The Skeleth Page 13

  Edmund turned to look up the spiraling stairs and saw Geoffrey before and above him. He whirled around, toward the warmth of flame and flood of light. He found Geoffrey on the stairs below, holding his torch aloft, confusion turning rapidly to fright upon his face.

  “This room isn’t just similar to the one below.” Edmund stepped out into the circular chamber and found the ruined table just where he expected it to be. “It’s the same room.”

  “That can’t be.” Geoffrey ran onward up the stairs—and emerged from below.

  Edmund’s prickles turned to chills. “You stay here. Let me try it.” He went downstairs this time. As soon as he emerged below the level of the next floor down, he found Geoffrey looking up at him.

  Edmund joined his brother on the landing. “You go upstairs, and I go downstairs. Ready? Go!”

  The brothers ran away from each other, Edmund down and Geoffrey up—and crashed into each other on the landing of the stairs.

  “Ow!” Geoffrey staggered back from Edmund. “What are we going to do? We’re stuck in here!”

  Edmund stepped into the room. “Help me look around.” He scanned the whole surface of the wall. “Maybe there’s something we can learn in here to help us.”

  “Here.” Geoffrey knocked a rotting pile of tapestries aside. “Here, Edmund. There’s writing.”

  Edmund rushed over and waved away a whole colony of skittering bugs. “The Skeleth are shapes without substance. Right is left, up is down.”

  “Sounds like what’s happening to us,” said Geoffrey.

  Edmund paced around the chamber again, passing by the spiral, then the head of the snake, then the raised hands upon the wall. He stopped. “Geoffrey, look. The snake has two heads.”

  Geoffrey looked at Edmund, then around the room. “No it doesn’t.”

  “Follow me.” Edmund walked around the room one more time, with Geoffrey following close at his heels. This time he felt it, the shift and subtle warp of a spell. He passed the spiral again, then the raised hands—and he was sure. “Stop. Stop here. Feel it?”

  “Feel what?” said Geoffrey.

  Edmund grabbed his brother by the arm. He followed the feeling outward, from the room to the edge of the stairs. “The missing brick outside, and this chamber—they aren’t really tests or traps, they’re lessons. They’re teaching us what the Skeleth are, and teaching us how to defeat them.”

  Geoffrey shuffled behind him. “Defeat them how?”

  “By a spell, one with multiple parts.” Edmund kept the doubled sight of the heads of the snake fixed in his vision, one in the corner of each eye. “Follow right behind me. It’s here.”

  “What’s here?” said Geoffrey. “What are you doing? You’re just waving your hand in the—oh!”

  Edmund found the rift, the very slight imperfection in the folded space of the chamber. “Here.” He got his hand into it and felt the change of air. “Here, come through.” He forced the gap wider, first with his hand, then his shoulder, then he jerked Geoffrey through behind him, and dropped to his knees on a set of stairs that he had never seen before.

  “Ha!” Edmund descended through a half circle of stairs, then waved his torch across a pair of stone doors that barred his path. “Give me a hand with this.” He set his shoulder to one of the doors, and with Geoffrey’s help it gave way with a grinding squeal.

  Geoffrey poked his torch through the gap, then let out a hiss of awe. Two corpses, one a man, the other a woman, lay rotted to bones in the chamber beyond, each upon a slab of stone.

  Edmund pushed in first. “I knew it!”

  Geoffrey ducked through behind him. The crypt barely gave the brothers the space to stand together, and the ceiling arched in just above their heads. He held out his torch over the corpses—the glow of his flame awakened glints of gold. “A king and a queen.”

  “But which king and queen? That’s the question.” Edmund set his torch in a hole in the wall that seemed made for the purpose. Skeletal though she was, the queen lay in a repose that suggested peace. The king, on the other hand, looked to have died by some great violence, for though his corpse had been arranged with care, most of his bones looked badly damaged, and one side of his skull had been shorn clear off.

  Geoffrey burned away some cobwebs from the wall with his torch. “What are these?”

  Edmund set down his sack and drew from it his wax-covered writing tablet and stylus. “Those are just what I was hoping to find.” He started sketching the outlines of the spell painted on the wall, the curled and spiky symbols that recorded the thoughts of a long-dead wizard.

  “The Sign of Perception, and then the Sign of Closing.” He brushed away some cobwebs, then traced out a long passage about the sealing of boundaries and something to do with a casket, or a prison. “The Pillar of Inversion, yes, good . . .”

  “Ugh!” said Geoffrey. “And what are those?”

  Edmund followed Geoffrey’s light—depicted on the stone were long lines of funny squiggles that he took at first to be the letters of an unfamiliar language, until he looked more closely. The painted creatures were nothing but rows of jointless arms undulating around maws of jagged darkness. “There’s something written under them. Aha! Yes, these are the Skeleth.”

  Geoffrey drew back in disgust, taking his torch with him. “I think I found something I hate worse than bolgugs.”

  “I need that light!” Edmund set the book on the slab of the queen. “Look, there’s a row of warriors above the creatures, and—Geoffrey, get back here. You should see this.”

  He drew his knife, a double-edged dagger that was a twin to Geoffrey’s, and scraped away some of the filth from the wall. Shadowed by the ceiling, covered in the drippings of centuries, stood a third line of figures.

  Geoffrey peered at them. “It’s like the squiggly monsters from the bottom row are standing with the men from the middle.” He raised his torch to bring the flame nearer. “Or in front of them.”

  Edmund stared. “Not in front, inside. They’re together, each monster bound to a man.” He traced out a figure—the squiggled rows of arms seemed to wrap around the man’s body. “And here, see? There are the two women standing beside each other, with the opened box just like we saw before, and—look, look there—the men and the monsters have been pulled apart again.”

  He followed the wall to the next scene. The squiggly creatures were being drawn into the box, leaving the men untouched. Geoffrey wandered away again, forcing Edmund to retrieve his own torch from the wall.

  “The Skeleth are man and monster both.” Edmund read aloud from the words painted under the scene. “The man can be freed if he awakens to what the monster cannot know.”

  “Oho, look at this!” Geoffrey shifted aside some ragged cloth from the breast of the king to expose an axe clutched in bony hands. “Give this thing a polish and I’ll bet it could chop a shield right in half.”

  Edmund turned to look. The meaning of it struck him—an axe. He turned back through the pages of the book. There came three kings, three brothers, three kinsmen of the Pael—Ricimer, Thodimund and Childeric the Fair; an axe-king, a sword-king and a king of tall spear.

  “Of course.” He returned to the symbols painted on the wall. “This is not the tomb of Childeric, the king who summoned up the Skeleth. This is the tomb of his brother, Ricimer, one of the kings who fought against him.”

  “Then I’ll bet he’s the one who killed all those Skeleth things.” Geoffrey wiggled the axe, then tried to ease it from the grip of the dead king. “Anyone who could swing this thing around must have been a real terror in a fight.” He heaved and grunted, levering the axe with a crash onto the floor.

  Edmund turned to stand over the queen. The remnants of a red silk gown clung in tatters to her bones, covering what might once have been a linen shift or tunic. The gown had wide sleeves, and was bound with a golden, star-shaped broo
ch.

  “The image of the sun.” Edmund answered Geoffrey’s questioning look. “The return of hope and life.”

  He ran his fingers over the words incised around the rim of the brooch, translating them in as simple a form as he could: “I am the weapon that wounds the wielder. I am the defense that is no defense at all. I am triumph in surrender. I am that which, by being given, is gained.”

  “Another riddle,” said Geoffrey. “These folk seemed to love them.”

  Edmund flipped the brooch over. “For my beloved sister.” He sidled along the wall of the tomb, passing by the corpse of the queen. Crossed strips of decayed leather held the remnants of long stockings to the bones of her legs, while on her head there remained the shreds of what would once have been a veil. A pair of heavy pendant earrings lay on either side of the skull, with no ears left to hold them.

  Geoffrey held his torch over the queen, the flame too near the corpse for Edmund’s liking. “I wonder if she was pretty.”

  Edmund looked into the empty eye sockets of the queen, then reached down and took up the brooch. “I am the weapon that wounds the wielder . . .” He felt a twinge of guilt, but placed it into his sack.

  “Here, help me.” He seized the head of the axe and waited for Geoffrey to get hold of the handle. He strained and hauled the axe up off the ground, and then, to Geoffrey’s disappointment, maneuvered it back onto the breast of the king.

  “Out.” Edmund nudged his brother through the door of the tomb. “Go on, outside. We’re finished here.” He turned at the threshold of the door to the tomb.

  Geoffrey’s freckles scrunched inward in the torchlight. “What are you doing?”

  Edmund went down on one knee before the corpses of the king and queen. “Thank you. Both of you.” He stood and left, closing the doors behind him.

  Chapter 15

  What songs there were to sing had been sung. What cheer there was to shout had been shouted. Another night’s noisy feasting had come and gone, leaving silence the victor once more. Katherine kept one hand to the grand curtain walls, following the side in shadow from the moon. Gray-silver starlight touched the slanted roof of the long wooden stable, painted thick the blacks of gap and grain and hung night in shrouds beneath.

  A stable boy slumbered at his post, curled in a sheepskin blanket on his bench by the door and hugging a half-eaten piece of Harvestide cake. Katherine felt a sudden urge to kneel down and tuck him in, but resisted it, slipping around him instead and down the straw-littered passage. The sounds of sleeping horses soothed her, as they always had, the chorus of their breathing making her feel that, somehow, all would be well.

  “Oh, look at this.” She slipped into Indigo’s stall and reached for the brushes by the door. “What have they done to you?”

  Indigo stamped a hoof. The grooms had made a proper mess of his mane, braiding it in silly knots against the lay of the hair.

  “I’ll see to it, don’t you worry.” Katherine picked at the knots of the braid, working them loose one by one. Indigo watched her as she groomed him, one dark eye roving to fix on her hands, then her face. From outside came the sound of the inner gates trundling up, then falling shut again.

  Katherine reached up to free Indigo’s forelock from its tangles. “When I close my eyes and lie down to sleep, sleep won’t come.” She spoke into his long gray ear, telling him her troubles as she had done since he was a foal. No one but Tom would believe that he understood her, but he nudged her when she sighed, and nuzzled against her when she felt her fears rising up to smite her hopes.

  “I know just enough to be afraid, but not enough to know what to do.” She brushed the knots from his tail. “Who can I trust?”

  Indigo raised his head. For an instant it seemed to Katherine almost as though he had an answer, that if she could only read his movements well enough, she would know it, but then he blew out a snort and turned toward the door.

  “Good squire!” The stable boy startled awake down the passage, let out a whooph and rolled onto the floor. “Ow. Good squire, you’re back! I was just resting my eyes—not asleep, I swear it. Do you need—”

  “Hush, now.” The answering voice sent a thrill through Katherine. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see to my horse myself.”

  “Yes, good squire. I’m glad you’re home. Please don’t tell on me.”

  “I would never. Sleep well.”

  Katherine felt a tingle at the sound of soft approaching steps. She tugged at and smoothed down her homespun dress, even though it was homespun, and even though she stood in darkness.

  Indigo seemed taken by an entirely different mood. He twitched his ears again at the footsteps in the passage and stomped a heavy hoof in the straw. He made for the door with an air of irritation.

  Harold of Elverain, Lord Aelfric’s only son and heir, led his dun-colored stallion down the passage. “Katherine?” He stopped at Indigo’s stall. “Is that you?” He leaned around Indigo’s gray bulk, looking over the half-height door. Katherine’s heart leapt at the sight of him, lit from behind by moonlight from the window. The sensation stunned her with its power—and frightened her with how helpless it made her feel.

  “You’ve been gone so long.” Katherine pushed Indigo aside to let Harry in. “Where have you been for so long?”

  “Away south, with the king.” Harry stood just her height, though he was two years the elder. “Learning to connive and deceive. Watching our kingdom shudder and shake itself apart.” He wore an ornate sword in a silver-chased scabbard at his belt and a shirt of mail under his surcoat. If there was a more perfect image of a handsome young squire, Katherine could not picture it.

  “Papa’s gone to Tristan, and that’s made your father suspicious of him though I don’t know why. Your father says Papa’s not marshal of the stables anymore—he’s thrown me off the farm and set me to work here.” Once the words started, they poured forth from Katherine in a torrent, and the tears came with them. “Lord Wolland rode in off the moors with half the nobles of the north—he wants something from your father and he thinks he can get it. There’s a letter, and some sort of weapon, and a wizard girl in Wolland’s service who was talking to . . .”

  She found herself shaking. “I’m afraid, Harry—for my papa, for you, for Elverain and all the north. I’ve been alone, all alone.” Edmund’s face bubbled up into her thoughts, but she pushed it away.

  “You are not alone anymore.” Harry drew near, though he had to dodge around Indigo’s attempt to block him. “Don’t you worry about any of that, now. Let me speak to my father on your behalf. Let me help you.” Even his whispers were somehow handsome, touched with grace in form and tone.

  Katherine did something that she thought she would never dare to do. She collapsed onto his shoulder and threw her arms around him. “I don’t understand what is happening.”

  “You don’t need to understand, anymore.” Harry put a finger under her chin, lifting her face to his. “For my part, I’m glad that I found you alone.”

  “Why?”

  He seized her. He kissed her. She fell and she flew.

  After a while, Katherine began to worry that she was kissing too hard, or too soft, or drooling on him, or making a fool of herself, somehow. She pulled away. “Am I doing it right?”

  “How should I know?” Harry seized her close again.

  “You’ve never kissed anyone?”

  “Not really.” He paused for breaths at intervals. “Not like this.”

  Indigo whickered and shook out his mane. He stepped away from them and bent down for some hay.

  Katherine reeled. The bliss blinded her, seeming to blank out all the world. It took all her strength not to fall into it, to let the thrill of it drown all else. “Wait. Just a moment.”

  Harry let go. “What’s wrong?”

  “Shouldn’t you be telling me what’s wrong?” Katherine drew back from h
im. “You said that the kingdom was shaking itself apart. What is happening in the south? Why is Wolland here? What does he want with your father?”

  Harry sighed and leaned against the door. “Do you really want to talk about all that right now?”

  Katherine wavered. She did want to talk, wanted desperately to know what was going on—but then Harry looked at her again, a flash of gold in the moonlight. It made her dizzy.

  “You truly care for me?” She let him come near again. “Please don’t say yes if you don’t mean it.”

  Harry took her hand. “While I was down at court, there were folk who tried to charm me.” He even smelled perfect, clean and pure. “I sat down to feast with ladies and lords of the highest blood. They talked their grand intrigues all around me, flirted and whispered behind one another’s backs. Some of them seemed to care what I thought, asked my counsel on matters I barely understood, started sounding me out for the sort of lord I would become one day. There were even a few offers of marriage, some of which might not have been jokes.”

  “Of course they weren’t jokes.” Katherine smiled, but her belly lurched. She had seen just enough of hall and castle to imagine the grand courts away south in the core of the kingdom. A thousand painted ladies in silk and brocade danced through her thoughts, each of them making eyes at Harry, all of them skilled in arts that she would never learn.

  Harry laced her fingers into his. “But every single night, when I lay down to sleep, the same thoughts spun in my mind: ‘How is Katherine? Is she well? Is she thinking of me?’ And so my single week at court seemed to last an age, and I fear the great lords and ladies of the realm found me something of a bore.”

  What strength of will Katherine had ran to water. She touched his sleeve, then traced her fingers up his arm.

  Harry shifted closer. “And then, on my way home, I learned that you had gone up into the Girth, gone to seek the Nethergrim.” He kissed her fingers, one after the next. “I heard that you had marched off into the deadliest danger, and that you had come home safe again, all at once. That one instant was enough for me to know what it would feel like to lose you, enough for me to know my own heart.”