Chapter 19

The thrice-opened eye went blind with the heart’s blindness. The thrice-beloved king cast his love upon the pyre with his honor and his truth. In his anger, in his fear, in betrayal of his kin, King Childeric called upon the Skeleth, They Who Crawl Below, they who shape as one with men, but are not men. In his lust for lordship without limit, Childeric asked for that which could be halted not by sword, nor by axe, nor by spear. He had asked for that which could kill without end and, screaming to the last, he received his gift.

Edmund balanced a pebble on the rat-eared corner of the page to weigh it down. He drew up his cloak against the wind that blew in sudden gusts across the village green of Moorvale. It was a warm wind for autumn, southerly and kind, but even so its pulsing breath did not please him in the least, or anyone out on the green behind him, from the sudden shouts of disappointment it evoked:

“Oh, a pox on it! Did you see that? That was a bull’s-eye, dead to the middle, and then that accursed breeze—”

“You always blame the breeze, Nicky Bird. You’re not fooling anyone.”

Edmund followed the scrawling text onto the facing page: The land where the Skeleth walk is now waste. It is ruin, given up to death, a land under the sway of That Which Waits Within the Mountain. We have tasted the bitter fruits of King Childeric’s greed. Upon the banks of the river we have made our redoubt, and there we fight an enemy that knows neither mercy nor fear.

The hairs on Edmund’s arms went up and stayed raised. He looked behind him, up and west to Wishing Hill, then over through the square, past the mill to the turn of the broad river Tamber. The statue of the old stone knight that stood in the center of the square faced eastward, toward the bridge over the river and the empty moors beyond. No one in the village knew who the knight was or what he had done to deserve a statue in his honor. His head and right arm had broken off long ago, so that no one even knew if he was meant to be raising a hand in welcome or shaking a sword in defiance.

Edmund raised the pebble and turned the page—parchment flaked in his hand, and a whiff of wind nearly sheared the page clean off. They are seen and yet unseen, they are form without substance, they are man and monster both. They serve only their master, only That Which Waits Within the Mountain—

“It’s your turn.”

Edmund startled. A thin, curved shadow hung suspended over the pages of the book—a horn-handled bow of springy yew. Geoffrey held it out, the quiver of arrows in his other hand.

“Come on, Edmund!” Martin Upfield called from the other side of the walnut tree Edmund had been using to block the wind. Martin stood with a crowd of peasant folk at one end of the common green, a place used for grazing livestock most days, but on that morning the sheep and cattle had been moved across the road and replaced with a line of ragged old archery butts. Almost every man Edmund knew stood in clumps at the near end of the green, and a goodly handful of women, besides. Even as he looked across, Missa Dyer loosed and struck firm into her target, bringing a cheer from her brother Jordan and half the Twintree clan.

“I’ve been looking for you all morning.” Geoffrey dropped the quiver in his lap. “The practice is half over already.”

Edmund grabbed the feathered flights of the arrows before they could spill forth from the quiver. “I don’t want to take a turn.”

“You’ve got to shoot, Edmund.” Geoffrey held forth the bow. “You’re over thirteen; it’s the law. Every able-bodied man in the village is here, and there’s a clerk walking about with the tax rolls making sure we all showed up.”

“I’m busy!” Edmund struck the open page before him. “Do you think that figuring this stuff out is easy? I’m trying to find a way to defend us from the Skeleth!”

Geoffrey shook his head. “I don’t see those Skeleth things anywhere. Why are you so sure they’re coming back, anyway? Just because that wizard girl told you?”

Edmund closed the Paelandabok and slid it into the sack at his feet. “What do you think we were doing in that tomb?”

“Stomping around like fools and nearly getting ourselves killed, so that you could pull up some dusty old spell, and—let me guess—you showed it to the wizard girl, didn’t you?” Geoffrey shot Edmund a sour smirk on their way over to the targets. “You think you know everything, but you’re really stupid, sometimes.”

One of the villagers stood aside from his place at the mark to let Edmund step up. “So, then, Edmund, tell us another story from your books, there.” Short, shaggy-bearded Nicky Bird flipped an arrow end over end, catching it in one hand, then the other. “Come on, a good one with some great fancy wizard throwing his spells about.”

“I told you before, spells don’t work the way you think they do.” Edmund set his left foot at the mark. “True magic is a way to see the laws that rule the world, to find the balance of things, the opposite natures of which all is made, and then—”

Geoffrey snorted. “What did I tell you? He doesn’t make a lick of sense anymore.”

Edmund sighed. “All right, then, a great fancy wizard.” He sighted down to the target. “There’s Mad Mull of Millthwart—it’s said he worked out a spell that could scythe a whole field of wheat with a wave of his hand.”

“Now, that one can’t be true—aim up a bit, Edmund. Here.” Martin Upfield loomed in—head and shoulders taller than Edmund and more than twice his weight. He shifted Edmund’s arms and turned his shoulders. “There, try like that.”

“Seems to me that any man who could do a spell like that could just give out all the bread he likes—set himself up for a king, somewhere.” Nicky drank deep from a cowhide waterskin. “That’s just an old wives’ tale, it has to be.”

“No, it’s true.” Edmund held the shaft of his arrow with his thumb, just as he had been taught. “I’ve read about it in too many different places.”

“Hunh.” Nicky Bird scratched at his curling beard. “So what happened to him?”

Edmund released—the arrow skipped off the top of the target. “There’s more than one version of the story.”

“Let’s hear ’em all, then! The one I like best will be the true one.”

Edmund plucked up another arrow. “Well, the first is that one day he stood on the wrong side of the field.”

“Ha!” Nicky nudged Martin. “Hear that? What’s the other?”

“It’s a bit more complicated.” Edmund did not like the look of the arrow in his hands, an old broadhead with a crooked shaft. He drew up another. “So the story goes, the spell worked perfectly, made him as much wheat as he wanted, any time of the year. He was able to balance the cost on the Wheel of Substance by—well, never mind that part. He started bundling up bushel after bushel and bringing it in to the cities by the wagonload.”

Nicky shrugged. “And?”

“The bottom fell right out of the grain market. Not a farmer in the land could sell his crop for so much as a brass farthing. Riots in the streets—death by pitchfork.”

“Ha!” Nicky turned to Martin and nearly stabbed him with the arrow in his hands. “Ha! You hear that?”

Martin swatted the arrow away. “I heard it. Stop poking me.”

Edmund drew back another arrow. He considered trying to explain the third version of the story, the one that sounded as though it might be true. He gave it up for too tangled to tell—how could he explain what magic really cost if the wizard abused its power? He would rather not be cut in half by an invisible scythe, but by the same token he would not like to die by inches inside, consumed from within by bread that was no longer really food.

“I don’t know, Edmund.” Gilbert Wainwright stepped in above the end-nock of his bow to fit a new string at the next mark over—nearer to thirty than Martin and Nicky, but by all accounts the follower of the three, ever since they had been boys together. “I hear your tales about these wizards working marvel after marvel, and yet here we are, still plowing our fields by muscle and sweat. Our king’s no wizard, our lord’s no wizard—don’t see how those stories can be true and the world still be the way it is.”

“That’s because you don’t know how magic works.” Edmund waited for a lull in the wind. “You don’t know what it costs, and you don’t know what the world is really like.”

“Hey, now, Edmund, no harm meant.” On a face like Gilbert’s even a look of reproach seemed mild. “Not trying to tell you your business.” He turned to aim his shot, seeming to take but an instant to gauge arc and wind before he loosed and struck square in the middle of his target.

“No one’s going to argue with you about what wizards can do, Edmund—not anymore.” Nicky turned to watch Edmund’s following shot. He tutted and shook his head. “You shanked it a bit. Are you keeping your fingers wide on the string?”

“Of course I am!” Edmund grabbed another arrow. He nocked it, taking care to space his fingers around the flights. He drew to the ear, sized up the target, and let fly.

A familiar sinking feeling followed. Geoffrey started snickering behind his back well before the arrow landed—in the grass beside the target.

“Well, the wind took that one. Nothing you could do.” Martin Upfield raised his hand, looking up and down the row. Gilbert did the same, then Aydon Smith, Jarvis Miller and old Robert Windlee, who must have been five times Edmund’s age but could still hit the target without fail. The shooting stopped, and then Gilbert walked out with a few others to gather up the arrows.

“Never mind it, Edmund.” Martin gave Edmund an encouraging smile. “We all know you’ve got other things you do well.”

“The Wizard of Moorvale. Hey? There’s our lad.” Nicky prodded Edmund’s side. “Why don’t you work on that scything spell? Be a big help at harvest next year. It’ll be our secret!”

A voice piped up shrill from along the row. “You there, with the hat. What’s your name? Speak up—Hugh Jocelyn, Jocelyn, yes—let’s see your arrows.”

Edmund looked up to see a small and well-dressed party passing crossways behind the archers. He felt a thrill of sudden fright and stuffed the Paelandabok into his sack. Lord Aelfric rode his horse beside a black-haired young clerk who recorded the name of every man at the practice. Lord Wolland followed with Wulfric and Richard Redhands, who were both armed as though they were about to ride to war.

“Ah, the fabled archers of Moorvale.” Lord Wolland signaled for his knights to dismount with him, then walked along behind the row of men lined up at the marks. “Let us see if the legend bears any truth.”

“You shall indeed, my lord.” Aelfric stepped to the ground and put his reins in the hands of the page. He walked right up behind Edmund, coming so near that he nearly trod on the sack that held the book Edmund had stolen from his private chambers.

Edmund felt a bead of sweat roll down from the line of his hair. He kept his gaze away from the nobles behind him, waiting to fire on the signal. He tried to think only about the wind, and not about what Lord Aelfric did to thieves.

“You there, churl!”

Edmund jumped. He whirled around, wild excuses at his lips, but Sir Wulfric was talking to Martin Upfield.

Wulfric clapped Martin on his broad shoulder. “You are made for war. There is need of such men as you.”

“Sir knight.” Martin turned and bowed. “I have no love for war.”

Wulfric let out a short, hard laugh. “Come and seek me, or remain forever a fool.” He stepped back from the line of archers and stood in a tight clump with the other knights and lords.

Henry Twintree called out from down the line. “Ready, all? Draw and aim!”

Edmund nocked an arrow to his string, drew it back and waited for the signal to fire. Of all the torments of archery drills, the massed volleys were the least painful to him, since no one could ever quite be sure if the arrow that missed the target was his.

Henry Twintree bellowed. “Fire!”

Edmund loosed his arrow with the volley. Dozens of arrows whipped in an arc through the sky, shuddering into their targets in a deadly swarm.

“Ha!” Lord Wolland clapped his pudgy hands together. “Well done!”

Edmund stared about him at the green. Not one of the arrows had missed the target. Not even one—and that meant that he had hit. He had actually hit!

“Very good indeed.” Lord Wolland nodded to Lord Aelfric. “I have always taken an interest in archery. It is of great use on the battlefield, if properly deployed. I seem to recall that your grandfather used a company of archers to good effect in a battle not far from here, when my great-uncle Adalbert thought to invade.”

“You remember rightly, my lord.” Lord Aelfric faced south and pointed out with all the fingers of his gloved hand. “The battle took place in that direction, in a field just east of Longsettle. My grandfather concealed a troop of archers from Moorvale in a copse of trees by the road. They passed unnoticed by Adalbert’s scouts as they took the field, then fired on the flank of his army once the battle was joined, causing great damage.”

Lord Wolland turned to Wulfric. “What do you think of such a ploy, my son?”

Wulfric’s face turned sour. “I do not like it, Father. It was unmanly. There was no honor in such a victory.”

“It was war, sir knight.” Aelfric shot a hard look at Wulfric. “Honor lies with the innocent. Those men fought and died to keep their homeland free of pillage and ruin.”

Lord Wolland laughed. “Oh, now, that is unfair, my lord!” He swept out a hand to the line of Moorvale men. “My great-uncle would have used these people well enough. Indeed, by now they would think themselves Wollanders, and all would be well with the north after all. But for my part, I call it well played, one for the histories. You have inherited quite an asset in these levies of peasant archers, and you are wise to keep with the tradition.”

“I thank you,” said Aelfric. “Your great-uncle did not live to know of it, but his campaign had pushed my grandfather to his last strength. Those archers swung the battle and the war, and their children’s children practice at the targets once a week because I know it full well.”

“You see, Wulfric?” said Wolland. “Useful stuff, archery. We must train up a company or two. Oh, don’t pull a face, I won’t make you do it. Perhaps good Lord Aelfric would be so kind as to lend us a troop of his best peasant bowmen to help us get things under way.”

He turned his smile back on Aelfric. Hatred crackled between the two lords, in silence but with such force that Edmund felt the urge to slip away out of sword distance.

“My lord, I fear that I must deny your request.” Lord Aelfric did not sound as though he regretted refusing Wolland in the least. “The men of Elverain train at the targets to defend their homes and families. That is the only right use of war.”

“I would have thought you above such a trite and commonplace idea, my lord.” Wolland’s deep eyes glittered. “In all my years of life, I have discovered but one useful truth: Bold action in war sets a new order for the ages. In battle, in war, in daring attempt, is the life of a man exalted. Fortune, yes, but moreover fame, glory, a hand in the shaping of the world. Through deeds in war a man lays the path on which the future wanders. His children rule, while the children of other men bow and serve. The king upon his golden throne: What is he but the echo of a better man who drew up his plans at a rough-hewn table? Through deeds in war, a man carves himself into the memory of the world.”

“It is not for us to decide who is to be remembered and why, my lord,” said Aelfric. “My archers will defend their homes as their forefathers have done, against any who come to challenge them.”

Lord Wolland’s smile only grew. He took a small but deliberate step toward Aelfric. “There are forces against which a storm of arrows are but a gently falling rain.”

Lord Aelfric was the taller man; he drew himself up into the image of what he must have been like in his youth. He loomed over Wolland. “Show them to us, my lord, and we shall put that to the test.”

The hands of knights and men-at-arms drifted toward the hilts of their swords. Edmund glanced along the row of archers. Not a few of the village men had nocked an arrow to the string and stood tensed, ready for anything.

A muffled groan from along the row broke the silent tension. Edmund turned to find his father stumbling up to the mark beside him with his bow and quiver.

Harman Bale puffed, red at the cheeks, one hand held over his side. “Am I late?” He dumped his bow and quiver on the grass, spilling out his arrows. “Not late, am I?”

“Here, Harman, have a sit down for a while.” Martin Upfield took Edmund’s father by the elbow and tried to guide him away from the archery range and over to a seat in the grass. “You look half done in.”

Edmund’s father pushed Martin away with his free hand. “Curse it all, I’m not an old man yet!” He stumbled and seized his side again.

“Not yet, Harman Bale.” Old Robert Windlee eyed him up and down. “And maybe not ever if you prance about with a half-healed belly wound.”

“Father?” Edmund moved to brace up Harman’s other side. “Are you sure you should be out here?”

Harman grabbed for his longbow. “Don’t you start with me, boy.” He lowered his voice. “Those are nobles over there, Edmund, almost every man of substance from here to Paladon, and our lord Aelfric’s showing off our skill for them. I’ll be tied and tossed in the river if I let that Henry Twintree hog all the credit for every bull’s-eye we hit.”

He stepped into his bow, straining to bring the string up to the nock—then he groaned and let go.

“Look out!” Edmund leapt from the path of the whippy bowshaft as it sprang across the grass, striking Sir Richard Redhands square in the face.

“Ow!” Richard Redhands grabbed for his nose. “By all thunder—ow!”

Lord Wolland stared at his knight, then burst out laughing long and loud, slapping his thigh in noisy mirth. Wulfric took it up in his father’s echo, and then a few chuckles sounded up and down along the line of archers. Richard Redhands turned in a fury and charged straight for Harman Bale.

Edmund had time for a single thought—if a blow should land, it must not strike his father. He threw down his bow and arrows and stepped out in front Richard Redhands. “Please, sir knight, my father’s wound is still fresh. He received it defending my mother’s life from a cowardly attack. Surely a gallant and honorable knight such as yourself would understand, and forgive.”

“Boy—out of my way.” Richard Redhands stepped sideways, making to go around Edmund and get to his father.

Edmund blocked his path. “You must not strike him, sir knight. His wound has not yet healed.”

The knight set his teeth. “I said out of my way!”

Edmund braced himself. “No.”

The force of the blow sent him spinning, then falling. He landed hard upon the earth.

“Son.” Edmund’s father shook his shoulder. “Edmund?”

Edmund rubbed at his jaw. His vision blurred and doubled. He reached out his other hand to push himself up; Richard Redhands trod on it, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Lord Wolland stepped between Richard and Edmund. “Not now.” His smile remained fixed, but his eyes bored deep. He dropped his voice low, low enough that Edmund, who lay at his feet, could only barely catch the words: “Not yet.” He turned his back on Aelfric, leading his knights away across the green. It was only after his party had gone out of bowshot that Edmund felt safe enough to get to his feet.