The Skeleth Read Free

and to the ruined keep where his whole life had changed two weeks before. Beyond that stood the starlit peaks of the Girth, the mountains where he had fought against the Nethergrim and won. He had found a way to break a spell devised between the world’s most celebrated wizard and the Nethergrim herself. If he could do that, he wondered, then why could he not call down light?
    Edmund.
    â€œI heard you,” said Edmund. “I understand what you are asking me. If I look to my right, I look away from my left. If I face to the west, I turn away from the east.”
    Thus speak the masters of
Dhrakal
, the wizards whose works you so adore. All things have their needful opposites. Light needs darkness. The dawn carries with it certain knowledge of the dusk. You can have what you want, but you must always pay for it. Now—understand, and try again.
    Edmund found the balance in his mind. He reached forth to tip it. “ L ET THE LIGHT OF THE STARS DESCEND. I GRIP THE SLEEVE OF NIGHT . S TARS, ATTEND ME.” He lowered his hand, indicating the place. “ D ESCEND.”
    The sky above him warped, and the stars turned their faces, casting their cool and indifferent glow upon the little heathered hollow where he sat. It was not much, just enough for reading. The night beyond grew just a little blacker, a little deeper—a simple cost for a simple spell, straight across the Wheel from Light to Darkness.
    There, said the Voice. Not so very hard, after all.
    â€œNow get lost.” Edmund took up his book and spread it out across his lap. “I’m trying to find a way to kill you.”
    Edmund. You never looked east.
    â€œWhy should I?” Edmund turned his head, even as he spoke. “There’s nothing that way except—”
    What Edmund had meant to say next was that there was nothing to his east except for empty moors. What he had meant to say next was that eastward, from where he sat, there were but barren rolls of ground choked with weeds and moorspike, with hardly a tree to break up the monotony all the way to the horizon. What he had meant to say was that there was nothing to see in that direction, for no one had gone three rises east of the Moorvale Bridge from time out of memory. Instead he said nothing, because he saw something he did not expect.
    Edmund leapt to his feet. “Is that torchlight?” He peered eastward—another torch appeared behind the first, and then they both began slowly to descend, as though their carriers had crested a rise on the great West Road, and now followed its path down into the hollow.
    Your book speaks truth, Edmund. The tone of the Voice changed, seeming to taunt him. I have indeed taken manyforms in this world. It is also true that I have many ways of working my will upon it.
    â€œWho is that?” Edmund forgot that he was speaking with the Nethergrim, the being that had stolen away the lives of two children before his eyes. “No one takes the West Road in from the moors. No one comes from that way—not ever.”
    You know that I was not destroyed, there within the mountain. You know, in the deepest part of yourself, that I cannot be destroyed.
    Edmund let the light of his spell go out, the better to see the lights upon the moors. The glow of the torches lit what looked like men on horseback, and even in the deep of night their garments marked them out as men of noble rank, coats of arms laid over mail armor, woad blue and madder crimson, the glint of steel and cloth of gold.
    â€œWhat is it that you want?” Edmund spoke as though the Nethergrim stood beside him. “What is it that you are trying to do?”
    This much is certain, Edmund Bale. If you carry on against me, I will be your death.
    Edmund clenched his fists. “I will find a way to stop you. This I swear.”
    No reply came, save for the wind.
    â€œDo you hear me?” Edmund did not know why he looked upward at the stars, since he was not at all