The rat’s view of the bridge and gulch had made them seem gargantuan in the split second before the creature had crumpled uselessly to the ground. Ash knew there were bridges in this land which carried travelers through the mountains. Core was said to have an entire district of bridges arching between branches of the great tree Spire. Burrower bridges spanned holes into the earth that drank all light and seemed to have no bottom.

Westerbrook’s bridge couldn’t compare to the world’s great bridges, yet Ash was impressed.

The gulch was much wider than he had anticipated, both sides dropping almost straight down to the river below as if the land had been sheared away by magic. Each end of the bridge supported two thin columns wrapped about with carvings of grocklins, wisps, and birds so realistic they looked ready to leap from the stone and disappear into the surrounding woods. A waist-high railing stretched between columns.

In regular intervals the bridge had wisp lights in stone sconces and balconies--modest squares replete with seats and tables carved from stone. The centermost balconies were bigger, the chairs large enough to accommodate a hob’s massive frame. Despite the early hour, a gray-haired man occupied a distant balcony, a rudimentary fishing pole hung lazily over the railing.

Ash had wanted to gain the hob’s loyalty in order to secure the bridge, among other aims. He hadn’t realized how vital his mission was until he stood before the bridge. Ranks of his army could cross its wide passage without much fear of being bottlenecked. However, if the bridge crossing were denied to him, his army would pay dearly to gain the other side.

Secure this creature’s loyalty and others of his kind will follow, Krachnis instructed. They’ve never had leaders, but he could be one.

Between one step and the next, Ash felt all the magic he controlled vanish. He could no longer feel the skeletal ranks in the Ashen Lands. Krachnis was still there, a familiar presence in the back of his mind like a nagging thought, but something shielded the entity.

Ash reached for a necklace beneath his cloak. The master stone there was a familiar weight as he wrapped his hand around it. He reached for the nearby stone he had placed in Westerbrook’s graveyard but couldn’t sense it. The stones he had left throughout the Ashen Lands were similarly closed to him.

Taking a step backward, he stood beside the rat corpse which had fallen inert once his magic had no longer animated its lifeless body. Magic returned to him, a fire in his blood. Still holding the master stone, it glowed with a soft blue light until he released it. He threw a spell at the hob, little more than a blast of air, only to feel it dissipate as if he had tried to spit out a house fire.

Such powerful magic! Could it be from the bridge? Was there something to the relationship of a hob to its bridge that Krachnis had never told him? No, that seemed unlikely considering this particular hob’s past. Ash had heard some of the story, enough to know Sineck’s golem would have toppled over useless if hobs had always possessed this power.

It had to be the game. But was the game connected to the hob or to the bridge?

The Hero of Shrivemount lay on the opposite bank half-beneath the bridge, appearing to be nothing more than a pile of stones. The hob had been smart enough to sleep within the range of his unknown magic power. Of course, he wasn’t actually asleep. One eye popped open the second Ash stepped upon the bridge. A hob’s connection to its bridge would be worth investigating once Ash secured the creature’s allegiance.

“She said you would come,” the hob rumbled.

A grand speech full of dark promises died on Ash’s tongue.

“How? Who?” He looked around for an ambush and prepared to run outside the bridge’s magic-canceling influence.

The hob laughed. He lumbered to his feet, head nearly brushing the bridge’s underbelly, and pulled himself out of the gulch as if clambering over a fallen tree. He walked across the bridge, footfalls much lighter than Ash would have guessed.

Krachnis had told him of the mountain hobs’ great size, but he had thought it an exaggeration. Ash was half the creature’s height, and the hob’s arms hung at his sides like idle battering rams.

The closer the hob drew, the more Ash was filled with unease. It wasn’t the familiar anticipation of a fight. He felt an unseen force pushing him away from the hob. A seed of discomfort blossomed across his chest where the master stone hung. Even robbed of its magic, the stone reacted to the hob’s proximity.

“You are Skull Throw,” the hob said, apparently unaffected by the same force Ash felt.

“What?” Far from helpless without his magic, Ash reached into his cloak. The crossbow on his back would do little against the still advancing hob, but the serrated blade at his side might give him a chance if the hob attacked. Nothing in the hob’s demeanor suggested violence, but the master stone’s peculiar aversion to the hob had Ash worried.

The hob stopped at a respectable distance and repeated, “Skull Throw. Death mage.”

“Scheltro?” Ash hadn’t intended the word as a question, but the hob’s pronunciation threw him further off-balance. None this side of the Gambler’s Mountain should know the title he had adopted as leader of the Untamed. Could there be spies among the Untamed somehow loyal to this land? He released his hold on his blade and gathered his wits. “Yes, Hob, but who said I would come?”

“Knock.”

“Who is Knock?”

“My name is Knock,” he rumbled. “Not ‘Hob.’ Skull Throw has a name?”

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Ash laughed. The hob’s flippant behavior pulled the sound from deep within his chest. Like the mountains where he had once made his home, Knock was immutable and stubborn.

“Ash.”

“Would you like a cup of tea, Ash?” Knock pointed toward a large rock on the riverbank where a small metallic shape might have been a kettle. Watching the hob brew tea in the dainty kettle would have been a sight. “I have a few hand-rolled smoke leaves from a merchant. They’re much too small for me, but perhaps you…”

“Tea? Smoke leaves?” Ash asked. “I don’t understand.” Barely through introductions, the hob had already reduced Ash to a wonderstruck child. He thought Krachnis might have been correct--he was too naive.

“Pleasantries before negotiations.” Knock stood outside a large balcony and motioned for Ash to enter. “We have a deal to make. Your army needs to cross my bridge.” Knock swept his arms out like a proud parent. “I’ve improved it at the villagers’ request.”

“How can you know about my army?” Ash asked, lowering his voice on the final word. “Who is the ‘she’ you mentioned? How did she prophesy my arrival?” Ash had felt safe entering the Radiance’s territories. None had known his purpose. His legs felt unsteady, and he nearly crumpled into the stone seat.

Worse, at a time when he actually needed him, Krachnis was silent, offering none of his vast knowledge or advice.

“Gailinn,” Knock said.

Dealing in reanimation, Ash was familiar with cold--corpses, catacombs, and long-forgotten tombs. The chill running through him when he heard that name was new, a body-wracking chill.

“A new hero for the Radiance?” he whispered under his breath, at a loss for why the unknown name should affect him so strongly.

Knock held a long thick box beneath his arm. While Ash looked inward for counsel that wouldn’t come, Knock set the box atop the table.

“You want your army to cross my bridge. We’ll make a deal.” Knock rapped his knuckles across the box.

“And play your game.” The word sounded alien coming from Ash’s mouth.

Knock paused before he answered, “Yes.” He must have thought himself well informed. He should have expected Ash to be as well.

“I want my army to cross your bridge with you at its head,” Ash said, returning a semblance of calm and power to his words.

“Won’t happen,” Knock said. He ground his teeth. It sounded like bones crushed beneath a war wagon.

“When I win, you become a champion of my army,” Ash said. “Whatever power suppresses my magic, you remove it from the bridge.”

“When I win, none in Westerbrook shall come to harm by your influence or by those you serve,” Knock countered. “No member of your army may set foot within the town’s borders.”

“That’s it?” Ash said. He didn’t trust the hob’s wide grin. They locked eyes for some time, until Ash conceded that while the hob was surely capable of trickery, he couldn’t find any sign of it in the other’s words or expression. When Knock held out his hand, Ash shook it, only grimacing slightly at the hob’s firm grip. He failed to notice Knock’s other hand on the box until a moment before magic washed over him in a warm wave.

“The deal is bound by magic, sure as stone,” Knock said. Though it shouldn’t have been possible, his grin widened to monstrous proportions. Ash could see himself being swallowed whole by that cavernous mouth.

Knock flipped a latch, opening the box at its midsection. Equal wooden halves unfolded, then each half split along its middle and opened to create a large flat surface. If the entire box hadn’t been created with magic, the craftsman was to be commended. Ash couldn’t see where the folded halves fit together as if the entire board had always been one unbroken piece.

No sooner was the box open than the wooden surface changed. A town grew from the center of the board like a seedling unbound from time’s usual crawl. Stalks of grass shorter and thinner than the hairs of Ash’s arms sprouted along dusty roads and thickened outside a palisade. Trees appeared, reaching up and out until they surrounded the town, thick canopy swaying beneath the gentle breaths of a phantom wind. On the board’s western edge foothills climbed atop each other until stopped by the board’s limits. To the right a line of water rushed from north to south. Two-thirds of the way down its length, Westerbrook’s bridge spanned the stream.

The miniature land was lit by its own sun, an orb of fire suspended between man and hob. Ash stared directly at the sun, felt a mild warmth, but suffered none of the blinding brilliance he would have expected. Shadows waxed and waned, its light contained to the board.

Knock leaned back and awaited a reaction. Ash had heard about this part of the game in the tavern and tried to keep his face neutral. Hearing about the game couldn’t compare to seeing its brilliant display in person. No matter how much of his wonder he held back, some of it must have slipped through--a slight widening of his eyes, an upward angle to the corner of his lips, or an almost imperceptible gasp. The hob saw what he expected and bent back toward the game.

“Choose a land,” Knock said. He closed his eyes, and the landscape changed.

Mountains rose, topped by snow at their peaks. A river cut through the rock until it pooled into a lake where it met a valley rich with grass and trees. Through it all, roads and bridges marked some trace of civilization. One bridge, greater and longer than any other in the world, had become the subject of bard songs and artisan works since the last great war. Once an astounding feat of hob craftsmanship, spanning the heavens across the Tornilen River, Shrivemount Bridge was broken. At each end he could see the remaining statues of wodenlang, burrower, dryad, and human while the other statues of the High Races had been lost to the rocks and river below.

“When they learned who I was, my history, they all asked to play here,” Knock said.

Ash wondered if “they” referred to everyone who was not a hob or the people of Westerbrook. He knew something of the various races and their prejudices but not enough about hobs.

“Gailinn must have started the rumor,” Knock continued. “Not out of malice, though having my past known tortured me for a time. She forced me to confront what I’d been running from. To ride the sway.”

“Ride the sway?” Without Krachnis scratching in his mind, Ash found himself paying closer attention to the hob than he might have otherwise.

“Bridges aren’t dead and lifeless. They whisper if you know how to listen. Sometimes they scream.” Knock reached calloused fingers toward the broken bridge upon the game board, then pulled his hand back with a determined set to his mouth. “The greatest of them, the impossibly long or breathtakingly huge, they move. Shudder or shift.

“My forest kin maintain wooden bridges. The advantages and disadvantages of stone versus wood have been debated among us since time began.” Knock chuckled, suggesting he had been part of those debates. “Their bridges sway. Understandably so. Young forest hobs always fight the sway. They have to learn to ride it, to accept that it’s beyond their control.”

“Couldn’t you bend the bridges to your will?” Ash asked.

“Perhaps,” Knock sighed, which sounded like the first rumblings of an avalanche. “That wasn’t the intended point of my story.”

“What then?”