XLII. The Limewood
Monster
Calum came down from The Saylis without calling attention to himself, and fell in with Elias and Benedict as if he’d walked beside them from the start. His horse he said he’d left with someone in Wentbridge.
Thomas was walking alongside Little John. Benedict came up to speak with John. “Calum says nothin’s happened along the road. If anything, it’s been unnatural quiet hereabouts. Not anything like knights gathering.”
“That’s good, innit?” John asked.
Thomas replied, “I hope so, but we can’t let ourselves think they haven’t cut portals into every house in the vill to call up who knows how many more if needed. Still, if the road remains clear, it leaves us to focus upon the vill itself. How soon, John?”
“River’s just over that rise ahead. Vill’s on t’other side and up a ways.”
Even as he said that, Elias called out and pointed. A rider on a blazing-fast white stallion was riding the thin road through the heather toward them. Thomas recognized the disguised beast well before he identified blond Will Scathelock on its back.
Will dismounted the beast and went straight to Thomas. He was dressed in black, articulated armor. Behind him, some of the outlaws were staring at his odd apparel. Others looked over the strangely still horse. “Am I too late?” he asked. He craned his neck, looking at all the outlaws standing or sitting among the gorse.
“Now, why would you think you were?”
“Green halos like to the other night. Two or three, back there just off the road. Could easily be more of them deeper in. The fire doesn’t show so much in the daylight. Anyway, I thought sure they must be engaging you already.”
“No,” Thomas said, understanding at once why the road here had been devoid of activity. “I think they’re waiting for a signal from the vill. They mean to trap us between the vill and them.”
He gathered everyone together, and studied the faces: the Fouke family, Elias and the Waits, the archers who’d competed against him and Will, Sir Richard, and the various outlaws he didn’t know but all of them vouched for by Little John, who seemed to know everyone.
He climbed up on a fallen tree, overlooking them all, and for a moment he was cast back in time to a sloping, grassy plain that was about to become a battlefield in France, and where a short soldier stepped up onto a tree stump to direct the infantry, the mounted knights, and the archers. He’d become that soldier.
“The . . . demons are coming up behind us,” he announced, and many looked back to where the edge of the woods began with a scattering of birch trees. “Will says they’re in the woods near the road, maybe deeper. Now, clearly, they are in league with the five who’ve invaded Palavia Parva, and my guess is, their intent is to squeeze us between the two forces, but they’re waiting for a signal. Archers, I want at least four of you to engage them on your own. Their armor is like this that Will is wearing, regardless of how it appears. It is difficult to penetrate. You can waste countless arrows firing at it. If you do, try for these openings along the sides, assuming you can see them. They breathe through those. Personally, I recommend you marksmen aim instead for their throats, mouths, eyes. And get out of the way if they draw their swords. Those have special properties that Little John can tell you all about. Also, some are like to be riding creatures such as this one. Don’t waste your shots trying to bring these mounts down, either. They can’t be killed. Ultimately, you want to drive them back through those blazing green rings. Every ring that closes up is one less way in for them.
“Elias, will you take the other archers back into The Saylis? If any of those demons get through, you rain arrows down on them.” And there was Waldroup again in his thoughts, in his words: “Once you know the other side’s plans, change the rules to bring them down.”
“The vill,” said Little John, “it’s on t’other side of river, too. Only one bridge across to it. We’ll be ducks in a pond.”
“Can we wade across elsewhere, upstream perhaps?”
“Aye.”
“All right, then, Will, you take five and ford farther up. Come around from there.”
“That’ll put ya comin’ in behind church,” said John. “Fields up that way, too. And orchard trees.”
Scathelock nodded. Young Fouke III walked over to John, parents in tow, to volunteer.
“All right. John, you’re leading the way over that bridge. You’re the face of us, giving up the spinners. They’ll be expecting you to come bargaining. See how long you can keep them engaged, how many of the villeins you can get released before those coming to get us strike. Sir Richard, the Foukes, and these others are yours to position as you see fit. Sir Richard is near as good as you with a quarterstaff if there’s to be close combat. If there is, it means some of the elven got past Will’s bowmen.”
“I know. What about tha, Robyn?”
“I’ll have go to collect our ransom now that we need it.”
“I could accompany you,” offered Sir Richard.
That boldness erased any remaining doubts Thomas had about Sir Richard. He replied, “Let us see the situation first, before we do anything.”
They came up a hillside that proved to be a field lying fallow for the season, the first indication that the vill was near. Thomas had the remaining force hold up. He went to Will. “I hope you didn’t use that stone to cut a gateway to here.”
Will glanced back at the white stallion. “Didn’t need to. That creature all but flies on wings. Without it I would still be on my way here and likely riding a dead horse. Here.” He tried to hand the stone back to Thomas, who insisted he keep it for now. “By the way, D’Everingham was nowhere to be seen, nor was Adam, though he’d left my armor at the castle as if he’d known it would fall to me to return his mother’s body. The whole household wailed over her. They were still grieving when I left.”
“I’m sure they were. My heart is with them.” He let out a deep sigh. “Let’s avenge her here.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Oh, once you’re in position,” Thomas said, “you might let them catch a glimpse of you in that armor. It might unsettle them a bit.”
Will embraced Thomas, then led his five off below and along the ridge. The archers ran off into the woods, and Elias’s band headed down the road and climbed up into The Saylis to watch for more trouble.
Thomas dropped the stone into his quiver, then alongside John crawled atop the ridge. From there they beheld their destination.
Palavia Parva comprised fourteen thatched houses, spread over the lowland around and along the river. A wheat field lay below, half harvested, dotted with “angels”—sheaves of wheat bound together near the top and stood up in neat rows to await threshing. From here they did indeed look like golden-brown long-skirted maidens. More fields lay on the opposite hillsides beyond the town.
As John had described, the church, ringed by a low wall, stood slightly apart to the northeast of the rest of the vill, separated in part by an orchard. Will would be coming from there. Smoke wafted out of the holes in most of the fourteen roofs. A few figures strode about, some feeding the animals penned up in the yards beside their houses, some walking the dirt lanes as if taking a morning stroll, but accompanied by at least one knightly figure that hung back as if watchful of the group. No one, despite the bound sheaves, was wielding a flail over any laid-out stalks of wheat—they must have known that the baker was gone.
In fact, John pointed out that his brother’s bakehouse was dark and smokeless. It stood nearest the mill. No one was attending to the animals in its yard, either. Starting from the bakehouse, John identified a cooper’s, a blacksmith, a tannery, and, farther back, a main hall, which was a larger version of the thatch-roofed houses, with four windows along its sides. Almost all the houses had smaller outbuildings on their properties. Had it not been for the knights and the lack of threshing, the scene would have been deceptively idyllic. Smoke floated out of the main hall chimney.
“John, if you had but five men to hold a population of, what, twenty-five perhaps? What would you do with them?”
Little John pondered a moment. Then he replied, “I’d be keepin’ them in one place, all together.”
“Agreed.”
Thomas studied the bakehouse and mill. If John could hold the Yvags’ attention on the bridge long enough for him and Will to get in place, this might yet work.
“All right, then,” he said quietly, “it’s over to you, John. I won’t be long, and next time you see me, I’ll be in your brother’s house.”
“You’ll what?”
“Or maybe the mill. Once I’m back, though, you stay low—just for safety’s sake.” Then Thomas patted him on the shoulder, rolled aside, and took off running down the hill and below the others watching the vill from the ridge.
Back along the road and away from the vill, he drew up beside the white stallion. “Well,” he told it, “at least I know you won’t talk.” He stepped close to the beast. Someone in The Saylis might see everything, but that couldn’t be helped. He took out his ördstone and concentrated on his destination. Eyes closed, he focused upon the chantry in the King’s Houses once again, then sliced the air and quickly stepped through the portal, turned and sealed it up.
He stood a moment in the empty chamber, then crossed to the altar and uncovered the hidden space where he’d stuffed his masonry tool bag. The bag only had one ördstone in it now. He took the one Will had given him and dropped it in. The two stones skritched and burbled, a sensation like insect legs trying to communicate, to twist his mind as they’d once done to Alpin. He closed up the bag and drew his own ördstone again.
Thomas stared up at the massive limewood tree. He removed his bow and leaned it against the corrugated trunk, then hauled himself up and out of sight. The spatulate leaves shivered as he made his way around to the hole where he’d left the remaining two dights. Those he quickly dropped into the masonry bag along with the ördstones. These fluttered and flickered as if agitated in the presence of the little pyramids. The skritching grew louder; the pressure in his head became a dull headache.
He grabbed onto a lower branch and swung down to the ground again. Facing him as if he’d grown there stood Sir Richard atte Lee.
“Sir Richard,” Thomas said, not terribly surprised. “Aren’t you supposed to be observing the vill?”
“So,” replied the knight, making no pretense of innocence, “this is where the dights are safest, is it?”
Thomas could not help smiling at that. “Seemed so to me and they’re still here. You and your kind were so busy turning over the King’s Houses, I couldn’t very well hide them there any longer.”
“Kunastur found them, then?”
“He did not, though he tried. And you—is this the weary flesh of Sir Richard or have you reshaped yourself into him? I know it’s not mere glamour. You have his voice.”
“His fetch, am I? Which do you think?” Sir Richard closed a hand around the hilt of his sword.
Thomas guessed its blade would throw off a multicolored sheen. He estimated the distance to where his bow leaned against the side of the limewood tree. “I think you reshaped. I noticed on our way here you’ve periodically gone off on your own—once even as we spoke—no doubt to unspell yourself and regather your strength.”
“You suspected all this time? How could you?”
“Where Nicnevin’s concerned, I’ve a suspicious mind.”
Sir Richard’s brow furrowed. “How come you to know the Queen’s name?”
“You asked me that before. Does everyone on your side insist on learning that?”
“Before?” The knight gestured dismissively, then extended the arm. “Hand to me the dights now.”
“Tell me first—how did you arrive here of all places?”
Sir Richard showed his annoyance at this delay but reached into his kirtle, then held up between thumb and middle finger an ördstone larger than Thomas’s own, more like the ones Waldroup had once collected. “You thieved our hostages in Palavia Parva. A simple matter it was to track you here from there.”
“Ah, the portal.” They were like apparitional doors along a hallway, each opening to a specific destination.
“I should care to know how it is you come to have and use such a stone.”
“That’s a tiresomely old story, Zhanedd. Do you have that much time, or would you prefer to discard this shape first? We both know you aren’t Sir Richard atte Lee. I assume he’s past suffering?” The knight said nothing. “If you care to conserve your energy, I won’t prevent you.”
Sir Richard bowed slightly as if in thanks. His body began to ripple and contort. It broadened into something more powerful, even taller. The voice, becoming a croak, replied, “He might be dead by now, your Sir Richard; he is certainly otherwise vacant.”
As the transforming Yvag knight spoke, Thomas dove over the nearest roots of the tree. The nacreous blade of the sword bit into the trunk where he’d stood. He rolled, snatched the bow as he passed it, and sprang up behind the limewood’s massive bole. If that damnable snaking blade could bend around the tree, he was doomed.
“There is no escaping,” said a voice no longer belonging to Sir Richard, but deeper, a growl like a rusted hinge. The sword did not shoot around the tree.
“I was going to say the same,” Thomas replied. He stepped out, bow drawn to kill the Yvag that had tortured and dogged him.
And did not fire.
He had never beheld anything like the creature that confronted him. Tall and muscular in the Yvag armor of black and silver, it stood its ground. Its face portrayed the very essence of beauty, an allure that compelled him, tugged at him. He stumbled a step toward it before that visage and the entire creature changed to something jagged and skeletal at once, propelling him back but without releasing its hold over him; then again it warped into a hideous, distorted form bent on devouring him if he remained, and then again into achingly enticing beauty . . . It flickered, shifted, transformed while he stood his ground but barely. Its bewitchment teased and tangled in his mind no matter how the shape of it focused upon him and fluttered through glimpses of things, moments, people he’d known. Onchu swirled past Alpin swallowed Innes melted into Baldie becoming Ađalbrandr, and so on too fast to name, a ceaseless coruscation into new forms stolen from his memory. Whether he stared at it straight on or turned to view it sidelong, the creature flickered hypnotically, its identity always becoming something or someone else—Yvag, human, animal, frond, stone, lightning, darkness, death, and through all of these it grinned maniacally, basked in its effect, which it must have known, a living cockatrice. Five minutes staring upon it and almost anyone would be driven insane, robbed of their memories. As it slid through new forms, Thomas hurled himself back behind the limewood tree before he became rooted to the spot.
The thing asked again, “How know you the name of the Queen?”
“What is your name? You’re not Zhanedd.”
The creature made an eerie creaking sound. Thomas realized it was laughing. “Zhanedd,” it said, “that weak changeling. I am the only one the Queen trusts.”
He replied with mock disdain. “Oh, the Queen again. She trusts you?”
“I am her wean.”
“You?”
“I am Bragrender mac Nicnevin.”
“Nicnevin?”
“Jumalatar Nicnevin Ní Morrigu. My mother, Queen of Ailfion, for whom I will kill you and collect the dights you stole. Now, come out and face me!”
They would be dying in Palavia Parva, a battle surely engaged in the Barnsdale Wood without him by now. This monstrous spawn of Nicnevin would hold him here forever if he didn’t act. However fast he was, he knew it would be faster. No help for that. He drew two arrows, stepped quickly out, fired the first knowing the creature would block it, shot the second at the ördstone it still held. The arrow pierced its hand and drove the stone away, into the brush. But the sword in its other hand had already jumped, and though he dodged, it cut through his thigh so swiftly and sharply that he didn’t quite realize until it snapped back. Then the cut burned.
Lurching away, Thomas collapsed. Bragrender could have killed him then but went racing to retrieve its escaped stone. He hastily drew his, focused on the bakehouse of Parva, and sliced his way back there again. His vision blurred though, the cold creeping agony of his wound skewing his arrival. The gate opened not in the bakehouse but beside the mill—not where he’d intended to arrive. He threw himself through the ring, then turned and sealed it up. The creature was bellowing his name—“Robyn”—which rippled and warped away as the gate vanished, becoming a loud bleat above him. He looked up to find a goat staring him in the face. He was in the bakehouse yard.
Not far away, Little John stood staring down an occupying knight.
Thomas lay there, arrow drawn and pointed at where the gate had been. If Bragrender even started to open it now, he would eat an arrow. But the air did not spark. Bragrender would know Thomas was expecting him this time, and not yet how severely he’d been wounded.
When, after a minute, nothing appeared in the air, Thomas gathered his strength and rolled over. The goat bumbled out of his way. He was seeing spots in a collapsing swirl of darkness. There was no time to prepare or protect himself further.
He stumbled up and lunged into the empty mill, managing not to pass out before he’d shut the door after him.