The Nethergrim (3 page)

Chapter
2

Y
ou there—boy! More ale this way!”

Edmund topped off the mug of the man seated before him and peered through the smoke-laced light. A grubby hand rose and beckoned from the table in the far corner. Several others rose with it: “That’s six ales, now, and hurry it up!”

Edmund wiped the beaded sweat from his forehead. He looked into his pitcher—down to the dregs once again.

“Right away!” he shouted back. “I just need to get some more!”

He had never seen a night like this. The tavern bustled and swung; folk laughed and rubbed elbows, talking endless nonsense. Nicky Bird and Horsa Blackcalf played back and forth on flute and fiddle by the fire, and it seemed that Wat and Bella Cooper were having better days, for they danced and spun together through the middle of the room.

Edmund elbowed past and hurried down the narrow steps into the cellar, a cramped and clammy place that smelled of ale and must. Three kegs lined one wall, opposite shelves that would have held the inn’s store of mugs had they not all been in use upstairs.

“This one’s almost done.” Geoffrey bent at the tap of the middle keg and watched the thin, slow stream of ale fill his pitcher. He blinked and rubbed at half-lidded eyes.

Edmund pressed his back against the cool plaster of the cellar wall. He let out a weary breath. “Where’s Father?”

Geoffrey shrugged. Another shout for ale resounded from above.

“That’s the second-to-last keg,” said Edmund. “If this keeps up, we’ll have to tap the dark stuff.”

“No one likes drinking that in hot weather.”

“You watch. If they finish this keg, they’ll be so drunk we could serve them ditchwater.”

Geoffrey snorted and stomped upstairs, holding his brimming pitcher in both hands. Edmund replaced him at the tap. He let the cool brown ale fill his pitcher to the brim, wiped the foam and then rushed back up to the tavern before the shouts for service could grow too loud.

“I tell you, they’re gone! Bossy, Bessy, Buttercup—all of ’em, gone!” Hugh Jocelyn sat hunched over his mug at the end of the table by the stairs. Hugh always wore a battered old cap jammed down over his ears, save only for those times when he was particularly worried. “It’s not right, I tell you it’s not right.” When he was worried, he removed the cap from his spear-bald head and wrung it round and round by the brim.

“Did you look in the sty?” Hob Hollows leaned next to Hugh on the bench. He swung his fingers out in Edmund’s face, then tapped his mug.

“Of course I looked in the sty—they’re pigs!” Hugh raised his voice to a reedy chirp. “I’ve looked everywhere, everywhere! And Bossy’s to farrow soon, good fat piglets, she always gives good’uns—oh, what’ll I do?”

“Sure you didn’t slaughter ’em and then forget you did it? Eaten any bacon lately?” Hob looked down to find his mug still empty, then up at Edmund.

Edmund held his pitcher in close at his chest. “Who’s paying?”

Hob made a show of reaching at his belt. He looked across at his brother Bob, who shrugged with an amiable smirk.

“Alas, we left all our coin at the house,” said Hob. “But you wouldn’t let us run dry, would you? Not tonight of all nights!”

Edmund sighed and topped his mug.

“There’s a lad.” Hob slapped Edmund’s shoulder. “I’ll bring a good chicken by tomorrow, settle it up proper.”

Edmund took a look at Hugh’s drawn old face and decided that Hob was buying his ale. “How long have they been gone?”

“Oh, days now, days.” Hugh sighed. “I took them out for pannage in the wood, you know, out for acorns. Bossy loves acorns. I always let them have a run of it, let them come back on their own. Bossy knows the way, she’s a wise one. She always comes home.”

He put his face in his cap. “I can’t find them anywhere—oh, what have I done?”

Hob winked up at Edmund and tapped a finger to his temple. He knocked full mugs with his brother. “To Bossy! Hey? Wherever she is.”

“Boy! You there!” The shout from across the room was repeated more loudly. “I said ale!”

“Just a moment!” Edmund raised his pitcher over his head and dodged around the dancers, taking the long route past the door and making to hop in front of the fire on his way toward the far table. He did his best not to meet eyes with anyone who looked thirsty. He caught odd, disjointed bits of conversations as he pushed along:

“. . . and folk out that way still don’t go above the foothills. They say them shrikes aren’t all gone by any stretch—”

“Oh, just shut it, will you? There’s not been shrike nor bolgug nor any other such thing seen around here in thirty years, and you’d think that tonight of all nights you’d know to keep your tall tales . . .”

“. . . and they were just gone the next day. That’s what they said, just gone, the whole herd. Folk were looking high and low for ’em but couldn’t find hide nor hair. If you ask me . . .”

“. . . drove the shipment out of town, put it in a cave, waited a week, and brought it right back in. Sold the lot for five each! Shrewd, was our Bill . . .”

“. . . well, I couldn’t do that, could I? Was already married, you see, so . . .”

“This is undrinkable.”

A goblet was thrust out in front of Edmund—a real, proper goblet made of pewter or maybe even silver. Its owner was younger than he sounded, with thick short hair just starting to turn gray and a strong chin shaved smooth like a city dweller.

“Worst wine I have ever tasted.” The stranger waved the goblet back and forth under Edmund’s nose. “The very worst. A singular achievement, considering the wide and multifarious competition. I very much hope the ale is better.”

Edmund could not help but stare. Scrolls, books and parchments covered the whole surface of the stranger’s table—a trove ten times the size, and he could not guess how many times the worth, of the paltry collection his father had sent into the fire that morning. A script of round and sweeping elegance graced the pages of the book in the stranger’s hands, adorned with capital letters worked in whorls of color upon color and gilded with leaf of gold. A pair of eyes seemed to watch everywhere, inked with cunning craft above the figure of a star, upon which lay seven men—no, seven children, each laid out upon one of the rays. Symbols wound ox-turns around them, each changed by the one before and after, not one of them repeated on the whole of the page. Edmund knew just enough to read a small piece:
Bring a blade for He-That-Speaks -From-The-Mountain—

The stranger placed a firm hand over the book and shot a barbed glance up at Edmund. It felt exactly like a slap.

“I’m very sorry.” Edmund took the goblet and poured out the wine in the straw. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anyone doing that in here—reading, I mean.”

“Indeed? I would never have guessed.” The stranger licked a finger to turn the page—then he coughed. He coughed again, then bent over and retched into a square of fine cloth. He left the pages of his book exposed, and Edmund could not restrain himself from sneaking another look. A creature made all of thorns had been inked with chilling art into an upper corner, its tendrils curled around the first letter of a neatly written passage:
As the quiggan serves the Nethergrim in fouled water, and the stonewight in his—

The man placed both hands across the page. “I said ale.”

Edmund filled the goblet, reading as he did the symbols incised around the rim:
Wind, Thunder, Ten Thousand Seasons.
He shot a closer look at the stranger—the man was not old, but neither did he look at all healthy. His skin looked as though it had been cured like his parchments, yellow at the edges and with a sickly, translucent gloss. He had missed a fleck of blood on his lips, and another on his chin.

Edmund turned to look out across his neighbors and the travelers in the tavern. The stranger’s coughing fit had rung to the rafters, his clothes could buy everyone else’s in the room all together in a bundle—and yet no one so much as glanced at the man.

It struck him in a flash: “No one else can see you.”

A thin smile curled the stranger’s lips. “They can see me perfectly well.” He turned a page. “But they cannot perceive me. They cannot think about me—they cannot remember me from one moment to the next. When you walk away from this table, neither will you.”

He held out a hand without looking up. Edmund gave him back his goblet foaming with ale.

Another bellowing cry sounded from the far corner: “By all thunder, boy, what is keeping you over there? Ale, curse it all!”

“Yes, yes, all right! Just a moment!” Edmund turned and pushed his way between the crowded benches, making sure to fix the stranger’s face and voice in his memory as firmly as he possibly could. Anna Maybell tried to pull him into the dance, but he shrugged her off and shouldered through the last few feet of chattering locals to the gang of traveling merchants in the far corner.

“About time.” Grubby Hands pushed his empty mug across the table.

“So sorry.” Edmund picked it up and poured. “Busy night.”

“We’ve got some fish coming our way, too. I thought that surly redheaded boy would have brought it out by now.”

Edmund searched through the crowd. “Mum, where’s Geoffrey gone?”

“He must be down in the cellar.” His mother passed him with a tray of griddled rabbit, her mousy braid swinging out like a rope as she turned her head his way. “Can you go serve the Twintrees when you’re done?”

Edmund reached out for the next of the mugs, muttering curses at his lazy little brat of a brother under his breath. Weariness sprang on him in mid-pour, a yawn that sent the world to gray for a moment. He could not remember how long it had been since he last sat down. He wondered if this was how old people felt all the time.

“That’s the word going round, Father.” The young merchant who spoke could be no one’s son but Grubby Hand’s, right down to the fat gut and gaudy shirt. “They say Lord Tristan’s not coming to the fair.”

“What? Now why isn’t Tristan coming?” The woman seated between the two men drained her mug to the dregs, then held it out for Edmund to refill. “Isn’t this whole thing done half for him?”

“Lord Tristan’s getting on in years,” said Grubby Hands with a sagacious nod. “Must be sixty by now—probably just wants to live quiet-like.”

The woman pursed her lips. “He’s alive, isn’t he? It’s just good manners to show up at a feast in your honor.”

Edmund cast a glance around the room. The news spread from guest to guest, deadening the frolic in the tavern. Horsa Blackcalf left Nicky Bird hanging at the chorus of a jig and drew a long, slow air on his fiddle.

“It’s a bad lookout for us, Father, no mistaking it,” said the younger merchant. “Bad for business. No Vithric, and now no Tristan.”

The woman looked from son to father in unhappy surprise. “You mean Vithric’s not coming, either?”

“Oh, you never heard?” Grubby Hands scraped at the remains of his porridge. “Vithric’s been dead for years.”

“A shame, really,” said the younger merchant. “Best wizard of his time—of any time, some would say.”

“Well, it’s a bit late in the year for a fair, anniversary or no,” said the woman. “It’ll be a thin one, you mark me, and we’ll be out a fair handful for the trip.”

Grubby Hands made a fat, self-satisfied smile. “And that, my sweet, is why I’m the one to set our course.” He turned to Edmund. “This village—what’s it called—”

“Moorvale,” said Edmund.

“Right, Moorvale. This little spot’s as near as any other to the Girth. I’ll wager more than half of these folk lost a father or a brother on that mountain, battling their way up to the Nethergrim all those years back. They’re drinking to them as much as to Tristan, and tomorrow they’ll bring every coin they’ve managed to scrape—and, oh yes, they’ll spend it, they’ll trade bulls for goats for a chance to mark the day. You heed me—heroes or no, we’ll not see a better haul all year.”

“Oh, quit your blather, I’m not a customer.” The woman turned away. “We’ve come all the way up here to trade at an anniversary fair in honor of two old heroes, but one of them’s been dead for years and now the other’s not going to bother turning up. What a fool’s errand—why I listen to you, I’ll never know.”

“She may be right, Father.” The younger merchant scratched his jowls. “What’s the point of it without Tristan and Vithric? They’re the grand heroes—the only ones who even came back.”

“Three came back.” Edmund spoke before thinking.
Never gainsay a guest
—one of his father’s many rules.
Let them say the sky is green so long as they pay.

Grubby Hands squinted at him. “What was that?”

“Three came back, begging your pardon.” Edmund took up the last mug at the table. “Sixty men went up the mountain, but only three came down again. Tristan and Vithric, and John Marshal.”

“Hadn’t heard that.” Grubby Hands said the words in a manner that meant that since he had not heard it, it must not be so. “So where is this John Marshal now, then?”

“He lives in the village—well, on a farm just outside.” Edmund poured a little steep to make some extra foam and hide the fact that he was half a mug short. “He’s marshal of Lord Aelfric’s stables, raises and trains his warhorses.”