The Hob's Bargain полностью

I knew the others were thinking raiders. It was possible the group harassing Fallbrook was part of a larger raiding party or even an enemy army—but a feeling that chilled me down to the bone told me the answer was worse than an army. A feeling and the memory of a vision of men dissolving into ash didn't allow for so mundane an answer.

The quick glimpse I'd had of the wolf bones became more sinister. I didn't say anything, though, merely sent Duck after the other two horses as they headed down the trail to Auberg. What could I have said?

We passed the croft with the hanging laundry first. There were a few chickens in the yard: small and scrawny, half-grown chicks. The men rode past the trail to the house but, on impulse, I turned in. Kith and Wandel stopped to wait for me.

The grass was knee-deep, so it wasn't until something crunched under Duck's feet that I realized there were bones scattered here and there throughout the yard. I dismounted and kicked some of them out from under the grass.

They were clean as if someone had boiled the flesh from them—chicken mostly, though some of them might have been goose. Nearer the clothesline I saw the bones of a dog. A basket sat nearby, half full of washing.

I led Duck around the fluttering clothes. A brightly striped kerchief was still wrapped around the skull of the woman who had been hanging laundry.

Not raiders, I thought. There was no sign the woman had met an untimely end by ax or knife. It might have been a plague that killed her. There were some that swept through towns, killing entire populations. Most of those were mageborn, but some of the natural diseases could do it, too.

If this were a plague, we shouldn't go into town. If this were plague, it couldn't have happened very long ago. The bones were yellowish, almost greasy looking, with dark spots on the long bones of her arm. Newly stripped bones that had lain there for no more than a month.

I'd seen an army turned to bone, then ash: it hadn't been a plague. But what madman would have loosed such a spell here? Auberg was no threat to anyone.

I sat beside the skeleton and touched her wrist gently. The bones were dry against my fingers. I wondered what the unknown mage who'd stripped the land of magic bindings had done with the power he'd acquired. Duck touched the top of my head with his nose, worried about my unaccustomed place at his feet.

I closed my eyes and tried to see what had happened to the woman. I tried to put aside all of my speculations. For a long time, nothing came to me. Visions all the time when I didn't want them, but they were harder to call on purpose. My right leg started to go to sleep.

I heard hoofbeats approaching. Kith and Wandel must have gotten tired of waiting. I opened my eyes and turned to look…

A bloodmage clad in black and red with arcane symbols climbing his sleeves stood alone in a gray tower that looked out over the city. Some of the runes worked into his clothing I knew from Gram—calls for health and well-being.

The man turned, letting his face touch the lamplight.

It was the face of a man eaten from inside by his magic. I knew what it was because Moresh's mage was showing signs of it. Father said it was because bloodmagic made the bones go soft. What this man's original features might have been was impossible to tell.

"I told you that we would lose this fight, my lord," he said. His voice was only a harsh whisper, but it carried power.

Someone made an answer, inaudible—but the effect on the mage was electrifying. "I have done all I could. Do you accuse me of treachery?" He listened, then replied even more softly. "A truce? What would he take in return for truce when he knows we have already lost?"