The Nethergrim Page 18

  The castle guards sat slack at their table, staring into space and babbling sounds that did not add up to words. A single rushlight cast them in wavering shadow—from above, near the ceiling. Edmund looked up—his mother hung suspended in the air, held there by nothing he could see, but whatever it was, it pinched her hard, making dents along her arms, in her belly and on the side of her neck. She held the rushlight in one dangling hand.

  “No alarms, if you please.” The faltering light cast a face in sharp relief behind her. “Not a sound, not a shout. Do just as I say and she lives.”

  “Who’s that? Edmund, is your mother in there?” Harman thumped through the kitchen door. He gasped and rushed forward, but Edmund held out his hand and shook his head.

  “Edmund, is it?” The stranger twisted his features into a vicious smile. “And this is your father? I can only think that these two failed to raise you as they should. Did they never tell you that it is wrong to steal?”

  Edmund stared, unable to think or move, locked in the stranger’s narrow gaze. Beads of sweat rolled down the man’s brow. He coughed, his body shook—Sarra wobbled in the air and nearly fell. The rushlight dropped from her hand and guttered in the trampled straw. It nearly went out—then it caught the straw ablaze. Orange light swelled the room.

  Edmund’s father put up his hands and spoke as slowly and as calmly as he could. “I don’t know what this is all about, but I promise you that you may have anything you want from me, anything at all, if you just let her go.”

  “I’ll let her go when I please,” said the stranger. “Put down that flail.”

  Beneath his terror, Edmund felt something moving in his mind—and with a start he came to know it for what it was. It felt like the moment when he first learned to read, the first time the shapes and squiggles on the page had resolved into thoughts. It was at once strange and familiar, a tune he knew though he knew he had never heard it before.

  He could sense the stranger’s magic.

  He could feel its flow around him. He heard the subtle chord of the spell, recognized its design from the pages of the book. He could even see its flaws.

  The stranger wavered, seeming to grow older with every breath he took.

  “You’re drawing through the center.” Edmund advanced, staring hard into the stranger’s bloodshot eyes. “You don’t have the strength to keep that up for long.”

  The stranger flicked a finger. Edmund’s mother let out a moan—a trickle of blood ran down her neck. The side of her dress ripped open and a welt formed beneath.

  Harman stepped up close at Edmund’s side. “Son, the flail.”

  Edmund looked down. He had forgotten that he was holding it. He set it on the floor.

  “All right, then,” said Harman. “We’re unarmed. What now?”

  The stranger glared at Edmund, his face drawn skull white. “You know what I want.”

  Edmund took the cellar steps all in a bound. He knocked aside the piece of plaster behind the last keg, pulled out the book and bolted back into the tavern.

  “Put it there, on the table, then get back.” The stranger’s voice came strangled. “Stay out of my way. If anyone comes too close or makes a sudden move, I will snap her in half. Don’t think for a moment that I won’t.”

  Edmund came forward, ducking past his mother’s dangling feet. He set the book on the table and retreated. The balding guard slumped out of his chair and pitched over onto the floor.

  “So this is all your doing.” His father curled his fists. “I never believed all that stuff about the Nethergrim.”

  “Oh, you should believe,” said the stranger. “Though, really, what you believe or think is of no consequence.”

  “What have you done with Geoffrey? What have you done with my boy?”

  “You’ll hold your tongue, peasant, if you want to keep what you still have.” The stranger edged over to the book, so busy watching for a twitch from either Edmund or his father that he failed to mark where he placed his feet. He brushed his leg through the straw that had smoldered to life next to the dropped rushlight. The trailing ends of the fabric strips wrapped around his breeches caught fire.

  Everything happened at once. The stranger yelped in pain and reached down. Sarra dropped, struck a table and rolled to the floor. Edmund sprang for the book. The stranger snarled and produced a long, thin knife.

  “Edmund, back!” Harman rounded the tables and charged, knocking Edmund aside over a bench. Edmund tripped, struck the floor and saw stars.

  “Run, Edmund!” His mother tried to pull him up and flee with him. He shrugged her off and gained his feet—and found his father swaying over the burning straw with the stranger’s knife stuck in his gut.

  The stranger staggered over to the table, grabbed up the book and turned to run. Edmund’s father toppled down into the rushes. Sarra shrieked out his name.

  “Father!” Edmund leapt over the growing blaze to kneel at his side.

  “Oh, no.” Sarra stumbled near, already weeping. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  Edmund rolled his father over onto his back and leaned in to inspect the wound. Harman gasped and choked, his hand clamped over a dark stain on his shirt.

  “Help!” Edmund leapt out onto the road. “Please, someone help!”

  Chapter

  19

  The village bell clanged out, loud enough to be heard for miles. Troops of castle guards tramped the roads outside—they shouted to each other to mark the time, to announce and report that they could find nothing. The neighbors were gone, home to worry and wonder for themselves. They had gripped Edmund’s shoulder, told him to be brave, told him that his mother needed him. Someone had even called him master of the house—he could no longer remember who it was, only that he had nearly punched the man.

  He took a stick and poked at the embers, stirring them up hot again. The fire gave him something to do. Moans sounded from upstairs, his mother speaking low and soft amidst the mutter of the healers. Lamplight shifted through the gaps in the floorboards above.

  The bloodstains were far too much to bear. They ran in spatters up the stairs where they had carried Edmund’s father, up to his bedroom to survive or not. Edmund stood over the place where his father had fallen, offering silent bargains—spare him, spare him, let him live and I swear that I will be a good son. He reeled back across the empty tavern and sat down before the fire. He tilted his head into his hands. Spare him.

  The door opened. Edmund covered his face. “We’re closed.”

  Someone stepped inside.

  Edmund turned. “I said—”

  Katherine stood in the doorway. She wore her embroidered shirt, breeches and riding boots. The light of the fire made a halo from the careless wisps of her hair. She carried a leather pack over one shoulder and saddlebags over the other. Ropes bound a round shield tightly to the pack, crossed by her uncle’s sword.

  She set down her things. “How is he?”

  “They don’t know yet.”

  Katherine touched her foot to the burned, sodden circle on the floor. “Papa’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Edmund wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “Gone where?”

  “Up into the Girth. Hunting for the Nethergrim.” She seemed to tremble. “I need a place to stay.”

  Edmund stepped around the turned tables and the mess of discarded blankets from the night before. He reached down for Katherine’s pack and hauled it over by the wall.

  She held out a tarnished coin on the flat of her palm. “Is this enough for a few nights?”

  Edmund just stared at it until she put it away.

  They sat together by the hearth without speaking for a time. The noises around them grew in the silence. The fire licked and hissed; a log groaned, then split with a loud crack. The wind sang droning, and above them, rolling upward with every breath, moans and gasps grew in volume and pain until they became wails.

  “Come on,” said Katherine. “Let’s get some air.”

  If the village hall of
Moorvale seemed uncommonly old, the bridge that arched over the river at the eastern edge of the square was ancient beyond reckoning. It was massive out of all proportion with the modest wood-and-thatch houses that surrounded it—even Jarvis’s handsome new mill seemed flimsy and ephemeral by comparison. The river ran deep and fast beneath its span, lulling and rushing by the banks in an endless half-musical drone, one note that changed with the moment and yet never changed at all.

  Edmund hunched at the river’s edge, watching eddies curl black below. “Have you ever felt as though the ground won’t hold you up, no matter where you stand? Like you’re sinking everywhere?”

  “Yes.” Katherine sat with her arms on her knees, her hair hanging loose across her face.

  “I’m sick of waiting for the world to hurt me some more.” Edmund felt about him on the bank. He found a smooth, flat stone and turned it over in his hands. “I want to do something.”

  “I made a promise,” said Katherine. “I told my papa I would stay out of trouble. Even if I broke it, what would we do? We don’t even know where to go, let alone what to do if we got there.”

  “He’s my brother.” Edmund flipped the stone into the water. It skipped once and plummeted.

  “We’re only fourteen.”

  “But we know things. We can do things.”

  “I made a promise.” Katherine skipped a rock of her own. It skittered again and again across the water and disappeared into the dark.

  Edmund sank over his arms. He could not cudgel what he remembered from the book into any sort of shape. “I can’t. I just can’t think anymore.”

  He sprawled back in the grass. Katherine lay down beside him. The wind blew cold along the riverbank. They moved closer so slowly, they did not know it until they touched shoulders.

  Katherine turned her head. “You were very brave last night.”

  Edmund dug his fingers in the grass, and through it to the mud. The names of the constellations rose before him, then melted away, leaving stars.

  “Papa will save them.” Katherine sounded far away, and not very sure of herself. “He will.”

  • • •

  Tom tensed, took his grip and hauled the axe over. The head caught and drove into the wood, running a split down to the end. He set his foot and pulled loose, turned and swung again, breathing heavy, round and even. The sound of every chop came back to him in echo, once and twice across the barren field.

  The sun fled. The flapping sleeves of his overlarge shirt got in the way on the downswing, but it had gotten too cold to take it off. He made a pile by the stand of birch above the banks, dragging each limb down by the stream before he chopped it and then setting up the pieces by the charcoal pit for Aydon Smith to find. He took no pauses in between, for that would make his hunger worse.

  Tom made his progress down into the dark, hauling by the place where the Dorham road crossed the stream. A magpie alighted in the branches of the alder nearest by. She watched him work—the last glimmers of the sun caught in her quick dark eyes. He raised the axe and brought it down, turned and set and did it all again, one breath into the next. The tensing was a part of him, the release, the pause and the hunger. Black spread from gray, quicker down where the growth was older, among the trees last lopped before he was born.

  The magpie cackled and fled. Tom listened, then looked. He set down the axe. “Who’s there?”

  Hoofbeats sounded on the footbridge over the stream. A shape moved past on the Dorham road.

  Tom leapt down to the banks. The horse stopped to drink on the far side of the stream. Even in the dying light the outline of an empty saddle stood out plain along its back—his back, a gelding or a stallion. Saddlebags hung from under the cantle, one closed, the other slashed and dangling open.

  Cold dread seized Tom. He stepped onto the bridge. The horse raised his head to look at him.

  “Oh, no.” Tom reached out for the reins. “No.”

  Chapter

  20

  Tom raced down the Dorham road, leading John Marshal’s wayworn horse as fast as he could go. He sprinted by the turn for his master’s farm without the least precaution, hurrying past thick cover with no thought spared to the curious quiet. The horse gave a whinny of alarm too late—hands snaked out from the undergrowth to seize his shoulders, and then his master’s face loomed from the darkness in hateful, hard-glittering triumph.

  “You’ve done it now, boy.” Athelstan croaked the words. “You’ve done it now.”

  Tom twisted to look behind him. Oswin held him fast by the arms.

  “Stole a horse, did you?” Athelstan stepped out onto the road. He nodded to Oswin. “That’s good work. If we hadn’t caught him here, he’d be in Quentara by tomorrow.”

  “I’m not running away!” Tom twitched in belated struggle. “It’s John Marshal’s horse—Master, please, he’s in trouble—”

  “Leave the horse. Let John Marshal go a-hunting for him.” Athelstan held out a hand to take Tom by the shirt.

  Oswin jerked Tom back from Athelstan’s reach. “That’ll be a penny.”

  Athelstan scowled.

  “A penny, or I let him go,” said Oswin.

  Athelstan reached into his belt and drew forth a coin. “Half a penny now, half when I’m done with him.”

  “Fair enough.” Oswin shoved Tom forward with one hand and plucked up the coin with the other. He kept his face averted from Tom, his features set and grim.

  The two men pressed in tight at Tom’s sides and frog-marched him up to the farm. A lone candle burned in the window of the master’s house. Moon-white faces peered out in its light.

  Athelstan glowered, then glanced at Oswin. “Bring coals from the fire, and tell the women if I catch a light or a sound from that house when I am done, they will regret it.”

  “Coals? What for?” Oswin got no answer. He shrugged, let go of Tom’s arm and strode over to the house. The candle snuffed and the window drew shut.

  Athelstan took hold of Tom and shoved him through the door of the byre. Tom stumbled in the doorway and fell to his knees in the straw. A thick braided whip lay coiled around his tree-stump table. The sheep and oxen milled about at the back, bleating and mooing at the late disturbance, while the cats prowled belly-low in the corners, looking for a way out. Jumble rushed up to Tom, then past him, barking in fright at Athelstan’s feet with his paws splayed out to beg.

  “Please.” The last of Tom’s shock gave way to terror. “Master, please, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  “Oh, that you won’t.” Athelstan picked up the whip and stretched the coils in his hands. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  He dragged Tom over to one of the two rough posts that braced up the ceiling. A peg had long ago been driven into its side, high enough that a man could hang by his hands from it with his knees bent.

  “It’s been a while since you were kissing that post.” Athelstan gave the whip a few experimental cracks. “I would have thought I taught you well enough then to mind your place. Mark me, boy—you’ll learn this time.”

  Jumble could stand no more. He advanced in a storm of growling barks, jaws open wide in angry display.

  “Shut your noise, you cur!” Athelstan cracked the whip across Jumble’s muzzle. Jumble sprang whining to the back of the byre, scattering the ewes and lambs to all corners. Oswin stepped inside with a bowl of glowing coals in his hands and stood gaping at the mayhem before him. The cats seized their chance to bolt through the open door.

  “Put down that bowl, you addle-pated jack-in-the-dirt!” Athelstan jabbed a finger into Oswin’s gut. “Get the rope and let’s get to it!”

  Oswin set the bowl on the stump next to Tom. A look of regret spread on his pock-scarred features, but then it hardened into stony resolve. Athelstan stripped Tom’s shirt from his shoulders, hauled him up and shoved him face-first against the post.

  “Master, I was coming back,” said Tom. “I was coming right back. I swear I won’t do it again. I won’t run, I promise.
”

  The grating rasp Athelstan made bore only the most passing resemblance to laughter. “No, you won’t be running again. But your promise is of no account.” He placed something in the coals, something that rang when it struck against the side of the bowl.

  Oswin grabbed hold of Tom’s wrist and drew it up to the peg. Tom writhed and tried to slither away, but Athelstan seized him firm and squashed him against the post until he lost his breath.

  “You ungrateful pile of filth.” Athelstan’s breath hissed warm across Tom’s neck. “I took you in when you were nothing at all, just an orphan babe half dead of fever, covered in muck and wasting away in the reek of an alley. I clothed you, I fed you and raised you, and this is how you thank me.”

  “Please, Master. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me.”

  Athelstan grabbed Tom by the hair and jerked back his head. “I should have left you to die! Do you think I bought you out of kindness? Eh? Do you? Do you think when I picked you out of all the stinking brats for sale that day that I did it because of the way you looked at me? Eh? No, I picked you because all the other children for sale in the alley that day were girls. I needed someone to work in my fields, to learn from me, to gain by me, but every time my wife would swell in the belly, out would pop another girl, another milkmaid, another dowry to pay, so instead of a son I had to settle for you. That’s why I chose you, boy—because I have no sons.”

  Tom stared upside down into his master’s hard blue eyes. “I could have been your son.”

  “You are no blood of mine.” Athelstan slammed Tom’s head against the post. “You are property. You have no purpose in this world but to serve me and mine until you die.”

  He reached for what he had placed in the bowl. “I’m going to whip you, boy, you know that. But that’s not all, not this time.”

  He held it in front of Tom’s face—it glowed a dull red. “I’m going to brand you, like the stupid animal you are.” He thrust it back into the coals. “You’ll wear my mark for the rest of your days, and no matter where you run, the world will always know that you are mine.”