The Nethergrim (2 page)

“You speak truth.” Tristan roused himself from his place by the fire. “Come with me.”

“What do you mean?” Vithric spoke in a snap. “We have already discussed it. There is no way out.”

Tristan opened the door. “I have lost my sword and shield. I may have lost my honor, too—but I did not lose my horse. Come.”

He led a dumbfounded Vithric to the stable. “You will have to ride without a saddle.” He touched Juniper’s face. “Goodbye, dear friend. Bear this man to safety.”

Vithric gaped at Tristan. “You could have run. You could have gotten on this horse and galloped for your life as soon as you knew you were in danger.”

“His name is Juniper.” Tristan walked them out to the road. “I ask only that you treat him well.”

“You grant me the hope of life,” said Vithric. “How do you know that I am worthy of the gift?”

Tristan helped him onto Juniper’s back. “Make yourself worthy.”

Vithric took the reins. He stared down at Tristan, then off into the distance. “Then—what will you do?”

“Help the folk of this village escape their fate if I can, or die at their side if I cannot.” Tristan slapped Juniper’s flank. “Now ride, and do not look back.”

Juniper sprang off at a gallop down the cold and empty road. Tristan turned to walk to the hall alone, but before he had gotten much closer, he felt a chill down his back. He looked around; creeping from paddock to garden to byre, the servants of the Nethergrim had shadowed him, and now they drew in. He would never reach the hall alive.

Even though he knew it was useless, he took a fighting stance. “I know what you are—I have killed your kind before. You cannot scare me to death. Come and take me, if you can.”

The creatures closed in, emerging from the shadows under cottage and haystack. Just before they crept onto the road and their forms became more than awful suggestions, Tristan heard the sound of hoofbeats approaching at a gallop. At first he thought he was dreaming, and then he thought it was the villagers, but it came from the other way. He looked down the road and could scarcely believe what he saw.

Yes. It was Juniper—and Vithric, too. They rode in at a thunder, a heartbeat ahead of the Nethergrim’s creatures.

“I come to return your gift!” Vithric reached down for Tristan’s hand, and so the greatest knight and the greatest wizard this world has ever known became friends. You see, before they could save that little village, and then the kingdom and all the world, first they had to save each other.

Chapter
1

E
dmund Bale came last to breakfast, too bleary to note the curious silence until it was too late. He descended the rickety steps into the tavern at a sleepy shuffle, yawning all the way down. His family ate their morning meal at the best table by the fire. The rest of the room was a jumble of benches left as they were when the last guest stumbled out the night before.

“Horsa left his fiddle here again.” Edmund kicked it aside. He had reached his chair before he came to understand that his family was neither talking nor eating. Between them on the table, amongst the loaves and leeks and bowls of porridge, lay a pile of parchment—bound scrolls and loose leaves thrown carelessly over a pair of worn old books.

Edmund felt the blood drain from his face. “Where—”

“Where you hid them,” said his father. “Sit down.”

His mother fixed him with a wounded look. “Son, we told you about this, we told you and told you. What does it take, Edmund? What does it take to get through to you?”

“Mum—”

“Sleepy, are you?” Edmund’s father ground his teeth. “Up late?”

“No, I—no, it’s not—” Edmund could not find a good lie. “I just—”

His father grabbed him by the arm. “Sit. Down!”

Edmund sat, reeling. He had been so careful, so sure to pick his moments, stealthy almost beyond reason with his secret stores of books. His mother sighed, looked away, shook her head and sighed again. His little brother, Geoffrey, curled his snub-nosed, freckled face into a smirk from across the table.

“You’re in it now.” Geoffrey mouthed the words.

Edmund responded in kind, moving his lips slowly so that his brother could not mistake him. “If you did this—” He curled a fist. He was by no means big—something less than average height for his age and rather underdeveloped compared with the beefy apprentices and farmers’ sons who lived in the village. He was, however, more than a match for his twelve-year-old brother, and he felt a tiny moment of pleasure at the death of Geoffrey’s smile.

Their father reached into the pile and pulled out a thin pamphlet, no more than a few dog-eared pages folded over and bound with string. He opened it and read: “The Song of Ingomer.”

“It’s just a story, Father.” Edmund tried to catch a glimpse of which books lay beneath the parchments; if they had found only the songbook and the one on old legends, he might escape the worst. “Ingomer was a famous wizard from away south, and that’s just the story of his life, all his travels and—”

“I know who he is.” His father set down the pamphlet and picked up a scroll. He unrolled it. “The Discovery of the East, being the account of Plegmund of Sparrock on his journey beyond the White Sea.” He tossed the scroll aside and shook his head.

“Edmund, how many times have we had this talk now?” His mother had a face made for grievance. “How many? Why must you act this way?”

“The Fume or the Flicker.” His father read from another scroll. “The debates of Tancred of Overstoke and Carloman the Short on the subject of Fire, transformation and the magical union of opposites.”

“The waste, Edmund, the utter waste.” His mother threw up her hands. “I argued with your father, I told him letting you keep your tips would let you get some savings started, teach you the value of a penny. You’ve made a fool of your mother, a right fool. Are you happy, son? Are you?”

“Beasts of the Western Girth,” read Edmund’s father from the top of a scroll. He tossed it aside and read another, and another. “The Circulation of Harmonies, The Illuminations of Thodebert.”

“He’s always reading, Father.” Geoffrey bounced in his chair but could not draw their father’s eye. He gave up and turned the other way. “Always reading, Mum, reading stupid things when you’re not looking.”

“Now what’s this?” Edmund’s f
ather had uncovered a flat sheet of parchment, much scraped, upon which was written a number of verses filled with edits and crossings-out. Edmund let out a gasp and tried to seize the page, but his father snatched it up and stood him off with a glare.

“Looks like our boy’s been doing some scribbling of his own.” Edmund’s father scanned the parchment. He staged a cough and held it up to read aloud:

Katherine, Katherine, ever fair,

A waterfall of lustrous hair,

Two eyes whose gaze fill me with bliss,

And lips I dream each night to kiss.

Katherine, Katherine, perfect girl,

Before you I am but a churl,

Look down to me from far above,

And tell me how to win your love.

Edmund felt a flush run up his neck and out to the tips of his ears. Geoffrey broke into hoots of nasty laughter and made taunting signs with his fingers.

“Just let that go, Harman,” said his mother. “That’s normal.”

“I doubt you could say the same for this.” Edmund’s father picked up the heavier of the two books. The last of Edmund’s hopes fell to bits. They had found both of his hiding places.

Harman Bale pulled open the soft cover of the book, paying little heed to the new crack he gave its spine. He held it down flat to the table and thumbed through its pages; closely written passages flipped past, followed by pages filled with geometric shapes, then drawings of lutes, flutes and fiddles surrounded by notes and words of song. Then a set of numbers and symbols, then a series of chords across circles, then a long list of words and then more passages of writing. Anger grew on his face with every page he turned. He set the book down with a thump in front of Edmund. “What is this?”

Edmund glanced up at his father, then away. “It’s called
The Seven Roads.
”

Harman leaned closer. “The Seven Roads to what?”

“It’s—” Edmund swallowed. “It’s a preparatory course.”

“And what’s it preparing you for?”

Edmund’s stomach flipped and churned. He made no answer.

His father came closer still. “Say it.”

“Magic,” muttered Edmund.

Harman picked up the smaller book and brandished it as though he were readying to smack it across Edmund’s face. “And this one? The same?”

“Yes, Father.”

Harman reached out and tapped a finger hard, again and again, at Edmund’s temple. “Like a hole in your head. Everything I say, in one ear and out the other. Makes me sick.”

Edmund sat still, swaying with every strike of his father’s fingertip to his head. The look of sneering triumph began to fade from Geoffrey’s face.

His father slammed down the second book. “That’s it, Sarra. Tips go back to me until he’s grown up enough to deserve them.”

“You were right, dear.” Edmund’s mother shook her head. “Still a silly little boy.”

“This book alone is worth nearly a mark,” said Harman. He turned to Edmund. “If I found out you stole this—”

“I paid for it,” said Edmund. “I bought it with my own money.”

“Son, this pile must have cost you every single coin you earned in the last year!” said Sarra. “What were you thinking of? What were you thinking of to do this?”

“I like it, that’s what I was thinking!”

Harman brought up the back of his hand. “Don’t you dare raise your voice to your mother!”

Edmund flinched away. His father started in on one of his favorite themes—even through his fright Edmund found himself mouthing along with the too-familiar words:

“Do you think I moved this family to this backwater, this sleepy little patch of nowhere for the good of my own health?” Harman punctuated his speech with a slam of his fist onto
The Song of Ingomer,
so hard that Edmund heard the parchment rip. “Do you think I put up with those stinking drunks every day because I like their company? I moved us here to set you up in a place you could inherit, to found something that will last—and this is what I get in return.”

“I didn’t ask for us to move here.” Edmund could not raise his voice above a mutter. His brother looked down and away—their father never said a word about what Geoffrey was meant to inherit.

Harman drummed his fingers on the table, scowling out the window at the rising day. He reached for his ale, took a swig, then glared at Edmund’s mother over the rim of his mug. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?” said Sarra. “How is it my fault?”

“You treat that boy like a baby. You let him do as he likes, and see what comes of it!”

“He’s only fourteen.”

“Fourteen is old enough to start acting like a man!”

“Well, maybe if you paid more attention to them, they’d know what you wanted!”

“Don’t you start with me, woman! That boy is old enough to know what’s expected of him, but what does he do? He doodles funny symbols all over the ledger book. He daydreams by the fireplace. He plays about with an orphan slave and moons over that great ox of a girl.”

Edmund gripped the table hard.

“There’s nothing wrong with Katherine Marshal,” said Edmund’s mother. “A little tall, maybe, but a nice figure. Good hips on her.”

Harman snorted.

“She’s just a tomboy—most tall girls are,” said Sarra. “She’ll grow out of it.”

“Well, she’ll have a good dowry, at least, so if he likes her so much, he should be asking to marry her.” Edmund’s father rounded back on him. “And do you know what you need for that, boy? You know what you need to persuade John Marshal to give away his only daughter? You need a living, you need a future, you need the coin you had before you tossed it away on this nonsense. You try finding yourself a wife with a pile of parchment, see where you get. You like that orphan boy, too? Then earn some money, save it up and buy him off his master. It’ll teach you to drive a bargain.”

Edmund stood up, his fists balled tight and trembling. “Don’t talk about my friends like that.”

Harman rose from his chair. Edmund quailed, but the blow never landed. His father looked down at the table, then in one swift motion snatched up the books and scrolls and threw them onto the fire. He might as well have thrown Edmund on, too, for the way it felt. The parchment caught at once, sending up a roll of sickening smoke.

“Harman!” Sarra coughed and waved her hand before her face.

Edmund’s father stepped around the table, caught Edmund by the ear and dragged him over to the washpot that sat above the fuming fire. He bent Edmund’s head over the pot until Edmund could see himself in the water, his eyes streaming from the smoke that came from his burning books below.

“Take a look,” he said. “What do you see? What are you?”

Edmund looked at the reflection of his face, then at the reflection of his father above him. He saw that their noses were alike and their chins unlike, that he had his father’s eyes but lacked his brow. His own hair stuck up all about like a messy bale of yellow straw—his father’s had begun to thin into a dark lace across his crown.

A rippled Harman stared up at Edmund from the water. “Are you noble?”

“No, Father.”

“Are you rich?”

“No, Father.”

“Do you live in the city with the other rich nobs?”

“No, Father.”

“Are you going off to study with some great fancy wizard and fiddle about with books all your days?”

A tear struck the water. “No, Father.”

“No, boy.” Harman let go of Edmund’s neck and shoved him away from the fire. “You know what you are? You’re an ungrateful brat who has no idea how good he’s got it. You have a roof over your head, good solid meals and a trade to inherit, and still you act like it’s not good enough for you. You are the son of innkeepers. You fetch ale. You count kegs. You cook and you serve. You are a peasant, and you’d do well to remember that you’re better off than most.”

Edmund stumbled back a few paces, clutching at his throbbing ear. Harman took his place at the table and resumed his morning meal.

“Grow up.” He said it through a mouthful of porridge. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Come to the table, Edmund,” said his mother. “Eat your breakfast.”

“I’m not very hungry this morning, Mum.”

His father turned a look upon him. Edmund sat.