Footsteps scuffed along the floor above. Thomas drew back and at that moment, something tiny whizzed past his face. Screeching, “Gaaaa!” it sliced his cheek. He snapped his head back hard enough to strike it on the pillar, cursed and wiped at his cheek, feeling the blood there. He gazed all around. In the darkness the hob with its little claws was almost invisible. It could spend all day and night stripping bits off him if it liked.
Candlelight glowed above the stairwell. The hob zipped at him again, but he ducked and swatted at it this time. He lowered himself down, set the crossbow on the floor, and sat rigidly pressed against the pillar. He wished he had one of those barbed Yvag daggers Waldroup had used on the very first of the little monsters.
The candlelight was now moving downward—someone descending the steps—but far slower than a group of Yvag knights come to finish him off. He tried to watch everywhere. Each moment more light bloomed in the crypt. The tiny monster dove at him again; the glow of the candle inadvertently revealed it as it bore down on him. Still he didn’t move.
“You no Tocrajen!” the hob raged. “You no anything!”
It went straight for his face again. He made himself hold still. Let it come, let it cut him.
At the very last instant, he shot out one hand and snatched it from the air. Its claws feathered along his cheek, but he whipped it away and with all his might smashed it against the end of the nearest vault. It came apart in his hand, left him holding a gooey, dripping, lifeless coil of threads and wires ending in disks edged in hooks. The goggle-eyed head had exploded into nothing. He dropped it and lifted the crossbow again, leaned around the pillar. A white-robed figure peered into the crypt.
“Casseov?” the voice called softly. “Are you there?”
No doubt this would be Ranulf. Thomas pushed himself to his feet once more and stepped cautiously into view.
“Ah, good, good. I believe someone has entered the abbey.” Ranulf had a deeply creased face under a shaved furze of orange hair.
Thomas nodded. He gripped the tiller of the crossbow, gestured with it under the stairs, and projected his own name.
“Really? Rimor? Have you killed him?” The monk hurried down the remaining steps, holding his robe up so as not to trip. The candle fluttered, then steadied as he reached the corpse. Even facedown as it was, the armor identified it. “Oh, but he looks like . . . he’s—” He set down the candle on the nearest tomb and turned the body over. “But . . . this is Casseov.” The monk looked from the body to Thomas as understanding dawned. “You’re him. But how can that be?”
Pressure invaded Thomas’s head, the sensation of the monk attempting to scry and take over his thoughts.
“Listen, now,” Ranulf said as he rose. “Listen to me.” The words of the spell swirled with allure, seeking purchase.
“Not this time.” Thomas fired the bow. The bolt passed through the monk’s robes and into the stone wall beneath the steps. The monk hardly moved, as if made of gossamer, as if magically unharmed.
The pressure in his head continued as Ranulf tipped to one side, reached over and placed a hand on one step. Then a red mist burst out of him, leaving a bloody oval like a target on the robe. The monk sagged forward, his head like a rotting gourd barely attached by sinew, and the robe collapsed, as if it had been held up by twigs. The pressure roared over and past him, evaporated.
“Just like the alderman,” muttered Waldroup.
“The trick doesn’t work anymore,” he replied. “They can’t take hold of me.”
“Yes, but they don’t—”
There suddenly came a pounding from the third tomb along, and Thomas calmly reloaded the bow.
The lid scraped and slid aside. Yvag arms reached up, clutched the edges, and pulled the knight halfway out. “Ranulf!” it managed to wheeze. Thomas fired as he strode toward the tomb. The Yvag was flung back with its arms thrown over the side. On its left it wore a dagger, the handle an elaborate T-shape. “Ask and ye shall receive,” Waldroup said. Thomas reached to tug loose the blade.
The sheath wasn’t belted; when he tugged at the handle, it all came away. He couldn’t see how it attached, but when he pressed it to his own uniform, the weapon locked into place as if it knew exactly where to be. Gingerly, his fingers explored upward toward his wound. The armor over the wound seemed to have knitted itself back together. He could feel the inside of the black casing slip, slick with blood against his skin, but the hole in his side, if it remained, barely stung where he touched it, as though he was knitting just like the uniform.
“Time to move,” he said.
He pushed aside the lid of the next vault and slew one more of the leeches and then another, but left the first tomb closed. In that one there would be a guardian sprite, and he had no interest in dodging and grabbing for another of the little monsters just now. Let the sleeper lie. The two dead would alert his enemy if they all weren’t on their way here already.
He left Ranulf’s candle burning on the lid of the first tomb and climbed swiftly up the stairs and out of the crypt. Even as he pushed at the north entrance door, however, tendrils of communication invaded his head—half thoughts increasing to harsh orders in some disarray, urgent thrumming announcing the imminent arrival of the Yvag knights. Someone had died in their midst on the road just now. He drew back inside the transept, dodged through the nearest archway and into the north aisle. That narrow passage paralleling the nave lay all in darkness, made seemingly darker still beside the candlelit transept and choir. He pushed his white glamoured hair back and drew the helm up over his head again, then tucked himself into the corner nearest the arch, pressed against stones he had helped shape, and waited.
The north and south doors thundered open in almost the same moment. No doubt the invaders hoped to trap him between them in the transepts, nave, or choir if not the crypt.
Watching and listening, he counted four knights in all. Something flitted between them. It buzzed around the choir, then down the length of the nave, at which point a call rang through his head as someone ordered it to precede them into the crypt. It sped on dragonfly wings past the aisle where he hid and down.
Thomas leaned toward the archway as much as he dared, and was able to catch a reed-thin glimpse of the soldiers passing by in the north transept. They all looked human. But where was the one-eyed blond one?
The hob returned, and hovered in their midst. “Dead out of box, Captain. Ranulf voja dead in one. Threaves voja, mac an Fleisdeir in others.”
He knew that voice. Teg, the only hob that might recognize him on sight. He kept his thoughts tight and small.
“And Alwich?” asked the nearest soldier.
“Sleeping, let be.”
“Did we drive him off, or . . . You’re certain there’s no one hiding down there?”
“Raaa!” the little monster screeched in annoyance. The sound echoed in the stairwell. A minute passed before its voice answered again. “Gone, Captain. No one.”
“All right, then. We search everywhere. Belamex, go below. Guard the crypt better than did Casseov. You two come with me, scour this abbey, and the grounds. Our diktat remains ‘kill him on sight.’ Do not hesitate or you’ll join the Yvagnajat who’ve perished this night. Come!” the Yvag snapped, and the hob flitted up beside it. They marched down the nave and toward the monks’ scriptorium.
Thomas leaned back into the darkness and allowed himself a moment to breathe. It was time to go. But where the devil was their leader? Something here was wrong, and he could not see the shape of it. He’d anticipated all of them showing up eventually; another few minutes and he would have been set to lead them away. At least he knew now which three of their skinwalkers he’d slain. His false relative, Rimor of Alwich, remained alive. Nothing for that just now.
The Yvag knights were searching the far end and the south side of the nave. The one called Belamex suddenly buzzed from the crypt: Casseov is regenerating.
Regenerating. It was something he’d half expected to hear, given his own remarkable healing abilities since escaping Alfion. It meant, too, that an arrow through the middle was no guarantee with these creatures.
The disembodied voice of Waldroup whispered, “Time to be gone from here, Tom, else it’ll be five instead of four.”
He crept out of the aisle. The transept, glowing in candlelight, lay empty. He walked fast past the crypt entrance and pushed open the north door, paused, then turned about and let it close. The boom would echo throughout the abbey and keep them from knowing which door it was that had opened.
He raced through the trees for the tethered beast. As he went, he unbound the magic that made him look Yvag, pushed back the helm, and shook out his dark hair.
