Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  “I know who you are.” He heard a woman’s tremulous voice. “I saw what you did.”

  He opened his eyes. The woman was no dream.

  In the predawn gloom, he glimpsed her. How he had come to collapse in the inn’s main room and how the woman had found him lying amid the ashes, I will never know. He saw her crouching in the shadows on the room’s far side, her eyes invisible in the darkness. Her nose was a white pearl, her dark dress pooling on the floor.

  “You’re the Hunter.” She named him, her tone almost accusatory. “I’ve heard the stories. You look just as they said you would, but only because of the ash. Your face is black and your hair like a monster’s mane. The fire treated you poorly. You look like an animal.”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I know.”

  “I suppose I should thank you.” She stirred in the shadows. He saw the whites of her eyes, but little else. “Those pigs would’ve killed me. They were right to be afraid. I saw what you did to the wounded wolf. I saw you slay the iron knight.”

  “For all that it matters,” he grunted.

  She peered out from behind her fallen timbers. In dawn’s growing light, she looked a stark sight against the ashes covering every surface in the room. Not of Roma, this one, he discerned. She lacked the Romaldarian swarthiness; her complexion was much too fair. Her hair was long and straight, the color and texture of finely spun copper, while her cheeks were pale and regal. She was unquestionably stunning, entirely out of place amid the death and ruin.

  “From beyond the black teeth.” He slumped against the wall.

  “What?”

  “Mountains. Valleys. You are from Yrul.”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “It does not matter.”

  Tentative, she emerged from her hiding place. She was as beautiful as she was tall and slender, else I am still dreaming. She erected herself in the room’s center, standing in a ray of early sunlight gleaming through a window. She shone like a copper star, sharp and radiant. He felt small and broken beneath her.

  “Everyone’s dead.” She clung to herself with a shiver. “My new husband, his family, all of them.”

  “I regret…” he offered clumsily. “I am sorry…for your family.”

  As sudden as a storm cloud curtaining the sun, a glimmer of black shadowed her eyes. “Don’t be. It was my countrymen who helped do it. Such are my people, proud and treacherous.”

  Not yet ready to trust him, she picked her way across the room. She watched him like a raven eyeing an earthbound predator, ready to fly should he threaten her.

  “You were right.” He raised his hand in feeble greeting. “I am the Hunter.”

  “I know. You’re wounded, Hunter. Your side runs red.”

  “A gift from the iron knight.” He grimaced.

  “You…” She shivered again. “…you didn’t come here to save us, did you? You came to kill the Master’s wolves.”

  “Mostly true.” He accepted her judgment. “I wanted to help the villagers, but my first thought was of the Wolde.”

  “And how many you could kill.”

  “Yes.”

  She stood taller then, halting where the black timbers and burned chairs made a ring for her to stand in. She was guarded, defiant, as proud as any Yrul he had ever seen. She regarded him for a long while, the wheels of her mind turning as she looked him up and down.

  “Nephenia,” she announced her name.

  “You already know who I am.”

  “Yes. So I do. You’ll perish of that, you know.” She inclined her finger at the wound between his ribs.

  “Unlikely. I have survived worse.”

  “Oh? Worse, you say? I’ve seen men in the mountains die from scratches half as deep. You’re a braggart, Hunter. Where I come from, the braggarts die first.”

  He would have answered did not his tongue become heavy in his mouth. His blood pounded hot in his temples and the fever of his exhaustion drowned his battered bones. He tried to stand, but like a tower torn from his base, he staggered and collapsed. Nephenia swam in his vision, ethereal and angelic, before the murk dragged him under again.

  Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I will die.

  He awoke hours later. His body hurt to the marrow and his head throbbed, a hollow drum for all the world to beat upon. Alive, he remained unsurprised. A shame, perhaps. The room he lay in was utterly dark, and through its open window he glimpsed the embers smoldering in the skeleton of the fallen mansion. Starlight shone in through spacious holes in the roof, illuminating the charred and crumbling timbers holding the inn upright.

  I slept the entire day.

  He tried to sit up, but a striating pain ran the length of his ribs, and he slumped back against the floor. For breaths unknowable, he lay flat as a board. Someone moved me. I am not against the wall anymore. He touched his hand to his ribs, and he found his flank bound in lavender cloth, recognizable even in the shadows as a silken strip of Nephenia’s dress.

  For a time he lay motionless, clearing his mind, already turning his thoughts to the future. He dreamed of vengeance, of chasing the surviving Wolde and hunting them to a man. As he brooded on the thousand ways he would slaughter them, he failed to notice Nephenia sitting cross-legged in the shadows beside him. He saw her sit up, his dagger and the Greyblade cradled in her lap, and for the first time in years he remembered what it was like to be surprised.

  “You…” He winced. “Still here…”

  Though mostly enshrouded in darkness, Nephenia showed a faint smile. “I stitched you up.” She patted her palm against the Greyblade’s scabbard. “Unless it festers, you’ll live.”

  Still lying flat on the floor, he touched his wound again. She tells the truth. The ragged cut dealt by the iron horror was stitched tightly shut. He sensed other injuries: a torn muscle in his calf, a knot on his head, bruises dotting his flesh, but none were so grievous as to mean the end of him, a thought which gave him little comfort.

  “There must be others.” He tried to sit up and only made it halfway. “Other survivors to help.”

  “No. None.”

  “Surely—”

  “Lykaios’ men were waiting in the fields.” Her expression was blank. “When we fled, they met us with arrows and flames. They wanted everyone dead. They hired Yrul men to murder any who ran. I know…I saw. That I’m the only one left is a bitter irony.”

  He expected sorrow, but she gazed at him without emotion, tiny motes of starlight shining in her eyes. “Strange for you to be here,” he said. “Anymore, Yrul is safer than Roma.”

  Softer than the gentlest breeze, she sighed. “It was to be an alliance, my marriage. He, a Roma lord, and me, daughter to the last family in Yrul to resist Lykaios. It was to mean an end to the border burnings, to the fighting between the kingdoms. But Lykaios…he killed the Roma king and swore pacts with other Yrul…wicked Yrul. You of all people must’ve noticed the Wolde are not all Roma men. Some are hounds of the Yrul wastes, mercenaries of Murlyk, the Hammer Lord. I won’t claim to know why he helps Lykaios. But he does. He’ll overthrow our king someday soon, and we’ll all suffer for it.”

  “You speak the common tongue,” he noted.

  “As well I should. I was a princess, you know. I studied language, art, and culture. Do you think us barbarians? Do you think I haven’t noticed that you, like me, aren’t of Roma? If I am out of place, then you are doubly so, northern man. You’re too tall, too made of sinew and swiftness to be like these people.”

  “I mean no offense,” he replied.

  “And I take none.”

  An almost companionable quiet settled. Aching, he pushed himself upright and leaned against a pile of blackened, still-warm stones. Nephenia set his weapons aside and came to him. “Here,” she said. “Stay still.” She dipped a rag into a tin half-filled with water and wiped a dribble of blood from his forehead. “Drink.” She offered him the tin. “You’ve had nothing since I found you.”

  As he drank, she sat cross-legged on th
e floor and appraised him. She looked tired, yet steadfast. A princess, he thought. A survivor.

  “We cannot stay here,” he said at length. “I must go. You as well.”

  “Go where?” She absently toyed with his knife. “You must rest. We’ll need food and more water. No one’s going anywhere.”

  “I will rest, but not here.” He inhaled a vast breath. With each moment beneath the stars, I feel stronger. “My work beckons. This place will not be safe. The Wolde will wonder where the iron knight has gone. They will want to find my body. They might be here already.”

  “Your work beckons? What work is that?” she pried.

  “Lykaios.”

  “What of him?”

  He sighed. Years since last I spoke of this. “The Master. I have tried and failed many times to take his life. I must end him soon, else my time in Roma is wasted. It should not matter to you. You should flee home, princess, and quickly. The Wolde will return, and they will not tend kindly to a woman left alive.”

  “So you aren’t really hunting the Wolde. You’re hunting the Master.”

  “Yes.”

  She opened her eyes. Amber upon ivory, he remembered glimpsing them a moment before his collapse. They were dark now, inky black in the starlight, but still he sensed her emotion. She is afraid, he realized. She does not want to be alone.

  “You give me this look,” she said. “What does it mean?”

  “You have something to say. I am waiting to hear it.”

  She parted her lips ever so slightly. Her voice was softer than he remembered, her Yrul pride subdued. “I can’t go home,” she said. “My husband’s body swings from a tree, and my family is endangered. If I go back, Murlyk will know. He’ll hunt me down. It was surely him who bargained with Lykaios and sent the Wolde here. He despises my family, for we were friends of the Roma king before Lykaios executed him.”

  “Then find somewhere in Romaldar. Go north. Find a village nearer Graehelm. The Wolde never attacks near the border.”

  “Romaldar?” she scoffed. “There’s nowhere to go in Romaldar. The Wolfwolde will soon conquer everything, and what Roma man will spare his sword to protect a houseless lady of the Yrul? I’d be killed. Or worse, I’d be sold to Murlyk and forced to lie in his dungeons, servicing any soldier who wishes it.”

  He cupped his chin with one hand, hiding a grimace. Wise, this woman. She has fewer places to hide than I do.

  “Why do you do it, Hunter?” she pried again. “Why all this death, if not to help those Lykaios has wronged? I’ve heard of you. We all have. And yet I see something in you besides murder.”

  “I do not ask for understanding.”

  “Oh?” She raised one copper-hued eyebrow. “Even before I came to Roma, we all heard of the Hunter, thorn in the Wolfwolde’s side. Why is it so? How is it you murder on so grand a scale, yet I look at you and see no evil. Tell me. You’ve nothing to lose.”

  Quite a woman. He shook the last cobwebs from his head. Stitched me together, and now wants to open me back up.

  “I do what I do for my own reasons. You will not appreciate any of them. And for as many as I have slain, it comes to nothing. Were I more capable, I would have been here before the Wolfwolde. Your husband…these people…they might still be alive.”

  “Maybe…” She swallowed hard. “But more likely you’d have died, and I’d be dead just the same. You killed the ones chasing me, Hunter. There were four, and you made them none. You saved me. Don’t you see?”

  And now you want me to save you again.

  “Tell me what you want, princess.”

  “You already know, Hunter.”

  He shook his head. Easier if she had died, he hated himself for thinking it. Easier if we both had died.

  “If…” He gritted his teeth. “If I take you from this place and lead you to safety, you will promise no more questions. I have not had to explain myself to anyone in a very long time. I seek no approval for what I do, nor will I suffer your judgment.”

  Nephenia cracked a slender smile, and he knew he had guessed rightly. “If you help me, I promise it,” she said. “No more questions until tomorrow.”

  Defeated, he slumped against his pillow of ash-smothered stones and regarded her. No sense in fighting it. We saved one another, for all that it matters.

  “Tell me what’s next,” she said.

  “Spare me a moment more, and then we can go,” he told her. “If you know of any food the fire missed, sneak outside and fetch it. The road ahead is long and difficult. Food for one is hard enough to come by. Food for two will be...well…”

  She stood tall, smiling in the starlight. She took up the Greyblade and swaggered to the inn’s broken front door, and in the night’s silver glimmer he saw her cheeks flushed with pride, her chin lifted high. “I will return,” she said. “I’d tell you not to run, but you’re still hurt. I’ll catch you if you try to leave me.”

  I do not doubt it.

  She slipped into the night. Shuttering his eyes against the starlight, he allowed himself a while of repose. Tired, he thought. So very tired. No time for a proper recovery. If the Wolde returns, we are dead.

  He was not sure how long he dozed, or how long his dream of soft rain upon an otherworldly wilderness lasted, but his next sensation was that of Nephenia prodding him with the flat of the Greyblade’s scabbard.

  “I filled this.” She dropped a sack stuffed to its brim at his feet. “Potatoes, olives, wine, and a few other surprises. I felt terrible to take it, but the dead don’t eat. It’s as you said; we need food.”

  At long last, he forced himself to his feet. Like climbing a mountain, he mused. After catching his breath, he held out his hand, nodding at the Greyblade in Nephenia’s grasp. “The sword,” he said. “Unless you intend to carry it.”

  To her, the Greyblade seemed a final token of trust. He saw dewdrops of doubt gleam in her eyes. She looked him over for the hundredth time, surveying his scraggly beard, his black bandit’s garb, and his sunken, haunted eyes.

  “I’m in your care, Hunter. I trust you.” She held the Greyblade outward, the scabbard trembling.

  “So it seems,” he sighed.

  “I don’t know you, but I want to believe you won’t hurt me. I beg you, do me the honor of proving me right.”

  “Princess…” He uttered the word with genuine respect. “I know what I look like. I know what you have seen. So long as you are near, I will leave you your privacy and your pride, and I will protect you as though you were my daughter, as though I am an army standing between you and any poor Wolde who thinks to hurt you.”

  “This wasn’t your plan,” she sympathized. “I’m sorry.”

  “I am meant to be alone. And I will be again.”

  “But you’ll help me?”

  “For now. I will take you to safety. And then I will resume my war against the Master.”

  She cocked a smile at him. For a moment he felt as though the sun were shining upon him. She handed him the Greyblade, stared at him with starlight in her gaze, and walked to the door.

  “Let’s go,” she said with all the confidence in the world. “We’ve only a few hours of darkness left.”

  Darkness, he thought. The more, the better.

  Diary, Part III

  A hilltop. Four nights south of Muthemnal

  The rain has ended. I wish I could say it was because my heart has warmed. I wish, but it is not so.

  I sit tonight under lavender skies. For once, there are no trees. I lean atop a hummock of dry grass, scribbling by the dusklight to pass the time. I should be sleeping. My daylong marches have exhausted me. If I have stopped to write, it is because no one is out here to talk to. Why would they be? Once glance at the northern sky, and everyone will know what comes.

  Above me, the evening is clear. But in the north I see the clouds. They pool like a dark ocean, soon to overtake the grasslands a quarter day’s walk behind me. I know their game. Slow and steady, they pursue me, rumbling ever southwar
d, retracing my every step. By tomorrow afternoon this hill will be sodden, and the meadows beneath it drowned. Every animal will flee. Every flower will wilt. My only hope is that with the storm following me, Muthem might be released. Though even if it is, other places along my march will suffer.

  Supper tonight is stolen carrots and sour wine. Hardly the cuisine I am accustomed to, though far better than I will enjoy in Shivershore. Shivershore. That is where I am bound. Harsh winters, rainy summers, and always the Selhaunt Sea thundering against the craggy shore. My father’s abandoned tower is there. I have never seen it, but I will know where to find it. How? I just will.

  I chomp my carrots and sip my wine. Chomp and sip, sip and chomp. I have forgotten all the manners I learned at Muthem. Aera’s umbrella sits open in the grass, ragged as my dress, less a protector from the rain and more a reminder of better days. I am such a mess from my travels. How grimy can one be and still be considered a woman? I feel boggy, swampy, as sodden and stagnant as rotten, rained-on meat. Sometimes my clothes feel so slick and flimsy I think I might be better served marching naked. My only dry possessions are this book and the Pages, the latter of which I use to shield the former from the rain.

  Oh, if not for pride. I could so easily flit like a raven all the way south. I could be a shadow. It would be a simple thing. In a single night, I could consume all the distance between me and Shivershore. I could land on the rocky, sea-blasted shore by dawn tomorrow, and I could begin a lifetime’s lonely contemplation. For there in my father’s tower, the rain can fall eternal, and few will care. But no. No Nightness for me. I will stay my course. I will walk. In a twisted way, it is the right thing to do. It is the least of the punishments I deserve.

  I have not slept well. Why should I? There is little need, my being rejuvenated by a few hours of darkness. Still, my persistent wakefulness makes me feel less than human. Whenever I try to doze, the Nightness crackles at my fingertips, unused but ever nettling. My senses, even when I wish they would dull and let me drowse, are sharp to the point of causing me pain, with every chirrup, caw, and rustle in the night thundering like war drums in my ears. I hate these feelings, and love them. It seems a small miracle I have not yet succumbed to madness. Perhaps it is you, fair journal, who deserves the credit for keeping me sane. You are my only friend. You listen, and you never judge.