The Nethergrim Read online

  Edmund could not help but stare. Scrolls, books and parchments covered the whole surface of the stranger’s table—a trove ten times the size, and he could not guess how many times the worth, of the paltry collection his father had sent into the fire that morning. A script of round and sweeping elegance graced the pages of the book in the stranger’s hands, adorned with capital letters worked in whorls of color upon color and gilded with leaf of gold. A pair of eyes seemed to watch everywhere, inked with cunning craft above the figure of a star, upon which lay seven men—no, seven children, each laid out upon one of the rays. Symbols wound ox-turns around them, each changed by the one before and after, not one of them repeated on the whole of the page. Edmund knew just enough to read a small piece: Bring a blade for He-That-Speaks -From-The-Mountain—

  The stranger placed a firm hand over the book and shot a barbed glance up at Edmund. It felt exactly like a slap.

  “I’m very sorry.” Edmund took the goblet and poured out the wine in the straw. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anyone doing that in here—reading, I mean.”

  “Indeed? I would never have guessed.” The stranger licked a finger to turn the page—then he coughed. He coughed again, then bent over and retched into a square of fine cloth. He left the pages of his book exposed, and Edmund could not restrain himself from sneaking another look. A creature made all of thorns had been inked with chilling art into an upper corner, its tendrils curled around the first letter of a neatly written passage: As the quiggan serves the Nethergrim in fouled water, and the stonewight in his—

  The man placed both hands across the page. “I said ale.”

  Edmund filled the goblet, reading as he did the symbols incised around the rim: Wind, Thunder, Ten Thousand Seasons. He shot a closer look at the stranger—the man was not old, but neither did he look at all healthy. His skin looked as though it had been cured like his parchments, yellow at the edges and with a sickly, translucent gloss. He had missed a fleck of blood on his lips, and another on his chin.

  Edmund turned to look out across his neighbors and the travelers in the tavern. The stranger’s coughing fit had rung to the rafters, his clothes could buy everyone else’s in the room all together in a bundle—and yet no one so much as glanced at the man.

  It struck him in a flash: “No one else can see you.”

  A thin smile curled the stranger’s lips. “They can see me perfectly well.” He turned a page. “But they cannot perceive me. They cannot think about me—they cannot remember me from one moment to the next. When you walk away from this table, neither will you.”

  He held out a hand without looking up. Edmund gave him back his goblet foaming with ale.

  Another bellowing cry sounded from the far corner: “By all thunder, boy, what is keeping you over there? Ale, curse it all!”

  “Yes, yes, all right! Just a moment!” Edmund turned and pushed his way between the crowded benches, making sure to fix the stranger’s face and voice in his memory as firmly as he possibly could. Anna Maybell tried to pull him into the dance, but he shrugged her off and shouldered through the last few feet of chattering locals to the gang of traveling merchants in the far corner.

  “About time.” Grubby Hands pushed his empty mug across the table.

  “So sorry.” Edmund picked it up and poured. “Busy night.”

  “We’ve got some fish coming our way, too. I thought that surly redheaded boy would have brought it out by now.”

  Edmund searched through the crowd. “Mum, where’s Geoffrey gone?”

  “He must be down in the cellar.” His mother passed him with a tray of griddled rabbit, her mousy braid swinging out like a rope as she turned her head his way. “Can you go serve the Twintrees when you’re done?”

  Edmund reached out for the next of the mugs, muttering curses at his lazy little brat of a brother under his breath. Weariness sprang on him in mid-pour, a yawn that sent the world to gray for a moment. He could not remember how long it had been since he last sat down. He wondered if this was how old people felt all the time.

  “That’s the word going round, Father.” The young merchant who spoke could be no one’s son but Grubby Hand’s, right down to the fat gut and gaudy shirt. “They say Lord Tristan’s not coming to the fair.”

  “What? Now why isn’t Tristan coming?” The woman seated between the two men drained her mug to the dregs, then held it out for Edmund to refill. “Isn’t this whole thing done half for him?”

  “Lord Tristan’s getting on in years,” said Grubby Hands with a sagacious nod. “Must be sixty by now—probably just wants to live quiet-like.”

  The woman pursed her lips. “He’s alive, isn’t he? It’s just good manners to show up at a feast in your honor.”

  Edmund cast a glance around the room. The news spread from guest to guest, deadening the frolic in the tavern. Horsa Blackcalf left Nicky Bird hanging at the chorus of a jig and drew a long, slow air on his fiddle.

  “It’s a bad lookout for us, Father, no mistaking it,” said the younger merchant. “Bad for business. No Vithric, and now no Tristan.”

  The woman looked from son to father in unhappy surprise. “You mean Vithric’s not coming, either?”

  “Oh, you never heard?” Grubby Hands scraped at the remains of his porridge. “Vithric’s been dead for years.”

  “A shame, really,” said the younger merchant. “Best wizard of his time—of any time, some would say.”

  “Well, it’s a bit late in the year for a fair, anniversary or no,” said the woman. “It’ll be a thin one, you mark me, and we’ll be out a fair handful for the trip.”

  Grubby Hands made a fat, self-satisfied smile. “And that, my sweet, is why I’m the one to set our course.” He turned to Edmund. “This village—what’s it called—”

  “Moorvale,” said Edmund.

  “Right, Moorvale. This little spot’s as near as any other to the Girth. I’ll wager more than half of these folk lost a father or a brother on that mountain, battling their way up to the Nethergrim all those years back. They’re drinking to them as much as to Tristan, and tomorrow they’ll bring every coin they’ve managed to scrape—and, oh yes, they’ll spend it, they’ll trade bulls for goats for a chance to mark the day. You heed me—heroes or no, we’ll not see a better haul all year.”

  “Oh, quit your blather, I’m not a customer.” The woman turned away. “We’ve come all the way up here to trade at an anniversary fair in honor of two old heroes, but one of them’s been dead for years and now the other’s not going to bother turning up. What a fool’s errand—why I listen to you, I’ll never know.”

  “She may be right, Father.” The younger merchant scratched his jowls. “What’s the point of it without Tristan and Vithric? They’re the grand heroes—the only ones who even came back.”

  “Three came back.” Edmund spoke before thinking. Never gainsay a guest—one of his father’s many rules. Let them say the sky is green so long as they pay.

  Grubby Hands squinted at him. “What was that?”

  “Three came back, begging your pardon.” Edmund took up the last mug at the table. “Sixty men went up the mountain, but only three came down again. Tristan and Vithric, and John Marshal.”

  “Hadn’t heard that.” Grubby Hands said the words in a manner that meant that since he had not heard it, it must not be so. “So where is this John Marshal now, then?”

  “He lives in the village—well, on a farm just outside.” Edmund poured a little steep to make some extra foam and hide the fact that he was half a mug short. “He’s marshal of Lord Aelfric’s stables, raises and trains his warhorses.”

  “Hmm. Well.” Grubby Hands shrugged at his son. “Better than nothing, I suppose.”

  “He must be quite a hero to you folk.” The woman did not seem quite so pompous as her companions. “Bet he tells some grand stories!”

  Edmund shook his head. “No. He doesn’t.”

  “My friends! A round for this house on me!” Henry Twintree sto
od and slapped a large silver coin to the table. “And when you drink, drink to the memory of Vithric, the great and the wise, who saved us all from the Nethergrim in years gone by!”

  The answering shout belled in Edmund’s ears. He cast a frantic look around for Geoffrey, hoping against hope for some help, but instead caught sight of his father glaring his way from across the room. Harman Bale turned from his cheery conversation with the elders of the village and made a significant jerk of his head in the direction of the cellar.

  “Drink, my friends and neighbors, to Vithric, to Lord Tristan and to our own John Marshal.” Henry Twintree’s eyes shone dewy and soft—he seemed to be making his speech to a corner of the ceiling. “But most of all, drink to those who gave all, for you stand upon the ground their courage gave you!”

  His neighbors gave throat to their agreement. Mugs were thrust up in firelight on all sides, dozens and dozens, to acclaim and to signal.

  “Go on!” Edmund’s mother nudged his back. “That’s half a mark!” She picked up the coin and thrust it in her apron. Edmund hurried down the cellar stairs to find his brother’s pitcher lying empty on the floor. He kicked it against the wall with a curse and set his own under the tap.

  A noisy, stamping dance had gotten underway by the time he came back up, making the trip to every table a whirling gantlet of arms and legs. It took seven weaving, ducking trips down to the cellar and back to serve the whole of the tavern—it would have taken only six if Wat Cooper had not chosen that particular moment to swing his wife right around in Edmund’s path. No dodging that one—and of course Father saw it all.

  “Everyone got your round? Got it? Then here’s to ’em!” Nicky Bird leapt onto a table. “Raise ’em, come on, raise ’em up. Here’s to Tristan and John, to the Ten and the fifty, to Vithric!”

  Edmund stopped, seized with the sick and flailing sensation that there was something he wanted very much to remember but could not. He glanced around the tavern room, thinking that maybe he had missed serving one of the corners. For a moment something slipped in and out of his thoughts, leaving only the memory of a pair of eyes watching him in cold disdain. He shrugged—or shuddered—then poured out the foamy bottom of his pitcher into the mug of old Robert Windlee, who had so far managed to sleep through all the din.

  “To Tristan and Vithric!” Everyone raised his voice, even Grubby Hands. It was the loudest sound Edmund had ever heard: “To the Ten and the fifty, the men who slew the Nethergrim!”

  Chapter

  3

  Edmund lay upon his pallet, fully dressed. He had been drifting off to the sound of distant, rumbling conversation and drunken singing for as long as he could remember, and by rights should be so weary as to sleep for a week—yet he had never felt so awake, so quick with anticipation. He passed the time by watching the shafts of firelight that shot up through the many gaps in the floorboards to play on the sharply angled ceiling of his bedroom, winking off and on as the shadow of a reveler passed near the fire in the hearth of the tavern below. They were still at it, long after his father would usually have kicked out all the locals and shut the taps for the night. Horsa Blackcalf scraped the tune of a bawdy drinking song; villager and traveler slurred and shouted their way through the chorus, bashing their mugs on the tables in clumsy rhythm. Edmund could hear his father circling the room, holding them all to the tune in his fine, round baritone, pausing only to urge them to louder choruses, greater joy, and most of all the purchasing of more of his ale.

  There came a restless rustle from the pallet next to Edmund’s. He shut his eyes and breathed in through his nose, deep and even as though lost in sleep.

  “Edmund? Edmund!” Geoffrey leaned across the gap between their beds. His breath reeked of the onions Edmund had avoided at dinner. “Why have you got your clothes on?”

  Horsa drew out the last note of the song into an uneven tremolo, after which there came a raucous cheer and the dull clack of coins being tossed into a hat. Edmund savored the familiar, happy tension in his belly. He ran back and forth over the things he had been practicing to say.

  Geoffrey grasped his shoulder. “I know you’re awake!”

  “Get off.” Edmund shoved his brother back with one arm and gained his feet.

  Geoffrey followed him over to the window. “Where are you going?”

  Edmund opened the shutters. The moonlight shone in at a slant. Nothing moved amongst the shadows in the yard below. He turned from the window and opened the trunk at the foot of his bed.

  Geoffrey crossed his arms over his hand-me-down nightshirt. “I’ll tell Mum.”

  Edmund favored his brother with a look of withering scorn. He pulled out a belt, then dropped it and felt around for the other.

  “I’ll tell Father!”

  “Think it through for a moment.” Edmund fastened the belt around his waist. “I’ve heard that you actually have some friends now—Miles Twintree, Emma Russet, that kid from across the river, what’s-his-name.”

  “I have lots of friends. More than you!”

  Edmund moved a bowl of water to the window. “You and I share a room. We have since we moved here four years ago, and we will until one of us runs away or Father dies. Must I go on?” He examined his wavering reflection in the moonlight and tried to smooth down a few jutting strands of his hair. Folk carried on downstairs as though that night was all there was or ever would be.

  “So—I think we understand each other.” Edmund ruffled his brother on the top of his head. “Yes?”

  Geoffrey slapped his hand away. “Are you waiting for that girl?”

  “No.” Edmund reached down to fuss with his boots. “What girl?”

  “You know—the big one!”

  “She’s not big!” Edmund caught himself before his voice rose too loudly. “She’s just tall.”

  “She’s a head taller than you, and she could pick you up and toss you like a sack of apples.” Geoffrey stuck out his chin. “Father’s right, she’s an ox!”

  “Who’s an ox?”

  Edmund jumped. A head thrust itself up over the sill of the window beside him. Katherine’s eyes were so dark a brown that in moonlight they were wells, endlessly deep but sparked with mirth.

  “Evening.” She leaned crossed arms on the wooden sill, as though she were twelve feet tall and just passing by the window. “Lovely weather we’ve been having.” All the smooth, clever things Edmund had been meaning to say simply melted.

  Geoffrey scrunched up his freckles. “How did you get up here?”

  “This is hurting some.” A boy’s voice floated softly from the yard below. “Don’t know how long I can hold you.”

  “Sorry, Tom.” Katherine disappeared from the window. Edmund leaned out to see her jumping down off a pair of skinny shoulders, landing in the stack of hay beside the empty kegs and rolling back into the yard with a whoop. Wat Cooper’s dogs set to barking from the next croft over, but they barked at everything.

  “Is that Tom?” Geoffrey pushed up next to Edmund. “Oh, ho, he’s not supposed to be out!”

  Tom slipped back into the shadows under the grain shed. Edmund sighed to himself. Just once he would like to ask Katherine to sneak out with him and have her come alone—just once.

  “If Tom gets caught, I bet his master whips him good,” said Geoffrey. “Emma Russet says his master whips him all the time!”

  Edmund seized his brother by the shirt. “And if Tom gets caught, we’ll know who tattled, won’t we?”

  Geoffrey shrugged him off. He leaned out the window. “Hey, Katherine? Katherine!”

  “Yes, Geoffrey, hello.” Katherine beat bits of chaff from her cloak. “Edmund, are you coming down?”

  “Katherine, I saw what Edmund wrote about you!” Geoffrey leaned out. “He said—”

  “You little toad!” Edmund ripped his brother back from the window. Geoffrey squirmed from his grip and dodged giggling around the tiny room.

  “He wrote a poem!” Geoffrey raised his voice dangerously high,
almost as loud as the singing from the tavern below. “He said that your hair was like a—”

  “Shut your face! Shut your face!” Edmund got a grip on Geoffrey’s collar. He threw his brother hard onto the cot and raised a fist.

  Geoffrey sneered at him. “Go on. I’ll scream.”

  “Edmund? Tell Geoffrey I saw him playing down in the creek with Miles Twintree and Peter Overbourne this evening.” Katherine spoke just loud enough to be heard over the noise. “I thought it was a bit odd since the tavern was so busy. My papa saw it too, and thought the same.”

  Geoffrey’s face twisted into the sort of scowl that spoke of unquestionable guilt.

  Edmund smiled. He let go of Geoffrey’s shirt and tweaked his nose. “Sleep tight, little toad.” He swung a leg over the sill and hung from it to drop into the hay.

  Geoffrey sat up on the pallet. “Why can’t I come, too?”

  Edmund pretended not to hear. He shifted over, trying to angle his fall into the soft middle of the haystack.

  “Come on.” Katherine beckoned smiling. “It’s not far.”

  Edmund let go—and knew at once that he had missed his mark. He landed one foot hard on a tight-wound bale and stumbled backward through the yard to flop at Katherine’s feet.

  “Whoops.” She stooped over him. “You’re not hurt?” Her long hair swung down across his face—it smelled of spice and apples. He wanted to lie there forever.

  “There you go.” Katherine grabbed his hand and hauled him standing. She wore breeches under boots, and a shirt cut for a man but embroidered with roses at the collar. “Come on, let’s get moving before we’re caught. Tom?”

  “Here.” Tom stepped out from the gloom—taller still than Katherine, half a head over most grown men, but where Katherine had gained grace in proportion to her reach, his height had seemed to come by stretching him into a raw, rangy spindle. There were moments, especially in poor light, when they could almost be brother and sister, but the illusion disappeared when they moved or spoke. Katherine always led, and Tom followed, stuck to her like a burr on her shirt.