The Hob's Bargain(11)

"Killing the mageborn is barbaric," said Tolleck the priest in his smooth baritone. "The One God does not demand it - he condemns the bloodmages and those who call upon their power from death. But a man... or woman cannot help how they were born. To condemn them for it is wrong."

"Brother Gifford did not agree with you," called someone from the crowd. "He had more experience as a priest than you."

"Brother Gifford is not here now," thundered Tolleck in a voice I'd never heard from him. It almost made me look, but I was afraid I'd see something else. There was power in his voice, and it subdued the crowd.

Calm and forceful, the priest continued. "It is not for you to condemn someone who has committed no crime."

I saw the priest's face, proving that I didn't need open eyes to see. The thought of living with these constant visions for any length of time made me wish Tolleck would be quiet and let them hang me.

"Drink this, Pest," said Kith, putting a glass against my chattering teeth.

I swallowed, tasting apples and poppy juice.

"She needs rest. My home's just around the corner, and that lot won't bother me." It was Cantier's voice, rough and unmistakable.

I woke up abruptly, startled by the strange surroundings - though when I gave myself a moment to really look around, I realized I was lying on a makeshift pallet in the main room of Cantier's house, which smelled faintly of fish. It was dark but for the banked embers in the fireplace. From the loft overhead came the soft sounds of sleeping bodies. I wondered how he'd talked his wife into allowing me here.

By the darkness and. by the silence of the streets, it was sometime past midnight. I was still wearing my dress, but it took me a moment to find my boots. As quietly as I could, I let myself out the door and into the street.

The home I sought was my parents' house rather than my own. I needed to cling to something familiar, somewhere safe. The house was dark and empty when I got there. I had nothing to light my way into the interior, so I fumbled my way into the main room.

Ma's bride chest was highlighted in the faint wisp of moonlight leaking through the broken oilskin of the main window. Someone had taken an axe to it, leaving its contents scattered on the floor. I wondered if it was the same man who destroyed the furniture in my home, or if the raiders specialized in hacking helpless furniture to bits.

There was blood on the floor, and I lost the humor I'd been trying to summon. I turned away. A blanket lay in a rumpled heap in the corner of the room. I snatched it up and wrapped myself in it, though I didn't believe anything could make me warm again. I sat in the corner where the blanket had been and stared into the night.

I stayed at the house until late morning, gathering what I could use from the things the raiders had left. There wasn't much. The house had been stripped of food, weapons, and anything anyone could use to pack things in: sacks, baggage, backpacks, even bedsheets. I don't know how the blanket I'd used came to be overlooked.


I found an assortment of Caulem's clothing. Father's' clothes were gone. I folded my brother-by-marriage's shirts and pants carefully and left them beside the remains of his cot. Perhaps his parents would want them.

My hands stopped as I folded the last pair of pants. I was tall for a woman, though skinny. Caulem had been a growing boy, almost as tall as he would have been as a man, but thinner. Caulem's pants would fit me.

I stood and stripped my clothing as quickly as I could, exchanging it for boy's trousers and a loose-fitting shirt. I had to tighten the drawstrings around my ankles and waist, and fold back the sleeves. The shirt, which had come to Caulem's hips, hit me just above the knee. I belted it to keep it out of my way. His boots were too big, but mine would work.

The boy's clothes made me different from the silly woman who believed in happy-forever endings. The woman who'd killed her husband because she'd tried too hard to be like everyone else.

It occurred to me that I was more than a little crazy. If the priest could have seen me running to my cottage and slipping through the shelves into the cellar, he might not have been so quick to defend me.

Over several days, the dark enclosure of the cellar became my shelter against the world. I left the main floor as it was, covered with the scattered remnants of my life. Like some half-mad animal I cowered in the dark of the earth, leaving its embrace only at night.

I couldn't run from the visions, for they came to me no matter how hard I tried to hold them away. They came with sound more often than not, and sometimes smells as well. I watched as the villagers buried my family in the plot behind my father's house and scattered fragrant petals on the disturbed ground over their graves. All from the closed darkness of the cellar.

I knew what the world outside my cellar was doing, whether I wanted to or not.

Like me, the village buried itself away from the truth of its isolation. The planting season was so much work, they were soon lulled into complacency. The raiders were quiet. The houses that could be repaired, were, and new houses were started to replace the one or two dwellings that were beyond fixing. There were a few more earth tremors, but they were weak and easily ignored.

Perhaps, opined the townswomen as they washed their clothes at midweek, the bandits had left altogether. Perhaps they'd wandered on to Beresford and kept going. Didn't Albrin's man, Lomas, report that Wedding Pass was clear, though he hadn't followed it all the way through to Beresford? Wasn't it sad about Hobard's daughter, Aren? Doubtless she was just maddened by the grief of losing so much so quickly, but what a thing to claim! She was lucky that the old priest had died; he would have had her burned for that - and some of the women whispered that the new man was too soft.