Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(7)

When the beast did not seem inclined to say anything more, the hobgoblin touched the creature gently and continued with the task the talk of wolves had interrupted. When she had the proper shape of the magic within her, she settled her magic on the beast. She petted its forehead, and said, “Forget. Let the mists hide the worst and leave only the best.”

Her magic snuck in and clothed the beast’s memories in kindness, a thing possible only because the beast allowed it. The change was immediate—the terrible beast faded.

Instead of the horrible wounded thing, her lady blinked at Haida, the blackness shrinking down until it was pupil only and her eyes were wide and jewel green. Open wounds were absorbed by deep brown skin, scars hidden by glamour until she looked no different than she ever had.

“Hobgoblin?” she said, sounding a little confused but not distressed.

Her lady looked around the kitchen, Haida’s domain. It was neat and tidy as always, if not so grand as the rest of the house. The hobgoblin felt the moss-covered walls of the kitchen, which had pulled back in distress at the beast’s presence, ease back into place—but the stillness had a waiting feeling rather than that of a home at peace, and she worried.

“Yes, my lady,” said the hobgoblin sadly, because the confusion in her lady’s face was being replaced by worse things as the magic Haida had worked was dispelled, and memory resettled properly. Her lady only needed to forget for that breath of time, so that she would have courage to take back her power and body from the beast.

Her father the forest lord was dual-natured. He had the form of the sidhe, and another of a forest fae. Ariana’s beast was born of that heritage, but had her father not brutalized her with pain and the terror of the hounds he commanded, it would never have materialized. The beast, a creature of the forest, unlike Ariana, could not disobey a direct order from the forest lord—what had started out as a punishment had borne useful fruit for Ariana’s father.

Haida’s lady sucked in a breath and looked at her hands, moving the fingers gently, then clenching them into fists.

“I don’t remember everything the beast did this time,” she said, her voice tight. “Did it do what he wanted us to do?”

Haida shook her head. “I don’t know, Mistress. Your magic is beyond me. You will have to look at what it created yourself.”

•   •   •

The little hobgoblin, green-gray and covered with wiry hair from head to feet, was closer to the Heart of Magic than the Tylwyth Teg, the greater fae like Ariana. Haida was like a shepherd who cared for the flocks and Ariana a weaver who worked tapestries with their yarn. One was not inherently more skilled or powerful than the other but differently able. Other fae did not see it as Ariana did, including Haida. To them, lesser fae were weak, but for her father, their home shivered and groaned, while only Haida could bring it comfort. If it had not been for Haida, Ariana knew she would have long ago been lost to the beast.

Ariana shed the last of the hobgoblin’s veil of shadows, ready to face the results of her father’s bidding and the beast’s obedience. The first few times she’d been able to remember what she’d done after her father reduced her to that other aspect. But eventually, her memories had not been so clear. This time, like the time before, she could remember nothing after she’d broken under the wave of terror that was the banehounds’ magic.

Her father would succeed in destroying her. All she could hope for was to ensure that he got no gain by it. She was so afraid that she would fail even in that.

She stood up carefully, but although she was dizzy and weak, the pain of her injuries was fading quickly.

“How long this time?” she asked Haida as Ariana walked out of the kitchen and down the hall with the poise her mother had drilled into her before she left. The advantage of moving with grace was that it kept her centered, so she didn’t fall on her face. Every time her bare feet touched the floor, she drew magic from the earth to strengthen herself just as the food she’d eaten had strengthened her.

“Four days,” Haida told her. “He left as soon as the dogs finished.”

That was unusual. He liked to supervise her work, though what she did was so far outside of his forest-bound magic that he could not follow it. There was something she should remember about the dogs . . .

The color of old blood and snow, with fangs that tore, the hounds delivered pain and terror to freeze her forever. That was the gift of the white and red hounds of the forest lord, terror that stopped the breath and heart.

“My lady?”

Not that. She couldn’t remember that, or she wouldn’t stay in control. If she were reduced to her other aspect, the one who could only follow the orders of the power that gave a forest lord dominion over the beasts in his forest, all would be lost.

There was nothing left, now, of the father who had loved her. The one who had taken her on long walks in the woods and taught her to speak to the deep-voiced oaks and the quivering willow. No more than there was anything left of the daughter who had loved him and believed that he could do no wrong.

He’d told her that he had a commission for which he’d been well paid in favors and power—the power was what he craved, almost as much as he wanted to see her reduced to something that could only obey him, something he had no reason to be jealous of. She was to make a weapon that could be used to siphon the magic from any fae, sidhe, hobgoblin, and anything in between.