The Nethergrim Read online

  Edmund made his rounds, avoiding the merchants’ table—Grubby Hands had drunk quite enough for one night. As he passed the kitchen door, he caught the sounds of his parents in low argument, his mother pleading and weeping and his father growling, biting at the ends of her words.

  “Did they ever tell you what it was?” Another stranger—the dusty tinker from the fair—leaned across from his table. “The Nethergrim, I mean. Did they ever tell you what they saw, what they did?”

  “Three men only came back from the mountain.” Horsa Blackcalf folded his hands on his belly. “Tristan nearly died of his wounds, Vithric was delirious for weeks, and John Marshal—if you could have seen the look on his face. John only said that it was done, that’s all, and not another word about it since.”

  “No, no, he said Tristan ran it through!” Nicky reached out to grab up some of Martin’s meager supper—a hunk of bread, and an onion that he bit into like an apple. “That’s what he said—the Nethergrim died on Tristan’s sword.”

  Horsa scratched his warty nose. “I don’t see any gray in your beard, Nicholas Bird. I don’t recall that you were yet born when they came back.”

  “Well, that’s what my gran said.” Nicky tossed the onion from one hand to the other. “Told me often, when I sat at her knee of an evening: ‘Tristan slew the Nethergrim, aye he did. Ran it straight through the heart, and nearly drowned in its gore.’”

  “Your gran was naught but an old—” Horsa stopped, glanced sidelong at Nicky, and contented himself with a dismissive shake of his head.

  Edmund lingered at the table. “Did Tristan ever say himself what he’d done?”

  “If he did, how are we to know about it?” Horsa placed his fiddle on his knee, gave it a few scrapes, then turned the pegs to tune it. “He left Elverain that same year, and he’s not been back here since.”

  The dusty tinker made bold to hop across from his table and join them. “I’ll tell you this, every bard and minstrel in every tavern from here to Anster sings it just the same, that Tristan stepped right up and struck the Nethergrim dead.” He sat down next to Martin. “You’ve heard the songs, have you not? And Tristan drove his sword into the jelly of its eye, the jelly of its eye, so praise you all good Tristan, for he—”

  Martin held up a meaty hand. “Tell you what, stranger, stop singing and the next round’s on me.”

  “But maybe that’s how it got about,” said Edmund. “Maybe Tristan told the story, back in his own lands, or maybe Vithric did, before he died.”

  Horsa ran up and down the scales on his fiddle. “We’ve never pressed John Marshal for the whole of the story, though he’s lived among us for nigh on thirty years. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Martin nodded. “If keeping it in is what gets my uncle John through the days, then so be it.”

  “You younger folk, you strangers, you can’t know what it was like back then.” Horsa waved his fiddle bow around the room. “It was as though all the troubles from every old legend you’d ever heard came back all at once to threaten us with ruin. First it was livestock, then folk caught out alone, then farms and then whole villages—no message, no mercy, nothing sought but our deaths. It was like no sort of war made by men. We could not plead nor bargain—we could not even surrender. We were to be overrun, scattered out onto the roads and fields to be cut down one after the next, and our lords seemed able to do nothing. Then Tristan came, and Vithric, John and all the Ten. They fought for us, they died for us, they gave us hope. It’s true, stranger, that we do not know what they faced in those mountains, nor even exactly where the bodies of our fathers and brothers may lie, but since the day those three came home, there has not been a single grute nor bolgug nor any such thing seen in settled lands. They earned our faith in them, and so we give it gladly.”

  “You there, the blond boy!” Grubby Hands thunked his mug. “Let’s have another round over here!”

  Edmund pretended not to hear him. He slid back into the dark, serving the tables farther from the fire. He passed around the back corner, then bumped into a goblet held right at the level of the pitcher.

  “Ale, please.”

  A prickling chill shot up Edmund’s neck. The man holding the goblet was younger than he sounded, with thick short hair just starting to go gray over a smooth-shaven chin. He wore dark clothes fit for a prosperous merchant but without a merchant’s taste for loud color. He held up a parchment to read it by the light of a candle—it appeared to be the lineage of the royal family. Books and scrolls lay scattered all about on the table before him, beside a tray piled high with chicken bones.

  A flood of memories struck Edmund dizzy. He had only just served the man—seen him, served him food and drink and then somehow forgotten he was there. Then he remembered that the man had been there for days, and then remembered that he had remembered this before and forgotten it, again and again. The rush-littered ground buckled below him. Not knowing what to do, he held out his pitcher to serve.

  “On second thought, don’t bother.” The stranger shut his book. “Do these people ever stop drinking?”

  “Do I—do I know you?”

  The stranger favored Edmund with a chilly smile. “You do not.” He rolled up his parchment and slid it into an ivory tube. “Prepare my horse.”

  Edmund looked down at the books again. “You . . . you’re a wizard.”

  “And you are a peasant. My, what an enjoyable game. Now go prepare my—” The cough bubbled up from his throat. He bent and spat blood into a hand cloth.

  Edmund looked up and around the tavern. No one paid the slightest notice to the stranger, despite the violence of his coughing, despite the handsome cut of his clothes and despite the tooled and decorated books on the table before him, each one of which was likely worth more than they could earn in a month.

  “—my horse.” The man shuffled his books into a pair of saddlebags and dropped them over Edmund’s shoulder. “Now.”

  “Yes, my—lord?”

  “You will address me as ‘your eminence.’”

  “Yes, your eminence.” Edmund hurried outside. The din of talk and music swung shut behind the door. The sun set low behind the far peaks of the Girth, raising shadows off the roofs of his neighbors. The saddlebags weighed heavy on his shoulder, stuffed to bursting with thick, rectangular shapes.

  Edmund ran his fingers down the worked leather strap of the bag, then in under the flap. He touched board-and-leather binding, a rough run of pages, the frill of a tasseled bookmark. He looked up at the waking stars, thinking he might take a moment to decide, but he knew that he already had.

  His future stretched out a hand and beckoned. He weighed it all up in moments—he might be gone for years, but when he came back, when Katherine saw what he had become, she could not help but fall in love with him. He pictured himself grown tall and stern, dressed in dark finery and crowned with hard-won wisdom, slapping a bag of gold marks in the craggy hands of Tom’s master and asking—no, commanding—that his friend be given his freedom. Yes, oh yes—and best of all, Geoffrey would have to inherit the inn. Father would have no choice.

  The stranger emerged. Edmund turned to him, ready with the question that would raise him up, change his life and set him on a new course forever. “Your eminence—”

  “No,” said the stranger.

  Edmund’s mouth hung open. He stammered. “How . . . how?”

  “You affect the posture of the supplicant.” The stranger shouldered past onto the road. “I have seen my share.”

  “But, you don’t even know what I’m asking.” Edmund turned to follow. “Please!”

  “Do I need to be told?” The stranger bent to cough again. “Your eyes tell me what I need to know. You want something from me and have nothing to offer in return.”

  “But I have read The Seven Roads! I know the keys and chords of the Five Wheels, the secret names of the Three Pillars! Test me, your eminence—test me, please! I know them all!”

  The stranger looked Edmund up
and down. “Well, I can’t be right all the time. Here I thought you were begging to be taken as a servant, but no! You wish to become an apprentice. How old are you?”

  “Fourteen, your eminence.”

  “Fourteen.” The wizard spat a laugh, though the sound was too flat to be seriously taken as mirth. “By the time I was twelve, I had written a summation of commentaries upon each of the Seven Roads. By fourteen I could call and command forces that you could not even name, spoken words that you could not in a year perceive the meaning, pressed my mind through realms of thought whose merest shadow will be forever unknown to you. You aspire beyond your station. If you had come to me five years ago, I might have considered you, but now you are far too old.”

  He bent to cough again—it seemed to sharpen his anger. He stepped over Edmund and stretched out an arm toward the stables. “Now go get my horse before I discover that you have started to annoy me.”

  Edmund backed away. “Yes, your eminence. Please forgive me, your eminence.” His voice came out just like Geoffrey’s—a broken little squeak, the sound of someone who knows he cannot win.

  The stables leaned up beside the inn, a newer and much flimsier construction set well back from the road beside the Twintrees’ tall and ancient hedge. Edmund did not need to be told which horse. He set down the bags in the straw that lined the stall.

  Anger flared in him, hotter than the shame he had swallowed. The flap of one of the saddlebags fell open to expose the silvered edging on the binding of a book. He stared down at it. His mouth went dry.

  It was done in a heartbeat. Sweat broke on his palms—he wiped them on his breeches and felt along the wall for the bridle.

  “Aren’t you finished yet?” The stranger followed him in through the doorway of the stable.

  “Almost, your eminence.” Edmund threw the bags over the horse’s back and covered them with the saddle. He bent down to fasten the girth, fumbled and tried again.

  “Boy! Do you need light?”

  “No, no—done, your eminence!” Edmund led the horse from his stall. He handed the reins to the stranger. He could not stop his fingers from shaking.

  The stranger took the reins without looking. He gazed around him at the darkening village—the statue and hall up in the square, then back at the inn and then across the street at Jordan Dyer’s workshop—all as though he expected to find something but did not.

  “Hmm. Somewhat shabbier than I remembered it.” He used Edmund’s hands for a step into the saddle, then set his horse to a canter up into the square and onward into darkness.

  Edmund breathed in through his nose, and out. He waited for the sound of hoofbeats to fade out of hearing, then raced back into the stable. He seized the book out of the straw and slipped behind the inn. His skin prickled—it was done. He would need to find a new hiding place.

  Chapter

  8

  A raw wind raked the field. The sun rose behind clouds that stretched out to spin into wisps at the edge of the sky. Tom grasped the stilts of the plow. “Cush, now.” The oxen strained in the yoke, and then the plow started moving through ground still heavy with damp.

  “Your master should have had you go over this in spring.” A hired man named Oswin followed just behind, smashing clods of earth left in Tom’s wake with a mallet. Oswin wore a cap pulled tight over woolly dark curls. His face bore the marks of a childhood pox. His shirt was like Tom’s, all stitch and mending.

  Tom’s floppy old shoes were little use against the seeping cold. The water got in and soaked him to the ankles, puddle after puddle in the furrows. “Cush. On we go.” The oxen lowered their heads and pulled, blowing hard, battling their way toward the distant headland and a moment’s rest at the end of the field.

  “Aye, that’s grand, how you do that,” said Oswin. “Look at ’em go! Never seen that done without a whip.”

  The plow kicked and dragged in the hard-caked earth. Tom fought to hold it straight. The day promised work and nothing else, one furlong and the next until he dropped. The world was beautiful, the world was good—he said it to himself at the rise of every morning. Most days it was enough to get him through.

  A blackbird took to singing in the trees beside him. She kept pace with him, flying from branch to branch along the field, then swooped in to perch on his shoulder. He felt her dig her talons in, just enough to keep herself from falling off. The wind swung in from the west, bringing news: tomorrow promised rain, by noon and not later. The blackbird ruffled and preened her feathers. The world was beautiful, the world was good.

  “Hoy, Tom! There’s a bird on your shoulder!”

  Tom glanced behind him. He did not like the look on Oswin’s face.

  “Oh, ho, and she’s a nice plump one.” Oswin dropped his mallet. “Hold still, now. Blackbirds are good eating.”

  Tom shrugged up his shoulder. “Go.” The blackbird sprang to flight just in time, flapping off an inch past Oswin’s reach.

  “Aw, curse it, what did you move for?” Oswin jumped and clapped the air, but had no hope of making the catch. “We could’ve had her in the stew!”

  They reached the headland, a strip of treed and ragged ground between the fields. Tom steered the oxen through the long slow turn and set down the plow at the edge of the next furrow. He found himself wishing that he had not been sent to the fair. It seemed to make him want things that he knew he could not have. It was easier not to want them.

  “Mother’s grace, I’m hungry.” Oswin leaned against the mossy boulder by the stream. “When’s your master going to bring us something?”

  “I’m trying not to think about it.” Tom drew up his tunic against the cut of the wind. The sweat on his skin began to chill. The breath of the oxen steamed out—slower, slower. They looked at him. They were hungry, too.

  “He doesn’t pay me enough. He doesn’t pay me half enough.” Oswin knocked his mallet against the boulder. “So there, Tom, I’ve been wondering—why are you here?”

  Tom could not guess what Oswin meant. When he could not guess what people meant when they talked, he just waited for them to try again.

  “You’re a bit slow, aren’t you?” Oswin chuckled. “Why are you here, Tom, on this farm, a bonded slave to your master? What happened—your family all die on you?”

  “Oh.” Tom shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. I was left on the step of an inn down in the city. My master bought me and brought me up here. I was just a baby; I don’t remember it.”

  “Ah, right. That sort of thing.” Oswin scratched his chin. “Just as well you don’t know your parents, then. Wouldn’t be the sort you’d want to meet.”

  Tom shut his eyes. It was enough to make the day a bad one, all the way to night. It was enough to make him wish for sleep and the end of thinking. He took up the stilts and whistled. The oxen started down the field.

  “Hey now, no harm meant, there.” Oswin fell into step behind them. “I know who my mother is, and let me tell you, I wish I didn’t.”

  Some people seemed to talk just to stop themselves from listening. That was what Tom had always guessed it must be. The words people spoke so often seemed to get in the way.

  “So hungry I could eat that ox, and then the other one for afters.” Oswin smashed a clump of earth with more effort than was needed. “I was at a feast once, you know, a great big feast up at the castle, just before your master hired me on. Did I ever tell you? It was one of those things the nobs do sometimes—throw a banquet for a few of us poor folk so they can sleep easy at nights. I was out begging by the gates one day, and they just pulled me in, sat me down and, oh, you should have seen it! Beef-and-onion stew, smoked herring on trenchers with peas and beans on the side. And they had things called figs, too, drenched in honey. Have you ever had a fig?”

  The plow lurched sideways in the furrow. Tom set his weight against it and looked down. The ox on the left, a mottled dark creature twelve hands high at the shoulder, pulled up a hind leg and wobbled with every other step.


  “Well, they’re chewy and sweet,” said Oswin. “I could eat them all day. And they have bowls full of salt at the table, did you know? Everyone gets one—you can just sprinkle it all over your food. And at the end they had baked apples with cloves and some white stuff that I thought was more salt, but it turned out to be pure sugar! You ever had sugar? Never had anything like it in my—hoy, what are we stopping for?”

  Tom set down the plow. “Thunder’s pulling lame.”

  “We can’t stop now, we’ve got a whole acre to do.” Oswin pointed all around him with his mallet. “We’ll be at it till sundown as it is!”

  “We won’t be going anywhere if Thunder goes off his hooves.” Tom knelt at Thunder’s side. The ox rolled an eye at him, his face pinched in pain.

  Tom touched his fingers down the injured haunch, felt the tremble and the heat. No good. “We should get the horses.”

  “Can’t—your master rented them out to the Millers for the day. You’re sure it’s so bad?”

  “It’s bad, and it will get worse if we keep going. He needs rest.”

  Oswin snorted, then jutted his weak chin across the field. “Tell that to your master. Here he comes.”

  Tom stood and turned. His master, Athelstan Barnwell, stomped down the path from the farm—old, bent of back, his face a mask of sour lines. He held a whip in his hand.

  “Morning, Athelstan.” Oswin waved as he approached. “I don’t suppose you’ve brought us some breakfast?”

  “You’re slow.” Athelstan’s voice was a salted field. “You’re accursed slow. You make us miss good growing and you’ll regret it.”

  Tom bowed his head. “Thunder’s lame, Master.”

  Athelstan shouldered past and bent to examine the ox. “Which?”