On their second night out of Valencia, Hamish said, "I am still not certain that going by way of Barcelona is a wise move. It will take us a month to get there at this rate, and we're going to starve to death first. Supposing Oreste is there? He'll detect you with gramarye. You'll never slip past him."
Toby did not answer. He might be asleep already, or else just not want to repeat an argument they had rubbed raw several times. He insisted that the best way to escape from Spain was to tiptoe past the monster's lair. All other ways out would be more heavily guarded, he said, and once Toby made up his mind nothing would ever change it.
"We ought to head inland," Hamish muttered. "Back to Navarre."
Still no reply. Toby must be asleep. It had been a hard day. The walking was not so bad — they were seasoned walkers — but the heat was absurd. This was September, after all, or perhaps even October, and weather like this was ridiculous. Every night Hamish dreamed of fine misty rain blowing down the glen, wet moss under his toes and shaggy, long-horned cattle wallowing in the bog. How wonderful it would be to shiver again! Spain was just sweat, sweat, sweat.
Hamish sighed and went back to his book. He was stretched out on his belly in the ruins of a cellar with the stars above him and too many ants and sharp pebbles underneath. The ruin was ancient, not part of the recent devastation, and although it was a zitty uncomfortable place to camp, it provided shelter for the fire — a very small fire, just enough to cast a little light on the pages of the book. No one would see it down in this hole, and in Aragon these days the wise traveler did not attract attention to himself.
The book was excessively dull for even his omnivorous tastes — everything he did not need to know about designing a formal garden for a chateau. Being written in langue d'oïl, northern French, it had no market value here, or he would have traded it away for food a long time ago, like everything else. His worldly possessions were down to the minimum needed for survival: tattered hose (if they tattered any more there would be very little point in wearing them at all), one equally ragged doublet, a shirt in quite disgusting condition, the remains of a straw hat that a donkey had chewed, buskins almost ready to fall apart, one thin blanket and a piece of rope to tie it, one leather water bottle with two leaks, one very small knife, a quarterstaff, and a book. He owned a half share in a whetstone, a tinderbox, and a copper cup; everything else had been stolen or traded away for food. Toby still had the steel helmet he had won in Navarre, but only because it wouldn't fit anyone else's head — much like the book. They did not have a sword between them, or even a dagger, just staves, here in a land where strangers, especially foreigners, were liable to be shot on sight.
His stomach rumbled. Steak. Suet pudding with cream. A bowl of steaming oatmeal, well salted. Or roast pork? He had not seen a pig or a cow or a goat or even a habitable house for days. The rebels had burned crops and vineyards and cut down trees by the thousand, but even they could not reduce a fertile land to a total desert, so there were still pickings to be had. He had been living on onions and fruit. He hated oranges.
Back to the book. In his father's house were many books. Zits, but he was homesick! Homesick for books, for Ma and Pa, for Eric and Elsie, for soft rain and soft, peaty drinking water, and brown soil. Anything but this red, burned wilderness. He had left home to see the world. He had wanted to see life but had witnessed too much death. For three years he and Toby had been hunted by the Fiend's agents — Brittany, France, Aquitaine, Navarre, Castile, and now Aragon.
The puny fire shot up a few sparks. Having nothing to cook, Hamish had claimed a fire would be a defense against the feral dogs prowling around. Toby had agreed solemnly, although he had known perfectly well that Hamish just wanted to read. Somewhere not too far away, a dog howled. He shivered. Nasty noise! Those brutes hunted in packs. They were dangerous. His stomach rumbled a surly reply. Back to the book.
Then a man cried out. Hamish was on his feet in an instant with his staff in his hand and no recollection of picking it up.
"Toby! Toby?"
Toby wasn't there. His blanket was, and his staff, so he could not have gone far.
Hamish scrambled over the wall, out of the cellar. The moan came again. He headed toward the sound, feeling his way carefully with his staff until his eyes adjusted to the starlight. Another groan…
Toby was a few yards off — flat on his back with his hands above his head and his eyes shut — not asleep, then, because he always slept facedown, which he claimed was all Hamish's father had ever taught him in school. He appeared to be unconscious. Again?
Demons! For three years Hamish's recurring nightmare had been to wonder what he would do if anything ever happened to Toby — anything permanent. Normally the big lunk seemed indestructible, but twice in the last few days he had passed out for no apparent reason.
"Toby! Wake up! Toby!" Sick with alarm, Hamish grabbed a shoulder and tried to shake him. Easier to shake an oak tree. He lay down and put an ear on the big man's chest and was reassured to hear a steady Dum… Dum… Dum… He was alive, anyway.
"Uh?" Toby said. A huge shiver ran through him. His eyes opened. "Hamish?"
"Who d'you expect, you big ape — Baron Oreste?"
Toby frowned and did not answer.
"What's wrong?"
He winced. "Cramps. Can you move my arms?" He grunted with pain as Hamish took his arms and rotated them to a normal position at his sides. "Now help me up." That was easier asked than done, for he weighed tons, and he gasped a few more times as Hamish heaved him into a sitting position.
"What by all the spirits is wrong?"
"Told you — cramps."
"Why? Why cramps? What happened?"
Gingerly Toby raised one knee. "I just spent a night in a dungeon."
Hamish discovered that his fingers were wet. There was blood on them.
It made no sense at all. Back at the fire they inspected Toby's scraped and bleeding wrists. The blood had run up his arms to the elbows. His hose were bloody, too, and when he removed them, he displayed ankles almost as bad. Worse, though, the cloth was only blood-soaked, not shredded like the skin underneath. How had he managed that? It had to be gramarye.
"It's the hob's doing!" Hamish said, and was annoyed at the shrillness in his voice. "Why is it mad at you now?"
"Don't think it is. Tell you in a minute. I was going to the spring. I had the water bottles."
Hamish went back out to find the water bottles. He took them to the spring beside the burned cottage. As he was filling them he raised his head and sniffed. Roast pork? Impossible! He went back to the cellar and watched in frustration as Toby washed the blood from his wounds.
"We should bandage those!" But they had nothing to use for bandages. They could tear up a shirt, but their doublets were made of coarse hessian that would scrape intolerably in the heat of the day.
"They'll be all right," Toby said. "Just scrapes. Better to leave them uncovered. Then I can pick the maggots off. I told you these visions were more vivid than your average daydream."
Hamish did not believe in the visions. He thought they were delusions. "What did you see this time?" He added more twigs to the sputtering little fire.
For a dawdling moment it seemed he would get no answer, then Toby said, "Barcelona. The water there tastes terrible."
"What happened to your wrists?"
"Manacles. I was in jail." He peered up at the stars. "How long was I gone? How many pages?"
"Not many. I wasn't reading much. Ten minutes at most."
"I was in jail a lot longer than that. Look, I'd better wash these clothes before the blood dries any more."
Hamish took the hose from him. "I'll do it. And your shirt, too."
Normally any hint of mothering provoked the big man to bull-headed stubbornness, but this time he muttered thanks and meekly stripped. Still moving as if every joint hurt, he stretched out on his blanket and covered himself. "I'll tell you when you get back." He must be in much worse shape than he was admitting.
Hamish headed off to the spring. Three times in a week Toby had passed out cold and wakened up babbling about visions. The first time he had talked of a tent in the woods, a knight, and beautiful lady. Then a man in a city street. Now what? He thought the visions were prophetic, but that was plain impossible. Since leaving Scotland Hamish had read every book about spirits, demons, gramarye, and hexing he had been able to lay his hands on. He had spoken with every acolyte who would spare him a minute. He knew as much about spiritual powers as anyone except a true adept could ever know, and one of the things he had learned was that seeing the future was impossible. Not even the greatest tutelary could ever foresee the future.
Not visions — delusions! Madness.
As he was rinsing the garments, his belly rumbled again, louder than ever. A month to Barcelona? How many oranges could a man eat in another month? Oranges and sometimes dates, although most of the palms had been cut down, and onions, and… and roast pork?
Demons! His mouth was watering like the Fillan in spate. He scrambled all the way to his feet and sniffed. He was not imagining it. Someone was roasting pork somewhere upwind, and not very far away, either.
He went back to the cellar, laid the wet shirt and hose on a prickly bush to dry, and then sat down crosslegged. "Tell me. They hung you up by your hands?"
Toby was sitting up, wearing his doublet, wrapped in his blanket. "Nothing so crude. Baron Oreste has more subtle methods." He grinned more surely this time, more like his own self.
"Oreste? He's in Barcelona?"
"He was in my dream."
"That was no dream!" Hamish squeaked. "You mustn't go to Barcelona if he's there!"
Toby frowned and looked mulish, which he did very well. "I suppose that would be charging the bull, wouldn't it? Does this mean that you believe in my visions now?"
Oh, demons! "No, I don't believe in visions, not yours, not anyone's." The only thing Toby's visions might mean was that the hob was finally driving him out of his mind, and Father Lachlan had warned him of that years ago. Or the hob itself was going crazy, locked up in his mind. It wouldn't make much difference, would it?
"Then there's no problem!" Toby smirked at outwitting Hamish Campbell. "No reason not to go to Barcelona? We can talk about it in the morning. Nice town, Barcelona. Roomy dungeons, all the latest torturing machines. I didn't see you there. You didn't miss much."
"Tell me about the second vision."
"I've told you a dozen times."
"Tell me again!"
"You sound just like your father. You want me to pull down my britches and bend over, domine?"
"Is that the only way to get your attention?"
Toby smiled ruefully. "Sorry. We were walking along that street in Valencia, the one I pointed out to you the next day. It wasn't much of a street, because all the houses had all been burned. You saw that. What you saw in reality was just what I saw in the vision, except there was a ragged old man there. We talked with him."
"You don't remember what we said?"
"No. He seemed friendly enough. After a while we went off with him, and he led us through a doorway. That was all. Then I was sitting on the trail feeling giddy, and you were asking if I was all right."
"And when we reached Valencia, you found that street, but there was no one there."
"Yes."
"So these… these dreams you're having… they're not real, Toby! They don't show you the future. They can't. That isn't possible! What you're having are fits of déjà vu. It's not uncommon to see a place and think you've been there before. Everyone does, sometimes. I do."
"Not like this." Toby held out a thick wrist, torn and scabbed with blood.
"It's the hob playing tricks on you."
"Then I wish it would stop. Now I'm going to go to sleep. So should you." He eased himself down, moving like a very old man. He rolled over.
"Toby. Someone's roasting pork. I could smell it. Upwind. Not far."
Longdirk heaved himself up on one elbow, grunting at the pain. He fixed Hamish with a dangerous stare. "I smelled it too."
"Well?" Hamish pleaded. "They might share?" Zits, but he was hungry for a decent meal!
"Not me. That's what I saw in my first vision, Hamish. Or smelled, I should say. There was a fire in an orange grove with something being roasted on a spit. I'm not going near it!"
"What?" Hamish swallowed a mouthful of drool. "Why not? I know it's a risk, but if we warn them we're coming and we're not armed—"
"I did. Last time. Listen, I'll tell you again exactly what I saw. There's a fire, obviously, and a tent. Made of cloth, blue and gold. I think there were horses, but I'm not quite sure about that. You were with me, and it was a night just like this one: warm, starry, very little wind. In the vision I shouted to warn whoever was there, and they came out of the tent, two of them, a gentleman and a lady, very well dressed. He had a green and gold jerkin on, she was in red and white. The man called to us to come forward. We walked forward, me in the lead, and just as I neared the fire, something frightened me."
"What?"
"I don't remember! All I know is that I shouted and turned to run. Then I ran into you, and that was all. I woke up." He grinned menacingly. "You go and explore if you want to. You don't believe in my visions, so you've got no reason not to, right? I'm in no state to go anywhere, but if you feel like bringing me back a juicy rib or two, I won't refuse."
Hamish glared back at him suspiciously. "How far did you go tonight?"
"Just to where you found me, I'm sure. I wouldn't have gone on without my staff, would I? Go and see if my vision was true."
Tobias Longdirk was not the only man who could be stubborn. "Very well!" Hamish said. "I'm going."
"Wind's from the northwest. Take your bearings from the stars. Bon appétit!" Toby smirked and lay down again.
Hamish took his staff and went to the wall.
"Hamish?"
"What?"
"Be careful!"
"I can look after myself," Hamish snapped. So he could, by most men's standards, because Toby had taught him. Toby was in a class by himself when it came to fighting, but that didn't mean Hamish Campbell was a pushover.
Beyond the spring Hamish came to the start of an orange grove, just as Toby had predicted. Toby could have seen that in daylight.
The trees made things tricky, and there was no clear path. He went slowly, being extra cautious. Creeping up on anyone was dangerous in war-ravaged Aragon. People slept with their bows strung nowadays. He was a little surprised that Longdirk was letting him do this — not exactly an unwelcome surprise, but an uneasy-making surprise. Toby was treating him as an equal now, no longer the boy he had been when they began their adventuring together. Although he was full-sized, or almost so, and a seasoned traveler with smatterings of five or six languages, he was still a little disbelieving every time he drank from a pool and saw the fuzzy fringe of beard around his face. He would never admit it to anyone, of course.
Nor would he admit that he was now scared spitless. Creeping up on strangers in the dark like this was not prudent. Normally he would have tried to talk Toby out of trying it. He would certainly never have volunteered to do it himself, alone. He couldn't go back now, of course. But if something jumped out at him, he knew he would head for Longdirk fast as prunes through a goose.
There were other things moving in the woods. He paused a couple of times to listen, but when he stopped they stopped, and all he achieved was a higher level of funk. They were probably those feral dogs, attracted by the smell, just as he was. Feral dogs and feral Scotsmen…
There was no way to go quickly in the dark, even knowing that the roast pork might be all eaten before he arrived. The ground was littered with dead branches, the air full of live ones at head-height. Don't trip in the tangle of weeds, which… ouch!… included thistles.
Yes, a faint light twinkling in the darkness ahead! The mouth-watering odor was stronger. Not very far at all, and Hamish had a nervy vision of the men who had built that fire creeping around in the trees to find his fire at the same time as he was creeping… no, his was downwind and it didn't have any pork on it.
He began planning what he would say. He would start by telling whoever was there that they were in no danger, of course, so that they didn't start banging away with muskets. Then admit to being a foreigner but not part of the Fiend's army. The delicious aroma of roasting meat was making him slaver like a dog. He eased through the grove toward the yellow flicker, keeping eyes peeled for guards or sentries, but the fire was a small one, and there was only the one. He couldn't see any people near it, only trees. The smoke stung his eyes.
Time to warn them he was coming.
"Friends! Friends! Good evening! I am alone. I come in peace. I mean no harm!" He used Castilian, because his Valencian and Catalan were still as thin as the seat of his hose.
Nothing happened.
He clattered his staff on branches and marched forward, shouting out the same message, over and over, with variations, adding a few words in Valencian. "Friends! I come in peace. I seek only charity and companionship."
The fire was quite close now. It still seemed deserted, but campfires did not build themselves. His scalp prickled. He shouted again.
Suddenly he saw the tent beyond it, exactly as Toby had described, gold and blue stripes. He stopped dead. How could he reconcile that with prophecy not being possible? The flap lifted. They came out, a man and a woman, young and handsome, both beautifully dressed. The man wore green hose, a green and gold jerkin padded wide at the shoulders, a shining cloth-of-gold cloak with fur trim. A sword dangled at his belt. The lady's gown was snowy white, slashed with crimson on the full skirts and puffed sleeves, cut low at the neck over a sheer chemise. Her hair was hidden by a red and black mantellina trimmed with braid and velvet that hung to her shoulders. What were a prince and princess doing here in the woods with no attendants?
At least Hamish couldn't see any attendants. Perhaps there were other people or even horses in the darkness beyond the tent. Hard to say — he was too fascinated by these gracious nobles.
"Who approaches?" shouted the man in Castilian. He had a hand on his sword.
"One hungry traveler, senor! I am unarmed and come in peace."
"Come forward so we may see you." The man gestured to his lady to keep back while he advanced to meet the stranger.
Hamish walked forward until he entered the firelight. He bowed.
The nobleman smiled.
Then the fire roared up, much larger than before. Hamish jumped and looked toward it. The source of the delectable odor was a human torso with the remains of a head still attached. It had been skewered lengthwise by a rod about eight feet long, supported on a metal tripod at each end. The underside was charred and the top raw. There were remains of half a dozen other corpses scattered around under the trees.
Hamish turned back to the handsome caballero, but he had gone. The tent and the beautiful maiden had vanished also. The thing standing in front of him, leering at him, was a demon.
During his last few hours in the baron's dungeon — they might have been around midday or midnight for all he had been able to tell — Toby had started falling asleep, and for once falling had been the appropriate word. Time and again he had awakened with a sickening jar, tearing his wrists on the manacles and bruising his back against the wall. His shoulders still ached as if his arms had been pulled from their sockets.
Nevertheless, the moment Hamish disappeared over the wall he lurched up and grabbed his hose from the bush. He hauled them on, and fortunately the wet cloth clung to him well enough that he could trust them not to fall off, so he left his doublet where it lay. He pushed his feet into his buskins, grabbed up his staff, and followed Hamish, veering to the left to move parallel to him and confident that he was making a lot less noise.
Hamish could argue all he liked that there was no such thing as prophecy, but those three visions had been utterly convincing. Three times Toby had found himself somewhere he could not possibly be, and yet sights, sounds, smells, and in the last case sheer agony, had all compelled belief. The hob used him as a mount to ride around and see the world, and it cared for him much less than a man would care for his horse. It was stupid, childlike, and treacherous, but it had never played this sort of joke on him before.
Certainly the visions were not exact prophecies. The street in Valencia had turned out as he had foreseen it, a litter of rubble between burned out buildings, but the man he had expected was absent. Hamish seemed to be constitutionally incapable of disbelieving anything he had read in a book, but if he now stumbled upon the tent and its occupants as Toby had described them, then even he might have to change his mind. Then he might be able to think up an explanation, for the teacher's son was a lot smarter than big, dumb Toby Longdirk.
Hamish was still creeping gently along through the trees like a stampeding herd of buffalo, although Toby could see a twinkle of firelight ahead already. Be fair! Not many men would make less noise. Hamish spent every spare minute reading and thus was an invaluable source of information. Toby never read. He preferred to practice useful skills like fencing, marksmanship, wrestling — and stalking. In the middle of this smug self-praise he stepped on something squishy and recoiled so fast he almost fell.
The revolting stench told him it must be a corpse. Too small to be a horse or cow. Goat? Sheep? He was about to move around it when something reflected the starlight. He poked with his staff and concluded it was a steel helmet. Gagging, he stooped and forced himself to explore further. Slime, maggots… The man must have been dead for weeks. He found the prize he was hoping for, a sword. He wondered if the hob had guided him to it, then dismissed the idea as absurd. Any stray dog was smarter than the hob. Still, a sword would be very useful if he was about to encounter what he feared.
He wiped his hands on the grass and rose. Hamish was shouting in Castilian, hailing the camp. Trailing his quarterstaff and carrying the sword, Toby moved faster, heading straight for the fire. Even without the vision he would have been suspicious of this lonely campfire. Only a strong, well-armed group would advertise its presence in this lawless, starving land, and there was no sign of such a camp here. In a few moments he was close enough to see Hamish through the trees, and his worst fears were realized.
Hamish stood near the blaze, apparently quite oblivious of the revolting object suspended above it. He was smiling and talking, but the creature stalking him was obviously a demonic husk. Once it had been a woman, and there was probably some life left in it even yet, but when demons managed to possess people, few of them could resist the temptation to torture their hosts and enjoy their pain. The thing that had lured Hamish into its trap was naked and scarred with burns. It had torn out most of its hair and chewed on its own limbs. Its eyes were empty bloody sockets, but the demon would be able to see without them. Hamish Campbell was a dead man.
Any army employed hexers, so it was not surprising that a war demon had escaped its controller and remained behind to add to the miseries of Aragon. But it had not yet detected Toby. With luck, he might be able to slip away unseen. His legs trembled with the urge to flee.
It lifted its web of illusion from Hamish. He screamed, flailed his arms, and tried to run, but his feet did not move. He swung his staff. The demon cackled shrilly and wrested it out of his grip as if he were a child, then tossed it away. Then it clasped his face in the ravaged claws that were all it had left of its hands.
"Pretty, pretty!" it gibbered. "The pretty man is welcome. You will find happiness here — food and love, yes?" It pulled Hamish's head down to its breast in mock affection.
Hamish was doomed. It would take possession of this new victim and torture him also until he died and someone else walked into the trap — which happened first would matter little. In theory a creature and its resident demon could be slain with a blade through the heart, but that was only in theory. In practice the demon would freeze an attacker to the spot or throw lightning bolts at him or pick up a tree and hit him with it. No one except a hexer could creep up on a demon undetected, or evade its powers.
Or possibly the hob. Capricious and unpredictable though it was, it did hate demons. Toby could not abandon his friend. If the hob would let him, he must try to do something.
Hamish was squirming in the creature's grasp, retching at its stench, but powerless to avoid that odious mouth approaching his. The horror was about to kiss him, and even Toby's stomach turned over at the sight.
"Stop!"
The husk released Hamish and spun around, staring with festering blind sockets toward the sound.
Toby took a step forward, and neither the demon nor the hob blocked him. "Stop, monster! Here is a larger, stronger body for you to claim. Let the boy go and take me." He blundered forward.
"Idiot!" Hamish screamed. "Get out of here!"
"Come!" the husk shrilled gleefully. It jiggled and waved its arms. Its torn dugs flapped up and down. "Two of you to play with! Much feasting and loving and pain! Come to my embrace, lover!"
Toby felt it take control of his feet, rushing him forward to his doom. Hamish was still rooted to the spot, still cursing Toby's folly.
The ghoul spread its arms to embrace its new victim. At the last moment Toby's arm brought up the sword. The hob must have revealed itself then, for the demon screamed, but it was too late to stop the blade. It slammed into the woman's chest, straight through the heart. Corpse and Hamish collapsed at the same moment. Toby felt his limbs returned to his own control and staggered, grabbing a branch to support himself.
His hose dropped around his knees, and he started to laugh.
Even after he had managed to choke down the laughter it was a few moments before he could do more than just shake. Then he pulled up his hose and retrieved both sword and staff.
Hamish had scrambled away from the dead husk. His face was chalky in the firelight. "You flaming fool! That was crazy!"
"Don't thank me, friend. Thank the hob."
Apparently not yet trusting his legs to support him, Hamish sat where he was and stared up incredulously. "I didn't know you could control it that well!"
"I didn't control anything," Toby said. "I just remembered how it hates demons."
"You knew there was a demon here, and yet you let me come?"
"I thought there might be, because of the vision. I didn't suggest it, because you don't believe in visions."
Hamish said something in langue d'oïl that did not sound polite.
Toby wakened with the sun blazing down on his right ear. He had overslept, which was annoying but also confirmation that his sleepless night in the dungeon had not been pure hallucination. Not that he needed more evidence than his arms, which still ached all the way from wrenched shoulders to bruised wrists. And now was the moment to wonder what might have crept into bed with him: spiders, snakes, scorpions? He rolled over and heaved himself upright.
Hamish was reading, of course. Beside him lay a heap of oranges and two swords. He smirked with the smugness of the earlier riser. "Sleep well?"
"A few nightmares. You?"
"No. I had my nightmares before I went to bed. There aren't any more demons around. If there were, your snoring would have brought them running."
Since he was wearing nothing but his locket, Toby reached first for his clothes. "You found another sword."
Hamish nodded, closing the book. "I found eight bodies, too. There's other stuff on them, but I couldn'a bear to touch any of it. Yours is a demon sword, you realize?"
Of course. They were conventional, single-edged military swords, with simple L-shaped guards, probably of Spanish make, but one of them had slain a demon and so would have power against demons. That might be useful, for although incarnates were not exactly commonplace he seemed to have a knack for running into them.
Dressed, he reached for the oranges. "Any thoughts on my visions now?"
Hamish scowled. "No. That hob of yours breaks all the rules. And your prophecies aren't accurate — but they do seem to come close," he conceded.
Toby thought of Baron Oreste's dungeon and shivered.
As soon as he had eaten they set off northward, still carrying their staves. Having no scabbards, they tucked the swords in their bundles, hilts ready to hand in case they were needed. Westward lay the scrubby hills, and eastward the brilliant sea.
Amazingly, Hamish seemed none the worse for his horrifying experience with the ghoul. For a while he indulged in aimless chatter, explaining that the Mediterranean had been named by the Romans and meant Middle of the World but the Moors called it Bahr al-Rumi, the sea of Rome; that from the south coast of Castile you could see Africa; that it was only thirty years since the king of Castile had conquered Granada for the Khan; and that a tigress could outrun a horse, but the rider could escape it by throwing down a glass ball, which the tigress, seeing her own reflection in it, would think was one of her cubs and stop to suckle.
"What do you do about the tiger?" Toby asked. "Can't it run too?"
Hamish frowned. "The book didn't say. You suppose no one ever came back to tell them?" Then his eyes twinkled. It was never possible to tell how serious he was when he recounted a tale like that. He usually seemed to accept anything he read in a book without question, but he might have just been having fun with his big, stupid friend. Although his dark coloring made him look like a native, he was tall by Spanish standards and still gangly, so recently come to his full height that he had much filling out left to do. Fine-boned and yet firm, his features combined a pair of very solemn dark eyes with a mouth ever ready to smile. Dress him as a gentleman instead of a beggar and those long lashes would quicken every female heart in the land. If they didn't, it would not be for want of fluttering.
Suddenly he went to business. "What exactly did you foresee last night?"
Toby told what he could remember of the vision. "It's odd, but I don't recall much of what we said. Everything else was as vivid as real life, but the conversation's all fuzzy and patchy."
"Like the meeting in Valencia. You didn't remember what was said then, either." Hamish was wearing his smug expression.
"So?"
"This sounds to me like the hob's doing. It wouldn't care much about words, would it?"
"No it wouldn't. So, yes, you're right." Trust Hamish to work that out.
"Then what?"
"That's all. Oreste just went away and left me in the dark." For how long? All night? The soldiers had checked on him several times.
"Standing up? Chained?"
"Yes. Now you know everything. You're the scholar. Explain it."
Hamish scowled down at the trail. "I can't. It makes no sense. Déjà vu isn't usually so dangerous. If you're seeing the future — and you can't be — then how can you change it? But you mustn't go to Barcelona now. Even you can't be that pigheaded!"
Toby grunted.
"Well?" Hamish demanded. "We've got no reason to go to Barcelona. There are other ways out of Spain!"
Barcelona was the shortest, but the real reason Toby wanted to go there was to find a ship for Hamish. He had hoped to find one in Valencia, but the city was a graveyard and no ships came to El Grao. Hamish, although he hated to admit it, was bitterly homesick for Scotland. Hamish had done nothing to earn this endless, dangerous life as a fugitive except be loyal to his friend. It was time to repay the debt by sending him home. Scotland was a poor land with troubles of its own, but he had friends and family there, which Toby had not, and the sooner he was shipped back there the sooner he could start living the sane, ordinary life he deserved.
So Barcelona it must be, but that argument would not sway him, so think up another reason:
"You know I want more than anything to be rid of the hob. Didn't you tell me that Barcelona has one of the greatest tutelaries in Europe?"
"Montserrat? Its sanctuary is near Barcelona, yes. But the hob won't let you go near a tutelary. You know that."
"A hexer could exorcize it," Toby said cautiously.
"I expect so, but all hexers are evil, and how do you find one anyway? How do you bribe him or pay him?"
"The Khan must have hexers. He'd help."
Hamish groaned. "And how do you get to Sarois?"
That was certainly the problem and always had been. Ozbeg Khan was a thousand leagues away, beyond the Caspian Sea. He would love to have the amethyst, because that would give him the real Nevil's soul, and Nevil had known Rhym's true name, so the Khan could then conjure the Fiend and regain the half of Europe Nevil had conquered. That was why the Fiend had been chasing Toby so relentlessly for the last three years.
"I know a hexer in Barcelona — Oreste himself."
"What?" Hamish howled.
"He has dozens of trained demons. I'll offer to give him the amethyst if he'll take the hob off me."
"You have the brains of a field mouse!" Hamish yelled. "Oreste would hex you or turn you into a creature or just torture you to death out of spite. There is no way you can bargain with Oreste! How could you trust a man so evil? He won't deal, he'll throw you in jail and torture what he wants out of you, or just hex you to obey him. You're joking, Toby, aren't you?"
"Suppose I send him a letter, offering him the amethyst in—"
"He'll trace it back to you by gramarye."
"Well, think about it," Toby said complacently. "I'm sure you'll find a way." And he would see Hamish safely on a ship before he tried it.
"You are deliberately being stupid!" Hamish said, sounding very much like his father had when little Toby Strangerson insisted that three and three made five. "Look at this country!" He waved at the desolate landscape, the burned houses and ravaged orchards. "Nevil marched half his army down this coast to Valencia and Toledo and back the same way. Oreste took the rest to Navarre. They destroyed everything. But somewhere in between there must be lands they never reached. There will still be people there, and food. I am sick to death of living on oranges and onions. I want to cut across country to Navarre. We have friends there, even if Nevil does rule it now."
Toby eyed the hills. "Cutting across country in Spain is like going through a city without using the streets."
"It's worth a try. Over there is a valley leading inland. Let's try it. Please, Toby?"
This was serious. Hamish never begged.
"If we go to Barcelona, I might be able to get my hands around Oreste's neck and strangle him."
"That's a beautiful idea. He certainly deserves it. When you have a vision of yourself doing it, let me know."
Toby shrugged. "All right! We'll head for Navarre."
Hamish looked at him incredulously and whistled. "Truly? Spirits! I'm going to write home and tell Pa that I managed to change your mind about something."
"He won't believe you."
"No. He certainly won't."
At first the valley seemed as barren of life as the coastal plain. Towards noon, though, they sighted a little town on a hillside ahead, a speck of promise amid desolation, although the odds were that it had been sacked and burned like everywhere else. The trail led to it, so they pushed on, dispensing with a siesta. Toby's buskins were rubbing painfully on his raw ankles, but he saw no reason to mention it.
Hamish did not notice his limp. Mostly he prattled about things he had read, often years before, as he so often did. Toby listened in silence as usual. Only once did they return to the prophecy problem.
"Toby?"
"Hmm?"
"No spirit can see the future. The books all say the same — not even great tutelaries ever prophesy. All they can do is assess a person's potential, and they're not much better at it than mortals are. Remember back in Tyndrum? Everyone knew Vik Tanner was a no-good that would never amount to a heap of horse dung while Will Donaldson was a promising lad who would go far. But Will Donaldson fell off a roof and broke his neck. When we went to the shrine at Shira, the spirit said you showed signs of greatness. It didn't say you would live to achieve it. Bordeaux said much the same. It thought you might do remarkable things."
"Like seeing the future, you mean?"
Hamish growled angrily. "I still think the hob is playing tricks on you somehow. Let's just hope that it doesn't play any of them around the Black Friars, or you'll find yourself explaining things to the Inquisition."
Although the hob had no mind, no concept of right and wrong, and little akin to any human sense of purpose, it certainly had strong likes and dislikes. It would reduce a military band to screaming chaos in seconds, usually inflicting serious injuries, and it adored pretty things, which were liable to turn up later in Toby's pockets. When it got angry, people died. But none of that explained the visions.
"Ha!" Hamish peered down at horse droppings in the road as intently as Dougal the gamekeeper tracking the laird's deer.
"Not very recent," Toby said. "Two weeks?" He was guessing wildly. Dung had never been one of his most pressing interests.
"Hard to say in this heat. But it's on top of the tracks." Hamish looked up with his angular face twisted in a pout. "Don't think we're going to find anyone home."
"Let's go and make sure."
The town was larger than Toby had expected. It had no freestanding fortifications, but the outer houses faced inward and their backs presented an unbroken wall of masonry to visitors. The road led to a gate, which had been reduced to charred scraps of timber on half-melted iron hinges — obviously by gramarye, not cannon. Clutching his staff and peering around warily, he limped in behind Hamish, who strutted forward, all eagerness to explore.
No dogs came yapping, no chickens scurried, no goats bleated. The country trail became a steep and rutted mud-floored alley winding between tight-packed stone houses, two or three stories under red-tiled roofs. Most doorways stood open on dark interiors; most of the barred windows were shuttered. The ground was littered as if the contents of the houses had been thrown out into the street: broken furniture, smashed pots, rags, dead cats, shattered rain barrels. Seemingly the place had not been put to the torch, for the usual reek of ashes was missing. In its place was a sickly scent of decay that grew steadily stronger as the visitors advanced. They passed the remains of a body, then another, both far enough decayed for the bones to be visible. When they reached a fork, with neither branch providing a view of anything except another bend and flights of steps, Toby veered right and Hamish followed his lead as usual.
"May be able to find food here," Hamish whispered, "real food, not just zitty oranges."
The idea was mouth-watering. "If it's fit to eat. What's that noise?"
Hamish cocked his head and then shrugged blankly. "Starlings?"
Together they rounded a corner and reached a little open place, a cobbled plaza where four or five alleys met. Arcades of gloomy arches surrounded it, and on the far side stood the grandest building of all, the sanctuary, with a tiled facade, marble steps, and a little minaret. The jumble of litter was even thicker, comprised of broken casks, furniture, merchants' stalls, and general rubbish — and a heap of corpses in the center. Here the people had been rounded up and massacred. Bodies were piled head-high, distended like barrels by the sun, swarming with grotesque black shapes that were the source of the puzzling noise — crows and bigger things that might be kites or vultures. They squabbled and shrieked, crawling over their feast in search of juicy titbits.
The visitors' arrival sent them aloft in a wild flapping. Scores or hundreds of black birds whirled upward, raising dust, darkening the sky. Others, so bloated by their feast that they could not fly, flopped around amid the carnage, trying to escape, while a tide of rats swirled across the cobbles and disappeared into the arches and buildings. The airborne flock gradually settled on rooftops to scream at intruders like living gargoyles, nightmare guardians in a town of the dead.
Toby closed his eyes until he could breathe again and his stomach writhed less urgently. Then he risked another look. The carrion feeders had ripped the uppermost bodies to shreds of meat on white bone, but there were many layers underneath. He wondered if King Nevil himself had been here in this plaza, supervising the slaughter.
"Throats cut, mostly. It would be quick. We've seen worse." Impalements were worse — people left to die on posts. In some villages they had been burned alive, or hung up by their feet, or staked out along the road for miles, and there were other ways to inflict slow and painful death.
"Don't be so sure," Hamish mumbled through the hand he held over his mouth and nose. "Women on top, see? Children next, men at the bottom. How long do you think the women lived after they saw their children die? Hours? Days?"
"Too long, I'm sure."
Yes, the women were bad, but the children were worse — children with rotting green faces, eyes missing, teeth grinning maniacally where the lips had been torn away. There were dead animals in the heap, also, mostly dogs and cats, of course, because the victors would have driven off the livestock or just eaten it.
That thought of eating made his insides lurch again. This was the first settlement they had seen in weeks that had not been burned to the ground. He turned his back on the atrocity and spun Hamish around also, to face the alley.
"Let's explore." His legs were still stiff from his hours in Oreste's dungeon. He needed a rest from walking, even if it must be in these nightmare surroundings.
"As long as we're away before dark!"
"Obviously. I hate looting, but I'm going to take anything I can use."
"They have no more use for it," Hamish agreed.
"Let's start by seeing if we can find water and something to eat."
Hamish choked. "I'll eat outside the gate."
"If you want. We do need food. And clothes. Why don't you start hunting?"
"What are you going to do?" Hamish peered at him suspiciously.
"I'm going to visit the sanctuary."
"It won't be there!"
No matter what Toby ever suggested he could rely on Hamish to shoot back objections, usually very logical objections. Sometimes they were wonderfully sensible and he had to overrule them anyway, although he hated doing that. Hamish was an equal partner now, but he had always been senior deputy in charge of objections. Sure enough:
"The tutelary won't be there, and even if it is, what's happened to its town may have driven it completely insane, so it'll attack any stranger on sight, and even if it isn't, you know what the hob will do to you if you try this, but we can't risk having you injured here, so there's no reason to go there at all; it's pointless and dangerous, so I'm going to come with you, and why are you laughing?" He pouted, hurt and resentful.
"Just nerves," Toby said, for it seemed inhuman to be amused by anything in this terrible place. "Yes, it's a long shot, but worth a try. If there is still a spirit to tend the souls of the dead, then we can spend a night undercover for a change. I don't think there's any real danger. And if the hob gives me trouble, I'd rather you were out of it so you can come and pick up the pieces afterward."
He strode off around the plaza, holding a hand over his nose and trying not to look directly at the hill of rotting corpses. Soon he had to slow down, because the piled junk made treacherous going for a man whose buskins sported more holes than a lace shawl. He stepped between timbers with nails in them, broken glass, broken crockery, scrap iron. If the hob reacted to the spirit as it had in Bordeaux and other places, he would soon find himself rolling in all that. But even before he started he had been about as close as he had ever come to a sanctuary and the hob had raised no objection. Sometimes he could tell when the hob knew a spirit was nearby, although that did not always work — he had felt no premonition of the demon in the orange grove. He certainly felt none now. Almost certainly, Hamish was right and the tutelary was gone.
Birds fluttered and shrieked. The stench made his head swim, but he came at last into the cool shadow of the archway. He almost turned to see if Hamish was still there, watching over him, and decided not to. If he was, it would embarrass him to know that his intentions were so transparent; if he wasn't, there was no point.
Toby stepped through the space where the doors had once hung, then waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim, cool light of the high-vaulted chamber. So this was a sanctuary, was it? Before the rebels came it might have been very beautiful, although in an ornate Spanish style that would have seemed alien to an ignorant Scottish Highlander. Now it was a ruin, a singularly repellent one. The invading army had smashed everything breakable and then used the place as a latrine, leaving a deep layer of excrement on the floor and splattered over the walls. Stained glass, frescoes, and carvings had all been smashed. At the far end, where there would have been an altar and probably a throne, there remained only bare stonework above a heap of ruins.
No, the tutelary had gone, for no spirit except a demon would tolerate this ugliness and filth. Furthermore, since no spirit ever left its own haunt willingly, it must have been raped away by a hexer and perverted into a demon itself. Tutelaries made the worst demons of all, Father Lachlan had said, because they were wise in the ways of men. It need not have been Nevil himself who worked this abomination — he had many hexers in his service — but it might well have been. Doubtless the former benevolent guardian of this sad little town now resided in a jewel somewhere, perhaps on the rebel king's own finger. A spirit once dedicated to the welfare of its people was now given over to hate and destruction.
Obviously Toby's harebrained plan to rid himself of the hob was even less likely to work than he had expected. Had he found the sanctuary bereft of its tutelary but intact, then he would have shown all its beauty to the hob and tried to persuade it to remain there. He did not know if it could voluntarily quit him without killing him, but it would have been worth a try. It still was.
"Hob? Fillan! I'm talking to you." Could it even hear him or understand? Probably not. "This is a sanctuary. People lived in this town once, many people. Others would like to come and live in the houses, but they cannot if the place lacks a spirit to care for them. If you choose to remain here, then people will come and repair it and make it beautiful again. You see on the walls and the ceiling? They will repair all the pretty pictures for you. They will bring offerings and praise you for helping them."
He heard nothing, felt nothing. He said what had to be said:
"If you can only leave me by stopping my heart, then I will pay that price. Let me die and you will remain here. This will be your house."
No response. The hob either did not hear or did not understand. Or else it wanted to continue traveling the world, because it was peculiarly crazy, even for a hob.
With a sigh, Toby turned away from the desolation and walked out into the brightness. Hamish had not moved from his place in shadows at the far side of the plaza, keeping watch. The birds were back at their feasting.
The first houses they investigated had been thoroughly looted, the furnishings broken or deliberately fouled, including the water casks, which had long since dried out anyway. Whether demons or mortals led by a demon, the invaders could have destroyed everything more easily with fire, so they must have taken pride in their work and wanted to leave evidence of their thoroughness.
Toby's canteen was long empty. A town must have a supply of water, and the rain barrels could not possibly be adequate. There would be a spring or a cistern of some sort, but would the demons have poisoned it?
Moving together in ever-grimmer silence, they turned a corner into a tiny yard and almost knocked over a girl coming out. She leaped back with a scream and then continued to retreat. She was short and slight, dressed all in black: a long skirt and a sleeved blouse. Her cloth bonnet was tied under her chin to conceal her hair and ears, leaving only her terrified face exposed. Incongruously, she had a bright-colored pottery bottle hung around her neck on a cord, and this she clasped to her with both arms as she backed away, staring at them in horror.
"Senores! Do not hurt me." Her voice rang shrill and cracking with terror. "I will submit! I will do anything you say, and I can cook for you, too, or wash your clothes. Anything, senores! There is a bed upstairs, senores, and I will not resist, if you promise not to hurt me and not to tell your friends. I will be just yours, yes? Just the two of you. And you will not—"
"Stop!" Toby howled, turning his back. "Hamish, speak to her."
Hamish went down on one knee. "Senorita!" he said, speaking Castilian, as she had. "We mean you no harm, no harm at all. We have no friends with us. We are foreigners, but we are loyal subjects of the Khan, not the Fiend. There are just the two of us, and we do not molest women. We will not touch you. Please do not be alarmed."
How could she not be alarmed in this place, trapped by two strange men, and one of them a giant? What horrors had she experienced to make her react so? She had expected to be raped before she even knew they were foreigners.
"I will do anything you want, senores, but please do not hurt me."
"We shall not touch you, senorita. We are honorable men. You have nothing to fear from us."
"You are not soldiers?"
"No, we are merely travelers, men who honor and respect women."
Cautiously, Toby looked around. She had backed against the wall, very small and vulnerable, arms crossed across her breasts and that inexplicable bottle. Her face was sickly with fright. She was scarcely more than a child.
Hamish rose and bowed. "I am Diego Campbell Campbell. We are visitors from a faraway land. We will not harm you, I promise."
"I am Gracia Arnalt Arias de Gomez."
"Senora de Gomez, I am at your service. May I have the honor of presenting my friend Tobias Longdirk Campbell?"
Toby bowed also. "Your servant, senora." She did not look old enough to be married, and her black garments implied mourning — a widow? He did not know what to say next.
Hamish came to the rescue, more proficient with words in any language and especially words to women — not that he was much of a ladies' man, although he tried hard enough, but Toby was most certainly less of one. "You also are a stranger here, I think?"
She nodded, staring at him with the huge dark eyes of a cornered rabbit. Why was she wearing a bottle? It was ornamental, not practical everyday ware, glazed in whorls of red and green, fitted with a handle through which the thong was strung. The mouth was corked, but the way it lay on her breast and the way it moved when she did suggested that it was empty.
"Then we may have interesting tales to exchange. Senora, my friend and I are very thirsty. May two weary travelers beg the mercy of a cup of water?"
She nodded, shooting a hasty glance at a dark doorway.
"We shall wait out here." He strolled over to a flight of stone steps leading up to another house and sat down. By the time Toby had joined him Gracia had vanished indoors.
"She probably has fourteen brothers and three uncles in there," Hamish growled, watching the door. "Women don't travel alone."
"Unless she's the last survivor."
"She's from Castile."
"She's been here for some time, though." The little yard was the first clean place Toby had seen in the town, sunlight and shadows on ancient stonework, barred windows, two weathered doors broken off their hinges and one whole. It had been tidied and swept. "I wonder why the wraiths haven't driven her away?"
"If she offers you roast pork, refuse politely."
"Don't be obscene!" To compare that sweet child and the creature in the orange grove was utterly repugnant. "She may have jumped out the back window and run away already."
Hamish shrugged cynically. "She's from somewhere near Toledo, I think. Not a great lady, more than a peasant."
Toby could not have guessed that much, but Hamish had an ear for languages. He had known Latin as well as Scots and Gaelic before he left Scotland. Since then he had picked up a working fluency in Breton, langue d'oïl, langue d'oc, and Castilian, although even he had been stumped by Euskara. Soon he would be jabbering away in Catalan like a native. They were all variants of either Gaelic or Latin, he would explain solemnly, as if that were obvious. He was Diego now because he enjoyed translating his name into the local tongue: Hamish, James, Seamus, Jakez, Jacques — Diego.
Gracia reappeared, struggling two-handed with a bucket. She set it down in front of the men and retreated quickly. She was no longer wearing the bottle. Without rising, Hamish slid to his knees and reached for the cup under the water. He drank, refilled it and passed it to Toby, both of them being elaborately courteous, making no sudden moves. The water was sweet and fresh.
"You are wounded, senor." The girl was staring at Toby's swollen wrists, which had been bleeding again. Anyone could guess those wounds had been made by manacles.
"Just, um… How do you say 'scrapes,' Hamish? They are nothing, senora. But I should clean them if you will tell us how we may refill your, um, fetch more water for you."
"There is a cistern. If the senor will permit me to tend his injuries?"
That hint that she was regaining her confidence was welcome and must be encouraged, however much Toby disliked being mothered. "They are only scratches, senora. You are very kind." He held out his hands.
Gracia approached as warily as a deer, producing a rag she must have brought for this purpose. She barely took her eyes off his face as she washed away the blood, and he felt her fingers shaking, but she was more deft than Hamish would have been.
He thanked her and insisted he did not need bandages.
"The senor was also limping?"
Hamish had not noticed that! It was true that Toby's ankles were in worse shape than his wrists now, but he could not reveal those without removing his hose.
"My buskins do not fit well," he said. "We have walked a long way." His buskins were falling apart. What chance did he have of finding a pair to fit him in this ruin of a town?
Gracia seemed to accept the explanation, and she was gaining more confidence by the minute. "I can find the senor a new pair!" she said eagerly.
"To fit me?"
"I believe so. If the senor will excuse me a moment?" She hurried off into the house again.
"You know," Hamish said thoughtfully, "if you can get hurt in these visions of yours, then one day you may come back dead!"
Oh, he had just realized that, had he?
"If they're the hob's doing, then it won't kill me." It had never worried about hurting him, though.
Gracia returned with a black cape trailing from her shoulders. She carried an empty bucket, but she also had the bottle hung around her neck again. "If the senor will be so kind as to follow me?"
Toby took the bucket and moved to her side, leaving Hamish to empty the first bucket and follow behind. She was ignoring Hamish completely, but she seemed to have lost her fear of Toby, for she shot a few hesitant smiles up at him, which he returned. He felt overwhelmed by her softness, her femininity. He admired the slight bulge in the front of her blouse and thought he could detect a scent of roses from her. A single dark curl had escaped from under the edge of her bonnet, but most of her hair was tied in a long braid, encased in a tube of black cloth that hung down her back. She was a reminder that there were still decent, honest people in this terrible world, vulnerable people.
Hamish, meanwhile, kept trying to flank the lady on the other side but was balked by the narrowness of the road. That did not stop him from talking. He explained dramatically how he and Toby were refugees from the war and had never been part of the Fiend's army. That was not quite true, but true enough. Gracia responded by telling her story. Toby missed much of it, but he gathered that she had lived in a little village called Madrid, two days' walk north of Toledo, where her husband, Hernan Gomez Ruiz, had been keeper of the shrine. The rebel army had sacked the village and stolen the spirit away. Her husband and brothers had died. She did not mention what had happened to her.
"My sons also died in the war," she said. "They died bravely."
The men exchanged puzzled glances. Admittedly a woman could be a wife and mother at fourteen, but Gracia was not much more than that even now. Could babies die bravely?
She led her new friends directly to a shoemaker's dingy workshop, which was in predictable disarray, with heaps of old boots and buskins covering the floor. Obviously the invaders had helped themselves to whatever they could use and left their own footwear behind, and most of it was as disreputable as Toby's. Gracia, though, headed straight to a back corner and produced a brand new buskin of greater size than the rest, an adequate fit for his right foot. Its mate proved elusive. They had almost concluded that it had never existed and the cordwainer had died before completing a special order, when Hamish uttered a whoop of triumph and dragged the missing partner from under the ruins of the workbench. It was a little snug, but it would do.
"I feel guilty robbing the dead," Toby complained, although he knew he was going to.
"Oh, you must not care about that!" the girl said excitedly. "He does not grudge them to me, and I give them to you. So that is all right! Now we must find some better clothes for the senor. And the boy, also." She headed out of the shop, apparently unaware of Hamish's outraged glare or Toby's smirk. She was enjoying herself now. "This way! There are some garments that I believe will fit you. The senor is a very striking man!"
She blushed at her own temerity and moved off quickly. Hamish made a snorting noise and rolled his eyes.
This time she had to investigate several houses before she found the one she wanted. It had been home to someone almost Toby-sized, and no one had bothered to loot the clothes he had left behind in his tiny attic room. Even Gracia could not stand erect under the roof.
"Obviously servants' quarters," Hamish remarked acidly.
"A child's, a growing lad," Toby retorted. He found green-and-brown hose that fit when he cut the toes off, although they were uncomfortably snug around his calves and thighs, baggy at his hips and waist. The anonymous donor must have been wearing his jerkin the last time he went out, but he had left two shirts and a shabby brown doublet that could just close around Toby with gaps at the lacings. Even with the cuffs dangling above his wrists they were a big improvement on his previous rags, and Gracia was as thrilled as a child when he appeared in his new splendor. She wanted him to accept a flat cap of black velvet with a red feather in it, but he perversely insisted on retaining his steel helmet.
"Now the boy," she said as they emerged into the evening light. "He will be harder to fit because he is so ordinary."
Fortunately Hamish had his nose in a book by then and was so busy trying to walk and read at the same time that he did not hear.
"What is the name of this place, senora?" Toby inquired.
"Name?" She hesitated, looking up and down the street. "I believe the house we need is this way, senor."
So she did not know the town's name, and that probably meant she could not read, because a little later in the looting expedition Hamish located some letters and announced that it was Onda. Gracia was also very vague as to how long she had lived there, but she had obviously explored it from cellars to chimneys, and her memory for what she had discovered was astonishing. Most clothes that would fit Hamish had already been looted, but she had noted and remembered a few shirts, hose, doublets, and even cloaks, and was able to lead the men to them.
So they trailed around Onda after her, carrying the buckets, and she picked out the garments. None of them matched any other, some were bloodstained or impossibly soiled, but eventually Hamish was outfitted.
"I feel like a court jester in this motley," he whispered as they followed their guide down a narrow staircase.
"You look more like a looter," Toby responded glumly. Looters were hanged. Stealing made him feel guilty, even stealing from the dead.
Gracia puzzled him. She made him think of a songbird in an invisible cage. Her attitude had changed from abject terror to absurd airs, so that she was issuing orders as if she expected to be obeyed without question, yet next moment she would be laughing and chattering like an excited child. She ignored the bodies in the streets except to lift her skirts when she stepped over them. At times she made nonsensical remarks about how much easier the senor's journey would be if he would just obtain some horses, and a moment later she would comment perceptively on the difficulty of finding anything to eat in the hills.
When she had her new retainers outfitted to her satisfaction, she led them to little caches of food the looters had overlooked: beans, meal, onions, dried fruit, jars of oil, and a sack of hard wheat — most precious of all, because it would keep indefinitely. She had been dipping into it for her own use, but she expected Toby to carry off the whole bag, as well as all the other things she had loaded onto him. He was already feeling like a pack mule, but that did not stop her from detouring on the road home to top him up with bottles of wine and some firewood. Then she took her porters to the cistern so they could fill the buckets. Hamish was too laden with books to be much help.
"The senor is perhaps hungry?"
"The senora has not spoken a truer word since her naming day."
"I am an excellent cook."
"I hope you are also a speedy one, or I shall eat the firewood raw."
Laughing at this brilliant wit, Senora de Gomez hitched up her hems and stepped over a dead child without seeming to notice it.
Her little kitchen was clean, tidy, and cosily cramped with three of them in it, a bizarre oasis of domesticity in a city of death. She set half a bushel of beans to boil and rapidly peeled about a hundred onions. She put Toby to grinding the grain in a hand mill and Hamish to opening a wine bottle. By the time they had passed that around several times and he had opened another, the party became jolly. Toby's mouth watered copiously as the scents of food wafted around him — he could not remember his last good meal. Gracia bustled merrily, clattering pans while the fire crackled in the grate and her guests sat on their stools, awkward in their mismatched, ill-fitting finery.
She put another stool between them, set a bowl on it, and began tipping food in. The men reached for it, burning their fingers and not caring. As soon as they emptied it, she would add more and they would start all over again. More wine bottles went around. She was as good a cook as she had said she was, considering the material she had to work with, and she had the sense to realize that her companions needed large portions. She helped herself to a few handfuls without ever sitting down.
"It grows late." Hamish frowned at the little barred window. "We must be gone from here before sunset."
Gracia's spoon paused in its vigorous beating of batter. "There is a room upstairs where the senores may sleep." She did not look at them. "There are no neighbors to gossip. Besides, it will be perfectly proper, because I shall be out." The spoon walloped against the bowl again.
The senores exchanged glances.
"I am concerned about the wraiths," Hamish said. "There are many unburied dead here and no spirit to care for them."
"You need not worry about wraiths, senor. They have been attended to." She thundered her spoon in the batter.
"I do worry about the wraiths. Wraiths drive men insane."
"I have lived here for several nights, and they have not harmed me."
Hamish looked skeptical.
"What have you done for them, senora?" Toby asked quietly.
Gracia flipped a drop of oil onto the griddle to test its temperature. "I have collected them." She added more oil and spooned out some batter.
More glances. Women could be driven insane as easily as men, but Toby had been expecting something along these lines.
"In the bottle?" The bottle was never far from her.
Hesitation. "Of course."
"Is this gramarye, senora? It is not a custom familiar to us in our homeland."
"Have you had so much war and death in your homeland? No, it is not gramarye! How dare you suggest that I would stoop to such evil?" But she still did not look at her guests.
"Will you tell us the way of it, then?"
She tipped more beans into the communal bowl. "Eat!"
They ate in silence, while she plied them with tortillas and beans and onions, helping after helping. Toby felt as if he were filling an empty barrel. When at last they could eat no more, the light in the alley outside showed that the sun must be very close to setting.
"Tell us about the wraiths, senora," said Hamish.
"It is of no importance."
He opened his mouth to protest — probably to point out that he regarded his sanity as of considerable importance — and Toby silenced him with a shake of his head. She responded better to him.
"You are taking your sons' souls somewhere, senora? And these other souls also?"
She promptly filled her mouth so she could not answer, but then she nodded.
"This is a noble mercy, although I never heard of it being done before. Who taught you this skill?"
After a moment she said, "My sons."
Hamish rolled his eyes and looked around for his staff and bundle.
"Where are you taking them?" Toby asked gently.
She bit her lip, staring at him, and then seemed to decide to trust him. "To Montserrat, senor. There is a great tutelary there, just north of Barcelona. My sons asked me to deliver them to the spirit in the monastery at Montserrat."
"You are traveling alone?" he asked incredulously.
With a little more hesitation, she said that, yes, she was traveling alone.
"This is a most fortunate coincidence. We are going to Montserrat. Will the senora permit us to escort her?"
She gave him a smile as warming as a blazing fire on a winter night. "So that is why they told me to wait!"
"Who told you, senora?"
"My sons, of course!"
"Toby!" Hamish was glowering.
Toby shrugged apologetically. He could not possibly let this poor child go wandering off alone again! It was a miracle she had managed to come this far without being molested.
But Hamish's practical soul was much less impressed by this damsel in distress. "Tell us how you work this conjuration with the wraiths."
"It is not your concern!"
Toby said, "It should not be, senora, but if we are to be traveling together, then it might become so. The Inquisition, for example, might—"
She froze, staring at him. The color drained from her cheeks.
"We disapprove of the Inquisition," he added hastily and sensed Hamish shuddering at this indiscretion.
"I have no dealings with demons!" Gracia cried.
"Nor we, I assure you, but it takes only a whisper to start the Inquisition asking questions, and we all know how they ask questions."
She looked down at the floor and spoke very quietly. "After the soldiers left Madrid… I was the only one left, senor. They overlooked me at the end, when they slew the women. I hid under the bed where… it was not my bed. I was the only one left, the houses were burning. I went to the shrine, and the spirit did not answer, so I knew they had taken it. I hunted everywhere for my husband and my sons, to bury them. All day I searched and could not find them. But that night my sons came to me. Their wraiths stood beside me — not as I had known them but as the men they would have been, tall and strong and handsome. They wept because their lives had been so short and they would never grow to that manhood. They wept more because they must evermore remain wraiths with no spirit to cherish them. They told me to take a bottle and gather up the souls, theirs and all the others, and carry them to the tutelary at Montserrat, for it would take them in and care for them always as if they had been its own people. That is what I have done, senor. There and anywhere else I found death. Is this a wickedness?"
"No, indeed. It is a virtuous thing." He did not know if what she claimed was possible, but he certainly did not know that it was not. He dared not look at Hamish. No doubt Hamish could quote books on the subject.
Gracia was relieved to have his approval. She smiled wistfully, her eyelashes glistening. "They still speak to me sometimes. Here I found much death, and it was hard for me to make the wraiths understand, because of the language. My sons told me to keep trying, to stay here for a while. They must have known you were coming, senor, a strong man to escort me through the troubled lands. But I think I have gathered all the souls in this town now. I shall go out again tonight to make sure. There may still be a few of the very little ones, I fear, who find it difficult to understand. They will not trouble you." She looked at him like a wounded plover.
"I believe you. I shall sleep here tonight, then, with your permission." The hob would defend him, but it might not worry about Hamish. He stole a quick glance at his friend.
"And I," Hamish croaked loyally, although he looked as if he could see the room full of ghosts already.
He had a lot more to say later, when the two of them were alone in the poky bedroom Gracia had appropriated for her use during her stay in Onda. The bed was too short for Toby and would not be wide enough for both of them anyway. He spread his blanket on the floor.
"Toby, I thought you agreed we were not going to go to Barcelona?"
"We can't abandon that child!"
"Child? She's borne two children — or thinks she has. She's crazy!"
"All the more reason to be kind."
"Ha!" Hamish hurled the last of his clothes down and scrambled into the bed. "Kind? Child? She was dropping broad hints that she didn't really have to go out if the senor needed her and the boy could sleep in the dog kennel."
"You're imagining things!" Toby stretched out on the floor and rolled himself up.
"She wanted you to share her bed, and you weren't exactly ignoring her yourself. This is no time to start falling in love with a demented—"
"You are being ridiculous and evil-minded!" Toby sneezed several times as his efforts to get comfortable raised dust from the ancient boards. "I am certainly not falling in love! I'm sorry for her, that's all." Memories of last spring… Jeanne in the springtime… disaster at Mezquiriz… Agony in his throat. Never, never fall in love! Love was not for a man possessed. The dust was making his eyes water.
"And you promised we wouldn't go near Barcelona." Hamish sounded aggrieved.
"We can go around it. We'll cut overland, avoid the coast. That'll be just as safe as heading for Navarre. And if we find a convent, we'll leave her there, all right? Or some town with a tutelary that will care for her. Besides, I'm not convinced she's crazy at all. The wraiths don't seem to have molested her."
"How could they?" Hamish said glumly, moving the candle closer and balancing a huge leather bound tome on his chest, a history of Aragon. "She was crazy before she arrived."
"Is what she thinks she is doing possible?"
"Not without gramarye, I shouldn't think. Ah, me! Demons last night, ghosts tonight? You won't mind if I read awhile?"
"Not as long as you don't laugh too loudly."
"If I cut your throat in the night, don't blame me for it." It would take more than a few hundred wraiths to distract him from a good, meaty book, but after a moment he said, "Toby? I realize that your vision, or whatever it was… that your vision of Barcelona was pretty bad. I know you suffered. That doesn't mean you have to prove anything."
"Prove what?" Toby asked his blanket.
"Prove that you're not scared, I mean. I know you're brave."
"Huh?" He could still smell that odious cellar, see the barbarous implements of torture, feel those cold manacles scraping his flesh. How long could a man endure being chained to a wall like that? How long survive in the cold and the dark? How long endure without sleep? And what happened after he broke, when he begged for release, telling everything, promising anything at all…? "What do you mean? That's an absurd backward way of thinking! Why would a frightening vision make me want to go to Barcelona? That's nonsense. Bloody demons! That's just as crazy as anything Gracia has said."
Hamish grunted. "You needn't shout. Go to sleep, you big ox."
Toby was awakened in the morning by a delectable odor of fresh-baked bread. Gracia was clattering pots downstairs. The candle had burned itself out, and Hamish lay fast asleep, the book pitched over him like a Gothic roof.
Soon after that, the three of them walked out of Onda and headed north, over the hills.