Hamish left the two of them in heated conversation and wandered off to attend to necessary morning functions. As far as Gracia was concerned, he did not exist. To her he was merely the boy, although he was older than she was. He kept telling himself that it didn't matter because he would never let himself become involved with her even if she begged him. She was crazy. She collected wraiths in a bottle and heard voices. Oh, she was pretty enough with her dark Spanish eyes, and when she unbound her thick black hair it hung to her hips like a sable cloak, but she would flutter her lashes at Toby till the stars fell before he responded.
Toby had been attracting women's attention since he topped six feet, when he was about thirteen. It was well known back in Tyndrum that some of them had done everything short of stripping naked and crawling into his bed, and even that would probably not have met with any success. Toby never even noticed. He was oblivious to every hint or signal. If he ever did fall in love, then it would be a lifetime commitment, never a passing fancy, because he could not forgive what the Sassenach soldiers had done to his mother, although that was how he had been conceived. Hamish was quite certain that the big lad was just as much a virgin as he was, alas! The only girl who had ever won his interest had been Jeanne, last spring, in Mezquiriz. Yes, he had shown some reaction to her, and he had wept copiously when she died in the tragedy. Of course his lack of interest just made him more interesting to women. Unfortunately, it also made any other man in his vicinity even less interesting. With a sigh at the unfairness of things, the boy unlaced his codpiece and irrigated the desert.
***
By the time the sun flamed on the horizon, the three of them were on their way, heading down the narrow little valley, which must lead to the coast. Its sides were stony and rough, and the stream bed was dry as tinder, without a single tree in sight. Mostly there was nothing to see except the next bend, but almost certainly the travelers were being watched from afar.
The hills had been a mistake. There were no roads and few crops. The rebels had not ravaged this wild, barren landscape because there was nothing to loot except goats and sheep, but multitudes of refugees had swarmed through the area and made the inhabitants distinctly inhospitable. Every casa had become a fortress and every outsider a target. Fortunately none of the shots fired at them had been loud enough to rouse the hob, and the dogs had never come within tooth range.
At sunset they had all agreed that they must return to the coast, even Toby, who had hitherto led the way across country with his usual bull stubbornness, storming up and down those bare-bone hills, bent under three times the load Hamish could manage. Gracia with her grand airs carried only her precious bottle and expected her two henchmen to take care of everything else. Now that their food was running low, they had agreed that they must go back to the plain.
By the time Gracia had finished chattering about famous dreams in her family, Hamish had decided that Barcelona was the city of dreams. He secretly dreamed of boarding a ship home to Scotland there, although he knew he could never abandon Toby. Gracia's dreams of delivering a bottleful of wraiths to Montserrat were as crazy as Toby's nightmares of Oreste. But it seemed that they would have to pass very close by Barcelona, if not go right to it.
From the scrunch of his brows, Toby was doing some thinking of his own, and he suddenly said, "Hamish?"
"Hmm?"
"How close would a hexer have to be to hex me like this?"
"Depends on his demons, how strong they are, how well trained, whether they're immured or incarnate. Depends what the hexer's trying to do. Giving you dreams might not take much power, I suppose, but to rip skin off your wrists and then put it back again, or shave off your beard without you knowing it..." His voice withered under Longdirk's glare. "I don't know." Books were always maddeningly vague about such things.
"Maybe it's Oreste doing this to me!"
"I still think it's the hob. Oreste would try to lure you to him, not scare you away." Except that Toby was the most bullheaded man alive. Flash a threat at him and he put down his bull head and charged—in Bordeaux only violent objections from Hamish had stopped him trying to go after Oreste with a crossbow. Could Oreste have guessed that about him, or learned it from his demons?
"It has to be the hob, Toby. I know you don't think it's smart enough, but suppose it's learned to read your dreams, or fears, or thoughts? It could be reflecting them back at you like a mirror..." Mirror... shaving... A fit of nervous laughter took him unaware. Toby's puzzled scowl only made it worse. He howled.
"What is the boy laughing about?" Gracia demanded angrily.
"He suffers from a looseness of the wits."
Hamish coughed himself back to self-control and wiped away tears. "I just thought—if your next attack of augury brings your beard back again, we'll know for certain that it's the hob doing it."
Toby looked startled, then his big mouth twisted into a smile. "Yes, I'd have to agree with you on that."
He walked on for a moment in silence, hitched his load higher on his back, and said, "I promised our companion, whose name I shan't mention, that I would see her to where she wants to go, which is not far away from the city I shan't mention either. Then I'm going to put you on a ship. I don't care what lies you have to tell or what sort of rat-infested leaky basket it is, nor whether it's bound for Scotland or Karakorum, if we can find a master willing to take you on, you go. Far away from this accursed land."
Hamish said, "Um." Nice thought but not possible. Can't desert a friend in need. But Toby would insist he try. No need to equivocate, though. "That's a promise! I'll try." If he was to be allowed to lie to the seamen, he would explain that he wanted to leave Barcelona because his mistress had just died of plague. That would reduce his employability to much less than zero.
He was still savoring a mental image of this mistress in her days of health and lust—naked on a bed, of course, with a rose in her teeth and a flush of desire spreading over her plump, red-tipped breasts—when Toby said:
"If these visions are Oreste's doing, would he find me harder to get at it if I had more company?"
Hamish riffled through all the books he had read and stored away in his mind. "I have no idea. Where are you thinking of finding more company?"
"Right there." Toby pointed.
Their little valley had joined a larger valley, equally desolate, but not deserted. A party of travelers was proceeding down the larger way, heading in the same direction as themselves—a dozen or so, men and women both, some on horseback and some on foot. Two of the riders had already seen the trio and were coming to investigate.
"There are friars!" Gracia moaned. "You will not betray me to the Inquisition, senor?"
"Not all friars are Inquisition, senora. And we wouldn't. Why should we? You are not possessed by a demon. It would be wise if you will not tell them about my wrists healing, either."
Sunlight flashed off a metal helmet. The two horsemen were soldiers, or at least the one in front certainly was—indeed he was a knight, for he carried a lance and rode a huge warhorse. The other was probably his squire, for he was thumping his heels on a pony, trying to keep up.
Then Toby said, "Oh, demons!"
"What?" cried Gracia. "You turn pale, senor! What is wrong?"
He answered in Gaelic, to Hamish.
"I know him. His name is Don Ramon de Nuñez y Pardo. About an hour ago I cut off his head."
CHAPTER THREE
The images in the visions remained sharp as crystals, the sounds and scents and pains and tastes no less so; only the words spoken and heard lay blurred in Toby's memory. As Hamish insisted, that was a strong argument that the hob was behind the visions, for a human hexer would have more interest in conversation. But names were different. Ludwig, Captain Diaz, Don Ramon... those he remembered. This, without question, was Don Ramon cantering up on that gigantic horse.