Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Spencer had just finished a partial retelling of the previous
day’s adventures to Rolf, the moatkeeper’s son. So far Rolf was the only friend
Spencer had managed to make at the castle. Out in the provinces where Spencer
was from, castle folk had a reputation for being abrupt, unfriendly and
intolerant. In the three short weeks Spencer had been living at the Haligorn
that generalization had proved by and large fairly accurate. Rolf and his
father were two of the exceptions though. Rolf was maybe eighteen years old and
unusually tall. He hadn’t filled out his frame yet, and the result was that he
looked a little like a beanpole with large ears. His smile was kind, however,
and he had an appetite for stories, which was excellent because one of the few
things Spencer loved more than reading a tale was telling one.
    However,
his latest story was an abridged version. He had told Rolf everything about the
book except how it arrived; he had cut Daphne and Lorna out of the retelling
entirely, making it sound as though he found the book in some deserted corner
of the Haligorn. He trusted Rolf, as much as one could after just three weeks,
but he could not afford for anyone to know about the role the princesses had
played. People were very touchy where the royals were concerned, and he feared
what might happen to his mother if it was discovered that the princesses had visited
the Haligorn.
    Spencer
shuddered at the thought of what the Queen might do to his mother, and turned
up his collar against the wind that whistled through the gaps and slits in the
old drawbridge, shivering with the bite of the coming winter. The surface of
the moat was green and foaming, lapping restlessly at the boards. He was
sitting cross-legged at the edge of the drawbridge, while Rolf stood, slowly
trawling through the water with a long-handled net. A white dove passed over
their heads, her wings white and silent. Her shadow rippled on the water as she
passed low over the moat, and Spencer took a moment to appreciate her beauty. Preoccupied
as he was by the white dove, he entirely missed the sight of a tiny, misshapen
reptile, like an ill-proportioned lizard, that scuttled around the corner, lost
its grip on the boards beneath its feet and slid sideways into the moat. The
tiny plop of the reptile’s body startled him, and he glanced this way and that,
searching for the source of the sound, but the odd little creature had already
sank beneath the froth.
    “So what
are you going to do about it?” Rolf asked.
    “What do
you mean?”
    “The
book.” Rolf reminded him. “If you need a witch to disenchant it for you, I know
a good one down at the Bottoms. She’ll charge you two-thirds price if you tell
her I sent you.”
    The
Bottoms were a maze of poverty stricken neighborhoods at the foot of Mount
Wulfyddia, just above the harbor. Technically they were part of the Castle
complex, but the way that people there lived, you wouldn’t know it. There were
murders every day, more taverns than grocer’s stalls, and the tide washed in
all manner of strange folk. Spencer couldn’t imagine what his mother would do
to him if she found out that he had been in the Bottoms visiting a witch
recommended to him by Rolf the moatkeeper’s son. Even the wrath of the Queen
paled in comparison.
    “Thanks
anyway.”
    “You
could toss it into the Chasm.” Rolf suggested after another moment of thought.
The Chasm was the deep cleft in the Earth that separated the cliff of the
Castle Proper from the jagged peak on which the Haligorn perched. It was the
subject of many local legends. Most people avoided it like the plague, with the
exception of Spencer and his mother, who had to cross a narrow footbridge over
it every time they wanted to travel from the Haligorn to the castle. Spencer
tilted his head, hesitating, and realized that he was searching for an excuse.
The fact of the matter was that he didn’t want to part with the book just yet.
    The
events of the evening