The Nethergrim Read online

  Edmund stepped out into the empty sunshine. Morning lit the mountains cold and cheerless in the west. He pressed into the swelling crowd.

  “There he is!” Hob Hollows slapped Edmund’s shoulder as he passed. “There’s our man—the Wizard of Moorvale, you are!” His brother Bob grunted and nudged Edmund’s other side—as close to talking as Bob ever got.

  “Story’s getting around.” Wat Cooper leaned in to grin over Edmund. “Thought I saw that light up on the hill last night. Whole village is talking about it!”

  “Ha, and here we thought you’d be serving us our ale all your life!” Hob burped out a laugh. “And now think, lads—who’s to inherit the inn once Edmund here’s run off to apprentice himself to some great fancy wizard somewhere, now that—”

  Hob stopped—both his brother and Wat Cooper glared at him. Edmund bit his lip, willing himself not to burst into tears right in front of them.

  “Oh—hey now, Edmund.” Hob scratched his straggled beard. “Don’t take that wrong. There’s hope for Geoffrey yet, I’m sure.”

  Edmund thrust onward without answering, slipping in between his nervous, chattering neighbors until he reached the front of the crowd.

  “Would that we all could search the hills and wastes for this missing boy and girl.” Harry bore a bright helm under his arm. He raised his other hand, palm extended up in a gesture of studied oratory Edmund had once seen sketched in a manual on courtly grace. “I do not think I need remind you that no fear of foul creatures in the woods should make you forget the winter soon to come. It falls to you all to work the fields, so that you may reap the grain you have sown and store enough to last your families through to spring.”

  “It’s not our fields we’re working today.” Someone muttered it just quietly enough. “It’s yours.”

  “Now those of you assigned to the search will march up to the keep as one force.” Harry turned to address the levy men—most of them double his age. “There we will inspect the ground for signs of these creatures and have the dogs track their scents if they can. If we must follow more than one trail from there, we will divide into companies of no fewer than five. I want everyone to keep close—no straying off on your own. Be on your guard at all times; an attack may come from any quarter.”

  Edmund kicked at a pebble. “Waste of time.” He stood on his toes and looked around for Lord Aelfric.

  “Good squire, if I may.” Martin Upfield raised a hand. “What are we looking for, exactly?”

  Hugh Jocelyn waved his cap from the back of the crowd. “Yes, does this mean there are more of them bolgugs about?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Jordan Dyer flicked his fingers. “Bolgugs don’t come out in the day.”

  Hugh shook his head. “Shows what you know, you young fool.”

  “We do not know anything for certain.” Harry raised his voice over the argument. “We will use the greatest caution until we are more sure. Now—”

  Loud ringing sounds drowned the rest of his words—Aydon Smith mending a levy spear in his shop across the square. By the time Harry caught Aydon’s eye and signaled him to stop, the villagers had turned his ordered plan into anarchy.

  “I saw one this morning, you know.” Gilbert Wainwright carried the oddest weapon present—an antique battle-axe whose thick oaken haft and double head seemed far too heavy for his wiry arms.

  “What, a bolgug?” Half the village turned around. “Where?”

  “Out by Longfurlong, just after dawn,” said Gilbert. “I was on my way to mend the far fence and saw big yellow eyes over by the rocks near the creek.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a squirrel!”

  Harry raised a hand. “Wait, now, wait—let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “That’s right next to my father’s house!” Lefric Green had a voice only a mother could love—and Luilda Twintree, for some reason. “You might have warned us.”

  Gilbert looked indignant. “Well, I haven’t seen you since last night, have I?”

  “You could have come by this morning! My old mother—”

  “Will you all please just listen for a moment?” A note of frustration crept into Harry’s voice.

  “Sir?” Jordan Dyer cupped a hand to shout. “Maybe we should start down at Longfurlong, sir.”

  “No, it won’t be there anymore.” How Nicky Bird had gotten himself chosen for the search party was anyone’s guess. “We should head right into the woods.”

  “And then what, just blunder around all day and hope we run into them?”

  Nicky jerked a thumb. “Harry’s got a plan!”

  “Yes, in fact I do have a plan, and if you would all just—”

  The grand double doors of the village hall swung open, forcing Harry to step aside before he was knocked off the stairs. Lord Aelfric of Elverain stood the same height as his son, though he would have been taller in his youth. The silver thread in his belt glinted the same shade as his hair and the many rings that adorned his liver-spotted hands. A half-dozen castle guards followed him out onto the steps. They wore long green tabards like the village men, though theirs looked in much less need of a wash.

  “My people.” Lord Aelfric spoke in a voice gone thin and airy with the years. “I grieve with you on this dark day. You may lay trust that we will do all we can to secure this village. We have brought a generous boon of food and drink for the harvest. My son will lead a troop of guards to ensure that your work goes on without hindrance. Return you all to the fields, for the frost will not be delayed by your sorrow, nor your fear.”

  Edmund, like everyone, expected him to say more, but he simply waited in silence, looking past them at something down the road. Edmund turned—four men approached the square from the west, bearing a shrouded corpse between them. All talk ceased as the procession drew near, and a way was made for the passage of the dead.

  Peter’s mother stepped out of the crowd. She caught sight of her husband walking behind the men. Their gazes met. When the body had come within five paces, she fell to her knees, and then, reaching her hands over her head, she curled down to the earth.

  Telbert Overbourne knelt beside his wife. He put his arms in hers. For a moment they shuddered together, then they staggered up and followed the body of their son as it was borne up the steps of the hall and into the darkness beyond.

  Lord Aelfric waited for the corpse to pass, then strode down off the steps toward the stable. The villagers looked at each other, shifted and murmured, then dispersed.

  “My lord?” Edmund elbowed through his neighbors to the edge of the crowd. He found Lord Aelfric stretching out his back beside his horse and sizing up the leap into the saddle.

  “Here, Father, let me.” Harry stepped up beside Lord Aelfric and knelt with his hands laced together.

  Aelfric glared at him. “I can still gain my saddle alone.”

  “Yes, Father.” Harry stood away. “You are not still angry?”

  “This is a fool’s errand, boy. There are greater things at stake than the lives of a few—” Lord Aelfric cast a sidelong glance at Edmund, and fell silent. He climbed up stiff into the saddle.

  Edmund did not know how to begin, but Lord Aelfric had already taken his reins. “My lord—wait, my lord! Has anyone ever asked to borrow a book from you written by Plegmund of Sparrock?”

  Aelfric stopped his horse. He narrowed his eyes. “And who might you be?”

  “Edmund.” He remembered to bow. “Edmund Bale, my lord.”

  “Oh—Father, this must be the boy who cast that spell last night.” Harry held out an arm, though he did not quite touch Edmund’s shoulder. “Wait—I recognize you—from the fair! Better with a spell than a longbow, I must say!”

  Edmund stepped around Harry and in front of Lord Aelfric’s horse. “My lord, please—if you search only around Wishing Hill, you won’t find my brother, or Tilly Miller. There’s something else going on, I know it, and—”

  “Heed some advice.” Lord Aelfric fo
lded gloved hands on his pommel. “From all I have learned in a long life, the secrets of magic are most assiduously guarded by the men who make use of them. Were I you, I would find a way to lose my growing reputation as—what are folk saying?—the Wizard of Moorvale, before too many real wizards hear tell of it.”

  Edmund felt a cold hand on his heart. “I just want to find my brother.”

  “Do not hope much.” Lord Aelfric spurred his horse around Edmund and off down the road.

  Chapter

  16

  John Marshal sat some time in silence, seeming to sink as the sun rose outside. He went so long without speaking that when he started again, Katherine was halfway through making their breakfast. She turned to listen, still swirling a spoon through what was shaping up to be a rather bad pot of porridge. The look on his face tore at her, worked the void in the pit of her stomach yet wider.

  “Vithric seemed to know which way to go, more or less, though it was still more than a week before we reached our goal.” John ran his fingers across his brow. “It grew cold and began to snow on us as we went on, far deeper into the Girth than we ever had gone before. We took a few wrong turns, which gave us some days of low spirits and argument. The mountains were quiet, very quiet. There was no sign of bolgug or shrike, no ambushes at our camps. There were precious few animals of any sort up there—all eaten or driven off, I would think—so what struck me most on those days of travel was the emptiness and silence of the land. It seemed to come down on us, somehow, and smother all talk, all the merriment and jest that soldiers use to keep up their spirits on the march. I would be eating the evening meal and suddenly realize I had not spoken a word all day, and neither had anyone else. Silence turns your thoughts down strange roads. A shadow fell over us all, and it began to guide our thoughts and deeds though none spoke of it. We were in the heartland of our enemy, and we knew we would not pass unchallenged, yet nothing happened, day after day. We marched longer, slept less, and guarded ourselves with ever greater vigilance without saying why. The lack of hindrance seemed to make Vithric all the more worried, and though he was no mountaineer himself, he tried to urge us on to even greater haste. I didn’t want to ask what he feared, and I doubt he would have told me. He wouldn’t have wanted it to get out to the men.

  “At last, late one afternoon, we came up through a shallow pass to find a great half-crumbled tower of the same fashion as the others we had seen. We found more glyphs and symbols carved upon its walls. Vithric grew excited when he saw them—he told us we must be very close to the lair.

  “We climbed the pass toward the tower as the sun set before us, and looked out into the valley on the other side. There we saw the host of the Nethergrim, and many of the men cast themselves to the ground in terror.”

  Katherine’s father looked around the room as though he saw something other than the furnishings of his house. “In the gray of twilight great shadows moved, some seeming to grow and shrink with the moment. If I told you that we saw a valley filled with nightmares, I would not be far wrong. Shapes both ponderous and lithe moved below us, each with its own gait, all terrible to behold. We came to know that we had until then met but skirmishers, the lowest orders of the forces arrayed against us. Here stood the core. None were arrayed as soldiers, for these were not men. The skin of a stonewight makes a crumbling, scraping noise as it moves about. It is an awful sound, like a fortress falling to pieces, stones cracking and sliding from the thing only to be absorbed back into its feet and remade by the moment. We could smell the swamp stench of dozens of boggans, see the flitting flash of a score of shrikes, hear the dry cracks of a swarm of thornbeasts writhing as one mass. The glare of the firesprites lit the ground red in places. Never have I seen a piece of land so accursed; the grass was torn and burnt, and the river that ran south out of the valley hissed and steamed. I do not know if such creatures need food or rest, but though they seemed to have been in that valley long enough to ruin it utterly, they did not seem to be encamped. No, they were merely gathered before the mountain at the valley’s head, circling its foothills, waiting. Their master was about to rise. No one needed Vithric to say it.

  “Tristan pulled us back from the edge and behind the wall of the tower. We knew that our deaths lay in that valley—I freely admit my only thoughts at that moment were of escaping before we were detected by what we had seen below. Strange it may seem to you, but as I stumbled into cover and looked at my panicking comrades, I had the sudden wish for a leg of mutton in verjuice and mustard. I don’t know why: perhaps I thought I’d never had quite enough of them, and thought that now I never would. I suppose I was trying to convince myself of all the things it was worth running for.

  “Tristan addressed us there, beside the ruins of the tower. I don’t remember exactly what he said—the words were not as important as the way he said them. He told us that what we saw in that valley would soon run riot over all we held dear if we faltered. He said there was no time left to prepare, for the Nethergrim would soon rise, and then it would be too late to fight or to run. Everyone, everything we loved was on the hazard that night, but still he gave a choice. He would not fight beside the unwilling; he let those men who could not stomach what was to come go free. Five turned and left us then.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Katherine brought her porridge to the table. “I would have thought I’d have heard of them.”

  Her father shrugged. “They didn’t make it home. The rest of us waited for full dark, then crept over the pass. The Twins led us on a high, difficult cut across the side of the peak, up and away from where we had seen the creatures, taking cover wherever we could. We hoped to reach the entrance of the lair and slip inside unseen. It was a long, slow trek, every step of it made in fear. We could no longer see the creatures in the valley, save for the firesprites, who seemed to flit and twist about below us in some eerie dance. Even at that distance the sight of them filled us with dread, but so long as they stayed where they were and showed no sign of noticing our passage, we were able to press on. We crept along, each of us doing his utmost to stay silent. Until the night your mother died, those were the longest hours of my life.

  “We had gone well over halfway, and had reached the slope before the entrance with no sign of trouble. I began to think our ruse would work—then one of our wide scouts must have run smack into a thornbeast. There came screams and a whipping sound. The firesprites in the valley below turned at once and came our way, along with, I could only guess, every other horrible thing we had seen. Panic very nearly scattered us, but Tristan pulled us back together. He ordered Unwin and the Twins to lead the men at a run up to the lair as he rushed back with Bill and Hubert to hold the flank. We fought a running battle up the slope, with bolgugs and shrikes, the quickest of our enemies, rushing to cut us off from the entrance that we could see looming dark as pitch on the slope before us. By then I had been in a good number of fights, but never had I felt such terror. We were overmatched and we knew it. Men were being picked off left and right as we ran, bowled over and shredded by shrikes or falling with crude spears hurled into their sides. Those of us that remained staggered up into the entrance. I remember one man who had made it up with us looked down to see the wound in his belly and collapsed right there. We knew the slowest of the creatures coming for us would be the worst—the boggans, the thornbeasts and stonewights. And then. And then.”

  He looked out across the spreading dawn. The porridge sat untouched. A rooster crowed twice before he spoke again.

  “I remember Tristan’s face, the notches on his sword. It was Vithric who reminded us of why we had come. He told us that the Nethergrim was still asleep, that if we could reach its chamber in time, it would take only one man to kill it. He asked for Tristan to come with him, and decided to take one more, just to be sure. He chose me. The rest of the men turned to stand against the horde of creatures coming up the slope, to try to buy us enough time to do what we had come to do. It was a mournful and terrible thing, to leave your dearest
friends behind to die for you.”

  Katherine reached out for her father’s hand, but he pulled it away.

  “I can still see them,” he said. “I see them shadowed against the night sky, the outline of their spears held ready, the Twins perched high upon the rocks, bows drawn side by side upon a field of stars. But the three of us descended into darkness. The central tunnel was very large, and would have led directly to the lair, but a great wall of masonry had been constructed to block it up. The dim sounds of battle began behind us as Tristan and I looked about wildly for a way through. There seemed no way forward, but Vithric rushed to the side wall, spoke one word of command and opened a passage that led into a complex of rooms and tunnels that could have easily housed a hundred men or more. They were built as though tunneling through solid mountain rock was nothing, and I marveled even in my fear as we raced onward. All that was not stone within was rotted to ruin, yet still it was a majestic place, and by the glow of our torches I glimpsed the fullness of the art of those who had built the towers in the mountains. By then the echoes of the battle had died away, though we did not know if that meant it had ended or that we had gone too far down to hear it.

  “At every turn Vithric scanned the walls, pausing sometimes for a few moments to collect his thoughts and read what was carved into the stones around him. At last, at one junction, he stopped, turned and pressed his torch into my hand. ‘The Nethergrim is just down these steps and on to the right at the end of the great hall,’ he said to me. ‘There is another way that must be secured. You two go on to the lair and I will meet you. If you reach it ahead of me, do not fear! It is still asleep. Kill it—whatever it is that you see, kill it. Strike for the heart!’

  “As he spoke, we felt a thump and a rumble from the direction we had come, and then the sound of pursuit, the long echoes of the caverns drawing all motion into one muddled rush. ‘They’ve broken through,’ I said—I might have screamed it. Vithric ducked into a narrow side passage just big enough for a man to pass through, and disappeared. I ran with Tristan down the stairs, leaping over piles of rusted armor and littered bones, and all the while the echoes of the chase grew louder.