“Ah, you’ve lost someone, then?”
Instead of answering, Thomas said, “Tell me where you’ve traveled from, sir. I’ve never myself been on a pilgrimage, though I’ve met a few before you on their way to holy places and holy lands, and marveled at their stories.”
“We? We hail from many burghs and towns, but we came together in Jedburgh because Bishop Ecgred of Lindisfarne founded the church what is now the priory there. It seemed an auspicious start for our small group.” He gestured to them all as if to a group of players, and now they all moved, shifting about as if a cue had been given, which no doubt it had.
The woman behind the leader, though her face was much obscured by the draping of the couvre-chef, seemed to be reciting the pilgrim’s words to herself as he spoke, her lips twitching ever so slightly, as if she could not listen to her companion without matching his speech. Thomas had the odd thought that if he listened hard he might hear whispered words inside his own head the way he’d once heard the Queen of these monsters. Instead, what he heard was Waldroup announcing the obvious: “They’ve found you, Tom, and sooner rather than later. Where did you trip up?”
“I’ll bring you that ale,” he said again, then stepped back and closed the door to the house.
He’d just witnessed a performance for his benefit. If they had already determined his identity, it wouldn’t matter much hereafter how he played it.
The sleeping area was partitioned for warmth and he drew back the heavy curtain to find Janet seated with Morven on her lap, being happily bounced. But his wife was staring at him fearfully. She would have heard everything. Thomas put his finger to his lips.
At the foot of the bed, he opened the chest and took out a dark cape and hood that Janet had woven for herself. He closed the lid.
He laid down the cape. Then, drawing the curtain aside, he stepped onto the end of the bed frame, reached into the overhead loft, and pulled himself up among the rafters. His bow and Waldroup’s hung from a peg there. He took his down, reached for the quiver belt and one of Waldroup’s daggers.
“Those pilgrims?” she asked softly from below.
“Not pilgrims. Yvag. What I’ve always feared . . . I don’t know what, but something has given us away. You have to go, you and Morven, to your father.” He lowered himself onto the frame again, bringing his bow with him. He placed them upon the bed.
Janet had set their daughter aside, and Thomas leaned down, lifted her up. She giggled and grabbed at his hair. He nuzzled her and whispered to her, while her mother reached out and wrapped him in her arms. “Tàm, no,” Janet pleaded. “There has to be—”
“There’s no other way. My love, I don’t know what I did that drew them, but forgive me. Doesn’t matter now, it’s done, and they’ve come.” He kissed Morven’s round cheek and finally handed her back. Then he picked up and draped her dark cape around her shoulders, kissing her, too. “When you leave, while I’m at the byre with them, walk straight out the door toward the river. Keep on that line until you’re in the woods, then run home. Tell your father to arm his men and to kill any self-proclaimed pilgrims who arrive at his walls tonight. They will be no people, and the proof of that will be quick to behold. But he must show them no mercy.”
He drew the small bag on its thong from inside his tunic. He untied the neck of it and slid the ördstone into his palm. Its jewels glowed bright blue as if lit from within and appeared to be flickering through some sort of sequence. “See?” he said. “It knows they are nearby with other stones.”
“What will you do?”
“Take them their ale. Pretend ignorance of their true intentions.”
“But they’ll kill you.”
He smiled reassuringly. “Not immediately, or they’d have done so the moment I opened the door. Anyway, they’ve tried before, and here I stand.” Alone, he thought but did not say it. No Waldroup this time to cover him. No brother or sister, nor father or mother. They had taken all that from him, and now the elven would cleave him from his wife and daughter. There would be a reckoning; the only question, finally, was whose.
“Let me stay and fight beside you.”
“Janet, if you were to perish, if they got their hands upon Morven, I couldn’t live. I can lead them a chase far from here. From you.” He returned the ördstone to its bag, slid it back beneath his tunic. Then he clutched his wife and held her tightly. “If I’m taken,” he said quietly, “watch the ruins of Old Melrose for my return. It’s there they’ll take me through and there I’ll come back if I get away.” She started to protest. He kissed her hard, tasted the salt of her tears. She was trembling. He could not show weakness nor his own anguish now. He took a flagon from a shelf and filled it from a cask in the corner. A pity he had no poison to add to it. Beside the door, he left his bow and quiver before pulling on his fur-lined hooded shepherd’s cape over his other tunic. “When you hear me speaking to them, then go. That will tell you no one’s watching you.” He kissed her again. He grabbed three small wooden cups and stepped outside.
The yard was empty. The rain had let up, and thin mist hovered in layers above the ground.
He circled around the house, looking for any figures crouched in the shadows, but there were none. He headed to the byre and stable. Beyond it, two cows stood inside the stone fold watching him, lit now by the flicker of a low fire.
The pilgrims had made the fire just beyond the overhanging roof of the byre. Three of them were seated before it; the other three stood in a cluster, everyone accounted for.
The leader had removed his hat. He turned at Thomas’s approach. Thomas held up the flagon and cups. “I’m afraid I haven’t enough cups for you all. I don’t receive much company here,” he said.
“We will share. Thank you for this.”
The ördstone seemed to beat like a second heart against his ribs.
“I’m glad you found a way to warm yourselves. Wet business, striding through the rain.” Striders ’cross landscapes—the words of his own riddle echoed in his head. “But for me, I’m exhausted from my day’s work, so forgive me if I bid you a pleasant night’s stop on your journey and do not stay and converse.”
All the pilgrims rose as one and wished him a good night, one saying only “Bon nuit,” which caused him to wonder from how far away this group had been assembled, how quickly the call had gone out. And why were the three locals not included? Were they cautious because of the disappearance of Baldie and Alderman Stroud? Suspicious that he knew their identities already? And where would the sleeping leeches for these six be hidden? Doubtful they lay in the crypt of St. Mary’s, and that suggested more portals, maybe many scattered across the landscape, which made his small war seem all the more hopeless. Again he wondered how they invaded their hosts, how swift the process, how difficult. It must have been complicated; otherwise, they would simply have done the same to him or to Janet. So these pilgrims were likely not newly inhabited, but had been summoned like forces held in reserve because he would not recognize them. The only consolation he could take from that was how much they must want him.
He turned and walked away from the byre. He’d seen no weapons, yet at every step he half expected an arrow, a blade, something in his back.
He went back inside. Janet and Morven had gone and nothing had been touched. He took up his bow and quiver, then watched through the crack in the door. Perhaps they weren’t absolutely certain yet, and this was a scouting party sent to ascertain his identity, perhaps hoping to find out how many stood with him. They couldn’t be sure.
He closed the door. Yes, they wouldn’t know that even if they were certain of his identity.
Suddenly he understood.
The pilgrims were being cautious. The one thing he knew for certain was that for every skinwalker there was a sleeping and helpless Yvag somewhere. They were like spiders all connected by webs of power and influence. When one fell, it tore the web, disrupted long-simmering plans, and the elven must begin again, selecting a new host, forging new connections as they determined who to inhabit. No, if they determined his identity, they would send for someone else. He thought he might know who.
Ađalbrandr.
It soon came clear they had no idea yet that he’d sussed them. As he worked his way around the property, he encountered no one positioned to watch his house, no spies at all. He’d tied the bracer to his wrist, and belted his full quiver at his hip. His bow was strung and ready. He stayed alert, too, for any flying tubers with hummingbird wings darting through the air, but sensed none.
The light rain returned before he’d halfway reached his objective. It drove down the mist. The knees of his hose were soaked, and his leather boots. He pulled the hood of the cape up and worked his way around the far side of the byre. In the stable Dubhar and Waldroup’s horse stood calmly observing the strangers next door.
There was a large boulder at the base of the rise that led up to the shieling. It wasn’t far beyond the paddock that held his few cows. He nestled in behind it and waited to see what would happen.
For an hour, absolutely nothing did. The light rain sprayed the air. The pilgrims, save for their leader, sat so motionless that they became like carved objects. In his house, by now the fire would have all but gone out.
The leader in the straw hat drank some of the ale. When he did, two others drank as well, lifting their cups together, as if matching him. He set the cup down and they set down theirs. Then he got up, stirred the fire under the byre roof, and walked out into the rain. He began walking round and round in a large circle, until he’d created a muddy track.
Eventually the pilgrim stopped and drew something from under his round cape. Even at that distance Thomas glimpsed blue light reflected in eyes, coloring the pilgrim’s face and the underside of the hat; at that point he realized that the other pilgrims had climbed to their feet and were approaching their leader, oblivious of the rain, all of them in unnatural lockstep.
