree to wed him. My father always said never agree to a bargain that doesn't have the particulars worked out." He looked at me while he spoke.
I couldn't decline, not after having agreed to death. It would certainly be an insult if I did. The same reasons that made me an ideal candidate for death applied for marriage as well.
"I'll do it," I said. It was my doing that had brought us to this point, after all. I had found the hob and enlisted his aid. How I felt didn't matter.
"Willingly?" prodded Cantier.
I looked at Caefawn, who looked back at me. "Don't push it," I said. Caefawn grinned, his fangs gleaming in the bright sunlight.
"All right, then," said Cantier sourly. "I agree."
As he spoke, something happened. We all felt it.
"The bargain is struck." The hob sounded as enthusiastic as I felt: that is, of course, not at all.
EIGHT
Three days later, I woke up in the attic of the unoccupied house I'd been sleeping in since Kith told me to move camp until things in town quieted down. I think he believed I had moved farther away, but the deserted house on the east side of town suited me just fine. It had been deemed unfit to live in, but it worked for me.
I'd been dreaming of red-eyed demons chasing me through a forest. The reason the demons bore a striking resemblance to the hob was obvious, even to someone who was not a priest trained in dream interpretation. However, I could find no reason for the hob to be lying at my feet.
"Why are you lying at my feet?" I asked sharply—a result of sitting up too fast and hitting my head on a low beam. "How did you find me?"
"The little folk told me where you'd be. I've tried to catch you at night the last couple of days, but you were gone. So I decided to try before it got dark." The hob stretched, taking up even more space. His eyes glowed a little in the dark.
"I've been patrolling," I said in answer to his implied question. Little folk? What little folk? Fully awake, I was too intimidated by his presence, made even larger and darker in the confines of the attic, to ask him about little folk.
"I'm afraid I told the big man—Koret? — that I would be borrowing you from him for tonight. I promised to see what I could do about the earthens, and I need you to do it."
"Earthens?" I asked, slipping out of my blankets and rolling them into a tight bundle. Yesterday's clothes (which I had slept in) would just have to do. I wasn't changing with the hob looking on.
"The creatures that attacked your village were earthens. They're the earth spirit's minions, pretty harmless as such things go. Your folk were lucky the spirit is weak yet, or you'd have been facing something much nastier."
"Earth spirit?" I asked.
"I think," said Caefawn, "it might be better if I talk as we go. Koret explained it is important that no one find you here. If we continue to talk, the chances of someone discovering your sleeping place are greatly increased."
By the time we were outside the village proper, night had fallen. The moon was still in a brighter phase, but it was cloudy, so at intervals we were floundering (well, I was floundering) in darkness. I wondered why he'd picked me to go adventuring with instead of Kith or someone else more competent. Of course, there was the bargain between us.
"Where are we going? " I spoke softly because we weren't far from the village yet, having stopped just past the temple grounds.
"I was hoping that you would have a better idea than I," responded Caefawn.
I thought for a while, then said, carefully, "How would I know where we're going, when I don't even know why?"
"Form a picture in your mind of this half of the valley."
I frowned at him, but he didn't see because he'd closed his eyes. I could feel him gathering magic.
"Do it, Aren. Please."
I tried, but it was like trying to decide what the roof of a building looks like from the inside. I'd never considered the valley as a whole unit, just bits and pieces, one connected to the other.
"Mmm. Perhaps try one place at a time."
I started with the place I knew best, my parents' house. I thought of it as it had been when Quilliar had been there. Ma's roses in full bloom.
"Move on." The hob's voice was dark as a moonless night, slipping into my vision without intruding. His magic cloaked me as warmly as a blanket in winter, and as comforting. The tension I'd felt in his presence dissolved and my vision shifted until I saw the house as it was now: deserted and sad, the roses withering from lack of care.
"This isn't it. Try somewhere else," said the hob.
I tried my cottage next. The thatching was thick and snug; bits of brown poked out of bare dirt near one wall where I'd planted starts from Ma's flowers. There were a couple of slats broken on the pasture fence near the barn. A rabbit moved cautiously through the doorway.
"That's it," said the hob, and his hands came down on my shoulders.
A swooping feeling lifted me, like going over a high jump on a horse, but stronger. It was as if the whole valley were laid out before me. I could see the raiders as they went about their business, the patrollers who skulked in the shadows, an owl swooping upon an unsuspecting mouse.