Streghe? Witches? Are they under attack? Thomas swings about, takes his bow up, nocked and drawn this time.
Chugging along the path after them comes short, rotund Gallorini. He carries a sword in one hand and in the other a crossbow. How he’s able to trundle along while carrying both, Thomas cannot imagine; but seeing the bow aimed at him, Gallorini goes wild-eyed, ducks his head, and dodges from the path and into the trees.
Thomas calls out, “Gallorini, stop, I won’t shoot you. Fermo!”
But Gallorini has already stopped, rigidly.
The sword and crossbow slide from his grasp. He stands stiffened, arms and legs spread wide. Then he tilts back his head and pules, “Io ho solo voglia—I only want share in your treasure—il tesoro!”
Thomas starts for him but Waldroup grabs hold of his tunic from behind. “No,” he says. “It’s too late. It’ll get you, too.”
He yanks free. “What will? What treasure is he talking about?”
The trees whisper as if pleased, “Lonely one, yes, yes.”
Even as he takes another step toward the Italian, Gallorini is taking root. The ground where his feet are planted is leeching the essence from him, transforming him. His clothing pulls, strains, and tears. It slides down his body, seemingly into the ground.
He screams now like a bear set on fire. Roars and screams as his skin, like the clothing before it, stretches tight and tears away, leaving glistening muscle beneath. His arms thrust high above his head, tissue and sinews unraveling. They slither down, until the arms are naked of flesh, the fingers extending, growing, branching, as his skull melts into his torso, ribs condensing, joining. His screams by now have curdled to a whisper; in any case, he is no longer Gallorini but a miniature version of the thousands of trees around him, his gasping wail mingling into their rustling call. “Þagalwood.” Now the never-ending agony threaded through that word is clear. Whatever the others were, whatever existence they once knew, this is their banishment, their doom, a suffering that has no end. And they were calling to him and Waldroup to join them in it.
Behind him, in the direction of whatever it is sparkling beyond this horrible skeletal forest, something rumbles, a thunder that doesn’t die, but grows slowly, steadily louder. Pounding. They’ve been through enough battles to identify the sound of an enemy horde charging in their direction. That is the moment Waldroup yells, “The stone!” He stares first at his hand, then at the ground around them, dropping to his knees, and begins patting all around himself. “Do you see it? When I grabbed your shirt, it was in my hand. How could I—It has to be here, Tommy.”
“Whatever’s coming, it’s closing on us, Alpin. We can’t wait!”
Waldroup claws the dirt, stares wretchedly up at him, hands out as if imploring. “It glitters so blue, why can’t I see it?”
Thomas doesn’t know if he dropped it just now, or before, so in awe of the evil wood around him that he didn’t even notice when he let it go. They don’t have time to find out.
“Look,” says Thomas, and he tugs on the cord around his neck. “We still have a stone to get us out. Come on.” He tugs Waldroup to his feet, pushes him ahead, and they finally take off running.
The trees seem to be reeling in a gusting wind now that neither of them can feel. The branches clatter and knock all around them, excited by this chase or maybe directing their pursuers: Here, here they are.
They plunge into the fog again and it swirls away. Ahead of them, what has previously been a single circle spreads and divides, and divides and divides again, until there must be a hundred red tunnels, all identical, all receding into darkness, all pulling on him to go their way. Waldroup stumbles and tries to lead them off. “It’s this way!” he insists, but even he isn’t certain any longer.
Thomas hesitates, takes the ördstone from the pouch and holds it in his fist, concentrates. The many paths spin around them as if they’re running on a treadmill spinning infinite ways to go. He holds up the stone, and the blue spiderweb flickers in one direction, aligns along one path—the only one burning with green fire like a tiny star at its end. When he focuses upon that star, the other ways collapse and fold together again into the untouchable, bloodred walls. The single line of blue gossamer light from the stone points the way. “Here!” he shouts, and drags Waldroup after him. He holds that flickering exit in his sight to keep from joining Waldroup in becoming lost. Somehow, Waldroup has caused the multitude of paths to appear; without his stone, he is the helpless quarry of this place. It would trick him, trick them both.
Far behind them the thunder has closed the distance. Beating hooves seem to be gaining every instant, while the green fire seems to be forever out of reach at the end of the tiny blue thread strung from the ördstone. Wheezing, he dares a look back, but there’s nothing visible beyond the bloodred tunnel, nothing in the distant, receding woods, nothing galloping on the path behind them even as the sound roars down on them like a storm.
And then quite suddenly he shoots out of the green circle and falls.
XIV. Talking Stones
On the outside again, he tumbled, instinctively clutching his arrows so they didn’t spill everywhere. He rolled upright onto his knees. Waldroup sprawled ahead of him, crying, “The stone, Tom! Quick!”
Thomas dropped his bow and drew the ördstone from its pouch. It burned cold as ice against his palm.
He lurched to the opening, and with the stone first touched the ground and then swept upward the way Stroud and Waldroup had done before him. The flaring ring collapsed along the line he drew, green fire sputtering to nothing below his hand as he got to his feet to finish. In the gap just before he sealed it, a helmed face rushed at him, eyes ablaze and fanged teeth bared. Quickly, he cut upward and jumped back, expecting an Yvag’s sword to plunge out of the night and impale him. But the last sparks of fire were gone. Nothing emerged in the air.
Even so, he picked up his bow and aimed where the circle might open again. Held the bowstring drawn taut until his arms were trembling. He sensed Waldroup beside him, both knives out, similarly prepared for a sudden flare of green fire.
The gate had been erased; nothing cut it into being again, though surely the demon was just an arm’s reach away.
Finally, Thomas lowered the bow. He turned.
Waldroup’s features were strangely discernable. Thomas could even see the shine of his eyes, and behind him the treetops were rough dark shapes against a starry but lightening sky.
The monks would be up now for lauds. But that meant . . .
“How long were we gone, Alpin?”
Waldroup was staring at the treetops behind Thomas. “Can’t have been but two hours at most. Not even.”
“I’d agree, but the whole night looks to have passed us by. It’s dawn now.” With the arrow he’d aimed he gestured at the treetops. “Mayhap five hours gone or more.” After returning the arrow to his quiver, he wrapped the ördstone in its wool cloth and tucked it back into the pouch dangling beneath his shirt. All the while he was watching Waldroup, whose expression contorted from something like pain into a look of utter grief.
Then he collapsed to sit cross-legged on the rise. He stuck his knives in the ground, crossed his arms around himself, and bowed his head. In a voice full of anguish, he said, “This is all my doing, my fault. I as good as killed Gallorini.”
Thomas wanted to offer sympathy but found it difficult, as he happened to agree with his friend. How had an ördstone driven his friend mad when his own stone effected no pull upon him at all? “What did you do, Waldroup? Tell me, because I don’t understand it.”
“The stones,” was all he said.
Thomas thought he’d misheard. “Stones. As in the one you lost and mine?”
Waldroup slowly looked up, and from that look it was obvious there was more he hadn’t said. He stood wearily, retrieved his knives. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
They walked back through the woods. There was thin mist in the low wooded valley beneath the half-constructed abbey. Before they emerged from the trees, a herd of deer ran through, and Thomas shot a young one, which he then lifted and carried slung across his shoulders as they went on. “This at least makes it look as if we were out hunting this morning,” he said. Waldroup agreed it was a good idea to appear so engaged.
As if to reinforce this, the first of the other stoneworkers they encountered on their way up the hill, Vasquez, asked if they had seen Gallorini. Waldroup lied and said they had not, and Vasquez smiled, replying that the young stag would make for a good feast tonight.
