Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  “A storm…” He felt his confidence wither. “Why didn’t I see it last night?”

  “Because you weren’t looking,” quipped Unctulu. The bloated beast pattered to his side, his vials jingling, his breath stinking. “Where oh where?” the field belched in his ear. “Where now, Pale One, is your braggart’s heart? Those clouds are no accident, no story made up for the Master’s pleasure. That’s a child of Archithrope at work.”

  “A child of what?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Unctulu licked his lips. “The witch does us a favor. She’s given up her hiding place. Go to the center of her storm. She’ll be there, as will the Sleeper’s prize.”

  “Her storm?”

  “Yes. Hers. A hundred men would die. But one might have a chance. Remember?”

  For the first time since awakening, he felt hesitant to do what he must. The maelstrom over Sallow threatened wind, snow, and such dire cold as to kill him should he dare stand beneath it. Dressed only in his hauberk, stiff boots, and black studded breeches, he felt unprepared to survive.

  “You should’ve told me earlier.” His jaw tensed.

  “You worry?” Unctulu clapped him on the shoulder. “The storm isn’t what’ll kill you. Take my blankets if you fear to freeze. Bundle yourself like a great ball of snow and roll all the way to Sallow’s heart. But if you shiver, it should only be for the witch, the girl with raven hair and skin whiter than Mother Moon. Make too much noise, and she’ll find you in the dark. She’ll see through your skin and roast your bones. Meet her, and die. Avoid her, and live.”

  “If I do this,” he growled, “the Master’s promises had best be true.”

  “Go, go.” Unctulu raised a fat finger toward Sallow. “Bring the prize to me, and we’ll retire to the south. The witch and her storm will leave, and the rest of our work will be easy, so easy.”

  After tearing his gaze from the sky and blowing a blast of hot breath into his gauntleted fists, he trudged back to the barely-burning campfire. Unctulu prattled on about the many dangers of Sallow, but he listened no more. I know more of Thillria’s wilderness than any of the Master’s maggots, he thought. Likely more than even the Master himself.

  “We should’ve invaded during summer,” he said.

  Unctulu grinned again. “We would’ve, Pale One. But we’d counted on you not dying in the Mooreye mud. What was it like? Killing so many before dying to just one?”

  It was beautiful, he wanted to say. Before what came after.

  Annoyed at Unctulu’s continued existence, he made a swift circle around the camp, slinging a trio of blankets over his shoulder, snatching a rack of meat from beside the fire, and looping a grey hood over his ebon-haired head. The sooner I leave, the better, he thought. I’d rather die in Sallow than suffer another hour with ‘Tulu.

  “Four days,” he grunted as he brushed past the fiend. “If I’m not back by then, assume I’m in the Nether where I belong.”

  “Four days.” Unctulu licked his lips.

  With a last glower at the fiend, a shallow breath of bitter air, and a clutch of his grey cloak to his armored shoulders, he made for Sallow. Horseless, he marched directly east, leaving the wind-whipped prairie for the sullen hills and shadowed forest beneath the storm. The grass ended and the scrub began, and he took his first thousand steps into Sallow’s outer brush, where every thorny bush and squat, many-taloned tree looked eager to prick him. There was no snow on the ground, not yet, but with every footfall he came closer.

  The next hours were a test of his patience.

  Sallow’s terrain, far more treacherous than Thillria’s grassland, did its best to impede him. He crossed frozen creeks, clambered over slate-shelved hills, and shouldered his way through warrens of twisted trees, whose roots slithered through the stony soil as though wanting to catch his ankles and drag him to his death. Worse yet was the wind blasting in his face, a tireless stream of frosted air sapping his warmth even through his hauberk and three layers of blankets. It won’t last forever, he told himself.

  Or perhaps it will.

  Without end, the wind tore at him. It invaded every cranny of his clothing. His swords froze in their scabbards, the same for the dagger in his boot. Tendrils of ice formed on the lank strands of his hair and dangled from his cowl like rows of white daggers. He remembered only one instance of being more miserable: the days of his death, spent in the company of Them.

  For all Sallow’s treachery, he survived his first day.

  Just before dusk, he camped in a rut between two forested hills, spending two tedious hours giving life to a roaring campfire. Snacking on frostbitten meat and half-frozen water, he hunched before the fire and counted his blessings, few though they seemed.

  Remember.

  Remember why you’re here.

  The earth will burn and the skies turn black, but in death I shall know peace.

  At dawn of the next day he rose from his rut as though awakening from a grave. His frosted blankets crackled upon his shoulders, while his joints groaned and popped. After tugging at his swords again, he cursed, Frozen. No matter. Not in the mood for killing today. In the mood for living.

  He broke camp without eating. The early cold felt so deadening, so draining to his senses that he desired neither food nor water. Setting out, he skulked between a dozen hills and crossed the threshold of a vast thicket of nameless, scab-barked trees. His only guide anymore was the storm, whose center roiled in the eastern sky, and whose outermost arms bludgeoned the heavens. Worse than a Fury storm, he ruminated. The Emperor would’ve been jealous.

  Grunting, he pushed his way into the maze of needlelike limbs. The scarecrow trees crowded him, their crooked arms tearing at his cloak. If any living creatures remained, he could not imagine it. The crows were absent, as were the wolves, the owls, and the winter hares. Every creek and streamlet was frozen solid as stone, and every source of food long withered. A graveyard, he reckoned it. The one place father never sent me.

  Utterly alone, he delved deeper into the woods. He crossed the frozen waters of Sallow’s largest swamp, whose poisonous effluence glowered at him beneath the ice. The hours passed him by, and he began to wonder if everything in the world were frozen, if by nightfall he would join the trees in deathly repose.

  Then came the snow.

  He encountered it at midday, moments after leaving the swamp behind. He mounted a treeless ridge and descended its opposite side, and there he paused to gaze upon Sallow’s frozen heart. The earth beyond the ridge wore a shining white sheen, a blanket through which only the tallest trees and broadest boulders rose above. Shapeless drifts of snow filled the spaces between the tomblike hills, white upon white upon white. It looked more like a painting than reality. He took a few steps forward and sank immediately to the middle of his armored thighs, his black boots cutting into the pillowy powder like knives into a vat of sugar.

  The going was even slower from then on. The storm spat in his face, coughing so much snow down upon him that after an hour of trudging he looked much the same as the trees. White downy accumulated on his hood, his shoulders, and his arms. His feet felt wetter than sailors’ socks, while his steel gauntlets sizzled his flesh, the cold burning him. In such a landscape he could hardly believe there had ever been a sun or a season other than winter. I am the only living thing in the world, a blighted, black-cowled crow.

  Still he pressed forth, indomitable. In some ways, he felt as though he was pursued, not by Unctulu or the Wolde, but by a blacker presence, the shadow of a shadow in his mind. It’s Them, he began to believe. They see me. They know what I’m doing.

  They want me to succeed.

  In ways unknowable, he felt Them in his mind. They observed his every step, stretching their hands across the darkest part of his conscience. The closer he trudged to the storm’s heart, the more he felt as though ten thousand eyes lay upon him, willing me to continue.

  But it’s not possible. I’m awake. I’m alive. The cold’s playing games with my mind.
>
  The snow deepened, swallowing him up to his waist. Great feathery flakes drifted down from the sky, obscuring the hills. He knew the way nevertheless. They’re guiding me, he shuddered. Now Their agent as much as the Master’s, he felt himself drawn closer to the very heart of Sallow, to the very thing They want me to steal.

  Impossible.

  Dusk claimed the ravaged sky. If the sun had ever truly shined, its tattered remnants sulked to the horizon somewhere far behind him. His mind felt as weary as his body. His empty belly ached and his body, half-frozen, felt ready to shatter .

  One more hill, he swore to himself, not sure whether it was his thought or an idea placed in his head. No, not one. Two. Maybe three.

  He mounted three hills, and then three more. The night swallowed the day. In darkness, he staggered through a hundredth valley, propelling himself more with his arms than his snow-swallowed legs. He felt delirious, lurching through the void with a fading sense of what he was doing and where I’m meant to go. Even with darkness complete and the storm wailing in his ears, he continued.

  I’m being pulled.

  Guided.

  Driven.

  He might have died if not for luck. Sensing he had entered a clearing, he hauled his legs out of the powder and knelt inertly atop the snow. He looked the part of a penitent man, sagging on the earth and waiting to be struck down for his sins, but he no longer felt anything. His body was numb, his mind empty. He nearly pitched face-first into the snow, but fortune had another fate in mind for him. As he knelt, his body cooling, his palm came to rest on an object beside him. He knew at once what it was. A chimney. A house. I’m not dead.

  Hooking his hands like a pair of spades, he raked into the snow and pitched handful after handful of powder into the darkness. It was as he thought. The snow’s deepest here. I’m standing atop a house. After more digging, his fingertips struck the roof of the dwelling lying asleep just beneath him.

  I’ll live. One more night.

  Remembering his strength, he tore at the roof timbers as though they were matchsticks, hurling three of them into the night. He grasped a forth, but before he closed his fingers a portion of the roof gave way. He plunged into the hollow space below, an avalanche of limbs, snow, and splinters.

  After three dust-filled breaths, he lurched upright in the center of the long-abandoned house. There was no light, no sound beyond the faint whistle of wind through the hole in the roof. He sensed his fall had been broken by some manner of table, considering the slats of wood beneath his bruise-blackened knees. Wanting more than anything to remember what it felt like to be warm, he wandered along the dwelling’s walls, groping every surface, searching for the hearth I know exists. When he found it, he tore away an iron grate and pitched the wood from the broken roof therein. Tinder, he remembered. ‘Tulu gave me tinder.

  He awakened a fire and knelt before it as if in prayer. The flames grew, the warmth soaked into his body, and before long the hearth roared, illuminating the tiny house’s innards as though it were a palace and he its king.

  He slept that night, warm at last. The house’s door and windows were sealed beneath the snow, and the night too deep and dark to bother climbing back outside. Lounging before the fire, he dreamed of things that had never happened in his real life:

  A hero, he imagined himself. Not a warmonger. A husband and father. Not a cutthroat. No swords. Nothing but fields and ploughshares. How quaint. How improbable.

  And yet, I could’ve lived these lives. If not for who I am.

  He dreamed deeper. Taken with rare fantasy, he imagined himself a wife, who in his mind looked much like Mykla of Archaeus. He heard his children laughing in the grass beyond his door. He felt the rising sun thaw his tired bones. His thoughts were wondrous, if too far-fetched to last.

  The fire died down. Darkness fell on his sleeping mind.

  At the edge of his dreams, his imaginings perished. What once had been the fictional faces of loved ones burned away. He saw ghoulish visages in their places: black eyes, liquid shadows, and fingers meant for rending the souls from living men. It’s Them, he knew. They’re close now. He saw himself sleeping, the Ur stretching like spiderwebs over his body. Their gazes loomed like black-lighted lanterns. They did not laugh, not this time, but instead whispered into his ears:

  Pale One, Pale One, do now as we ask. Our Sleeper was right to wake you.

  Follow in his steps. Follow us in ours. Listen to the blackness of your heart.

  Do the deeds that have long waited to be done. When the Eye comes, your reward will be at hand.

  Do not falter, lest you sleep while ours remain.

  Do not fail, lest you forever burn.

  Dead Man Stalking

  Archmyr awoke at dawn full of fear and questions.

  What is the Eye?

  Who is the Witch-Girl?

  Why’d they come all the way to Mooreye to dig me up from death?

  A thousand breaths he dwelled in darkness, until at last he cleaved the thoughts from his mind. Hastily collecting his things, he rose in the pale circle of morning light gleaming through the ragged hole in the roof. His swords were loose in their scabbards, his armor unfrozen at the seams. He felt alive again, not as invincible as three evenings ago, but invigorated by Them to serve the Master’s will.

  After three sharp breaths, he climbed out of the cabin. He bounded atop a chair, clutched the roof’s rim, and pulled himself outside. The wind stung his nose before he could drop his cowl, and yet it felt not nearly as harsh as before. His blood felt colder, his skin thicker, his heart and mind ensorcelled against the storm.

  Impossible. He lowered his hood over his eyes. They’re helping me.

  He emerged to an eerie sight. Directly above, the storm roiled. In sickly shades of grey and white, the clouds looked eager to swallow all of Sallow. Not just Sallow, he thought. All the world.

  He trudged into the snow. The landscape was blindingly pale. He stood in a lifeless, snow-stuffed valley graven between three Sallow hills, and he wondered how deep the powder went, how many animals are buried beneath me. He might have dwelled upon the thought even longer, but after wading waist-deep into the snow he picked out a singular sight which gave him pause.

  Smoke.

  Someone’s alive here.

  A trail of grey smoke, narrow as a wisp of steam from a freshly-baked pie, drifted through the air some two hundred paces ahead. He spied it, a bird of prey, narrowing his gaze until all other things went out of focus. Smoke, he thought again. A house. There at the base of the farthest hill.

  The little cabin was packed in powder, surrounded on three sides up to its eaves. Its front was visible only because its inhabitants had shoveled a narrow path away from its door. He glanced to the sky, the storm’s heart black above him, and he allowed himself to smile.

  This is the place I am meant to find.

  He crouched in the powder like a hunting cut. Falling curtains of snow accumulated on his shoulders. Half-buried, he crawled closer to the little cabin, inching serpentine through the valley. It felt against his nature to skulk and creep rather than rush to the house and smash the door in. But if Unctulu was right...

  He crept ever nearer. With every step through the snow he felt his calmness increase, a fresh sense of invulnerability invading him. At fifty paces away, he hunkered down. Here I wait. Witch-girl, ‘Tulu says. We shall see.

  He expected to wait many hours. He imagined the day would die and the night would find him frozen stiff and dead. He settled in his hiding place, but no sooner did he suck in a hundred bitterly cold breaths than he saw what he hoped to see.

  The dwelling’s door creaked open.

  A girl stepped outside.

  To his eyes she hardly looked the part of a witch. Her hair was dark and her countenance pale. She wore only a ragged shirt and breeches, no shoes, no cloak, nothing. Her clothes were not nearly enough to protect her from the bitter, biting wind, not nearly sufficient to hide the fact that she was the pretties
t thing he had ever seen. Can’t fool me. He secreted a smile. Not Thillrian, this girl. She’s Grae.

  If the girl minded the cold, he could not tell. Expressionless, she slinked barefooted along the shoveled path, walking around the house and to the bottom of the hill behind it.

  He froze, stiller than death. Unseen, he watched the girl and wondered just what manner of creature she might be. A witch? A normal woman? Did ‘Tulu lie? Have I seen this woman before?

  What he did know was that she was beautiful. Her ebon locks flowed in the wind like fine silk, while her skin, flawless despite the cold, looked the color of cream, the same texture as the snow. He watched her, sensing something musical in her gait, something enchanting in the way she strolled through the white powder without fear.

  A witch indeed.

  Distracted, he stared at her instead of the house. He caught himself only after she meandered out of view, and he came to his senses as if he had been dreaming.

  The girl vanished up the hill. He blinked hard and snapped his gaze back to the house. There it sat, three-quarters buried save for its ramshackle door. Swift as a plunging dagger, he cut through the snow, arriving in moments at the door. A shovel lay on the ground, rusted and warped. His swords were frozen in their sheaths again, so he hoisted the shovel over his shoulder, ready to crush the skull of anyone inside. He swallowed a frozen breath, and in the next instant ripped the door open and strode across the threshold.

  The warmth inside enveloped him. A healthy fire crackled in the hearth, scattering scarlet luminescence about the house’s only room. He caught the scent of freshly-cooked rabbit, trailed by the delicate fragrance of a now absent woman. None of these things mattered. What matters now is that I’m not alone.

  A drowsy young man bolted upright in a blanket-shrouded bed. The youngling was neither quick nor powerfully built, and yet a fire lived in his eyes.

  “Who are you?” The youngling lifted a short, broad-bladed sword from beside the bed. “You…you didn’t hurt Ande, did you? I’ll kill you a hundred times if so.”