Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  “I will, I will!” He quivered with excitement. “My food is yours! Anything you need! Just ask, and I’ll make it happen!”

  Shying from his outburst, she nodded toward the darkness in the center of the grove. “Be calm, Marid. Come with me. The trees are home tonight.”

  He trailed her back to her chosen tree. Her satchel lay on the ground, open to the night sky. She was quick to close the bag and conceal the Pages Black, though in truth she did not need to. Nothing on earth will make him sad tonight, she knew. Not the rain, the wind, or the black book of the Ur.

  While she slid the Pages into her satchel, Marid knelt in the moss beneath the tree and dropped his rucksack on the ground. “Don’t fret,” he remarked as she tied her satchel shut. “I know you keep a diary. You think I never noticed it?”

  Relieved, she sank like a puddle onto the ground and plopped against her oak. A diary, she mused. He thinks the Pages Black is a diary. Well and good. Silly man.

  With a smile, Marid doled out her supper. He gave her grapes, hard bread, and two fistfuls of nuts. All of it tasted odd from having survived the rain, but none of it anything less than scrumptious once sitting in her belly.

  After eating, she leaned against the oak. She felt limp with exhaustion, weary to my bones. “I need sleep,” she murmured. “A rare thing for me. I ask you only to leave my diary be. A lady’s secrets, even mine, are her own.”

  Plopping on the ground beside her, Marid grinned. “Anything about me in there?”

  “No.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Promise me you will leave it be. Else our journey will end before it begins.”

  “I promise, I promise,” he protested. “No nosing. Not tonight. Not ever.”

  “Good.”

  Her lack of sleep caught up to her all at once. Perhaps it was Marid. She expected him to suffocate her with questions about why I left, where I am going, and what manner of madness drove me into the wilderness. But he sat quietly next to her, content as a king on his throne of roots. She felt comfortable with him near, and even as she thought to bid him goodnight, a mountain of slumber fell down atop her. She sank into a deep, dreamless sleep, and remembered nothing of her worries.

  She awoke after what felt like the passing of an eon. Her consciousness emerged like a bubble rising to the surface of a calm-watered lake. She opened her eyes to the world, and she was pleased to discover the rain was not yet upon her, and that the only sound in the world was Marid’s soft snoring. Dawn’s pale light illumined the sky, while dense fog infiltrated the grove, thick enough to render the trees like great grey headstones idling in a graveyard’s murk. Peaceful, she thought. Beautiful.

  She rose with a yawn and wandered into the fog. She touched low-hanging leaves, padded between ancient oaks, and savored the feeling of the dew between her toes. After a time, she heard Marid awaken, and she returned to her tree to watch him rise.

  Stretching in the grass beneath his tree, Marid was blissfully unaware. He smacked his lips and slapped his palm against his beardless cheeks, realizing she was watching him only after catching the barest sight of her through the fog.

  “Still here?” he smiled sleepily.

  “Still here.”

  “What happens now?” he asked. “You never said where you’re going. What’s your plan? Do you know someone out here?”

  “Shivershore,” she answered. “My father’s tower. I mean to find it and move in.”

  Marid grimaced. “Shivershore? Of all the places. What about food? Come winter, we’ll need bundles of blankets and clothes just to keep from freezing. Shivershore’s no laughing matter. How do you expect we’ll manage?”

  “I will manage just fine.” She batted her lashes. “I rather like the cold. As for you, I was not expecting a guest. Perhaps you should turn back while you still can.”

  He clucked his tongue. “No turning back, not now. If Shivershore’s what you want, Shivershore you’ll have. We’ll find what we need, I’m sure.”

  With a roll of her eyes, she padded back to the oak. The night’s sleep had done her well. Her body was as pliable as a willow reed, her aches from yesterday entirely erased. She knelt beside Marid, plucked a ragged chunk of bread from his bag, and chewed on it while slinging her scruffy old satchel over her shoulder.

  “Time to go.” She stood over him.

  He looked worried. “Why the hurry?”

  She gave no answer but to turn her cheek and stride into the fog. She walked briskly, and within moments she stood at the grove’s southern edge, peering out into the wide, grey world. Beautiful, she thought again. Out in the prairie the fog drifted in tatters beyond the protective embrace of the trees. The skies were dark and gloomy, the natural storm from the south mere moments from colliding with the colonnades of shadow in the north. And here I stand, right in the middle.

  The lack of sunlight soothed her. She breathed so deeply of the thick, humid air that she felt drunk with it, her insides tingling the same as if she had sipped one too many goblets of wine. Oblivious to her worship of the clouds, Marid caught up to her.

  “Coming?” she asked him.

  “A rough day, it’ll be,” he said. “Storms in every direction. Might be miserable.”

  She cast a cool look upon him.

  “No. It will be perfect.”

  North Man

  At midday, Andelusia and Marid entered the dominion of the southern storm.

  The rain fell lightly at first, fluttering in gentle waves. But then it came fiercer, driving against the earth like the fall of a million hammers.

  No matter how it fell, soft or stinging, she adored it.

  But not poor Marid.

  Drenched from head to toe, shivering the same as a freshly-shorn lamb in the dead of winter, Marid pushed through the rain curtains as though swimming in the sea. Brave, she reckoned. But foolish. Muthem must be dry by now. He could be lounging in a field, a farmer’s daughter on each arm.

  After sloshing through another creek and tramping across a hundredth drowning field, she glanced back at him. No matter how far she let him fall behind, he never quits. Once, when the lightning flared and burned a lonely birch in a nearby thicket, she thought he might turn back. She assumed that some small spark of wisdom might leap to life in his head. But no, he keeps on. His skin weeping from the rain, he followed her without complaint. It seemed to her that he might love her after all, and the thought of it, though touching, made her sick with guilt.

  The southern storm died by early evening. Its remnants crashed against the clouds in the north, slowing the great pursuer in the sky. Like a half-remembered friend, the sun took refuge in the west, tumbling toward the horizon as though fearful of the next downpour. In the failing light, after finding an abandoned barn in a silver-grassed field, she and Marid finally stopped.

  Pushing through the barn’s broken doors, she stood in a pool of pallid light and wrung the rain from her ruined skirt. “Your first part of the promise,” she said to Marid as he trudged in behind her. “Due now.”

  “I can’t remember.” Marid’s hair was slicked to his scalp, his boots still dripping. “What did I say?”

  “The village to the south. You saw it?”

  “I did.”

  “Good. I need clothes. Fresh ones. The rain rotted everything I brought from Muthem.”

  “So it did.” He looked her up and down. “I’ve never seen rain do that before. Not that quick, anyhow.”

  “My magic makes the rot move faster. It wants nothing between me and the night.”

  “Oh.”

  If he disbelieved her, or thinks me mad, Marid showed no sign. “We just got here,” he huffed. “I need to sit. I’ll go in the morning.”

  “Go now. You promised. Besides, we have no food left. If you hurry, you can be back before dark.”

  “Fine.” His shoulders sank. “You’ll be safe here?”

  “As safe as anyone in the world.”

  With a sigh, he marched back into the evening. She felt guil
ty for sending him away, but a promise is a promise. If a walk to buy apples and shirts is too much, he will never survive Shivershore.

  The barn fell into silence. Marid and the rain’s absence left her feeling alone. Glad for it, she sat cross-legged on the dirt floor and shut her eyes.

  I could leave now.

  It would be cruel, but merciful.

  He will suffer in Shivershore.

  Alone with me, he will begin to understand.

  So I will stay.

  The only way for him to learn is to experience it for himself.

  Marid returned well after dark, a new lamp glowing in his grasp. Still sitting on the dirt, she peered up at him, managing a smile as he trudged through the door. “Late,” she teased. “As ever.”

  He closed the door with a grunt. Save for his lantern’s light, the entire world felt black as pitch. “You could’ve come with me,” he quipped.

  “No one wants to see pale and skinny me, all rags and skin and shadows.”

  “I do.”

  He plunked down beside her, dropping two sacks on the floor, each filled to bursting. “Food in that one,” He patted one of the bags. “Carrots, leeks, apples, potatoes, and salted-hen. I even bought a cooking pot.”

  “You spent all your coin?” she worried.

  “Most of it.” He smiled. “Well worth it for you.”

  She made a face. “And in this bag?”

  “Clothes, two sets for you, two for me. Here.” He reached into the sack and pulled out a lady’s tunic, its fabric as green as any leaf. “The other one’s white. I hope they fit. They belonged to a farmer’s daughter. But she’s gone and gotten herself plump with child.”

  She clutched the tunic close, kneading it as though it were the softest thing she had ever laid her hands on. Given the rain and the Nightness, she knew her new raiment might not last, but she loved Marid a little bit more for bringing it.

  “Thank you.” She leaned forward and pecked him on his cheek.

  “Go ahead.” He blushed. “Try it on. Don’t worry. I won’t watch.”

  She took the green tunic and slid into the barn’s rearmost shadows. In moments she dressed, and to her surprise the tunic was a near perfect fit. She felt almost beautiful in it, almost a woman again. She saw Marid trying not to notice. Striding back into the light, she sat beside him, and though he passed her a kerchief stuffed with berries, bread, and newly-pulled carrots, he never once looked at her. I should be ashamed, she thought. I disdained his help, but now I enjoy it.

  She and he dined together on the floor. His lantern’s light puddled in a small ring around them, but beyond the light, the world was dark. In the quiet reigning after supper, she sat across from him, hands folded in her lap, gaze settling into some faraway place.

  “Where does it come from?” he asked at length.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The storm, the rain.” He shrugged. “Never seen anything like it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was chasing us.”

  Her eyes went dark, but she hid it well, staring through a hole in the barn’s side where a plank was missing. Chasing us, she wanted to say. Exactly right.

  “And did you notice?” He peered out the very same hole. “There was a rider behind us today. I thought I was seeing things, but there he was. I saw him at noon in a curtain of rain, and I think it was him stabling his horse in the village. I wonder if he was one of the Duke’s men. Surely not. Or could he be?”

  “Rider?” She blinked at him. “What rider?”

  “Big man. Plump horse. I’m sure it was nothing. He could’ve caught us if he’d wanted.”

  “Strange I did not notice.”

  “If you’d not marched so far ahead of me, you might’ve,” he snorted.

  She smiled. “Someone had to set the pace. About this rider…”

  “I’m sure it was nothing.” He yawned. “Just a fat, slow man on a fat, slow horse. Besides, we’re no one anymore. We’re Shivershore-bound at the backside of summer. No one’ll want to follow us. My own mother doesn’t know I’m out here.”

  As if I needed to feel guiltier.

  She let the matter be. Marid, exhausted beyond anything she reckoned he had experienced before, faded fast. She watched his chin droop and his head loll, and she wished for his sake he would have stayed in the village and found himself a proper bed.

  Marid slept. She did not. She blew out his lamp and retreated to the barn’s corner, where the night pooled thickest. The planks shuddered and groaned with every stray gust of wind. The darkness felt complete. Even so, nothing extraordinary seemed at work in the world, no minions of the Duke hunting us, no swells of Nightness swooping down.

  And still I cannot sleep.

  Well into her second hour of sitting in meditative silence, she cracked the barn door and crept outside. Beneath the scrolling clouds, her cheeks damp as dewy petals, she searched the heavens.

  Where are you? she wondered. I know you are watching me. Let me sleep. Just tonight. Please, I beg you.

  She saw it then.

  In the night, it roamed, dark and vast and terrifying. She glimpsed the Black Moon inking out a half-dozen stars, haunting the skies over Thillria. Save for me, no other being in the world would have spotted it. A great ebon eye, it moved amid an ocean of clouds. For what seemed an epoch, she stared at it, hating it in one breath, aching with curiosity in the next. The longer she looked, the closer she came to a dire conclusion. I am meant to see this horror. I am watching it. And it watches me.

  To see the Black Moon filled her heart with blacker memories. Images of things she wished she had forgotten swam into her head. The Ur, he called them, she remembered her father. Sealed away by unknowable magicks, they still exist, and from now until the end of time they will always desire their freedom.

  She glared skyward. She cursed the Black Moon, the Ur, and the memory of her father. If help is what you want, find someone else to do it. I will not. Not tonight.

  Not ever.

  Cold under her collar, she stripped her gaze from the sky and fled back into the barn. Here at least was some small sanctuary, where Marid, who loved her despite all her many flaws, lay peacefully asleep.

  She and Marid took to the prairies early the next morn, outrunning the storm. A span of black clouds briefly overtook them, dumping drizzle on their backs, but hardly slowing them. The storm remained sluggish, for it knows not where I go.

  At midday, well ahead of the rain, they crossed a vast field of silver grass. On its far side, the field gave way to a heath pocked with weeds, brambles, thorny shrubs, and stout, grey-barked trees. Gone were the farmlands, streams, and paths winding through the fields. She felt the chilling wind on her face and she knew.

  “Shivershore.”

  “We made good time,” Marid remarked. “By my reckoning, it should’ve taken us a few days longer.”

  “Strange how the wind is different here,” she observed. “Colder…sharper…as if we crossed a boundary.”

  “We did,” was all Marid could muster.

  The afternoon dragged on. Their conversations were short, their pace swift. She felt weary no longer, and with every pull of the wind against her new green tunic, she swore she marched faster, remaining always ahead of Marid.

  At dusk they entered an old forest, where thin, sickly oaks loomed like bending towers and no speck of civilization lay in sight. Father Sun, pale and grey-faced, spread his light through breaks in the leaves like shafts of moonlight through a ruined temple roof. Peaceful. Quiet. Empty. She walked at ease. We will sleep here tonight.

  They made camp at the far southern edge of the forest. The storm was well behind them now, slowed by my relative contentment. She sat upon the roots of the forest’s outermost oak, while Marid plopped down on a log that had fallen several seasons ago. She supped only lightly. She was hungrier than usual, yet mindful of the limited amount of food.

  At the edge of night, as she rested in the deep shade, she dropped a smile upon
Marid.

  “Thank you.” She surprised him.

  “For what?”

  “Your company,” she sighed. “Makes this more bearable.”

  “Oh. Of course,” he stammered. “Though I wish I understood why you’re going to Shivershore.”

  Her smile dimmed. “When you come to your wits and leave me, I will be sad. No matter what, I will always remember you, Marid of Muthemnal.”

  “I won’t leave.”

  “As you like.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the oak.

  She heard Marid sit up and prepare his next argument, but then she sense him go still. No sound lived in the forest save the flutter of leaves and a pair of night birds cooing, and yet it seemed to her something was amiss, an unwanted, unwelcome presence. Her eyes darkening, she cocked her head around her tree and peered back into the forest.

  “What is it?” Marid followed her gaze.

  She shushed him with a finger raised across her lips. Crawling around her tree, she focused. “Someone is here,” she said. “Keep quiet.”

  Brushing the sable strands of hair from her face, she put her ear to the earth and listened. She heard it, the rhythmic boom in the distance, the measured fall of heavy hooves upon the forest floor. It sounded ominous, like the low peal of an executioner’s footfalls upon a gallows stair.

  “What is it?” Marid fumbled for his sword. “What do you hear?”

  She reprimanded him to silence with a glare. Fearless, she rose up between her tree and his. “Wait,” she commanded him. “Not a word.”

  She stood to see the man ride in from the north.

  In the distance she beheld the stallion. It strode through an open lane between oaks, its hooves hurling great clumps of sodden grass into the air. Its legs were corded rope, its shining mane slicked to its neck. Its rider, fearsome in the backdrop of blackness, held aloft a half-shuttered lantern, the narrow beam cutting like fire into her Nightness gaze. In the rider’s grasp hung a weapon, a thick oaken staff shod at both ends with steel.