The boy sat up and reached down to his right ankle. Fingers gripped the steel fetter, muscle bulged, tendons flexed. The cuff snapped open. The hands moved over and freed the other ankle also. Those were Toby Strangerson's hands and arms, but they had more than Toby Strangerson's strength, more than mortal strength.
The drumming pursued its steady, unhurried beat. The boy was on his feet, flashing across the floor in pursuit even as the last cowled figure was disappearing up the stairs. He caught the robe, dragged its occupant back. He lifted the thing, swung it, shattered its head against the wall, dropped the body, and stepped over it to follow the others. He raced up the stairs without a change in the overriding beat: Dum… Dum…
The last two robed henchmen slammed the metal gate from the far side. That should have made a noise to rouse the entire castle, but it was inaudible under the irresistible drumming. The men collided with table and benches as they struggled to reach the guardroom door.
The boy took hold of the gate. The thick bars resisted, the arms swelled, iron bent. The gate changed shape, came loose bodily in a shower of rust and fragments of stone. The cowled men had gone, leaving the door open. As the boy passed the mirror, he turned his head and paused to look at his reflection — large, curly-haired, bare from the waist up, rusty bangles on his wrists. Bleeding scratches adorned his neck and ankles. The arcane sigil on his chest had gone dark and become merely a pattern drawn in blood. His juvenile face bore an idiotic simper of satisfaction, the face of one who had no worries and never would have.
Toby Strangerson stared out of the mirror in horror.
The boy swung a fist to meet another fist and the mirror shattered between them. He trotted forward, out the door.
The courtyard, also, was bright with the mysterious lavender radiance. The two cowled things were struggling to open the postern gate, but the boy ignored them and crossed to the stables. All the horses and ponies should have been in turmoil, but they dozed in their stalls, paying no heed to the eldritch light or the drummer's deafening beat. The boy took a bridle from a peg and moved along the line to the laird's pride, the white stallion whose name was Falcon.
Toby Strangerson had no experience with horses. He had ridden ponies a few times and watched the fusiliers at their dressage, but that was the limit of his experience. The stallion jerked its head up and rolled its eyes, then calmed at a touch on its neck. It took the bit without resistance. It let itself be backed out of its stall and led from the stable, ignoring the thunder of the urgent drum. There was no other sound in the world: Dum… Dum…
The postern gate stood open. A flash on the battlements released a puff of smoke, but the range was far too great for a pistol. Where the ball went was immaterial.
Falcon stepped through the gate. The boy sprang lightly to its back.
With his sure hand steadying its reins, the stallion raced down the road, leaving the castle far behind. Responding to the touch of knees and bare feet, it turned aside and made its way across country, soaring over walls, never faltering, never putting a foot wrong. The landscape rushed past, illuminated partly by fitful moonlight, but much more by that demonic blue glow, while an irresistible drummer beat slow time.
CHAPTER FIVE
Reality returned with a crash. The drumming stopped. The light cut out like a snuffed candle. Toby awoke from his trance to instant darkness, full of motion and sound and an icy wind. Starting to slide, he grabbed at the horse's mane with both hands. Falcon shrilled in terror, stopped dead, and sent its rider spinning through the air. He smashed to the turf with a jarring impact. The horse kicked and bucked for a few moments, then thundered away across the fields.
Toby lay and stared at the whirling moon. Where was he? How had he come there? The events in the cellar and his departure from the castle seemed like the most improbable of nightmares. He had watched himself from the outside, yet what he had seen was so sharp and clear in his mind that he could not doubt it. Obviously Lady Valda's conjuration had gone seriously awry, resulting in the escape of her stalwart victim, who now lay flat on his back and half stunned, somewhere in Strath Fillan.
The moon steadied in the sky — the clouds had almost gone and a pale misty ring in the sky told of frost. He felt cold seeping into his body. It brought welcome relief from a collection of aches and pains he could not begin to catalogue. He might have just lain there, slowly freezing into a blessed numbness, had not his teeth begun to chatter noisily. Grunting, he checked that all his limbs moved, that he was still breathing, if only just. He heaved himself upright and looked around. He saw stony pasture, silver with hoarfrost, but right ahead of him was the grove, with the jagged spire of Lightning Rock glittering in the moonlight.
Well, of course! Although he was already shivering hard enough to fall apart, Toby laughed aloud. That was what had gone wrong with Lady Valda's conjuration — she had been messing with the witchwife's little lad! The hob had taken offense at a demon intruding in its glen. The hob had intervened. It had demolished her gramarye, brought the boy home. He had Granny Nan to thank, undoubtedly, but he must thank the hob itself, too. He had money now, so he could buy it some shiny trinket as a token of his gratitude.
First, he must head for the cottage. Even if the soldiers came looking for him again — and that was by no means certain — they could not possibly arrive soon. No mortal rider would travel as fast as he just had. That had not been Toby Strangerson on the horse.
He was a mortal man again now, though, and he had urgent troubles: biting cold for one, outlawry for another. He was still liable to be hanged for murder, and when the carnage in the dungeon was discovered, he could expect to be impaled as a demon, as well. Most urgent of all was the loathsome sigil on his chest. He supposed that it must be the demon's way of identifying him, or its password for entry. He had no wish to be repossessed. Tearing up handfuls of frosty grass, he wiped at the bloodstains until the marks were well smeared and the sign was illegible. If demonology was at all logical, then that ought to block any effort by the demon to return. He found two shallow cuts, but they were nothing to worry about.
Standing upright was.
Even when he was on his feet, it took more effort to straighten. He had lost his bonnet when the Sassenachs threw him onto the horse's back, and now he had lost his pin as well. Pulling his plaid over arms and shoulders, he set off around the copse at a stumbling run.
Granny Nan had said she was leaving. Whether or not she had gone, the door would not be locked, for it had no lock. He could blow up the fire or light another. From the position of the moon, sunrise was still a few hours off. He had a small start on the inevitable hue and cry. The Sassenachs would be looking for a man on horseback until Falcon calmed down and went home or was found in the morning. They might not come looking for him at Granny Nan's right away. He felt light-headed and battered, as if he'd fought two bouts in quick succession. What he needed most was sleep, about three days' solid sleep. Or a square meal and then sleep. If he ever sat down — if he ever got warm again — he would just fall over and snore. In the morning the soldiers would find him there, still snoring.
Would the soldiers come looking for him? Lady Valda had been killed or stunned. The cellar was full of evidence of her black art. Two of her adherents had been slain, chains snapped, an iron gate mangled like a string bag. An untrained farm lad had taken the wildest horse in the stable and ridden off bareback—there was real gramarye! The castle would be in an uproar of terror.