The Hob's Bargain(57)

In the tree, his face had been in shadows, so I had no warning until he was crouched in front of me and I looked into my husband's brother's face. But looking out through Caulem's clear eyes was someone else entirely.

"How dare you?" I grabbed the top of his shirt by the shoulders. "How dare you take the form of my kin?" I didn't yell, but rage thickened my voice. "It does not belong to you."

"Aren," warned the hob, his tail wrapping my ankle for the second time this night. It must have been a habitual gesture, but I found it distracting. My anger cooled enough for me to better consider my actions.

"Everything that goes to earth belongs to me!" the creature screamed. He was a wicked caricature of the boy I'd known. "You have not the right to deny me any form I choose, human."

"What is this?" A man's musical bass stroked my ears.

The being who wore my brother-by-marriage's form pulled from my grip and ran into the shadows whence the voice had issued. "It hurt me!" he cried piteously. "Oh, Master, save your poor shaper from the dreadful thing. Ow, ow, my shoulders. See where it bruised me?"

The moon came out in her full glory just before the new creature stepped out from the rye field. He was taller than either the hob or I by a good head, and his golden antlers were taller yet. Like me, he was clothed in a simple sarong, though his merely wrapped around his hips. I still couldn't tell how it stayed on. I reached up to make certain mine was still where it belonged.

The elemental's features were broad, with wide cheekbones and full, sensuous lips. His chin and lower jaw were coated with a dense beard that looked as much like moss as it did hair. Large, dark-colored eyes gazed upon me solemnly. His hair was shoulder length, wire-thick, and curly. His feet were cloven hooves.

"So you abuse my servant?" he said. There was no accusation in his tone, but I bristled anyway, ignoring the way the hob's tail tightened painfully around my ankle.

"Your servant wears the body of my kin, who died this spring." Anger at the shock and the sacrilege added an edge to my words.

The earth spirit made a chiding noise through his teeth, turning to the boy who crouched at his feet. "Is it so?" He didn't seem to need an answer, because he continued, "For shame, shaper. Go and change. Wear no more the forms of shades just to torment the living."

The boy cast me a malevolent look. "She hurt me, Master. Wilst punish her?"

"Go, now, child."

The boy hissed, but he left by the same path through the rye his master had taken earlier.

"Are you going to punish me?" I asked. I heard the hob draw in his breath at my challenging tone. Either that or he was laughing. In the darkness it was hard to tell.

"The fledgling was in the wrong," said the earth spirit. "I apologize for him." There was regal concession in his voice, but no real apology.

"You're not the one who owes me an apology," I replied.

The hob shook his head. This time I knew I heard a choked-off laugh. I ignored him.

The earth spirit spared Caefawn a glance, then turned to me. "Who are you, and why do you come to me here?"

Ah, here was the chance to use the speech I'd practiced all the way here. "I am Aren of Fallbrook. I've come to find out how we have angered you, that you sent your earthens to attack us." There it was, my speech, all of it.

The spirit shrugged his wide shoulders and dropped to the ground with sudden grace. I stood feeling awkward for a moment, but when the hob sat down as well, I did the same. The night enfolded us in its secrets while I waited for the spirit to speak.

"Where are the dances?" he asked after a while. The dark voice was heavy with sorrow. "Where the songs to gladden my heart? Where the thanks belonging to the earth? I am bereft." The pathos in his voice was so heartfelt that tears gathered in my eyes, though I didn't understand the reason for his sadness.

He continued to speak. "My ears have not heard the spring songs for so long that I do not even have the memory of them to hold. Yet the children of the village continued to rip my skin with their iron and forced me to bear them fruit whilst I could do nothing but sleep. But I am awake now. Should they not pay the price?" Wrath lit the bass reaches of his voice, and his eyes glowed green and brown with a light of their own. The strangeness of it reminded me how powerful this spirit could be. I'd seen the mountain cause an earthquake, and Caefawn said the earth spirit was stronger.

"What you say is true," I answered carefully, the germ of an idea beginning to sprout. "The songs were lost long ago, when the bloodmages bound the magic." His teeth peeled back from his lips at mention of the bloodmages (he had white teeth, large and flat). The glow in his eyes grew more green than brown. Good, it liked bloodmages as well as the hob) - that was, not at all.

I continued slowly. "Like you, the world we know has slept. My people were kept in ignorance and fear by the bloodmages." How nice to have a villain ready to hand. Caefawn gave me a grin from behind the spirit's shoulder. I hoped the elemental wouldn't read me so easily. "That the earth and water have guardian spirits has been kept secret from us. Generations have been taught that the earth is dead."

The spirit had begun shaking his head as I finished the last sentence, his action exaggerated by the stronger movement of his antlers.

"Life cannot come from a dead thing," he snapped.