The Nethergrim (21 page)

Edmund looked at Tom. He did not know how to reply, so he rummaged through his bags and drew out an apple. “These are from the Twintrees. Always the best.”

“If Katherine’s father went on, he went on without a horse.” Tom took the apple and bit in. “If we go the same way he did, we might catch up.”

“I hope so.” Edmund found himself repeating the words under his breath. He reached out and stroked Jumble’s belly.

“He likes that,” said Tom.

“Do you?” Edmund scratched some more. “Hey, boy?” Jumble opened his eyes and lolled his tongue.

Tom finished his apple—flesh and ends. He dropped the seeds on the fire. “My master rented John Marshal’s east field when I was five, for the price of one day’s work from me every month. I counted out the weeks by the days that Master would send me over—I’d wait for them, dream about them. I’d gather chaff and John would thank me for it. I’d chop firewood and Katherine would come by with a mug of water. No one cursed me. No one hit me. Before they sent me home, they would feed me supper. It’s the only time I ever ate at a table.”

The fire died back. Tom fell into red shadow. “I can’t bear to think he’s dead.”

Katherine turned in her sleep. Edmund forced himself to look away before Tom caught him staring. “I forgot to tell you on the way. The Nethergrim might still be alive.”

“I’d guessed that much.”

Edmund felt his fears loom up around him in the dark. “We don’t know where we’re going.”

“I believe in you,” said Tom. “You’re the smartest person I know.”

It almost made Edmund feel better. “You should get some sleep. I’ll take a turn watching.”

Tom lay back in the bedding. “I’ll try.”

Chapter
22

T
he last stars twinkled high and west over the Girth, giving way with each passing moment to the widening of dawn. Edmund turned at the side of the inn, and stopped. The whole of his world lay beneath him, lit to cold burning by the sunrise. The Dorwood stretched in endless, deathless green across the north; the West Road wound through the foothills and down through a patchwork of pasture and field. Past that, the sun sat red upon the moors, flooding the world in new light. The sight took his breath away—but the wind dug deep beneath his collar. He hurried around behind the inn and shouldered back the door of the stable.

“Breakfast.” He held out the wooden bowl.

Katherine unbent from the stall farthest down with the currycomb in her hand. Her breath steamed out white in the cold. “You cooked?”

“There was a hearth, and dry wood, so why not?” Edmund picked his way over broken tools, bits of wood and piles of hay dropped all about on the hard dirt floor. He found Rosie saddled and brushed, her saddlebags slung under the cantle.

“Oh, it’s warm.” Katherine cupped the bowl in her hands. Curls of wind found their way through the many cracks in the walls—they moaned in haunted harmony and set the flame of her lantern to wavering.

Edmund rummaged back through the stall for Rosie’s bridle. “Brrr—drafty in here.”

“It’s draftier outside. I’m enjoying this while I can.” Katherine spooned up the porridge. “This is delicious! How did you do it?”

“It helps that you brought my mother’s whole store of herbs with you.” Edmund dug a finger under Rosie’s halter, but she did not want to leave.

“Oh—did I?” Katherine spoke with her mouth full. “It was dark.”

There came a kick from the door of the next stall. “My lord calls for his carrot.” Katherine reached into her bags. “Here, one for Rosie.”

Edmund broke his carrot in half and held the pieces in his palm. Rosie twitched up her ears. He stepped back—she stepped out, looking at the carrot, then the door.

“I was just thinking when you came in.” Katherine jingled the harness in her stall. “Tristan must have stabled Juniper right here, all those years back.”

Edmund looked about him. He had never imagined the stables from that story as a grand place, but neither had he expected them to be quite so shabby. He felt a whiskered muzzle at his hand—Rosie nearly got her carrot for free.

“Papa always said that in the days that followed, Juniper did as much to save the folk of this village as anyone,” said Katherine. “They say he trampled down dozens of bolgugs, that he charged at foul creatures when men lost their nerve—the second-finest horse ever born.”

“Second?”

Katherine stepped out into the passage. “Second.” Indigo walked after her, crunching on his carrot.

Edmund kept the carrot in his hands just out of Rosie’s reach, using it to lead her outside. The stable door opened west onto a view of the peaks, their caps of snow going pink with the dawn. “How far is that?”

Katherine looked. “It’s hard to say—I’m not used to land like this. Forty miles, maybe.”

“Ugh.” Edmund rubbed at his legs. “I’m still sore from yesterday.”

They found Tom standing on a broken-down cart, looking east over the long descent behind them, back toward their home. He held Berry loose by the reins, letting him pick at the meager grass by the roadside.

Edmund opened his palm—Rosie dove for the carrot. “Saying goodbye?”

“Making sure no one’s following us.” Tom turned and swung his leg from the cart—he looked like a stork, but he got himself up into the saddle without trouble.

“Did you have some of this porridge?” Katherine dug out another spoonful from the bowl.

“It was very good.” Tom turned Berry around to face the rising road. “I liked the thyme and the parsley.”

“Edmund’s got his mother’s touch.” Katherine looked around her, then set the empty bowl on the cart. Jumble took that as his cue to swoop in for the dregs.

“We’ll have to keep our eyes open for any place the road might split.” Edmund put a foot in the stirrup and sized up the leap into the saddle. “Or a river, any one of them might—hold still, Rosie. Rosie! Hold still!”

Rosie rolled a look at him and pinned her ears back. Edmund hopped on one foot, following her shuffle to the side. “Stop that!” He put a hand on her withers to try to hold her in place. “She always does this.”

“You can use the cart, Edmund.” Katherine got Indigo’s bridle on. “Tom did.”

“No, no. I know how.” Edmund tensed his back leg. This time he would get it right, out in the daylight where Katherine could see it. He lowered down and sprang for the saddle.

Rosie shifted in the middle of his leap, leaving Edmund to waggle his leg in the air and crash back to the ground. “Ow!” He yanked his foot from the stirrup. “You stupid old affer!” Rosie dropped her head and danced away.

Katherine reached down to help him up. “Don’t worry, it takes time to learn.” It could not have felt worse if she had laughed and kicked him. Her touch meant nothing if she thought him a runt, good for making porridge, a weedy little boy who was just like his mother.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” Edmund crossed his arms. “She just hates me.”

“Move slower around her.” Katherine caught the reins and looped them back over Rosie’s head. “Speak soft as you come near, and always keep a hand on her side when you move past her rump.”

“You don’t do any of that with Indigo.”

“Rosie’s not Indigo.”

“She’s afraid of you,” said Tom as he walked Berry nearby. “She’s had a hard life. When you get angry, she thinks you’re going to hit her.”

Edmund felt heartily sick of Tom and his bumpkin wisdom. “Oh, how do you know that? We only bought her last year!”

“It’s in her walk,” said Tom. “It’s in her face. She flinches when men raise their voices. Whoever owned her before your father treated her very hard.”

Edmund looked back at Rosie. “Oh. Well—I didn’t mean to hurt her.” Rosie regarded him in tense suspicion, then let him run his hand along her broken-down withers. After a while she turned to push her nose into his palm, something he could not remember her ever doing before.

“I’ll make a horseman of you yet.” Katherine knelt with her fingers laced. “Step in.”

Edmund could not think of how to refuse. He put a foot in Katherine’s hands and let her raise him onto Rosie’s back.

Katherine made the leap into Indigo’s saddle look so easy that a child could do it—even though Indigo was three hands taller than Rosie. She started them off at a walk, through what would once have passed for the center of the village. Rosie made up her mind to follow close at Indigo’s flank, while Tom let Berry amble behind. They passed the burned-out husk of the village hall in silence, then ascended into the arms of the pass.

“I can see why they called this place Upenough.” Katherine glanced back over her shoulder. “Look at that!”

Her voice echoed back, once and again—and again. Edmund turned to look just as they crested the rise. He caught one last glimpse of his home—he thought of his father, made a silent wish—then Rosie paced on for another stride and it was gone.

The valley they entered dropped before them for a hundred yards, then rose on a southwest curve—a long scar up the side of the Girth with walls of spruce and fir folded into slopes that split and ran and split again as they descended to meet the road. Trees thinned to copses and then stands, dotted out to lone adventurers and then gave way to open green that ran to gray and then to white. Edmund breathed in air sharp with chill and the resin of trees, empty of all else save the scents of rock and dry dirt.

“If it weren’t for the road, I’d think we were the only people ever to have come here,” said Katherine. “The only people in the world.”

The sun rose at their backs, glinting with sudden fire off the far snow on the summits. Sweat broke along the shoulders of the horses. Pine and spruce crowded in along the road, hanging their branches so that the riders had to duck from time to time to avoid a face full of needles. The action of their roots had conspired with the work of long years to shift the ground beneath, laying bare the broken edges of tight-laid stonework under grass and earth. The top of the pass came into view far above, a bare saddlebow of rocky ground between a pair of white peaks.

Tom drew in a long breath through his nose. “I could live up here.”

They found their guard of spruce trees falling back as they climbed, defeated by the chill and the height. The road ran lonely through a whispering sweep of bristle grass. The sun passed its zenith and began its fall.

“We should have seen him by now.” Edmund waited until Katherine had gotten a few lengths ahead before he whispered it to Tom, but the wind chose that moment to fall off to nothing.

Katherine shot them a glance over her shoulder. She pressed the pace, craning up at every rise and then slumping down again, lower each time.

They ate in the saddle, unwilling to rest while their horses could still carry on. Even Indigo started to tire—he breathed loud and hard, his head swaying down with every stride. Edmund could not find a way to sit that could ward off the worsening sores from his saddle. After a while it was all he could think about, that and the cold.

“What is it?” said Tom.

“It’s my legs.” Edmund reached down to rub a hand on the inside of his thighs. “It’s—everything. Everything hurts.” He would say no more of it with Katherine so near, but he wondered to himself why riding horses was not the exclusive domain of women.

“No.” Tom pointed ahead. “What is
that
?”

Edmund looked up. Katherine had stopped a few lengths up the road. Some distance past her—it looked close, but was as likely as not still a mile off—was something made of stone, something taller than a house.

“Everyone off.” Katherine jumped to the ground. “The horses can’t help us up here.”

Edmund slid from his saddle. He drew out his longbow and slung his quiver on his shoulder. He could not quite catch his breath, though it might just have been the mountain air. Tom took the reins of all the horses. It seemed to take a year to reach the stone structure, for it was in truth quite far away—and much taller than a house, easily as tall as a castle tower. The road approached on a long loose curve, turning to run straight up to one side—and through. It was an arch.

Katherine strapped her shield to her arm. “Edmund, nock an arrow.”

The arch stood out alone on a shoulder of slope, near to nothing and a gate to nothing. Edmund found himself ducking under it though the blue-gray lintels were three times his height above. He looked up under the passing expanse—it was not one arch, but four, a building supported by great corner columns that held up a vaulting roof. Carvings remained on the ceiling, sheltered from the worst of the weather. A row of men posed in a line that wrapped the borders—one wore the horns of an elk, another perhaps the skin of a bear. They presented themselves one by one before another man. This man held a star and a dagger, the star out, the dagger up. The point of the blade pierced a cloud between two disembodied hands. Around and below danced other forms. They were not men.

“I don’t like it.” Tom would not come in—neither would Jumble or the horses. “I don’t like those carvings, or the men who carved them.”

Katherine passed by Edmund. “Oh, no.” She peered out each entrance of the arch. “Which way?”

Edmund turned all about him. North, west, south—one guess to make from three. Each road led off into wild nothing, westward over a snowy pass and the other two directions through scraggy mountain meadow. Nothing he could see outside the arch told him anything of use. In all the stories of all the great heroes he had ever heard, the hero never fails simply because he cannot find the villain. It was intolerable.

What would Vithric have done? Edmund let his mind go still. From all that he had ever read, Vithric was not the sort to let his feelings get in the way of his thoughts. Vithric would have stopped shaking his fist in frustration and started sorting through what he knew, pondering the facts before him until he found a solution.

“If we want to figure this out, we have to work out what these folk were thinking when they made this place.” Edmund returned to the center of the arch and looked at the carvings above him. “We have to try to think like they did.”

Katherine followed at his side. “We have to think like a bunch of scary old dead people who served a horrible monster?”

“We do.” Edmund lay on his back. “This was once a crossroads, a place people might have passed through every day. This was made for them, not us.”

“That’s horrible to think.” Katherine sat down against one of the posts. “What must it have been like, living your whole life under the Nethergrim? Do you think they all wanted to live that way—that they were evil themselves?”

“I don’t think they were,” said Edmund. “Even when a whole kingdom goes bad, some people will still try to be good—and many more will just get used to things, try to live their lives without getting into trouble.”

Katherine grabbed for a fluttering wisp of her hair and worked it back into her braid. “I hope I wouldn’t give in.”