Half the implings retreated.The others wavered, but one—the one who had ridden upon the cow—advanced another pointed step.
It met my gaze, its eyes pits of ochre matte sea-glass, and as it tilted its head I saw something about its throat.Tight.Bronze.Not a decoration.
A collar.
Impossible, one part of my mind declared.
Undeniable, the other concluded.
“Someone else is… controlling them,” I murmured to Grant.I could feel my lips move in the human world, though my othersenses were wholly occupied.I risked a glance at the horizon, searching for the other Sooth’s dark-green mark.But Ostchen and the sea behind us were endless hazes of lights, all jumbled together and obscuring one another.
Dividing my mind as Olsa had taught me, I began to subconsciously search forHart, Olsa, and Illya.I could not waste a single moment here.
Immediately the implings all surged forward.Grant made a strangled sound and our shoulders bumped together.
“Sam!”Grant protested.
I clapped the full force of my focus onto the implings.Some froze again.The remainder fully fled.
“Go back to your forests.Abandon your master,” I told the last creatures, though I looked at the one with the collar.“I will try to take that off you, if you permit.”
More implings trickled away, until only three remained.Two lingered nearby, clustering, waiting for the collared one.
It crawled forward and stood on its too-thin legs, distended stomach sagging.
Slowly, I crouched to meet it.The longer I was in the Other the more natural my movements felt, the easier it was to breath and sense andsee.I felt gentle tugs in various directions, like sparrows plucking at my clothing.Visions and Knowings slipped closer, like penitents wringing their hands.
The impling approached until it was within arm’s reach.
“Turn around,” I said.
The creature sneered at me, revealing densely packed lines of teeth.Fourdensely packed lines of teeth, to be precise.
“Or leave,” I told it.I felt calmer now, and my patience waned.“I will give you no other choice.”
With a silent shriek, the little monster lunged.I shied back, throwing up a hand just in time to stop its claws from my face.Flesh parted.Skin and fabric tore.
My power billowed out.The creature fled, and I staggered back into my body to an assault of senses—cold and condensation, the sight of snow and mist and the first brush of green.Blood running down my arm, though no pain came yet.Grant’s round eyes and his ghisting, swirling around us in a panic of sudden, avian wings.
Then, as if dragged by an invisible hook, I crashed back into the Other.I spun, searching for lights.Grant.His ghisting.Fleeing implings.One, lingering, hovering, clacking its long nails together in obvious distress.
A murky green light growing in the distance.A tug, no longer gentle.A fishhook around my ribs.
Inis Hae was not only tracking me.He was summoning me.
“The coin,” I croaked.“Mr.Grant.Charles!”
I felt no fumbling in my pocket, just the coin when Grant pressed it into my hand.I awoke as if from fever, in flickering fits and starts and flashes of vision.
I braced on my knees and retched.Nothing came up, which left me feeling infinitely worse, and I was grateful for Grant’s hand on my shoulder.One of my forearms felt hot, and when I squinted at it, I saw blood.So much blood.
“If you are finished,” the highwayman said slowly.“There is one more impling.”
I squinted through a tangled curtain of hair.One final creature, small and young, squatted on a patch of snow.It wrung its fingers, like I’d seen it doing in the Other.
“You can leave,” I grunted to the little monster, though with the coin on my skin once again, my power over it should have been nullified.
I was not sure it was, however.I still felt nauseous and dizzy, trapped just on the edge of my own skin with the Other hovering close.Grant’s ghisten light and the impling’s innate glow seemed too strong in this human world, and a blur refused to leave the very edges of my vision.
