Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  As they drove him deeper into Archaeus, he studied each landmark and every tower, counting the number of Wolfwolde soldiers. In case I have to slaughter them.

  “Eyes straight ahead,” a scowling warrior snapped at him from atop an ugly horse. “No sense in looking for your sweetheart now.”

  Indeed.

  As darkness fell, the Wolde led him straight into the city’s heart. He knew where they were taking him. Archaeus’ fortress, the stronghold of Lykaios, the Master’s tower. Most men would have torn at their chains to escape such a fate, but not he.

  “Walk faster,” a soldier scolded him.

  “Or we’ll carry you in pieces,” added another.

  ‘Kill yourself a hundred times if you like,’ he remembered what Wrail had said. ‘Like me, like all the others, he’ll raise you anew.’

  Dusk became darkness, and the scarlet-bottomed clouds dwindled to blackness. He entered a courtyard, striding through iron gates into an ugly, gardenless wasteland pocked with ash-filled pits and hundreds of vacant tents. Recently abandoned, he knew at once. Wisps of smoke crawled upward from every pit, while here and there clouds of crows feasted upon the remains of several recently enjoyed suppers. Where the Wolfwolde host had gone, he saw no obvious sign. To war, he guessed. No telling with whom.

  Twenty paces from the fortress’s portcullis, his escort came to a halt. A screech of iron sounded from the blackness before him, and the portcullis’ iron teeth rose, opening before him as though to devour him whole. Wolf-maned men dropped down from their horses and prodded him with the pointed ends of their spears. Crowding around him like hungry curs, they herded him into the fortress, where only the frailest lantern-lights and guttering torches greeted him. He took a last glimpse of the sky behind him, and then was lost in a world of darkness.

  If the fortress of Archaeus had once been the home of Romaldarian kings and queens, he could not tell it now. The corridors were barren and black-walled, all traces of royalty removed. Grim silence pervaded, broken only by the clinking of his chains and the shuffling of his enemies’ footsteps. Worse yet, he tasted something charnel in the air, death’s unsubtle vapors creeping wormlike into his nostrils. The deeper the Wolde took him, the stronger the scent became. He imagined he might at any moment enter a new passage and rest his eyes upon stacks of bodies ten men high.

  After dozens of turns and descents down countless stairwells, he knew he had entered the fortress bowels. The Wolde looked uncomfortable. Slit-eyed and scowling, a dozen crowded him down a final stair and into an underground catacomb.

  It was an eerie place they brought him to. Torches blazed hungrily upon the walls, throwing shadows which had lives of their own. At the entrance to a cavernous hallway, the Wolde staggered to a stop behind him.

  “Foul place,” he heard one mutter.

  “Why here instead of the gallows?” growled another.

  The source of the ghoulish stench became clear to him. Coffins lay here, hundreds upon hundreds. Moldered and grey, the grave-boxes were stacked up and down the passage walls as though the fortress cellars were tombs for half of Romaldar’s dead. He wondered how old the coffins were, for many of their lids were warped, their sides scarred by unknowable centuries of rotting beneath the earth. The smell of ancient earth drifted through the air like dust, invading his nose with every breath.

  He caught glimpses of the Wolde, their eyes dim and beady, their stomachs churning, and his only comfort was that they hated this place as much as he.

  “Ought to put you in one.” One of his captors sneered at him. “Stack you with the rest of the dead.”

  “Aye,” crowed a stocky, swarthy fiend. “Easier that way. If Wrail’d let us, you’d be in box until the Master needed you.”

  He ignored the slurs. Bracing himself against the stench, he looked from coffin to coffin. Old bodies. Fresh ones, too, he thought. These are not Lykaios’ victims. These dead serve another purpose. The Wolde are ill at ease. They hate this place. Whatever their Master has planned, they know as much as I do.

  Nothing.

  “With any luck, your coffin’ll be the next we fill.” The closest of the Wolde pushed him forward.

  The Master’s men conquered their dread of the grave-boxes and ushered him into the hallway. He felt their torches hot on his neck as they prodded him past stacks of coffins. Infinite, the hallway seemed, until at last he reached the end. At a black, sooty stone wall, the Wolde unlocked a wooden door, cursed him a few final times, and shoved him into the blackness beyond.

  He understood what this final chamber was meant to be. My prison cell, the fortress’s most inescapable room. The only light therein, red and ethereal, oozed through the gap at the door’s bottom, emanating from a torch one of the Wolde had mounted in a sconce. The room was cold, bitterly so, enough that the chill of his chains burned against his skin.

  The Wolde shut him in and barred the door from the other side. The part of him that had any hope of escape shriveled. I should have fought them. He closed his eyes. Nephenia was doomed no matter what. I should have fought them atop the hill.

  And died the same as I have lived.

  “Hunter, poor Hunter,” a Wolde warrior chided through the door. “Your bones are all they’ll find. You’ll be lucky to last the night.”

  They left him. He heard their footsteps trailing away, and he knew they were hurrying to escape the coffin-lined hallway. Utterly alone, he hunkered in the darkness. He heard little sound, only the faint echo of water dripping upon distant stone. He sensed the dungeon chamber was huge, its walls at least twenty paces away on each side.

  Meant to imprison hundreds.

  Meant for me.

  His stomach growled. His lips were dry and cracked, his muscles screaming. Only now aware of his pain, he sat cross-legged on the floor. Nephenia. He imagined her smiling, the sun shining on her tresses. He hoped against hope Wrail would let her go, that the villain would see some quality in her that placed her above despoiling. It seemed a fragile hope, but he allowed it to sustain him. Without the thought of something beautiful in the world he would surely have raged against his bonds, crashed like thunder against his door, and broken himself against the cold, damp, black stone.

  An hour drifted past, then another. He knew his night was destined to be sleepless. After a time, the deprivation of most of his senses subdued him into vulnerability. Worse yet, as the night deepened, he became aware of something else within the dark, an unidentifiable presence lurking in his chamber. I am alone, but not. This is no normal dungeon. Someone else is here.

  No…not someone.

  Some…thing.

  The torch outside his door guttered and died. The last vestige of light abandoned him. He sensed the presence in the darkness grow stronger, a nameless, invisible horror lurking just beyond his ability to touch. He, the dauntless Hunter, felt cold and terrified. He shivered against an unnatural chill, snapping his gaze where there was nothing to see and no light to see it by. He felt his sanity slip, his unbreakable will begin to waver, and yet what he did not know was that his senses were not tricking him at all. The presence in his chamber was real.

  Whether or not he chose to believe it, he was of the Archithrope, the old blood. Here in his lowest state, I feel them.

  The Ur.

  * * *

  Perhaps at morning, perhaps beyond, he descended into miserable sleep. The unendurable presence let him be, and he sagged upon the floor. Whether he slept a single breath or an unknowable number of days, he neither knew nor cared. Darkness conquered him, and his thoughts dwindled to nothing.

  Later, much later, a knock rattled his door. He stirred slowly back to consciousness. The sounds beyond the door were as muted as voices in the rain. When the door opened, he half expected to see the coffins in the hallway were empty, their occupants waiting to drag him to his death.

  “Hunter,” said a voice, gruff as a goat. “Arise.”

  His legs feeling full of lead, he lurched to his feet. He rose to se
e three Wolfwolde warriors, armed and armored to the teeth. They advanced into his room. Their torchlights were hot and blisteringly bright, the light cutting into his eyes like embers from the sun. He dreamed of ripping the torches from their grasps and dashing the fires into their faces, but thought better of it when he saw Wrail glide between them and into the room.

  “Ah, Hunter. You slept well, I trust?” Wrail greeted him. The little man looked like a spirit, striding forth with a crackling, cinder-spitting torch in his grasp.

  “I have been here longer than one night.” He shielded his eyes.

  “Indeed. A full night, a full day,” answered Wrail. “The hours have been unkind to you. I can only imagine what someone like you…with the old blood…might see down here when the lights are gone.”

  His senses felt painfully slow in returning. Bothered by the slowness of his mind, he rolled his shoulders, ringing his chains against the floor. “Nephenia,” he said her name. “Swear she is well.”

  Wrail curled his lips into a grin and glanced to the door. A second trio of Wolde, previously hidden in the hallway outside, marched into view. To his utter surprise, they had Nephenia in tow. Her wrists were bound with black cloth and her eyes masked behind a blindfold, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.

  “As alive as ever,” said Wrail.

  He felt his heart jump within his chest. Disguising his emotion behind a wall of stoicism, he gazed like winter upon Wrail.

  “Release her. She is not a part of this.”

  Wrail smiled. “I’ve a better idea.”

  He watched as Wrail sidled around Nephenia, circling her like a hawk around its prey. Wrail’s eyes looked dead as he walked, as unfathomable as the dark spaces between the stars. “Leave us,” Wrail ordered the Wolde warriors. “Hurry back to the light.”

  The six warriors marched off. In ten breaths, he was alone with Wrail and Nephenia. He gazed upon Wrail, slender and unarmed, and he dreamed of wrapping his chains around the little man’s neck. It was an ugly thought, a poison in his mind. And his little death would not free us.

  He looked to Nephenia, who stood as still and silent as any of the idols upon Archaeus’ streets. She was dressed in peasant garb, her lavender dress discarded in favor of a sack-like chemise and skirt. Beautiful nonetheless, he realized. The light from Wrail’s torch drew shadows beneath her blindfold, but even so she seemed a reservoir of sunlight in the otherwise impenetrable void.

  “Release her,” he said again.

  “I think not,” Wrail countered. “We’ve dreamt a different fate for our dear Princess. You’ve such affection for her. I propose a different arrangement.”

  He gave no answer. Loathing to look at Wrail, he focused on Nephenia instead.

  “Come, Hunter. Follow us,” said Wrail. “I’ll show you what I offer.”

  Wrail snatched Nephenia’s wrist and led her away into the darkness. He warily fell in behind them. He had expected the fiend to march straight back into the coffin-lined hall, but Wrail instead strode deeper into the prison chamber, where the darkness stretched into oblivion.

  Until that moment, he had assumed his prison chamber was the lowest, deepest point of Archaeus. I was wrong. Trudging behind Wrail, he expected to encounter a wall or another door, but there is only nothingness. His room, far grander than he knew, was in fact a corridor stretching an unknowable length, tunneling far beneath Archaeus as though meant to reach the far side of Romaldar.

  He trod a hundred paces in pursuit of Wrail and Nephenia, then a thousand, then more. On all sides the lightless corridor continued, consuming everything beyond Wrail’s feeble fire.

  “This room never ends.” He glared at Wrail’s back.

  “Archaeus’ builders ended their work at your prison door.” Wrail glanced over his shoulder. “It’s a good thing you didn’t try to wander last night. We might never have found your bones.”

  “Tell me what this place is,” he demanded.

  “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  Hating the sound of Wrail’s voice, he kept the remainder of his thoughts to himself. As he walked, a growing fear encroached upon his mind. No walls here, no ceiling, no doors. No human made this place. A cavern, this is. An endless void.

  The floor he walked felt as smooth as polished obsidian, gleaming beneath Wrail’s torchlight. His chain made little sound as its end dragged between his feet, only the barest chime like silver pinging against perfectly-tuned crystal. The atmosphere of the void felt increasingly oppressive, hurting him to walk, to think, to draw any but the shallowest breath.

  “Getting closer, yes.” Wrail squeezed Nephenia’s wrist tightly enough to provoke a whimper. “Patience, Hunter. I know it hurts.”

  His feet felt heavier and heavier. The air’s thinness took its toll. Exhausted, he took every step listlessly, able to continue only because he feared what Wrail might do to Nephenia if he left the two of them alone.

  Then at last it came, a break in the emptiness. Wrail lifted his torch, illuminating a black wall at the tunnel’s terminus. “Here we are.” The little man grinned like a ghoul. “The bottom at last.”

  His eyes were bleary, but even through the haze he was able to see the massive wall at tunnel’s end. It stretched upward into eternity and sideways beyond his sights. Its surface was as smooth as glass, as reflective as any mirror. Five doorways were carved into it, each one a ravenous mouth hungry to devour Wrail’s light. He halted at ten paces, wondering which door Wrail would choose, for something wicked lies beyond each.

  Wrail clutched the back of Nephenia’s shirt and wrenched her upright. “Yes, dear Hunter, you and milady should be afraid. These are the Null Chambers, the crèches where the first Ur came into our world.”

  The Ur. His blood ran cold. He speaks of them as though they are real.

  “This is an old place,” said Wrail. “Older than any man, older than any civilization. So long as we’re down here, we do not age, nor will hunger slay us. The Ur made it so. Impressive, no?”

  He recoiled at the Ur being named. A memory, old and unwanted, sent a shiver up his spine. A cave, vast and deep. A tower. A warlock.

  “There are no such things as these creatures you name,” he grunted. “Just myths for you and your Master.”

  “You sound so certain,” said Wrail.

  Wrapping one serpentine arm around Nephenia’s waist, the fiend tugged her into the middle doorway. His torch smoldered in the narrow corridor beyond, the red like blood pumping in an artery.

  He pursued them. The way was narrow, the corridor twisting like a serpent’s innards. After a hundred or so steps he came to a dead end, where Wrail and Nephenia had already stopped. Here, he paused. This is wrong, he knew. Very wrong. The corridor ceased to exist against a blank, mirror-surfaced wall. Just beyond Nephenia, a circular pit rent the floor, a cavity plunging down into an unknowable place.

  By the light of Wrail’s torch, he approached. He had never felt such dread ever in his life. “Nothing is here,” he said.

  “Ah, but you’re mistaken.” Wrail peered over the pit’s edge. “This is exactly the place.”

  He should have known what was next to come. He sensed it an instant before it happened. Wrail was too quick. With one hand on the small of Nephenia’s back, Wrail shoved the Princess toward the pit. She teetered on the edge for a breath before plummeting into blackness. The floor swallowed her. He heard her scream, but then there was no sound, only the cold hammer of his heart against his ribs.

  “You killed her!” He glared at Wrail.

  “Perhaps,” said Wrail.

  Pulling his chain taut between his manacled, bruise-blackened wrists, he charged like a maddened bull. Wrail made him look foolish. The little man slid aside, swift as the wind, smooth as water. He grasped air where Wrail’s throat was supposed to be, and caught darkness instead of flesh. The obsidian floor was as slick as frosted marble. He skidded and tumbled over the pit’s edge, catching himself by his fingertips only at the last possible m
oment.

  Wrail arose from a catlike crouch. Smiling, toying with his torch, the little man sidled to the pit’s edge, where the Hunter clung to the smooth, slippery edge.

  “Did you think I was so slow?” Wrail leered. “Know this, little Hunter; I’m not of the Wolde. I lived on the field of battle when your great-grandfather was but a mote in his mother’s eye. I’ve killed many hundreds, more even than you.”

  “You…lie.” He felt his fingers slipping.

  “Were only it so.” Wrail clucked his tongue. “But with any luck, this shall be the last wicked thing I ever do. The Master has others to do the rest. With you gone, my work’s finished.”

  His grip gave way. He reached for Wrail’s leg with one white-fingered hand, but the little man waved the torch across his knuckles, searing his skin. “Let…me…up!” he roared.

  “You’ll never come up again,” said Wrail.

  Lowering the torch to the edge of the pit, Wrail burned his hands. He felt his skin blister and pop, his fingernails splitting. He wanted to cry out, but his last act of defiance was to squeeze his eyes shut and tighten his jaw so that no sound could escape. His fingers smoking, he fell.

  His eyes flickered open, and the last thing he witnessed was Wrail and his flame.

  The Null Chamber

  I should be dead.

  I am.

  But not.

  The Hunter collapsed into a realm of shadows. He struck his head and strayed far from consciousness, dreaming of distant places, of friends long-forgotten, and of voices in an otherworldly void. Even in his dream, he knew he would awaken. He wished his sleep would last forever, for only pain awaits.

  He awoke in darkness.

  His first sensation upon clawing his way back to consciousness was the throbbing ache in his skull, trailed by the feeling of fire in his hands. Then came a voice, and the dreary drumming of his pain gave way to the realization that Nephenia was still alive.