“I would love to try him out.”
“Which would you be?”
“Oh, definitely the Þ________. He’s small enough to fit into my ƺ________.” Some of the Yvag words elude him but still drip with odious carnality.
“I suspect he’s one of the changelings, not entirely transformed.”
“Exotic, you mean. . . .”
After the third such encounter and overheard dialogue, he’s wondering how they don’t see his beard. Has the armor glamoured him somehow?
He wanders the walkways then, trying to recall the buildings, the landscape through which he was dragged. Half the landmarks that seem familiar he doesn’t trust. No idea in what order he encountered them—he was trussed up, a goat, utterly confounded and upside down. All he knows is, keep walking, brave it out. Something will occur to him or else he’ll walk all the way to Þagalwood even if it’s on the other side of the world. He can’t come this far to be thrown back into prison.
Three small shapes zip past him. Homunculi. Was one of them down in the underground? He might fool an Yvag, but these little monsters? Not a chance. He walks on, hoping they’ll just go on wherever they were flying.
Yet, a moment later, he senses one of the sprites settling on his shoulder. Peripherally, he can just make it out. Resists the urge to swat it flat before it can sound an alarm. What would an Yvag captain do? Ignore it, he hopes.
It suddenly screeches at him. His fist clenches, ready to crush it. To his amazement, though, he understands its words: “Reporting I, Captain, with nothing to report.”
Thomas nods. Thinks loudly, Be gone then.
“So, where you go, Captain? Assignment?”
Well, why not? He lets the word surface. Þagalwood.
“Raaa!” Its screech practically makes him jump. “Teg can prepare you way. You see. Reward Teg. Take along Teg, no?” It slues off ahead of him without waiting for an answer. He tracks its flight as it veers left between two curling spires. The hob knows where he’s going even if he doesn’t.
On the far side of the spires is the plaza where sits the well between worlds. Hel awaits him.
He remembers a guard taking up a position across the way as if at the perimeter of something. Thomas strides across the plaza, pausing at Hel long enough to glance over the white glowing rim. A body, far below, is disintegrating, half gone already. It’s not Sìleas. No sign of her. How long has it been, he wonders, that they’ve tossed in at least one more sacrifice? And when will Taliesin hear her? At what point in their eternal fall do they communicate to him? Onchu was years ago now. He leans against the well, careful not to touch the burning white fire, but otherwise momentarily confused, off-balance. What’s happening to him? He’s down on one knee. Thoughts jumbled.
Gets up, tries to march but staggers instead across the plaza. Are other Yvags watching him now? He rubs his face. Even through the glove he can feel the odd grit of his skin, thorny growths at his chin. There’s no beard. I am glamoured, but when? He can’t imagine the hob did this; no, it was reacting to him in this form already.
He remembers what Taliesin told him about the changelings that don’t acclimate, that go mad because of the transformation. If other Yvags watch him now, maybe they think he’s one such.
Across the plaza Teg squawks to a guard—the perimeter guard, posted on the same mound as before above a set of steps. There’s another Yvag there, one in a long, flowing gown with whom the guard seems to be half engaged in something vaguely salacious. The guard has already taken out their ördstone and sliced open a portal, probably just to get rid of the annoying Teg. He can hear them urging the hob to go away.
Thomas clenches his teeth and strides purposefully, almost angrily, toward the green fire, hoping to pass right by the soldier.
At the last moment, however, the perimeter guard comes to attention; the one they’ve been dallying with edges aside, but looks coy as if a changeling captain might be more entertaining than a guard. He wonders how his rank is determined? The armor all looks the same to him.
Buzzing fills his head. “Begging pardon, Captain, sir, where’s this hob gathering its information? We’ve heard naught on it.”
Thomas stares at the guard. Reminds himself I am one of you. “Meeting a returning”—Oh, what was the word Nicnevin used for them? Stroud had said it, too—“an Yvagvoja.”
“One of our glorious heroes is returning? How grand to learn. It’s just, we haven’t been privileged to know what this gnat knows.” Trying not to make it sound like a complaint, though it clearly is. He wonders what can happen to an Yvag who’s petulant. Probably nothing. It’s not as if they’ll be executed for insubordination, their dwindling numbers all too precious to Nicnevin. This is being played out to impress the dalliance who’s standing by.
“Me go.”
No, Teg, you stay here. His head is pounding.
“But, Captain!”
Reward on my return. Big reward for you.
The sprite flits about, grins with a hundred silver needle teeth. “Big,” it repeats, and settles upon the shoulder of the guard, who eyes it distastefully. “Big,” it tells him.
Thomas takes a careful step toward the burning portal.
“Captain, which Yvagvoja is it?” asks the perimeter guard.
Panic. He has no answer for this, has only ever heard a few names, and what if it’s a trick to trip him up? Janet—he has to get home! Now!
He sees the guard’s expression beginning to change, knows he’s slipped up, and at the very least the guard suspects he’s a deviant changeling. He punches the Yvag across the jaw, knocking it into the gowned one beside it, both toppling off the knoll, and Teg caught between them, at least for a moment. After that he doesn’t know, because he’s running hell-bent into the sliced-open tunnel to Þagalwood.
With each step he takes, the tunnel collapses the distance—that, or he’s hallucinating. One second he’s running down a bloodred passage, the next he’s burst onto the path among the skeletal trees. Stumbles to a stop a moment to take stock. The trees whisper. Intruder, says one. Chosen, says another, but no indication of what he’s chosen for. The axe most likely if they catch him.
Already he’s realized his mistake. That guard had an ördstone. Why didn’t he snatch it, instead of losing his grit? He could have sealed the way. Now he’s trapped himself in the Þagalwood, and it won’t be long before . . .
He doesn’t even finish the thought before distant thunder echoes through the woods, a thunder of hooves. Exactly like the time he strayed here with Waldroup.
Something is coming after him.
He runs harder. Thinks: What if I left the path? Even knowing what happened to Gallorini, he tries to convince himself that this Yvag uniform will protect him.
Shortly, he passes the Gallorini “tree.” Stops, turns back.
Gallorini had weapons, and Waldroup . . . Waldroup lost his ördstone somewhere here. Right here. What if no one’s ever looked for it? Why would they?
