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XL. Adam’s Dilemma



Thomas half expected Adam to draw the dagger and attack. Instead, Adam’s anger seemed to collapse upon itself. He lowered his hand against his thigh. He said, “She’s not right, is she?”

Thomas knew exactly what the question meant. Head slightly bowed, he answered, “I didn’t want to think it was so—that there might have been a fourth dight we knew nothing of. The Yvags seemed so intent on recovering the three . . . What I don’t understand is when it might have happened. You and Will were with her until I got back. When—”

“We weren’t. Don’t you see?” His trembling scowl was self-directed, his eyes full of pain. “She tired of us watching her every move, and went off for a walk across the entire grounds.” A tear slid from the corner of his eye. “She insisted. You know how she can be.”

“I do, yes. Stubborn.”

The word almost made Adam grin in his misery. “We shouldn’t have listened, but we did. I did. I obeyed her like always.”

Thomas nodded in sympathy. “It won’t be much consolation, but I think if you’d followed her, either you’d have taken her place or they’d have slain you and Will both. This was too carefully executed.”

Adam sniffled and wiped at his face. “What do we do? How do we undo—?” He finally shook his head.

“You know already we can’t.” Can’t bring her back, an admission to himself finally that the worst had come to pass. If Adam sensed it, too, there could be no doubt. Isabella had been cored out and replaced. He wanted to grieve, but neither the situation nor Adam would allow it.

“Where are they, then?” Adam demanded. “Where lies the sleeping thing that’s inside her?”

“I’m not certain. Not hereabouts. Too obvious, too easily found, impossible to defend. Perhaps at Laxton, where your father can guard the site, but then where does his own possessor lie?” It was a question he had turned over repeatedly without a resolution. “At one point I did think I knew. John and I found an empty crypt at Rufford Abbey, but whether it had been vacated because of our visit or just awaited habitation, I can’t say. It had been made ready for someone.”

“The abbey?” Adam said. Then he seemed to understand. “Where you went while we waited. You were looking for these sleepers even then?”

“I’ve found others in sepulchers before. I couldn’t determine that Abbot Godwin was involved, but someone there surely is. Someone cast a spell upon the entrance that kept Little John from descending, and I’ve seen that magic before. He didn’t even recognize that he’d been turned aside, it’s that sly.”

“Then how did you get past?”

“A curious trick, usually taking more than one run at it. You have to acknowledge that you don’t wish to fight it at the same time as you plunge through. You . . . muddle things a bit. I’m not sure that’s helpful.”

Yet Adam nodded, as if grasping the idea. He seemed about to walk off, but then hesitated and turned back. “She was fond of you. It surprised her. And me. I was . . . I was angry because it wasn’t my father. But he hasn’t been my father for years, has he?” Another pause and then he remarked, “I’m the only one left.” Then he marched out of the stables and cut away from the Great Hall as well, no doubt, thought Thomas, to wallow alone in his misery.

There were still outbuildings to investigate. He headed as he’d intended for the nearby Queen’s Hall, a miniature version of the so-called palace with a separate and unused kitchen attached to it. The hall was kept in good order; the kitchen not so, dusty and strung with cobwebs. Nobody had visited either of them recently. The even smaller building beside the hall was a one-story apartment. Inside was a single room with a bench, small table, and a large bed. He found himself staring at it. Despite the uninhabited appearance of the chamber, the bed curtain was drawn. Zhanedd had tried to hide the Keepers at Laxton by drawing the curtain.

He pulled a dagger before crossing the room and sweeping back the curtain. He should have been prepared for the two dead bodies, but took a step back in shock. Wilkin was facedown in the bedding. Edrick lay on his back, his head tilted at an impossible angle. “Zhanedd,” Thomas muttered. This was surely that Yvag’s handiwork, instinctively hiding the bodies to protect their newest asset. A mistake, as he’d told Isabella.

Thomas drew the curtain again and left everything as it was for now. Went out and softly closed the door. He would have to tell Little John and his brother, but not right away.

Isabella had been put in play to betray them all. He was sure of that. The only unanswered question now was how she would do it.


Overnight, the woods continued to flare with green fires, but fewer than before, as if it was now all for show, a reminder that the Yvags could do as they liked. Late that night another man arrived through the main gate—a tall and gaunt figure with long graying hair and a dark beard. Elias, guarding the King’s Houses, brought him inside.

Thomas could not help but grin, even at the sight of him so worn down and thin. “Sir Richard!” he called.

“Sir Thomas!” answered the knight, no doubt to the confusion of Elias and the others.

Thomas said, “So I will have opportunity to repay your hospitality. I’d hoped as much, but with these nightly invasions I feared you might have been scooped up.” They embraced.

Stepping back, Sir Richard said, “Oh, but I was scooped up, as you say.”

Everything fell silent. “What happened?” Thomas asked.

“The—what did you call them?—the Yvags, yes, they killed all five of my friends, the green-fire brigands, before dragging me off to . . . I really don’t know where.”

Thomas thought he’d called them nothing at all, recalling no conversation with Sir Richard where they discussed the Yvags. Then again, he and the knight had consumed a fair quantity of ale.

“Torture tha?” asked John.

“Oh, yes. They forced me to swallow a—a creature, I don’t know what to call it.” He shivered at the memory, and John nodded. “Asked me over and over about some missing objects. ’Course, I knew nothing of them.” He looked at Thomas. “So then they asked about you—if I knew where you were. Of course I didn’t since we had parted ways, but then I didn’t know you were going by Robyn Hoode, either. I thought I met him a few times—a much smaller man, and older.”

“That was Hodde, who I’m afraid is dead at the hands of those green-fire brigands.”

Sir Richard scratched at his beard. “So you’re as practiced at the bow as at the staff.”

“More so, I would hope. I’ve thus far avoided a good drubbing when applying arrows.” Thomas introduced him to all those gathered. He said, “You were tortured and had no answers for them. How did you escape?”

Sir Richard accepted a cup of ale. “I didn’t. Don’t believe I could have found my way, either. No, they opened one of those rings of theirs and threw me back out.”

“Tha were lucky.”

Lady Isabella asked to be introduced to him. Thomas could feel the pressure of her probing. Sir Richard exclaimed, “This is the personage who has chased me across all of Sherwood? My lady.” He bowed.

She canted her head. “I’ve pursued you? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“That’s because we know how and where to hide,” replied the knight. If he also felt the intrusion of her thoughts, he didn’t show it.

“Well, no more hiding now,” Thomas said. “We are all on the same side for once.”

Sir Richard glanced at Thomas. “And how was that accomplished exactly?”

“Come eat, at the very least some bread and more ale, and we will discuss it all.” Sir Richard followed Isabella to the table.

Little John came up to Thomas to ask how this strange outlaw knew him. Thomas explained, filling John in about poor Sir Richard’s situation at the hands of some mercenary turned abbot who was known by the name of “Red Roger.”

“Oh, I know of ’im. Roger’a Doncaster. Bad as they come.” Behind him, Elias was nodding in agreement.

“When this business is over, perhaps we should pay him a call.”

Little John laughed.

Elias came up and said pointedly, “Sir Thomas?”


It was some time before the company discovered the absence of Adam D’Everingham. While it occurred to Thomas that this Isabella Birkin might have dispatched her own son after their previous conversation, he first checked the stables and paddock, discovering that Adam’s horse was missing, his livery as well. He was sure now that Isabella’s son had not returned to the Great Hall after their encounter. It might be that Adam was riding through the wet night to exorcise his own demons, but it seemed far more likely he’d set forth to hunt for the Yvagvoja of Rufford Abbey exactly as they had discussed.

However, upon returning to the company, he explained that Adam did not like Thomas’s evolving relationship with Isabella, and had earlier confronted him about it—which was certainly true if not exactly accurately portrayed—and proposed that, furious and sulking, Adam had gone off on his own to work through these feelings. Everyone, especially Isabella, seemed to accept that. Her Yvagvoja would know of their difficult history.

One significant limitation of skinwalkers was their inability to share information freely the way Yvag knights did all the time. If Adam’s absence became a cause for concern, Isabella would need to make a report of all she’d learned, either to a flitting little hob or to another Yvag in their midst, if there was one. Thomas was listening now and would sense any such communication. Even then, she would know nothing of his destination. Adam was as headstrong and rebellious as his mother had been. Whatever happened now, Thomas’s own sharp-edged guilt was one more stone around his neck, one more sorrow to carry afterward. If he was right about Adam, it was a pain that would soon be shared. In the meantime, he would have to watch Isabella as much as possible to interrupt any attempt to alert a third party, added to which there was now Sir Richard atte Lee, whose story, while convincing enough, raised questions about the remarkable benevolence of Nicnevin.


It was surely well past midnight by now. Adam D’Everingham had ridden a perilous path; although the storm had passed and the moon was out now, the trail had been soaked, making it difficult to distinguish the burrows and other treacheries that could easily trip a horse. But he knew the way, and was careful. That he reached Rufford Abbey without incident would have made his mother proud.

Against the moonlit darkness of the woods, the abbey glowed with the smallest of light—a large, sharp-edged structure with one or two candles burning behind the windows of the nave. He walked around the presbytery and slipped silently into the south transept, careful not to be obvious. If what Robyn Hoode had told him was true, then someone in the abbey must be involved in what went on in the undercroft.

He’d been here as a boy on at least two occasions, left on his own to wander about while his mother and the abbot hashed out the details of various agreements: how many deer the abbey was allowed, how much they could interfere with travelers on the King’s Way—things of that sort, which had meant nothing to him at the time. Compared to racing around the cloister or playing hide-and-seek with Brother Piers, it was all tedious and ignorable, but it meant he’d had experience of the undercroft on occasion, too busy with his game to be afraid of who or what was buried there.

From the nave he entered the cloister, where he borrowed a thin candle to light his way across the covered walkway and to the steps into the undercroft.

He reached the entrance down into the crypt . . . and found himself walking away, hand out to push open the door to the outside. He slowed.

What had just happened?

He turned around and went back.

Almost immediately he felt the urge to turn away creeping upon him. He started to follow that urge. His thoughts collected around the unnecessariness of visiting the crypt.

Stopped again.

What was happening here? The opening to the crypt insisted he was de trop. Whatever approach he took, the spell—for it was surely a spell as Robyn had said—would send him elsewhere, out into the night.

Adam paused to reconsider Robyn’s suggestion, the way to deny the spell’s manipulation. Something pushed at his head, invading his mind.

That was when he spied the grinning monk watching him from the covered walkway to the monks’ frater. No one would be eating this late. Somehow, the monk had been alerted to his arrival. The spell itself? Perhaps proud of his handiwork, he’d had to come and witness its efficacy. Or else he was on guard.

The quiet laugh emerged as a wheeze. “You’ll never get in,” said the monk.

No doubt that was true. The spell would continue to redirect him. The monk stepped nearer, pushed back his pale cuculla. It was Brother Piers! But that was impossible. Piers had died four years ago from a fever.

“Adam,” he said, still grinning, but now tenderly. He held out one hand. “Come away now, come along.”

Adam turned and retraced his steps back through the cloister and presbytery, out to where his horse stood tied. He stood the candle in the dirt. It was not Piers, could not be. The voice was wrong, that wheezing. He squeezed shut his eyes. What he had seen was a lie.

Now he reached into the bag he’d carried and brought out what appeared to be a congealed mass of night itself: the Yvag armor, borrowed from Will Scathelock. Having not tried it out, he didn’t know if it fit over clothing, so he quickly stripped down to his braes before stepping into and tugging the armor on. Even as he pushed his hands into the sleeves, the armor came to life and flowed up his body, over his shoulders, around his neck. It continued up and over the top of his head like a hood of mail, leaving his face bare. The dagger Will had shown him hung attached above his hip. And though Will was considerably taller than he was, the armor fit him as if it knew his body.

This time he walked the dark path around the outside, guided by the candlelight, back to the undercroft door. He opened the door and went in.

The monk still stood in the shadows. His grin faded at the sight of Adam in the shining black-and-silver armor.

“‘Never,’ you said,” Adam told him. “Let us find out if that’s so.”

“No, withdraw!” the monk snarled and launched himself at Adam, slammed against him, arms thrown over his shoulders to wrestle him to the ground. Almost instantly, “Brother Piers” sagged in his arms. Adam pushed him away, but held onto the Yvag dagger he’d stuck into him.

The monk collapsed at his feet, a look of surprised horror on his face, continued limply to reach up, fingers sliding down the slick armor, finally slipping to the floor. The monk gurgled one final breath, and the glamour faded. There in the candlelight lay an Yvag in armor much like Adam’s, its sharp face gray, though it continued to look something like Brother Piers as if caught in the middle of transition. Had that monk always been one of these demons? Recollecting Maurin’s story about the one that had come back to life in Nottingham, he dropped to his knees and made himself stick the barbed dagger into its throat. Perhaps it was that which made him acknowledge the quest he was on, what he proposed to do. Then he noticed that the Yvag also had a sheathed dagger. Why hadn’t it tried to kill him, unless it and its kind wanted him alive?

Climbing to his feet again, Adam sheathed his dagger, picked up a candle, and walked to the steps. The pressure of the repelling spell poked at him, pushing him away as before; now, somehow, he was outside it, like someone looking through an odd doorway before entering a room. As Robyn had advised, he projected thoughts that he was no enemy of what it protected as he pushed hard through its resistance, found himself on the far side of it, and, undeterred, descended the steps into the crypt.

The lid of the first tomb was sculpted, a gisant of a recumbent knight with mail-gloved hands pressed together in prayer. Adam wondered who that was supposed to represent—a king, a knight, some benefactor? Surely not his father. It set him to wondering whose body would lie beneath it. There were two other tombs, as well, but Robyn had described this one.

With great effort he pushed against the lid. At first it wouldn’t budge, and he speculated that he would need a mallet instead to smash the cover to pieces. And then, as if another spell had broken, the lid moved—a grinding slide away from him.

Something small as a trapped bat flitted out of the opening and right past his face. “Raaaah!” it screamed. Its claws tore at his cheek, and he fell back.

The creature came about and dove at him. Adam swiped at it with the dagger.

“You not us!” it yelled as though he’d claimed otherwise. “You pretend!” It dove again. Below it, in the shadows of the tomb, something moved. Adam ducked the darting hob, bent over the edge of the tomb, and stabbed hard into the darkness there again and again. The interred creature kicked and flailed. Seeing his target more clearly, he thrust again. The hob landed on the back of his neck now and tore gouges across his cheeks. He slapped at it as the demon in the tomb fell still.

The screeching hob suddenly sprang away and flew up and out of the undercroft, and Adam at last tucked away the dagger. Blood ran to his chin from the many inflicted cuts.

Unsteadily, he slid down with the tomb against his back and tried to feel nothing, no anguish, no loss. But it was there, up the steps and out of the crypt, awaiting him: Whoever this Yvag had been inhabiting, they were no more.

Now that it was done, Adam dreaded that he had either just murdered his father or his mother.


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