They spread out along the line of the circle he’d trod, and when they had all taken positions upon that ellipse, the pilgrim raised his ördstone and cut the night. Green fire sizzled, blazed, unfolded, and opened.
How did they know? How could those waiting on the far side of that cut know where or when to be? If the stone was a beacon, then how had he and Alpin met no resistance? No one had been waiting at Old Melrose nor in Italia or the other places Alpin had cut into—and maybe no one would have come looking at all had it not been for Gallorini’s intrusion. Were it a beacon, they would have been met, surely, when Waldroup cut open Old Melrose to roll a body to their side and when they blundered into the Þagalwood. Was it some part of the ritual, then? Or some secret in the stone itself? Maybe something the Yvag could do that he couldn’t.
No time to puzzle that now. He expected to see warriors emerge on their demonic mounts as they had the day they took Onchu. Instead, the spiky black-armored creatures came through on foot, five of them, silently, black blades drawn. They marched straight out of the ring, and three of the pilgrims fell in beside them, striding past the byre and out of sight: a raiding party, it seemed, intent on swift surprise and a sure death for poor Tàmhas Lynn if he was home.
Three pilgrims remained before the crackling green hole in the night. Thomas, in shaping a plan, had regretted having to abandon Dubhar. Now he saw that he didn’t need to.
Crouching, he darted to the circular stone fold, lifted the wood bars across the opening, and slid them aside. The cows watched him, shying away as if sensing his tension, but then they seemed to consider the gap he’d left them.
Thomas stood up. With three arrows in his drawing hand, he walked straight at the pilgrims and calmly loosed all three, so quickly one after the other that it seemed like one flight. The pilgrims dropped with hardly a sound, a red mist bursting from each. He ran then. By the time he reached them they were rotting like old gourds on the vine. He snatched up his arrows and raced for the stable. Dubhar was nearest, Waldroup’s horse beside him. Quickly, Thomas fitted the bit in his charger’s mouth and swung up on him. No time for saddling. He’d seen no bows among the Yvag but if they came around the byre, they could chop his horse’s legs out from under him.
Dubhar took off with no prodding at all. They rode out and past the hole in the night. Inside its bloody circuit, another black-armored figure, taller than the others, stepped into view, then stopped as if guarding the entrance and raised one hand. Was it a greeting? It simply watched him thunder past. In the last instant, something might have darted from that hand into the night.
The cows bolted from the fold as he galloped around it and up the hillside. He took one final backward glance; distant figures charged about, lit by the green fire. Then he was over the hill and gone.
Where would they trap him? Where would they expect him? “Old Melrose,” said Waldroup’s voice in his head.
He rode instead for the new abbey. Cardden had said St. Mary’s was completed, but he found that wasn’t quite true as he made a cautious circuit around it. The east portion was—the great window, the choir and transepts, the nave and south aisle. But scaffolding still ran along the cloisters and the north aisle. Why, he wondered, had the work slowed? Clacher had seemed hell-bent to finish it upon the king’s schedule.
Completing his circuit, he drew up and tied Dubhar to a tree some ways off. The rain had stopped again, and he stood and scrutinized the abbey from the shadows. No monks seemed to be about, no one at all, though a few lights flickered behind the stained glass windows.
Only four headstones stood in the new graveyard. Otherwise the distance to the abbey was flat and unadorned. He walked slowly, carefully along, the bow in his left hand, his finger holding the nocked arrow at the ready. He gave a glance at the names on the graves, then stopped short as he beheld clacher plainly carved on a pale marker.
Had the skinwalkers come looking for him and Waldroup among the masons? He could imagine how that might have gone: Clacher testily telling them to leave off troubling his crew, none of whom would have helped them in any way, and then in a day or two some convenient accident—a fall from a scaffold, or a stone slipping out of the pincer of a lewis. Another person who’d likely died on his account. Waldroup’s ghost might try to argue him out of it, but he knew it was true as surely as if he’d been on hand and watched it unfold. And if they were going to murder his innocent friends, then they should expect no quarter from him. He walked to the east doors and went inside.
A few candles were lit in the choir and nave. No one was about. Would the monks have any idea what lay in the sepulcher beneath this floor?
He walked around in search of stairs. There must be stairs. Tried to recall the work, the layout, which must have anticipated them. Taking one of the half-melted candles, he walked deeper into the south transept. No steps there. He crossed to the north and came upon the steps like a hole into the earth. But nearing the top of them, he was overcome with a sudden desire to back away. He found himself turning to leave as if he had been instructed to, and had to make himself stop and turn around again. There was a spell in place here, keeping people out of the vault below. Yvag pressure pulsed in his head, urging him away. Perhaps one of the monks or the abbot himself was a skinwalker—someone who tended to the sleepers. Or maybe like the family in Carterhaugh who’d heard music, some sort of charm rendered them unconscious.
Thomas stepped forward. The spell shoved him away. He stepped back and it eased. So, it was as simple as that. Quickly, head down, he sprang down the stairs before his mind could talk him out of it. The sensation was like bursting through a great sharp-edged spiderweb. The contact stung and then he was past it.
Compared to Old Melrose the sepulcher under St. Mary’s was an enormous space, with empty recesses all along the walls, and a row of vaults, open and waiting future abbots, or maybe kings. Who had built and installed these? Had they been here all the time he worked on the exterior walls? He never would have known. The north transept hadn’t been finished, the steps and the crypt not dug. He wondered, was Clacher’s death somehow tied to this construction? Probably he would never find out.
What he was looking for stood at the far end of the crypt—three vaults already covered with nondescript lids. From experience, he knew what he was seeing. The resting places of three insensible Yvags.
“Just as you saw, Tom,” whispered the ghost in his head.
He set the fat, dripping candle on the edge of one of the open niches. The room glowed orange. “One of them’s my father,” he said.
Waldroup laughed. “Not your father now, and you know it. We’ve been over this.”
“They’ll take Innes next if he dies.”
“Then again they might not. They’ve sent her to the nuns, and she’ll not come back from there. More like, a distant cousin of the MacGilleans will magically turn up and take control of the land. Or maybe they’ll claim to have married her to someone else, and who’s going to ride to Cluny to confirm it? No, they won’t leave anything to her. She’s mad, so easily disposed of.”
Thomas hoped Waldroup’s opinion was sound, even if the voice in his head simply told him what he wanted to be true.
They had learned from Old Melrose: Start with the final crypt and save the first for last. He set his bow aside, then with effort pushed the lid from the last crypt. It tottered, fell on one corner, and broke in half. Warily, he peered over the lip.
Candlelight played over slick black armor that was neither leather nor metal, the long, cruel features, slender hands crossed in a parody of the carvings on top of sarcophagi he’d seen, of dead knights praying or clutching the hilts of their swords, perhaps as a final discouragement to any monk who somehow overcame the spell and decided to peek for himself. As Alpin had said, discoveries of these creatures no doubt explained all kinds of tales of ghouls and vampires. Like others they’d seen, it wore a dagger. He snatched that from its sheath.
The ördstone thumped against his chest. Setting the dagger down, he dug in, drew the stone from its bag. The jewels in it flickered and pulsed as he held it over the crypt. Gossamer threads of blue light ran from the stone to the gray-green creature, another ran straight across the sepulcher to the steps.
It sang in his head, but its piercing note rose into a terrible screech as a little batwinged hob came diving along that gossamer line, straight at Thomas. He grabbed the dagger he’d set down and swung it at the tiny monster. Even as he did, from the corner of his eye, he saw the sleeping creature open its eyes.
The Yvag blinked its golden eyes strangely, as if for a moment sightless, the circle of pupils expanding in response to the dimness. Then it saw him and lunged.
Its long fingers curled around his arm but he pulled away easily. It tried to drag itself upright, too weak still, those taloned fingers sliding along the lip. The hob came screaming in from behind him.Thomas whirled about and struck, slicing the thing in two. It plopped to the ground. Then he fell back, stuffing the ördstone away in the bag around his neck. The Yvag sat up and started to rise. Thomas dove in over the edge of the vault and stabbed its own dagger into its throat. The Yvag clawed at him and hissed. Its raging voice buzzed inside his head, drowning out Waldroup, drowning out almost every thought. One talon tore his sleeve as its fingers slipped from the lip of the vault and it fell back into the chiseled coffin and sank down. The sentinel had awakened it. And if it had awakened one . . .
“Tommy, that thing’s led them right to you!” Waldroup’s ghost shouted at him. “Get out!”
From the second crypt came subterranean rumbles; the inhabitant was awake and trying to get out. The lid thumped, raised a little, slammed back down. He aimed his bow.
“There’s no time! Leave it.”
Screaming hornets filled his head, drowning out even Waldroup’s urging. With no choice, he ran for the steps. Get to Dubhar, lead them a chase to the MacGilleans’ and beyond, far away from Cardden’s.
Across the floor of the choir sprawled monks who hadn’t been on hand upon his entry. Were they summoned by the hob? But then why were they unconscious?
No time to puzzle that out. The hornet voices grew louder every moment. He hurried to the eastern door beneath that “high and bright” rose window. Pushed it open.
The murderous Yvag called Ađalbrandr stood there as if it had been waiting for him. He tried to raise his bow and the knight grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off his feet. He kicked furiously, striking it once or twice, while stars began to sparkle all about him, merging with the sound of their chatter, the roar of his blood, then blackness.
He came to his senses to find himself being dragged through the nascent graveyard.
Ađalbrandr breathed with effort as it hauled him along. He noticed strange gaps in the black armor above him that flexed, opening and closing like inhuman mouths, deepening into dark red. It looked like a tiny column of the holes Waldroup had cut in the world, and he thought I should have stabbed them there. Finally, the knight dropped him in the dirt. Contemptuously, it considered him. Its buzzing penetrated his skull, hammering at him like a terrible headache. All at once the noise coalesced into a raw, orotund voice.
“Finally, you’re mine,” said Ađalbrandr, then reached down, clutched the thong around his neck, and tore it from him and with it the bag containing his ördstone.
