The Hob's Bargain(65)

"If real names are so dangerous, why would anyone want one?" I asked.

He laughed. "Real names add power to your magic as well. When you know enough about your magic to know what you are choosing, you can decide if you want a real name and I will help gift you with one."

"Hmm." I considered what he said, shifting against my tree because my shoulder was going numb. "What did you say I should do with the fetch if she comes?"

"Anything you want to," replied a low feminine voice in sultry tones.

I turned, but it was too dark under the trees to see anything more than a shadow. The voice sounded familiar. Knowing what little I did about fetches, I would have bet that its voice sounded just like mine - though I don't think I'd ever sounded quite so sultry. There was an old saying, "If you ever meet your fetch, if you don't die today, you'll die the next."

I felt outward with the sight. At some point in our excursions, I'd discovered that the sight and this spirit-speaking were very close. It was the sight that allowed me to see the spirits when even the hob couldn't. Calling and seeing were just two sides of the same thing, like talking and listening. Not that I was good at controlling either one, but I was getting there.

A woman dressed in boy's clothing walked out from the shadows of the trees where I'd been watching. Her face was strong, though not pretty. Her dark hair was drawn untidily back into a thick braid. I'd thought it might be like looking into a mirror, but it wasn't. I'd thought it might be like looking at Caulem animated by the shaper, but it wasn't like that either. She was a stranger; if I hadn't known she was a fetch, I wouldn't have noticed she looked like me.

"What do you see?" I asked Caefawn.

He shrugged with his ever-present grin, though his eyes were wary. "Nothing, but I heard it speak."

"Leave this valley," I said, turning back to the woman.

"He brings you here to me," she purred. I never purr, at least not in public. I began to feel a little indignant, but she continued. "So kind of him. He never told you what happens to a human who meets their fetch, did he?"

A few days ago, I would have believed her. Believed the mere sight of her would kill me. But I trusted Caefawn. He wouldn't have brought me here if death was the only thing to win.

"I've heard the stories," I agreed mildly. "But you cannot harm me, a speaker." The look on her face told me that what I said was true, and that she wasn't happy I said it. Me, I was happy. I'd hoped that, as with the ghosts, my magic would serve to protect me.

"Not if I don't believe you can hurt me," I continued, watching her face closely to see if I was right. I was.

"We don't believe in you anymore," I said cheerfully. This one was as easy as the noeglins had been. "If someone meets you and talks with you, when he is home, he'll dismiss it as his imagination. It's been too long since your kind has been here. You'll have to find other prey."

She laughed. Not good. She approached me, gripped my hand with hers. I could see the pale scar the hillgrim had left me winding down her forearm. The hair on the back of my neck lifted, and I met her eyes. She smiled and looked at her arm as I'd just done, drawing my gaze with hers. The skin on her arms began to dry. It cracked and pulled back, curling away from the flesh. I stared at it, unable to break her spell.

The skin broke along the lines of the hillgrim's scar, and for a moment, just an instant, I thought the arm I stared at was mine. I cried out with the sharp pain of it and with revulsion at the ugly wound. The pain made it more real, so when I shifted my gaze away from her arm to mine, I wasn't surprised to see that my scar had split, too. Yellow pus oozed out like a tear and dropped to the ground. The distinctive odor of rotting flesh filled the air. I felt the hob's hands on my shoulders, but I couldn't pull away.

"Break it," he said hoarsely. Good, he was scared, too, how comforting. "Break her hold."

Very helpful, I thought, but he was right. I thought of how I had broken the ghost's hold in the garden and tried thinking of Daryn again. The fetch giggled and ran her tongue into the same ear Daryn had. Her saliva burned, and I couldn't hear out of the ear.

Passion didn't work. I'd try something else, then. Caefawn had enveloped me in his arms from behind. I could feel his heart beat against my back like a drum, like hoof-beats.

A vision came, and I grabbed it with both hands, unsure whether it would help me or her.

Duck's hooves drummed against the ground shaded with golden light from the sunset's fading glow. I sat him without saddle, reins resting loosely on his neck.

I remembered the day clearly, several weeks after we'd come back from Auberg. Memories shifted to accommodate the vision, subtly strengthening both sight and memory.

I laughed as the wind caught my hair and spilled it out of its loose braid. Free, I was free. Free of hiding what I was. Free of being less than I could be. I gloried in my strength, my freedom. The price had been too high, but it was paid. Now there was no one to hold me in subtle chains of wifehood, womanhood. No one to belittle my warnings because I was a woman, and women are given to such fits and starts. No need to hide what I was behind the image of what I should be.

I let out a war cry and shook my hair in the wind. Letting the cool fingers of air wash my other self behind me. The weak woman who cowered in her cellar was gone forever. The woman I was now had grown beyond her.