The Skeleth Read online

  “You must trust me,” said John. “You have walked into a trap! We have no time to discuss the matter!”

  The village elder stretched out an arm at the walls around him. “If these brigands keep this castle, there won’t be anywhere safe in this valley, as well you know, John Marshal. They could ride out at us whenever they like, and our lives wouldn’t be worth living.”

  “We don’t have time to argue!” John lost his temper. “We must retreat! Where is Tristan? He will heed me. Where is your lord?”

  “Why retreat when we can attack?” The men took up their battering ram. “Let’s batter through, and whoever’s in that tower, let them look to running while they can!”

  Tom’s stomach clenched in. He felt exposed, surrounded by the high curtain walls from which an attack might come at any instant. He kept to the shadows, scanning the western corner of the castle before him. Doors opened out onto the battlements from each side of the watchtower, and it looked like a fight had taken place atop the northern wall, for men lay collapsed and still along the walk. The villagers rolled and roared in their count—one, two, three, and then another crunching run against the door. In its echo rose the sound of a new voice, coming from the highest turret of the tower.

  “Do you hear that?” Tom grabbed John’s sleeve to get his attention. “Master Marshal, do you hear it?” He cocked an ear—it was a woman’s voice, raised to a chant from somewhere high up in the tower. The noises of the villagers obscured what she said, but she spoke in strong rhythm, full of fury and empty of fear.

  John strained to listen. His face lost its color. “Oh, no. No!” He shoved Tom. “Run! To the back wall, to the postern gate. Run for your life!”

  Tom’s heart thumped and bounced in his chest. He crossed the courtyard at a flying dash, making for the place where he thought he saw the outline of a door. The voice of the woman rang out triumphant, chanting in a fierce, resounding ecstasy.

  Something fell from the top of the tower. It struck the earth beside the village men and broke open, letting out a pallid glow and then a keening wail.

  Chapter 4

  Edmund Bale did not sing like a bird. His voice rolled deep, lovely but not delicate, and seeming far larger than what his slender frame should produce. It never failed to surprise those who had only heard him speak, so different was it both in tone and shape of word, and so strangely matched with a boy who was somewhat under average height for fourteen, with sunless skin and soft golden hair. It was the duty of every village in the barony to entertain their lord on Harvestide night, and though Edmund was only halfway finished with his song, he already knew that he was not going to let his home village of Moorvale down.

  The grand hall of Aelfric, Lord of Elverain, seemed built to receive such arts. The strains of Edmund’s song filled its vaults to the ceiling, and the tapestries, while woven with stern and noble scenes, yet enfolded the echoes before they could turn harsh. Trestle tables ran the length of the hall, whereupon sat the folk from all the villages of the barony—Moorvale and Longsettle, Roughy and Dorham and Quail. Candles stood impaled on stands every few feet along, casting as much light as Edmund could remember ever seeing in a room at night. A fire blazed high in the grand hearth set in the western wall, though with so many folk pressed in together no one needed its heat.

  Edmund knew just where to stand for best effect. He sang the Deeds of Tristan, a long chain of verses with couplet refrains that changed and interlocked, each telling of a brave exploit or noble act in the life of its hero. He raised his arms, faced outward from the fire. Beasts reared up in shadow and in song, but one by one Tristan defeated them: Tristan saves a tiny village from a grute while the lord of the land cowers in his hall; Tristan rides alone to the marshy lair of the Buddleboggan, and wins a contest of riddles, forcing it back underwater for a thousand years and more; Tristan leads the villagers of Upenough to safety in the very teeth of the Nethergrim.

  Edmund scaled the heights of the refrain, rising to each note with neither trill nor glide. He had the place in his grip—mugs sat forgotten at elbows and chins lay pressed on palms: Tristan takes the fight to the mountains, leading his brave companions against the Nethergrim when no other man would dare to tread above the foothills; Tristan descends into the lair of this greatest of enemies, meets it in single combat and strikes off its head, bringing peace to the lands once again. Tristan the Good, defender of the meek. Tristan the Righteous, unstained in deed. Tristan the Brave, jewel amongst knights.

  Edmund brought the song to a reverent close, drawing out the last note to leave it wandering in echo through the hall. A hush descended, and then, just as the folk around him rose to cheer, something struck him in the face.

  Edmund spluttered, wobbled and tripped. He landed in the rushes strewn across the flagstone floor, and came perilously near to flopping onto the fire. He heard a stifled chorus of gasps, but no one moved to help him up. He rolled over, dazed, and saw what had hit him—a boiled cabbage.

  “Stuff and nonsense!” The shout came from the same direction as the throw, from the high table at the head of the hall where sat the folk of noble rank. “You keep your seat from now on, peasant, and you keep your mouth shut!”

  Edmund rubbed at his jaw where he had been struck. The folk in the hall sat stunned, their merriment turned into confusion and fright in a heartbeat.

  “Tristan is a liar and a coward, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.” The knight who had thrown the cabbage sported a bristly black mustache that did little to soften the bitter contours of his mouth. He curled one of his hands into a fist while he pointed about the hall with the other. “Come on, any one of you, or all of you together. Just any of you clap, any of you cheer for that boy and his song, and I will take you outside and make you eat some dirt.”

  Edmund, like everyone in the hall, looked past the scowling knight, in the direction of Lord Aelfric and Lady Isabeau, who sat in the chairs of highest honor. Lord Aelfric gazed fixedly down into his fine silver goblet, as though he was trying to pretend he had not heard what had just passed in his own hall. Lady Isabeau clenched her jaw and then the arms of her chair, but neither she nor her husband spoke a word. The scowling knight resumed eating, as though he sat in his own castle and had just abused one of his own peasants.

  “We were on those accursed moors for nine days, and this is what I get for my trouble.” The knight plucked up a stout-bladed dirk from the table. He stabbed it down, skewering a hunk of salted pork and then waving it about. “I wouldn’t feed this to the dogs! Someone bring me something edible, and sharpish, or by all thunder I will—”

  “That’s enough, Richard.”

  A wide shadow blocked the light of the fire. Edmund rolled over to find a man in lord’s finery looming up behind him, seeming to have somehow stepped right out through the stonework of the wall. Everyone around Edmund stood up in surprise, and then bowed. Edmund tried to scrabble up in time, but before he could, the lord reached down to help him stand.

  “You must excuse my loyal knight.” The lord was a man of middle age, stout and not over tall, halfway between powerfully built and running to fat. His face was broad, his thick black hair and beard were curly, and his eyes were dark and very deep. “He has his uses, but we call him Richard Redhands for a reason.”

  Edmund took hold of the hand and staggered to his feet. “My thanks to you, my lord.”

  “My lord Wolland, I will not hear it!” Richard Redhands leaned out over the high table. “Tristan is a charlatan, a faker, a knave in lord’s robes, and I will not hear his praises sung by some gap-toothed yokel!”

  The lord waved his hand. “Sit down, Richard. Make merry for once in your life!”

  The herald of the castle rushed into the hall through the grand double doors, looking utterly flustered. “Oh, there you are, my lord! I was waiting to announce your entrance—how did you get past me?”

  The lord had a
ready laugh. “I’ve been in this castle before, my boy, many times. I know all the secret passages!” He shot a wink at Lord Aelfric—or perhaps at Lady Isabeau—but neither of them returned it.

  The herald cast a discomfited glance at Lord Aelfric, then scurried into the hall and struck his staff to the floor for silence. “Ahem—make way for my lord Edgar, Baron Wolland, peer of the realm and Lord Warden of the March!” It sounded rather silly, since Lord Wolland was already in the hall, and so, with a blush on his face, the herald then retreated hurriedly through the doors.

  Edmund made his bow low and solemn. “My lord.” He knew—everyone knew—that Edgar, Baron Wolland was the richest man in all the north, lord of a land twice the size of Elverain and on speaking terms with the king himself.

  “That is I!” Lord Wolland swept onward to the high table, and took up a goblet in toast. “Edgar of Wolland, happy lord of that happy land just down river and across the moors from here. Come, come, good folk of Elverain, do not be cast down on this Harvestide night, where we celebrate the bounty of the year and the reunion of old friends!” At this, he slapped Lord Aelfric on the shoulder. Lord Aelfric remained so still and rigid that he looked as though he had died sitting up in his chair.

  Edmund slipped back to his seat on the trestle bench, surrounded by family and neighbors and across from his little brother, Geoffrey. He managed to fend off a flurry of frightened attention from his mother, Sarra Bale, telling her that he was not hurt, that it was only a cabbage, and anyway they should keep their voices down so as not to anger the nobles any further. He felt Sir Richard Redhands’s scowling gaze upon him, but did his best to pretend he did not notice.

  Geoffrey leaned across the table, and dropped to a whisper. “And you’re sure they came in off the moors?”

  Edmund wiped cabbage juice from behind his ear. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “You all right, son?” Edmund’s father, Harman Bale, hobbled along the rows of benches to stand by his seat. He winced and staggered, holding one hand to the table and the other to his side. “Not hurt, are you?”

  Edmund got up. “Father, you should rest. Your wound’s not even halfway healed. Here, please, take my seat.”

  Harman slid with a heave of breath onto the bench. “Your old dad’s not what he used to be.” He was dark where Edmund was fair, his brown hair thinning at the crown. His beard had grown out ragged, poorly trimmed on one side—the bandaged wound in his belly still kept him from raising his right arm above the shoulder.

  Edmund grabbed a log from the stack of wood by the fire, and used it to make a seat for himself at the end of the table. “You just need time to heal, Father. It could have been a lot worse, you know—you did stand up to the greatest wizard ever born.”

  Harman reached out and landed a weak punch on Edmund’s arm. “Like father, like sons!” He turned and did the same to Geoffrey. “Let Vithric tremble when he hears the name of Bale, that’s what I say!”

  As soon as sons and father shared the smile, it faded. It was true that each of them had, in his own way, thwarted Vithric’s malevolent designs; but Vithric was still alive, and none of them knew when or in what form his revenge might come.

  Edmund did something he had never even considered before. He let his father into his thoughts. “Father, why do you think these nobles are here?”

  Harman Bale cast a dark look up to the high table. “Whatever Lord Wolland’s here for, it means trouble for us.” He shook his head. “He’s the richest man in all the north, and cousin to the king on both sides of his family. You mark me, son, everything that man says, does and thinks is politics.”

  Geoffrey scrunched his freckles together. “Then why does he act like he’s the village fool?”

  Lord Wolland’s voice boomed out from his elevated station, cutting across every conversation in the hall. “Now, your herald, there, my good Lord Aelfric, he knows not his own business!” He extended a pudgy finger to point down the central aisle, indicating a line of well-dressed folk as they entered through the grand double doors. “He’s let my noble companions enter the hall unannounced, and after I gave him the slip around the side passage, even though he’s a spry young lad of twenty and I’m but a fat old codger with one too many helpings of roast quail under his belt. Ha!” He patted his paunch. The folk of the hall gave way to nervous tittering, and then, as he prattled on, honest laughter.

  “That’s the spirit, everyone! That’s the way—happy Harvestide!” Lord Wolland drained off a gulp from his goblet, then waved it toward the entrance of the hall. “Now, I think I shall play the herald myself, and why not? Hark ye, hark ye, good folk of Elverain, for persons of great substance and rank have entered in among you! That one there with the mug in each hand is my lord Blave of Overstoke, and over there with the bald pate is my lord Sigbert of Tand. Cheer up, Tand, your wife says it makes you look manly! Ha! Now that one there in the furs and the preposterous hat is Hunwald of the Uxingham Hundreds, and up last is young Elísalon, whose title is one of those long wizardy things that no one can pronounce. Don’t try, or she might grow cross with you and turn you into a goat, or something like. You can turn folk into goats, can you not, my dear girl? No? Father’s thunder, I thought that’s what wizards did! Well, what I am paying you for, then?”

  Edmund watched the procession of nobles thread their way between the trestles on their way up to the high table, under the pouring stream of Lord Wolland’s babble. The girl he had met upon the moors, the one Lord Wolland had named Elísalon, passed him by without answering the question in his look.

  Geoffrey nudged Edmund once they all had ascended to their high places. “Those are half the lords of the north!”

  “All the lords of the north that live east of the river,” said Edmund. “Everyone who dwells in Lord Wolland’s shadow.”

  “It makes no sense.” Geoffrey was two years Edmund’s junior, and his voice had just begun to break, which made attempts at hushed conversations rather pointless. “They could have crossed the river down in Rushmeet, like folk always do!”

  Edmund leaned out across his table, looking past his neighbors at the row of noble personages at the high table. Though she sat amongst the lords, Elísalon did not seem to share in their company. She spread a parchment chapter book flat upon the table, dipped a quill and started writing. Whenever she glanced up, she seemed to look everywhere in the room except at Edmund.

  “We should find Katherine,” said Geoffrey. “Where is she, anyway?

  Lord Wolland banged his goblet on the high table. “Now harken to me again, one and all! It is time for me to play the gracious guest, and announce that on the fourth day hence, we shall host a grand tournament of arms, right here on Northend green before this very castle. There shall be jousting by the men of noble blood, contests of archery and quarterstaff for the common folk, feasts to burst your belly, and various entertainments of unsurpassed quality. I should know—I paid for them!”

  The hurrah Lord Wolland’s announcement drew forth from the assembled folk of the hall was not at all forced, for everyone loved a grand tournament of arms. Their good cheer restored, everyone returned to their holiday babble, the cabbage forgotten by everyone save for the dogs who fought over it in the aisles.

  “An archery tourney!” Geoffrey’s many freckles drew apart when he smiled. “What’s the prize for first place, do you think?”

  Lord Aelfric stood and, after a moment’s chilly silence, commanded the attention of the crowd. “My people. Your oaths of service are honored, your labors accomplished, and so with glad heart do I welcome you to our feast. Take of our plenty this night and remain within the bounds of my castle until morning if you wish. A happy Harvestide to you all.”

  The cheer this raised was not quite so loud as the one Wolland received at his announcement of the tourney, though it was bolstered by the arrival of the kitchen servants, carrying between them tray after tray pi
led high with the next delicious-smelling course of the Harvestide feast.

  Geoffrey rubbed his hands. “Oho, smell that? Is that mutton? I’ll bet we’re getting mutton!”

  Edmund tried for a little longer to draw Ellí’s gaze, then gave up. He looked about him, and could not help but feel a touch of the delight that lit the faces of his family and neighbors. The strangeness of his meeting on the moors the night before, the oppressive weight of the Nethergrim’s voice, the nightmares that kept him from sleeping—all of it fell away, for just a while, amongst the celebrations of the feast. The harvest was in, every field reaped and gleaned, and the larders were as well stocked as they would be all year. Of all the holidays that dotted the calendar, Harvestide was Edmund’s particular favorite, for it was the one day out of the year when he could sit down while someone else served him dinner.

  “Mutton with the trimmings.” The food had hardly touched the table in front of Edmund before the person who had served it moved on down the aisles—but there was no mistaking the voice.

  Edmund whirled around in surprise. “Katherine?”

  Chapter 5

  Voices resounded off the walls of Tristan’s castle: “Run! All of you, run for your lives!”

  Tom found the postern gate, but found it barred from the other side. He gave up trying to shove it open and turned back into the courtyard, passing through a crowd of panicking men searching frantically about them for some way, any way out.

  “Help, help me, please, someone—” Whatever the villager in the grass nearby had meant to say next, Tom never heard, for his voice dissolved into a babbled scream. Tom threw himself down beneath a cart overgrown with weeds up to its axles. He crept to the other side and glanced out upon the courtyard, and wished very much that he had not.

  Something drifted near, something that was there and yet not there—the blinking, melting image of a fire impressed on the eyes after they have shut, a nightmare that would not resolve into a shape and give up the awful secret of its form. A dozen jointless limbs waved and whipped in double rows. There was nothing for a head, just a tuft of fringed, grasping feelers.