The Nethergrim Read online

  Edmund tried to move—his shoulder reminded him that it was there. The pain made him gasp, almost gag.

  “It’s just as well that you were out cold when I found you.” John Marshal’s voice moved over his head and behind him. “That barb would have been harder to dig out if you could have felt me doing it.”

  Edmund tried to roll himself so that his shoulder hurt less. “I was drowning.” But he had dreamed—just the tiniest bit of it came back. He had dreamed of flying.

  He set his face in the grass and made a hollow for his cheek. The fire had been built small, hardly more than twigs and tinder. His shirt, cloak and boots hung suspended over the flames on a makeshift frame of sticks. Something moved in the dark beyond. The light glinted on the metal buckles of tack and harness—Indigo.

  “We have no time for long explanations.” John Marshal brought him a bowl of something warm. “I fell into an ambush just past the mouth of the tunnel and was forced to make a retreat up into high cover. When I came back down to press onward, I found some bolgugs trying to corner Indigo in a gully. We gave a good account of ourselves—I don’t think any escaped to bring a warning. After that I got hold of Rosie, there, and was just starting to wonder what it meant when I found you on the riverbank.”

  Edmund turned his head. Rosie cocked a look at him, twitching her ears from the edge of the fire. Somewhere in her flight she had stepped on her dangling reins and snapped them.

  “I searched inside the tunnel, and found this.” John Marshal held Katherine’s sword across his palms. “Edmund—I know that you are injured, I would never press you in such a state, but I must know. Did Katherine come with you?”

  “We found your horse,” said Edmund. “We thought you needed help.”

  John Marshal looked ready for grief. “Did she—was she also in the water?”

  “No—no, Master Marshal!” Edmund reached from his bedroll with his good arm. “He took them—they’re alive, they have to be. He needs them alive.”

  “He? Who do you mean?”

  “The stranger. The wizard.” Edmund stared at him. “You don’t know?”

  “I’m starting to think that I don’t know nearly enough.” John pushed the bowl under Edmund’s nose. “Have some of this, and tell me what you’ve learned, as quick as you can tell it.”

  The smell made Edmund retch. He shoved the bowl aside. “There’s a wizard behind this—he’s the one who stole the children. He’s taking them to the Nethergrim, to cast a spell that will steal their lives away.”

  John opened the saddlebags and started moving things from Indigo to Rosie. “Where? Where is it done?”

  “In the mountain, in its chamber.” Edmund winced as he drew back the bedroll. The cold seized him hard. “We’ve got to hurry. The spell needs seven children, and now he has them. They won’t be kept alive for long.”

  “The closest thing to safety I can give you is to leave you here in hiding.” John slipped the bridle over Indigo’s head. “If I don’t return within a day, you must try to make it back on your own.”

  “No.” Edmund heaved himself to his feet—and nearly staggered onto the fire. “I’m coming with you.”

  John shook his head. “I will not place you in more danger.”

  “That wizard stole my brother and my friends. He hurt my father.” Edmund reached for his shirt, and tried to slip it on his good arm first. He got tangled in the folds. John helped him put it on.

  Edmund found that his bad arm hurt when he moved it—but it moved. “I’ll be in danger anywhere in these mountains.” He reached down for his boots. “If you go without me, I’ll just follow you.”

  John nodded—and smiled, just a little. “It seems I never judged you fairly.” He pulled up Edmund’s cloak and held it out. “There is much more to you than I had guessed.”

  Indigo snorted and champed at his bit. Rosie backed away from Edmund’s approach, swiveling her ears in all directions.

  “I wish I could say the same for your horse.” John shut his saddlebags. “She’s a sweet old girl, but no campaigner. There’s nothing for it, though—we must press on as quick as we can.”

  Edmund let Rosie have her distance. “There are apples in your saddlebag. Right there on your back. I could get some.”

  Rosie turned her head to regard him. She twitched her meager tail. Edmund held out his hand, down at the level of his belt, palm up.

  “That’s my girl.” Edmund let her approach, hesitate, then snuffle. “Who wants an apple?” He reached for his saddlebags and found his longbow and quiver, still strapped alongside.

  John took up the dangling ends of Rosie’s reins and made a knot in them. “It’s hardly fair giving Rosie an apple and leaving Indigo to go hungry.” He reached in for another and held it out flat on his palm. Indigo did not let it stay there long.

  They walked the horses down the slope, John first and Edmund following, stopping to listen at intervals. They could hear nothing but the howl of the wind against the trees—no creature of any sort made noise above it anywhere. They reached open ground, and then the road.

  “We’ve one more pass to climb.” John helped Edmund up into the saddle. “The river flows through a gorge up ahead, no way through at the waterside. We must use the greatest caution, especially—” His words ended in a hiss of pained breath.

  Edmund looked down. “Does your hand hurt, Master Marshal?”

  John climbed up onto Indigo, using his left hand where he should use his right. “Tristan always said, whenever we came home—every great adventure leaves you more than you were, and yet less.”

  • • •

  Black lines under stars. The world an empty floor. Edmund put his hands in his sleeves, a loop of rein between them.

  He turned in his saddle. The land behind was all a shadow. He rode west, up the walls of the Girth on a path that often came perilously close to the river gorge it followed. It rose through oak and alder, up past spruce and fir and still on up to harder ground. The river cut farther and farther down below him, its noise a distant and unceasing thunder.

  Rosie heaved and puffed, sweating cold down her flanks. She picked her weary way in the dim, a long tumble down to death on either side. Edmund kept his knees in close and tried to move in the sway of her walk, no matter how much it chafed at his sores or pulled at the half-healed cut on his shoulder. John rode Indigo some distance ahead. The dull glint of the sword in his belt was the brightest thing on the mountainside.

  They turned with the road, hard against the edge of the gorge, then over a spur of rock so chancing and exposed that Edmund forgot to breathe until they had come down again. He had to peer at the shapes he found on the other side for ten long paces to know what they were—broken teeth blue in the moonlight, works of stone grand beyond anything he knew, all thrown down in ruins on the keel of a farther, higher spur. The trail twisted in to run beneath them and then up over the last pull into a pass. Rosie kept as far from the edge as she could, feeling out her steps with nervous care.

  Edmund followed to the turn and passed under the shadow of the ruins. Rosie did not want to walk so near to them—Edmund did not want to look at them, but he could not help himself. The ruins made toys out of castles—each stone its own monument, columns and lintels lying sundered in the avenues, dead houses for giant men. Moonlight came into angle for a moment and shone through a wide passage, onto a row of faces carved along a wall in terror and judgment and bitter majesty. Empty eyes. Mouths open to shout forever. Edmund looked away.

  “What was this place?” He shrank from the sound of his own voice—the mountains ate it and spit back an echo that was little more than wind.

  “I remember asking Vithric that.” John’s voice came down from somewhere in the gloom. “I was sure that this must be the great stronghold of the Nethergrim—what could possibly be worse than a place like this?” His laughter came soft, and without real mirth.

  Rosie placed a hoof wrong on the trail, scraped over a rock and stumbled. Edmun
d grabbed for the saddle and hunched down. They lurched toward the precipice, Edmund’s stomach gripped in—they were falling—then Rosie caught herself and braced on a hind hoof. With the slow strength of terror she gained her feet and stood upright. They quaked together, Edmund down across Rosie’s back, both of them breathing rough and loud.

  “Edmund, are you all right?” John raised his question to a shout. “Edmund!”

  Edmund found his voice. “We almost fell.”

  “Come down from the saddle, then. We’ll walk them from here.”

  Edmund dismounted. He stepped around to pull off the saddlebags, never once turning his back on the ruins. He dug through the bags for the last of the apples. “Come, girl. Just some walking now. It’ll be easy.”

  Rosie had her ears back. Her eyes rolled—she wanted to run but could not. Too steep. Too tired.

  “I know. It’s a bad place.” Edmund held out the apple. “I’m afraid of it, too. Let’s go on past it.”

  Rosie put her head in his hand. She snuffled, then ate. He touched the whorl of russet hair in the center of her forehead. “Good girl.” He put the saddlebags over his shoulder, took the reins in one hand and started up the trail. The reins drew taut, then Rosie followed.

  John waited with Indigo where the trail reached its steepest. He stretched out a hand to pat Rosie’s broken-down flank, then turned to lead them on. Edmund kept watch on his feet, testing every step before placing his weight. Sweat broke through on the back of his shirt. After a time he no longer felt the cold.

  The stars turned in slow procession through the bottom of night. The saddlebags dug at Edmund’s shoulder. Weariness drew in. At last the trail dropped to a gentle grade and followed in between two peaks.

  “Watch closely, now.” John kept in step beside. “We’re coming to a place that would be very easy to defend. If there is anything set to guard, they’ll be able to see us coming from a good way off, even at night.”

  A ruined tower stuck out dark against the stars. The wall that projected from it would once have run all the way to the gorge, but it lay long shattered, its massive blocks weathered and sunk across the broad saddlebow of the pass. John kept his sword out and ready. Wind burst sharp up the slope, howling in the crevices.

  “Sit a moment.” John paced out amongst the broken foundations of the wall. “There are only a few ways through this rubble—I might learn something of our quarry here.”

  Edmund let the reins slip from his fingers, not fearing for a moment that Rosie would go anywhere. He found space under the shelter of the tower where the wind did not bite so hard. Cramps seized and shuddered his exhausted legs. He thought of Geoffrey, then Katherine, then his father—then tried his best not to think of anything.

  Indigo grazed in a circle by the tower, picking through the wispy grass without seeming to find much. Rosie let her head droop to the ground, dead asleep on her feet. Edmund drew his cloak around his shoulders. He lay back and looked up. The carvings of long thin hands, of Gatherers and their victims ran under the lintel of the doorway behind. What little he could read upon it spoke of the turn of seasons in the stars, the might of king and army, an ordered harmony above and below.

  “They were so sure, so fierce and proud,” he said. “They thought their kingdom was going to last forever.”

  “Nothing does, not in this world.” John’s voice came back from amongst the blocks of wall.

  “They conquered and ordered things, tried to make their world in the image of their thoughts—and now it’s rubble, bits of pictures and words that no one really understands.” Edmund gave up trying to read them. “Doesn’t it sometimes make you think that building things is no use?”

  “What I think is that I love my daughter, and I will save her if I can. What I think is that things like love and hope are the substance of life, and that what gets carved on the side of a tower amounts to very little of importance. Come, I will show you something that means more to me than every word in every language ever written.”

  Edmund got up. He reached for Rosie’s knotted reins and led her in amongst the blocks. He did not have much of a guess at what John had found, but even still he had expected something a bit more grand than a splat of horse dung.

  “I am no great tracker, but I’ve been looking at what horses leave behind all my life. This was dropped tonight.” John reached for Indigo’s reins. “We’re close behind them. Come, onward. We can ride from here.”

  Indigo started at an eager trot as soon as John gained the saddle. Rosie puffed and pushed to keep up. Grass gave way to dirt, then dirt thinned out over rock. The angle of the rise before them diminished, rolling Edmund’s view down through star and cloud as they approached level ground at the top of the pass.

  They emerged over a vale so wide and deep that it made Edmund spin to look into it, a needled and unbroken darkness—fir, spruce and pine like grass in a gully. He stared down and did not know how far it was, how tall he was, but the bottom of the land was not the greater marvel. Around him, rising up on every side, were faces all of snow and folds of gray, summits tall enough to pierce the moon. Awe moved in him, both wonder and dread.

  “In the dark hours of my life, I knew I would come back here.” John pressed in his heels to start them down the long, narrow drop from the pass. A shift of cloud revealed another ruin on the floor of the valley. The cast of light and frame of mountain gave Edmund little clue to its size, but it had walls and avenues and another snaggled nest of broken towers.

  He heard the music of the river long before he saw it. It wound at a rush down the eastern wall of the valley, passing under a bridge that resembled the old stone bridge at Moorvale in every detail. Rosie did not trust it, and had to be led across the span.

  “Let’s have them drink.” John dismounted and led Indigo down the banks. “We’ll want to consider our course. Eat something if you can.”

  Edmund pulled a cloth bundle from his pack. A scent rose to him—flour and eggs cooked thick with a hint of spice. It brought thoughts of home, but no hunger. He put it away again.

  “Which mountain?” He joined John Marshal at the edge of the road. They had come down switchbacks on ridgelines halfway to the bottom, and all the peaks around him looked more or less the same.

  “There.” John stretched his good hand out to point. “We have a choice before us. We can look for the ascending trail the Twins found on our first approach, or we can follow the road down to the floor of the valley.”

  Edmund came to understand that he was being asked to give counsel. “What is good or bad about either way?”

  “The risk of the first is that I might not find our way quickly enough. The Twins were better guides than anyone I have ever known—they found that trail and led us along it, on a path so steep and treacherous that we would have no hope of bringing the horses. The second way carries a different sort of danger. We’ll be taking the shortest and most direct path to the entrance in the mountain, but through heavy cover, through a place that thirty years ago swarmed with every kind of horrible thing you could imagine. I have no idea what might dwell down in that valley these days—but if I was this wizard you spoke of, that’s the place where I would lay an ambush against anyone following me.”

  Edmund stepped back to look about him. The valley floor was vast and dark, but the folds of mountain northward looked like a fine place to die of a broken neck. “I say downward, on the road. We can’t lose any time.”

  “I think the same, but I wanted you to know what you hazard.” John raised a hand. “But stop a moment. You are sure you are resolved on this? Edmund, you are young, you have the chance of a long life before you—you may be the only child your parents have left. I do not say this because I think little of you, I say it because I think much of you, and would have you grow to manhood and live happy if you can.”

  Edmund felt grateful to be asked. “I don’t think I could live happy if I turned back now.”

  John nodded. “Very well, then.” He put
a foot into the stirrup. “Sling your quiver onto your back from here on, and keep that knife close to hand.”

  Chapter

  26

  The road turned off the ridges and descended through a very odd sort of forest, thick with needled saplings to the shoulders of the horses but dead bare above. The air lost the blustery sting it had carried on the heights. Leafless branches passed overhead, thin shadows against the sky.

  “It looks so strange.” Edmund heard no echo of his voice for the first time since entering the Girth.

  “Last time I was here, the firesprites were busy setting the whole of this valley alight. I think it all must have burned before the end.” John reined Indigo back to come alongside. He leaned off the saddle to look at Rosie’s legs.

  “What’s wrong?” said Edmund.

  “You don’t feel it? She’s starting to limp.”

  “Oh. I thought it was the bumpy road.”

  John sat up straight. “She is old, Edmund. She’s been driven very hard—she won’t be able to carry you much farther.”

  Edmund stroked a hand on Rosie’s mane. “When we get back, folk will scarcely believe all the things she’s done.”

  The closer they got to the floor of the valley, the closer in the undergrowth grew on either side—then it blurred across the verge and forced them to ride single file. The land buckled up and ran flat. The mulch turned muddy thick between the brambles. Rosie snapped a twig underfoot—she startled and staggered, too weary to jump. The road would have been no better than any wild stumble through the woods, save that everywhere else, looming up through weed and sapling, lay broken, weathered hunks of mossy stone.

  Edmund hugged down and shoved past a lace of reaching branches. “What was this place?”

  “I had hoped that you might tell me.” John held out his sword to push and slash along. The rush of the river grew louder again—though deeper, more water but on a slower run over flat, old earth. Edmund shoved onward to find John Marshal waiting in the open. Their road met another in the shadow of a mammoth stone, like the Wishing Stone at home but three times the height.