'No, I was wearing these clothes, I am sure of it.'
The friar nodded. 'The visions are not madness, Tobias, although they may drive you mad. They happened but did not happen. They are real and not real. They may be true or false. All they show is that you are in fearful danger. If the Inquisition may be looking out for you at Tortosa, then we shall have to scout the town very carefully before we enter it.' He smiled wanly. 'You are not alone in having reason to be wary of the inquisitors.'
'They are friars too.'
The old man thrust out a bony jaw. 'Not of my order!'
'I am sorry, I should not—'
'No you shouldn't. To rid the world of demons is commendable, but if those who seek to do so use methods as evil as the demons themselves, then where is the benefit? And if the methods do not work, then the total evil is worse than before. But peace, Tobias! Let me think on what you have said.' Brother Bernat fell silent.
CHAPTER FIVE
As they were walking past the remains of an orchard, the friar began to talk again, gazing at the road ahead and speaking so softly that he seemed to be musing aloud.
'Like you, Tobias, I can see elementals. That is not a birthright but a knack one gains from dealing with them. You were a witchwife's child, and I have studied the spirits all my life. I don't know how old I am — ninety, perhaps more. It is too long to remain ignorant, but that is what I am. Spirits are still mysteries to me, and especially I do not know where they come from. They do not procreate as mortals do, but they must be replenished somehow, else the hexers would have stripped the world clean of them long ago. I like to think they are spontaneous manifestations of nature, outpourings of the power of life and beauty. Anywhere I have ever encountered a sprite was a place of beauty — a grove of willows, a grotto, a bend in a stream. But I don't know if the elemental is attracted to the beauty, or creates it, or is created by it.'
He smiled his patient, gentle smile, which Toby now thought was more effective than a castle wall at preserving secrets.
'I have gathered a little lore in my time, though, and I shall share it with you if you promise not to ask any questions until I am done.'
'I should gladly promise more than that, Brother.'
'That will suffice. Most people know of only three types of spirit, although they are all varieties of the same, of course — the wild elementals, the benevolent tutelaries, and demons. It does seem unfair, doesn't it, that the evil ones are able to move around while the tutelaries remain always in their own domains? Their mobility is bought at a terrible price. Whatever the Inquisition did to you, Tobias, or would have done to you, could be nothing compared to the tortures an adept applies to a spirit to make a demon of it. And the spirit cannot even hope to die, as I am sure you did… would, I mean. Small wonder they are so malevolent!
'Your hob, though, or imp as we call them, is not bound as a demon is. It has free will, and undoubtedly it is responsible for your visions. Those are very unusual and very dangerous. Think of them not as prophecies but as warnings. No hob nor spirit can foretell the future, not in any detail. A great tutelary may recognize a sickness in a man and know that he will die soon. It may have knowledge beyond mortals' ken and be privy to great secrets, but it cannot write a history of the future. The hob knows less of what is going to happen to you than you do, because it lives only for the moment.'
The pause seemed to invite comment, so Toby said, 'Yes, Brother.' Whatever this long introduction was leading up to must obviously be bad news.
'You, for example, are deeply concerned by the problem of finding enough food for us, but that is completely beyond its comprehension. Mostly the hob just watches the world unfolding around you, satisfying its childish curiosity. If it becomes excited, then it may do foolish things, but otherwise it is only an observer, I think. You agree?'
'Yes, Brother.'
'It takes no heed for the morrow, until suddenly it realizes you are in serious trouble. Then it will react to save you, because you are valuable to it. It is undoubtedly fond of you in its way, and if it cannot understand what pain is, that is not its fault. Suffering it ignores, but your death matters to it. If it can use its powers to save your life, then it will. But supposing it cannot?'
'When it is blocked by other demons?' Toby had promised not to ask questions, but the friar either did not notice that lapse or did not care.
'Baron Oreste's demons, perchance. And the Inquisition undoubtedly uses demons of its own, although the brothers probably do not think of them as that. Once in a while they must pick on a genuine creature, and if they did not restrain it by some sort of gramarye it would blast them. When they disincarnate an incarnate it would merely take over one of their own number unless they had some means of preventing that.'
'By 'disincarnate' you mean—'
'I mean kill its host, Tobias. When the husk dies, or soon after, the demon is freed. Suppose… Let us suppose that a few days from now you meet the Inquisition. They may be looking out for you, or someone in our party denounces you, or they just pick on a foreigner. It doesn't matter which, although that poster you mentioned suggests that they are specifically looking for you. Also, the Inquisition is normally extremely patient, absurdly so. It will keep people in jail for years while it prepares its case. For it to put you to the Question so quickly is very unusual. But you say they will begin to torture you almost right away.'
'And I cannot tell them what they want to know.'
'Of course. And so, eventually, you will die. Even a strong man can only endure so much. Then, and only then, the hob realizes the problem.'
'
'Probably not until you are dead or near death. It realizes its mistake, but it cannot just heal you and blow a hole through your cell walls, because it is blocked by some sort of gramarye. So what does it do?'
Toby blinked in sudden sunshine as they emerged from the shade of the trees. 'I don't know, Brother.'
'I suspect it does what we want to do when we make a mistake. You know that terrible feeling when you have done something wrong and wish you could undo it? A thoughtless word, an error of judgment, hitting your thumb with a hammer? For us, what's done is done, but that may not be true for the hob. Suppose it jumps back in time — taking you with it, of course — and lets the world unfold again? The next time events may turn out differently.'
'Spirits! I did not know that was possible!'
'I find it hard to credit myself, but I heard such a procedure mentioned as a theory once, many, many years ago. I shall discuss it with Father Guillem, if you will let me take him into our confidence. But see how well it fits the facts! Especially it fits the hob. An elemental has no need to violate the order of nature so brutally. A tutelary never would, because to change the past for one person would change it for many and might introduce other evils worse than the first. A demon cannot, because it is bound by conjuration. I have only scant knowledge of such vile hexing, but I do believe that it binds the demon in time as well as in space. The hob, though, is free to do as it likes. I expect it tried this trick once in desperation and it worked, so now it does it more often.'
Usually Toby thought of himself as a horse and the hob as the rider. Brother Bernat was saying that this rider gave the horse its head — which might not be true always but could be most of the time — but when the horse wandered into trouble, the rider took it back to… 'I find this hard to visualize, Brother.'
'So do I, my son, so do I! Imagine that you are dying from the inquisitors' cruelty, say a month or two from now. The hob wakes up to the situation and flips you back to this morning. If it does this properly, then everything that has happened is wiped out. The slate is clean. You proceed more or less as you did before.'
'Then I should fall into the same trap again.'
The narrow gray shoulders shrugged. 'Not necessarily. Life is a series of choices, of chance happenings, of little events producing large results. Small hooks catch big fish. A seed blows in the wind and a tree grows. Things may not work out exactly as they did the first time.'
'The ghoul in the orange grove! The first time I tripped over Hamish and…' Toby rephrased a question into
