Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK (9 page)

“Humph,” said Old Hob. “I didn’t come here to be scorned. State your business, prancing fool.”

Oberon’s dance halted. He stood behind the massive figure. “Have a care, goblin.”

Hob turned slowly. He raised his lantern. Inside it, new captives obediently caused it to flare into life. Instead of wisps, he now had a flock of three tiny, sad dragonettes. Each of them puffed flame of a different color, one red, one silver and the third a deep umber.

Hob’s grin flared with their light, and showed his enjoyment of Oberon’s surprised appraisal of the lantern and its contents.

“Oh yes,” said Hob, his teeth gleaming yellow in the lantern light. “I have many new friends, new tricks and new thoughts.”

Oberon considered his words. It was possible that Hob wasn’t just bluffing. He had some power now, and had risen fast. Others would naturally begin to treat with him. They would ply him with gifts, even as they had once paid tribute and lavished thoughtful favors upon the elves. Now that he had power, Old Hob, once the object of universal scorn amongst the lords of the various folk, had come into good fortune. Oberon was forced to recalculate the other’s status, and he did not enjoy the sensation.

Hob watched Oberon’s face closely in the light of his newly relit lantern and his grin did not diminish. In fact, an observant witness might say that he leered.

Oberon sniffed. “You have gained some facility with the horn. I’m glad to see it.”

“Indeed,” said Hob, voice dripping sarcasm. “I’m sure that you are.”

“I have need of an ally of capacity.”

“Don’t we all?”

Oberon eyed him. He did not like this new Hob, this creature of confidence and condescension. As irritating as the groveling, wheedling Old Hob had been, he thought now that he had preferred that old cur to this new, confident one.

“I’ve dwelt these past months upon the lost battle in the Dead Kingdoms. Your forces retreated in the face of the enemy,” said Oberon, his mocking, cheerful attitude having shifted. It was unlike him to be petulant, but these were trying times.

“Your forces never bothered to engage them at all,” pointed out Old Hob.

Oberon shrugged. “Goblins whip rhinogs to fight for them. Few of your real folk died.”

Old Hob raised a hand that was all long bone and hairy knobs of knuckle. “Let us leave that day, the day of battle, in the past. What would you have of me now?”

“The Kindred gather. They have selected a Queen. Worse yet, they have Pyros. They may march upon any and all of us.”

Old Hob nodded, clucking his tongue. “Sad tidings. I have heard such tidbits of information. Be of good cheer, however! Rest assured that my goblins are safe. We will stay in our strongholds in Eire and watch with great interest—and sadness—should anything happen to our friends on this side of the sea.”

Oberon flashed him a look of irritation. “I’ve asked you here to rejoin me. I see an opportunity to reforge our old alliance. I see a future, where our two peoples are again united and strong.”

Hob nodded sympathetically. “Oh yes, I feel your loss. I recall those days with fondness. Unfortunately, circumstances have changed. Rather drastically, I’m afraid.”

Oberon’s expression darkened further. “Hob, I ask you: what would it take to have the goblins march with the elves again?”

A very long finger tapped thoughtfully at a lumpy chin. “A boon, perhaps?”

“What boon?”

“A
great
boon,” said Hob, and here, finally, his eyes alit with greed.

The expression almost brought a shudder to Oberon, one who never felt an emotion such as disgust. He had seen too much in his impossibly long lifespan. But, imagining what Hob may have in mind brought him
disgust
, and the sensation did lay there, unbidden and raw upon his mind.

“I say again, what boon?”

Hob’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t know yet,” he said, sounding almost dreamy. “But I will think of something. Let me assure you.”

Oberon blinked. He almost drew his dagger and slashed Hob’s leering face. Better to chance it all and live or die now, than to suffer some future ignominy at the hands of this monster. An
unstated
boon. A future debt of uncertain magnitude. Almost nothing could be requested that was greater in measure for one of the Fae.

He thought of attacking Hob, of trying his luck right now. With Osang, he could march without Hob’s legions at his back. But he held himself in check. He might fail, and he wanted an army more than he wanted a Jewel of the second rank. Besides, he had other enemies he hated far more than Hob, his fair-weather friend.

“Be forewarned,” said Old Hob, “gone are the days when my folk will gleefully die as fodder on the front lines while your people nibble delicacies and watch from a safe hill at twilight. Your troops must be at the front line. We will strike only when the enemy is engaged.”

Oberon hesitated. Indecision was unfamiliar to him, a being who had lived all his life on instinct and impulse. He hated his uncertainty. “But, you will strike? When the time is clear? When the moment is ripe?”

“Yes, indeed. It is the goblin way.”

Oberon nodded. He made his decision. The agreement was made and sworn to. The old alliance between goblin and elf was reforged, under far more onerous conditions for the elves.

As they were about to part, Oberon passed on a final warning to his renewed ally.

“Hob, be assured. If your armies do not materialize, if they fail to fight with us, know this: the memories of elves are very long indeed. You will never know the moment, but your end will come. And it will not be pleasant. If I do not regain Lavatis, and the failure is attributable to you, I will have Osang as consolation.”

Hob nodded indulgently, as if a naughty child had threatened his matronly grandmother. “And be forewarned as well, Lord Oberon,” he said. “This threat of yours will be remembered when I have completed my task, and have come to collect my well-earned boon.”

As Hob floated silently away from him, Oberon was left alone upon the hill of a dead Queen. He shuddered once, then breathed deeply and struck out on a new path.

There were others yet to be gathered.

* * *

Darkness neared by the time Piskin finished dragging Mari to a lonesome spot in the Deepwood. She was puffing for real by then, and feeling truly ill. She thought that if his plan was simply to slay her and leave her body where none would discover the crime, this was an excellent spot for it. She wondered as well if the baby would really come if they kept walking at such a pace.

“There’s no one here to take care of me or otherwise,” said Mari. “I’d expected an Inn or a woodsman’s outpost at least.”

Piskin flashed her a smile. “No one here? Don’t be so sure!”

He pushed through another hanging thicket of brush and a clearing opened ahead of them. There was a structure of sorts, but it was dark and in ruins. In the half-light of the dying day as seen from the floor of the Deepwood, she squinted and realized it was a ruin of toppled stones. Fallen blocks of bluish stone circled the spot, and it was raised somewhat upon the earth. Grass had grown up over much of it, but the forest itself seemed to be in retreat. The trees leaned in overhead hungrily, but did not approach the stones with their trunks.

“What is this place? I don’t see any lights.”

Piskin chuckled. “You will see them, rest assured. As the sun sinks, they will pop out here and float about.”

“Wisps?” asked Mari in alarm. “You’ve brought me to a haunt of the Fae, then?”

“Indeed I have. Out in the wilds of the Deepwood, it is only they who might help such an unlikely pair as us.”

Mari balked. Piskin tugged with more strength than she would have given him credit for having in his tiny body, but she, being more than twice his height, held firm. She stared, wide-eyed. In her own beloved Haven woods, of course, she had entreated with Puck. But she had never been to a true fairy mound. Certainly, there was the one out on the common in Riverton, but that was different. She’d seen it, but never dared walk near.

This spot of power, this connection between her world and the world of Twilight was different. It was unknown, wild. All the terrible legends she’d heard all her life, they struck through to her now and froze her mind. Banshees, ghosts, floating things on gossamer wings both beautiful and terrible to behold. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and her eyes were white circles.

“Girl, don’t freeze on me now!” said Piskin. “Where did you think you might meet Puck or his kind? At a smithy, perhaps? In one of your apple orchards, or strolling down a lane in Frogmorton?”

She looked at him, but barely heard his words. For behind him, in the half-lit scene of huge tumbled blue stones, the first wisp had popped out. It was a pink-white one, a glimmering, floating fireball. It was so strange, so lovely, Mari forgot to breathe at all for several seconds.

“They come!” said Piskin, tugging at her hand. He grunted with the effort, like a man trying to force his mule to market. “We must circle around them, and entreat with them as they appear.”

Finally, Mari took her first, stumbling half-step forward. Two more wisps had appeared. Somehow, although they were silent, the beauty of them, the intense alien vision they formed, weakened her resolve. She stepped forward as if in a dream.

Slowly, with Piskin squeezing her hand painfully, she walked around the circle of fallen stones. She knew not what it was that she circled. It could have been an ancient tomb, or a shrine upon which a thousand maidens had been sacrificed. She did know that it was a terrible place and a place full of wonder, all at the same time. A magical spot, where her world connected with another.

They kept walking, and more wisps kept appearing. They approached the unlikely pair now. Three green sisters linked hands and danced in the air around her head, giggling. The sounds of their voices were too tiny to separate into words, but she could hear their mirth.

Tears streamed down her face, tears of joy and rapture. She smiled hugely through it all. She was overwhelmed. Puck had been one thing, but he had been only a single member of the Fae, a single piping elf. Now, without any kind of ward, she was cast into the middle of the Shining Folk, and they floated around her, caressing her hair and touching her stomach curiously. Their every touch left behind a hot, pink spot upon her skin. Their every caress made it harder to think.

And so they walked around the stones, widdershins. The moon appeared in the sky as they finished the first circuit, where none had been before.

Three times more around, then five.

The grass beneath her feet turned silver. The moon had swollen and now shone with an unnatural brightness. Soon, seven circuits had been made.

Some small part of her knew that she was lost. She had stepped too far down their shining path. She could not step away, even if her mind had allowed it. To do so was to be lost between worlds, to be left wandering a void forever. She was in the power of the wisps, and she could only hope and pray for luck and mercy.

Chapter Eight

The Search

On the morning of the second day, they found the abandoned boat along the western shore of the river.

“Heave west!” shouted Brand. Corbin, who manned the tiller, guided them to the shore. Soon they investigated the stolen boat.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Corbin, looking at the slashed lines. “Someone has cut down the sails.”

Brand walked around the craft, eyeing the muddy shore with a frown. “I see evidence of merlings here. Quite a number of them.”

The others looked on in silent concern. If merlings had found a solitary pregnant girl and a half-crippled Wee One out here, they might have been easily overwhelmed.

“I’m not sure it was merlings, Brand,” said Telyn. She knelt at the edge of the craft. “The tracks are beneath the boat as well as around it. Perhaps they just come here to fish.”

Brand’s axe twitched with impatience. He echoed its mood, shaking his head. He stood with his hands on his hips, but already he felt the itch to reach up and draw Ambros. Merlings were foul things—things that
needed
slaying.

“Let’s not make excuses for them,” he told the others. “Someone cut those sails down and dragged them from the boat. Perhaps here, or out in the water. We can’t know which, without finding bodies.”

“Do you think then..?” Telyn asked, her voice trailing off. She looked at him in sad concern.

“Probably yes, the girl is slain. But I’ll not leave the matter to chance. Frogmorton is only another dozen miles upstream. If there are merlings about, and we all know this wild section of the Berrywine crawls with them, I’ll wager they’ve got a village nearby.”

Corbin nodded thoughtfully. “They would be in the marshlands on this side, the wilder of the two shores.”

The others reluctantly agreed with Brand’s logic and they continued on, following the western shore and probing for any sign of bodies, merlings or other evidence.

By midday they had found the telltale signs: a rivulet, a channel cunningly hidden but noticeable to the trained eye. It was an artificial channel that connected to the river, and took water away into the Deepwood. Covered over with brambles and fallen logs, it did not appear to be anything unnatural, but Brand knew it for what it was. The channel fed a merling village somewhere amongst the brooding trees.