Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  “Who’s there?” She stood.

  The door rattled on rusted hinges again, pounded from the other side by a heavy fist. Gathering her courage, she struck down the last embers of the hearth-fire with a puff of Nightness smoke and stood in the darkened room’s center.

  “Who goes?” Her shout rattled the walls.

  The wind outside howled. A man’s muffled voice boomed against the thick wooden door. If this is Grim’s emissary, she thought, he sent a fool.

  She held her position, waiting for the moment to strike. Outside, the day was not yet dead. A wan strip of dusklight, grey as cold iron, crept around the doorframe and knifed into the house. She saw the shadow of the figure outside blotting part of the light out.

  “I say again!” she called out. “Who goes?”

  The wind died down, but in the void there lived only silence. Crabbing her hand like a curled spider’s corpse, she summoned a deadly pathogen in her palm, the same Ur virulence she had used upon her arrival at Undergrave Hill. She was ready to kill, ready to die. Darting forward, she ripped the door open and cocked her shoulder to swat the life of whoever awaited her.

  The door swung open.

  Her grey moon eyes widened.

  Her hand fell to her side.

  The moment she saw the two men awaiting her, she closed her fingers and snuffed her poisonous spell. “Saul?” She stood dumbfounded in the doorway. “How are you here?”

  As sure as the snow blanketing the earth for a day in each direction, Saul of Elrain stood before her. He looked much the same as she remembered, only his beard was thicker and his cheeks tinged blue from the cold. Dressed in a mountain of wet, wind-lashed fur, he looked road-weary and gaunt, but very much alive.

  “Ande.” He pulled back his hood. “To think I worried. It’s so good to see you!”

  “How did you find me?” she blurted.

  Beneath his billowing beard, he showed the slightest grin. “Everyone in Thillria knows you’re here. Your storm is legend, your name a part of every rumor. It would’ve been hard not to find you.”

  Quaking, she sank into his arms. He felt like a bear, all fur and muscle. To hug him felt so sublime she thought she might never let go. “I thought…” she wept on his chest. “I thought you were never coming back. I worried that…the same ones who killed Tycus would kill you.”

  He held her shoulders and smiled down at her, though it was not the smile she hoped for. Hollow, shaded the same as twilight, his eyes betrayed his fear. “All will be explained in good time,” he told her. “For now I need you to hurry. Gather your things. We haven’t a moment to spare.”

  The way he said it made her shiver. After all the many months and a sudden surprise at her door, he looks full of terror.

  And then she glimpsed the second man’s face.

  She drew a sharp breath and felt her heart thump against her ribs. Though his countenance was partly hidden behind a cowl and an icicle-laden beard, she recognized the impossible serenity in his unfathomably blue eyes. Of all the creatures she expected at her door, he was the last.

  “Garrett,” she breathed, “am I deceived? How are you here?”

  Her head swam with a thousand remembered emotions. She tingled as though thawing before a roaring fire. Garrett pulled her to his chest and nestled her head beneath his chin, and wherever his hands touched her she felt her body begin to melt.

  “Ande,” he said, “I know there is much to say. You have questions, but Saul is right. Gather your things, only the important ones. All talk must wait until we steal you to safety.”

  Her eyes frosted with tears, she lifted her gaze to his. “This is too quick. Why must we go? What is the matter?”

  “She doesn’t know,” Saul said to Garrett. “Tell her. Be quick with it.”

  Garrett, bundled in black wolfskins and bearing an unfamiliar sword at his waist, took her gently by her narrow, shivering shoulders. He was fearsome, all steel and fur and corded muscle, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  “You have been here too long,” he said to her. “The storm has sheltered you. What you have not seen are the powers gathering around you. Grimwain is coming. He has a legion of black-hearted men marching hither beneath the banner of the wolf. His horde is but a half an hour at our backs, and he knows you are here.”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  She peered into the twilit wastes beyond her house. “But Marid...not back from hunting. He was supposed to be here hours ago.”

  “So he followed you.” Saul shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ande. We can’t wait.”

  Though glad beyond words to see Saul and Garrett, I will not stand for such talk. “He is my responsibility.” She glared. “I will never leave him behind.”

  “Ande, you don’t understand,” Saul tried.

  “Yes. I do.”

  She swept like the wind into the snows beyond her door. With a storm in her eyes, she stared at the flanks of Undergrave Hill, all snow and rocks and scarecrow trees. “Marid will be here presently. Count on it. And even if not, I am staying. This is what I have waited for.”

  Saul waded through the snow after her. His boots sunk deeper into the powder than her bare toes, leveling his gaze with hers. “Ande, please.” He reached for her hand, foiled when she crossed her arms. “There’re thousands coming. They know all about you. They mean to kill you and retake the Undergrave.”

  “How?”

  “The storm. Just look at it. They know, Ande. They’re ready for you.”

  “They are not.” Her eyes smoldered with shadows.

  “Ande…” Saul sagged. “I don’t doubt that with your powers you might slay many hundred. But then you’d fall, and Garrett and I beside you. Please, for our sakes and your own, gather your things. We’ll take to the woods south of here. Garrett will hide our tracks.”

  No, she thought. Never.

  She directed her dead stare westward, forgetting Saul and Garrett, forgetting even Marid. “Grimwain,” she rumbled. “He is all I care about. His army be damned.”

  “Grim is not with the army.” Garrett interjected calmly. “The Master, so the Wolde call him, is elsewhere.”

  Garrett’s words struck like a dagger. The truth hammered beneath her breast, a dismal drum. “Just an army?” she said. “No Grim? Are you certain? I was sure he would come.”

  Garrett cut through the snow and arrived at her side. “He has spent every moment of his existence planning for this,” he said, serious as stone. “He knows you wait for him. He has other plans, plans for Thillria, plans for your father. He is not so foolish as to risk a confrontation.”

  “Father?”

  “We will explain everything.” Garrett nodded southward. “You need only follow.”

  She might have given in, if only because it is Garrett who asks. But Marid was still on her thoughts, Marid whom I cannot abandon.

  “Go without me.” She closed her eyes. “I have to find my friend.”

  “Ande—” said Saul.

  “No. I will find Marid. You will go south. Tonight I will catch up to you. Grim’s army will never see me.”

  She looked to Saul, who rattled the icicles from his beard with a shake of his head. It is not his way to leave a friend behind, she knew. All the more reason he must understand.

  She next glanced at Garrett. If Saul were sunken with cold consternation, Garrett was the essence of sympathy. He knows I have decided. He knows I will not change my mind.

  “Let her go,” Garrett said to Saul. “She will find us.”

  “It’s not wise. Too much could go wrong.”

  “Too much has gone wrong already. Let her go.”

  She went to Garrett. No words broke her lips, nor did she do as she wished and embrace him. Placing her palm upon his chest, she smiled brighter than the sun had shined in many months, sharing a silent moment with him that only he and she were meant to understand.

  And then the moment ended.

  “Soon,” she
said. “I will see you both.”

  She stepped away and breathed the bitter winter air. Darkness thrummed through her body, while the wind coiled, lashing the snow in frenzied spirals around her legs. In the next breath, she became shadow and Nightness dust, taken to the clouds in search of Marid.

  Saul and Garrett fell away. Alone, she soared into the skies above Sallow, over whose tracts the night now reigned. The wind screamed through her Nightness form like knives through a curtain. But nothing hurts. In the shadows, there is no pain, no feeling at all.

  She felt calm, confident she would find Marid even before Saul and Garrett left the valley beneath Undergrave Hill. But it was not so. She tore through the clouds, seeing everything, and yet Marid moved nowhere in her sights.

  An hour she flew, spiriting high above the snow.

  But nothing.

  In utter darkness she searched, night’s wandering raven, whittling away three hours, then five. She searched the hunting grounds Marid had so often boasted of conquering. Time felt too swift, the stars at the storm’s edge falling like sands between her thoughts.

  But still nothing.

  Her Nightness gaze penetrated the darkness with ease, but the deeper into the void she flew, the more her heart sank. She soared over the earth like a hunting bird, perceiving every tree, every wisp of falling snow. She grieved when she found no fires, no signs of a camp recently-snuffed.

  The emptiness was complete.

  The hours felt like days, each moment an empty eon.

  It was then, far removed from her friends, she knew her search would fail no matter how deep into Sallow she looked.

  He is gone.

  I should never have let him go.

  The trauma of it struck her, a black arrow in her heart. If not for her promise to Garrett and Saul, she might have soared all the way to the eastern sea, where the endless black waters would have welcomed her.

  In a grove of trees long slain by her storm, she descended to the earth. No human inhabited this part of Sallow. Nor have they ever, she imagined. She stood in the realm between the storm’s edge and the black, starry sky. She heard no sounds and felt no wind. Atop a hill, she knelt in a ring of starlit trees and begged the night for forgiveness.

  I am sorry, Marid. She looked skyward, in which the storm’s pale edge spun against the night’s black. I tried to find you. I should have come after you sooner. Now I fear you wandered west instead of east. The wolves have you, just as you warned would happen. Or if not the wolves, the cold has claimed you.

  And you are dead.

  It was not until unknowably later she returned defeated to the skies over Undergrave Hill. By now the storm mirrored her heart even more than usual, and all traces of the happiness she had felt upon seeing Garrett were departed. Darkness boiled in the heavens and snow rushed to bury the world. She no longer knew the hour nor cared what it might be. Her heart was broken, for she believed Marid was slain, his body frozen somewhere in the wilderness.

  Her Nightness wings spread wide and thin, she soared over her hut, hoping beyond hope her young friend had returned, knowing without a doubt he had not.

  Worse things lay in store for her.

  With one glance into the valleys surrounding Undergrave Hill, she understood Saul and Garrett had spoken truer than she had wanted to believe. Though she knew them not by name, she saw the Wolfwolde horde darkening the earth, thousands upon thousands of wicked men milling in Sallow’s heart. Their hellish fires stretched across the snow like ruby knives. Their tents surrounded the base of Undergrave Hill, the men’s wolfish laugher echoing in the night. Her house, buried in snow only hours ago, was already occupied by a dozen swarthy soldiers, their shoulders draped in the same steel and black fur Garrett had worn.

  She tried to count them, to imagine the ways in which she could burn them away, but there are too many. Oh, to destroy them all, she dreamed. To melt them and turn the white snow black with ashes.

  No. I am not a killer. Not even now.

  The shame of seeing her cabin conquered was too much to bear. She despaired, wanting to shut her eyes and disbelieve the Wolde, but after soaring over their tents and spreading fires, she succumbed to the truth.

  Grimwain planned for this.

  How many years?

  How many soldiers?

  His minions, far more numerous than she could ever hope to defeat, stood at the Undergrave’s threshold. What they meant to do was obvious, plain as the black burning in her heart. They were after the pillar of the Ur, the black spire at the underworld’s bottom. She wondered whether the Wolde knew what Grimwain planned, whether he had convinced them to aid in unleashing the Ur or had crossed their palms with gold and filled their ears with so many lies that they care nothing for what he means to do.

  She dared a low pass over her house. She saw men in wolfskins with crossbows in their hands, the bolts black and iron-tipped. Iron for me, she knew. Pure enough to cut the Nightness. Cold enough to kill me.

  This is not over.

  An hour later, as the grey sun crept over the horizon, she found Saul and Garrett’s camp.

  Situated well south of the Wolfwolde thousands, she spied Saul’s tent in a warren of brambles and thorn-barked trees. Floating quietly as a falling feather, she touched down to the earth. In her left hand hung her satchel, in her right a quill and a vial of frozen ink, all of it stolen in the dark from her Wolfwolde-occupied cabin.

  Heartbroken and exhausted, she staggered toward the tiny fire beside which Saul and Garrett sat. If ever she felt lower than now, she could not remember the day.

  “Ande!” Saul stood.

  “I made it.” She breathed her life’s most miserable breath. “But Marid…

  “I lost him.”

  Diary, Lost

  Winter. Haunting Sallow

  What should I feel? I cannot say anymore. Tonight is my second night away from my little house, and every bit of me feels wrong. I failed my Marid. I never should have let him go, and now I am tortured by the thought that he is dead. Was it my storm that killed him? Was it the Wolfwolde, whom Saul tells me I should fear? It does not matter. His loss is my shame, my sadness, an accident of a moment’s lust and many months of friendship that might never have been.

  It is dark here. Saul and Garrett are asleep in their tents. The trees crowd me in, and the campfire is almost dead. This is a haunted place. The ghost is me. I could sit here on my fallen tree and write into oblivion. I could, but for tomorrow.

  Would that I could trade places with Marid. Him alive, me dead. But then, the moment I think it, guilt rises into my throat. Garrett is here, drowsing so close, and I find myself not wanting to die in his presence. I want to be comforted, sheltered, protected. I want him to hold me. Is it wrong? Am I wicked? Why must I think these things?

  What is worse than losing Marid? What could possibly be? One thing, I think. I fled from my guardianship two nights ago, and now I am too cowardly to defy Saul and go back to do battle. It is midnight here, and the storm’s crawling edge provides a black blanket any creature could hide beneath. I could skirt the shadows and wreak havoc in the enemy camp. I could kill a hundred, maybe twice that, and slink back to safety.

  Or could I? Maybe not. Garrett warned me. He said the Wolde is ready for me, that the moment I set foot upon the earth a hundred poisoned darts will hurtle my way. Whether he says it because it is true or because he wants me not to go, I am not sure. For now I will not risk it. I am too fragile to wage the war I dreamed of. I am not prepared for Grimwain. I never was. All he does is kill. Men, kings, warlocks. All dead beneath his sword. What am I to such a creature?

  So here I sit. The wind rustles across these crinkled pages, drying the ink with each gust. The storm is at our backs for now, weakening until it finds me again. In the midnight sky I spy Mother Moon’s light slanting through the blackened branches of a wintered tree. Her face is pale and pure, the very opposite of the other. I cannot help but gaze upon her. She tells me not to embrace my desp
air. She reminds me of the truth, that my shame and self-pity cannot save the world from the Ur or bring Marid back to life. My emotions will only destroy me, she says. I still have a duty. I still have time.

  I must find a way to stop Grimwain.

  If I seem cold to Marid’s loss, it is not so. It is only that I am distracted. Garrett and Saul told me many things today, giving me more than I ever would have known while languishing in my hut. I am wiser for this knowledge. I am far more fearful of Grimwain.

  Grimwain. You occupy my every thought. You are a voice laughing in the darkness. Who, or what, are you? What manner of name is yours that is not Romaldarian, nor Grae, nor Thillrian, nor any culture Saul has heard of? Garrett told me he tried so hard to kill you, yet no arrow would pierce you and no poison take to your damnable blood. I wonder these things and shiver.

  And there is more. Today, while escaping into southern Sallow, Garrett and I shared many hours’ conversation. He told me that while the main of Grim’s army means to dig at the Undergrave, another force is on the move. Garrett extracted this information from two members of the Wolfwolde, two who were so unlucky as to stray from their pack. He bound them to a tree and put his blade to their necks, and though at first they would not speak they changed their minds when he threatened to crush their knees with Saul’s battlestaff. The wolf-pups gave too much.

  They told Garrett that Grim means to find my father.

  Let me write that again.

  Father.

  Grim means to find him.

  Sift through any of the pages at the beginnings of this journal, and you will know what my father was. Dangerous? Yes. Ambitious? Trebly so. Mad with his power? Almost certainly. After I captured him, the Thillrians exiled him to the Cornerstone, a place so secret and forsaken that few outside of Shivershore have ever heard of it. But I know somewhat of this Cornerstone, this island of undeath. Saul knows of it too, for in his deepest of studies he discovered many tales. A sanctuary, it was named, but not for mankind. It is said to have been the last stronghold of the Ur before they were imprisoned. It is also said that because of the lingering Ur essence, no one dies there, nor ages, nor ever takes ill.