Thomas collapsed beside the grinding stones. He let go the bow. Reached around and patted at his back. His fingers poked into the deep cut. His hand came away shiny with blood. He was sure he’d been sliced through the ribs in his back. He leaned to the other side, away from the cut, groaning as the move pulled at the wound.
Janet lay on the floor across the room, seemingly unconscious. He called her name, but she didn’t move.
Focusing all of his energy on her, he made himself get up. He slipped in the scattered grain on the floor, maybe in his own blood as well, and had to try a second time. With care, he navigated the four stairs down. His vision narrowed and he leaned against a beam to gather his energy. It felt like only a moment passed.
Forbes sat at an angle, face devoid of expression. The strange pyramid lay now on the floor, inert. When had it stopped spinning? It no longer glowed, looking rather like some arcanely devised metal box he could cup in his palm. Raised symbols or runes that he couldn’t decipher decorated its five surfaces.
Carefully pushing off the beam, he inadvertently kicked Ađalbrandr’s ördstone against the low stone axle-support wall. Its blue jewels still glittered. There seemed to be some sort of pattern, a repetition, to their glittering. He didn’t dare bend down to grab it, but noted where it lay and kept going, left leg leading, right side in agony.
Janet! He shouted her name in his head, saw her eyes flutter. He dropped to his knees beside her. Stroked her hair, her cheek. His hand streaked her face with blood and he pulled it back, trembling, not knowing how to touch her otherwise.
She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “Tàm,” she whispered, then lay her head down upon his leg. He touched his unbloodied fingers to her lips . . .
“Tommy!”
His head snapped up. Had he drifted off? “Alpin?” But even as he replied to the ghost in his head, Thomas saw why it had called his name.
Forbes was standing. He was studying his hands, arms, the room about him. He leered, an expression never worn by the miller.
Forbes leaned down and picked up the small pyramid. Tossed it between his palms. Dropped it and seemed to take pleasure in the sound of it thunking against the boards as it bounced and rolled, like Morven as a baby playing with blocks. “What sensations are these?” he asked. “I want them all. The bodies and their flesh, all!”
He turned around, saw Thomas watching.
“You.” The word filled the mill and echoed inside his head.
“Forbes?” he asked. He knew it wasn’t, but couldn’t help himself.
Forbes shook his head, then carefully began to recite his full name: “Thomas. Lindsay. Rimor—but you’re dead by now, surely. Ađalbrandr—” He looked around himself again, beheld the body hanging over the axle. “Oh,” he said in disappointment. “Am I among the dead twice over, then?” He laughed at the idea.
Thomas carefully moved himself away from Janet and let her head rest gently on the floor.
Forbes faced him again, scowling. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to us, Thomas Rimor?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You contaminated the pool.”
Not what he’d expected—he’d thought the miller was going to tally how many Yvag knights he’d killed. “The pool?” he asked. He could only think of the pool where Janet swam.
“The changeling pool. The filth of you contaminated it. Not one changeling has successfully transformed since you swam in it. The poet told you to do this, didn’t he? He knew. We found your discarded uniform above it.” Forbes tried to walk, but wobbled and had to wait. “We know how you escaped,” he said, “but how much did it change you? Enough to glamour. That I see.” The miller tried again, jerkily walked over to pick up the black Yvag dagger Ađalbrandr had dropped.
Thomas climbed, painfully and unsteadily, to his feet. The air sparkled for an instant, and his vision shrank, darkening around the edges. He fought not to pass out, to pay attention.
So they’d discovered that he had swum in their pool and thought that Taliesin had provided him with the knowledge to do so. Poor demented Taliesin. Maybe once upon a time he’d known how to poison that pool. If they thought that, no doubt they’d dispensed with him. Another cruelty inflicted, another death to be avenged. By somebody. He wondered what had done the job—his regurgitated meal or the hair and sweat and dirt off him after so long in their prison. Maybe both. Maybe the Queen’s ritual was more than a performance. A necessary purification?
Cautiously, Thomas shuffled away from Janet, keeping the overturned table between himself and Forbes. With affected casualness, he leaned against a post to keep him upright, his legs from trembling. There was no chance he could maneuver past the skinwalker, up the stairs, and grab his bow from the loft floor. If he ran for it, he might fling a stool; it might serve to keep the miller at a distance for a moment, but he would surely pass out from the effort. The only thing in his favor was that Forbes’s new owner was unused to its body just yet; leaping over the table might be more than it could achieve. What he needed was time to heal. He let his hand drop to his own dagger in its sheath. When Forbes attacked, he would only have one chance.
As if in command of himself, he said, “There’s a message I want you to take home with you.”
Forbes seemed fixated upon the dagger, turning it over, weighing it in his palm. Finally, glancing up with a grin. “You’re sending me home? You think so?”
He went on. “I was going to give it to him.” He gestured to where Ađalbrandr’s corpse hung over the waterwheel axle like an emptied bag of grain. “But he’s dead so you’ll have to do.”
The creature animating Forbes could not hide its unease then.
“First, tell your Queen. Tell all of them. For my brother, for my sister, for my father, I will kill every one of you that emerges through Melrose hereafter. You have wrung my family dry and I am shorn of pity for your kind.”
Forbes blustered. “We’ll come after you whatever you do.”
“Then you’ll die. I’ll cut you down before you’re through your gate. Interfere with my sister, my family any further, and I will slaughter you all without mercy. With all the ördstones I have, we’ll slice into your world from a dozen directions, and you’ll lose count of the immortals I bring down with me.”
The skinwalker wearing Forbes barked a laugh.
“I’ve learned,” Thomas said. “Your kind have gates all over. More than I might seal up in a lifetime. I’m only the slayer at this one opening. You go elsewhere, and stay out of my family’s world, I won’t even know of it, won’t care. But come here again, next time I will mount an army and bring the fight to your side.”
The miller covered his fear by sneering. “Bring the fight?” He tossed the dagger from hand to hand. “Why, you can barely stand up, Thomas Rimor.”
Then Forbes charged. Across the edge of the table, Forbes thrust his dagger. With a swipe, Thomas knocked it aside, then scooped and trapped Forbes’s arm under his armpit, locking the two of them close together. They stared at each other, scant inches apart. “I’m sorry,” Thomas said, and plunged his own dagger into the base of Forbes’s neck. When he drew it out, blood jetted into the air and he stabbed again. Forbes careened back and tried to slap one hand over the gushing new wounds.
His face went ashen. He pawed loosely at the table to remain standing. His arms shook.
For a moment, like Baldie so long ago, he was Forbes the miller again. His eyes met Thomas’s, and he wheezed, “Janet. Tell Janet—” Then he crashed down onto his knees. Red mist exploded from his chest. It sprayed the tabletop, and evaporated. The dagger fell from Forbes’s fingers, clattering on the boards, and he fell against the table and slid down onto his face.
Thomas leaned heavily on the table and stared down at the miller Forbes.
Within a few minutes, the latest Yvagvoja would climb out of a crypt it had barely begun to occupy and flee back through a hissing green portal with his message on its lips.
“He saved her, that one.”
