The Nethergrim Read online

  Katherine listened at the corner of the inn, then shook her head and pointed north. She crept off in front of her friends, leading them in between Wat’s looming kennels and Knocky Turner’s ramshackle garden, then up between the cottages to the edge of the village square. She leaned out to peer around, then crooked in a finger. “Looks clear.”

  Edmund followed her out into the square, which was really no more than a bulge in the wide West Road where it met the roads to Dorham and Longsettle. A statue of some old knight stood between the sweeps of wagon ruts, facing east across the bridge toward the dark and empty moors. No one knew who he was, or even whether he was meant to be saluting or shaking a sword in that direction, for his head and right arm were long gone.

  Katherine looped them around behind the statue, creeping under the yew trees that flanked the grand silent entrance to the village hall. Edmund shot a glance down the Longsettle road toward the inn as they passed west, and spied the dim outlines of men talking on the steps. Nicky Bird was in the middle of one of his shambling stories, from the sounds of it, and no one seemed to take note of the three friends before they slipped safely out of view.

  Tom wore a ragged tunic cut for a man his height but twice his weight, which made him look something like a running scarecrow. Absurd as he appeared, he had the practiced, economical gait of someone who traveled long distances on foot, and Edmund had to break into a sprint from time to time just to keep him in sight. The sound of their footfalls seemed to carry an uncomfortable distance across the open fields around them, but they were free of the village by then, and there was no one to mark their passing.

  “All right, Tom, we’re not running all the way there.” Katherine let herself drop back next to Edmund. She shot him a smile that raced his heart. “What is it about sneaking out that’s so much fun?”

  Edmund looked up at the stars. A few fat clouds slid past the moon. The breeze was just cool enough to tingle on the skin. He had the unaccountable feeling that marvelous things were possible.

  “Your father must be excited for tomorrow.” He had rehearsed it ten ways, and judged this opening the best.

  “Papa? No, he hates the whole idea. If it weren’t for me, I’m not sure he’d even go, though I guess Lord Aelfric would likely make him.” Katherine stopped, looking ahead, then south into the trees that lined the road. “Tom?”

  “Over here.” Tom’s voice came from somewhere past the first few trunks. “It’s the short way.”

  Katherine felt out before her and plunged off the road. Edmund followed at her heels, breathing in the trail of her scent, blessing the darkness for an excuse to keep so close. He could see his hands well enough, and the occasional flash of movement from Katherine, but all else was shadow and suggestion. Their clothes made rounds of creak, hiss and whip as they fumbled on, deep in gloom on a rising course up the side of Wishing Hill.

  “But you’ll be going to the whole thing? The reason I ask is, well, you see—I heard there was a feast afterward—and a dance—” Edmund failed to catch a branch Katherine bent back before him. He did his best to splutter and gasp without making too much noise.

  “That was not the short way, Tom.” Katherine pushed out onto a space of open trail that wound toward the summit of the hill. She drew up level with her friend, then leapt abruptly past him and pelted up the track. “Race you to the top!”

  Tom watched her go, then turned to Edmund. “You don’t want me here.”

  “That’s not true.” Edmund tried to face his way through the lie, but Tom just stared at him until he shrugged and looked away.

  “You can go on ahead of me if you like,” said Tom.

  “She would only believe I really beat you if you broke your leg.”

  Tom nodded, then seemed to disappear into the dark, so rapid and silent was his ascent up the path after Katherine. Edmund set his feet and put on his best turn of speed, determined at least to come in a respectable third, even if third was last.

  The earth of the slope on the north face of the hill had long ago been fashioned into sharply twisting ramparts, forcing any who ascended it to switch back and forth on his climb. The ramparts had sunk into gentle, waist-high rolls of ground, covered with a vigorous growth of spruce and maple, yet they still preserved the blurring form of a trail with only a few downed trunks to be vaulted on its course. At every puffing switchback Edmund spied a little more of the broken-down ruin of the old keep at the summit, first the tallest standing tower, then the snaggled top of a wall. Tom stood on a rock at the edge of the hilltop, looking out over the valley that surrounded their home.

  “Are you two coming in here?” Katherine’s voice carried out through the tumbled gap of what once had been the gatehouse, her voice folded onto itself in close echo.

  Tom’s face had that expression he sometimes got, a blank and faraway stare that most folk took for evidence he was a little soft in the head. “Just looking at the trees.”

  “Oh, you can look at trees anytime!”

  Edmund picked his way past Tom, over the waist-high jumble of stones that choked the entrance. He found Katherine in the courtyard beyond, seated on the tall dark stone that stood in the center, at the very tip of Wishing Hill.

  “I love it here.” She swung her legs back and forth, kicking her heels into the stone.

  “So do I.” Edmund jumped down to solid ground. Beyond the ruined gates the courtyard lay nearly bare, too deep in the shadows of the walls to let much of anything grow. “Did you win?”

  “The race?” She laughed—two notes at even pitch. The moonlight lit her silver, glinting down the spill of her long dark hair.

  “Come on, Tom!” She leapt down from the stone, then turned and placed her hand on it. “Make a wish!”

  “I don’t need a stone to make a wish.” Tom answered from somewhere over the wall to the north.

  “Fine, then!” Katherine looked at Edmund. “But you’ll do it?”

  “Oh, yes.” Edmund put his hand to the cold, blue-gray stone—it was so old that whatever had once been carved on it had weathered away to the mere suggestions of shapes, though he always thought he could trace the outlines of some of the oldest and strangest symbols he knew.

  “My father burned all my books this morning.” He spoke it in a blurt, then cursed himself. The last thing he wanted was to seem like a sap in front of a girl who trained warhorses, a weedy little boy who cared only for books—and just then the sting of Father’s punishment seemed blunted to nothing.

  “Oh, Edmund, that’s awful! I wish he understood you—oh, no!” Katherine let go of the stone. “I just made my wish!”

  “I still have one.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Edmund shut his eyes. It might not be strictly fair to relate exactly what it was that he wished for.

  “And I hope you get it.” Katherine stepped away from the stone, looking up at the tallest tower—a grand, imposing structure twice as wide as the shattered ruins of the other three. “I forgot—I was going to bring some rope this time. I want to climb that someday.”

  Edmund drew in a breath. He rolled back his shoulders and stood as tall as he could.

  “Katherine—” His voice came out as a squeak.

  “Though we’ll have to be careful. That’s how Nicky Bird got his name, you know, back when he was our age. They say it’s a miracle he survived the fall.” Katherine picked up a rain-worn shard of wall. She flipped it over in her hand, then hauled back and tossed it on a high, sailing arc. The rock struck what was left of the battlements—the impact smacked and resounded between the walls.

  “The feast tomorrow, after the fair.” Edmund got control of his voice. “Since Father’s on the village council now, he got invited—so I can go, too.”

  “Oh, good.” Katherine reached down in the straggled grass and plucked up another rock. “I was afraid I’d get bored.”

  “And there’s a dance.”

  “You know we’re supposed to get all dressed up?” Katherine too
k aim at the tallest tower.

  Edmund approached at her side. He shot a glance back at the Wishing Stone. “And so I was wondering, when we’re there—”

  Katherine judged her mark and threw, striking the tower a few feet from the top. “Ha! Close!” She reached down. “I’m aiming for the arrow slit. Want to try?”

  “When we’re there—” Edmund wrung his hands, then thrust them behind his back. “If I could have the honor—the great honor of asking you—”

  “Katherine.” Tom’s voice cut across Edmund’s words, not least because it came as near a shout as Tom ever got and carried with it a tremble of fright. “Edmund, please come here. Please hurry.”

  “What is it?” Katherine turned to dash for the entrance. She was over the scrabbled stones and gone before she said, “Tom, where are you?”

  Edmund shut his fists—for a moment he wanted Tom to just go jump off a cliff. He hurried after Katherine, clambering over the stones, but found neither of his friends on the other side. He looked about him, at a loss. The trail dropped away before a view of their home that was half the reason they risked so much trouble to come up there. The course of the broad river Tamber could just be guessed by the folds of the silver-lit valley around it, but that deep in the night there was no sign that anyone lived down there—not a light, not a sound. The river bent just before it reached the village, turning from its western rush down from the grand far peaks of the Girth to a more stately flow south, almost but not quite navigable by boat. Eastward the moon sat on a throne of cloud above the flat nothing of the moors. North, past the last of the fields, the broad line of the Dorwood bounded the world to the horizon and over. The sight had always filled Edmund with the urge to pack a store of provisions and walk, to see what lay beyond the edges of the world he knew—but just then it made him feel exposed, a foolish little mouse in sight of owls. The breeze blew up stronger, and rather too cold.

  “Over here.” Katherine spoke from somewhere west along the wall. “Have you got a knife?”

  “Why?” Edmund drew his work knife from his belt. He felt his way in near-blackness along the shadowed strip between the foot of the wall and the eaves of the nearest trees. He found his friends crouched by the crumbled ruin of the northeastern tower over a pile of something nearly white.

  “Bones.” Katherine held one up. “Pig bones.”

  Edmund knelt at her side. “Not a wild boar?”

  Tom shook his head. “Pigs.”

  “So a dead pig.” Edmund shrugged. “A long-dead pig.”

  “Pigs—three of them. And piglets—they weren’t born yet.” Tom placed a bone in his hand. “Feel that.”

  Edmund rubbed a thumb on the surface of the bone. “What am I supposed to be feeling?”

  “It’s greasy, not dry,” said Tom. “This pig was alive yesterday.”

  Edmund took a closer look down at the pile. Even in the feeble light the bones had the yellowish tinge of a freshly dead animal—but there was not a speck of flesh on any of them.

  “Bossy,” he said. “Bessy and Buttercup.”

  Katherine glanced at him. “Hugh Jocelyn’s pigs?”

  “He was looking for them, said he’d lost them.” Edmund gripped his knife and looked around him. “There must be wolves!”

  “Not wolves,” said Tom. “These teeth marks are too long for wolves—and wolves don’t make a pile after the kill. They like to drag bits away.”

  The last tingle of thrill left Edmund, replaced by a true and present fear. “What are you saying?”

  “Look at this skull.” Katherine held it up. “Broken right in half and the brains scooped out. Those are hack marks—an axe or a sword.”

  “Cracked every bone to get at the marrow.” Tom dropped the bones in his hands. “Crunched the piglets to bits.”

  Edmund swallowed hard. His friends looked just as frightened as he felt.

  Katherine stood up first. “We should go.”

  Chapter

  4

  Look inside the flame.

  Edmund stared. He tried. The candle before him flickered back and forth. It fizzed and guttered, its light drowned in the sunshine flooding through the opened window of his bedroom.

  Look inside the flame. Somehow he had to see the flame and know it. Somehow a wizard could know, just by looking, exactly what the flame would do, how it would move with every moment. Somehow a real wizard could ask it to change, and it would obey.

  He strained to remember what his books had taught him: Fire is the right hand of the Wheel of Substance. Its color is red, it is both dry and hot. In its true form it is entirely red, entirely dry and hot—only in the lost and muddy world in which we live can it be any less than its perfect self. Do not see the flame before you. See Fire.

  “See Fire. See Fire.” Edmund gazed at the candle until it hurt his eyes. “See Fire and see Light. Fire makes light, but it is not Light.”

  The rickety stair outside the bedroom creaked. Edmund let the sound come and go in his thoughts.

  Bits and pieces of the next lesson returned, things he had read in the last pages of The Seven Roads: Light, in its true form, is a crack in the darkness. It is the flaw in the tyrant’s perfect plan. It is hope flowing in with a dying man’s last breath. It is a sound, a harmony. When you wish to call on Light, do not see what meets your eyes. See Light, the crowning Sign of the Wheel of Essence.

  Wait—maybe that worked. The flame seemed to move the way he guessed. He raised his right hand in the Sign of Fire, his left in the Sign of Light.

  The stair creaked again. Edmund glanced aside.

  No! He snapped back. He had it—he almost had it! He could feel it, his mind moved with the dance of the flame. He had to get it right this time—good tallow candles cost a whole penny for a pound, and there were only so many he could sneak from the cellar before his father noticed the loss.

  One more sign: Quickening. The first kick of a baby in her mother’s womb. To be surprised by joy. The world flows past in a ceaseless rush—Quickening, the right-hand sign of the Wheel of Change.

  He almost had it! He was sure—now all he needed were some words. The words would seal it, make it his own.

  “Fire is a quickness. Fire—” Edmund paused to think. “Fire within makes—”

  A hand snaked into the room. Edmund caught the sight from the corner of his eye. He could not help but look.

  The hand seized Edmund’s longbow from the wall, then his quiver of arrows.

  Edmund jumped up. “Hey!” He doused the candle and sprang from his bedroom, taking the stairs in threes. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”

  Geoffrey rounded at the front door of the inn. He scowled, defiant. He reached out to open the door a crack.

  “That’s mine!” Edmund knew better than to simply stand and shout. He stepped quick across the tavern. “Give it back.”

  “I’m a better shot than you!” Geoffrey held Edmund’s unstrung longbow like a sword, and wore Edmund’s quiver of arrows on his back. “You stink at archery—you don’t even practice! Why should you get to have it?”

  “Because you’re a kid.” Edmund advanced to charging range. “You want your own longbow, go buy one when you’re older.”

  Geoffrey shook the whippy shaft in Edmund’s face. “You didn’t buy this! Father gave it to you!”

  “Which means it’s mine, so hand it over.”

  “He gives you everything.” Geoffrey threw the bow and quiver at Edmund’s feet, then flung back the door to stomp outside. Sharp white sunlight cut through the middle of the tavern.

  “Shut that, will you?” Wat Cooper raised a hand to shade his eyes. He sat with Hob Hollows by the fire, their feet up on benches, ales in hand.

  Edmund pulled the door to, muffling the happy chatter and the tramp of feet on the Longsettle road. He bent to gather spilled arrows back into the quiver and laid it on the tavern’s best table. He considered giving the spell one more try, then changed his mind and reached for his best
new shoes by the door, the ones he had haggled hard for at market. The last thing he wanted was to keep Katherine waiting.

  “It’s burning low.” Hob waved a hand at the fire. “Fetch us some wood, there’s a lad.”

  Edmund raised the lid of the pot that hung over the hearth. An odor of garlic and onions stung his nose. “Mum!” He aimed his shout at the closed door to the kitchen. “I’m going early!”

  “Edmund, did you do the threshing?” His mother’s voice rose from somewhere out back. “Your father said you have to get the threshing done before you go.”

  “Geoffrey hasn’t done anything, and he already left!” Edmund took up a spare bowl and spooned out a few globs of barley porridge from the pot. The new shoes pinched his toes painfully tight, but he supposed that was the fashion.

  “You can’t just leave it sitting on the stalks, Edmund!” His mother spoke over a swirl of clucks. “You get that threshing done or you’ll catch it from your father when he gets back!”

  “All right, all right.” Edmund ate standing by the pot, scooping down the porridge as fast as he could. He nudged a bit of charred leather with his foot—the binding from one of his books. It had fallen off onto the hearth, preserving with it the torn, burnt corner of a single page.

  Hob Hollows shouldered him aside and reached for the ladle. “So then, Edmund.” He slopped himself a huge helping of porridge. “Going in the archery tourney today?”

  Edmund eyed up at him. “Maybe I am.”

  Hob looked over at Wat. They broke out in peals of drunken laughter.

  Edmund chewed at his gummy porridge. He pointed at Hob with his spoon. “Are you going to pay for that?”

  Hob dug out one last spoonful, put it in his mouth and belched. “I’m good for it, lad, no problems.” He regained his seat by the fire. “I’ll bring a good chicken by tomorrow, settle it all up proper.”

  “That’s what you said last night.”