“What?”
Shaking his head, he replied, “Nothing.”
The greater question was, how had he come to do it at all? Had his being altered by the Queen gifted him with some power? That didn’t seem right. Wouldn’t he have transformed when the two Yvag fiends dumped him in his cold bath? His rage, and the shock of the icy water were surely the equal of his rage and surprise when Janet tackled him. And his fight with the troll, with Ađalbrandr—if the power had been his then, wouldn’t he have changed? It couldn’t be exposure to their world, nor coupling with the Queen, else he and Taliesin both would have been masters of such transformation. It had to have come after.
And that left the waterfall and the changeling pond.
Breathing those oily waters, floating beneath the surface whilst the child was being reshaped, held down past drowning, and him beneath the surface even longer, drinking deeply from the fluid as he hid from the Queen and her entourage. Droplets of the stuff had resorbed into his skin, coated his eyes, filled his lungs. It wasn’t the ceremony, it was the liquid itself that turned babes into elves and drove some of them mad—which he now appreciated firsthand. Merely touched by Janet, he’d gone mad. If she hadn’t called to him to stop he might have slid helplessly from shape to shape until he wore out and dropped down dead. . . . For all of which, it did not appear he had become a changeling, his natural form hadn’t become that of an Yvag. He could only wonder what the long-term effect would be, and how long it might last.
He didn’t want to explain any of it to her. He did not want to speak of how the Queen stole her image to drive him mad and encourage his lust, tortured and tormented him. Even less did he want to mention how he might even have fathered the thing growing on Nicnevin like a great glass cocoon. Her lust had owned him as surely as a seizure, but he couldn’t imagine a way to speak of it that wouldn’t shame him. The only thing such disclosure would accomplish would be to hurt Janet needlessly, and at a time where there was apparently a competitor for her hand, the miller Forbes, who’d had twenty years to plead his case. Thomas tried very hard not to resent the fellow, even as he remained amazed that she had held out, trusting that against all odds he would return.
In any case, Forbes’s affections would not matter for long. He and Janet must sell her land, take whatever monies they received, and never return here. They would go live with Morven, far away and safe from these monsters.
Finally, he said nothing, and put his face against her neck. He drifted off to sleep with her name on his breath.
The last thing he heard, at the edge of sleep, was Waldroup’s ghostly voice: “Pray it’s far enough, lad.”
In the morning, he checked the beast in the stables. Its red smoldering eyes viewed him indifferently. He wondered if it would have been so calm if he’d lacked the ördstone. Could it sense the changes in him? That was a concern to test another time. Right now, he needed to hide the creature should anybody come looking. How did glamouring work?
He stepped closer to it, placed his hands upon the cold, sleek hardness of it. Closing his eyes, he imagined Dubhar, the horse he’d ridden back from the wars.
Dubhar had died eleven years ago. Nevertheless, when he opened his eyes, there stood Dubhar before him, black and sleek and blinking as if nothing odd had occurred at all. The memory of his charger had been enough to transform the creature.
There was no guaranteeing an Yvag wouldn’t see through this glamour. He couldn’t be certain of that just as he had no idea how long a glamouring might hold—the glamouring of Innes’s chambers seemed to have lingered for weeks. At least this would hide the true nature of the beast from any casual glance into the stalls. He left it there and set off on foot to track Janet’s route backward.
Tracks led from Cardden’s to the river. Armed with fronds of goat willow to obscure the three-toed prints where he found them, he carefully brushed away all evidence of the beast’s passage.
“She would have led them right to your door.”
“Alpin! I thought you were lost, devoured by Nicnevin.”
“She weren’t welcoming and that’s for certain.”
“But you’re here again.”
“I’m here, wherever here is. Don’t know for how long, but then I never did.” And with that Thomas could feel him withdraw, as if a mouth whispering in his ear had drifted away.
With the last of the prints wiped from view, he stood on the banks of the Teviot and followed it until he found the place where she had entered, then backtracked those odd three-toed prints up into the rocky heights. The rest of her own misdirecting had indeed been cleverly executed. Anyone who managed to follow this far from Old Melrose would be pointed in the direction of Jedburgh, and with the rest of the trail erased, they had no reason to change course.
Satisfied, he walked back down from the heights, passing in sight of his own house and that of the Lusks, but avoiding them both. He circled to the far side of the planted oxgangs and strode into the woods beyond. He arrived at the pool where Janet used to bathe, where he used to catch glimpses of her like some selkie who thought herself hidden. Whether or not she’d believed herself to be a selkie, her enchantment had captured him.
He walked out onto the curving spit of land that formed the pool and tossed the goat willow branches far out into the water. The river carried them away.
He knelt then and looked into the nearly still water of that accidental pool. His own face looked back, haggard and rawboned but essentially the face he knew.
How was he to do this?
He needed to control it rather than be surprised into changing every time. In fact, that would surely be his undoing. What would Taliesin advise? He focused upon the old man in his mind, recalling the sharp rebuke that Thomas was no poet if all he spouted were riddles. It made him smile. He threw off a great shiver. Leaned forward. In the water, Taliesin stared up at him. He tilted his head and Taliesin did the same. Looked at his hand, and it was liver-spotted and scaly, as hairy as the old man’s. He drew back. The sensation of change was slight this time, less than a shiver. When he looked again, he was himself.
Had it been his imagination? He’d been thinking of Taliesin, but had he really seen him?
What would prove it? What about—
He didn’t even complete the thought before his body shook fiercely, and he found Alpin Waldroup looking up at him. “No. Alpin.” He reached for the water, shook again with a momentary ague, and was returned to himself before his fingers even brushed the surface. He felt suddenly drained and wanted to sit down. But Janet had seen something else, not a friend pulled from memory. And his hand, when he’d seen it, had been like theirs. That might prove a critical glamouring if he could do it. He must try once more.
This time he concentrated not on who, but on a general idea of the elven, in particular the ones who’d dragged him to the pool each day for bathing. He had seen hundreds of others, but those two he’d seen closely, their gills and strangely contoured annelid bodies. He squeezed his eyes shut.
He shook this time from head to foot, every inch of him twitching, so hard finally that he almost collapsed. The effort threw him forward onto his hands, splashing. When the water stilled, the face of an Yvag stared back at him, blinked with him. Its metallic white hair hung straight, almost to the water. He had only to glance askance to see the hair, no illusion. His fingers in the mud were thin and gray, the knuckles sharply pronounced and spicular, the extra joints and curved nails undeniable. He pulled up his shirt to find gill holes along his sides. He breathed and they flexed open; cool air rose in his throat.
He laughed, and his spiky twin laughed with pointed teeth, thorny cheeks, and an axe-blade-sharp chin. He climbed to his feet, studied the inhuman ripples of his torso; he lowered his shirt, which now fit him poorly. This was what Teg and the perimeter guard had beheld. This is what had crawled out of that glowing pool. Not mere glamour but reshaping. Once more he closed his eyes and strained, growing light-headed; when he looked down into the water again, the face and body were his. Then, just to make sure, he imagined that face again, passed his hand over it, and found himself with the features of an Yvag. He shook his head, and was himself again.
Glamouring was a spell cast to alter the perceptions of the beholder—the beast in his stables was still the beast, but anyone seeing it right now would perceive Dubhar. Innes’s “baby” had been a thing made of living twigs, but she saw her own child. Simple glamouring took little effort or energy. He could conjure Taliesin and Alpin over and over, even the Yvag knight. But reshaping was exhausting from the outset. What Nicnevin had performed on him seemed to be what he had undergone when Janet caught him. Shifting his actual shape repeatedly had left him depleted and helpless. But both skills might well come in handy against his enemy. He could be anybody now, or anything—at least for a short while.
When at last they did come for him, he wouldn’t have to hide. He would be neither Thomas Rimor nor Tàmhas Lynn.
He would be them.
XXXII. Preparations
The Master Lindsay who purchased two dozen arrows from the fletcher of Roxburgh was a short, corpulent man with the bulbous reddish nose of someone given to drink. He certainly did not look like the sort of man who spent much time at archery. That was why, he explained, these arrows would likely last him at least twenty years.
The Master Thomas who visited a fletcher in Kelso was thin, tall, and balding, with red patches of excema on his face. Although he looked vaguely familiar to the fletcher, he claimed to be a traveler, on his way now to London, and looking to protect himself and his goods on the road. By his own admission he was a “middling” shot with a bow and had used up his last sheaf, hence the need for thirty true-flying shafts. He hung them from their tips on his belt.
And then there was the dark and unsavory-looking villein named Land, an ex-soldier dressed in leathers and furs, who visited the fletcher at St. Boswells before heading off into the highlands for the winter. He wanted twenty-four good and true arrows because “when ye live way up and by yerself, ya live by yer wits—an’ whatever purses ye can snatch nor snatches that’n be pursed, hey?” He grinned lewdly at the fletcher’s wife.
The last anyone saw of the unpleasant Land, he was heading north toward the Tweed with a large pack and longbow. His coarseness invited no company; he vanished into the landscape and was not seen again.
