The Skeleth Read online

Look to your right.

  Edmund faced south, so turning to his right meant looking west. In that direction he saw his home, the village of Moorvale. It was as much memory as sight that shaped its familiar outline in the dark, its thatch-and-timber houses huddled in by the bridge at the bend of the great river Tamber. Everyone in the village had long gone to bed, exhausted from their labors gathering in the last of the harvest. Not even his own home, his parents’ inn where he lived and worked, showed a glimmer of flame—but that was no surprise, for he had only been able to slip out once all the guests had left the tavern and his father had closed up for the night.

  Now consider, Edmund. When you looked to your right, what did you also do?

  Edmund ignored the Voice. He gazed up past his shadowed village, westward to Wishing Hill and to the ruined keep where his whole life had changed two weeks before. Beyond that stood the starlit peaks of the Girth, the mountains where he had fought against the Nethergrim and won. He had found a way to break a spell devised between the world’s most celebrated wizard and the Nethergrim herself. If he could do that, he wondered, then why could he not call down light?

  Edmund.

  “I heard you,” said Edmund. “I understand what you are asking me. If I look to my right, I look away from my left. If I face to the west, I turn away from the east.”

  Thus speak the masters of Dhrakal, the wizards whose works you so adore. All things have their needful opposites. Light needs darkness. The dawn carries with it certain knowledge of the dusk. You can have what you want, but you must always pay for it. Now—understand, and try again.

  Edmund found the balance in his mind. He reached forth to tip it. “LET THE LIGHT OF THE STARS DESCEND. I GRIP THE SLEEVE OF NIGHT. STARS, ATTEND ME.” He lowered his hand, indicating the place. “DESCEND.”

  The sky above him warped, and the stars turned their faces, casting their cool and indifferent glow upon the little heathered hollow where he sat. It was not much, just enough for reading. The night beyond grew just a little blacker, a little deeper—a simple cost for a simple spell, straight across the Wheel from Light to Darkness.

  There, said the Voice. Not so very hard, after all.

  “Now get lost.” Edmund took up his book and spread it out across his lap. “I’m trying to find a way to kill you.”

  Edmund. You never looked east.

  “Why should I?” Edmund turned his head, even as he spoke. “There’s nothing that way except—”

  What Edmund had meant to say next was that there was nothing to his east except for empty moors. What he had meant to say next was that eastward, from where he sat, there were but barren rolls of ground choked with weeds and moorspike, with hardly a tree to break up the monotony all the way to the horizon. What he had meant to say was that there was nothing to see in that direction, for no one had gone three rises east of the Moorvale Bridge from time out of memory. Instead he said nothing, because he saw something he did not expect.

  Edmund leapt to his feet. “Is that torchlight?” He peered eastward—another torch appeared behind the first, and then they both began slowly to descend, as though their carriers had crested a rise on the great West Road, and now followed its path down into the hollow.

  Your book speaks truth, Edmund. The tone of the Voice changed, seeming to taunt him. I have indeed taken many forms in this world. It is also true that I have many ways of working my will upon it.

  “Who is that?” Edmund forgot that he was speaking with the Nethergrim, the being that had stolen away the lives of two children before his eyes. “No one takes the West Road in from the moors. No one comes from that way—not ever.”

  You know that I was not destroyed, there within the mountain. You know, in the deepest part of yourself, that I cannot be destroyed.

  Edmund let the light of his spell go out, the better to see the lights upon the moors. The glow of the torches lit what looked like men on horseback, and even in the deep of night their garments marked them out as men of noble rank, coats of arms laid over mail armor, woad blue and madder crimson, the glint of steel and cloth of gold.

  “What is it that you want?” Edmund spoke as though the Nethergrim stood beside him. “What is it that you are trying to do?”

  This much is certain, Edmund Bale. If you carry on against me, I will be your death.

  Edmund clenched his fists. “I will find a way to stop you. This I swear.”

  No reply came, save for the wind.

  “Do you hear me?” Edmund did not know why he looked upward at the stars, since he was not at all sure where the Nethergrim was, if it could in truth be said to be anywhere at all. “I will fight you and I will beat you!”

  Into the answering silence crept a sound, a rustle in the moorspike from the dark along the road. Edmund tensed. “Who’s there?” He drew his knife—a work knife, short and single-edged, made for whittling and carving more than fighting.

  The rustling sound shifted, seeming to come from behind him. He whirled about with his knife raised high, but even as he did so, hands flashed forth from the gloom, and words rained down upon him: “I GRANT THE CURSE OF PEACE.”

  With a clear, high pinging sound, the blade of Edmund’s knife snapped in half, the point falling to drop amongst the grass. A figure emerged from the shadows, a girl of perhaps fifteen, in a dove-gray dress and dark hair bound up beneath a hood. “I’m sorry about the spell. Are you Edmund Bale? The Wizard of Moorvale?”

  Edmund scrabbled backward and tripped in the moorspike. “What’s it to you?”

  The girl approached. She looked around her. “Who were you talking to?”

  Edmund stared up at the girl. She was not quite what he would call pretty, but he could not help looking long at her, not least because each of her two large eyes was a completely different color—one brown, the other a glimmering blue.

  “I saw your light.” The girl’s voice had a sweetness to it, with just the trace of a rolling accent. “Were you waiting for me? Is that why you’re out here—did you know I was coming?”

  Edmund got to his feet. “Who are you?”

  The girl drew back her hood. “My name is Elísalon, but folk in the north just call me Ellí.” Long, straight hair slipped free to hang in tresses as black as the surrounding sky. “Is it true, Edmund? Did you truly fight the Nethergrim? Did you see it, did you face it down?”

  That forced a laugh from Edmund, though the sound died lonely on the moors. “I wouldn’t call it facing her down, exactly—but, yes, I saw her, and I fought her as best I could.”

  “Help me.” The girl drew near, hands clasped and held out as though to beg. “Please. I’m trying to fight it, too, but if they find out what I’m trying to do, they will . . .” She trembled.

  Edmund watched the girl in silence. No matter how long he looked at her, he could see nothing but her fear.

  The girl turned to look east, toward the torches and the riders on the distant rise of moor. “Please, I’m scared. I’m all alone.”

  “I will help you.” To Edmund’s ears, his own voice had never sounded so deep, so measured and assured. “Tell me how.”

  Chapter 2

  The page boy looked Katherine up and down—but mostly up. He poked his head through the door behind him. “My lord? It’s Katherine.” He waited. “Katherine, my lord—the marshal’s daughter.”

  At a muttered reply, he made a sweeping bow. He turned back to Katherine. “Go on in, then.” He drew the door wide. “But you’d best not anger him.”

  Katherine picked up the skirts of her good blue dress. She limped across the threshold with her weight on her uninjured leg. “My lord, I am here at your summons.”

  Her lord did not answer, and neither did anyone else in the room. Tapestries graced every inch of wall, trapping the heat of the well-tended fire in the hearth. Scribes and clerks stared up at Katherine from their seats around a table st
rewn with ledger books, inkwells, piles of coin and a set of fine brass scales. Servants stood ready to attend the table with ewers of wine and a plate of sweetmeats, but no one looked hungry.

  “You sent for me, my lord?” Katherine made a slow curtsy with her bandaged leg held carefully straight in front of her.

  No answer came. The scribes kept to their work. Katherine flicked a glance at the table, stunned by the glint of more silver and gold than she had seen in the whole of her life.

  “My lord.” One of Lord Aelfric’s household guards leaned out from where he stood beside the wall. He put one hand to the back of the largest chair. “John Marshal’s daughter—she’s here.”

  Lord Aelfric of Elverain sat hunched over the vellum scroll that he held in wrinkled hands adorned with silver rings. He did not turn to Katherine, nor speak, so she stood up straight again, and composed herself in the best dignity she could muster.

  One of the younger clerks spoke under his breath. “Didn’t someone say that this girl was supposed to be pretty?” His fellows took up snickering, until the chamberlain glared them all back to silence.

  Katherine shifted her weight onto her good leg and felt at the lump of the bandage under the skirts of her dress. She had feared that the slash that crossed her thigh would never heal right, but Tom had tended it so well on their way home from the mountains that it only ached when she climbed stairs or stood in one place for too long. All in all, it could have been much worse.

  “Has Squire Harold not yet returned?” Katherine took a look around her, as though the one person she had hoped would be in the room had somehow escaped her notice. She tried and failed to get Lord Aelfric’s attention. “Your son, my lord, is he still not back from the south?”

  The castle guard shot her a narrow look and answered in the place of his lord. “What business is it of yours?”

  Lord Aelfric chewed his lip, his gaze fixed upon the scroll before him. He had a long, sharp face, little softened by his beard. White hairs grew in tufts from his ears, while above his eyes his straggled brows preserved what little brown he still possessed. Light from the arrow-slit window shone through the scroll from behind and showed Katherine that the words written upon it were handsomely scribed, though few in number.

  Katherine waited for as long as she could stand it. She raised her voice just a little. “My lord, I ask you to take some thought for your horses.”

  Lord Aelfric cast a chilly glance up at her.

  “The horses, my lord—the breeding mares from the farm my father keeps for you.” Katherine waited for a reply, but when none came, she could not stop herself from going on. “They are not well tended, here at the castle, and neither are their young. If the yearlings and foals are not turned out onto open ground soon, they will not thrive. They will not grow into horses fit for war.”

  Lord Aelfric returned to the scroll, as though nothing had been said. He seemed to be reading it over and over again.

  “Mind your place, girl.” The castle guard spoke through clenched teeth. “You’ll speak when you’re spoken to, and not else!”

  After a time Lord Aelfric seemed to rouse himself. He fixed a look on Katherine. “Sit.” He gestured to the chair directly across from his own. The young scribe seated there gathered up his books and stood.

  “Leave me. All of you.” Aelfric waved a hand and the rest followed suit, pushing their parchments into piles and laying tasseled bookmarks in the ledgers before snapping them shut. The chamberlain poured handfuls of coins into velvet bags and stacked them tightly in a wooden coffer. Katherine lowered herself into the chair and let her head droop in a pose of deference.

  “My lord.” The guard bowed as he followed the clerks from the chamber. He closed the door behind him.

  Silence fell thick between Katherine and her lord. She looked down into the polished brass of the scales and winced at what she saw. The reflected light brought out the weary circles under her eyes. She had put on her only good dress for her summons to the castle, but her hair was a knotted tangle that looked as though it had been arranged in the dark. Too many nights filled with too many nightmares—too many terrors that shook her from sleep.

  “When your father left Elverain, where was he bound?” Lord Aelfric’s sudden question made Katherine jump.

  “To Lord Tristan, to his castle at Harthingdale.” Katherine set her elbows on the table, leaning closer on the hope: “Have you any news of him, my lord? Any at all?”

  “You were summoned here to answer, not to ask,” said Lord Aelfric. “For what purpose did John Marshal make this journey?”

  Katherine sat back in confusion. “I thought you knew, my lord. Papa left because of Vithric, because of the Nethergrim.”

  Lord Aelfric stroked his beard, deep in shadowed thought. He glanced out the window, then over at the shelves where sat his store of musty old books. “Vithric is dead. He died many years ago.”

  “He is not,” said Katherine. “I saw him. My papa saw him.”

  “You are sure it was Vithric that you saw?” Old age had robbed Lord Aelfric’s voice of much of its power, but none of its tone of unyielding authority. “Think carefully.”

  Katherine’s confusion began to turn into alarm. “He was my papa’s old friend. Why would Papa lie about it?”

  “Indeed.” Lord Aelfric picked up the scroll again. He glanced over the words. “What cause could your father ever have to lie?”

  Katherine recoiled and held herself back from a retort with some effort. She could never have imagined allowing such an insult to her father to pass unchallenged, but she had been taught all her life to honor and respect her rightful lord—indeed, it was her father who had taught her so.

  “My lord, I still don’t understand exactly what it was that I saw beneath that mountain.” Katherine met Aelfric’s searching and unfriendly gaze. “But I know that Vithric is not dead, and neither is the Nethergrim. I don’t even know if a thing like the Nethergrim can truly die—I only know that it was there, that it was somehow forming anew.”

  Lord Aelfric fiddled with the silver chain that hung around his creased old neck. He stared out the window at the dying sun. Katherine did not know what she disliked more, the stony look he struggled to keep upon his face, or how easily and often it cracked.

  “Why Tristan?” Lord Aelfric muttered the words. “Why Tristan, and why now?”

  Katherine chose to answer, though she was not sure if she had in truth been asked. “I think he went to Tristan to tell him that they had failed, that everything they had suffered through thirty years ago was in vain, and that their old friend Vithric had betrayed them.” She had no trouble recalling Vithric’s face, a vicious man who had stolen seven children, she among them, and dragged them all before the Nethergrim to die. “If you wanted to understand what happened in the mountains, my lord, you should have summoned Edmund.”

  Lord Aelfric blinked. “Who?”

  “Edmund. Edmund Bale, from my village.” Bookish little Edmund—the son of innkeepers, and no one’s idea of a hero—had come through suffering and despair, tracking Vithric and his captives through the passes of the Girth to the deep and ancient lair of the Nethergrim. Katherine warmed to think of it. “Did no one tell you, my lord? Edmund broke the spell. He saved my life, me and all the children but two.” Edmund had stormed with Papa to the rescue and stepped up into Vithric’s face, right up under the thrumming presence of the Nethergrim itself, and ended the spell before it could claim all its victims. If that could not be fairly called a miracle, then too much was being asked of the word.

  Lord Aelfric flicked his hand. “When was the last time your father had contact with Tristan?”

  Katherine searched her memory. “I don’t know, my lord. Years ago.”

  Lord Aelfric held her in a fishy stare. “We have only your father’s word that the man he saw was Vithric.”

  Katherine stood
up flaring. “You doubt my father’s word?”

  Lord Aelfric set his fleshless lips. He turned pointedly away from Katherine and flicked a look toward the door. “Eustace?”

  The door drew back, and the page boy looked in. “My lord?”

  “Send for my lady wife.” Lord Aelfric turned back to Katherine. “Girl, your father left my castle in no good grace. I judge that when he did so, he also left my service. He is marshal of my stables no longer.”

  Katherine tried to speak over the lump in her throat. “But, my lord—”

  “The lady Isabeau.” Eustace drew back the door with another officious bow. Lady Isabeau swept within, veiled in purple satin and girdled in gold. She was not young, but her husband would have been a man full grown on the day that she was born.

  Lord Aelfric stretched a finger to point at Katherine. “When this girl’s father was here last, he extracted a promise from me, my word of honor made in haste. I told him that, whatever happened, I would see to the care of his only child. Find her a place within the castle.”

  Lady Isabeau eyed Katherine in displeasure. “I do not wish it, my lord. I find her ill to look upon.”

  The many rings on Lord Aelfric’s hands clacked and clinked when he closed his hand. “My lady, you are not called here to tell me what you wish.”

  Lady and lord stared long at each other. Katherine spent the silent moments of their struggle thinking that if she could get no better than such looks from a husband, she would much rather be alone all her life.

  Lady Isabeau broke first. She turned on Katherine. “Can you cook?”

  Katherine bobbed her head. “Somewhat, my lady.”

  “Can you mend and embroider? Weave at the loom?”

  Katherine smoothed down her dress. “Not well, my lady.” She had let it out twice as she had grown—it was still the only thing she could wear in good company, but she knew that she had nearly ruined it.

  Lady Isabeau pursed her lips. “What was your father about, letting you grow so wayward? Have you any talents at all?”