The Nethergrim Read online

  “I just hate it here.” Edmund hunched down. “I don’t want to stay at the inn, washing my father’s mugs, pouring his ale and waiting for him to die. I hate it.”

  “I can’t leave Papa. If I did, I think he’d just dry up and blow away.” Katherine turned the sword over in her hands. She slid it back into the scabbard and set it down. “But I know what’s coming. It makes me so scared, I can’t sleep sometimes.”

  “I just wish something would happen.” Edmund put his fists to his eyes to stop himself from crying. “I just wish—”

  “Quiet.”

  Edmund turned on the log. Tom stood moonlit next to Jumble, gazing up toward the summit of Wishing Hill.

  “What for?” Edmund got angry again. “Tom, this is important. We’re talking about our lives, you know. Our futures. Aren’t you even thinking about it?”

  “No.” Tom waved out a hand. “I heard something.”

  “Heard what?” Edmund paused for the briefest of moments. “I don’t hear—”

  A torn, hopeless scream drifted down from the summit of the hill. Edmund’s heart bounced in his chest.

  Tom whirled on Jumble. “Stay!” He sprang off toward the trailing echo of the scream. Katherine grabbed up her sword and leapt to follow.

  “Wait! Are you sure we should—” Edmund crossed the old West Road just in time to see Tom slither into the trees ahead. He plunged in behind Katherine. Branches whipped and stung at his face. The darkness hid roots and twists of ground; he tripped and cursed and picked himself up again and again. He followed Katherine on a sharp turn left, then a rise and a switchback right. Another scream sounded from above, longer and more despairing than the first.

  Edmund forced his way over a fallen trunk and took a scratch across his belly from the bark of a projecting limb. He caught sight of Tom on the slope above him, pelting through the trees like a hunted deer, then lost him again. He pushed himself as hard as he could go, crunching and cracking through the brush. He swung around a switchback at full tilt and nearly crashed into his friends.

  “What—” He could not get his breath. He grabbed his side. “Why have—” Then he saw it.

  On the trail before them lay the figure of a boy—facedown, arms hugged in under his chest and legs splayed out. They all stood still for one moment of horror, then rushed to his side.

  The boy wore a ragged tunic under his cloak and oversized breeches crisscrossed with strips of old leather to make them fit. There were leaves in his hair where his head had hit the ground. Katherine knelt beside him and shook his shoulders, then turned him over.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “No.”

  She cradled Peter Overbourne in her arms. Peter’s head lolled back. Tom searched down through his clothes and found a rip in his tunic. He drew his hand away, wet with blood. “A blade did this.”

  “That wasn’t Peter we heard screaming.” Katherine flashed him a look. “It was a girl.”

  “How did this happen?” Edmund could not keep his voice from quavering. “What’s going on?”

  Tom drew his hand across Peter’s face to close his staring eyes.

  “I don’t know.” Katherine lay Peter down in the leaves. “I don’t know—look around, will you?”

  Edmund stumbled off along the downhill side of the trail. He caught a glint in the undergrowth. “I found something.” He reached down and closed his hand around the pommel of a knife, double-edged and sized for fighting. The blade caught the starlight as he turned it. “This is Geoffrey’s!”

  Katherine stood. “We’ll go get help.”

  “Wait.” Tom raised Peter’s hand to the feeble light. It was spattered with a thick, dark liquid. So was the blade—Edmund touched some to his finger and held it up.

  “What is this?” The liquid was blue, near to black.

  Something crackled in the heavy undergrowth across the trail. Edmund had just enough time to let out a yell before he was thrown to the ground. A figure loomed in above him. It had a dark blue, noseless face, inhumanly round, with wide-set, bulbous eyes and a flat jaw that swung open to show a row of needle teeth.

  Chapter

  10

  Edmund froze, his gaze held by the creature’s liquid yellow eyes. It reached out to touch his face, the backs of its long fingers brushing his cheek—then it grasped him by the neck. He sucked in a gasp and tried to struggle free, but found himself helpless in its grip. With a push of its thumb against his chin it exposed his throat and pulled him closer. He flailed out with Geoffrey’s knife, but struck the trunk of the tree beside him. The jaws swung wide—its teeth were arranged in two rows, one staggered behind the other. Its breath was sweet and sour, and very warm.

  There was a rush of air above. Something landed on the creature, driving it to the ground and jerking Edmund forward. He smashed his shoulder into the trunk of a tree, then the creature loosed its hold and he sank down, choking for breath. Two figures rolled through the weeds before him. One of them gained the upper hand and pinned the other down—it was Katherine. She raised her sword, but the creature was as quick as it was strong. It lashed out from shadow and struck her across the jaw, then shifted its weight and dumped her on top of Edmund, squashing him down into the mulch. The sword tumbled end over end through the air and fell into the bushes by the lip of the trail.

  The creature was wiry and muscular, curled and hunched but still tall as a man. It wore a vest made of slick, blackened skin from some unguessable source. Filthy cloth breeches clad its upper legs, ripped and ragged at the ends and held up by a belt made of dark rope. It held a hand clamped over a wound at its side—it drew a dagger in the other hand and advanced on them with a bouncing, bow-legged shuffle, spitting and gurgling in rage.

  Tom rushed to stand over his friends, swinging his shepherd’s crook in wild arcs. The creature wove and dodged, stabbing viciously at Tom, slicing into his improvised staff and driving him back. Katherine rolled off Edmund and aimed a kick at its belly right where it was wounded. The huge yellow eyes bulged wide—it let out a scream and stumbled back, giving Katherine a moment to scramble to her feet. Edmund tried to struggle up behind her, but his shoulder gave out beneath him.

  The creature spun away from the swing of Tom’s crook and leapt onto a boulder across the trail. The blood that seeped from the wound around its hand glistened blue near to black, a shade or two darker than its skin. It sprang at Katherine with its blade thrust out—she ducked out of the line of its charge and tripped it, slinging it over Edmund and off through the trees downhill. The creature flailed its limbs as it disappeared into the dark. There came a crunch, then the crackling slither of something falling through branches to the ground—then silence.

  “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Katherine dragged Edmund to his feet. Her hair fell in wild dark tangles around her face. There was an ugly, swelling bruise on her jaw.

  “I’m fine.” Edmund could not stop shaking. He rubbed at his shoulder. “I’m fine. Where is it?”

  “Down there. It’s not moving.” Tom stood at the edge of the trail, looking down the steep slope of the hill.

  Edmund grabbed for a branch and leaned out. The creature lay crumpled at the base of a tree far below. “I think you killed it.”

  “Let’s get it into the light and see.” Katherine pulled Geoffrey’s knife from the tree trunk where it had stuck. She handed it to Edmund. “You cover us. If it twitches, stab it.”

  They descended the slope and approached the creature, casting wary glances all around. Katherine and Tom grabbed it by the ankles and dragged it back up onto the trail next to Peter. It was indeed dead—its mouth hung open and its yellow eyes stared at nothing, just as Peter’s had.

  “What is it?” said Katherine.

  Edmund nudged it with his foot. “A bolgug, I think. I’ve seen drawings.”

  “A bolgug?” Katherine drew its long knife from the ground—it was as near a sword as a dagger, heavy bladed and made for thrusting. “That’s not possible. The bolgugs served t
he Nethergrim, and the Nethergrim is dead.”

  Edmund did not know how such a thing could be possible, either—and yet there the creature was, lying sprawled at his feet. He knelt down next to it and gave it another tentative prod, and when it did not react, he turned its head to examine its face.

  “Look at those teeth!” He ran his fingers along the bolgug’s wiry blue torso and felt the wound at its side. The breeches it wore had been made for a boy, far too short but just wide enough for its sinewy thighs. The belt around its waist had been fashioned from a braid of long brown hair.

  Katherine crouched over him. “Did you stab it?”

  “No—Peter must have.”

  “Peter was running downhill.” Tom spoke from a few yards up the path, bent low to examine the ground in the feeble light. “He must have been coming from the keep. This thing chased him down.”

  Edmund looked down at Geoffrey’s knife. His guts gave a squeeze. “My brother must be up there!”

  “And it was a girl who screamed, I’m sure of it.” Katherine plunged about in the bushes for her sword. “Tom, you’re the fastest. Go for help.”

  Tom glanced back at the corpse of the bolgug. “What if there are more of these things?”

  “Then we will need the whole village in arms, and quickly. Go on.”

  Tom dropped his crook. “Be careful—both of you.” He turned to run back down the hill. Edmund followed Katherine the other way.

  The trail wound upward to the summit, emerging at the blasted, broken gates of the old fortress. Light from within the courtyard crowned the ruined walls. Edmund dropped to a crouch next to Katherine in the last stand of trees. “That’s a fire. A big one.”

  Katherine pushed her hair behind her ear. “Footsteps.” She leaned out. “Two at least—maybe more.”

  “There, in the entrance.” Edmund pointed. Another bolgug stepped out over the tumbled stones that choked the gates and peered around it, then made an awful clacking noise with its teeth. It bore a crude, broad-bladed spear in its hands.

  Katherine sized up the bolgug, then gazed along the top of the wall. She chewed at the nail of her thumb.

  “Geoffrey, you twit.” Edmund muttered it under his breath. “What were you doing up here?”

  “Playing and dreaming,” said Katherine. “Same as us.”

  Edmund had a momentary vision of his mother holding him and weeping—oh, Edmund, don’t blame yourself, there was nothing you could have done. Then his father put a hand to his shoulder—no sense throwing your life away, son. At least we still have you.

  A new sound reached his ears—a frightened, very human whimpering. “Please, please don’t. I don’t know what you are, but please don’t—”

  “That sounds like Emma Russet.” Katherine pulled up her sword.

  Edmund started moving, and only then understood that he had chosen to risk his life. “There’s a place around the back where the wall’s crumbled down. Maybe we can sneak in.”

  They crept north through the trees, past the place where they had found the bones of Hugh Jocelyn’s pigs. Katherine leaned out from cover, looking for any sign that they had been spotted by the guard. She waved Edmund on; he followed at a crouching run, along the side wall and around the tallest standing tower to the back.

  “Here.” He stopped at the place where the wall had collapsed until it was little more than twice the height of a man. Emma let out another wail from inside, a cry for her mother, someone, anyone. A bolgug cut her off with a grating squeal.

  Katherine knelt and made a step with her hands. Edmund stepped in and Katherine hauled him up the face until he stood on her palms. He reached above him and felt for a handhold amongst the jagged stones that surmounted the wall. He found one and pulled—the stone came loose and rushed past his head, thudding into the grass below.

  “Careful!” Katherine sucked in an alarmed, shuddering breath, but held him firm.

  Edmund dug his fingers in and found a precarious foothold. He strained and dragged himself onto the broken top of the wall as quickly as he dared, then looked down into the courtyard.

  A bonfire blazed beside the tall dark Wishing Stone. Miles Twintree lay beside it, bound hand and foot—he seemed to be making furtive struggles against his bonds. Emma Russet squirmed and sobbed, trying to crawl away from beneath a bolgug who seemed intent on shaking her into submission. The bolgug with the spear stood aside from the entrance to let four others pass by into the dark. These four walked in pairs, each pair carrying a child slung from a stick on their shoulders. One of the children had curly red hair.

  Edmund’s stomach dropped. He leaned out to whisper down to Katherine. “They’re taking Geoffrey!”

  “Not if I can help it.” Katherine drew her sword and raced back around the fortress.

  “No, Katherine, wait—there are too many!” Edmund flung out a hand, but by then she was gone from sight. He turned back to the courtyard, sick with fear. There was nothing he could do.

  “Get—off!” Geoffrey kicked and squirmed. “Let go, let—somebody, help!” His captors dragged him away into the dark beyond the entrance.

  Pages flicked in a blur through Edmund’s thoughts. It was madness, utter madness—he had never cast a proper spell in his life, could not even coax a candle flame, and now he was going to try something that might set an untrained apprentice on fire. But Katherine, Geoffrey—he had to try.

  “Hey!” He stood up on the wall. “Hey, you—ugly face, over here!”

  The bolgug holding Emma dropped her to the ground and drew a knife. It opened its wide mouth to scream an alarm. The guard at the entrance turned and brought its spear up to its shoulder. A third leapt out from the shadow of the Wishing Stone with a nasty-looking spiked club in its hands.

  Edmund watched the flame in the courtyard until he knew it, until its roving form was the face of an old friend. He made the sign for Fire—a red star ignited behind his eyes. He turned through the sign for Quickening, felt a rushing tingle on his skin, then smoothly on to Light, and this time felt it glow in unearthly harmony. There was no time to try the spell in any way but the most dangerous, no place to anchor it but within himself. Words came to him—they carved strange vibrations in the still night air:

  “BY FIRE LIGHT IS BORN. IN LIGHT THE DARKNESS FLIES!”

  Painful heat coursed up through his body. He felt as though a bellows had sucked all the air from him and replaced it with something dry and hot beyond words. He felt his heart give a lurch, then stop. He collapsed.

  The fire exploded in utter silence, sending off a pulse of light that slapped the clouds.

  Edmund heaved and gasped for breath. His heart started beating again—every thready pulse sent more pain through him. A gray tunnel formed at the edges of the world and drew inward. He struggled over onto his side. The nearer two bolgugs lay on their backs, clutching at their faces and squealing. The guard tottered, spear still raised, waving its dark blue hand before its face. It blinked its yellow eyes, squinted at Edmund and made ready to throw, but by then Katherine was upon it.

  Katherine ripped the spear from its hands, turned it and drove the point into its belly. She pulled it out, throwing the shrieking creature to the ground. The other two bolgugs regained their feet. They raised their weapons, but they passed their long fingers before their eyes and gibbered in confusion. Katherine hurled the spear at one, drew her sword and rushed the other.

  The tunnel closed across Edmund’s sight. He sank down. The pain left him. He knew he lay on stones but could not feel it. A scuffle reached his ears—then a squeal, or a scream. “Katherine? Katherine, I can’t see.”

  Chapter

  11

  Edmund. Edmund!”

  Edmund felt his bed shaking. He shifted, then groaned. “No. Don’t feel well.” His eyelids fluttered.

  Someone touched his head, then gripped him by the shoulder. “Edmund!”

  “Mum, no—let me sleep—” He opened his eyes. It was dark—he lay on dirt. His memory ret
urned. They had taken his brother.

  “Geoffrey!” He tried to sit up—everything went gray. He clutched at his head and sank back to the ground.

  “I couldn’t catch them.” Katherine raised him to sitting. “I couldn’t leave you here. I’m sorry.”

  Edmund blinked the motes from his sight. The fire was dying fast—it gave off rolls of a curiously thick and sodden smoke. Puffs of white ash rose in the plume, then broke and fell to dust the grass around the Wishing Stone.

  As soon as Katherine let go, he slumped back down again. Nothing worked right. If he thought hard about one limb, he could move it, but then he forgot about the others. They twitched and shuddered on their own—they were cold. He was cold, so cold that he burned, but when he shut his eyes, it all went away.

  “Please, Edmund.”

  Edmund. He spoke the name in his mind. He liked the sound of it, but did not know why it was his.

  “Please. I need your help.”

  Edmund forced his eyes open. Katherine had a cut across the knuckles of her sword hand. The stars seemed to be vibrating. Miles Twintree sat ashen beside him, knees hugged in to his chest. Emma lay where she had been dropped next to the two dead bolgugs by the fire. She stared into the sky with blank, wide eyes.

  “Up—I’m up.” Edmund pushed himself onto one arm. He touched along his brow and drew his hand away to examine the blood. When had he hit his head?

  Katherine propped him against the Wishing Stone. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Spell. Don’t know. I’m cold.”

  “How long until you can walk?”

  Edmund shrugged—it nearly slid him sideways to the ground again.

  Katherine caught him. “Tell me if you start to feel better.” She stood and towed the bolgugs away from the fire. “Emma, Miles—I want you both to think back. How many kids were up here with you?”

  Miles buried his head in his arms. Tears streamed out along Emma’s lashes and down the sides of her face, running back into her ears and her leaf-strewn hair.