He worried that Ađalbrandr might have returned to Filib’s house and taken on the Lusk boys personally. If so, Thomas feared for them. Ađalbrandr was a lethal enemy, and for all their nascent skill with a bow, that Yvag would surely slaughter them with ease. But if so, Ađalbrandr had taken them on alone, which seemed unnecessarily risky for the Yvag. He wanted to go and see, but didn’t dare lead these four to the Lusks if they weren’t under attack. The die was cast and he had to follow his own plan, and hope to draw all of the knights away.
The beast stood as still as the pile of discarded stones beside it, as though it could have waited a century and not been bothered. His longbow and belt quiver still hung from its saddlery. He discarded the crossbow and quiver of bolts. It was a risk, choosing his own skill with a bow over the penetrating power of the bolts, but he hoped to work at more distance. Besides, the Yvags would bring him at least one more crossbow when they came.
Agitated buzzing filled his head. They were looking outside now, circling the abbey. Soon enough they would expand the circle and find him here, but right now they were in disarray.
He turned the beast and rode out of the trees and off down the road for the bridge across the Tweed. Behind him, the knights’ buzzing intensified, and one tiny sprite hissed in fury.
Follow me, you bastards! he shouted in his head.
He reached the bridge and then slowed, turned to wait; then, seeing them and, more importantly, ensuring they saw him, he charged ahead up the road in the cold moonlight until he reached a smaller path that led away from Ercildoun, across country and toward his true destination.
XXXVI. Oakmill
They had finished their meal of loin of boar. Forbes was being extravagant, although his tendered excuse was that Tàm and the Lusk boys would be famished when they arrived.
He sat across from Janet, having poured them each a cup of ale, which he had brewed himself. One of the benefits of operating a mill, he maintained, was the availability of grains—barley, rye, even wheat in the warm fall they’d had. He’d also made a science of collecting and pairing the different grains with bittering herbs. For most of their meal, he babbled away about shaping the flavor of ales. “This one,” he told her, “is reliant on broom for its dark flavor.” He set aside the jug, adding, “Bet I you weren’t expecting your meal prepared by an alewife like me.” He was grinning, and she laughed. Forbes was certainly no alewife. If anything, he seemed far too cheerful in her company tonight, given the circumstances that had brought her here. She dismissed it as a man trying too hard to impress and entertain a woman he’d come within a hairbreadth of marrying, as if he might yet through his conduct change her mind. She well imagined that on some level he secretly and sincerely hoped that her husband and the Lusks would never arrive. Had he admitted this to himself? He’d known to expect her—not necessarily today, but almost inevitably soon. Her greater concern had been whether she would expire before the elves came. Neither Tàm nor Forbes knew the extent of her affliction—the sharp-edged pain in her side. There was no point she could see in sharing the whole of it. They could do nothing but worry, and Tàm had outlined plans for how they would sell Cardden’s holdings and leave before the devils arrived, how they would collect Morven from Fontevraud and be a family again. She let him have his fantasy. She knew her part in it would be short-lived.
She’d visited the infirmarer at the abbey numerous times now, and his provided potion did help with her pain. She’d learned to balance the effects of the medicine against the presence of her husband, but she had no illusions that it was curing anything. It stilled the pain but did not heal her. Even the infirmarer had said as much. She wasn’t sure, had Tàm not returned, if she wouldn’t simply have taken enough of the medicine not to have awakened again, and while his presence meant that she didn’t have to answer that question, it left her asking another: how soon was she going to lose him? All the years the elves had cruelly stolen from her—and now their time was short. She could not pretend, nor could she forgive herself. She had given her daughter to Christ, her husband to the elven, herself to . . . what? Hope everlasting? God’s will?
Forbes had wanted to marry her two decades ago and she had refused. They might have had a sound and agreeable life, but she had put him off instead as if she’d always known that Tàm would return. She wished she could say so, but it would have been a lie. Much of the time she hadn’t believed, more nights than not she’d thought him dead, and in some sense he was . . . or at least he was wedded to this war with the uncanny, and it would always take precedence, because how could they stop the elves from coming for him? The creatures had boundless resources, it seemed, and all the time in the world to finish what they’d begun. The kingdom of elves corresponded to nothing in her world save her husband. She didn’t know what had been done to him, but she recognized, for all his own newfound powers of glamouring, that time had not passed for him as it had for her. It had kept him from aging as she had done. He was pretending otherwise as a kindness. And poor fool Forbes, secretly hoping the elves triumphed and took or killed Tàm. She would not long survive the outcome, and Forbes would find himself tasked only with laying her down and burying her.
She drank more of his ale. It was stronger than what she was used to. The bitterness of broom was actually quite pleasant.
Then he was speaking again and his statement caught her off guard. Had she heard right? “I’m sorry, Forbes, what did you say?”
He paused, gave her a look that seemed to assess her, to weigh the outcome of the conversation not yet spoken, his lips pressed flat as if unable to decide upon a smile or frown.
Finally, he repeated, “I said, you have no idea truly for how long I’ve been looking after you.”
It was such an odd sentiment. She hadn’t returned a month from Fontevraud before Forbes had begun finding excuses to visit his landlord. It was Cardden himself who’d pointed it out to her: “He’s hoping that Tàm’s gone off to the wars this time forever.”
She replied to Forbes, “Oh, I think I’ve a very good idea, practically down to the day.”
He shook his head. “Not what I mean.” Stared into his cup while he swirled the ale. He seemed to be making up his mind about something. Then he said, “About you they knew more than you ken. You and the Lusk brothers both.”
Suddenly everything was still. The air in her lungs turned to ice. “Who knew more?”
“The Yvag . . . Yvagvoja.” He said it with difficulty, sounding it out as if he’d never spoken the word aloud before. “What your Tàm calls skinwalkers.” He made a face then, an expression she read as regretting he’d admitted this, as though recognizing how much more he now must confess. “They, ah, believed that Sìleas Lusk was the wife of Tàmhas Lynn, that she was you.”
“Yes, I know that now.”
“You disappeared at the same time, and your Tàmhas, well enough he hid it from them, too, but the widow Mac an Fleisdeir had met us both at your father’s Christes Maesse. He didn’t manage to eliminate her, so that when your father called you home, she soon heard gossip of your return. She probed your father. You mustn’t blame him, for he only expressed his worry for you. He knew no better. She told what she learned to Threave and old Rimor.”
She had no fear for herself. If they took her now, she would go willingly. What could they do that wasn’t occurring already? Her fear lay elsewhere. “What about Morven?”
Now he smiled, beneficently. “That is what I wanted to say.” He poured himself more ale. “I kept her from them. The gossip was, she had died, hence your return alone. You did not speak of her, and I promoted that story to them. Kept them from knowing anything else. Your husband, they swore to me he wasn’t coming back, but you and she needed looking after all the same. They had to be reassured, you see. So I protected you. Both of you. I made pacts. Your father, too. They’d wanted him over Threave, saw him as a lock upon you, but I convinced them that he lacked the affiliations they preferred.”
She lowered her head, offering a prayer that her daughter remained safe. “But, Forbes, how can you . . . how do you . . . I don’t even know what I’m asking. You are no skinwalker yourself, then.”
“No. Were I, it wouldn’t have gone your way. The rider would know everything I know, and you—” He seemed to blanch at the unspoken thought. “It was all an accident. I want to say how it was. Alderman Rimor, he came to me years and years ago and asked me to advise him, to provide him a little information from time to time about people who used the mill. I thought it was just the price of doing business with him, and the information seemed harmless—who delivered grain and how much, things of that sort. In return he sent more business my way. Oakmill thrived, which meant I could always pay your father. And for Rimor’s patronage I did very little at all, because what concerned him underneath the innocent questions was that there was no one to take up Tàmhas’s mantle and kill the elves.”
“But you spied on me.”
“No, my dearest, hardly any of it was to do with you. Mostly others he asked about.” He shifted agitatedly. “Passed things along—I admit, a few things. In truth, mere confirmations of what already they knew or suspected. But I kept Morven hidden in what I shared. I protected you. You don’t know. When you first returned after so many years, old Rimor wanted to drag you off to Ailfion. But I assured him you and I would wed and that would be crueler—letting Tàmhas know how you were living a life without him. He was forgotten. I promised you would never be a threat. Knew they that you watched their activities, but you never interfered, you and the Lusks. So they decided to leave you be.” His eyes pled his case, a look begging her to see that he had served her better than Tàm, even standing between her and the elves. “I hoped our union would come to pass.”
She turned over the empty ale cup. “They take children, Forbes. Do you know that? As changelings, and for tithes. The tithes they murder.”
“I’ve none to do with that. I look after you, my darling. Only you. I kept you from being their tithe. I can’t save Tàmhas, nor any longer the Lusks, but you can still go forward without fear of reprisals—”
“Oh, Jesus have mercy, you’re a damned fool. You’ve condemned us all in return for, what, a little help with your business? A little wealth for you?”
“Condemned?” He was suddenly confused. “No, shielded you, I have. And I’d do it a thousand times. I love you, Janet. I always have.”
Before she could answer him, the door to the mill opened. Both, with different expectations, turned.
Up the wooden steps came a knight in dull gray mail and a black surcoat. He was powerfully built. He untied the chain mouthguard and pushed at the helm on his head. To Janet, it seemed to vanish, and the hood beneath to retreat into the mail at his throat like a high stiff collar. He was blond and wore an eyepatch. Forbes relaxed at his presence. Clearly, he’d been expecting this knight, who said nothing, only glanced at their mostly uneaten feast. How many, she wondered, had he invited? Coming to wait for her husband? She swallowed, and considered the carving knife that lay in the center of the small table.
In that pause the knight seemed to shimmer, almost like a dog throwing water off its coat. When the shimmering stopped, it had a face and elongated hands that were rough as sand and gray as iron. The surcoat had vanished, leaving instead a smooth and shining black armor that seemed fluidly molded to its body; its broad jaw ended in points like thorns; long silvery hair fell straight about its face, but somehow odd and not like hair at all; the eyepatch, no longer leather but metallic and beaded with blue jewels, remained. The other eye was golden or orange, and there was something wrong about the iris.
When it finally spoke, the Yvag’s voice seemed to vibrate inside Janet’s head. Its scarred mouth moved not at all.
“Have you another cup, Miller Forbes?” it asked. “Before we make any hard decisions.”
XXXVII. Castle MacGillean
