The Hob's Bargain

families who would have me after that.
    If anyone had found out I was mageborn, they’d have killed me. By the One God’s sacred commands, mages are an evil to be eliminated, and since Lord Moresh’s great-grandfather’s conversion, everyone in Fallbrook followed the teachings of the One God. Death to mages was more popular than some of the other edicts.
    I still had nightmares about the old woman who was pressed to death by her family when I was five or six. They’d used a barn door and piled it with stones until she was crushed beneath the weight. I wasn’t there when it happened, but the stones still stood. When I passed them, I always tried not to see the remains of the barn door underneath the heaped mound of rock.
    Like my brother, I’d still prefer such a death over what a mage would do to me—which was just as well, for I wouldn’t be given the choice of apprenticeship. All bloodmages were men.
    I stayed away from town when Lord Moresh and his bloodmage were in residence. Fortunately, Fallbrook was neither his only nor his most important holding, so he was seldom here. This year there’d been a war someplace and he hadn’t come at all.
    I’d expected Quilliar’s death to leave me an old maid no matter how hard I tried to appear mundane, but fourteen years had been enough time for memories to fade. My father needed someone to take over the land he held. My sister Ani’s husband, Poul, had as much land as he could work. So Father traveled north to Beresford, which was even smaller than our own Fallbrook, and found Daryn and his younger brother Caulem, tenth and eleventh sons of a farmer with only a small plot to divide among his children. So Caulem and Daryn came to my father’s house last fall to help with the harvest.
    Neither old memories, the pall of the sight , nor the equally dismal embarrassment of burning the toast this morning could rob me of my happiness for very long. The past was gone: Quilliar’s death was unchangeable. When I went to the fields at midday with food for the men, I’d warn my father to be careful. Though Ma tried to pretend I didn’t have the sight , Father would give proper weight to it. Tomorrow I would do better with the toast.
    I looked around the cottage for something to do until lunchtime, but there really wasn’t anything. We hadn’t been living there long enough to get much dirty. My earlier fit of cleaning had taken care of our few morning dishes.
    I pulled out the quilt I was making for my sister’s baby. After years of barrenness, Ani was preparing for the birth of her first child in late summer. As fast as I sewed, I might get it done by the child’s twelfth year. Even so, the rhythm of sewing was familiar and relaxing.
    At midday I folded the blanket and set it aside with a smile and a pat. I was not the best seamstress, but this blanket was going very well. Ma said it was the simplest pattern she knew, and even I couldn’t ruin it. Stretching the stiffness of a morning’s stitchery out of my shoulders, I started for the cellar to prepare a meal.
    I slid the rug aside with my shoe and tugged the trapdoor open. A haunch of salt pork awaited me on one of the shelves. Sliced onto some of Ma’s bread, it would make a good meal.
    I’d already taken a step down the ladder when I heard a commotion outside.
    Hooves thundered, and a male voice shouted something I couldn’t quite make out. Horses at this time of year were bad news. Good news could wait until planting was over. I started toward the door.
    â€œCheck the barn,” rumbled someone. I didn’t know his voice, and his accent was odd. “See if they have any horses.”
    I’d just been ready to call out a welcome, but that stopped me. Bandits , I thought. We hadn’t had robbers for a long time. Even though the King’s Highway passed through Fallbrook, we were isolated on the outskirts of civilization.
    The sound of boots on the porch shook me from the stillness of shock. I pulled the rug across the outside of the trapdoor and held it in place with one hand as I climbed down the ladder. I let the door close almost completely before releasing the rug and pulling my fingers out. I hoped it would conceal the door from a cursory search; it had no lock or bar to keep anyone out.
    I heard a crash that might have been the cottage door opening. Daisy, our milk cow, lowed in alarm from the barn. I