The Skeleth Read online

  “It says ‘Juniper.’”

  Tom turned to find Rahilda standing behind him, a sack of barley balanced on her shoulders.

  “It used to be one of those standing stones you see about, but Lord Tristan had it carved to look like his old horse,” said Rahilda. “Just like Tristan to spend a fortune on that, and make a mess of the work on his walls.”

  Tom touched the cold stone flanks. “It’s beautiful.”

  “My sister tells me you’re not with that bunch.” Rahilda nodded up at the brigands on the walls around them. “But if you’re not, why didn’t you run when you had the chance?”

  Tom stood up. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  Rahilda shrugged. “There are folk here—children, elders—who could never get away. I won’t leave them.”

  Tom let that be his answer, too.

  Rahilda started walking. “My sister says you know John Marshal.” She glanced over her shoulder, seeming to expect Tom to follow.

  Tom caught up with her in two long strides. “I grew up on the farm next to his. He’s the closest thing to a father I ever had.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Tom held out his hands and let them drop. “Gone.”

  Lord Tristan’s great hall stood more than twice as high as a house, its sharp slate roof coming to a peak within a few feet of the battlements. Windows ran its length, cut back into the timber, all of them shuttered. The kitchen stood at its north end, in shadow from roof and wall.

  Rahilda went inside, then emerged a moment later with a bowl of porridge, barley and field beans all in a glop. “Here. Take this down to Lord Tristan. They’re holding him in a cell beneath the watchtower.”

  Tom took it and turned to go. He looked back. “Is there anything you want me to tell him?”

  Rahilda thought it over, then sighed. “Tell him he should have kept a better lookout on the world.”

  Tom hurried off across the courtyard, one hand over the bowl to preserve its warmth. He mounted the steps to the thick wooden door of the tower, found it barred, and so banged on it.

  A slot drew back in the door, and a pair of eyes glinted. The door opened, and a man with big arms and a bigger belly leaned out. He was dressed in a shirt of chain armor that clanked against the keys at his belt. “That slop had better not be for me. I saw them carting that pig in here, and I want some fresh pork.”

  Tom ducked his head, almost bowing to the man. “This is for the prisoner.”

  The jailer picked up a lantern from the room’s lone table and held it out. He jutted his double chin at the stairs. “He’s down there.”

  Tom took the lantern and descended. The lancet top of the arched stone staircase brushed through his hair, even though he crouched as he walked. He felt out each of the dank stone steps before he committed his weight. He dared to hope, just a little. He had not sat listening to the tales of Tristan all his life as had Edmund and Katherine, but he still knew that he was approaching the presence of the greatest hero the world had ever known.

  “Who is there?” A voice called from beyond the last stair, past the iron bars of a cell and out of the darkness beyond.

  Tom reached the door of the cell at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve brought you some food, my lord.” He held up the lantern to see within—the cell was rather large, a room of the same size and shape as the guardroom above it. A pair of raised stone slabs stood in the center, each of them large enough that someone could lie down on it. Funny paintings ran the circuit of the walls, surrounded by the sort of squiggly symbols Edmund liked to read. Piled sacks littered the floor, beside a fold of carpet on an old table and a chair painted red and blue with two broken legs.

  “My thanks to you, then.” Someone stood up in the shadows, a man taller than Tom and twice as wide at the shoulders. “I do not recognize your voice.”

  Tom darted a wary look up the stairs, then dropped to a whisper. “My name is Tom. I am not with the brigands. I came here from Moorvale, with John, the Marshal of Elverain.”

  “John has come? He is here?” The man felt for the pillar and stepped closer, coming into the light of the lantern.

  Tom let out a gasp, and almost dropped the stew. Hope guttered and died within him.

  The man was old. Lines cut deep into the skin of his face, and though his shoulders were indeed grand, they were also stooped. His hair gleamed white, save for two dark streaks in his beard, one on each side of his mouth. Tom took all of this in afterward, for it was the man’s eyes that transfixed him in shock and understanding. They were set and shaped in ideal proportion, spaced exactly wide enough and perfectly even, but a thick, milky film covered the whole of their surface.

  The prisoner raised a hand while seeming to gaze into the empty space above Tom’s shoulder. “I am Tristan.”

  Chapter 9

  Ellí held a finger to her mouth. “Quiet. Stand right there, Edmund. Don’t move. Watch my eyes.”

  Edmund could find himself looking nowhere else. Ellí’s blue eye dilated, until the iris was a tiny strip of clouded sky encircling night. Her brown eye contracted to a pinpoint, a shaded forest where he might wander and lose himself forever.

  Ellí reached into the sack slung at her belt. She drew forth dust—it glittered as she threw it high into the air. “ALL FLOWS, NOTHING STAYS. I PUT MY HAND INTO THE STREAM.”

  Edmund looked up. The dust arced and began to fall.

  “BY MY WILL I TURN THE CURRENT.” Ellí’s voice took on a vibration that Edmund felt in his belly. “BY MY WILL THE FERMENT CURLS. ALL FLOWS, NOTHING STAYS. I PUT MY HAND INTO THE STREAM.”

  Edmund shuddered. He gaped. The bits of dust hung in the air. At first they seemed utterly still—but they descended, ever so slowly, their turning edges glinting, reflecting a light whose source he could not see.

  “We can speak freely now,” said Ellí. “No one can hear us here.” The glittering dust turned and turned, stars winking on and off around her head.

  Edmund felt as though a whisper and a shout would sound just the same. “Where are we?”

  Ellí’s voice seemed to come from behind him, even though she stood in front of him. “We are under the Sign of Obscurity.”

  Shadows—voices, presences—moved through the edges of Edmund’s world. He felt a thrum beneath his feet. “I don’t understand.”

  “Edmund, listen to me.” Ellí’s hair slipped free from the net that bound it. It cascaded around her face as though it had a will to move and flow, every strand of it a different shade, blown by a wind that Edmund could not feel. “Lord Wolland means to start a war. Indeed, he has already started it.”

  Edmund hissed. “A war? Then what is he doing in Elverain?”

  “Every war needs allies.”

  The hairs on Edmund’s arms stood up and stayed raised.

  “Lord Wolland means to make war and he means to win.” Ellí held a hand to her forehead, the palm over her blue eye, her face contorted as though in pain. “He has made a bargain to secure the aid of creatures that once came near to exterminating every man, woman and child in the north. He is in the service of the Nethergrim, and he does not even know it.”

  A trembling dread filled Edmund at the mention of the Nethergrim’s name. He tensed and came to understand that he was waiting for the Voice to intrude upon his thoughts, even there under the Sign of Obscurity. “Why are you telling me all this?” he said. “What do you need me for, and how did you even know my name when we first met?”

  “I’m telling you because I hope that you will help me.” Ellí drew in a long breath through pursed lips and took her hand away from her face. “I need you because you thwarted the Nethergrim once already, and no wizard in centuries has been able to do that, no matter how well trained. I know your name because the wizard who taught me everything I know whispered it when she thought I was not listening.” The blue in he
r eye had dilated to nothing, leaving a glassy void.

  Edmund turned his head. He was nearly sure that he had heard the sound of his own voice in the distance, shouting or maybe screaming. He shuddered but tried not to let his fear show.

  “The creatures whose power Wolland seeks are called the Skeleth, in the language that is mother to the tongue we are speaking now.” Ellí picked up her skirts and turned to leave, and Edmund found himself following her, out through what might have been the doorway through which they had entered. “From what my teacher found in the archives of the Chancery down in the Tithe, the Skeleth threw down whole kingdoms into ruins in ages past. They serve the Nethergrim, killing and ravaging without remorse and without end, and if the legends are right, they cannot be defeated in battle.”

  A heavy tread broke the silence of the passage outside. “I swear I heard something! Ulf—hey, Ulf, get over here!”

  Edmund leapt back from the threshold in fright. He looked wildly about him, but the low cellar chamber had only one door.

  A young, tall castle guard poked his head into the cramped cellar chamber where Edmund and Ellí had hid themselves. Excuses for what they were doing down there raced through Edmund’s mind.

  “Be calm.” Ellí put her hand on Edmund’s arm. “Calm, now. Stay with me. They won’t be able to see us.”

  An older guard, sallow-cheeked and balding, stepped in behind the first. He raised a torch, flooding the room with light. “What are you talking about, Gammel? There’s no one here.”

  Edmund recoiled. He stood within arm’s reach of the two guards, so close to the torch that he could feel the heat of its flame upon his face. The tall one turned to look right at him—his face took on hollow, frightening shapes—and turned away again, poking through the sacks and stores along the wall.

  “The guard is nothing. He does not matter.” Ellí did not even try to whisper. “Stay calm, and feel nothing.”

  Edmund fought down his fear. He glanced at Ellí. “Why can’t they see us?”

  “Their eyes see, but their minds ignore the sight.” Ellí stepped out of the way of the path of the tall guard’s search. “Their ears hear, but the sound means nothing to them.”

  Gammel pawed through barrels and sacks, walking right past Edmund again and again. “I heard something before, I swear I did! It’s one of those Wollanders, I’ll bet, snooping about the place.”

  “To do what, report to their lord on the state of our cheese supplies?” Ulf turned and left, bringing the torch with him. “I’ve had just about enough of you for one night.”

  Gammel shook his head, looking right at Edmund, then shrugged and followed his companion out.

  “I’ve seen a spell like this before, but from the other side.” Edmund caught up to Ellí on her way out of the cellar behind the guards. “I don’t remember the dust, though.”

  “Every wizard makes her spells in her own way,” said Ellí. “She finds her own balance and pays her own cost.”

  “What’s the cost of your spell?”

  “You have much to learn of our ways.” Ellí winked at Edmund with the brown eye. “It’s not polite to ask that sort of thing.”

  Edmund emerged behind Ellí into the courtyard of the castle. Echoes fled wide of him, and the night sky above seemed to ring and shake with the meter of his steps. He felt a shiver, fear and delight run together. “Can you teach me how to do it?”

  Ellí smiled at him, though the ever-shifting visions of her spell smeared it out into toothy trails. “I’m just an apprentice myself, but if you would like to learn from me, I would be happy to teach you what I know.”

  Edmund had dreamed almost as many dreams about learning magic as he had about kissing Katherine. In most of those dreams, though, the teacher was a stern old master whose grudging respect was only slowly earned, not a friendly, lively girl scarcely older than he was himself. He could hardly believe his luck.

  The browning remains of Lady Isabeau’s garden seemed to curl and twist into the sky. A guard walked the parapet above the courtyard, and another coughed from atop the turrets of the keep, but they seemed to walk on empty trails into another world, and showed no sign that they had noticed Edmund and Ellí passing beneath their gaze.

  The longer Edmund stayed within the spell, the easier it became to distinguish between the sights of his own world and the fragmented visions that trailed around them. He hurried himself to walk abreast with Ellí. “So where are we going?”

  “Your lord Aelfric comes from an ancient family, older than the kingdom itself, in fact.” Ellí ascended the narrow stairs that led up to the raised, narrow door of the keep. “All the legends tell me that when the Skeleth were last summoned, they ravaged someplace nearby to here. Lord Aelfric keeps a library, books he has inherited from his forefathers down through countless generations. If there are records left of what happened the last time the Skeleth were raised, they will be there.”

  “But that’s in Lord Aelfric’s private chambers!” Edmund recoiled from the empty sound of his own voice, and dropped to a whisper. “We can’t just go in there!”

  “We must,” said Ellí. “The fate of all the north might depend on it.” She did not pause at the door of the keep, and the guard posted there spared neither her nor Edmund a glance. Edmund felt a nagging tug of conscience, but Ellí swept on inside without an instant’s hesitation, and he was not about to lose his new teacher so quickly.

  The great hall roared with another night of noisy feasting. Edmund followed Ellí on tiptoes around the benches and past the hearth, taking care to avoid tripping over anyone on his way behind the tapestries at the back of the room. The narrow passage beyond led to a set of stairs that he took two at a time. When he reached the top, he pushed the door wide to enter the hallway above. Servants slept on rush mats in alcoves along the passage, huddled in pairs for warmth outside the bedrooms of the great folk they served.

  Edmund turned back to Ellí and found a gleam in her blue eye that matched the thrill he felt. “I must admit—this is fun.”

  Ellí gave him a wink; he found her prettier on the brown-eyed side, somehow. “This is where I will need your help the most. I can’t keep up this spell for much longer, so we should find what we need as quickly as we can. Start with the oldest stuff first.”

  “Right.” Edmund guessed at which door to try and got it right the second time. “In here.” He ushered Ellí into Lord Aelfric’s private study and closed the door behind them.

  “Look at all of this!” Ellí grabbed a pile of scrolls from the shelves and started flipping through the dirty, half-ruined pages. “There are scholars down in the Tithe who would kill for half of what’s on this shelf alone. Would you light those candles for me?”

  Edmund reached for the flint and tinder, lit the candles impaled upon the pewter holder, and dragged them close. He knelt at the bottom shelf and started searching. The words, glyphs and drawings under his fingers tempted and teased at him, seeming to crawl back and forth across the page beneath the swirling shadows of the spell. Ancient legends passed before his eyes, tales of the deaths of kings he had never even heard about, accounts of travels to places he had never known existed.

  “Many centuries ago, after the fall of the Gatherers and the collapse of the great Dhanic empire, a wandering tribe crossed over the mountains from the west.” Ellí spoke softly as she searched the highest shelf, her skirts swaying and dangling by Edmund’s hands. “They found the remains of the old empire easy pickings, so they marched here in ever greater numbers, looking first for plunder, then for conquest.”

  Edmund picked up a book, then placed it aside—tax records. “Who were they?”

  Ellí reached down to poke at Edmund’s hair. “From all I have read, they looked a lot like you do. They were the old Pael, and we are speaking the child of their language.”

  Edmund pulled out a rather torn and tatty book from
the shelf. He had to turn it facedown to hold it, for the stiff leather binding only remained on the front. The back side of the book was nothing but a ragged, ruined page, the ancient stitching along the edges coming out in fraying loops.

  Edmund set the book on the thick oaken council table and turned through a few pages. “Ellí. Here.”

  Ellí bent to look. “This is it! Oh, well done, Edmund!” She read along in breathless fascination: “There came three kings, three brothers, three kinsmen of the Pael: Ricimer, Thodimund and Childeric the Fair; an axe-king, a sword-king and a king of tall spear. The brothers marched for mastery across the north, each taking for his queen a maiden sister of the Dhanu. Each king built a tower for his queen, a Pael tower by a Dhanu stone.”

  Edmund leaned in over the table. “Wait, go back. Read that last part again.” He listened, then wanted to jump into the air from excitement. “There’s a broken-down old castle on a hill beside my village. One of its towers is older and taller than the others, and it’s next to a standing stone that looks older still.”

  Ellí’s brown eye twinkled in delight. “And you wondered why I might need your help.”

  Edmund felt a blush creep up around his ears.

  Ellí placed her hands on the book with an air of reverence. “This is the Paelandabok, the work of unknown hands in the dark years before the making of your kingdom. Bits and pieces of it survived as quotations in the works of other authors, but I don’t think anyone outside Lord Aelfric’s family has seen the original in centuries.” She followed the closely scrawled text onto the other page: “A tower by the riverbend for the Queen of the Wheels, one within the mountain vale for the Queen of the Heart, and one in the fairest of the lands between water and wood for the Queen of the Thrice-Opened Eye.”

  Edmund leaned in to look at the words as Ellí read them. “No one remembers any of this, anymore. It’s our own history, and we don’t even remember it.”