Other Yvag knights came up. Their voices slid through his head, like stones sliding against stones.
“How far had he got?” asked Ađalbrandr.
“In the crypt, one of them.”
Ađalbrandr nodded, glancing around, settling finally on Thomas’s charger where it stood tied past the few graves. “Payment in kind, then.” The Yvag stalked toward the horse, drew its black sword. As if knowing its intent, Dubhar tried to tear itself free until finally the reins snapped, and his horse bolted off into the night.
Run, Dubhar, he thought, never stop running.
Frustrated, Ađalbrandr sheathed the sword. “We’ll find another way for you,” said the knight, striding past him. “Bring him along!” They grabbed him under the arms and hauled him off to the east. He knew exactly where they were going. He tried to gauge whether he could get one arm free from the gray-skinned fiends long enough to grab Waldroup’s dagger, glanced down and realized he’d already lost it. Someone had emptied his quiver of arrows, too. He strained to hear some advice from Waldroup, even the noise of his own ördstone; he managed only to fill his head with the buzzing of their thought-chatter. The breathing of the two dragging him was heavy, wheezing.
The Yvag knights trod the path along the river to the old abbey ruins, seemingly oblivious to the cold rain drenching them. Breaths steamed as from half a dozen chimneys, floating up from the holes in their sides. Thomas stayed limp, conserving his energy for whatever moment came. If any would.
Pretty soon they were weaving their way between old gravestones, and he knew where he was. He looked up to see, looming ahead, the spot where Onchu had been taken. He wondered why the pilgrims weren’t there. Maybe they’d completed their part in his capture. He wondered what human host he’d killed by slaying that Yvagvoja. His father? Grief or joy—he didn’t know how to react if that proved true.
As if it was nothing, Ađalbrandr sliced open the world. The stone he used looked to be twice the size of the one in Thomas’s bag, leaving him to conclude there must be different kinds of them; no wonder Waldroup had poisoned himself in collecting the stones from the crypt. Those stones were likely never meant to be wielded by humans.
The moment the sizzling green line expanded to a circle, the Queen rode through on her mount. The effect was strange to behold—glaringly bright, she seemed to lunge through the opening, but then slow to a walking pace as she pierced the divide. The discordance lasted only an instant. It was as if she had rushed into a wall of water in the crossing.
She made no attempt to glamour herself to him this time. He beheld no beguiling Queen of Heaven in pointed cap seated upon her palfrey, but a creature of gray-green skin, the golden, canted sloe eyes, ringed with pupils, her hair the unnatural color of red-hot iron. Her elongated cheeks that he’d thought of as smooth as marble were instead mottled, even scabrous, more like the skin of a toad than a human. Her abnormally wide mouth contained rows of sharp needlelike teeth the same as all the other Yvag. She did not wear the same armor, but a gold-and-black cape or robe that covered her completely. He wondered if she breathed through her sides like the others.
Ađalbrandr bowed. She nodded to him formally, held one hand over his head as if blessing him. Then she turned her beast with its polished skeletal head to face Thomas. The beast came forward. The rain fell steadily.
The pressure of her mind probing his made him wince. “Oh, my pretty broken toy, it’s you,” her thoughts said in surprise. “You’re our nemesis? This is how you repay my kindness, my generosity in stilling your discord?”
“This is how I repay you for taking my brother from me.”
“Did we do that? Was it he who rode behind me, his arms around my waist? Well.” There was hardly any sympathy in the word.
“Onchu—”
“Yes, I remember his name. I remember all their names. I had a look inside him. You know, he thought you a simpleton. Why would you even grieve for him?” When he gave no answer, her voice continued. “Besides, he has served our higher purpose. That is all that—”
“You mean, the teind.”
She blinked at him. The ring of pupils shrank and enlarged in her eyes. “What can you possibly know of that word? Who gave it you?” she asked imperiously.
“It means he was your sacrifice. Something you pay.”
“But you’ve no idea what or why, have you?”
“No,” he admitted.
“No. You judge us without knowing the truth of us; then you murder us. We, who are but a breath shy of sempiternal. Comprehend you the cruel indifference of bringing death to an immortal?” She answered her own question. “Of course not. You are all mayflies. You live this long.” She snapped her fingers. “You know nothing of what you steal from us. What you personally have stolen from more than one of us.”
Even if her argument had merit, they had chosen his brother. Chosen his sister. Chosen his father. The Yvag that had been Stroud had told him Onchu was dead and that Innes’s baby had been snatched from her so that these supposed immortals could “repopulate,” whatever that meant. However terrible his perceived offense, they had brought it on themselves, stealing everything and everyone from him—the cruelty belonged to them. He wiped the rain off his face and stared her down, seething.
The Queen leaned back on her shiny black beast and regarded him anew. She had heard his every thought.
“You’ve come far from the addlepated boy I repaired.” She smirked. “Do you riddle them all still? All greenwood their enchantment?” She laughed. The sound tinkled inhumanly.
He felt her, like fingers inside his head, trying to trigger a seizure in him. He cringed at the pain.
Then through it, Waldroup’s voice whispered, “Resist her, Tom.”
The pressure ceased abruptly. Now her eyes were wide with fury. “Who was that?” she asked.
He thought he’d made up the ghost. Was it possible that his insubstantial companion was real after all?
Thomas shook his wet, shaggy head. “No one known to you, Nicnevin.”
Now her eyes narrowed, face drew tight in outrage. “Who has spoken to him?” she buzzed the Yvags all around her.
Ađalbrandr knelt. “None of us, Majesty.”
Thomas recited a riddle Janet had written on parchment; until that moment it had been opaque to him:
“True name spoken,
grants control.
Say it full to
Own the soul.”
She could have burned him with her glare. “That is enough of you, little man. I won’t bother to joust nor justify what comes now. We need a new teind.”
He glared at her defiantly.
