Dream Magic (4 page)

“Hob,” Brand choked out at last. He lowered the
Axe slowly, but did not let it drop completely to the flagstones at his feet.

“Old Hob…w
hy have you come?”

A slow, rhythmic thumping began. A figure formed out of nothingness right in front of
Brand. It started as an umber shadow, then grew into a stain upon the bright stones of the ramparts. A second later, the stain transformed into a cowled figure, and a few moments after that the full body of Old Hob stood before him, leering with yellow teeth and even yellower eyes.

The rhythmic thumping sound, Brand saw now, was
coming from Old Hob. His big, misshapen hands were slapping into one another, making a popping series of reports that instantly grated upon Brand’s irritable mind. He was clapping, slowly and mockingly.

“Very good, Axeman,” Old Hob said. “You spotted me quickly. I’m not accustomed to
being seen at all.”

Old Hob possessed the Lavender Jewel, which chose as its form a hunting horn
. It provided the bearer with power over flight, sight and sound. It could make one as invisible and silent as a wisp of drifting smoke. Brand could see the horn now, where Hob wore it slung around his neck.

“Do not mock me
here upon my own walls, goblin,” Brand said dangerously. “I’ve split creatures in twain for less.”

Hob stopped clapping. He straightened
and made a gargling sound, clearing his raspy throat.

“I meant no offense. You should better contain yourself. You’re barely in cont
rol of that Axe. Make sure you’re the rider, boy, not the horse. Put it away, and show me who is in charge!”

Brand did not put the Axe away. Instead, he lifted it and aimed it at Old Hob, who shifted uncomfortably.

“Again you insult me. I’m the Axe’s master, but it knows an enemy when it sees one. I dare you to insult me again, here in Castle Rabing. Come, try it! I wish to see your rags alight.”

“No need, no need,” said Hob, lifting his hands in a supplicating gesture. “We are two creatures of power, two lords among
our countless, helpless servants. There is no call for threats or insults between us. I’ve come with a gift, in any case.”

“What kind of gift?” Brand asked suspiciously.

He let the Axe drop to his side again, but still did not put it away. It squirmed in his hand, and provided images to his mind. He saw himself slashing away Old Hob’s outstretched olive-green arms and splitting open his deformed skull. Droplets of foul blood and even fouler glistening teeth would splatter the stones here, and he doubted the stain would ever wash away.

“
I bear the gift of knowledge—of forewarning!” Hob said grandly. He seemed to be unaware of Brand’s mood, but he was watching closely.

“Speak to me, and know that at this distance you could never e
scape me. You are being judged today, king of the swamps. You must not be found guilty of deception, or your life will be forfeit, for I am the lord of this castle and these lands, and I will not tolerate deceit.”

Hob shrugged and dared to roll his eyes. “Really, Brand, it would be better if you put
that thing away. It makes you—” Hob paused, seeing Brand’s face darken. “Never mind,” he said quickly. “I’ve come to warn you about a being known to you, a trusted comrade from the past. When he arrives, you will greet him with happiness, but he will bring you only sorrow. He knows not what he seeks, nor how to find it, nor what it will do when he does find it. But rest assured, neither of you will be happy when that day comes.”

Brand
stared and frowned. Old Hob, like so many of his kind, never liked to state his meaning clearly. The Fae preferred to talk in riddles and half-truths. Brand, with the Axe gripping his mind, found this infuriating. He lifted Ambros with sudden purpose. He poised the twin blades under Old Hob’s Adam’s apple, which was huge and wattled.

“Speak plainly,” Brand said quietly. “For
the words may be your last.”

Old Hob froze. He didn’t dare step away. His eyes bulged and his throat rose and fell as he swallowed. The baggy skin of his neck touched the twin shining blades of the Axe and a few drops of blood ran down the curved edges.

“Trev will come to you,” he said. “Do not help him! He is a stripling that plays with fire. He will burn down his house and yours as well. Let what sleeps slumber on. I beseech thee for both our sakes.”

Brand withdrew the Axe
from Hob’s neck and frowned. He could think more clearly now. The Axe had tasted blood, and even though it was only a trickle, Ambros’ fever was less urgent in his mind. He had no doubt the Axe was savoring the flavor of Hob’s flesh and would want more. Soon, it would demand that he lop off Hob’s disgusting head from his neck so it could drink deeply.

Deciding this was a lucid moment in what had already been a trying morning, he gently pushed the blades into his pack and released the handle.

The rush of fatigue, aches and pains that wracked his body a moment later almost caused him to stumble. He wasn’t a young man any longer. He’d passed his fortieth birthday and his children had grown too big to hold in his arms. All this running about, busting down doors and raging at Hob had wearied him more than he liked to admit.

Brand
forced himself to stand firm and easy, however. The wave of fatigue quickly passed. He gave Old Hob no hint of his frailty without the Axe. He crossed his arms and looked up at the oldest Goblin, the self-styled
King
of the Goblins. He smirked then, noticing that Old Hob’s robes had been scorched black around the lower hem. That was what had given him away: a burnt, brimstone-like stink.

“I see I
burned you right out of the air,” Brand said, almost laughing. “Sorry about that.”

Old Hob was visibly relieved now that the Axe wasn’t tickling his throat.

“I must say, you need to keep better control of yourself in these situations, Brand.”

“And I say that people who come
flapping down from the sky unannounced and uninvited can take what they get. I owe no hospitality to skulking devils who seek to glide into my castle unseen.”

“Very well,” Old Hob
sniffed, “I may have made a mistake in that regard.”

“You said something about Trev
? That I’m not to listen to him or to help him? You must realize I trust him a thousand times more than I trust you.”

“Perhaps. But I know that you trust my nature. I would not come here to play an idle trick like Wee Folk souring milk. I came because you and I both have so much to lose.”

Brand scowled. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Very well, let me show you something.”

Old Hob turned, and with grunting steps, he bent down and entered the tower. Frowning, Brand followed him.

The other was a
lready halfway up the stairs when Brand entered the cool gloom of the tower. How had Hob moved so quickly? Knowing it must be a trick of the Lavender Jewel, he rushed after the beastly creature to the roof.

Up
atop the tower, the cool morning breezes could be felt coming up from the river. The clouds had pulled apart like torn cotton while they’d been speaking, and they could now see for miles to the distant horizon.

Old Hob extended an impossibly long arm. After a knobby series of joints and baggy, wrinkled green skin, a finger as tapered as a dinner candle
pointed to the south.

“There. Look there.”

Brand peered in the indicated direction. A lone figure was on the road, coming toward them. He frowned and turned to Hob.

“Who’s that then? Are you saying it’s Trev, come already?”

But he was talking to no one. Hob had vanished and was presumably soaring away into the heavens.

Brand twisted this way and that, squinting into the sunshine and
the blue sky, both patched by rising white clouds. But without mists to mark him, Hob was impossible to see. He thought about drawing the Axe again and burning holes in the air, but it seemed pointless and foolish.

He shrugged, and looked south
ward again. Could that really be Trev?

Yes…
he thought he saw silver locks reflecting the sun like a soldier’s polished helm. And that stride—the boy had always been fast, but today he seemed to move over the land like one of the bounding Wee Folk.

Brand frowned, thinking about Old Hob’s words. He was going to have to talk to Trev to get to the bottom of all this.
He would have to question him on every detail.

Perhaps that was precisely what Old Hob had wanted.

* * *

Trev,
being half-elf, didn’t often feel a need for urgency or directness. When he reached the gates of Castle Rabing, a grumbling watchman let him pass. The gates always opened at dawn and closed again at dusk for all save people who were on the lord’s business.

Trev knew he could have scaled the walls during the night, but that would have been rude and possibly dangerous if a misunderstanding
had ensued with the guards. So, he’d waited for the sun to come up before making his approach from the outer lands where he’d camped for the night.

Once inside the outer walls, he
headed first toward the copse of woods that stood in the eastern corner of the interior lands. There, his aunt Tegan and Ivor lived. The region was known to be home to unusual folk—folk like his cousin Ivor, who was an ogre. The people who lived in the main village shunned the area, but they tolerated it. They knew that if a time came when the walls of Castle Rabing needed defenders, the strange creatures who dwelt there in that wooded corner would muster and could man their posts well. So the stranger folk were tolerated even if the townsfolk often whispered and cast dark looks in their direction.

Tegan had lived
under a sugar pine tree near the south wall for years. Off and on, Mari and Trev had journeyed here during the summer months to visit them. That had not happened for nearly three years, but for a half-elf, three years are little more than the blink of an eye.

When he arrived at the base of the sugar pine, he frowned in concern. There
he found Ivor’s stake and chain, worn nightly for show. It helped to keep the locals calm about sleeping with an ogre in their midst. Tegan had always slept in the tree’s branches in summer, as did Trev when he visited. But Ivor had slept on the gnarled roots of the trunk. These had never seemed to bother him in the slightest, which had fascinated Trev throughout his youth.

“Aunt Tegan?” called Trev
squinting up into the sugar pine’s branches.

T
here was no answer from the tree. The wind stirred the needles and caused them to rustle. That was the only sound which came to his sharp ears.

He thought perhaps they’d gone to market, but upon investigating the place he found many signs indicating they’d been gone for a long time. The bucket they used for water was bone dry. The leather sacks of goods they hung from the branches were flaccid or missing entirely.

Trev looked around in concern. When he found no signs of any wrongdoing, he shrugged and headed for the central encampment of the Fae.

Here
he found elves, half-elves, Wee Folk and even two young, immature ogres at play in the shade of the trees. Unlike humans, elf settlements were not places of drudgery and hard work. These people preferred to live upon the land with a minimum of comforts. It was not that they were unskilled, nor that they were particularly lazy, but they did place value upon the elements of life in a very different order than humans did. Building complex structures and luxuries were not their priorities. Rather, they did enough to survive and frittered away the rest of their time upon what others might consider idle pursuits. A Wee One might spend a decade perfecting a reed flute, for example, playing it nightly at sunset—all the while he lived in an unadorned burrow under a slab of rock.

At last, at midday, Trev met a familiar face. It was none other than Kaavi, sister to Tegan.

“Auntie Kaavi!” he shouted and embraced her immediately.

She returned the hug and they beamed at one another.

“My, how you’ve grown!” Kaavi said. “Has a century passed so quickly?”

“Of course not,” he laughed. “I’m not pure elf, you know.”

“But you have the spirit of an elf. I feel it in every movement of your person. I’m so glad you’ve come, Trev. Will you be staying long? It is still spring, and we can spend the entire summer together.”

Trev shook his head. “This isn’t a social call. Not exactly. I wanted to talk to Aunt Tegan and  Ivor, but I can’t find them.”

Kaavi’s face clouded. “They’ve gone. Oberon recalled them last year for the Winter’s Feast.”

“But that was months ago.”

Kaavi shrugged. “Yes, here it was. But it’s hard to say how much time has passed back in the Twilight lands. They may think they’ve only been there for a long weekend.”

“I see. I’m disappointed.”

“So, if not just for a visit, why have you come?”

Trev hesitat
ed. “I need to know some things…about certain types of creatures.”