The remaining knight tossed down its sword and went to one knee. “Mercy!” came the plea, hands clasped.
Kester, with a nocked arrow, walked straight up to the figure and tried to tear off its helmet. Finally, he thumped a fist into the forehead and the whole of it drew away. The “man” beneath had brown hair and blue eyes. The terror in them might have been real enough. Kester said, “Mercy, is it? Here, then, I’ll grant you the same mercy you were gawnae give my brother’s family. Absolutely, I’ll gi’ yah that.”
He shot the soldier through the face, then kicked it over. Before the body hit the ground, it was gray-faced and spiky, and black blood spattered its white hair, which floated out around the shaft of the arrow protruding from one eye.
“And that’s for mah sister, you mingin’ bogie.” He spat on the creature.
Filib and Thomas walked up, gathered beside him. Thomas reached down and tugged at the black armor. He slid his hand inside a hidden cavity and drew out an ördstone. Janet had taken his in order to control the glamoured beast she rode.
He straightened up. “Drag them into the byre. Let’s see if we can catch their mounts.” He held up the glittering black stone. “See if you can find one of these on their bodies. It keeps the beasts docile.” He had no intention of mentioning what else it could do, although Filib, and probably Kester, knew it would open and seal a portal. “Right now, I need to stay ahead of the others.”
“Others?” Filib asked.
Kester showed his teeth. “Oh, aye. They’re visiting the House of Cardden at the moment with your alderman.”
Thomas said, “And when these three don’t show up, somebody will be sent. Maybe the one that rode off to Old Melrose, or maybe the one that seems to be missing.”
Filib’s brow knitted. “There’s one missing?”
“One of you should stay the night in the byre. Protect each other.”
“I’ll take the byre,” Kester said venomously. “I’ll wait the week if need be.”
Thomas saw that Kester would never stop now. He was wedded to the vengeance. He would imagine his sister’s death over and over, until he screamed for revenge. The desire to erase these creatures from creation burned in him. If he mastered the ördstone, he would likely slaughter as many as he could in Ailfion before they cut him down. “Berserker,” whispered Waldroup’s ghost. “Not your fault, Tom, they turned him the night they took Sìleas.”
In Kester, Thomas saw only himself in the days when Waldroup was training him. All he’d wanted was revenge for Onchu. I dreamed of killing them all, too.
Waldroup might be right that he wasn’t responsible, but the absolution brought him no pleasure.
XXXV. Return to St. Mary’s
There was a hillock where fractured stones and pieces of scaffolding had been piled up into a mound of detritus—the leavings of the construction of the abbey. It had been considerably smaller the last time he’d seen it. Now it offered a perfect place to hide his mount from view. He tied his beast there, left his unstrung bow and arrows hanging off its saddlery, and took with him instead the ornate crossbow he’d collected from the dead Yvag at Filib’s. The crypt would be tight quarters, and a crossbow easier to aim.
How much time he had depended on whether the servants at Cardden’s keep convinced Ađalbrandr to ride north and capture him at a place he hadn’t gone. He was counting on the servants’ sincerity in relating the story they’d been told.
He crept up until he was in sight of the east entrance. Even in the darkness, the finished Catherine window looked magnificent. In the dawn it would surely spray the whole of the choir with light and color. He wished he had the time to see it.
The graveyard and surrounding area appeared to be deserted, but with one Yvag unaccounted for, he took no chances and pressed to the abbey.
There were no monks to be seen anywhere. What was the name of the abbot’s assistant? Janet had said it. Ranulf. Wherever he was, he had been given plenty of time to prepare. Who then had warned him? Threave and the hunting party hadn’t had time to come here; that left two skinwalkers—the widow, and Rimor of Alwich—and the absent Yvag knight. Whatever the case, surely they all expected him here this time. The sleeping elven leeches provided an enticement he couldn’t pass up.
He wished he knew over what distances they communicated.
At the east entrance he paused. He was already wearing their armor. He touched the piece at his neck, which flowed up and over his head, disguising all but his sharp and thorny gray chin. That took little glamouring.
Thomas opened the door and went inside. The closing door echoed and reechoed after him as if down an endless hall. There were no monks by the door, and none in or around the candlelit choir, either. No doubt Ranulf had put them all to sleep. Likely, the monk would be awake and lurking somewhere.
He crossed the choir and turned to the north transept, where the stairs to the crypt lay. The spell hung there, potent as ever, urging him away. He could almost visualize it this time, like threads of mist crisscrossing the transept. He stood still and listened but nothing moved.
Taking one of the candles to light his way, he plunged through the warding-off spell, started down into the crypt. After only a few steps, he stopped and crouched to peer into it.
Though it was dark, nothing seemed to have changed: Tombs like huge boxes neatly lined the length of the chamber, dust-and-cobweb covered. Impossible to say how many were occupied by something other than moldering corpses.
He waited, patiently listening again as he took it all in. He sensed Waldroup’s ghost holding its breath, too, although how could a ghost hold its breath? He was about to accept that the crypt was safe when Waldroup whispered in his head, “Third pillar, near the ceiling, Tom.”
He squinted. It appeared to be a shadow, a smudge, no bigger than his thumb, but Waldroup had seen the hob right. It wouldn’t be there alone.
He went another step down, crossbow at the ready. The smudge shifted slightly. His head filled with a sibilant drone as if it was attempting to communicate to him. It wouldn’t be a sentinel out of the tombs . . . unless something else had already climbed out, which didn’t appear to be the case. It must be one of the little wretches that had arrived with Ađalbrandr’s knights.
Where do you think, Alpin? Behind a tomb or one of the pillars?
The ghost in his head didn’t answer. Instead, the hob’s noise crawled into his mind. “It’s an us.” Then at him directly: “Us on steps, who you?” What was the name of the one guarding the gate? Ađalbrandr had said it. Tocrajen. He thought loudly Tocrajen. The hob replied, “Us no Tocrajen, no.”
So much for that idea.
Pressed to the wall, he descended another stone step. The light from his candle now dully lit the crypt. Only one step remained above the floor. The hob had received no response to its original identification of him as an “us.” Whoever paired with it was waiting, withholding its location, as he would have done in the circumstances. The Yvag would have heard his response to the hob; between that and the candlelight, it would know where he was. But the hob’s alarum had been directed his way, even before it probed him. It wasn’t communicating with anything behind the pillars or the tombs ahead. Only one likely place.
If he stepped out into the aisle now, he would present the perfect target and go down dead as a stone.
The space between the pillars and the open niches was narrow, but not impossibly so. As Thomas stepped down, he flung the candle to the right over the nearest tomb and sprang left. The candle hit the tomb lid, sizzled and flared. Something shifted in the darkness beneath the curving stairs. He squeezed through the gap, dropped to one knee, and slid around the pillar, crossbow already lifted. The candle went out, but he’d already seen what he needed.
The Yvag knight stood in the deep darkness, but Thomas’s gambit had caused it to take half a step forward, anticipating a shot it hadn’t been able to make. For a fraction of a second the flame had revealed it, the deeper black form within the shadows. It saw him now and swung its own crossbow toward him. He fired an instant before the Yvag did. His bolt struck it square in the belly. Its bolt glanced off the pillar before stabbing him in the side. He fell back, gasping at the pain. The deflected bolt had pierced his armor nearly to the depth of the arrowhead. Gritting his teeth, he tore it out and let the bolt clatter on the floor.
He made himself stand. His side burned as if coated in pitch. His long gray fingertips pressed at the tear in the armor, trying to stanch the blood that flowed out of the hole.
He would have abandoned the glamouring then, but for the boom of a door closing above. He slid back behind the pillar again, lowered the crossbow to slip one foot in its stirrup, pulled the drawstring back and armed it. He picked up the bolt that had wounded him and set it in place.
