Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  Nephenia looked at him one final time. “I don’t care. Keep one anyway. For me.”

  Diary, Winter’s Wait

  Winter. Sallow. Fourth month below Undergrave Hill

  I have neglected you, dear journal. I hope you are not angry for it. My ink froze in its well many weeks ago. I have only now thawed it and set to writing again. If I have been lulled to complacency, please forgive me. I should write more often. And I will.

  This is a strange hour. The weather’s weirdness reigns. My storm has taken a new and terrifying shape. The rain is gone, but winter rules in its place. Slow but ceaseless, night and day, the white powder falls like sugar from the sky. The hills beyond my hut are buried in glittering mounds of snow. The trees have gone still, their dry and naked limbs gleaming with icicles. All of Sallow mirrors my mood. Pale. Silent. Dead. It is beautiful. It is perfect.

  If the entire world looked likewise, I do not know if I would mind. I feel sluggish, unmovable to excitement or sadness, unwilling to ever leave. The powder is elbow-deep. I wade through it to reach the Undergrave, a chore I will admit I tire of. I still do it, of course. Thrice a day I slog through the snow and climb the hill, and thrice a day I find nothing. My only real worry anymore is that Grim will wait many years to assail this place, and by then I might be long asleep. Dead but dreaming.

  There is another reason I have decided to write again. Were it just me and myself I doubt I would ever again have picked up my quill. But something changed recently, something that when it happened slowed the snows for three entire days.

  Marid is here.

  Why he did it, I will never understand. He sneaked through Grim’s outer guards and marched through snowy Sallow to reach me. The poor boy. He arrived nearly a month ago, half-starved, his clothes matted with ice, smiling at me like a child who had just found his favorite toy. He told me he was able to find me simply by following the storm, which according to him hovers above my miserable little hut for a day in every direction.

  Marid, sweet Marid. He dozes on the floor even as I write. My hut is a home for the two of us now, and I confess I rather like it. My loneliness had turned to boredom long before he came, but now whenever I find myself glooming he is here to uplift me. So buoyant, he is. What does he feel for me to have followed me so far? On the days when the snow is heaviest and we can hardly open the door, he finds ways to make passing time much more pleasant. We play games, he and I. Using twigs, needles, and pinecones we build little pretend armies and invent rules for imaginary wars. All our soldiers lose in the end, of course. The hearth consumes them at night, and we raise new armies the next day.

  Can you imagine it? We are like children, Marid and I, pretending our parents are away. We talk for hours on end, telling the truths of our childhoods some nights, concocting pleasant fantasies for the rest. I never knew how much he and I had in common. In Muthemnal it was only lovemaking, but now we are truly friends.

  He also hunts for me, my Marid. Every week he braves the snows and slips into the eastern hills, where Sallow’s Gluns are deep and dark. He brings rabbit, deer, and the occasional river fish for us to cook. I wonder what I would do without him. Would I waste away to nothing? Would I take flight among the shadows and steal food from the prairie folk? Would I die here, a withered old crone?

  I was stunned to see him when first he came, a fool with my mouth wide open. But now we are together again, far closer than ever we were in Muthem. Sometimes, just sometimes, I think I might kiss him. I am not so dead inside as to never want to be touched, and often he gives me that look.

  It tells so much, that glint in his eye. He loves me, desires me. I catch him murmuring my name in his sleep, and it is my secret shame that I keep him longing so. But it will be better in the end, I think, if we remain as friends. I have no ability to truly love, and he wants no part of the darker, unknowable part of me. No one does. No one.

  The wind howls. The snow tumbles faster from the sky. It is dawn now, but a peek out of my frostbitten window tells a much darker tale. There is little sun out there. This winter of mine is so voluminous as to consume my hut up to its eaves, wanting to entomb me. I sense the cold, the biting, gnawing, thieving drafts invading my hut through every seam. I wish I had another blanket for Marid. I rouse the fire, tuck him in up to his chin, and plant a kiss on his forehead, but it hardly seems enough. Why should he suffer while I sit here unaffected? Why should he try so hard only to be unrequited?

  And here it is again. Here is the feeling I dread most. With Marid asleep and the dawn dripping through the window like a grim, grey-lit twilight, I am alone. My mind races. Old memories thump like bricks of coal dropped against my heart. I have two cravings: the first to crawl under Marid’s blanket and snuggle with him until the world slows and all turns to ice…the other to fetch the Pages Black from its hiding place inside my satchel. I will do neither, of course. When the ink starts to thicken and all goes dead around me, I will push my way outside and clamber up to the Undergrave. The snow will stick to my knees and my hair will turn to a slick, sodden mess, but still I will go. I must. Grimwain is coming, and no amount of sadness will avail me.

  Grimwain. I know he is coming. I feel his presence in the world like a knife against my throat. His agents lurk in Sallow, darkening the earth just beyond my storm’s edge. His shadow stretches across leagues, invisible to everyone but me. If ever I doubted it, what Marid told me gave me all the truth I needed. When he and Saul arrived at Denawir many months ago, they found King Tycus had been slain. Poisoned by an ancient Romaldarian brew. No one knows who did it. They say his guards heard vials clinking, and then Tycus’s eyes turned black. Grim’s work. I am certain. With Tycus dead, Thillria is ripe for the plucking. I only wish I knew where Saul went. I fear the worst.

  I take a deep breath. My moment of melancholy passes. It happens this way, night after night, day after day. I force myself to remember my purpose in the world, and then all my other miseries fall away.

  This is my fate, my duty. I am the Undergrave’s guardian, its keeper, its watcher. In my veins the blood of the Archithrope pounds, and for possessing this dreadful power I owe the world a debt. I glance at Marid and I see just what it is I hope to protect. He is goodness. He is hope. He is one among the many who would not be snuffed out. I then think of the Undergrave, its teeth gaping, its secrets malevolent, and I remember that I am the only one standing between Grimwain and the loss of everything. For the Ur will come. They will build their shadow cities from here to the ends of the earth. They will. I have seen it.

  When Marid wakes, I will leave him for a while and plod through the snow to reach the top of Undergrave Hill. I doubt Grim will be there, not today, but on the odd chance he is, I am ready.

  The Pages Black has prepared me well.

  The Ghost of Thillria

  It was a bitter midwinter’s eve, the coldest of the season. The caws of agitated crows cut the twilight air, the sounds of their bickering enough to disturb a dead man’s sleep. Frigid breezes blasted across the prairie, prodding the dry grasses to dance like a sea of limbless puppets.

  A fine Thillrian night. Good to be home.

  Thus was winter in Thillria’s heart. It was here that the cold season struck hardest, and here that Archmyr Degiliac, Pale Knight of many men’s nightmares, made his evening camp.

  Most men would have been miserable on such a night, but not Archmyr. Sitting in the grass beyond his tent, his cloak torn ragged by the wind, he let his gaze wander the twilight. He felt as contented as he had since awakening to his second life, and if he was so relaxed, it was because the hardest part is finished.

  “I understand now,” said his Wolde servant. The young Romaldarian soldier had been assigned to serve him before the march from Archaeus had begun, though I wish they’d spared me his company.

  “You understand what?” He glowered skyward.

  “Why…um…why the Master chose you, Ser Archmyr.”

  “He could’ve done it himself.” He clucked
his tongue. “These people were itching to be conquered.”

  “Maybe. But to do it so quickly. So…bloodlessly. We Wolves never expected it. Not from you, leastways.”

  “This was to be my father’s land,” he chuffed.

  “Pardon, ser?”

  “My father. Lord Degiliac. Why do you think I was exiled, boy? For buggering milkmaids? Fifteen years ago the Degiliacs ruled all of Shivershore, every damp, dirty rock, and every harbor.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No. You don’t.” He rolled his eyes. “I know this land, boy. From Sallow to Shiver to King Tycus’s grave, I’ve marched and ridden it a hundred times. The Pale Knight, they called me. I murdered so many men, they thought I was a ghost. And maybe they were right. Maybe I am.”

  The young soldier, not catching on to his morbid mood, persisted. “Why’d you kill them, ser? I mean…we know why you killed for the Furies, but why butcher your own countrymen?”

  “For father. What else?”

  “Lord Degiliac’s enemies?”

  “And many they were.” He blew out a frosted breath. “A few more killed, a little ugly luck, and it might’ve been my country your Master marched on. And then, my little pup, none of this would’ve gone as smoothly.”

  The boy shivered. “How’d you do it, ser? How so easy?”

  Because it’s all I’m good at, he wanted to say. “Thillria has long awaited the sword.” He smirked. “But until now, there’s been no reason to conquer it. Rocks and grass, cold water and rotten wine. Our women are ugly, our men weak, and always…always our winters are cruel.”

  “It’s like they knew you, ser. When they heard your name, they just knelt. Everyone, all at once.”

  He wanted to take credit for the falls of Denawir, Muthemnal, and Dray, but the lie never came. “Wasn’t me, boy. Wasn’t my name. They know whose banner we carry. This Master of yours, he’s been here before.”

  “True, ser. But I was there. At Muthem, they had a thousand spearmen waiting for a fight. But when Ser Hanonn raised the Pale banner and told them you were camped only an hour south, they surrendered. And again in Dray, ser. We told them what you ordered us to say. And they laid down their crossbows and climbed off the walls by the hundred.”

  After all this time, he considered, they’re still afraid of father. Fifteen years in his grave.

  Well and good.

  Again, the wind picked up. Black curtains of cold air washed over him. He swore he could see the grass withering, the stars shuddering as if in pain. “The Thillrian king is dead,” he murmured. “Their armies are captured, and every city under lock and key. If we wanted, we could kill every soul in the country and have their tombstones lined up by spring. It’d be easy, if that’s what your Master wanted.”

  The boy flinched, chilled to his bones. “Why do you call him our Master. He’s yours, too.”

  “No,” he rumbled.

  “But—”

  “No man’s my master. I’m not doing this for him, for Romaldar, or for the Wolde. It’s for me.”

  “You shouldn’t say it so loudly,” warned the lad.

  And why not? he wanted to say. Your Master already knows. Else he wouldn’t have dragged me out of death.

  “It doesn’t matter, he said. “My work’s done here. It’s only a matter of time before you or one of these others is asked to murder me in my sleep.”

  “Pardon, ser?”

  “And that’ll be just fine,” he ignored the question. “Sleep’s all I’m doing this for.”

  He stood and walked into the night. The young soldier stood at his tent, dumbfounded, because none of the Wolde know anything.

  They think we’re here for glory.

  But we’re here to put an end to everything.

  Black Winter’s Walk

  My first task is finished.

  Now they’ve something more in mind for me.

  At Sallow’s edge, under a grey twilight, Archmyr brooded. While sitting beside a roaring campfire, he flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders, and narrowed his gaze until nothing but the fire remained. Thillria, for many weeks conquered, floated to the farthest reach of his mind. My trouble tonight, he thought as he glowered, is that I’m not alone.

  Loathsome, the creature Unctulu burbled on the fire’s opposite side. After receiving a letter from the Master, Archmyr had ridden days across the empty prairie to meet him. He had hoped for a while of freedom before the end.

  But instead he gives me 'Tulu.

  He wished he could take his newly-given silver swords to Unctulu’s throat. A thousand ways, he dreamed of the corpulent fiend’s death, but it was the Master’s will that Unctulu remain.

  “A shame.” He grinned at his disgusting companion, whose chin dripped with icicles of spit, and whose skin was bleached from the cold. “The weather doesn’t seem to agree with you.”

  Unctulu, never one to suffer abuse without a smile, obliged him with a two-toothed grin. “We’ll see who laughs, Pale One,” the fiend cackled, “when the witch of Sallow splays you open and turns your insides to pudding.”

  Unbothered, he hunched lower beside the fire and chewed a strip of venison. Despite Unctulu, the evening was a fine sight, all the more since he was away from the Wolfwolde. The gloaming in the sky was greyer than an old man’s beard, the failing sun imprisoned beyond an ocean of colorless clouds. It was not unlike the dusk he had died beneath years ago.

  “I’ve put Thillria’s neck under the Master’s knife,” he murmured. “I’ve done as he asked without delay. Why now does he choose me for this second task, this thing which has nothing to do with war?”

  Grinning, Unctulu swiped the icicles from his flaccid chin. “Because, because, Pale One. You’ll do it best of all. There’re no others who need this as much as you. Why choose a rich man to chase the world’s wealth when a beggar…you…might go in his place?”

  Contemplative, he stroked his beardless cheek with the back of his hand. He knew what Unctulu meant. The deeds of my first life betray me, he thought. If I die again, my suffering will be greater than any other man’s. The Nether awaits me. I’ve more reason to do the Master’s work than another other.

  “I’m no thief,” He grimaced. “I know his reasons, but even so, a hundred of the Master’s men could do this thing.”

  “Oh, Pale one, foolish one,” Unctulu gurgled. “A single soul might do what a hundred cannot. One man might stalk the night and cut the moon from the sky without anyone ever seeing him. But a hundred…a hundred would be known, and a hundred would fail.”

  He rolled his eyes. “And what of the girl-witch? I’ve seen magic before. What makes her so fearsome?”

  Unctulu’s eyes darkened. “You’d best remember the Sleeper’s words. ‘Shadows and night, she is. Turner of bones to dust and hearts to empty, soulless urns.’ You’d best steal the prize while she’s away or sleeping. Trying to seize it by force might send you right back to the grave. And from the black fire, there’s no coming back.”

  That name again: Sleeper. He heard Unctulu use it whenever his meaning was dire, whenever the names Master or Lykaios failed to measure up to the seriousness of the moment. He did not know why, but he disliked that name. It insinuated many things to his cynical mind, and none of them good.

  “Sleeper,” he said it aloud, wanting the word off his tongue. “Why are you the only one who calls him that?”

  “Oh, there’re others,” dribbled Unctulu. “Seers and thaumaturgists. Dead men and demons.”

  “Riddles,” he spat.

  “Riddles you shouldn’t be concerned about.” Unctulu wagged a crooked finger over the fire. “You should think only of Sallow, only of the prize. Consume yourself with it. Worry for the rest after it’s done.”

  For a change, he did as Unctulu asked. He looked to the east, where the sunlight no longer reached, and where Sallow existed in all its miserable gloom. I should be afraid, the maggot says, he remembered the many times Unctulu had warned him. But I’m not.
Touching his black-gauntleted hands to the handles of his swords, he took pride in his fearlessness, that no fate beyond the torment of the afterlife troubled him. Beneath his obsidian hauberk, his heart beat as steadily as a bear’s, as rhythmically as a boatman’s drum. I am invincible tonight, no more mortal than the wind.

  “I’ll do it,” he said to Unctulu. “I’ll steal this thing. But not for the Master, and not for you. My second sleep will be a peaceful one. Else you and all your minions will suffer.”

  That night, his truest night of freedom since his resurrection, he slept his life’s finest sleep. Nothing haunted the corridors of his dreams, and no memories of Them tormented his conscience. He slumbered beneath the cloudy grey strata, and he was almost happy, almost at peace. Not even Unctulu, whose snores shook the earth and who shivered like a frozen slug beneath a mound of half-rotted blankets, could wake him from his slumber.

  At dawn of the next day, he awoke more refreshed than ever he remembered. His limbs felt as loose as a jackrabbit’s, his mind sharper than any sword. A crisp, cold wind washed over him, but still he felt invincible, his body capable of enduring anything.

  “Fewer smiles, fewer smiles,” Unctulu gurgled at him while struggling to relight the campfire. “Nothing to be happy about today.”

  “Quiet.” He waved his hand. “You hear something?”

  “Yes.” Unctulu grinned. “Look to Sallow.”

  He gazed eastward.

  His insides knotted. His heart beat black.

  “You like what you see?” asked Unctulu.

  He stood and glared into the eastern sky for what seemed a hundred heartbeats. There, churning in the heavens above Sallow, lived a storm unlike any he had seen. It was starkly white against the grey heavens, a pallid vortex dominating the world above the hills and crooked trees. The storm’s outermost arms spun almost imperceptibly, while its center blossomed with what looked like a mountain’s worth of snow.