The Skeleth Read Online Free

dark. Too many nights filled with too many nightmares—too many terrors that shook her from sleep.
    â€œWhen your father left Elverain, where was he bound?” Lord Aelfric’s sudden question made Katherine jump.
    â€œTo Lord Tristan, to his castle at Harthingdale.” Katherine set her elbows on the table, leaning closer on the hope: “Have you any news of him, my lord? Any at all?”
    â€œYou were summoned here to answer, not to ask,” said Lord Aelfric. “For what purpose did John Marshal make this journey?”
    Katherine sat back in confusion. “I thought you knew, my lord. Papa left because of Vithric, because of the Nethergrim.”
    Lord Aelfric stroked his beard, deep in shadowed thought.He glanced out the window, then over at the shelves where sat his store of musty old books. “Vithric is dead. He died many years ago.”
    â€œHe is not,” said Katherine. “I saw him. My papa saw him.”
    â€œYou are sure it was Vithric that you saw?” Old age had robbed Lord Aelfric’s voice of much of its power, but none of its tone of unyielding authority. “Think carefully.”
    Katherine’s confusion began to turn into alarm. “He was my papa’s old friend. Why would Papa lie about it?”
    â€œIndeed.” Lord Aelfric picked up the scroll again. He glanced over the words. “What cause could your father ever have to lie?”
    Katherine recoiled and held herself back from a retort with some effort. She could never have imagined allowing such an insult to her father to pass unchallenged, but she had been taught all her life to honor and respect her rightful lord—indeed, it was her father who had taught her so.
    â€œMy lord, I still don’t understand exactly what it was that I saw beneath that mountain.” Katherine met Aelfric’s searching and unfriendly gaze. “But I know that Vithric is not dead, and neither is the Nethergrim. I don’t even know if a thing like the Nethergrim can truly die—I only know that it was there, that it was somehow forming anew.”
    Lord Aelfric fiddled with the silver chain that hung around his creased old neck. He stared out the window at the dying sun. Katherine did not know what she disliked more, the stony look he struggled to keep upon his face, or how easily and often it cracked.
    â€œWhy Tristan?” Lord Aelfric muttered the words. “Why Tristan, and why now?”
    Katherine chose to answer, though she was not sure if she had in truth been asked. “I think he went to Tristan to tell him that they had failed, that everything they had suffered through thirty years ago was in vain, and that their old friend Vithric had betrayed them.” She had no trouble recalling Vithric’s face, a vicious man who had stolen seven children, she among them, and dragged them all before the Nethergrim to die. “If you wanted to understand what happened in the mountains, my lord, you should have summoned Edmund.”
    Lord Aelfric blinked. “Who?”
    â€œEdmund. Edmund Bale, from my village.” Bookish little Edmund—the son of innkeepers, and no one’s idea of a hero—had come through suffering and despair, tracking Vithric and his captives through the passes of the Girth to the deep and ancient lair of the Nethergrim. Katherine warmed to think of it. “Did no one tell you, my lord? Edmund broke the spell. He saved my life, me and all the children but two.” Edmund had stormed with Papa to the rescue and stepped up into Vithric’s face, right up under the thrumming presence of the Nethergrim itself, and ended the spell before it could claim all its victims. If that could not be fairly called a miracle, then too much was being asked of the word.
    Lord Aelfric flicked his hand. “When was the last time your father had contact with Tristan?”
    Katherine searched her memory. “I don’t know, my lord. Years