Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  She sat up, her eyes wide.

  “Three summers ago I shot him dead in the heart with an arrow.” He spoke less to her and more to the stars. “It did not matter. He fell only to rise again. Last winter I slipped into his garrison and poisoned his supper. Still he did not die. Now I begin to wonder if he will ever expire, or if I have spent the better years of my life hunting a ghost.”

  “You shot him? He didn’t die?” She creased her brow. “You jest.”

  “I do not,” he said. “He is not like other men. I dream of ways to end him, and I come to nothing. Now I have only his servants to slay. I have taken hundreds, and yet he always sends more.”

  “He has all of Roma. You’re but one man.” She flinched.

  “It matters not. Now is the time to finish it.” He clenched his jaw. “Once you are safe, I will go to him. If he is flesh, the Greyblade will open his skull for the sun to shine into. You have inspired me to do this. The things he did to you and yours remind me why I came to Romaldar, why I put my old life aside.”

  Her calmness melted away. “You…you’re not well. You’re sick with this.”

  “I do not expect you to understand.”

  “You frighten me.”

  He looked at her. “I know.”

  Everyone says the same.

  Prey

  She believed me a virtuous man.

  Many before her thought likewise.

  And now she knows.

  All I am is a killer.

  Unhappy, the Hunter sank into bottomless brooding. The night slid by, and though sleep never came to overtake him, he remained as far from consciousness as the moon from the bottom of the sea. Nephenia remained awake as well, sitting beside the dying fire, gazing longingly at the stars.

  Until I sleep, neither will she.

  Had he been his usual, vigilant self, he might have heard the racket on the side of the hill, the rustling amid the trees. Had his mind not been filled with shadows, he might have known.

  He lay back against his ash tree, and with his senses drowned in darkness, he missed the subtle sounds of deadfalls snapping, of booted feet plodding through the loam. He saw Nephenia cock her head, curious at something, but he thought too little of it, content instead to close his eyes and hope tomorrow’s sun would shine brighter.

  “Hunter!” Nephenia’s hiss tore him from half-slumber. “Fires on the hill! We’re not alone!”

  Her terror snapped him back to his senses. Greyblade in hand, he lurched to his feet and kicked at the campfire, drowning it in a shower of embers and ash. As the smoke cleared, he imbibed the night air and saw the source of Nephenia’s fear.

  A ragged line of torches. A noose around our hill. Thirty men. Their necks shrouded in wolfskins. Their eyes burning.

  “Wolfwolde.” He snared Nephenia’s wrist and directed her to crouch at the base of the ash. “They found us. Stay here.”

  They came. Thirty of the Wolde closed in around him, notch-riddled axes and cruel spears gripped in their sweating, murderous grasps. They had the look of savage, prehistoric men. Some were Romaldarian, swarthy and stocky, while others were of the Yrul, as lean and whiplike as forest vines. Gathering like ghosts, they shaped themselves into a circle around his hilltop. He stood with the Greyblade in one hand, a dagger waiting in the other.

  As they thronged, forming a ring of steel and fire, he shielded Nephenia.

  “Will they kill us?” She blinked at him, eyes wide with fear.

  “Not if I have any say.”

  Closing the circle, his enemies halted some twenty steps away on every side. Their faces were painted with black pitch, their throats encircled by strands of wolves’ teeth. The leader of the pack emerged from the night. He was a lean, wiry thing, handsome and clean cut, a world apart from the rest. No greater in height than Nephenia, he glided between two broad-shouldered Wolde. His eyes were beady and bright, his flesh ghostly in the livid glower of the Wolde’s torches. He wore neither weapon nor wolfskin.

  The first one I should kill.

  “Your name.” He glared at the little man. “Before you die.”

  The ring of Wolfwolde men, nervous in the presence of their most hated foe, collectively quivered. Their diminutive leader did not.

  “I am Wrail.” His voice was unexpectedly powerful. “And you’re the one we call Hunter.”

  He took slow stock of Wrail. He noted no semblance to the rest of the Wolde. He saw wickedness in the little man’s eyes, the deadness in his pupils the same as a coal-eyed scarecrow. Whether Wrail was young or old he could not say, for though the little man’s flesh was smooth, there lay a shadow upon him, clouding him like ash from an autumnal fire.

  “Ah, Hunter.” Wrail shook off his gaze. “Would that we had met under better circumstances. We might’ve been allies, you and I. You might’ve learned just what a waste of time it is for you to try to stop us.”

  “Thirty…” The Hunter wrenched his gaze from side to side. “Not enough. I have fought more than this and lived. I will kill every one of you. The Master will pound his table to splinters when he learns of your failure.”

  It might have been true. The Wolde host was fearful, fully aware that no five of their number were a match for him. He glared from face to face, hopeful they would flee, pitying them that they would not. While he gazed, several lifted crossbows from their backs and took aim.

  “Go ahead. Tell them to shoot me,” he challenged Wrail. “But warn them that they shall be the first ones I slaughter, and that for each bolt that flies I shall take a head in payment.”

  Wrail, dark-eyed and undisturbed, considered the threat. “What if…” The little man leered at Nephenia. “What if we killed her instead? What would you do then?”

  He paused. His sword wavered in his hand. Nephenia crawled behind him and wrapped her arms around his leg. No, he wanted to shout at her. Show no weakness.

  Sensing a moment’s indecision, Wrail clapped his hands together. The sound was like thunder, breaking the night. “Lower your crossbows, lads. The Hunter is ready to hear my proposition.”

  “I am not,” he seethed. “This is my hill, my forest. You have reached too far.”

  Wrail, standing just two swords’ length away, licked his teeth like a hungry hound. “Your hill? Your forest?” he laughed. “I think if you want the girl to live, you’ll do the right thing. I know your story, Hunter. All of us who are given the Master’s gift do. Many deaths are on your conscience. You’ll not let another one fall, not tonight, not when you’ve a chance to save her.”

  Wrail’s words stuck a cold chord in his heart. He froze, feeling Nephenia’s clutches tighten around his calf. “I should not have brought her here,” he grunted.

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Wrail agreed. “It was her dress we found a strip of in the swamp. It was her song we heard riding the valley winds. If not for her, you might still be sitting here, alone and miserable.”

  “Wrong.” He glowered. “If not for her, you would already be dead.”

  “Two choices,” said Wrail. “Come willingly and live to see tomorrow. Or wade into us like fire against a wall of spears and swords, and live only long enough to hear your lady’s dying whimpers.”

  His heart throbbed in his chest, a burning stone dropped into frigid water. Hating himself, he gazed like death upon Wrail. “If I surrender, you will let her be,” he said. “You will swear to keep your men’s filthy claws away from her.”

  Wrail grinned with sublime satisfaction, licking his gleaming white teeth as though a feast were laid before him. “Oh, simple Hunter, I’ll do you a measure better than that. I’ll swear upon pain of the Master’s scourge she’ll not be touched, nor chained, nor so much as looked at by any who wish to harm her. Simply drop your sword and toss off your dagger, and these men will never trouble her, no matter how much they’d like to. Resist us, however, and she’ll suffer. She’ll know all the pain the Wolfwolde can give her, and her death will be the last thing you see.”

  Alon
e, I would stand a chance. The Wolde, fearsome though they looked, were but fodder, as easily dispatched as children. He yearned to wade into them, to descend into the abyss of the Hunter’s frenzy and leave naught but corpses where thirty men once walked. But Nephenia. I should never have saved her.

  He tossed his dagger at Wrail, who snatching it from the air like a bird in his catlike claws.

  “Swear it on your blood,” he bid the little man. “Swear she will come to no harm. Carve your oath into your hand, and I will surrender…for now.”

  I am lost to say such things.

  Wrail’s grin turned ravenlike. The little man turned the dagger on its point and scored a crimson line into his palm, afterward squeezing a rope of blood from his fist. “By this blood do I vow,” Wrail swore, cold and smug. “The Princess of the Yrul shall come to no harm. But you, ever the Master’s enemy, shall now and forever be my prisoner. This do I promise.”

  A last glance at Nephenia, and his hands fell like weary wings to his sides. This is wrong, he thought. I have betrayed myself.

  Breaking their circle, the Wolde came for him like wolves upon a wounded bear. They clasped their dirty hands around his arms, and he let them take him, not resisting their shoves, not lifting his sword and striking them down even when every fiber of his being begged for it. When they shackled his wrists and hung heavy chains from his neck, he stood stiller than stone. When they tore the Greyblade from his grasp, his heart froze inside him.

  While Nephenia screamed, they chained him like an animal to his tree. The Princess fought them with her tiny fists and molten fury, but they soon subdued her as well, stuffing her mouth with cloth and binding her wrists with black cord. He could not bear to look at her. She was the only beauty in a world gone dark, and in his heart he felt he did not deserve to see her. He allowed himself to think only of Lykaios, whose soulless gaze haunts this very hill. Watching me. Laughing.

  * * *

  The night passed.

  In chains, he never slept.

  He lay rigid and awake, dying inside as the torch-tattered night gave way to a pale, cloudless dawn. He imagined a thousand different ways he could have resisted, but none of it matters now. I am their prize, farther from vengeance than ever.

  An hour after a cold sunrise, his journey to Archaeus began. The Wolde recovered their horses from their hidden camp beneath his hill, afterward hauling him atop a broad-bellied draft mount, the same for Nephenia. He glimpsed her blindfolded atop her steed, her cheeks paler than white sheets, her limbs sagging in defeat. He doubted Wrail would honor his word.

  As they led down through the trees and into the valley, the Wolde tormented him. They lashed him with insults and mocked him as a weakling for giving up so easily. They called aloud the names of their brothers he had dispatched and whipped him with switches to give back some small measure of their pain. Laughing all the way, they led him and Nephenia out of the valley, carving an exodus into the Romaldarian heartland.

  The end of summer was near, and the beginnings of autumn cast a fair face across the open plain beyond the Hunter’s hill. A lie, he thought. For this land is blighted. The grass was already turning gold, the vineyards hinting at crimson, while the jade canopies of every watchful oak showed signs that their leaves would soon change to glorious orange and smoldering umber. He saw no beauty in it. No matter that the earth seemed afire with color or that the golden sun shined on his back, Romaldar felt nothing like home. Too many burned villages. Too many prairies burned by Wolde camps. This is Lykaios’ land now.

  Four dismal days plodded past.

  The Wolde resisted killing him.

  Wrail, keeping his promise to see Nephenia unharmed, kept her always away. The Hunter saw her looking at him even through her blindfold. See me one last time, he wished. Forgive me.

  And then came the forth night, his chilliest since being torn from the sanctuary of his hill. Wrail bid the Wolde to camp in a fallow field near a dead village. Separated from Nephenia by the breadth of the camp, the Hunter dropped down from his horse and allowed four of the Wolde to seat him before a campfire.

  His treatment was roughshod, his meal a paltry sum of water and half-rotten apples. His chains rubbed raw against his wrists and neck, while the night’s chill settled upon him. Wolde warriors stalked behind him, nicking him with their knives, marking him as though he were a tree and they the wolves scratching their territory upon him. They laughed and mocked and threatened him with death. But they will not kill me, he knew. Not yet.

  They want something.

  Bleeding from dozens of wounds, he lost himself in the lightless corridors of his mind. The Wolfwolde, discouraged to receive no reaction from their taunts, retired to their tents. An hour drifted by, maybe more. It was then that Wrail came. Uninvited, the little man emerged from the nighttime mist and settled across from him, chomping on an apple and sipping mead from a wineskin.

  “I’ve kept my end of the bargain,” said Wrail after a long silence. “Four days, and the girl is unharmed.”

  Content to meditate upon his pain, he gazed across the campfire with nothingness in his eyes.

  “You care for her, no?” Wrail continued. “I understand. I’ve loved and lost before. Tis a hard world that punishes such beauty while heaping rewards upon men like me.”

  He closed his eyes, wishing the darkness would dull the edge of Wrail’s voice.

  “I know, I know,” said Wrail. “You despise me, and rightfully so. You wish you could rip yourself from your chains, cut every last one of us down, and whisk the Yrul lady into the night. And yet…both of us know it would solve nothing. The Master has already left Romaldar. Anything that happens now is meaningless.”

  His eyelids opened. His gaze, no longer blurry, centered upon Wrail like a sunbeam.

  “Oh yes.” Wrail smiled. “You mean to say you didn’t know? Your prey is long gone from here. Accept it. There’s no hope for your revenge.”

  He felt his face turn red, his knuckles whitening. He searched Wrail’s eyes for any trace of emotion, any sense of truth, but found only shadows, only lightless coals, empty and dead.

  Pleased to prove disheartening, Wrail tossed his apple into the campfire, birthing a cloud of grey ash and cinders. “Hunter…” The starlight failed to illuminate Wrail’s eyes, “there’re many things you should know, things your hermit’s life has blinded you to. We knew you might survive Thresher. You might even say we hoped for it. Because you’re alive when all others would’ve fallen, we know what you are now. You’re one of the old people. You’ve the blood of the Archithrope, the midnight folk, pulsing in your veins. Should the Master try and fail to claim the others of your kin, you will fall into our service, his service. Imagine it; the predator a slave to his prey. Were I you, I’d pray it never comes to pass. I’d pray for death.”

  For Wrail to say the name, Archithrope, throttled him to his core. They had been a wicked people, the Archithrope, usurpers of everything, destroyers of whole civilizations.

  “Lies,” he mumbled. “You will take me to Archaeus and stretch me from the gallows. You will kill me for the Wolde to watch. We both know this is true.”

  Wrail shook his head, feigning sympathy. “No. I’m sorry, but it’s not so. You’ll wait in our keeping until Lykaios returns or the world comes to an end. It’s the truth. In time you’ll come to believe it.”

  “More lies,” he growled.

  “As you like,” said Wrail.

  “Even if it is so,” he said as he stared into the starry sky above Wrail. “I will take my life long before I lift a finger to aid the Master.”

  Wrail stood and dusted the ash from his sleeves. There seemed the slightest glint of pity in his eyes, a glimmer of light quickly dying. He stalked around the fire and stood behind the Hunter, gliding through the grass more like a spirit than a man. “Do not bother trying, oh Hunter of the hills,” he leaned close. “Kill yourself a hundred times if you like. Like me, like all the others, he’ll raise you anew.


  “And then you’ll understand. You’ll see what’s soon to come.”

  Beneath the Remains

  Lording high above a vast, dark-watered lake, the city of Archaeus awaited him. Its gates were open, the ivory doors strung with tokens paying homage to the Master.

  Rings, crowns, and bones, thought the Hunter.

  Morbid tribute.

  Archaeus’ towers were tall and ominous, the domes and white-stoned walls dusted grey with layers of ash from Wolfwolde furnaces. The closer the Wolde led him, the more ominous Archaeus appeared.

  In the twilight hour, the cloud bottoms glowed with bloodlike reds and murky, unfathomable blues. The city was bathed in ethereal light, for though the season was only the beginning of autumn, Archaeus looked as though winter had already staked its claim. When they opened the gates before him, everything seemed moribund. The dwellings peered down at him like tombs, the windows were haunted, and the marble streets broken and empty.

  After unseating him from his horse and binding him with rusted chains, twenty Wolfwolde riders led him through the gate. They smothered him in their midst, hustling him along in a mass of wolf-skinned stallions and steel-shouldered men. Were Lykaios here, he thought, I might rip them down and kill them all.

  But he is not. My vengeance is lost.

  Were he a lesser man, he might have fallen to his knees and allowed the Wolfwolde to drag him to his death, but his dignity forbade it. Standing tall, he strode along Archaeus’ prime thoroughfare the same as a returning king, rolling his shoulders as though the heavy chains about his neck were but silken robes. Whenever one of the Wolde kicked him or hurled epithets at his back, he ignored them, cutting his way along the cobbled streets as though made of unbreakable stone.

  And then there was Nephenia.

  Try though he did to keep her in his sights, he lost her some two hundred steps inside the city. With Wrail, he supposed. He strained to catch glimpses of her, but the Wolfwolde were too thick and the street lanterns too dim. The worst is in store for her. Better she had died in the burning city.