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9780451476333_The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle_int.indd 1 12/1/15 2:58 PM

chatelaine, n. (shat-l-eyn)

2. An ornamental appendage worn

by ladies at the waist, supposed to

represent the bunch of keys, etc.,

of a mediæval châtelaine; it consists

of a number of short chains . . .

bearing articles of household

use and ornament. . . .

—Oxford English Dictionary


It is your bane,

This chatelaine.

By flesh and bone,

By rock and stone,

I’ll charm a child

To call my own.

Fish and hunchback,

Boot and chest,

Cat comes crying.

For the rest:

The devil’s sign,

The dog and bell,

A nesting pearl

Within its shell,

Eel and anchor,

Last, the heart.

All complete,

All now a part

Of chatelaine.


Its magic dark,

A prison cold,

A witch’s mark,

A cruel fate,

A childling’s bane:

The thirteenth charm

Of chatelaine.

Your soul will sleep

Within its keep,

Your life will linger

Dark and deep;

By rock and bone,

By blood and stone,

Not life, nor death,

But lost, alone.

I’ll charm, I’ll claim

With chatelaine.


The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle 1

1The Fifth Charm: The Cat

It is 1863.The winter winds shriek and moan around the castle tur-

rets as the nightmare finds him, poor cat-boy John.

He runs from room to room until he finds a place to hide,

and then he hears but two things: the clattering and the ragged

hish, hish of his own breath.

Quit breathing so loud, you fool, or you’ll never breathe again.

His heart pounds in his ears and his chest aches as he holds

himself still and silent.

The clattering—irregular, metal on stone—stops, and the

dread silence that follows almost stops his heart, too.

Now where is the blasted thing?

The only sound cat-boy John hears beyond the pounding


2 J A N E T F O X

of his heart is a soft jingle—as of light rain on a bucket, or

a bracelet on a moving wrist, or the whisper a falling star

would make as it scatters, broken, across the sky. Oh, the heav-

ens help me.

Then, a click, rasp, click, like a clock being wound, and there

it is again, not ten feet from where he stands pressed against

the wall behind the tapestry, the cold stone seeping through

his thin shirt and up through the soles of his bare feet, the

smell of wormy wool full in his nose, suffocating him, the hor-

rifying thing only feet away now and closing in on him, metal

on stone, metal on stone, his heart a thump, thump, his eyes pressed

tight as the tears leak out beneath his lashes, his breath held in

his tight-drawn chest.

As one tear descends his right cheek and cleaves a line

down to his chin he thinks again, The heavens help me. Except

that heaven is far, far from this place of unearthly creatures.

How he wishes he could have saved the others before

him—the fishmonger’s daughter, the hunchback boy, the sing-

ing girls—but he is only a boy, brave but not brave enough,

more mouse than cat, and at the mercy of a monster too dread-

ful to behold.

No, he is not the first to be taken. Nor will he be the last.

One of John’s own cats, fresh from the night’s kill, betrays

him, cat-boy John. Poor lovey kitten drops a mouse on John’s

bare right toe before she speeds away to escape the monster.



The last John hears is a string of accursed words in a

voice that comes from the depths, perhaps from the devil

himself: . . . by flesh and bone . . .

Outside—beyond the thick walls, the frozen moat, the bar-

ren yard, the ringing stockade—the moon slips from behind a

skidding cloud as the screams whisk away into the forest. Even

the sneaking stoat hunkers in terror as the boy cries with the

ripping pain of losing his very soul.


4 J A N E T F O X

2London, Fall 1940: The Blitz

The pieces that made up Katherine Bateson’s world

were scattered across the landscape and over the ocean, far and

wide, blown about by the winds of war. Kat herself felt like one

of the clocks in Father’s workshop, all wheels and plates and

springs and pins strewn across the table, waiting.

But she squared her shoulders and told herself to hold her

wits together. That’s what her father would want, and what

her brother and sister needed. Especially given the urgency in

Father’s letter to Mum, the letter sending the children away.

“Are you sure?” Robbie pressed against Kat’s left arm. She

tilted the photograph so he could see. “Wow, it is,” he said,

sounding awed. “A castle.”

More like a not-so-majestic ruin, a shadowy box with



peaky turrets rising out of the ivy, but maybe the photo didn’t

do justice to the name: Rookskill Castle.

“I bet it’s got battlements,” Rob went on. “And ramparts. I’ll

bet there are dungeons. Secret passageways and hidden rooms.

And ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Amelie popped up from the floor like a bobbin,

round eyes in her round face, curls bouncing.

“All castles have ghosts,” Rob said. “They moan. And carry

clanking chains”—he raised his arms straight forward and

stiffened his body—“that they rattle at night when they’re

coming for you!”

“Robbie,” Kat said, a low warning.

“I can’t wait to learn more sword fighting,” he said. “I’m

already a whiz.” He took a stance.

“I doubt we’ll be fiddling with swords,” Kat answered.

“They’ll have us at regular lessons.”

“Lessons! You’re being stodgy again. It’s a castle,” Rob an-

swered. “Who in a castle gives regular lessons during war-

time?”

“Read Father’s letter, Rob. Rookskill Castle Children’s Acad-

emy, that’s what he says.” She unfolded the letter.

Aunt Margaret’s cousin Gregor is the

eleventh Earl of Craig, and a good man, recently

married. They need the income, as Lord Craig


6 J A N E T F O X

has taken ill. I met with Lady Craig at the

castle not long ago, and she seems devoted to

children, having none of her own. As I was

thinking of sending the children here, I helped

her secure instructors of my acquaintance. And

I have reason to be back in Scotland from time

to time. A sound choice for the children, under

the circumstances.

Kat paused. “So there you have it. Father secured instruc-

tors. We’ll be learning.”

“You are dull, Miss Stodginess. Of course we’ll be learning.

But it won’t be sums and history and Latin. We’ll be learning

how to parry and form up and shoot arrows. Practical things

we can use against the Jerries.” Rob thrust his imaginary sword,

made an imaginary block. “I’ve heard that the Jerries are plan-

ning a landing on the beaches in Scotland. We’d best be ready.”

Kat folded Father’s letter around the photo, tucking both

back into her pocket. Amelie’s eyes slipped from Kat to Robbie

and back. “I like ghosts,” Amelie said. She still held her drawing

pencil clutched tight in her fist. “Maybe there’ll be a ghost like

Mr. Pudge.”

Kat smiled. “Ame, it’s an old place that looks like a castle,

and we’ll be in school. And it’s Great-Aunt Margaret’s cousin.



And Father may visit. I’m quite sure there won’t be any ghosts.”

Kat had plenty of real things to worry about. For one, Rob-

bie might be right: the Germans could land on their shores at

any time. Kat worried about Father and his reasons for being

in Scotland, and about Mum and Great-Aunt Margaret being

left in London while the Germans continued their incessant

bombing. And at twelve, Kat had started in a new school and

was trying to sort out where she belonged and who her friends

might be, and now she had to leave. She twisted the watch that

wrapped her left wrist.

Ghosts ranked low on Kat’s list of worries.

“You must look after Rob and Ame,” Father had said. “I’m

counting on you.” It was what seemed ages ago, in midsummer,

and he was readying to leave. His tools lay on the bench before

he fitted them one by one into the sleeves in the felted fabric.

The clock he was done fixing tick-tocked on the table behind

them.

She wondered how he could do two such different things—

the one, mend clocks, and the other, so dangerous. He didn’t

even look the sort for the other, and she said so straight out.

He smiled, pushing his glasses on top of his head and rest-

ing his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,

Kitty. There’s often much going on inside. I do what I’m good

at. And I do it for you, and your mum and Rob and Ame, and

everyone who loves ‘this precious stone set in the silver sea.’”


8 J A N E T F O X

His voice lifted a little with the quote. “Your mum has many

cares. So you must promise to do your bit.”

Kat had promised, yes, but she wished her father wasn’t so

noble. She wasn’t sure she could bear it if he should be caught.

Now she was sure about only one thing. That castle in

Scotland to which he wanted them sent would be cold. Warm

clothes essential. And she would be head of the three young

Batesons.

Father’s parting words to her were, “Remember, my dear.

Keep calm.”

And biting down the swell of tears, she’d whispered back,

“And carry on.”

As Kat was packing, Great-Aunt Margaret called her to the

library.

“Your father is wise to send you to Gregor’s,” Aunt Marga-

ret said. “Well away from this dreadful noise and strife.” She

paused. “Although I must say Scotland is a bit dodgy. An um-

brella is of no avail against a Scotch mist.” She, like Father, liked

aphorisms. Mum had once said it was the way Great-Aunt Mar-

garet kept her mind sharp; Father had whispered that if Kat’s

great-aunt’s mind was any sharper, she’d impale her pillow.

Yes, she used to be so sharp, so logical and precise. But,

to Kat’s dismay, Great-Aunt Margaret had lately gone a little



dotty, perhaps more now with the bombing and the stress of

war.

Mum stood at the tall window, her hands clasped behind

her, her fingers weaving patterns, in and out, in and out, like

she was kneading dough.

Great-Aunt Margaret rose from her thronelike chair. “Now,

come over here, dear. ‘Time and tide wait for no man.’ I have

something for you. To keep you safe.” She took Kat’s chin in the

fingers of her right hand and laid the finger of her left along-

side her nose while she widened her eyes. Kat knew the ges-

ture: it meant, This is our secret.

How it could be with Mum there, Kat couldn’t imagine. She

glanced at Mum, who raised her eyebrows as if to say, Be kind.

So Kat played along, forcing down a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

Great-Aunt Margaret dropped Kat’s chin and took a step

back, and her hands went to her waist, to her belt of soft leath-

er. Pinned to it, dangling from it as it had every day in all the

years of Kat’s memory, was her great-aunt’s chatelaine.

The chatelaine had been a gift to Margaret from her mother

upon Margaret’s marriage, and Kat knew it to be a precious

family heirloom. Wrought of silver and marked with the

smith’s stamp, the chatelaine contained three useful items that

hung from slender silver chains joined on a silver hoop. “Yes,”

said her great-aunt. “This will keep you safe.” She was remov-

ing the chatelaine from her belt.


10 J A N E T F O X

To give to Kat.

“Oh, Auntie, no. I couldn’t.” Kat raised both hands in pro-

test and looked to her mother, who pursed her lips. What if it

should be lost?

“Nonsense.” Her great-aunt’s response was firm even as her

stiff fingers fumbled. “I’m having a bit of trouble. . . .” She lifted

watery eyes to Kat. “Help me, my dear,” she said. “Come, now.

I insist.”

Kat stepped forward, hesitant. She unclasped the chate-

laine and held it up. The three items—pen, scissors, thimble—

swayed as they dangled from her fingers.

Aunt Margaret leaned toward Kat, her lips close to Kat’s

ear, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s quite magical, you

know.”

“I’m sorry?” Kat whispered back. “Did you say magical?”

Oh, goodness. Kat saw worry in the set of Mum’s face.

Aunt Margaret straightened. “Yes, my dear. I shall explain.

But do remember this: be careful with magic.” She fixed her

eyes on Kat’s. “Do you hear me, Katherine? Magic is tricky.

There is always a price to pay for its use.”

Mum went with them to King’s Cross Station to catch the train.

Kat turned in the seat of the hackney as they pulled away from

the curb, catching a glimpse of Great-Aunt Margaret standing



at one of the tall windows with her hand in solemn salute.

The cab splashed through deep puddles and rain pelted

the roof. They passed mounds of rubble, men in their clinging

wet work clothes clearing flattened homes with picks and

shovels and barrows. They passed St. Paul’s, rising stately and

seemingly untouched from the ruins around it. Pride surged

in Kat. The bustle of London—motors and buses and black

umbrellas—continued as if there was no war. Londoners

described the bombings as “blitzy,” as if they were some kind

of nasty weather.

Most of the kids she knew were staying put, working after

school hours to help clear roads of broken bricks and glass, and

here she was, fleeing. She shut her eyes. No, she didn’t like the

bombings one bit, the sirens wailing, the dark root cellar, the

shuddering blasts, the plaster raining down, Ame crying out.

She didn’t like shaking so hard her teeth chattered. Still, Kat

would rather stay. Stay with Mum, stay in London, stay and be

strong.

She felt anything but strong as the station grew close and

home slipped farther away.

Mum, squeezed between Kat and Amelie, cleared her throat

over the splish-splosh-rumble of the cab. “Kitty, I must tell you.

In the Service office with me there’s a couple with a son about

your age. They want him out of London, too, so I thought to

recommend this place. He’ll be on your train.”


12 J A N E T F O X

Kat twisted sideways. “Oh, Mum, you didn’t.”

Kat’s mum was always trying to fix her up with friends.

She didn’t think it was good for her eldest daughter to spend

more time with facts and figures and puzzles and Father’s

clocks than with people.

“I’m not happy sending you off. It’s because your father

wants it.” Mum fiddled with the buttons of her coat. “Please

don’t fuss. It’s only for a little while. Just until the war is over.”

Nothing that Kat had heard or read convinced her that the

war would be over in a little while. “Why can’t we all stay to-

gether? Why can’t you and Aunt Margaret come away?” Kat bit

her lip. Her words sounded small and selfish.

Mum frowned. “Kat. I’m needed here. And your great-aunt

insists upon staying. You understand.”

Yes, Kat understood. But she needed her mum, too, and

with Father on a mission so delicate he couldn’t reveal his

whereabouts even to Mum, what if . . . Kat swallowed her pro-

tests past the lump in her throat.

Mum reached for Kat’s hand, holding it tight. She said softly,

“You have your great-aunt’s gift? I’d hate for you to lose it.”

Kat nodded. The chatelaine was pinned to her waistband

and stuck inside her pocket.

Mum’s face relaxed into a smile, and she sighed. “I’ll miss

you all, my little sweets.”

Robbie, sitting across, looked up from his reading. “When



we get back, we won’t be little or sweets. We’ll be knights.” He

was putting on a brave front.

“I’ll still be sweet,” said Ame, her voice plaintive, “and I

wish we didn’t have to leave.”

In the station they jostled among the troops and travel-

ers, lugging their trunks behind. Thick steam twined hiss-

ing around them, shuddering engines roared to life, brakes

squealed, whistles sounded, and the ground shook with the

thunder of trains coming and going. Kat clutched her sister’s

small hand tight.

“Ah, there they are!” Mum said, and walked forward,

waving.

“Ow! Kat, you’re squeezing,” said Amelie.

The boy stood with his parents. He wore a tweedy jacket,

his hands jammed in his pockets. His hair, browner than Kat’s,

was straight and brushed to one side, where it rebelled from its

slicked-back situation. He had a narrow face and brown eyes,

and was taller than Kat, which was a comfort, as she was usu-

ally the tallest in her grade.

“All here, then,” Mum said with forced cheer. “Kat, Rob,

Amelie, meet Mr. and Mrs. Williams. And you must be Peter.”

“Hello, there.” Mr. Williams stuck his hand straight out at

Kat. “Pleased to meet you all.”

“Ruddy Americans!” said Robbie, catching the accent at

once. “Wow!”


14 J A N E T F O X

Mr. Williams let out a deep laugh. “I am, anyway, and Pete’s

spent most of his life stateside.”

Kat tried not to stare at Peter. She shook hands with his

father and nodded to Mrs. Williams.

Mrs. Williams sniffled, and her eyes were rimmed with

red. “Here we are in London because I insisted, although who

could have known the war would come to this? And now to

have to send him away. . . . Oh, I know it’s for the best, but I do

so wish . . .”

“Mom. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

Kat didn’t know what she’d expected, especially of an

American boy, but Peter’s voice, despite its flat twang, was

gentle and soothing. She straightened and lifted her arm to

place it over Amelie’s shoulder.

“Besides, my dear,” said Mr. Williams. “This whole war

business will be over in no time, and we’ll all be back together

again. Think of this as a little holiday for the children. Don’t

you agree, Mrs. Bateson?”

“Why, yes, of course,” Mum murmured.

The conductor approached. “Need help with the trunks?”

Mr. Williams stowed the trunks, and the conductor helped

them into their car, latching the door behind. They all leaned

out the windows, hands reaching down. Kat held Amelie by

the waist so that she could grasp Mum’s uplifted hands. Ame

stifled a sob, and Kat’s throat swelled. Rob’s eyes glistened as he

pressed against the glass.



“Bye, my loves, bye!” Mum called as the train lurched away.

“Stay safe!”

Mrs. Williams burst into tears and buried her face in her

husband’s shoulder. The train tunnel closed in and curved

away from the platform, and their parents slipped out of

sight.

Long after the others had settled into their seats, Kat

pressed her face to the rain-streaked window as the warehouses

and rugged outskirts of London melted into a gray haze. The

multiple tracks skinned down to one and the city thinned away.

Kat clutched the watch on her wrist, pressing the snapshots of

home into her memory.

The three Batesons sat on one bench in the rocking train

car; Peter sat across from them, jacket off now and shirtsleeves

rolled up, his hair trying to fall from stiff confinement.

“So!” Robbie rubbed his eyes hard, then bounced up and

crossed to perch next to Peter. “You’re a ruddy American! Do

you know any cowboys?”

Peter grinned.

The boys talked (well, Robbie jabbered on and Peter responded

in friendly fashion), and the train pulled north into the creep-

ing shadows of a countryside blacked out in the face of war.

Kat shoved her hand into her pocket and clutched her

great-aunt’s chatelaine. Her fingers kneaded and worked at it,


16 J A N E T F O X

the three items rubbing against one another like the bones

of a bird, and she squeezed so they made imprints in her

palm.

In times like these, according to Great-Aunt Margaret,

magic bubbled up, rising out of the confusion and strife of war.

Troubled times stirred up magic like dumplings in a stew. “And

one must be prepared,” she’d said, folding Kat’s fingers over the

chatelaine, “with appropriate countermeasures.”

In times like these, thought Kat, magic—if such a thing

were real—wouldn’t help. War was a dark fog covering

everything. Kat could wish for the war to end all she wanted,

and it wouldn’t do any good. Really, even Robbie’s attempt at

swordplay was more useful than this chatelaine. Kat sighed.

Poor Aunt Margaret, spouting nonsense. Her sharp mind was

withering away.

This chatelaine was just one more thing for Kat to worry

over.

She stood, swaying with the train’s motion, clutched the

edge of the brass luggage rack above, and pulled down her va-

lise. With her back turned, Rob and Peter and Amelie couldn’t

see Kat as she unfastened the chatelaine from her waistband

and dropped it into the dark well of the open valise, watch-

ing as it disappeared underneath the more practical things, the

sweaters and hats and mittens, that Kat believed were truly

important to their well-being.

For an instant, she caught a dim light emanating from the



chatelaine, a soft blue glow, but then decided it was only a re-

flection off the silver.

Cold. At that moment Katherine Bateson was certain that

the chill and drafts of a Scottish castle would be their greatest

threat.


18 J A N E T F O X

3Claw

Deep in the dark well Kat sees something shiny. Glow-

ing. Faintly blue, like hard-packed ice.

It moves, creeping, and she backs away until her spine is up

against the cold stone wall of the well, backs away as it creeps

closer, and then she sees. It’s a hand, but not a normal hand. It’s

a claw hand, sharp, curving, wicked, crawling on knife-edge

fingers straight toward her, one scraping shiver at a time, and

she wants to scream but she can’t, oh, she can’t . . .



4The Number Thirteen

The train lurched and the lights flickered and Kat

woke up with a jolt, her back pressed against the cold hard cor-

ner of the bench. The muffled scream died in her throat as she

remembered that she was on a train, Ame’s head across her lap,

Rob and Peter talking, London far behind, and the northland

still far ahead in the dark night.

Kat clutched her book of math games, searching for the

page she’d been working on before she’d drifted into the night-

mare.

“Never mind Los Angeles,” Peter said. “New York, that’s the

place.” His elbows rested on his knees, Robbie fixed on every

word. “The city that never sleeps. Skyscrapers and shows. And

lights. It sparkles. New York is lit up day and night.”


20 J A N E T F O X

Kat slapped her book shut. Amelie stirred and whimpered.

Peter caught Kat’s sour expression and looked stricken.

“Oh, gee. I’m sorry.”

The blackouts had spoiled her for lights, and the only kind

of sparkle she knew now was the kind that preceded a blast.

Even the windows of the train had blackout curtains, the con-

ductor coming through at dusk to make sure they were all

drawn good and tight.

It wasn’t Peter’s fault.

Ame whimpered again. “Bad dream,” Kat said. Peter bit his

lip and nodded.

“At least it’s a castle,” Robbie murmured. “If we have to

leave home, I mean.”

“Yeah,” said Peter. He looked away, fidgeting. “What time

is it?”

Kat wrapped her fingers around the watch on her wrist. “I

forgot to wind it,” she lied.

“Ah,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Must be late. I’m going to

try to catch some shut-eye.”

“Me too,” Robbie said, yawning wide and leaning back.

Peter reached up and dimmed the lamp, and the green vel-

vet and mahogany and brass sank into dusky darkness. Kat

didn’t fall back asleep for a long time, not wanting to return to

the well and the claw-fingered hand.

They changed trains in Edinburgh in the wee hours. Peter



carried the sleeping Amelie through the station, and Kat si-

lently thanked him for it.

Their second train was only two coaches long and thread-

bare. There was no brass or velvet, just muslin curtains tacked

over the windows. The four sleepy children were nearly the

last left aboard when the engine crawled to their stop at Craig

Station.

It was a gray dawn, thick with mist, and there was no one on

the platform. They hauled their trunks from the luggage car to

the middle of the waiting room and heard the train as it roared

to life again and made away, leaving them alone on the raw east-

ern lands of Scotland, the smell of the sea heavy in the air.

Regret and worry filled Kat as the train’s clacking faded

into the distance.

The waiting room, no bigger than a small parlor, was si-

lent and empty and dimly lit. Kat and Peter exchanged a look.

He raised his eyebrows, and she lifted her shoulders. “We’re

supposed to be fetched from the station, that’s what Mum told

me,” she said, uncertain.

At that instant the outer door opened, the overhead bell

jingling, and the smallest man Kat had ever seen blustered in,

slamming the door behind him. The thin windows rattled in

their frames. He paid the children no notice as he marched

across the waiting room to another door that led into the dark-

ened ticket office.


22 J A N E T F O X

Open, slam, rattle-rattle.

Amelie tugged at Kat’s sleeve; Kat leaned down. “He’s such

a wee man,” Ame whispered.

“A dwarf, I think,” Kat whispered back, and Ame’s eyes

went round.

“Ah,” Ame said, nodding. “There’s always a dwarf in the

best magical stories.”

Kat was about to correct her—this wasn’t a story, and there

was nothing magical about to happen—when the wooden

ticket window shutter, which had been drawn down behind

the bars, slammed upward and Kat jumped. Lights buzzed and

blinked and brightened.

“Can I help ye?” The dwarf’s voice, belying his size, boomed

through the waiting room, his accent a strong brogue.

His head was now of a height with theirs. He’d changed

into a proper cap with a badge on the brim: stationmaster.

Peter and Kat stood side by side at the counter. Kat put on

her most grown-up expression. “We’re to be met,” she said.

“We’re on our way to Rookskill Castle,” Peter added.

“Refugees,” Kat said. “From the Blitz.”

The stationmaster looked from one to the other. Then he

shook his head. “I shouldn’t, if I was ye.”

Kat wrapped her fingers around the edge of the ticket

counter. “Shouldn’t what?” A chill crept up her spine.

“It’s a peculiar place,” the stationmaster said, rolling his Rs.



“Been so forever. Hainted, that’s what they say. By ghostlings.

You bairns, you childlings, oughtn’t be going there. Don’t

like it, and now all you childlings coming up from London

regular . . .” His words trailed off as he pursed his lips. “Odd

noises, specially at night, like grindings, and screeches, and

whatnot, is what I’m told, though I try to steer clear, I do,

specially at night. When I have to go up there on business I

make it quick-like. Not a one wants to go near the place. And

poor Lord Craig, bless him, not seen these many months, not

since just after . . . well. Peculiar, that’s what.”

“Odd noises?” Peter asked.

“Grindings?” Amelie asked from below. “And screeches?”

“Haunted?” Rob piped in from behind, sounding not so

brave.

“We were told he’s taken ill. Lord Craig, that is,” Kat said.

“So maybe that’s why—”

“Hainted, it is, with grindings and screeches,” the station-

master put in darkly. “I count three bairns from down south

before you lot.” He shook his head. “Came in last week. Haven’t

seen ’em since, neither.” He shuffled a stack of papers. “Next

train back to Edinburgh leaves at noon. You want tickets?”

Before they could answer, from behind them Kat heard the

outer door open again.

“Are you here for Rookskill Castle?” This man was as large

as the stationmaster was small, almost a giant, filling the door


24 J A N E T F O X

frame only because he was bent at the waist. “Let’s go then.”

Amelie tugged at Kat. “See? A giant. Just like—”

“Yes, I know, Ame,” Kat interrupted. “The old magical stories.”

“I shouldn’t, if I was ye,” came the low voice of the station-

master.

Kat glanced back at him; he was frowning behind his bars.

The giant took her trunk in one paw and Robbie’s in the other,

and said to Peter, “You take that ’un, now.”

Off they went. Keep calm.

What waited outside was not a motorcar but an open-seat

wagon drawn by four black draft horses. “Yer too many for

her Ladyship’s horseless,” the giant mumbled. He threw their

trunks into the back and lifted Amelie up by her waist to sit at

the front; the rest of them scrambled up to find seating on the

bench behind him.

Kat’s heart thumped something dreadful.

There wasn’t a proper dawn; it was too foggy. The cold fog

beaded on Kat’s beret and wrapped the wagon and the road

ahead in gloom, and she couldn’t get the lay of the land. Kat

tucked her gloved hands into her armpits. The wagon jostled

and shuddered. Kat was sitting between Peter and Rob so that

her shoulder bumped against Peter’s. It couldn’t be helped, and

though she wouldn’t admit it, it gave her some comfort.

As did her sensible packing. She wore warm woolen trou-

sers; yet, even so, her knees were knocking.



She saw something of the village, wreathed in mist, as they

passed through—small and silent, no souls strolling among

the thatched-roof cottages or in and out of the shuttered pub

with the sign of a spread-winged blackbird: the rook. The road

wound upward from there, back and forth, like a hawk hunt-

ing, turn and turn again, the wheels making a hawklike squeal

as they rotated in the muddy ruts. The drays puffed steamy

breaths as they hauled their load up the hill. The smell of damp

decay filled the air.

All of a sudden they were at a gate. The giant, who hadn’t

said a word since the station, got down and opened the gate on

its grating hinges, then pointed at Peter. “You,” he said, “close

it behind.”

When Peter climbed down Kat missed his shoulder at once,

and then dismissed that thought right away and clutched at

the watch on her wrist.

The gate was an iron monster with crossbars, and at the

very top of the arch she could make out an odd symbol. It was

the number thirteen inside an ornate circle, with the letters

RC flanking it.

Kat guessed that the RC stood for Rookskill Castle, but the

thirteen? Maybe it was the house number. Did castles have

numbers? And if so, who would choose the unhappy number

thirteen?

Silly, she scolded herself. Numbers weren’t happy or un-


26 J A N E T F O X

happy. Numbers were solid things, things you could depend on.

But as the wagon passed under the gate, she couldn’t sup-

press a shudder and wouldn’t look up at the thirteen that stared

down at them like a winking eye.

From somewhere in the misty wood came the echoing off-

off of a rook.


1

MASTER SET - 2nd PassMASTER SET - 2nd Pass

1

MASTER SET - 2nd Pass

If I’m still in this forest by nightfall, I’ll never leave it again.

The girl’s eyes darted through the misty pines. The air was

wet, though it wasn’t exactly raining. Everywhere she turned

she found dull gray shadows, and her mind put monsters in all

of them. The only sound was her own frantic breath. No bird-

song. No tumbling water. Nothing.

A leafy tendril snaked up from the undergrowth and began

to slither around her ankle. She tore her leg free and raced into

the mist, her bare feet crackling through a carpet of dead leaves

and fallen needles. Towering trees swayed overhead like mossy

giants, and the small patches of sky she could see were black

with clouds. Night was coming. And so were the things that

lurked in the fog.

As she hurdled over a rotting stump, a heart-sized dragon

scale necklace bounced against her chest. A matted drape of

spiders’ webs covered her body, her only protection against the

elements. The rest of her was streaked with mud. She had been

lost in this forest for three days. Had seen and heard things that

Pennyroyal_interior_PRINT.indd 1 6/24/14 2:21 PM

2


still didn’t seem real—a weathered thighbone so thick and long

it could only have belonged to a giant; the deafening thunder of

thrumming wings and the shadow of an enormous dragonfly

passing above the canopy. Three days lost and she knew, one

way or another, there would not be a fourth—

CRACK! The girl jumped at the sound, then heard the pop-

ping crackle of splitting wood somewhere above. She wheeled

just in time to see the hairy branch of a beech tree swooping

down. It slammed into her, knocking her over the edge of a hill.

She tumbled through moldy black sludge to the bottom, where

she collided with a pine trunk. She eased herself up, rolling her

shoulder to be sure her arm wasn’t broken.

The first day, the day she had left home, she had taken a sav-

age beating from the trees. Her father had always warned her to

stay out of enchanted forests, but she was still taken aback by

the trees’ ferocity. She had slowly begun to learn their moods

and patterns, and before long was able to anticipate their at-

tacks. She tried to avoid beeches especially, as they seemed the

most malicious.

Today it wasn’t the trees that frightened her. The sun and

moon and stars had all gone, along with chirping birds and

skittering goblins. In their place, the clouds and mist, and the

distinct feeling that something else was out there.

But what?

She listened, silent and still, though all she heard was wind

shivering through leaves. As she stood, her emerald-green eyes


3


narrowed. There, faintly visible through the dusk, was a distant

pinpoint of light. The window of a cottage.

She had always been cautious, much more so than her sis-

ter, but once she saw that light, she ran for it. The cottage was

small, its timbers frayed and soggy. This was the first shelter

she had seen since leaving home, and yet something inside her

screamed to turn back and run and then run some more.

Would I rather be out here when the sun is gone, or inside?

She ignored her instincts and edged to the window, grab-

bing hold of the sill. Clumps of rot crumbled off in her hands.

She wiped them away, then leaned in again.

Firelight washed across her face, and her stomach roared.

At the far side of the room, a thick, brown liquid bubbled over

the rim of a cauldron, sizzling on the embers. She couldn’t see

anything else, but that was enough. Her hunger drove her to

the door, but as she clutched the handle, panic swarmed up

through the soles of her feet like a million wasps.

Something’s not right here—

A wolf’s lonesome howl echoed down from the mountains,

and she knew she had no choice. She gave the door a hard

shove, but it didn’t budge. She threw her shoulder into it and

finally it barked open.

“Hello?” she said with a small, shaking voice. There was no

answer, only the soft pop of the fire. The floorboards screamed

as she stepped inside and shouldered the door shut with a res-

onant thud.


4


The cottage was warm and tidy. Beneath the lone window

sat a wooden table, where waterflies buzzed around a pile of

blackish-red slop. Next to that were a rusted hand-crank ma-

chine and several neat stacks of multicolored candies. A chill

ran down her arms.

In the corner, beyond the hearth, next to the open door of

a small bedchamber, stood a large cage, oranged with rust and

age. It was just the right size to hold a person. Next to it, a small

pile of children’s shoes spilled across the floor.

She turned to run, but the door that had just been so sol-

idly stuck now hung open. And outside, footsteps crackled

through the leaves.

She looked for another way out, but it was too late, so she

dove under the table and hugged her legs to her chest. A thick

drip of red slid through the slats of the table and plopped on

the floor at her feet.

Oh please oh please oh please . . .

A pair of muddy riding boots clomped across the floor-

boards, shoved along by an old woman draped in layer upon

layer of decaying black robes. The door slammed shut behind

them, though no one was there to slam it.

The girl’s blood ran cold. She was trapped.

The old woman, hunched and bent like a river, shoved her

prisoner into the cage and rattled the latch home. He was around

the girl’s same age, and wore a dark gray leather doublet embroi-

dered in burgundy. His dark hair was in knots from countless

hours on horseback, and his arms were bound behind his back.


5


The cage was too small for him to stand, so he threw his shoul-

der into the door. The frail metal clanged, but held fast.

His captor went to the cauldron to stir her bubbling broth,

which hissed against the flames like a chorus of angry snakes.

“Now then, what have I done with my jars?” Her voice was

full of contradictions, soft and sweet, but with a knife-edge of

menace. “It’s been so long since I had a heart to put in them.

Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh . . .” She leaned her ladle against the stone

gently, like a kindly grandmother might, then shuffled into the

bedchamber.

Now! Now! NOW!

But the girl sat frozen in place, watching as the boy strained

and writhed against his bonds. He leaned back to give the door

a solid kick, and that’s when he saw her.

“Hey!” he hissed, jerking his head toward the latch. Tears

welled in her eyes, and she suddenly felt as though she might

faint. “I know you’re scared, but open this cage and you’ll leave here

alive. I swear it.”

She pulled her legs tighter, clinging to them like the last jag-

ged stone before a waterfall. But as her tears fell and her heart

thumped in her chest, she noticed something in his eyes that

calmed her. He wasn’t afraid. When he said he could keep her

alive, he believed it.

Somehow, before her own fear could stop her, she began to

scoot forward. Each creak of the floorboards made her want

to scream and run for the door, but she kept her eyes fixed on

his and crept closer and closer to the cage.


6


“Hurry!” he whispered.

Her trembling fingers reached for the latch. She tried to

work it free as gently as she could, but the metal had become

violently angry over the ages. It screamed open.

“What’s this?”

The girl wheeled and fell back against the cage. She had

never seen a witch before, but there could be little doubt that

that was what stood before her now. The witch didn’t move,

just stared at her with milky yellow eyes and a wide, toothless

grin. Her skin was the color of a worm after three days’ rain,

and it drooped from her bones like a melted candle.

“Open the latch!” shouted the boy, slamming his shoulder

against the door.

But the witch’s gaze paralyzed the girl. The hag’s eyes bored

straight into her own, slicing through her brain and down her

throat. The girl gasped for air as the witch stared deeper, deeper,

straight for her heart. She was choking on hate, anguish, fear . . .

the feeling that she had already seen the sun for the last time

without even realizing it. The witch was inside her—

“RUN!” shouted the boy as the cage door finally crashed

open.

The girl snapped free of the witch’s gaze. All that choking

awfulness slid out of her throat and she could breathe once

more. The dragon scale whipped round to her back as she

sprinted for the door. She threw it open and burst out into

the night. The blackness of the woods and the swirling fog


7


made it seem like the witch was everywhere at once. Even in

the open forest, the girl was trapped.

“Over here!” The boy stood next to a massive white horse

that glowed in the moonlight like a ghost.

“What? On that?”

“These are her woods! We’ll never make it on foot!”

She grimaced, but knew she would have to trust him. As

she raced to the horse, the flickering firelight inside the cottage

was suddenly extinguished. Smoky blackness, darker than the

night, wafted from the door.

“Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh . . .” The cackle was no

longer that of a feeble old lady. It had morphed into something

elemental and terrifying.

The girl swung onto the horse’s back. Beneath the smooth

white needles of hair she could feel sweat and muscle and knew

the boy was right: this was their only chance of escape. She

reached down and grabbed the rope binding his arms, hauling

him facedown across the horse’s backside. Black smoke bil-

lowed from the door, and the cackling reverberated through

the forest like it was coming from the fog itself.

“Let’s go!” grunted the boy, but the girl was transfixed by

the figure floating out of the cottage. The witch’s body had dis-

torted into something monstrous, long-limbed and inhuman.

Her tattered robes billowed smoke. The skin around her mouth

began to crack and split as her smile grew ever wider.

“Take the reins and go!”


8


The girl wrenched her eyes away. Straps of leather tack dan-

gled from the horse’s head and neck. She didn’t know what

any of it was, so she gripped the mane instead. With her other

arm twisted behind her, she clutched the rope around the boy’s

hands.

“Ride,” she whispered, and they lunged away into the night.

Every muscle in her body clamped down as she felt the horse’s

power beneath her. Her fingers clutched the mane so tightly,

the knuckles had already gone white. As the horse sailed across

uneven ground, each stride threatened to break her grip.

“I can’t do it!” she screamed over the thunder of hooves. “I

can’t!”

“Please . . .” was all the boy could muster. His midsection

slammed repeatedly against the horse, forcing the air from his

lungs. He couldn’t draw breath.

The girl closed her eyes and ground her teeth. I will not let go.

The horse or the rope may slip free, but on my father I will not let go. She

glanced back, and what she saw made her gasp.

The witch, a billowing, spectral fiend, swooped through the

trees like an enormous owl. Waves of frigid air swept up from

behind as her bony fingers reached forward.

The horse leapt a fallen tree. The landing nearly ripped the

mane from the girl’s fingers. Her legs, pinned tightly around

the horse’s shoulders, felt frail and insignificant. Her entire

body hurt, but the truly ferocious pain was in the fingers hold-

ing the boy’s binding. It sawed deeper into her raw skin with

each stride. I can’t hold on . . . It’s all coming loose . . .


9


“Water . . .” he croaked.

She scanned the darkness until something in the distance

caught her eye. The pale reflection of moonlight on water. A

river.

She jerked the mane, steering the horse toward it. The boy’s

weight pulled the rope to the final joints of her fingers. She was

going to lose him.

Suddenly, she released the mane and grabbed the boy’s

vest just as the rope slipped from her fingers. Now her legs,

locked around the horse’s neck, were the only thing keeping

them both alive. She lay twisted along the horse’s back, and the

headlong gallop was driving the leather saddle into her side.

The boy was barely on the horse, and she had no way of know-

ing if he was alive or dead.

The bristles of the horse’s coat scraped farther down her

legs. Lower . . . lower . . . nearly to the ankles. Behind them, a

wall of pure terror rose up. The witch was enormous, wraith-

like, her arms extending from a cloak of swirling smoke.

Then, in an instant, the girl lost all sense of gravity. Her body

soared through the air. The boy was gone. The horse was gone.

And in the next moment, her lungs filled with icy water. With

shocking clarity, she realized she had made it to the river. As

she began to panic for breath, she found the rippling moon-

light beneath her. She righted herself and kicked toward it until

her head popped into the crisp night air, and she coughed until

her lungs were dry.

The witch had gone, hiding no doubt in the fog at the


1 0


shoreline. On the opposite bank, where the air was clear and

stars painted the sky, the white horse staggered out of the

water.

She swam toward the bank until finally her feet touched

the rough, slimy stones of the river bottom, then pulled her-

self ashore like some ancient creature, sobbing and gasping for

breath.

I made it. A miracle’s happened and I’m still alive.

Her legs buckled and she dropped to the pebbly shore. She

forced herself onto her back, filling her lungs with the night

until her panic began to recede. As she lay there, astonished

to be alive, a strange thought crossed her mind. This night

sky, a pale swipe of purple-white across a black field of un-

told numbers of stars, was the single most beautiful thing she

had ever seen. Crickets chirped rhythmically from the trees.

The choking mold stench was gone. Somehow, she really was

alive.

“Here . . .” came a weak voice from farther down the gur-

gling river. She sat up. The horse stood at the waterline nuz-

zling a dark figure. It was the boy, arms still bound behind him,

lying facedown in the sand, his legs dangling in the current.

She went to him, but her fingers were too stiff and sore to grip

the crude knot. She tried pulling on the rope, and it suddenly

crumbled away like it was a thousand years old.

The boy, battered and weak, pushed himself over, too dazed

to drag his legs free of the water. His teeth chattered, his whole


1 1


body shuddering in the steady night breeze. “You must be . . .

f-frozen solid . . .”

The girl, barefoot, sodden to the bone, and wearing only a

thin covering of spiderwebs, said nothing.

“What . . . what’s your n-name?”

Her eyes fell to the rocks. “I don’t have one.”


1 2


2

The girl stared, not at the fire, but above it, where orange

sparks wisped into the night sky to join the stars. The soft

crackle of burning wood and the comforting smell of flame re-

minded her of home, somewhere that now seemed like one of

the distant galaxies floating in the blackness above. She had al-

ways had an affinity for fire, though she had never quite learned

to make one. Her father tried to teach her, and her sister could

do it easily, but the best she could manage was a faint thread of

smoke. Now that the tendons in her fingers had loosened, she

picked up another branch and laid it on the pile, then watched

as the fire claimed it.

“Has anyone told you you’re a delightful conversationalist?”

said the boy, watching her through the fire with big, amused

eyes. She didn’t respond. “No, I expect they haven’t.”

In the calm of the night, far from the border of the enchanted

forest, the girl noticed something about her companion. The

way only half his mouth smiled, the brightness in his eyes, the

sense of constant amusement about him . . . It all added up to


1 3


someone who very much enjoyed being alive, and all because

he had had the good fortune to be born as himself.

“You can finish with the wood now. There are bandits out

there.” He lifted a cast-iron skillet from the fire and slid two

bubbling eggs onto a pewter plate, which he handed to her.

She shoveled them into her mouth, so hungry that she didn’t

even mind the quick scald as the yolks broke. With a chuckle

and a shake of his head, he took a few more out of a silk sack

and cracked them into the pan. She had refused when he had

offered her clothes, but food she could not resist.

“For your memoirs, my name is Remington. Of Brentano, in

the Western Kingdoms.”

She licked the yolk from her fingers. He sighed, though the

grin never left his face. His attempts to draw her out thus far

had all ended this way. She hadn’t helped him clear brush or

build the fire or even gather cordgrass for his horse. She just

watched him with mild suspicion as he worked.

“Are there more like you?” she asked.

“Pardon?” he laughed. She looked to the fire in embarrass-

ment. Her thoughts somehow seemed inferior next to the

smooth polish of his words. His voice was deep and refined,

and that, too, made her feel uncomfortable. “Are there more

like me? Well, according to most girls I’ve met, no.” When

she didn’t oblige him with a laugh, he softened his demeanor.

“What were you doing out there by yourself anyway? En-

chanted forests and barefoot girls don’t have a particularly

warm history.”


1 4


She set her plate in the dirt and studied him. Could she trust

him? She already had several times. And here she was, alive and

filling her belly. Perhaps he had earned the right to be trusted

again. She reached into her tangled mass of webs, pulled out a

rain-warped parchment, and handed it to him.

“I’m looking for her.”

He unfolded the parchment. It was a hand-painted notice

depicting a girl in a golden dress standing before a castle in a

heroic pose. In ornate script, it read:

Pennyroyal AcademySeeking bold, courageous youths to become

tomorrow’s princesses and knightsBlood restrictions lifted—Come one, come all!

“These bloody things are everywhere. They really are des-

perate, aren’t they? It’s not to say you wouldn’t make a fine

princess, only that they’ve never recruited this aggressively

before.”

“So you know her?”

“I . . . suppose you could say that. You’re really quite lucky I

came along to rescue you—”

“Hang on, you rescued me?”

He fought away a smile, but was only partly successful.

“We’ll ride to Marburg together. I’m headed to the Academy

myself to train as a knight.”


1 5


She leapt to her feet, snatching the parchment from his

hands. “You’re a knight?”

“No,” he said, looking at his suddenly empty fingers, “which

is why I’m enlisting. Look, you’re not terribly gracious, are

you?”

She folded the parchment, scowling at him. He shook his

head and took the skillet off the fire. He plated the eggs and

prepared to eat, then, with a sigh, offered this serving to her as

well. Her mother had told her from her earliest memories to

steer clear of knights, just as her father had warned her against

witches. Remington insisted he wasn’t a knight—yet—but

even the mention of the word made her nervous. She kept a

suspicious eye on him as she took the offered eggs and sat back

down.

He stood and stretched, then walked to the tree where his

horse was tied and started unclasping something from the sad-

dle. He was tall and lean, with the effortless bearing of an ath-

lete who trusted his body to always do what he asked. And he

intends to be a knight, she thought. I should have left him in that cage.

“I’m quite happy to see someone like you enlisting,” he said.

“The world is far too unsettled to be worrying about the color of

one’s blood, don’t you think?” He brought back a small bedroll

and tossed it to the dirt next to her. “It’s a bit damp, but the fire

should sort that out.”

He collected the empty plates and set them in front of his

horse to lick clean, though she had already done a good job of

that. Then he took off his doublet and lay down on the other


1 6


side of the fire, bunching it up beneath his head. “We ride at

first light. Try to get some sleep.”

Surrounded by the steady song of crickets, she looked

to the stars, confused and exhausted. Her eyes were raw.

All she wanted was sleep. But now she was even less certain

whether she should trust him. She glanced into the depthless

black of the forest. Perhaps she should continue her journey

alone . . .

“What if she finds us?” she said. She hadn’t meant to actu-

ally speak the words, but there they were. Remington propped

himself onto an elbow and looked over at her. “I can’t do that

again. Her eyes . . . It was like she was looking inside me.”

His smile was gone. He looked as earnest as he had in the

cage. “That was a wood witch. They rarely leave the enchanted

forest. Once we crossed that river, we were safe. Relatively

speaking.” She looked away, embarrassed by what she had said,

but also comforted by his words.

Within a few minutes, the crackle of the dying fire sent him

to sleep and she was alone again. She found a flat sandstone

boulder and perched in the dark, thinking. But every thought

inevitably led straight back to that cottage. She was safe now,

but didn’t feel it. The fear echoed on.

She slipped the necklace over her head and studied it under

the faint light of the rising moon. A coat of dried mud covered

its convex side. She licked her thumb and rubbed it away. Un-

derneath, a smear of dried black stained the scale from edge to

edge. And something in that stain, a faint shimmer, caught her


1 7


eye. She tilted the scale to catch the moonlight and it happened

again. The stain itself seemed to be moving.

She lifted the necklace higher to catch the moon’s beams

and realized it wasn’t just the illusion of movement. The stain

was shimmering in the light like a vein of gold. And as she

lowered it to her eye, it began to swirl and pulse, the blackness

moving faster and faster until she could see nothing else—

Suddenly she was plunging through an endless void. She

couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tell up from down. The disorienta-

tion was so intense she began to feel ill.

Then, at the bottom of the sickening gyre, an image came

into focus. It was the shore of a vast sea, pink with low sun.

Someone stood there amidst the crashing waves and scaveng-

ing birds. It was Remington. And he held her face in his hands.

“You are the one true Princess of Saudade. I would willingly

give my life to see it so.” He gently pulled her closer. She parted

her lips . . .

Her stomach lurched and everything went black again,

but the spiral quickly settled into another image. A crum-

bling tower in the midst of an endless forest, pelted with rain.

A woman in a tunic dress of imperial violet was in great dis-

tress. Some unseen magic was forcing her to her knees, her

eyes clenched in pain. The girl turned to find the source and a

monstrous witch loomed behind her, face obscured beneath a

cowled cloak. She stood no less than ten feet, and the sight of

her filled the girl’s heart with hopelessness and despair. A long,

bony arm rose up, and the woman in violet screamed. The girl


1 8


wanted to go to her, but found she couldn’t move, could only

watch as the witch forced the woman’s head to the stone in a

bow of forced subjugation.

The cloaked witch thrust her glaucous arms skyward and

the air filled with witches. Hundreds of them, black robes flap-

ping, dispatched to all corners of the land . . .

The girl tore the scale from her eye. Her breath came fast and

shallow, a stark contrast to the boy’s rhythmic snores, the peace-

ful thrum of the crickets. It took her a moment to realize that

what she had seen wasn’t real. Still, the overwhelming feeling

of dread lingered. Another wolf’s howl echoed in the distance,

reminding her that even though she had escaped the enchanted

forest, the bad things of the world lurked everywhere.

She perched on the stone all through the night, watching

the fire fade from orange to red to black. She tried to force

her thoughts to her family, to her home, to anything but the

monstrous witch and the unseen horrors lurking beneath that

hood.

Finally, the sky grayed to a dim, sleepy blue, and the girl

remembered something else from her vision. Not nearly as

haunting, but equally as startling. She glanced at Remington,

whose arms and legs sprawled everywhere like a giant had

tossed him aside. Why on earth would I want to kiss him? A sworn

knight, or soon to be.

“What, no breakfast? No tea? What have you been doing all

morning?” She jerked her eyes away. She had been staring at

him, and couldn’t say how long, but now he was awake. He sat


1 9


up, his face slow and sleepy. She looked away again when she

found her eyes resting comfortably on his lips.

Remington made quick work of camp, and they rode hard

through the morning. Now that she need not worry about the

trees trying to kill her, the forest became monotonous, the ride

quite exhausting. She clung to his waist, struggling to fight off

the sleep that hadn’t come the night before.

As the sun rose behind the dim green canopy, the air

grew thinner in her lungs. They had been climbing gradually

throughout the morning, sometimes up long, slow inclines

coated with bracken, other times along steep switchbacks of

crumbling basanite or limestone. But nowhere in their jour-

ney had the pines cleared enough to give a sense of where they

actually were. Finally, after a valiant fight, her eyes fell closed.

She drifted for what could have been minutes or hours, never

really sleeping, always aware of the crunch of leaves under the

horse’s hooves.

“Ah, there she is. Pretty as I left her,” said Remington. The

girl opened her eyes, but couldn’t make sense of what lay be-

fore her.

They were in high forest country that ended abruptly at a

sheer drop. Beyond that, the world fell away into a deep valley

feathered with millions of pines and furs. A thin, crooked ridge

formed a natural bridge to another mountain forest, splitting

the valley in two. The horse stepped onto the narrow trail, but

the girl didn’t even notice the vertiginous cliffs on either side

of her. Because there, at the far end of the ridge, an immense


2 0


fortress of stone seemed to grow out of the mountain itself.

Walls of bone-white limestone, forty feet tall and marred by

moss and water stains, encased towering spires where brilliant

purple banners danced in the wind. Every surface was topped

with battlements as jagged as the ridges of a dragon’s back. Be-

yond the majestic kingdom, another sea of black-green forest

rolled away to the ends of the world.

“What is that?” she said, her voice dry and feeble.

“Marburg, jewel of the mountain kingdoms.”

Eventually, they reached the end of the trail. The horse

stopped at a stony ledge that fell thousands of feet to an un-

seen bottom. Remington waved an arm, signaling someone

in the gatehouse. A tremendous crack echoed across the twin

valleys and an enormous wooden bridge began to lower across

the chasm. Its timbers groaned under their own weight until it

slammed to the ground. This is how a mouse must feel in the home

of a giant.

The horse clopped onto the drawbridge. Now there was

nothing beneath them but open sky and, after a very long drop,

a sudden end. Two massive pine doors began to creak apart,

broken shafts of arrows still lodged in them from foregone

wars, and a previously unknown part of the world opened up

before the girl’s eyes.

The kingdom, Marburg he had called it, was alive. Ragged-

clothed peasants crisscrossed bustling streets. Merchants

shouted prices and counteroffers. Mothers chased filthy chil-

dren who chased even filthier pigs. Woodsmen hauled giant


2 1


logs. Stoic guardsmen in glinting silver armor stood watch,

their spears piercing high into the air. Music poured from un-

seen windows. And the smells! Burning wood and freshly cut

grass and mud and flowers and roasted duck. White plaster

structures latticed by dark brown timbers jutted up on either

side of the high street, and thatched-roofed cottages squatted

down near the mud.

Everywhere she looked, the girl was keenly aware she was

missing a dozen other things.

“Look at them!” she cried. “They’re just like me!”

They came upon a circle of peasants happily clapping along

to an elderly fiddler’s song. Three small girls danced in the

center with carefree smiles and bare feet. Something about

the innocent joy in their faces drew her attention more than

anything else she had seen thus far. The fiddler kept a bulging

eye on the girls as they giggled and spun one another around.

Faster and faster he played, luring them into an impossible

game, and soon their feet tangled and they ended up in the dirt,

tears of laughter in their eyes.

“Wait,” said the girl, twisting to watch as they rode past.

“Couldn’t we stay? Just for a bit?”

“We’re late. Stay if you like, but you’ll miss your chance to

become a princess.”

She watched the girls as long as she could, until finally they

disappeared from view. Their happiness was so pure, it made

her wistful, and also a bit melancholy. I was never that carefree.

Remington reined the horse down an alley past yet another


2 2


timber-framed cottage, and almost immediately the joyous

hustle and bustle of the high street was gone. The sharp pun-

gency of rotting things made her bury her nose in Remington’s

doublet as the horse clopped through brackish puddles. The

farther down the twisting alley they went, the more clearly

she could hear something up ahead. An ominous murmuring

sound.

“What is that?”

“That, my dear, is about to be the strangest day of your

life.” Remington clicked his tongue and the horse cantered up

a slight grade in the dirt. Finally, they emerged back into the

sunlight.

Across a vast courtyard of cobbled stone there stood an im-

posing palace of polished black slate and mortar. Castle Mar-

burg. It loomed nobly over a temporary marquee held aloft by

three massive timbers. To the side, a line of carriage coaches

waited, each hitched to a team of horses. And the sound the

girl heard was the combined voice of hundreds of excited girls

milling beneath the marquee.

She went numb, unconsciously clutching Remington just a

bit more tightly. The girls were all of her same age, each wear-

ing an elegant dress of such a variety of colors the girl had never

seen. All different, yet somehow essentially the same. They’re

just like me, she thought. Only nothing like me at all.

As Remington’s horse crossed the courtyard, she began to

notice that they had been noticed. Faces turned to them with

unusual expressions. Delight upon seeing Remington, then


2 3


befuddlement when their eyes landed on her. The din of voices

softened. She heard whispers of his name—“Remington”—

circulating through the crowd.

His mud-spattered boots hit the stone with a soft thud.

“Mind your dismount. Fall on your face before these girls and

they’ll never let you forget it.” Alone on the horse’s back, she

realized that nearly every eye in the courtyard was focused

squarely on her, and she began to go pale. She took his callused

hand and slid to the ground. “First test, beautifully passed.”

She tried to hide herself behind him, but after adjusting a

strap on his saddle, he swung back atop the horse and left her

alone on the cobblestones. Alone in a crowd of hundreds.

“Right. I’m off to knights’ enlistment.”

“Wait!” she said. “What do I do?”

He pointed into the shade beneath the marquee, beyond all

the colorful dresses, to several long wooden tables. “You march

straight over there and enlist. You’ve as much right to be here

as anyone.”

She looked up at him with eyes full of fear. Take me home! I

don’t want to be here anymore! she thought. But no words came.

“ ‘ Bravely ventured is half won,’ as my father likes to say. The

only way to find the girl on your parchment is through that

lot.” He nodded to the crowd, not at all surprised by the atten-

tion coming his way. “Off,” he said, rearing the horse onto its

hind legs with a dramatic whinny. Then he rode away across

the courtyard, leaving a ripple of awed gasps in his wake.


Matthew Jobin

philomel books • An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA).

BOOK 1

TheNethergrim_final pass.indd 3 11/6/13 10:29 AM

11

P r o l o g u e

The best horse I ever knew was a bay stallion with

a white star on his face. His name was Juniper—a

strange name for a steed of war, but that’s what he was

called when he was born, and his rider never changed it. The

rider was the fourth son of the lord of a little place far away

south. This boy had heard every tale of every grand old hero

ever told, and when each of them was finished, he asked to

hear it again, long after the other boys had started sneering at

them. His father gave him Juniper on his sixteenth birthday

because he had no land left to give, and so this boy—his name

was Tristan—thanked his father for the horse and the armor

and the sword he was given, and rode away from home. He had

too many brothers for anyone to miss him much.

Tristan and Juniper wandered the roads for many months,

looking for good deeds that needed doing, and after a while

they found some—lonely things, quiet things in little hamlets


2 M A T T H E W J O B I N

and manors at the edges of the land. Tristan’s shield was often

dented and often mended. His sword grew notched, but he kept

it carefully keen. Juniper grew as fearless as any horse ever

born, and the rumor of their coming sent awful things scurry-

ing into their holes.

But the world is not a story, or if it is, the plot is very strange.

The people Tristan helped were mostly poor, and though they

were grateful when he killed a quiggan or caught an outlaw, it

was hard to live on what they gave in thanks. He and Juniper

grew both tough and wild, and in safer places where there

were no such troubles, he found that people had no use for

him. After a while he found himself dreaming of a different

life, with warm fires, good food and cheerful friends.

One day, as Tristan traveled through a land south and west

of us near a great curve in the mountains, he was met on the

road by a lord and his household knights, well-fed men in pol-

ished mail astride great horses of war. They commanded that

Tristan stop, for they had heard stories of this youth who roved

the marches, doing the bravest of deeds for the least of men.

The lord bade Tristan attend him at court, where Tristan spoke

of his adventures with the grace of perfect truth. The court sat

up listening long into the night, and when Tristan was finished,

the lord raised his cup and welcomed him as a knight of his

household. Tristan was overcome with joy, and swore a sacred

oath to serve the lord all his days.

All seemed well at last. Tristan was a gallant young knight

in service to a mighty lord, riding at the head of his vanguard

in gleaming armor. As the months went by, though, Tristan


T he Ne th e r g r im 3

began to discover something he did not like. He would hear

stories of trouble out on the borderlands, just as before: bog-

gans in the millponds, thieves and cutthroats on the roads—

the sort of things he would always go and try to fix when he

was on his own. But now he was an oathbound knight, and his

lord would never allow him to go help anyone. Tristan’s lord

wanted very badly to have more land, even though he already

had so much that you could not ride across it all in a week.

He plotted and schemed for months, drawing up his plans in

secret and buying allies with coffers full of gold. Other lords

came and went from the castle—some fearful, some angry,

and some with terrible hungry smiles.

Soon enough, war came, a war that was happening only be-

cause Tristan’s lord wished to rule more of the world. Tristan

had sworn an oath, and that meant he would not leave no mat-

ter how unhappy he became, for he had been raised to keep

his word, especially when those words were sacred oaths. His

lord led an attack through a nearby land, fighting all the way.

Instead of monsters, Tristan found himself in the thick of

battles against other men with whom he had no quarrel. He

tried to be merciful whenever he could, but people died on his

sword—perfectly decent people who did not deserve it. Some-

times he would lie awake at night, and a little voice in him

would ask if it would be better if it was he who died.

At last they laid siege to one of their enemy’s great castles.

Tristan’s lord thought he could win if he struck fast and hard,

so on a hot night in summer some of the men were ordered

to throw ladders up the sides of the walls and try to take the



castle by storm. They scaled the gatehouse and let down the

drawbridge under a rain of arrows. Thinking victory was his

for the taking, Tristan’s lord charged in, leading Tristan and the

other knights far ahead of the footsoldiers. He made an awful

mistake, for the enemy within the castle was much stronger

than he had guessed. They sprang in a mass from every tower,

trapping the knights in the courtyard below. Tristan tried to

protect his lord, throwing himself in front of every enemy who

came near, but it was no use. An arrow struck the lord in the

neck and he fell off his horse, dead.

The attack had failed. The courtyard was strewn with the

dead and the dying. Tristan lowered his sword and stared about

him like a man in a dream, and it was only Juniper, weaving

this way and that through the fray, who saved both himself and

his rider. Tristan let his sword fall with a clatter to the stones,

and then his shield. He grasped the reins and rode from that

courtyard through a hail of arrows, past his own army and

into the night. He was never seen in that country again.

Seasons turned in their weary round. Tristan and Juni-

per became lonely, wandering creatures again, but this time

Tristan was afraid and ashamed, and did not try to be a hero.

Juniper’s saddle was sold for food, and so was Tristan’s ring

that was given him by his mother, and still they had hardly

enough to eat. For many months they roamed, a ragged young

man with his big shaggy horse, until they came into the north

in the middle of a winter just like this one.

In that winter, in a place not far from here, there was a little



village in terrible trouble. It stood at the very edge of the king-

dom, far out and alone on a road so old that no one knew who

had built it. Tristan rode Juniper into the village just as it was

getting dark. They crept along from house to house, finding

no one anywhere, until they came to a crossroad where stood

a tiny inn. No sound came from within, but firelight flickered

through the shuttered windows. Tristan threw a blanket over

Juniper and led him to the empty stables in the back, then

opened the inn’s front door.

“There’s a draft,” spoke a voice. Its owner was the only per-

son inside. He sat with his feet propped up before the fire and

the cowl of his fine dark cloak over his head. He seemed—of

all things on such a night—to be reading something.

“Why are you not at the hall with the others?” The cloaked

figure spoke without turning.

“Please.” Tristan stepped in and shut the door. “I am just a

traveler. I do not know where I am supposed to be. It is very

cold outside.”

The other man turned to look at him. “You, friend, must be

the most luckless traveler in all the world.”

Tristan came closer to the light and warmth of the fire. He

could see that the other man took him for a beggar or a run-

away slave. He certainly looked it; his tattered old tunic had

been made for a much shorter man, and he had sold his shoes

months before. His feet were bound with rags, and in his long

wandering grief, his beard had grown tangled and his eyes

sunken.



The other man bent to throw a log on the fire. “The inn-

keeper is at the hall with the rest. Your best chance for sur-

vival is with them.”

Tristan held out his hands to the flames. “What is happen-

ing here?”

The other man looked up at Tristan with an expression

both searching and amused. “Tell me, traveler, where were you

going?”

“I do not know. I was following the road.”

“You could not follow it much farther. Past here there once

stood a few farms; they are nothing now but ashes. The road

then rises into the mountains, but you would never reach

them. The Nethergrim has come. He has found these people

living on his doorstep, and he is angry.”

“The Nethergrim?” Tristan sat next to him and warmed

himself by the fire. “I thought that was just a story.”

“Would that it were.” The other man flipped to the end of

his book, searching page after page. He closed it with a sigh.

“Nothing. No help at all.”

“What were you reading?” asked Tristan.

“My master’s journals, for the third time,” said the other

man. “I was looking for some secret knowledge of the Nether-

grim, some weakness I could use against him.”

“Where then is your master?”

“Dead—along with his guards, servants, mounts, guides

and all of his apprentices save me. I was the only one who got

back here alive.” The cloaked man laughed, short and bitter.



“We were exploring the pass, you see, searching for some sign

of the fabled Nethergrim.”

Tristan stood and looked through a crack in the shutters.

He saw nothing but the snow-dusted road and dark houses.

“And he is coming here?”

“He is,” said the other man. “There are records of such

things from long ago. The villagers know much less than I, but

their legends are enough to feed their fears. They meet now in

the hall to decide their course.”

“Why are you not with them?”

The other man looked around him at the shadows on the

walls of the tavern. “I don’t like crowds, and this seems as good

a place to die as any.”

Tristan felt a chill, for he knew despair when he saw it. “You

are sure there is no hope?”

The man looked Tristan up and down again. “What is your

name?”

Tristan hesitated, for it had been long since he had used

his right name—first from fear, then from shame, and after a

while from simple hopelessness. There was something, though,

in the way the other man looked at him that made him want to

speak truly. “I am Tristan.”

“You may call me Vithric,” said the other man. “Give me

your counsel, Tristan. The Nethergrim has arisen and slain my

master, a wizard of no small power. Foul things of many orders

obey his will. Tonight they will enter this village and harrow

it—tomorrow I doubt any of us will be left alive. There are



perhaps a hundred folk holed up in the hall, forty of them chil-

dren, and maybe a dozen old or sick. Few of them are armed,

and none are well armed. What would you have them do?”

Tristan was surprised, as it had been some time since any-

one had looked on him as someone to be heeded. “The village

hall—how is it constructed?”

“Timber over a stone foundation, with a high roof of

thatching.”

Tristan shook his head. “It cannot hold.” He pondered for a

moment. “Perhaps the villagers can buy their freedom. If they

put together all their possessions and offer them as tribute,

maybe the Nethergrim will let them go.”

“Here in the north the Nethergrim has many names,” said

Vithric. “The Old Man of the Mountains, they name him, the

Thief at the Cradle, Mother’s Bane. They say the flesh of chil-

dren is the only thing he truly prizes.”

The thought of those poor children trapped in the hall and

awaiting such a fate was more than Tristan could bear. “We

must do something!”

“There is nothing to do,” said Vithric. “The villagers might

as well pass the time digging their own graves. Perhaps the

Nethergrim will be so kind as to toss in their bones when he

is done with them.”

“They can run.” Tristan stood. “They can run! If they hold

together—”

“It is forty miles to the nearest village, and sixty to the cas-

tle at Northend,” said Vithric. “They are all as good as dead—

so are we.”



Tristan paced across the room and back. “How many horses

do they have?”

“None. My master hired them all, and they are all now

eaten or fled into the mountains.” Vithric raised his hands and

let them drop again. “Were it morning, and the fast did not

wait for the slow, some of these folk might reach safety—but it

is night, and mothers will carry children, sons will prop their

aged fathers on their shoulders and they will all of them die

upon the road. Some of these creatures can move through the

shadows at great speed.”

“I know that.”

A somber smile crossed Vithric’s face. “Then you no longer

wish to play the wandering pilgrim? You were not at all con-

vincing—sir knight.”

“What use is there in hiding, if this is truly my last night

in the world?” Tristan stared into the fire. Vithric watched with

him. Neither man looked at the other.

“Tell me,” said Vithric. “When you did fight, for what were

you fighting?”

“I once served a great lord,” said Tristan. “I thought I fought

for honor, but in truth I fought for his greed. I killed good men;

I made widows of their wives, I made orphans of their children

so that I might hear my master say that I had done well.”

“You score above the other knights I have known in your

honesty, at least,” said Vithric. “There is nothing else?”

“Once,” said Tristan, “long ago it seems, I wandered from

village to village, throwing my shield over poor folk with no

other hope. I never asked for more than they gave, and they



never could give much. I had my sword, my shield, my horse

and my honor.”

“And you had their thanks,” said Vithric. “Their praise and

their love. And in time, as you saved the lives of more of these

poor, decent folk, you began to wonder . . .”

Tristan looked up to the rafters. “I began to wonder if

I was doing it because they needed me or because they

praised me.”

Vithric nodded just once. “That is indeed the question. I

would have liked to spend some days discussing it, for the cur-

rents of your thought run deeper than most men’s. I fear, how-

ever, that we have no time.”

“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 un-

der 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 wiz-

ard 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.


13

C h a p t e r 1

Edmund 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 com-

pared 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 be-

yond 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 father had uncovered a flat

sheet of parchment, much scraped, upon which was written

a number of verses filled with edits and crossings-out. Ed-

mund 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 sym-

bols, 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. Every-

thing 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 de-

serve 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 him-

self 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 Ed-

mund’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 Ed-

mund 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 re-

flection 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 un-

grateful 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 throb-

bing 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.


22

C h a p t e r 2

You there—boy! More ale this way!”

Edmund topped off the mug of the man seated be-

fore 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 non-

sense. 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 to-

gether 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 brim-

ming 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 pay-

ing?”

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 al-

ways 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? Wher-

ever she is.”

“Boy! You there!” The shout from across the room was re-

peated 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 bol-

gug 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 parch-

ments 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 el-

egance 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 do-

ing 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 Geof-

frey 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. Wea-

riness 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 re-

mains 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 Neth-

ergrim 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.” Ed-

mund 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.”

“Hmm. Well.” Grubby Hands shrugged at his son. “Better

than nothing, I suppose.”

“He must be quite a hero to you folk.” The woman did not

seem quite so pompous as her companions. “Bet he tells some

grand stories!”

Edmund shook his head. “No. He doesn’t.”

“My friends! A round for this house on me!” Henry Twin-

tree stood and slapped a large silver coin to the table. “And

when you drink, drink to the memory of Vithric, the great and

the wise, who saved us all from the Nethergrim in years gone

by!”

The answering shout belled in Edmund’s ears. He cast a

frantic look around for Geoffrey, hoping against hope for some

help, but instead caught sight of his father glaring his way from

across the room. Harman Bale turned from his cheery conver-

sation with the elders of the village and made a significant jerk

of his head in the direction of the cellar.

“Drink, my friends and neighbors, to Vithric, to Lord

Tristan and to our own John Marshal.” Henry Twintree’s eyes

shone dewy and soft—he seemed to be making his speech to a

corner of the ceiling. “But most of all, drink to those who gave



all, for you stand upon the ground their courage gave you!”

His neighbors gave throat to their agreement. Mugs were

thrust up in firelight on all sides, dozens and dozens, to ac-

claim and to signal.

“Go on!” Edmund’s mother nudged his back. “That’s half

a mark!” She picked up the coin and thrust it in her apron.

Edmund hurried down the cellar stairs to find his brother’s

pitcher lying empty on the floor. He kicked it against the wall

with a curse and set his own under the tap.

A noisy, stamping dance had gotten underway by the time

he came back up, making the trip to every table a whirling

gantlet of arms and legs. It took seven weaving, ducking trips

down to the cellar and back to serve the whole of the tav-

ern—it would have taken only six if Wat Cooper had not cho-

sen that particular moment to swing his wife right around in

Edmund’s path. No dodging that one—and of course Father

saw it all.

“Everyone got your round? Got it? Then here’s to ’em!”

Nicky Bird leapt onto a table. “Raise ’em, come on, raise ’em

up. Here’s to Tristan and John, to the Ten and the fifty, to

Vithric!”

Edmund stopped, seized with the sick and flailing sensation

that there was something he wanted very much to remember

but could not. He glanced around the tavern room, thinking

that maybe he had missed serving one of the corners. For a mo-

ment something slipped in and out of his thoughts, leaving only

the memory of a pair of eyes watching him in cold disdain. He

shrugged—or shuddered—then poured out the foamy bottom



of his pitcher into the mug of old Robert Windlee, who had so

far managed to sleep through all the din.

“To Tristan and Vithric!” Everyone raised his voice, even

Grubby Hands. It was the loudest sound Edmund had ever heard:

“To the Ten and the fifty, the men who slew the Nethergrim!”


Chapter 1 The Kidnap

M abel Jones was woken by a sudden quiet.

She sat upright.

“What wasn’t that noise?” she wondered.

The city outside was strangely soundless.

The neighbors weren’t listening to the TV.

The cars weren’t driving up and down the

busy road.

Even the mice that scuttled under the floor-

boards observed the eerie silence. A most suspi-

cious silence . . .

9780147514257_UnlikelyAdve_TX_p1-294_3p.indd 1 9/10/15 11:34 AM

2

The unlikely adventures of mabel jones

Mabel listened very carefully, but even with her

eyes closed really tight she couldn’t hear where the

silence was coming from.

Little did she know that the source of the silence

was squeezing through the cat flap with a cutlass

in its teeth . . .

. . . tiptoeing through the lounge, leaving

wet pawprints on the carpet . . .

. . . creeping up the stairs, pausing

for a second to shudder in fear at

a photograph of Mabel’s

great-grandmother . . .

. . . crouching out-

side Mabel’s room

with a large, specially

designed child-sized

sack and, at that very moment,

pushing open her bedroom door ready to—

STOP! WAIT!


3

The Kidnap

Before we witness the terrifying sight of young

Mabel Jones being skillfully bagged in the dead of

night, I believe it is time to reveal the identity of

the creature that has invaded her home in such a

deafeningly silent fashion.

Let us shine a light into the shadows and reveal

the sly beast that lurks in the corner.

Who are you, creature? And what’s with the sack?

The creature’s whiskers twitch.

Some fur that grows in the wrong direction

on top of its head is anxiously straightened with a

licked paw.

A pause, then it fixes us with its saucery eyes

and blinks nervously, whispering:

“I? I is O m y n u s H u s s h . ”

It speaks!

And to which species do you belong?“I is a silent loris.”

A dastardly breed: quiet as a peanut and



sneaky as a woodlouse in a jar of raisins.

What brings you to the bedroom of the poor, unfortunate Mabel Jones?

“I is the bagger on board

THE FeROShUS MAggOt !”The bagger?“The bagger what bags them children! I gots the

proper fingers on me paws that ties the proper knots

that keeps the wriggling little snuglet safe inside.”

Surely not young Mabel Jones?“It performed the sacred DEED. THE DEED

that seals the deal! THE DEED that binds it

to the captain for a lifetime’s service aboard the Feroshus Maggot.”

The creature leans close and whispers.

“The Deed that shows it’s a pirate in the making.”

She didn’t? Not THE DEED?“It did! It did! We saws it through

the captain’s telescope!”


5

The Kidnap

Goodness me! THE DEED was performed!

What’s that, reader?

You know not of which DEED we speak?

Of course not—how silly of me. You probably

haven’t spent years aboard a pirate ship. You prob-

ably haven’t ever sat around a fire on a tropical

beach finishing the last morsels of a freshly grilled

parrot. Then, after the rum has run dry, heard

the talk turn to whispered tales of the unfortunate

children recruited to piracy after unknowingly

performing THE DEED !

So let me take you back an hour, to the deck of

the pirate ship

on which stands one c a p t a i n I d r y s s

E b e n e z e r S p l i t .

THEFeROShUS

MAggOt


7

The Kidnap

Split is a wolf.

A wolf with a pirate hat and a false leg carved

from a human thigh bone. He has a rusty cutlass

hanging from his belt and a loaded pistol hidden in

his underpants, with no fear of the consequences!

His left eye has long since been lost—burned from

his skull by a stray firework. His right eye is

pressed to the end of a telescope. The telescope

is focused on a strange hole in the thick fog that

envelops the FeRO S h U S MA g g O t —a hole

through which he observes a different world

from the one he knows.

A hooman world.

A world where young Mabel Jones is

about to perform THE DEED : the cere-

monial picking of Mabel Jones’s nose by Mabel

Jones’s nose-picking finger.

“Has it been eaten yet?” the crew asks eagerly.

“Is THE DEED complete?”

“Not yet, lads. Not yet!”


8


Mabel’s fate is to be decided by the final desti-

nation of the booger currently sitting on her finger.

The finger that now pauses precariously between

mouth and wall as Mabel makes the decision

whether to eat or wipe.


9

The Kidnap

Will she eat it?

Finally she makes the decision. The very same

decision that any person believing they were

unobserved would make. The same decision being

made across the world at this very moment by

principals, policemen, lunch ladies, and parents

(but especially by principals).

She eats it!Split allows himself a toothy grin. An extra

pair of hands aboard ship could come in useful. At

the very least, the child might fetch a modest sum

at the next port.

He turns to Omynus Hussh and claps the loris

on the back, laughing wickedly.

“Fetch your sack. For tonight you go child-

bagging!”

πIn the bedroom of 23 Gudgeon Avenue, Mabel

Jones climbed out of bed to find the source of the

suspicious silence.


10


Looking out of her window, Mabel could see

the city was wrapped in thick greeny-gray fog.

Only the tops of the tallest tower blocks could

be seen.

What an odd night! She wasn’t normally woken

by a strange quiet. The city wasn’t usually—

She had trodden on something.

A peanut!

Why would there be a peanut on her bedroom

floor?

I don’t even like peanuts, thought Mabel

Jones. Apart from the chocolate-covered ones, of course . . . And even then I only like the chocolate part.

Oh! There was another.

And another.

This is strange!Someone had left a trail of peanuts leading to

the darkest corner of her room.

OUCH!


The Kidnap

She picked them up one by one.

It’s almost as though someone WANTS me to follow them.

Mabel scratched her armpit thoughtfully.

It’s almost as though there is somebody in my room.

THERE IS SOMEBODY IN MY ROOM!

Mabel Jones turned to run for the door, but

a strong, spindly hand grabbed at her from

behind. She opened her mouth to call for help,

but only got as far as the “D” in “Dad” before

another hand was clamped tightly over her lips

and she was wrestled into a sack.

Skillful fingers tied a neat knot

at the top.


12


The sack was lifted to the window, where a large

pair of hairy arms grabbed it eagerly and pulled

it deep into the fog. Then, pausing only to exam-

ine a Mabel-Jones-sized bite on his hand, Omynus

Hussh climbed up onto the sill and leaped into the

night.

Shortly afterward the silence was broken.

Above the usual noise of the busy street in the

middle of the busy city, far away from the nearest

port or shore, the tuneless singing of a rude sea

shanty could be heard drifting on the last wisps of

the clearing fog.

The neighbors turned up their TVs accordingly.


Chapter 2 Pirates

M abel Jones was not the sort of girl to be

scared of something as silly as being kid-

napped by a pirate in the middle of the night.

“My name is Mabel Jones, and I am NOT SCARED of ANYTHING!”

It was dark inside the sack, so she said it again,

but louder this time, just to make sure that it was

true.


14

“My name is Mabel Jones, and I am NOT SCARED of

ANYTHING!”

Still, she wished her mom or dad was there in

the sack with her.

Actually, now she thought about it, it would be

better to wish that she wasn’t here, rather than that

her parents were. There wasn’t enough room in the

sack for them, for a start.

Still, they would be worried if she wasn’t there

when they woke up. Dad always came in to say

good-bye before he left for work.

Unseen paws loosened the knot on top of the

specially designed child-sized sack, and Mabel

Jones climbed out into bright sunshine.

The first thing she noticed after the cawing

seagulls and the blinding sun was a severed hand

tied to some rope and swinging in the salty breeze.

The last time she had seen those spindly fingers,

they had been clamped tightly around her mouth.


15

It turned out that it hadn’t

taken long for Mabel’s bite

on Omynus Hussh’s paw to

go septic.

O L D S AW B O N E S , the ship’s

surgeon—an aged and toothless

saltwater crocodile—had sighed

when he first saw the wound.

“There ain’t nothing quite

so toxic to a pirate’s blood as

child spittle mixed with fresh

toothpaste . . .”

And, while Omynus

Hussh was wondering

what “toothpaste” was,

Old Sawbones had removed the

infected paw with a meat cleaver. There being no

spare hooks on board, he had replaced the missing

hand with a doorknob.

Omynus Hussh had managed to retrieve the

severed hand from Old Sawbones. He planned to


16


keep it in a box for sentimental reasons. But first it

needed to be dried. Otherwise it would smell.

“Are ye sure ye really need it?” Old Sawbones

had asked, licking his lips.

The second thing Mabel Jones noticed was that

she was on board a ship in the middle of the sea.

And the ship was crewed by a wild-looking bunch

of creatures.

They were all looking at her.

My name is Mabel Jones, and I am NOT SCARED of ANYTHING.

This time she just thought it really quietly. She

was a bit scared to say it out loud. It was, after all,

her first time on a pirate ship.

But I forget myself! You may never have been

on a pirate ship either. So let’s pause the action on

deck and explore the vessel to find out more about

its bestial crew.

That door there leads to the captain’s cabin. I

dare not take you through it, though, for he is still

inside.

This open hatch leads below deck.


17

Down

these

wooden

STEPS . . .

Careful as you go.

It’s dark down here. And damp. This room is

where the crew sleeps, in those hammocks slung

from the timbers. The smell of sporadic nighttime

farting still hangs thick in the air, for the fresh sea

breeze does not reach below deck.

That corner is where Old Sawbones works. See

his trusty cleaver, its sharpened edge embedded

in a wooden block? A certificate in Advanced Nautical Surgery from the Butcher’s

Guild is pinned proudly to the wall.

That there’s a crate of ship’s biscuits.

Pardon?

Yes, you may try one.

Delicious, no?

Pirates


18


Currants? Those are no currants. That’s

weevi l.Look! The ship’s register—the list of names

of all the crew on board. It’s in the first-aid box,

nestled between a half-empty bottle of rum and a

box of princess Band-Aids. Let’s rejoin the action

above deck and put some

faces to the names, eh?

Ah! Fresh air.

Sunlight!

Right, let’s do

the roll call.

You already know, of course, the captain:

I d r y s s E b e n e z e r S p l i t ,

a wolf. He has emerged from his cabin to

inspect the new arrival. Behind him lurks

O m y n u s H u s s h, the silent loris. You’ve

met him too. Next comes O L D S AW B O N E S , the

saltwater crocodile.


19

The others you’ve

not met yet . . .

The goat with

the pipe is called

PELF. He’s the first

mate, all braided

beard and grubby

fleece.

Then the shiny-

faced pig, that’s

a well-spoken young

porker.

The orangutan is

Mr. Clunes, a

strong and silent type.

Milton Melton- Mowbray,

Pirates



Not a word has passed his lips for many a moon.

Then you’ve got the mole, McMasters, the best

shortsighted lookout ever to have mistaken a pirate

ship for an optician’s shop.

And that is the crew of the Feroshus Maggot, all present and incorrect.

A voice sounds from the top of the mast!

“What is it? I cannae see!” shouted McMasters.

There was muttering and discussion among

the crew.


21

“Tell us what it is,

Pelf! What kind of snuglet

have we bagged?” asked

Milton.

Pelf sucked on his

pipe. “A snuglet can come

in many shapes, sizes—”

“And flavors!” said Old

Sawbones.

“There’ll be no eating of the crew

this voyage, Sawbones. Least not until

the biscuits run out.” Pelf scratched his

impressive horns and blew out a cloud

of thick smog. “Aye, but this one is a

scrawny lad for sure. A real bag of

bones. Not the best type. Not alto-

gether useless, though. A bit short

maybe, but he could probably be

stretched.”

Mr. Clunes cracked his knuckles.

Pirates


22


There was a growl from behind the gathered

crew.

All eyes turned away from young Mabel Jones

and toward the lean and hungry figure that

was limping through the crowd: Captain Idryss

Ebenezer Split.

His one eye narrowed suspiciously and his lip

curled into a snarl, revealing his yellowed fangs.

“Well, well, well . . . What has THE DEED brought us this time?”

He grabbed Mabel Jones by the chin and

inspected her closely. Very closely indeed.

So closely she could see the rotten meat wedged

between his fangs.

His hot wolf-breath crawled all over her face,

up inside one nostril, down through the other

and then tried to squeeze between her lips.

Mabel coughed politely and hid her nose and

mouth beneath her pajama top.

Captain Idryss Ebenezer Split turned to his


23

crew and uttered an oath so foul it could NEVER be written down.

(It contained a word so rude that if an adult whispered it to themselves

after bedtime, under the quilt so no one could hear, they could still be arrested

and thrown in prison for a very long time.)

The crew huddled together in a worried cuddle

as the captain paced the deck. Finally he stopped

and, glaring at Mabel Jones, declared in a voice as

wicked as a poisoned ice cream:

“This is no boy. This is a —”

Split gagged. The disgusting word he had

reached for caught in his throat like a bad belch.

“ This is a —”

He winced. The foulness of the term Split

needed left a trail of filth in his mouth as he forced

it from his lips.

Pirates


24


“This

isa

GIRL!”

The crew let out a gasp of horror!

“It cannae be!”

“Surely not!”

“A girl?

GirlS

can’t bePIRATES! ”

“She dids THE DEED !”

“She picked her nose . . .”

There was a horrified pause.

“. . . and ate it!”


25

“Girls don’t do that . . . do they?”

The crew’s eyes fixed upon their captive, young

Mabel Jones, who was—just at that moment—

absentmindedly picking her nose.

“She’s doing it now!”

“I’m just itching!” lied Mabel Jones.

The crew fell into a familiar silence. From

the shadows crept the stooped figure of Omynus

Hussh, his saucery eyes rimmed

with angry tears as he caressed

the doorknob at the end

of his wrist.

“She’s a bad-

lucklet, a filthy

smooth no-beard

and . . . and a

s t ick y-f ingered

hand thief!”

Captain Split spat

angrily on the deck.

Pirates


26


“We’ll get no hard work from this prissy little

pink princess, and there’ll be no passengers aboard

my ship! Not this voyage. Not when our treasure

is so near!”

He spun around and clomped back to his cabin,

shouting:

“TONIGHT SHE WALKS THE GREASY POLE OF

CERTAIN DEATH!”


For Sakaki and the Tomoes, who are 100% cat and proud of it

FNL_9780803739758_ForbiddenLibrary_TX.indd 3 2/20/14 12:27 PM

1

Chapter one

THE FAIRY

Mu C h l at e r, al i C e wo u l D wonder what might

have happened if she’d gone to bed when she was sup-

posed to.

It was a fluke, really, because she was the sort of girl

who almost always followed the rules. But she’d been

doing schoolwork and she’d lost track of time.

It was a Saturday night, and her tutor, Miss Juniper,

had assigned her another chunk of algebra for Monday

morning. Alice excelled in all her subjects—she never

would have allowed it to be otherwise—but in algebra

her excellence was born of hard work and long hours

rather than natural talent, so she’d determined to make


2

t h e f o r b i d d e n l i b r a ry

an early start. She wouldn’t be bothering anyone, either.

Her room had its own little writing desk and even its own

electric lamp, which her father had had installed three

years before with the boast that no daughter of his was

going to ruin her eyes scribbling by gaslight.

Her father had been working late again. When Alice

heard the telltale creak of the front door, she weighed the

odds and decided he’d probably be happier to see her

than angry that she was still up. She shrugged into

her robe and padded into the hall and down the stairs.

The late-night silence was a little unnerving. Alice had

grown up in a house that had practically bustled with ser-

vants and guests, even in the middle of the night, and she

was used to seeing strangers about. But the servants had

departed one by one as times had grown mean, until only

Cook, Miss Juniper, and her father’s man were left, and the

visitors were less common than they used to be. The guest

rooms that lined the hallway were all shut up now, with

sheets draped over the furniture.

She passed the doors quickly, tugging her robe a little

tighter, and ducked into the servants’ stairs that led to

the kitchen. Her father would probably be there, fixing

himself something hot to drink.

Sure enough, the swinging door at the bottom of the


3

t h e f a i ry

steps was outlined in yellow light. Alice put her hand out

to push it open, but as her fingers brushed the wood she

heard the voices, and realized her father wasn’t alone.

“. . . you have to know what we can do for you, Mr.

Creighton,” said someone who wasn’t her father. “Some-

one is going to take advantage of it sooner or later.”

Alice turned away at once. Being up late was one thing,

but eavesdropping on her father’s business conversations

was quite another. She’d put her foot on the first step

when the sound of her father’s voice brought her up short.

“Don’t you dare!” he shouted. “Don’t you dare threaten

my family.”

The words hung in the air for long seconds, like a fad-

ing firework.

Her father never shouted, at least not in her hearing.

He was a quiet, honest man who dealt fairly with every-

one, put flowers on her mother’s grave once a month, and

went to church every Sunday. Hearing him talk like that

was like watching a teddy bear yawn and reveal a mouth

full of fangs. Alice stood perfectly still, not daring to

move even her eyes. She wanted to run, knew she ought

to—whatever was being said was obviously not for her

ears—but her feet felt like lead weights.

“Mr. Creighton,” said the other man. “Nobody’s threat-


4


ening. I’m just stating a fact. Nothing wrong with stating

a fact, is there? No law against it.”

His voice was odd, high and nasal. Alice could hear

a strange sound as well, a kind of urgent thrum-thrum-

thrum.

“Don’t mess me around,” her father said, not shouting

now but still angrier than she’d ever heard him. “We both

know what you’re here to say, and I’m sure you know

what my answer’s going to be.”

“I strongly recommend you reconsider your position,

Mr. Creighton.” The thrumming grew louder. “For the

sake of everyone involved.”

“By God,” Alice’s father said. “So help me, I ought to

break your ugly head against the wall.”

“You could do that,” the other man said. “You could do that,

Mr. Creighton. But you won’t. You know it would be unwise.”

His voice dropped a fraction. “For the girl, most of all.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, Alice turned around. Her heart

was still beating so hard, it seemed a wonder that her

father couldn’t hear it. She stepped back down to the

door, carefully avoiding the creaky step, and pressed her

fingers into the crack of light. It was wrong, possibly the

most wrong thing she had ever done in her entire life, but

she had to see. She gave the swinging door the lightest


5

t h e f a i ry

touch, and the crack widened into a gap big enough for a

garter snake, to which she applied her eye.

The light made her squint. On one side of the room

was her father, still in his suit, looking rumpled. His

hair was damp with sweat. One of his hands was curled

around the handle of a cast-iron frying pan sitting on the

range, as though he meant to swing it and make good on

his threat.

Across from him, hanging in the air, was a fairy.

When Alice had been a little girl, her father had given

her a book called The Enchanted Forest. It was a big book

made with thick paper, and had large type with pen-and-

ink illustrations on each facing page. She’d probably

been a bit too old for it, truth be told, but she’d read it

anyway, as she read every piece of printed material that

fell within her reach. It was the story of a rather stupid

little girl who wandered into an enchanted forest, and

caused a good deal of havoc among the creatures who

lived there.

One of those creatures had been a fairy. It was a slim,

child-like figure with wide eyes and a button nose wear-

ing flowing robes, held aloft by gauzy insect wings—Alice

had always imagined the wings in translucent greens

and blues, like a butterfly’s—and it had looked down at


6


the little girl with an air of amused benevolence while it

stood daintily in her raised palm.

At that age, Alice had grasped the idea that some

things in books were real, and others were not. Question-

ing her father had revealed that there were such things as

lions, tigers, and elephants (he’d promised a visit to the

zoo, which had yet to happen), while trolls, centaurs, and

dragons were the figments of writers’ overactive imagi-

nations. Alice remembered feeling vaguely annoyed at

the author of The Enchanted Forest, who had clearly

intended to deceive little girls possessing less penetrat-

ing intellects than her own.

There was, her father had told her, no such thing as

fairies, either.

The thing hovering in the air in Alice’s kitchen was

similar enough to the picture in the book to be instantly

recognizable, but he was larger, for one thing. The crea-

ture in the book had been insectile, six inches high at

most, while this creature was a good two feet from head

to heel. His wings were enormous, considerably bigger

than his slender body, and beat the air so fast, they were

a blur, like a hummingbird’s. They were colored, not in

greens and blues, but yellow and black, which put Alice

in mind of something nasty and poisonous.


7

t h e f a i ry

The fairy’s skin was off-white and gnarled with warty

growths sprouting clusters of thick, black hair. His scalp

was bare and bald as an egg, gleaming wetly in the electric

light. He had no nose at all, and his eyes were wide but

black from edge to edge. When he spoke, she could see a

mouth full of needle-like teeth, and a long red tongue like

a snake’s.

Alice closed her eyes. This, she thought, is ridiculous.

There are no such things as fairies. She gave herself a

pinch on the arm, which hurt, and counted slowly to ten.

When I open my eyes, she thought, he will be gone.

“I really wish you’d at least hear my offer,” said the

nasal voice.

Alice opened her eyes. The fairy was still there. He had

hovered closer to her father, his wings thrum-thrumming,

one tiny finger wagging in under his nose.

“I will not,” Alice’s father said. “I will not entertain any

sort of offer. Go back and tell your master that. And tell

him, if he troubles me again, I’ll . . .”

The fairy waited, lip curled in a cocky grin that showed

his teeth. “You’ll what, Mr. Creighton?”

“Get out!” he shouted. “Get out of my house!”

There was a long moment of silence. The fairy hovered,

impudently, as if to demonstrate that he didn’t have to go


8

just because her father

had said so. Then,

with an affected sigh,

he spun in the air and

zipped out the open doorway

on the other side of the room.

Alice heard one of the front win-

dows rattle open.

Her father sagged, like a heavy weight

had been fastened around his shoulders. He

let go of the frying pan and leaned on the range

for support. Alice wanted to run to him, but she didn’t

dare. Whatever she had just seen—and she was still not

certain what she had just seen—it was something

she had not been supposed to witness.

Alice’s father took a long breath, closed his

eyes, and blew it out slowly, tickling the edges

of his mustache. Then his eyes snapped open,

full of panic.

“Alice,” he said, under his

breath. “Oh God.”

All of a sudden he was

running, struggling to

get his feet under him,


9

t h e f a i ry

caroming off the kitchen doorway and out toward the

main stairs. Alice was caught for a moment in stunned

surprise, then started running herself, back up the ser-

vants’ stairs, heedless of the creaking. He made it to her

door only a few seconds before she arrived.

Finding the door slightly open, he flung it ajar, and

stared wide-eyed at the empty room. His expression,

bathed in the glow of her electric desk lamp, was the

most terrifying thing Alice had ever seen.

She hurried to his side and grabbed his arm. “Father!

Is something wrong?”

“You—” He gestured weakly at her empty room, then

down at her. “I thought—”

“I was studying,” Alice said, “and I got up for a moment.

I’m sorry if I startled you.”

All at once his fierceness melted, and he wrapped his

arms around her in a hug so tight, he lifted her off the

ground.

“Alice,” he said, his scratchy cheek pressed against her

forehead. “Alice.”

“I’m here, Father.” She squirmed until she worked her

own arms free, then put them around him as far as they

would go.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. She wasn’t sure if he was talk-


10


ing to himself or not. “Everything is going to be all right.”

“Of course it is,” she said.

When he let go, there was something new in his face,

a strange, wild determination so far out of the ordinary

that it made Alice feel scared and proud of him, both

at once. Her set her down gently, put his hands on her

shoulders, and looked her in the eye.

“I love you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Alice felt herself blushing. “Of course.”

His eyes were already miles away. He patted her shoul-

der, absently, and then hurried toward his study. Alice

looked after him, wondering about the decision she’d

seen in his eyes.

Then, because she was a girl who followed the rules,

she went back into her room and went to bed.

The next morning, everything seemed so normal that

Alice almost thought she’d dreamed the whole thing.

Almost, but not quite.

She woke up in her familiar bed, under her warm,

familiar quilt with its frayed edge. Her room was just her

familiar room, with the heavy oak wardrobe in one cor-

ner and the framed picture of her grandmother looking

down benevolently.


11

t h e f a i ry

There was no elf sitting on her desk, and her books

were just where she’d left them the night before. No troll

in the heavy wooden chest at the foot of the bed, only the

winter comforters and an ancient pair of stuffed rabbits

she couldn’t quite bear to throw away. She even, feeling

intensely self-conscious, lifted the bedskirts and looked

underneath, but there was no dragon there, only a thick

layer of dust.

Nevertheless, she was certain what she’d seen had

been real. The memory was bright and clear, not fuzzy

and fading the way dreams were. When she sat down for

breakfast with her father, she became doubly sure. He

was acting normal, but it was an act, a little too sincere

to believe.

“Earthquakes again,” he said, paging through the Times.

“First New Zealand, now Managua. Thousands dead, it says.”

“That’s terrible,” Alice said, because she knew it was

expected of her. She was trying to keep from staring at

her father’s face. He’d washed and shaved since last night,

of course, but there was still something tight around his

eyes. It wasn’t a dream, she thought. I’m sure of it.

“Something ought to be done about it,” he said, turn-

ing the page. “And still fighting in Spain. Seems like the

whole world’s coming to pieces.”


12


“You always say they only print the bad news,” Alice

said.

Her father looked up and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Cooper, her father’s man, appeared with a plate of

toast and jam. Properly speaking, it wasn’t his job to

serve at table, but Alice’s father had been forced to give

the last of the footmen the sack when they’d caught him

stealing from the pantry. Cooper insisted he didn’t mind.

In this day and age, he said, a man ought to be grateful to

have work at all.

Her father put the paper aside and went to work on

the toast, all in silence. Alice took a slice herself and

carefully covered it with jam, right to the edges, work-

ing carefully with the butter knife to spread it evenly. The

longer neither of them spoke, the more the silence grew

and grew, like some monstrous thing squatting on the

table between them. When her father finally cleared his

throat Alice gave a little start.

“Alice.”

“Yes, Father?”

“I’m going on a trip.” He paused, and took a deep

breath. “Something’s come up. It’s important, I’m afraid.”

“When?” Alice said. “And how long will you be gone?”

“I’m catching a steamer tonight.”


13

t h e f a i ry

A ship? Her father’s business took him all over New

England, and occasionally as far as Chicago or Washing-

ton, D.C., but he’d never been gone for more than a week,

and never on a steamer. “And where—”

“Here.” He folded the paper and pushed it over to her.

“It’s the Gideon, bound for Buenos Aires.” The schedule,

a set of stops all down through the Caribbean and South

America, was printed in a neat box beside the ticket

prices and number for inquiries. “This way you’ll be able

to keep track of me.”

Alice put one hand on the paper and swallowed hard,

trying to sound as normal as she could. “When should I

expect you back?”

His expression cracked. Just for a moment, but Alice

was watching him closely, and she knew him better than

anyone. His mouth turned down, pulling at his mustache,

and his eyes glittered with tears.

“It’ll be some time,” he said. “I’m sorry, Alice. I wish

there was another way.”

Something was wrong, very wrong. Alice fought a

growing thickness in her throat.

“Perhaps I should come with you,” she said. Ordinarily

she wouldn’t have dreamed of offering such a suggestion

unbidden, but desperate times called for desperate mea-


14


sures. “You’ve always said I need more experience in the

practical side of business—”

“No,” he said, a little too quickly. “Not this trip. When

I get back . . .” He forced a smile. “Maybe then it’ll be time

for you to start making the rounds with me. But I’ll make

sure to send you a postcard from every stop.”

The following day, Miss Juniper moved into one of the

guest rooms and added looking after Alice to her tutoring

duties, although in truth Alice didn’t take much look-

ing after. She worked on her French, and her algebra, and

completed everything she was assigned on time. When

Miss Juniper asked her what she wanted to do for her day

off, Alice told her that she wanted to go to the Carnegie

Library. She spent eight solid hours there, a solemn girl

alone at one of the great wooden reading desks, working

her way through a stack of books that represented every-

thing the library had on the subject of fairies.

Her father needed her help, she was certain of it. She

wasn’t sure why, or how, but the brief glimpse of the fairy

in the kitchen was all she had to go on. She took home a

notebook full of references and scribbles, and as many

books as the librarian would let her have. She stayed up


15

t h e f a i ry

late reading that night, and the night afterward as well.

Alice was not a girl who believed in half measures.

Two days later, Cooper brought her the Times with

breakfast. The front page told her that President Hoover

had given another speech promising that the worst was

over, that the stock market had taken another tumble,

and, below the fold, that the steamer Gideon had gone

down in a freak storm off Hatteras, with all hands.


16

Chapter two

MR. PALLWORTHY

A F t e r t h e s t o r m o F telegrams—the messenger

boy kept bringing stacks of them, and Alice piled them

unread inside the door to her father’s study—came an

inundation of relations. They were mostly cousins, none

of whom Alice had ever seen before and none of whom

paid her more than perfunctory attention. They trooped

through the big old house like visitors to a museum,

offering her halfhearted pats on the head while giving

the furniture appraising looks.

After the cousins came the accountants, who were

more open in their appraisals and didn’t bother with

Alice at all, and after the accountants, like a Biblical

plague building up to a big finish, came the lawyers. They


17

m r . p a l l w o r t h y

belonged to several different firms and seemed to have

come to argue with one another, and for the most part

they paid no attention to Alice either. She stood grimly in

the dining room, in her short-sleeved black dress, feeling

like an overlooked decoration.

Eventually, one of the lawyers came and told her

they were going to have a chat. She wondered if he was

their leader. He was certainly the largest, his coal-gray

suit straining to contain his girth, and he had an enor-

mous gray mustache that drooped past the corners of his

mouth, the ends stained nicotine-yellow. When he came

to fetch her, he affected a jolly, avuncular manner that

made it clear it had been years since he’d dealt with any-

one under the age of thirty.

She followed him up to her father’s study, and seethed

quietly as he seated himself behind the desk in her

father’s chair. It creaked alarmingly beneath his bulk.

Alice stood in front of the desk, as she had so many times

before, and fought the illusion that her father had some-

how transformed into this smoke-stinking whale of a

man.

“So, my girl,” he said, “you have my sincerest condo-

lences. Terrible business. A terrible business. You under-

stand what’s happened, don’t you?”


18


I’m twelve, Alice thought, not five. She made herself

nod. “I understand.”

“My name is Mr. Pallworthy. I’m here to look after

things on behalf of your father’s business partners, that

sort of thing.”

Alice, feeling that a response was called for, nodded

again.

“I don’t imagine you know very much about your

father’s business”—his deep-set eyes flicked to her,

as though to confirm this—“but that’s fine. We’ll take

care of everything, don’t you worry.” He reached under

the desk and brought up a heavy briefcase, from which

he extracted a thick sheaf of paper. “Now, your father’s

primary interests had suffered, unfortunately, from our

current market conditions—”

He went on, his tone changing from the jolly talking-to-

children voice to a going-through-the-motions drone. Alice

could follow what he was reading, possibly better than Mr.

Pallworthy himself could—his voice faltered when he came

to some of the more arcane financial terms—but the gist

was clear from the outset. There was nothing left, noth-

ing at all, and it was only by the extreme generosity of the

creditors represented by Mr. Pallworthy that Alice would be

allowed to leave the building with the clothes on her back.


19


Under other circumstances, she would have taken

some pleasure in going through the paperwork herself to

figure out how he was cheating her—he was, of course,

cheating her, that was what lawyers were for—but at that

moment she couldn’t bring herself to care. When he’d

wound down, he asked her if she had any questions.

“What is to happen to me?” she said.

“Eh?” Mr. Pallworthy frowned, his mustache bounc-

ing. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t stay here, I assume,” Alice said.

“No, of course not,” the lawyer said. “The house will

be sold at auction, the arrangements are already being

made.” He seemed to remember he was speaking to a

child, and put on his jolly-old-boy face again while he

rummaged through the stack of papers. “Arrangements

have been made for you too, of course. You’re to stay with

family, I believe. One moment.” He found the paper he

was looking for and peered at it. “Ah, yes. I see you’ll be

moving in with your uncle Jerry.”

Alice blinked. “I haven’t got an uncle Jerry.”

“Of course you do.” Mr. Pallworthy tapped the paper.

“It says so right here.”

“But—” She bit back her protest. It was no good to say

that her father had had only one brother, and that his


20


name had been Arnold and he’d died in the War before

Alice had been born. Her mother’s family she’d never

known at all. Mr. Pallworthy wouldn’t particularly care,

and he would believe his piece of paper. “I see. Uncle

Jerry.”

“He lives in Pittsburgh, it says. Or near Pittsburgh.

Arrangements are being made to get you there.” He

seemed to like the phrase. “Taking the train all the way

to Pennsylvania, all by yourself! Won’t that be an adven-

ture.”

“I suppose,” Alice answered politely.

“Did you have any other questions?”

Alice just shook her head. Something about her

expression must have finally registered with him, and

the lawyer’s face clouded as he dredged his memory for

something to reassure grieving children. “Chin up, you

know. I’m sure things seem awful, but . . .” He faltered,

then brightened up. “Just remember, it’s all part of God’s

plan!”

Courtesy of the extreme restraint of the creditors rep-

resented by Mr. Pallworthy, Alice was allowed to pack

two trunks full of her clothes, books, and a few odds and

ends, after one of the lawyers had looked them over to


21


make sure there was nothing too expensive among them.

She tucked the threadbare rabbits deep inside the trunk,

underneath her nightshirts. She knew it was childish,

but it made her feel better; and anyway, she couldn’t bear

the thought of leaving them for Mr. Pallworthy to toss in

the trash. The picture of her grandmother stayed—it had

been taken by someone famous, apparently, and would

have to be auctioned—so Alice stared at her for a few

moments in silent farewell before letting a lawyer escort

her to the door.

A footman in a big black Ford delivered her to Penn

Station, and handed her an envelope containing a one-

way, coach-class ticket to Pittsburgh, a local ticket to a

station called North Landing, and two ten-dollar bills.

She had to break one of these almost immediately, at

the station ticket window, in order make change to tip the

porters who dragged her trunks down to the side of

the track.

The long ride on the train barely registered. She spent

it with her chin in her hands, staring blindly out the win-

dow as endless farms and pastures rolled past and the sun

crossed overhead and sank behind the western horizon.

The other passengers in her compartment, as though

by common agreement, struck up a lively conversation


22


and completely ignored the gloomy girl in the mourning

dress.

Alice’s father had taught her that when she had prob-

lems, she ought to list them carefully, one by one, and see

what could be done about them. She did this now, using

an imaginary pencil and the endless Pennsylvania farm-

land as a sketchpad.

The first problem was, Alice felt like she was living in

a dream. Ever since the night in the kitchen, when she’d

watched her father arguing with a fairy, the world had

acquired a dangerously thin quality, as though it were

only as substantial as a soap bubble.

The second problem was, Alice hadn’t cried when

she’d read the newspaper. She hadn’t cried when the tele-

grams had arrived, or all the way through the funeral.

She hadn’t cried when Miss Juniper hugged her good-bye,

though the tutor’s eyes had been brimful of tears. She

certainly hadn’t cried while the flocks of vultures picked

through the house. She kept expecting to, but she hadn’t.

She supposed this was because of the third problem,

which was that she didn’t really believe it had happened.

In a sane, normal world, when the Times reported that a

ship had gone down, it had almost certainly gone down.

The Times had ways of checking on these things. Sane,


23


normal Alice would have accepted it as fact, and cried

(quietly, alone, and in the dead of night, but cried none-

theless) and then squared her shoulders and tried to deal

with whatever life offered her next, because that was the

kind of girl she was.

But something had gone wrong. If fairies were real,

then the world was not sane and normal anymore. If

magic was real, then what she read in the Times didn’t

have to be true. Her father might not be drowned after

all. He could be—she cast through her limited repertoire

of fantastic fiction—a castaway, on an enchanted island.

Or spirited away to a crystal palace to be entertained by

an elfin court. Or anything. That was the point. If fairies

were real, then anything could happen.

Alice realized, as the sun was setting, that she would

never be able to leave things where they were. It was as

though she had hold of a loose thread at the end of a

sweater. She had to give it a tug, and find out if the whole

garment unraveled, and if so, what was underneath.

The last problem, in this case, was that she had no idea

what to do next. But that was all right. The difficult part

was usually deciding where you were headed. After that,

in Alice’s experience, getting there was just a matter of

hard work.


24


Not that I have very much choice where I’m headed,

Alice thought, for the moment. She leaned back in her

seat, eyes closed, and listened to the rails clicking end-

lessly past.

The two-car local pulled into North Landing station,

which turned out to be little more than a wooden plat-

form, a sign, and a gravel lot. A sullen attendant lugged

Alice’s trunks off the train, frowned at the nickel she

gave him, and climbed back aboard the train without a

word.

It was long after dark, and without the city lights to

interfere, the sky was a riot of stars. Alice, who had never

spent more than a fortnight outside the confines of New

York City, looked up at them and felt very small and very

alone. To the south, across the river, the city of Pittsburgh

proper gave off a muted red-and-yellow glow, but to the

north there was nothing but darkness.

She was just feeling the chill and wondering what she

would do if no one arrived to meet her when she heard

the rattle of an engine and the crunch of tires on gravel.

A pair of headlamps blazed, and then an ancient car—a

Model T that looked like it was older than Alice—circled

around the lot and pulled to a stop in front of the plat-


25


form. The driver got out, leaving the engine idling, and

came up the short steps to meet her.

He was a huge man, tall and muscular, dressed in a

leather motoring jacket. His beard, sideburns, mustache,

and hair all merged into a wiry black mane that com-

pletely surrounded his head and hid his face, apart from

a small patch around dark, sunken eyes and a protrud-

ing, scabby knob of a nose. If this was “Uncle Jerry,” Alice

decided, he was certainly not any relation of her father’s.

“You’ll be Miss Creighton,” the man said. His voice

rumbled deeper than the car’s engine, and Alice half

expected the same coal-black smoke to leak from his

mouth.

She drew herself up and nodded. He stared at her for a

moment, and managed to give the strong impression that

he didn’t like what he saw.

“Right,” he said eventually. “Get in.”

“You—” Alice began, then reconsidered and spoke

more politely. “Have you been sent to bring me to my

uncle?”

For some reason this made the huge man smile, flash-

ing discolored teeth through the bristling hedge of beard

and mustache. “That’s right.”

If she’d hoped for more information than that, she


26


was disappointed. Alice stepped down from the platform

toward the car, and the big man followed closely behind.

Halfway there, she stopped and looked back at her two

trunks, which were now sitting unattended on the plat-

form’s edge.

The man halted, followed her gaze, then looked down

at her. Something in his hairy face twitched, but he

turned around with exaggerated care and climbed back

up to the platform. He gathered the handles to her trunks

in one hand—a hand, Alice couldn’t help but notice, that

was broad enough to wrap around a coconut—and lifted

them without even a hint of effort. She stepped aside as

he brushed past her and affixed her things to the car’s

luggage rack.

“Thank you,” Alice said, and received only a grunt in

return. “Can I ask your name?”

“You can call me Mr. Black,” the big man said. “Now get

in. Your uncle wants to see you.”


MORGARATH, LORD OF THE MOUNTAINS OF RAIN AND

Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked

out over his bleak, rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thou-

sandth time, cursed.

This was all that was left to him now—a jumble of rugged gran-

ite cliffs, tumbled boulders and icy mountains. Of sheer gorges and

steep narrow passes. Of gravel and rock, with never a tree or a sign

of green to break the monotony.

Even though it had been fifteen years since he had been driven

back into this forbidding realm that had become his prison, he could

still remember the pleasant green glades and thickly forested hills of

his former fief. The streams filled with fish and the fields rich with

crops and game. Gorlan had been a beautiful, living place. The

Mountains of Rain and Night were dead and desolate.

A platoon of Wargals was drilling in the castle yard below him.

Morgarath watched them for a few seconds, listening to the gut-

tural, rhythmic chant that accompanied all their movements. They

were stocky, misshapen beings, with features that were halfway

human, but with a long, brutish muzzle and fangs like a bear or a

large dog.

PROLOGUE

54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 1

Avoiding all contact with humans, the Wargals had lived and

bred in these remote mountains since ancient times. No one in liv-

ing memory had ever set eyes upon one, but rumors and legends

had persisted of a savage tribe of semi-intelligent beasts in the moun-

tains. Morgarath, planning a revolt against the Kingdom of Araluen,

had left Gorlan Fief to seek them out. If such creatures existed, they

would give him an edge in the war that was to come.

It took him months, but he eventually found them. Aside from

their wordless chant, Wargals had no spoken language, relying on a

primitive form of thought awareness for communication. But their

minds were simple and their intellects basic. As a result, they had

been totally susceptible to domination by a superior intelligence and

willpower. Morgarath bent them to his will and they became the

perfect army for him—ugly beyond nightmares, utterly pitiless and

bound totally to his mental orders.

Now, looking at them, he remembered the brightly dressed

knights in glittering armor who used to compete in tourneys at Cas-

tle Gorlan, their silk-gowned ladies cheering them on and applaud-

ing their skills. Mentally comparing them to these black-furred,

misshapen creatures, he cursed again.

The Wargals, attuned to his thoughts, sensed his disturbance

and stirred uncomfortably, pausing in what they were doing. An-

grily, he directed them back to their drill and the chanting resumed.

Morgarath moved away from the unglazed window, closer to the

fire that seemed utterly incapable of dispelling the damp and chill

from this gloomy castle. Fifteen years, he thought to himself again.

Fifteen years since he had rebelled against the newly crowned King

Duncan, a youth in his twenties. He had planned it all carefully as

the old king’s sickness progressed, banking on the indecision and

confusion that would follow his death to split the other barons and

give Morgarath his opportunity to seize the throne.

2 R A N G E R’ S A P P R E N T I C E

54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 2

Secretly, he had trained his army of Wargals, massing them up

here in the mountains, ready for the moment to strike. Then, in the

days of confusion and grief following the king’s death, when the

barons traveled to Castle Araluen for the funeral rites, leaving their

armies leaderless, he had attacked, overrunning the southeastern

quarter of the kingdom in a matter of days, routing the confused,

leaderless forces that tried to oppose him.

Duncan, young and inexperienced, could never have stood

against him. The kingdom was his for the taking. The throne was his

for the asking.

Then Lord Northolt, the old king’s supreme army commander,

had rallied some of the younger barons into a loyal confederation,

giving strength to Duncan’s resolve and stiffening the wavering

courage of the others. The armies had met at Hackham Heath, close

by the Slipsunder River, and the battle swayed in the balance for five

hours, with attack and counterattack and massive loss of life. The

Slipsunder was a shallow river, but its treacherous reaches of quick-

sand and soft mud had formed an impassable barrier, protecting

Morgarath’s right flank.

But then one of those gray-cloaked meddlers known as Rangers

led a force of heavy cavalry across a secret ford ten kilometers up-

stream. The armored horsemen appeared at the crucial moment of

the battle and fell upon the rear of Morgarath’s army.

The Wargals, trained in the tumbled rocks of the mountains, had

one weakness. They feared horses and could never stand against

such a surprise cavalry attack. They broke, retreating to the narrow

confines of Three Step Pass, and back to the Mountains of Rain

and Night. Morgarath, his rebellion defeated, went with them.

And here he had been exiled these fifteen years. Waiting, plot-

ting, hating the men who had done this to him.

Now, he thought, it was time for his revenge. His spies told him

T H E R U I N S O F G O R L A N 3

54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 3

the kingdom had grown slack and complacent and his presence here

was all but forgotten. The name Morgarath was a name of legend

nowadays, a name mothers used to hush fractious children, threat-

ening that if they did not behave, the black lord Morgarath would

come for them.

The time was ripe. Once again, he would lead his Wargals into

an attack. But this time he would have allies. And this time he would

sow the ground with uncertainty and confusion beforehand. This

time none of those who conspired against him previously would be

left alive to aid King Duncan.

For the Wargals were not the only ancient, terrifying creatures he

had found in these somber mountains. He had two other allies, even

more fearsome—the dreadful beasts known as the Kalkara.

The time was ripe to unleash them.


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 4

“TRY TO EAT SOMETHING, WILL. TOMORROW’S A BIG DAY,

after all.”

Jenny, blond, pretty and cheerful, gestured toward Will’s barely

touched plate and smiled encouragingly at him. Will made an at-

tempt to return the smile, but it was a dismal failure. He picked at

the plate before him, piled high with his favorite foods. Tonight, his

stomach knotted tight with tension and anticipation, he could hardly

bring himself to swallow a bite.

Tomorrow would be a big day, he knew. He knew it all too well,

in fact. Tomorrow would be the biggest day in his life, because to-

morrow was the Choosing Day and it would determine how he

spent the rest of his life.

“Nerves, I imagine,” said George, setting down his loaded fork

and seizing the lapels of his jacket in a judicious manner. He was a

thin, gangly and studious boy, fascinated by rules and regulations and

with a penchant for examining and debating both sides of any

question—sometimes at great length.“Dreadful thing, nervousness.

It can just freeze you up so you can’t think, can’t eat, can’t speak.”

“I’m not nervous,” Will said quickly, noticing that Horace had

looked up, ready to form a sarcastic comment.

1

54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 5

George nodded several times, considering Will’s statement.“On

the other hand,” he added,“a little nervousness can actually improve

performance. It can heighten your perceptions and sharpen your re-

actions. So, the fact that you are worried, if, in fact, you are, is not

necessarily something to be worried about, of itself—so to speak.”

In spite of himself, a wry smile touched Will’s mouth. George

would be a natural in the legal profession, he thought. He would al-

most certainly be the Scribemaster’s choice on the following morn-

ing. Perhaps, Will thought, that was at the heart of his own problem.

He was the only one of the wardmates who had any fears about the

Choosing that would take place within twelve hours.

“He ought to be nervous!” Horace scoffed.“After all, which Craft-

master is going to want him as an apprentice?”

“I’m sure we’re all nervous,” Alyss said. She directed one of her

rare smiles at Will.“We’d be stupid not to be.”

“Well, I’m not!” Horace said, then reddened as Alyss raised one

eyebrow and Jenny giggled.

It was typical of Alyss, Will thought. He knew that the tall,

graceful girl had already been promised a place as an apprentice by

Lady Pauline, head of Castle Redmont’s Diplomatic Service. Her

pretense that she was nervous about the following day, and her tact

in refraining from pointing out Horace’s gaffe, showed that she was

already a diplomat of some skill.

Jenny, of course, would gravitate immediately to the castle

kitchens, domain of Master Chubb, Redmont’s head chef. He was a

man renowned throughout the kingdom for the banquets served in

the castle’s massive dining hall. Jenny loved food and cooking, and her

easygoing nature and unfailing good humor would make her an in-

valuable staff member in the turmoil of the castle kitchens.

Battleschool would be Horace’s choice. Will glanced at his ward-

mate now, hungrily tucking into the roast turkey, ham and potatoes


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 6

that he had heaped onto his plate. Horace was big for his age and a

natural athlete. The chances that he would be refused were virtually

nonexistent. Horace was exactly the type of recruit that Sir Rodney

looked for in his warrior apprentices. Strong, athletic, fit. And,

thought Will a trifle sourly, not too bright. Battleschool was the path

to knighthood for boys like Horace—born commoners but with

the physical abilities to serve as knights of the kingdom.

Which left Will. What would his choice be? More importantly,

as Horace had pointed out, what Craftmaster would accept him as

an apprentice?

For Choosing Day was the pivotal point in the life of the castle

wards. They were orphan children raised by the generosity of Baron

Arald, the Lord of Redmont Fief. For the most part, their parents

had died in the service of the fief, and the Baron saw it as his re-

sponsibility to care for and raise the children of his former subjects—

and to give them an opportunity to improve their station in life

wherever possible.

Choosing Day provided that opportunity.

Each year, castle wards turning fifteen could apply to be ap-

prenticed to the masters of the various crafts that served the castle

and its people. Ordinarily, craft apprentices were selected by dint of

their parents’ occupations or influence with the Craftmasters. The

castle wards usually had no such influence and this was their chance

to win a future for themselves.

Those wards who weren’t chosen, or for whom no openings

could be found, would be assigned to farming families in the nearby

village, providing farm labor to raise the crops and animals that fed

the castle inhabitants. It was rare for this to happen, Will knew. The

Baron and his Craftmasters usually went out of their way to fit the

wards into one craft or another. But it could happen and it was a fate

he feared more than anything.


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 7

Horace caught his eye now and gave him a smug smile.

“Still planning on applying for Battleschool, Will?” he asked

through a mouthful of turkey and potatoes. “Better eat something

then. You’ll need to build yourself up a little.”

He snorted with laughter and Will glowered at him. A few weeks

previously, Horace had overheard Will confiding to Alyss that he

desperately wanted to be selected for Battleschool, and he had made

Will’s life a misery ever since, pointing out on every possible occasion

that Will’s slight build was totally unsuited for the rigors of Bat-

tleschool training.

The fact that Horace was probably right only made matters

worse. Where Horace was tall and muscular, Will was small and

wiry. He was agile and fast and surprisingly strong, but he simply

didn’t have the size that he knew was required of Battleschool ap-

prentices. He’d hoped against hope for the past few years that he

would have what people called his “growing spurt” before the Choos-

ing Day came around. But it had never happened and now the day

was nearly here.

As Will said nothing, Horace sensed that he had scored a verbal

hit. This was a rarity in their turbulent relationship. Over the past

few years, he and Will had clashed repeatedly. Being the stronger of

the two, Horace usually got the better of Will, although very occa-

sionally Will’s speed and agility allowed him to get in a surprise kick

or a punch and then escape before Horace could catch him.

But while Horace generally had the best of their physical clashes,

it was unusual for him to win any of their verbal encounters. Will’s

wit was as agile as the rest of him and he almost always managed to

have the last word. In fact, it was this tendency that often led to

trouble between them: Will was yet to learn that having the last

word was not always a good idea. Horace decided now to press his

advantage.


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 8

“You need muscles to get into Battleschool, Will. Real muscles,”

he said, glancing at the others around the table to see if anyone dis-

agreed. The other wards, uncomfortable at the growing tension be-

tween the two boys, concentrated on their plates.

“Particularly between the ears,” Will replied and, unfortunately,

Jenny couldn’t refrain from giggling. Horace’s face flushed and he

started to rise from his seat. But Will was quicker and he was already

at the door before Horace could disentangle himself from his chair.

He contented himself with hurling a final insult after his retreat-

ing wardmate.

“That’s right! Run away, Will No-Name! You’re a no-name and

nobody will want you as an apprentice!”

In the anteroom outside, Will heard the parting sally and felt

blood flush to his cheeks. It was the taunt he hated most, although

he had tried never to let Horace know that, sensing that he would

provide the bigger boy with a weapon if he did.

The truth was, nobody knew Will’s second name. Nobody knew

who his parents had been. Unlike his yearmates, who had lived in the

fief before their parents had died and whose family histories were

known, Will had appeared, virtually out of nowhere, as a newborn

baby. He had been found, wrapped in a small blanket and placed in

a basket, on the steps of the ward building fifteen years ago. A note

had been attached to the blanket, reading simply:

His mother died in childbirth. His father died a hero.Please care for him. His name is Will.

That year, there had been only one other ward. Alyss’s father

was a cavalry lieutenant who had died in the battle at Hackham

Heath, when Morgarath’s Wargal army had been defeated and driven

back to the mountains. Alyss’s mother, devastated by her loss, suc-

cumbed to a fever some weeks after giving birth. So there was plenty


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 9

of room in the Ward for the unknown child, and Baron Arald was,

at heart, a kindly man. Even though the circumstances were unusual,

he had given permission for Will to be accepted as a ward of Castle

Redmont. It seemed logical to assume that, if the note were true,

Will’s father had died in the war against Morgarath, and since Baron

Arald had taken a leading part in that war, he felt duty bound to

honor the unknown father’s sacrifice.

So Will had become a Redmont ward, raised and educated by

the Baron’s generosity. As time passed, the others had gradually

joined him and Alyss until there were five in their year group. But

while the others had memories of their parents or, in Alyss’s case,

people who had known them and who could tell her about them,

Will knew nothing of his past.

That was why he had invented the story that had sustained him

throughout his childhood in the Ward. And, as the years passed and

he added detail and color to the story, he eventually came to believe

it himself.

His father, he knew, had died a hero’s death. So it made sense to

create a picture of him as a hero—a knight warrior in full armor,

fighting against the Wargal hordes, cutting them down left and right

until eventually he was overcome by sheer weight of numbers. Will

had pictured the tall figure so often in his mind, seeing every detail

of his armor and his equipment but never being able to visualize

his face.

As a warrior, his father would expect him to follow in his foot-

steps. That was why selection for Battleschool was so important to

Will. And that was why the more unlikely it became that he would

be selected, the more desperately he clung to the hope that he might.

He exited from the Ward building into the darkened castle yard.

The sun was long down and the torches placed every twenty meters

or so on the castle walls shed a flickering, uneven light. He hesitated


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 10

a moment. He would not return to the Ward and face Horace’s con-

tinued taunts. To do so would only lead to another fight between

them—a fight that Will knew that he would probably lose. George

would probably try to analyze the situation for him, looking at both

sides of the question and thoroughly confusing the issue. Alyss and

Jenny might try to comfort him, he knew—Alyss particularly since

they had grown up together. But at the moment he didn’t want their

sympathy and he couldn’t face Horace’s taunts, so he headed for the

one place where he knew he could find solitude.

The huge fig tree growing close by the castle’s central tower had

often afforded him a haven. Heights held no fear for Will and he

climbed smoothly into the tree, continuing long after another might

have stopped, until he was in the lighter branches at the very top—

branches that swayed and dipped under his weight. In the past, he

had often escaped from Horace up here. The bigger boy couldn’t

match Will’s speed in the tree and he was unwilling to follow as high

as this. Will found a convenient fork and wedged himself in it, his

body giving slightly to the movement of the tree as the branches

swayed in the evening breeze. Below, the foreshortened figures of

the watch made their rounds of the castle yard.

He heard the door of the Ward building open and, glancing

down, saw Alyss emerge, looking around the yard for him in vain.

The tall girl hesitated a few moments, then, seeming to shrug, turned

back inside. The elongated rectangle of light that the open door

threw across the yard was cut off as she closed the door softly behind

her. Strange, he thought, how seldom people tend to look up.

There was a rustle of soft feathers and a barn owl landed on the

next branch, its head swiveling, its huge eyes catching every last ray

of the faint light. It studied him without concern, seeming to know

it had nothing to fear from him. It was a hunter. A silent flyer. A ruler

of the night.


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 11

“At least you know who you are,” he said softly to the bird. It

swiveled its head again, then launched itself off into the darkness,

leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Gradually, as he sat there, the lights in the castle windows went

out, one by one. The torches burnt down to smoldering husks and

were replaced at midnight by the change of watch. Eventually, there

was only one light left burning and that, he knew, was in the Baron’s

study, where the Lord of Redmont was still presumably at work,

poring over reports and papers. The study was virtually level with

Will’s position in the tree and he could see the burly figure of the

Baron seated at his desk. Finally Baron Arald rose, stretched and

leaned forward to extinguish the lamp as he left the room, heading

for his sleeping quarters on the floor above. Now the castle was

asleep, except for the guards on the walls, who kept constant watch.

In less than nine hours, Will realized, he would face the Choos-

ing. Silently, miserably, fearing the worst, he climbed down from the

tree and made his way to his bed in the darkened boys’ dormitory in

the Ward.


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 12

“ALL RIGHT, CANDIDATES! THIS WAY! AND LOOK LIVELY!”

The speaker, or more correctly the shouter, was Martin, secretary

to Baron Arald. As his voice echoed around the anteroom, the five

wards rose uncertainly from the long wooden benches where they

had been seated. Suddenly nervous now that the day had finally ar-

rived, they began to shuffle forward, each one reluctant to be the

first through the great ironbound door that Martin now held open

for them.

“Come on, come on!” Martin bellowed impatiently. Alyss finally

elected to lead the way, as Will had guessed she would. The others

followed the willowy blonde girl. Now that someone had decided to

lead, the rest of them were content to follow.

Will looked around curiously as he entered the Baron’s study.

He’d never been in this part of the castle before. This tower, con-

taining the administrative section and the Baron’s private apart-

ments, was seldom visited by those of low rank—such as castle

wards. The room was huge. The ceiling seemed to tower above him

and the walls were constructed of massive stone blocks, fitted to-

gether with only the barest lines of mortar between them. On the

eastern wall was a huge window space—open to the elements but

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with massive wooden shutters that could be closed in the event of

bad weather. It was the same window he had seen through last night,

he realized. Today, sunlight streamed in and fell on the huge oak

table that Baron Arald used as a desk.

“Come on now! Stand in line, stand in line!” Martin seemed to

be enjoying his moment of authority. The group shuffled slowly into

line and he studied them, his mouth twisted in disapproval.

“In size place! Tallest this end!” He indicated the end where he

wanted the tallest of the five to stand. Gradually, the group re-

arranged itself. Horace, of course, was the tallest. After him, Alyss

took her position. Then George, half a head shorter than she and

painfully thin. He stood in his usual stoop-shouldered posture. Will

and Jenny hesitated. Jenny smiled at Will and gestured for him to go

before her, even though she was possibly an inch taller than he was.

That was typical of Jenny. She knew how Will agonized over the fact

that he was the smallest of all the castle wards. As Will moved into

the line, Martin’s voice stopped him.

“Not you! The girl’s next.”

Jenny shrugged apologetically and moved into the place Martin

had indicated. Will took the last place in the line, wishing Martin

hadn’t made his lack of height so apparent.

“Come on! Smarten up, smarten up! Let’s see you at attention

there,” Martin continued, then broke off as a deep voice interrupted

him.

“I don’t believe that’s totally necessary, Martin.”

It was Baron Arald, who had entered, unobserved, by way of a

smaller door behind his massive desk. Now it was Martin who

brought himself to what he considered to be a position of attention,

with his skinny elbows held out from his sides, his heels forced to-

gether so that his unmistakably bowed legs were widely separated at

the knees, and his head thrown back.


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Baron Arald raised his eyes to heaven. Sometimes his secretary’s

zeal on these occasions could be a little overwhelming. The Baron

was a big man, broad in shoulder and waist and heavily muscled, as

was necessary for a knight of the realm. It was well known, however,

that Baron Arald was fond of his food and drink, so his considerable

bulk was not totally attributable to muscle.

He had a short, neatly trimmed black beard that, like his hair,

was beginning to show the traces of gray that went with his forty-two

years. He had a strong jaw, a large nose and dark, piercing eyes under

heavy brows. It was a powerful face, but not an unkind one, Will

thought. There was a surprising hint of humor in those dark eyes.

Will had noted it before, on the occasions when Arald had made his

infrequent visits to the wards’ quarters to see how their lessons and

personal development were progressing.

“Sir!” Martin said at top volume, causing the Baron to wince

slightly.“The candidates are assembled!”

“I can see that,” Baron Arald replied patiently.“Perhaps you might

be good enough to ask the Craftmasters to step in as well?”

“Sir!” Martin responded, making an attempt to click his heels to-

gether. As he was wearing shoes of a soft, pliable leather, the attempt

was doomed to failure. He marched toward the main door of the

study, all elbows and knees. Will was reminded of a rooster. As Mar-

tin laid his hand on the door handle, the Baron stopped him once

more.

“Martin?” he said softly. As the secretary turned an inquiring

look back at him, he continued in the same quiet tone, “Ask them.

Don’t bellow at them. Craftmasters don’t like that.”

“Yes, sir,” said Martin, looking somewhat deflated. He opened the

door and, making an obvious effort to speak in a lower tone, said,

“Craftmasters. The Baron is ready now.”

The Craftschool heads entered the room in no particular order


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of precedence. As a group, they admired and respected one another

and so rarely stood on strict ceremonial procedure. Sir Rodney, head

of the Battleschool, came first. Tall and broad-shouldered like the

Baron, he wore the standard battledress of chain mail shirt under a

white surcoat emblazoned with his own crest, a scarlet wolfshead. He

had earned that crest as a young man, fighting the wolfships of the

Skandian sea raiders who constantly harried the kingdom’s east

coast. He wore a sword belt and sword, of course. No knight would

be seen in public without one. He was around the Baron’s age, with

blue eyes and a face that would have been remarkably handsome if

it weren’t for the massively broken nose. He sported an enormous

mustache but, unlike the Baron, he had no beard.

Next came Ulf, the Horsemaster, responsible for the care and

training of the castle’s mighty battlehorses. He had keen brown eyes,

strong, muscular forearms and heavy wrists. He wore a simple

leather vest over his woolen shirt and leggings. Tall riding boots of

soft leather reached up past his knees.

Lady Pauline followed Ulf. Slim, gray-haired and elegant, she

had been a considerable beauty in her youth and still had the grace

and style to turn men’s heads. Lady Pauline, who had been awarded

the title in her own right for her work in foreign policy for the king-

dom, was head of the Diplomatic Service in Redmont. Baron Arald

regarded her abilities highly and she was one of his close confidants

and advisers. Arald often said that girls made the best recruits to the

Diplomatic Service. They tended to be more subtle than boys, who

gravitated naturally to Battleschool. And while boys constantly

looked to physical means as the way of solving problems, girls could

be depended on to use their wits.

It was perhaps only natural that Nigel, the Scribemaster, fol-

lowed close behind Lady Pauline. They had been discussing matters


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of mutual interest while they waited for Martin to summon them.

Nigel and Lady Pauline were close friends as well as professional

colleagues. It was Nigel’s trained scribes who prepared the official

documents and communiqués that were so often delivered by Lady

Pauline’s diplomats. He also advised on the exact wording of such

documents, having an extensive background in legal matters. Nigel

was a small, wiry man with a quick, inquisitive face that reminded

Will of a ferret. His hair was glossy black, his features were thin and

his dark eyes never ceased roaming the room.

Master Chubb, the castle cook, came in last of all. Inevitably, he

was a fat, round-bellied man, wearing a cook’s white jacket and tall

hat. He was known to have a terrible temper that could flare as

quickly as oil spilled on a fire, and most of the wards treated him with

considerable caution. Florid-faced and with red, rapidly receding

hair, Master Chubb carried a wooden ladle with him wherever he

went. It was an unofficial staff of office. It was also used quite often

as an offensive weapon, landing with a resounding crack on the heads

of careless, forgetful or slow-moving kitchen apprentices. Alone

among the group, Jenny saw Chubb as something of a hero. It was

her avowed intention to work for him and learn his skills, wooden

ladle or no wooden ladle.

There were other Craftmasters, of course. The Armorer and the

Blacksmith were two. But only those Craftmasters who currently

had vacancies for new apprentices would be represented today.

“The Craftmasters are assembled, sir!” Martin said, his voice ris-

ing in volume. Martin seemed to equate volume and the importance

of the occasion in direct proportion. Once again, the Baron raised his

eyes to heaven.

“So I see,” he said quietly, then added, in a more formal tone,

“Good morning, Lady Pauline. Good morning, gentlemen.”


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They replied and the Baron turned to Martin once more.“Per-

haps we might proceed?”

Martin nodded several times, consulted a sheaf of notes he held

in one hand and marched to confront the line of candidates.

“Right, the Baron’s waiting! The Baron’s waiting! Who’s first?”

Will, eyes down, shifting nervously from one foot to the other,

suddenly had the strange sensation that someone was watching him.

He looked up and actually started with surprise as he met the dark,

unfathomable gaze of Halt, the Ranger.

Will hadn’t seen him come into the room. He realized that the

mysterious figure must have slipped in through a side door while

everyone’s attention was on the Craftmasters as they made their en-

trance. Now he stood behind the Baron’s chair and slightly to one

side, dressed in his usual brown and gray clothes and wrapped in his

long, mottled gray and green Ranger’s cloak. Halt was an unnerving

person. He had a habit of coming up on you when you least ex-

pected it—and you never heard his approach. The superstitious vil-

lagers believed that Rangers practiced a form of magic that made

them invisible to ordinary people. Will wasn’t sure if he believed

that—but he wasn’t sure he disbelieved it either. He wondered why

Halt was here today. He wasn’t recognized as one of the Craftmas-

ters and, as far as Will knew, he hadn’t attended a Choosing session

prior to this one.

Abruptly, Halt’s gaze cut away from him and it was as if a light

had been turned off. Will realized that Martin was talking once

more. He noticed that the secretary had a habit of repeating state-

ments, as if he were followed by his own personal echo.

“Now then, who’s first? Who’s first?”

The Baron sighed audibly.“Why don’t we take the first in line?”

he suggested in a reasonable tone, and Martin nodded several times.


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“Of course, my lord. Of course. First in line, step forward and face

the Baron.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Horace stepped forward out of the

line and stood at attention. The Baron studied him for a few seconds.

“Name?” he said, and Horace answered, stumbling slightly over

the correct method of address for the Baron.

“Horace Altman, sir . . . my lord.”

“And do you have a preference, Horace?” the Baron asked, with

the air of one who knows what the answer is going to be before hear-

ing it.

“Battleschool, sir!” Horace said firmly.

The Baron nodded. He’d expected as much. He glanced at Rod-

ney, who was studying the boy thoughtfully, assessing his suitability.

“Battlemaster?” the Baron said. Normally he would address Rod-

ney by his first name, not his title. But this was a formal occasion. By

the same token, Rodney would usually address the Baron as “sir.”

But on a day like today,“my lord” was the proper form.

The big knight stepped forward, his chain mail and spurs chink-

ing slightly as he moved closer to Horace. He eyed the boy up and

down, then moved behind him. Horace’s head started to turn with

him.

“Still,” Sir Rodney said, and the boy ceased his movement, star-

ing straight ahead.

“Looks strong enough, my lord, and I can always use new

trainees.” He rubbed one hand over his chin.“You ride, Horace Alt-

man?”

A look of uncertainty crossed Horace’s face as he realized this

might be a hurdle to his selection.“Well . . . no, sir. I . . .”

He was about to add that castle wards had little chance to learn

to ride, but Sir Rodney interrupted him.


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“No matter. That can be taught.” The big knight looked at the

Baron and nodded.“Very well, my lord. I’ll take him for Battleschool,

subject to the usual three-month probationary period.”

The Baron made a note on a sheet of paper before him and

smiled briefly at the delighted, and very relieved, youth before him.

“Congratulations, Horace. Report to Battleschool tomorrow

morning. Eight o’clock sharp.”

“Yes, sir!” Horace replied, grinning widely. He turned to Sir Rod-

ney and bowed slightly.“Thank you, sir!”

“Don’t thank me yet,” the knight replied cryptically. “You don’t

know what you’re in for.”


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“WHO’S NEXT THEN?” MARTIN WAS CALLING AS HORACE,

grinning broadly, stepped back into the line. Alyss stepped forward

gracefully, annoying Martin, who had wanted to nominate her as

the next candidate.

“Alyss Mainwaring, my lord,” she said in her quiet, level voice.

Then, before she could be asked, she continued, “I request an ap-

pointment to the Diplomatic Service, please, my lord.”

Arald smiled at the solemn-looking girl. She had an air of self-

confidence and poise about her that would suit her well in the Ser-

vice. He glanced at Lady Pauline.

“My lady?” he said.

She nodded her head several times.“I’ve already spoken to Alyss,

my lord. I believe she will be an excellent candidate. Approved and

accepted.”

Alyss made a small bow of her head in the direction of the

woman who would be her mentor. Will thought how alike they

were—both tall and elegant in their movements, both grave in man-

ner. He felt a small surge of pleasure for his oldest companion, know-

ing how much she had wanted this selection. Alyss stepped back in

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line and Martin, not to be forestalled this time, was already pointing

to George.

“Right! You’re next! You’re next! Address the Baron.”

George stepped forward. His mouth opened and closed several

times, but nothing came out. The other wards watched in surprise.

George, long regarded by them all as the official advocate for just

about everything, was overcome with stage fright. He finally man-

aged to say something in a low voice that nobody in the room could

hear. Baron Arald leaned forward, one hand cupped behind his ear.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that,” he said.

George looked up at the Baron and, with an enormous effort,

spoke in a just-audible voice.“G-George Carter, sir. Scribeschool, sir.”

Martin, ever a stickler for the proprieties, drew breath to berate

him for the truncated nature of his address. Before he could do so,

and to everyone’s evident relief, Baron Arald stepped in.

“Very well, Martin. Let it go.” Martin looked a little aggrieved,

but subsided. The Baron glanced at Nigel, his chief scribe and legal

officer, one eyebrow raised in question.

“Acceptable, my lord,” he said, adding,“I’ve seen some of George’s

work and he really does have a gift for calligraphy.”

The Baron looked doubtful.“He’s not the most forceful of speak-

ers, though, is he, Scribemaster? That could be a problem if he has

to offer legal counsel at any time in the future.”

Nigel shrugged the objection aside.“I promise you, my lord, with

proper training that sort of thing represents no problem. Absolutely

no problem at all, my lord.”

The Scribemaster folded his hands together into the wide sleeves

of the monklike habit he wore as he warmed to his theme.

“I remember a boy who joined us some seven years back, rather

like this one here, as a matter of fact. He had that same habit of

mumbling to his shoes—but we soon showed him how to overcome


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it. Some of our most reluctant speakers have gone on to develop ab-

solute eloquence, my lord, absolute eloquence.”

The Baron drew breath to comment, but Nigel continued in his

discourse.

“It may even surprise you to hear that as a boy, I myself suffered

from a most terrible nervous stutter. Absolutely terrible, my lord.

Could barely put two words together at a time.”

“Hardly a problem now, I see,” the Baron managed to put in

dryly, and Nigel smiled, taking the point. He bowed to the Baron.

“Exactly, my lord. We’ll soon help young George overcome his

shyness. Nothing like the rough and tumble of Scribeschool for

that. Absolutely.”

The Baron smiled in spite of himself. The Scribeschool was a

studious place where voices were rarely, if ever, raised and where log-

ical, reasoned debate reigned supreme. Personally, on his visits to

the place, he had found it mind-numbing in the extreme. Anything

less like a rough and tumble atmosphere he could not imagine.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he replied, then to George he said,

“Very well, George, request granted. Report to Scribeschool to-

morrow.”

George shuffled his feet awkwardly.“Mumble-mumble-mumble,”

he said and the Baron leaned forward again, frowning as he tried to

make out the low-pitched words.

“What was that?” he asked.

George finally looked up and managed to whisper,“Thank you,

my lord.” He hurriedly shuffled back to the relative anonymity of

the line.

“Oh,” said the Baron, a little taken aback. “Think nothing of it.

Now, next is. . . .”

Jenny was already stepping forward. Blond and pretty, she was

also, it had to be admitted, a little on the chubby side. But the look


54915-01 3/16/05 1:24 PM Page 23

suited her, and at any of the castle’s social functions, she was a much

sought-after dance partner with the boys in the castle, both her year-

mates in the Ward and the sons of castle staff as well.

“Master Chubb, sir!” she said now, stepping forward right to the

edge of the Baron’s desk. The Baron looked into the round face, saw

the eagerness shining there in the blue eyes, and couldn’t help smil-

ing at her.

“What about him?” he asked gently and she hesitated, realizing

that, in her enthusiasm, she had breached the protocol of the

Choosing.

“Oh! Your pardon, sir . . . my . . . Baron . . . your lordship,” she

hastily improvised, her tongue running away with her as she mangled

the correct form of address.

“My lord!” Martin prompted her. Baron Arald looked at him,

eyebrows raised.

“Yes, Martin?” he said.“What is it?”

Martin had the grace to look embarrassed. He knew that his

master was intentionally misunderstanding his interruption. He

took a deep breath, and said in an apologetic tone, “I . . . simply

wanted to inform you that the candidate’s name is Jennifer Dalby, sir.”

The Baron nodded at him, and Martin, a devoted servant of the

heavy bearded man, saw the look of approval in his lord’s eyes.

“Thank you, Martin. Now, Jennifer Dalby . . .”

“Jenny, sir,” said the irrepressible girl, and he shrugged resignedly.

“Jenny, then. I assume that you are applying to be apprenticed to

Master Chubb?”

“Oh, yes, please, sir!” Jenny replied breathlessly, turning adoring

eyes on the portly, red-haired cook. Chubb scowled thoughtfully and

considered her.

“Mmmmm . . . could be, could be,” he muttered, walking back and


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forth in front of her. She smiled winningly at him, but Chubb was

beyond such feminine wiles.

“I’d work hard, sir,” she told him earnestly.

“I know you would!” he replied with some spirit.“I’d make sure

of it, girl. No slacking or lollygagging in my kitchen, let me tell you.”

Fearing that her opportunity might be slipping away, Jenny

played her trump card.

“I have the right shape for it,” she said. Chubb had to agree that

she was well rounded. Arald, not for the first time that morning,

hid a smile.

“She has a point there, Chubb,” he put in, and the cook turned to

him in agreement.

“Shape is important, sir. All great cooks tend to be . . . rounded.”

He turned back to the girl, still considering. It was all very well for

the others to accept their trainees in the wink of an eye, he thought.

But cooking was something special.

“Tell me,” he said to the eager girl, “what would you do with a

turkey pie?”

Jenny smiled dazzlingly at him.“Eat it,” she answered immediately.

Chubb rapped her on the head with the ladle he carried.“I meant

what would you do about cooking it?” he asked.

Jenny hesitated, gathered her thoughts, then plunged into a

lengthy technical description of how she would go about construct-

ing such a masterpiece. The other four wards, the Baron, his Craft-

masters and Martin listened in some awe, with absolutely no

comprehension of what she was saying. Chubb, however, nodded

several times as she spoke, interrupting as she detailed the rolling of

the pastry.

“Nine times, you say?” he said curiously and Jenny nodded, sure

of her ground.


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“My mother always said: ‘Eight times to make it flaky and once

more for love,’ ” she said. Chubb nodded thoughtfully.

“Interesting. Interesting,” he said, then, looking up at the Baron,

he nodded.“I’ll take her, my lord.”

“What a surprise,” the Baron said mildly, then added,“Very well,

report to the kitchens in the morning, Jennifer.”

“Jenny, sir,” the girl corrected him again, her smile lighting up

the room.

Baron Arald smiled. He glanced at the small group before him.

“And that leaves us with one more candidate.” He glanced at his

list, then looked up to meet Will’s agonized gaze, gesturing encour-

agement.

Will stepped forward, nervousness suddenly drying his throat so

that his voice came out in barely a whisper.

“Will, sir. My name is Will.”


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T H E P RO M I S E

Brotherband_TX_p1-434 FINAL.indd 1 7/28/11 12:27 PM

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Twelve years prior . . .

o n ec h a p t e r

W olfwind emerged from the predawn sea mist like a wraith, slowly taking physical form.

With her sail furled and the yardarm low-ered to the deck, and propelled by only four of

her oars, the wolfship glided slowly toward the beach. The four rowers wielded their oars carefully, raising them only a few centi-meters from the water at the end of each stroke so that the noise of drops splashing back into the sea was kept to a minimum. They were Erak’s most experienced oarsmen and they were used to the task of approaching an enemy coast stealthily.

And during raiding season, all coasts were enemy coasts.Such was their skill that the loudest sound was the lap-lap-lap of

small ripples along the wooden hull. In the bow, Svengal and two other crew members crouched fully armed, peering ahead to catch sight of the dim line where the water met the beach.

The lack of surf might make their approach easier but a little extra noise would have been welcome, Svengal thought. Plus white water would have made the line of the beach easier to spot


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in the dimness. Then he saw the beach and held up his hand, fist clenched.

Far astern, at the steering oar, Erak watched his second in com-mand as he revealed five fingers, then four, then three as he mea-sured off the distance to the sand.

“In oars.”Erak spoke the words in a conversational tone, unlike the bel-

low he usually employed to pass orders. In the center section of the wolfship, his bosun, Mikkel, relayed the orders. The four oars lifted out of the water as one, rising quickly to the vertical so that any excess water would fall into the ship and not into the sea, where it would make more noise. A few seconds later, the prow of the ship grated softly against the sand. Erak felt the vibrations of the gentle contact with the shore through the deck beneath his feet.

Svengal and his two companions vaulted over the bow, landing catlike on the wet sand. Two of them moved up the beach, fanning out to scan the country on either side, ready to give warning of any possible ambush. Svengal took the small beach anchor that another sailor lowered to him. he stepped twenty paces up the beach, strained against the anchor rope to bring it tight and drove the shovel-shaped fluke into the firm sand.

Wolfwind, secured by the bow, slewed a little to one side under the pressure of the gentle breeze.

“clear left!”“clear right!”The two men who had gone onshore called their reports now.

There was no need for further stealth. Svengal checked his own area of responsibility, then added his report to theirs.


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“clear ahead.”on board, Erak nodded with satisfaction. he hadn’t expected

any sort of armed reception on the beach but it always paid to make sure. That was why he had been such a successful raider over the years—and why he had lost so few of his crewmen.

“All right,” he said, lifting his shield from the bulwark and hefting it onto his left arm. “Let’s go.”

he quickly strode the length of the wolfship to the bow, where a boarding ladder had been placed over the side. Shoving his heavy battleax through the leather sling on his belt, he climbed easily over the bulwark and down to the beach. his crewmen followed, form-ing up behind him. There was no need for orders. They had all done this before, many times.

Svengal joined him.“no sign of anyone here, chief,” he reported.Erak grunted. “neither should there be. They should all be

busy at Alty Bosky.”he pronounced the name in his usual way—careless of the

finer points of Iberian pronunciation. The town in question was actually Alto Bosque, a relatively unimportant market town some ten kilometers to the south, built on the high, wooded hill from which it derived its name.

The previous day, seven of his crew had taken the skiff and landed there, carrying out a lightning raid on the market before they retreated to the coast. Alto Bosque had no garrison and a rider from the town had been sent to Santa Sebilla, where a small force of militia was maintained. Erak’s plan was to draw the garrison away to Alto Bosque while he and his men plundered Santa Sebilla unhindered.


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Santa Sebilla was a small town, too. Probably smaller than Alto Bosque. But, over the years, it had gained an enviable reputation for the quality of the jewelry that was designed and crafted there. As time went on, more and more artisans and designers were drawn to Santa Sebilla and it became a center for fine design and craftsman-ship in gold and precious stones.

Erak, like most Skandians, cared little for fine design and craftsmanship. But he cared a lot about gold and he knew there was a disproportionate amount of it in Santa Sebilla—far more than would normally be found in a small town such as this. The community of artists and designers needed generous supplies of the raw materials in which they worked—gold and silver and gemstones. Erak was a fervent believer in the principle of redis-tribution of wealth, as long as a great amount of it was redistrib-uted in his direction, so he had planned this raid in detail for some weeks.

he checked behind him. The anchor watch of four men were standing by the bow of Wolfwind, guarding it while the main party went inland. he nodded, satisfied that everything was ready.

“Send your scouts ahead,” he told Svengal. The second in com-mand gestured to the two men to go ahead of the main raiding party.

The beach rose gradually to a low line of scrubby bushes and trees. The scouts ran to this line, surveyed the country beyond, then beckoned the main party forward. The ground was flat here, but some kilometers inland, a range of low hills rose from the plain. The first rose-colored rays of the sun were beginning to show about the peaks. They were behind schedule, Erak thought. he had


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wanted to reach the town before sunup, while people were still drowsy and longing for their beds, as yet reluctant to accept the challenges of a new day.

“Let’s pace it up,” he said tersely and the group settled into a steady jog behind him, moving in two columns. The scouts contin-ued to range some fifty meters in advance of the raiding party. Erak could already see that there was nowhere a substantial party of armed men could remain hidden. Still, it did no harm to be sure.

Waved forward by the scouts, they crested a low rise and there, before them, stood Santa Sebilla.

The buildings were made of clay bricks, finished in whitewash. Later in the day, under the hot Iberian sun, they would glisten and gleam an almost blinding white. In the predawn light they looked dull and gray and mundane. The town had been built with no particular plan in mind, instead growing over the years so that houses and warehouses were placed wherever their owners chose to build them. The result was a chaotic mass of winding alleys, outly-ing buildings and twisting, formless streets. But Erak ignored the jumble of houses and shops. he was looking for the repository—a large building set to one side of the town, where the gold and jewels were stored.

And there it was. Larger than the others, with a substantial brass-bound wooden door. normally, Erak knew, there would be a guard in place. But it seemed his diversion had achieved the result he wanted and the local militia were absent. The only possible resistance could come from a small castle set on a cliff a kilometer away from the town itself. There would possibly be armed men


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there. But the castle was the home of a minor Iberian nobleman and its location here was a mere coincidence. Knowing the snobbish and superior nature of the Iberian nobility, Erak guessed that the castle lord and his people had as little to do with the common tradesmen of Santa Sebilla as possible. They might buy from them, but they wouldn’t mix with them or be eager to protect them in an emergency.

They headed for the repository. As they passed a side street, a sleepy townsman emerged, leading a donkey loaded with what seemed to be an impossibly heavy stack of firewood. For a few sec-onds, head down and still half asleep, the man failed to notice the force of grim-faced, armed sea wolves. Then his eyes snapped open, his jaw followed suit and he froze in place, staring at them. From the corner of his eye, Erak saw two of his men start to detach from the main body. But the firewood seller could do them little harm.

“Leave him,” he ordered and the men dropped back into line.Galvanized by the sound of Erak’s voice, the man dropped the

donkey’s halter and took off back into the narrow alleyway from which he had emerged. They heard the soft sound of his bare feet flapping on the hard earth as he put as much distance between himself and the raiders as he could.

“Get that door open,” Erak ordered.Mikkel and Thorn stepped forward. Mikkel, whose preferred

weapon was a sword, borrowed an ax from one of the other sea wolves and together, he and Thorn attacked the heavy door. They were Erak’s two most reliable warriors, and he nodded apprecia-tively at the economy of effort with which they reduced the door to


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matchwood, placing alternate ax strokes precisely where they would do the most good, each building on the damage the other had caused. The two men were best friends. They always fought together in the shield wall, each trusting the other to protect his back and sides. Yet they were a contrast in body shapes. Mikkel was taller and leaner than the average Skandian. But he was powerful and hard muscled. And he had the reflexes of a cat.

Thorn was slightly shorter than his friend, but much wider in the shoulders and chest. he was one of the most skilled and dan-gerous warriors Erak had ever seen. Erak often thought that he would hate to come up against Thorn in battle. he’d never seen an opponent who had survived such an encounter. Belying his heavy build, Thorn could also move with blinding speed when he chose.

Erak roused himself from his musing as the door fell in two shattered halves.

“Get the gold,” he ordered and his men surged forward.It took them half an hour to load the gold and silver into sacks.

They took only as much as they could carry and they left easily the same amount behind.

Maybe another time, Erak thought, although he knew no sub-sequent raid would be as easy or as bloodless as this one. In retro-spect, he wished he’d caught hold of the firewood seller’s donkey. The little animal could have carried more of the gold back to the ship for them.

The town was awake now and nervous faces peered at them from behind windows and around street corners. But these were not warriors and none were willing to face the fierce-looking men


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from the north. Erak nodded, satisfied, as the last of his men, each laden with two small but heavy sacks, emerged from the repository. he breathed a small sigh of satisfaction. It had been easy, he thought. Easier than he had expected.

Laden as they were, they couldn’t maintain their previous jog as they followed the path through the scrubby undergrowth back to the beach. At least a dozen of the townspeople followed them, as if unwilling to let their gold and jewels simply disappear from sight. But they kept their distance, watching in impotent fury as the sea wolves carried away their booty.

“Thorn, Mikkel, bring up the rear. Let me know if there’s any change,” Erak said. It would be all too easy to become complacent about the men shadowing their footsteps, and so miss any new threat that might arise.

The two men nodded and handed their sacks of loot to other crew members, then faded to the back of the column.

They marched some twenty meters behind the main party, turning continually to keep the following townspeople in sight. once, Thorn faked a charge at a couple who he felt had come too close, and they scampered hurriedly back to a safe distance.

“Rabbits,” said Mikkel dismissively.Thorn grinned and was about to reply when he caught sight of

movement behind the straggle of townspeople. his grin faded.“Looks like we’ve got some rabbits on horseback,” he said. The

two raiders stopped to face the rear.Trotting toward them, following the rough track through the

undergrowth, were five horsemen. The newly risen sun gleamed off their armor and the points of the spears they all carried. They were


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still some distance behind the raiders but they were coming up fast. The two companions could hear the faint jingle of their horses’ harness and their equipment.

Thorn glanced back to the main party of raiders. They were about to enter a narrow defile that led down to the last stretch of open ground to the beach. he let out a piercing whistle and saw Erak stop and look back. The rest of the party continued to move as quickly as they could.

Thorn pointed to the riders. Uncertain whether Erak could see the new enemy, he held up his right hand, with five fingers extended, then brought it down in a clenched fist close by his shoulder—the signal for “enemy.” he pointed again to the riders.

he saw Erak wave acknowledgment, then point at the entrance to the defile, where the last of his men were just passing through. Thorn and Mikkel both grunted in understanding.

“Good idea,” Mikkel said. “We’ll hold them off at the entrance.”

The high rock walls and narrow space would encumber the horsemen. It would also prevent them from flanking and encircl-ing the two sea wolves. They’d be forced into a frontal attack. normally, that might be a daunting prospect, but these were two experienced and deadly fighters, each secure in his own skills and those of his companion.

They both knew that Erak would not abandon them to this new danger. once the gold was safely at the ship, he’d send men back to help them. Their job was only to buy time, not to sacrifice themselves so the others could escape. And both men felt confident that they could hold off a few country-bumpkin horsemen.


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They doubled their pace, covering the ground to the defile. Behind them, they heard a ragged cheer from the townspeople as they saw the raiders seemingly running for their lives ahead of the avenging horsemen, who urged their horses to a gallop, determined to catch these interlopers before they could escape into the narrow gully.

The two warriors had no intention of escaping. Rather, as they reached the defile, Mikkel and Thorn turned and drew their weapons, swinging them experimentally as they faced the approach-ing riders.

Like most Skandians, Thorn favored a heavy, single-bladed battleax as his principal weapon. Mikkel was armed with a long sword. Both of them wore horned helmets and carried large wooden shields, borne on the left arm, with a heavy center boss of metal and reinforcing metal strips around the edges. They presented these to the oncoming riders, so that only their heads and legs were visible—as well as the gleaming sword and ax, still moving in small preliminary arcs, catching and reflecting the sunlight as the two warriors stretched their muscles.

It seemed to the horsemen that the shields and swords blocked the defile entrance completely. Expecting the Skandians to run in panic, they were somewhat taken aback now at this show of defiance—and at the confident manner of the two men facing them. They drew rein about thirty meters short of the two men and looked at each other uncertainly, each waiting for one of the others to take the lead.

The two Skandians sensed their uncertainty, and noted the clumsy way they handled their spears and small round shields.


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There was none of the easy familiarity that could be seen in an experienced fighter.

“I think these boys are still wet behind the ears,” Mikkel said, smiling grimly.

Thorn nodded. “I doubt they’ve seen any real fighting.”They were right. The horsemen, who had come from the castle

in response to a messenger who had run all the way from Santa Sebilla, were young and only half trained. They were all from well-to-do families. Their indolent parents had always supplied their every whim: new chain mail, a sword with a gold-chased hilt, a new battle horse. They viewed their training in the knightly arts as more of a social activity than a serious one. They had never before faced armed and determined warriors like these two, and it sud-denly occurred to them that what had begun as a lighthearted expedition to send a few ill-bred raiders running in panic had quickly turned into a potentially deadly confrontation. Someone could die here today. So they hesitated, uncertain what they should do next.

Then one, either braver or more foolhardy than his fellows, shouted a challenge and spurred his horse forward, awkwardly try-ing to level his spear at the two Skandians.

“Mine, I think,” said Thorn, stepping forward a few paces to accept the charge. Mikkel was content to let him do so. Thorn’s long-handled ax was the more effective weapon against a horseman.

Thorn summed up his opponent through slitted eyes. The youth was bouncing around in his saddle like a sack of potatoes, trying to steady his spear under his right arm and keep it pointed at his enemy. It would be ridiculously easy to kill him, Thorn


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thought. But that might simply rouse the anger of his companions. Better to humiliate him.

Bracing himself, he caught the spearhead on his shield and flicked it easily to one side. Then he slammed the flat of his ax into the shoulder of the charging horse, throwing it off balance. As it stumbled, he drove forward with his shield, hitting the animal again and sending it reeling to one side. The horse struck the rough rock wall beside the defile and lost its footing, crashing onto its side with a terrified neighing. The rider barely had time to clear his feet from the stirrups and avoid being pinned under the fallen horse. he fell awkwardly to one side, his small shield underneath him. he scrabbled desperately at the hilt of his sword, trying to clear the long blade from its scabbard. When it was half drawn, Thorn kicked his arm and hand, finishing the action and sending the bared sword spinning away out of his grasp.

The young rider looked up at Thorn with terrified eyes. he flinched uncontrollably as he saw the terrible war ax arcing up and over. Then it slammed into the hard ground, a few inches from his face. The Skandian’s eyes, cold and merciless, held his. Then Thorn said one word.

“Run.”The young Iberian scrambled clumsily to his feet and turned

to escape. As he did, he felt a violent impact in his behind as Thorn helped him on his way with his boot. Stumbling and crying in panic, he blundered back to where his companions were waiting, their horses moving uneasily from one foot to the other, the riders’ fear communicating itself to the animals.


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Behind him, the boy heard the two Skandians laughing.Thorn’s instincts had been correct. The apparent ease with which

he had dealt with the rider was far more disconcerting than if he had simply killed him. By letting him live, he had shown the utter contempt with which he and his companion regarded these neophyte warriors. Such disregard made the Iberians even more uncertain.

“I think you’ve made them nervous.” Mikkel grinned at his friend.

Thorn shrugged. “So they should be. They shouldn’t be allowed out with pointy sticks like that. They’re more danger to themselves than anyone else.”

“Let’s see them off,” said Mikkel. “They’re starting to annoy me.”Without any warning, the two Skandians brandished their

weapons and charged at the small group of horsemen, screaming battle cries as they went.

The shock of it all was too much for the demoralized group of riders. They saw the terrifying warriors charging across open ground at them and each one was convinced that he was the target they were aiming for. one of them wheeled his horse and clapped spurs to its flanks, dropping his spear as his horse lurched suddenly beneath him. his action was infectious. Within seconds, all four horsemen were steaming across the plain in a ragged line, the rider-less horse with them, and their dismounted companion stumbling awkwardly behind them, encumbered by his thigh-high riding boots, spurs and flapping, empty scabbard.

Mikkel and Thorn stopped and rested on their weapons, roar-ing with laughter at the sight.


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“I do hope they get home all right,” Mikkel said and Thorn laughed all the louder.

“Are you ladies ready to join us?” It was Svengal, sent back with five men to reinforce the rearguard. “It seems you don’t need any help.”

Still laughing, Thorn and Mikkel sheathed their weapons and walked back to join Svengal and the others at the mouth of the defile.

“You should have seen it, Svengal,” Mikkel began. “Thorn here simply frightened them away. The sight of his ugly face was too much for them. It even made a horse fall over.”

Svengal let go a short bark of laughter. hurrying up the defile at the head of the reinforcements, he had seen how Thorn dealt with the charging rider. he was impressed. he knew he could never have pulled that move off. In fact, he couldn’t think of anyone other than Thorn who might have managed it.

“Well, you played your part too,” Thorn was saying in reply. “Although I must admit I was magnificent.”

“I’m not sure that’s the word I’d—” Mikkel raised his arm to clap his friend on the shoulder when the spear hit him.

It came out of nowhere. Later, thinking over the event, Thorn realized it must have been the spear dropped by the first of the fleeing horsemen. he surmised that one of the following towns-people, overcome with rage and frustration, had retrieved it and hurled it blindly at the Skandians, then run for his life into the scrub and rocks before he could see the result.

The result could not have been worse. The heavy iron head penetrated underneath Mikkel’s raised arm, burying itself deep in


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his upper body. he let go a small cry and fell to his knees, then crumpled sideways. horrified, Thorn dropped to the ground beside his friend, seeing the pallor of Mikkel’s face as the life drained from his body.

“Sword . . . ,” Mikkel gasped. If a sea wolf died in battle with-out a weapon in his hand, his soul would wander in the nether-world for eternity. Svengal had already drawn his own sword and thrust it into Mikkel’s groping fingers. The stricken man looked up in thanks, then turned his gaze to his best friend.

“Thorn,” he said, the effort of speaking that one word almost too great.

Thorn bent his head close to Mikkel’s. “hold on, Mikkel. We’ll get you to the ship.”

Somehow, the ship meant safety and salvation, as if the simple act of being on board could negate the effects of the terrible, life-sapping wound in Mikkel’s side. But Mikkel knew better. he shook his head.

“My wife . . . and the boy . . . look out for them, Thorn.”Thorn’s vision blurred with tears as he gripped his friend’s

hand, making sure that Mikkel’s grip on the sword hilt didn’t weaken.

“I will. You have my word.”Mikkel nodded and seemed to gather his strength for one last

effort.“Won’t . . . be easy . . . for him. he’ll need . . .”The pain and the shock were too much. he couldn’t finish

the sentence. But there was still a last remnant of light in his


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eyes. Thorn gripped his hand tighter, willing him to finish. he needed to know his friend’s last wish, needed to know what he wanted done.

“he’ll need what, Mikkel? What will he need?”Mikkel’s lips moved wordlessly. he took in a great, shuddering

breath that racked his body. With a final effort, he spoke one word.“You,” he said, and died.


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