The Nethergrim Read online

  “From here we turn north.” By some trick of the land John’s voice seemed to come from all directions. “Just south, beyond that stone, this river joins another, and from there downstream you might as well call it the Swift. It leaves this valley through a cleft I could find no way to pass, but I traced up the banks with Tristan in our younger days.”

  “The marriage of the rivers. Just like in the book.” Edmund let Rosie come to the junction at any pace she liked, which turned out to be an exhausted, wobbling amble. He touched her withers. “Rest soon. I promise.” He found himself wishing for another apple to give her.

  John took the turn northward at the stone. Edmund stopped at the junction to listen and to look. He could hear the violent joining of the rivers, caught glimpses of the water churning white beneath the moon. Carvings on the great stone told him what he already knew, that he was in the hallowed fastness of the Nethergrim, and that if he was a good and faithful servant, he should already be on his knees.

  “Onward.” John gave him no time to sit and gape. The road northward ran on a rising course up the shoulder of a shadowed mountain, a grand, dead avenue fringed with the remnants of tower and wall and mansion, all built from massive blocks of blue-gray stone. Walls and columns stood amongst the burned skeletons of trees, poking through the younger growth in places and retaining just enough of their former shape to let Edmund guess the rest. There lingered a feeling of ceremony, of show, a message to any who trod upon the road—seek you the favor of That-Which-Dwells-Within-the-Mountain, or despair.

  “The halls of the Gatherers . . .” Edmund turned to John. “What do you think it was like back then, living so close to—”

  “Quiet.” John gripped his shoulder hard. He spoke in a tense whisper. “Hear it?”

  Edmund froze, his heart in his mouth. Rosie raised her head with her ears flat back. John wheeled Indigo sharply aside. Edmund turned in the saddle—he saw nothing, but into the hush that fell broke a rapid series of noises from somewhere behind him. They began as an innocuous rustle, but grew quickly louder and closer, shaping into the sound of something very large approaching at a rush through the trees.

  “Gallop!” John drew his sword. “To high ground, Edmund—go!” There came a burst of splintering wood to the west. Rosie bellowed in terror and sprang to a run without being asked.

  Edmund grabbed at the reins and hunched down over the saddle. The arrows bounced in his quiver, threatening to slide out over his back. He dared a look aside and caught sight of something very tall looming around the corner of a broken stone house.

  “Thornbeast!” Edmund looked around for John, and found him following on Indigo. The thornbeast came on with the gait and speed of a charging bear, thrashing up through the undergrowth along the road.

  “Get ready to dodge,” shouted John. “Now! Pull up!”

  Edmund hauled on the reins—Rosie’s back arched hard, nearly throwing him. The thornbeast dove in across the road, sweeping its tendrils through the place where they would have been if they had kept their pace, and crashed onward into the trees on the other side.

  “Gallop again!” John passed him. “Hurry—it runs faster in the trees!”

  Edmund jammed his heels into Rosie’s flank, though she had started her gallop a heartbeat before. He looked ahead—two furlongs more and the broad street ran up onto hard stone, out of the trees to safety.

  “Another!” John’s warning came just in time. Tendrils whipped past Edmund’s face. Something snapped loose from the saddle—he reached down to grab his longbow before it fell to the road. Indigo drove himself between Rosie and the thornbeast, giving John the space to slash his sword across the flailing, twisting thorns.

  Edmund could do nothing but hunch down on Rosie’s back and try to move with her run. He could feel the weakness in her hind leg as though it were his own, could feel how close she came to tumbling every time she came down on it.

  “One more furlong, Edmund, one more and we’re clear.” John pulled up alongside. Trees ripped and toppled, and the thornbeast came again. Both horses lowered their heads and brought out the last of their speed. A tendril strained to its farthest limit and caught Rosie in the leg—she squealed but kept her pace, leaping over fallen stones before Edmund had time to see them. The ground rose, the trees thinned . . .

  They were away, they were free.

  The next thing Edmund knew he was tumbling through the air. He lost hold of the longbow—he had time to look back and see Rosie falling, her back hoof caught and twisted in a hollow. Her head tossed back and she crashed down hard. John shouted his name—then he struck the ground and saw white.

  “Edmund!” Something thundered the ground, and something else scrabbled from another direction. Edmund could not draw a breath, could not make his chest heave in and out. He rolled over, snapping one of the arrows that had spilled from his quiver. His injured shoulder screamed and grated. Rosie lay sprawled a few yards back of him, her hind leg sticking out at a frightful angle. The thornbeast knocked a tree aside and came out onto the road. Its roots clawed and sewed through the earth. Its lightless eyes drank everything.

  Rosie turned her head to look at the thornbeast. She groaned and tried to drag herself away, raising herself on her forelegs but unable to stand. Edmund managed to roll onto his side. Everything hurt—but not for long. The thornbeast reared up high overhead.

  “Edmund! Your hand!” The thunder grew louder. Edmund turned to look—Indigo was charging straight for him, on a barreling course right under the reach of the thornbeast. John leaned from the saddle and held out a hand. Edmund raised his own up to meet it, and felt his arm nearly jerk from his shoulder. The stars spun, then the ground, and he was moving.

  “I’ve got you.” John pushed down on his back to hold him across the front of the saddle. The pommel dug hard into his stomach. Rosie’s screams filled the valley.

  “Don’t look!” John put a hand across Edmund’s eyes. Indigo galloped smooth and hard up to high, rocky ground. By the time John reined him to a halt, the screams had died away.

  “Is anything broken?” John held him by the back of his shirt. “Can you move everything?”

  Edmund tried his arms, then his legs. John lowered him off the saddle to slither in a lump on the rocks.

  Indigo’s flanks heaved in and out like a bellows. John knelt over Edmund and checked his bones. “Nothing broken—except ribs, maybe. Come on. Up.”

  Edmund wobbled to his feet with John’s help. He looked back over his shoulder before he thought to stop himself. The thornbeast crouched in the middle of the road, a quivering, writhing blot—then it moved off into the trees, leaving scattered bones in a dull red squelch on the road.

  “Never forget her.” John turned him forward again. “So long as you live, never forget her.”

  Chapter

  27

  John led them on a treacherous ascent, walking with the reins in one hand and his other arm bearing Edmund up. They rose onto rock, out of all danger of the thornbeast, on a path that broke off like a cliff to the left and was but a little less deadly to the right. There could be no mistaking where the path led—it served as a long tongue for the mouth of the mountain.

  “Rest here.” John took a torch and felt his way through the entrance of the cave. Up close the gaping maw looked to have taken a punch, smashed in along one side to spill rocks onto the path. Edmund sank to his knees—he could not draw his breaths in all the way, not without feeling stabbed between the ribs.

  “Rosie.” He had hardly spared her a thought in all the time his family had owned her, save to devise ways to make sure it was always Geoffrey who had to muck out her stall. She had died trying to save them both; he curled down and cried the way he used to cry when he was little.

  After a time he gave some thought to where he was. He stood and limped to the cliffside. A set of carvings ringed the edge, but he could not bring himself to look at any more of He-That-Speaks-From-The-Mountain and his endless, vicious vanity,
nor so much as glance at the open hands of the Nethergrim. The drop beyond would give anyone who fell over it a good space of time to think on death before he met it. The wind moaned loud across the mouth of the tunnel, a haunted chord that made mockery of hope.

  John emerged, looking pale as parchment. He walked past—bent of back, grown older before Edmund’s eyes.

  Edmund turned. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t understand it.” John sat down on a rock. “It’s blocked. There’s no way through.”

  Edmund peered through the entrance. “There’s nothing in there?”

  “Nothing but a fall of rocks and the bones of my old friends.” John took a panicked look about him, up and down the dark slopes of the mountain. “Edmund, I am sorry. I don’t know what to do.”

  The chord in the wind grew louder, and rose in pitch. Edmund tried to stop up his ears. The thought of Katherine and Geoffrey, Tom and the others, about to meet their deaths inside—it was too much to be borne.

  “It cannot be—it cannot be!” John got up. He grabbed the last torch from Indigo’s pack and rushed back into the entrance.

  Edmund thought that, perhaps, it could well be—but he was not going to give up while he had breath in him. He slithered back down the way they had come, hunting left and right for another path. He found the road ahead of him littered with the arrows that had spilled from his quiver—it looked as though a rather talentless company of archers had just shot a volley. He gathered up what he could find, and found his longbow stuck through the branches of a bush. He was about to dare going back into the trees—back in reach of the thornbeast—when a noise made his heart leap.

  “Woof.”

  It was not loud, but it was distinct, clear enough for him to know just who had made it.

  “Jumble?” Edmund looked over the rocks. “Jumble!”

  A black-and-white shape slinked its way below, up a path so narrow that it would not have looked like a path from above at all, save for the fact that the shape managed somehow to cross it.

  “Woof.” Jumble wagged his tail.

  “Master Marshal!” Edmund turned to wave. “Master Marshal, over here!”

  The torchlight swelled to the entrance. “Edmund?” John Marshal scrabbled down the mountainside, leading Indigo as close to a run as they could go.

  “Down there.” Edmund crouched over the rocks. Jumble sat on his haunches, waiting.

  “Call that luck if you like.” John unburdened himself of his torch and all else he carried save the sword. He felt out over the drop beyond the edge of the trail. “We were in something of a hurry last time I was here. If we’d known about this way, some of my friends might have survived.”

  Edmund looked over the side. He swallowed hard. “I can’t imagine that wizard climbing over this. He’s sick half to death.”

  “You’re assuming he walked.” John reached over Indigo’s back to pull off saddle and blanket. “I’ll wager the bolgugs carried him—and the children. You’d hardly believe how strong they are.”

  He shot a grim smile at Edmund. “Then again, I suppose you would believe, wouldn’t you?”

  “But how are we going to bring Indigo?”

  “We’re not.” John put his arms up around Indigo’s head, and drew away with the bridle in his hands. “A horse his size could never make this traverse. We’ll have to trust that he can find his own way home.” Indigo let the bit fall from his mouth and shook out his glossy mane.

  John stepped around in view of one of Indigo’s large brown eyes. “Now, don’t you dare try to follow us.” He unfastened the girth and set the saddle on a rock. “You run home, you run home fast, do you hear?”

  Indigo twitched his ears and stamped.

  John sighed. “We’ll just have to hope.” He felt his leg over the side, scrabbled past the edge and trod a few feet along. In the poor light it looked as though his next step would be over the side of a cliff. He held out a hand behind him. “On we go. Don’t think.”

  Edmund grabbed his hand—the bad hand. He felt the stump of the missing finger, and heard John hiss in pain. “I’m sorry!”

  “Hold tight, you fool! Onward.”

  Jumble waited until they reached his vantage, then turned without a noise and slipped around the cliffside. The wind laced over the edge of the pass, keening past the rocks and freezing Edmund’s fingers numb. The moon dropped down behind the peaks, pulling its light from the world just when he needed it most.

  “Master Marshal.” He worked his grip through scree and rubble until he seized on rock. “Can I tell you something?”

  “There is no possible way I could stop you.” John felt out ahead of him. “That bit there’s no good. Don’t put your weight on it, just step over, stretch and step—there.”

  “What I mean to say is—” Edmund felt sure that his handhold was going to come right out of the mountainside, but it held firm. He got his breath. “I like your daughter.”

  John hummed a laugh. “I know.”

  “I mean to say that I really, truly like her.” Any one and single step could be the very last he would ever take. He could not see the bottom, even if he had wanted to risk another look down. “Very much.”

  “I know what it is you are trying to say.” John helped him around a large loose rock on the trail.

  “I am in love, though. I am.”

  John spared a glance at him. “It may indeed be that you are. Stranger things have proven true.”

  Jumble nearly fell off ahead of them—his frightened yip bounced back many times—but then he seemed to find his way along to somewhere safe, for he turned and poked his head from behind a hook of rock. Edmund followed John around it, and beyond found himself on what felt like a king’s highway by comparison to what had gone before—a winding path up a sickening drop, but one on which he could place both his feet astride. He looked back at the way he had come; a burst of belated fear seized at him.

  The upward trail grew more tiring than dangerous—a wrong step more likely meant a twisted ankle than certain death. Edmund’s breaths came easier after a time, and though there was no part of him that was not bruised in some way or other, he began to hope that he had not broken his ribs after all. Jumble ran before them and then back, sniffing at the trail with his tail stuck high. He darted abruptly aside, scrabbling up through bare ground into the dark.

  “Get your knife out.” John paced off their trail. Edmund drew his brother’s knife and followed up the slope. He could just make out the square of exposed earth around the edge of a thick wooden board.

  “A board in the ground? Out here?” Edmund looked about him. They had risen through a jagged pass—even at night it seemed plain that the mountain of the Nethergrim would be all but unassailable save for the entrance down at the end of the road. A handful of men could have held off an army on the trail he had followed with John, and everywhere else was fissure and abyss.

  “This board was recently laid—as though we needed more proof.” John worked his fingers under the edge.

  “If we see the wizard, what do we do?”

  “Stab him to death. I didn’t think that needed saying.” John gripped and heaved the board over, exposing the top of a worked stone shaft.

  “Someone’s talking down there.” Edmund crouched at the opening. “Loud, but far away—and there’s a funny smell.” He knelt and reached down. “There’s a ladder.”

  John turned and slid a foot over the edge. “It holds.” Jumble nosed up to the entrance, then tried to put a paw over.

  “No.” John ruffled Jumble between the ears. “Good boy. Stay.”

  He descended a rung, then looked at Edmund. “I’ll say it once more. From here on, the danger will grow much worse. You can stay up here—no one would think the worse of you.”

  Edmund felt a wish to go home so bright, it hurt. He fought it down. “I’m going.”

  “All right, then.” John climbed down out of view. “Quiet as we can from here on.”

  Edmund
turned to feel out the ladder once John was out of view. He set his foot on a rung, and then another, and descended past the level of the ground.

  He touched down on a stone floor covered with untold years of fallen dust and the detritus of insect life. Something tiny and many-legged skittered away.

  “Grab hold of my shirt.” John breathed in Edmund’s ear. “We’ll have to crawl.” The square of starlight above seemed like a bright summer’s day compared to the void into which they had stepped. The tunnel that led from the shaft could be sensed by the faint drift of air and by the echoes trailing down its long, narrow gullet. It smelled of old earth and rotting stone, clammy and sepulchral.

  John bent down and felt out the low ceiling of the tunnel before him. Edmund followed as quietly as he could. They advanced in a crouch, dropping to their knees every few yards to pass under a hang of rock. The walls pressed close at Edmund’s shoulders. Cobwebs broke off in his hair. The husks of insects crunched underfoot. There was not the faintest hint of light. The slightest sounds took firm shape against the silence—the scuff and shuffle of their awkward march, John’s breath, his own breath, and beneath all, disconcerting in its sudden clarity, the tense beating of his heart.

  Edmund.

  The voice jerked him up, made him listen in fright for its source. “Who’s that?”

  Edmund Bale. Why are you crawling to your death?

  Edmund turned all about—but he was in a tunnel, with blank walls on every side. The voice came without an echo—it was not a sound he heard with his ears.

  Do not throw your corpse onto the pile. The voice sounded—it felt—like both his mother’s and Katherine’s at once—soft and feminine, the trail of a lullaby. You are worth much more than that.

  Edmund stopped to whisper. “Who are you?”

  Whom do you think?

  Edmund crouched, his face almost touching the fouled stone of the tunnel floor. He knew.