Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  Halfway to the stark, glass-sanded shore, the young sailor, whom she now knew as Bretaen, decided to speak.

  “Don’t say I n’er warned you,” he began, ignoring the menace of Garrett and Saul. “Tis hardly Grimwain you should worry for, but the White Isle itself. We could still turn back, if’n you grew wiser. Shiver’s Pride will take some time to push off without the wind.”

  She thought it odd Bretaen used Grimwain’s proper name. She returned his stare, her face as hard as any frozen rock of Cornerstone. “If you are afraid, you should not have come.”

  “One does not refuse one’s captain,” Bretaen snorted.

  “One should never have agreed to come here.” She glared. “If one is so afraid.”

  Bretaen chuffed, but dared no further remark. In less than a quarter hour, the rowers steered the dinghy across the grey shallows and up to Cornerstone’s miserable shore. The boat scraped to a halt upon the lifeless beach, and she was first to her feet, hopping like a hare over the side and onto land.

  Here at last.

  Her foot struck land, and it was a fortunate thing she had decided to wear her sandals. For here upon the stark Cornerstone shore, it was not sand that greeted her, but layers of ivory bone, the slivers and meal of uncountable, unknowable dead. Her sandals clattered atop the dry, bony grit, within which she glimpsed teeth, mandibles, phalanges, and a million shards of human bone.

  “What is this place?” she heard one of the sailors say.

  A bastion of the Ur, she wanted to tell them. What else?

  Garrett and Saul seemed not to care, not to notice. Perhaps I have lost my mind, she mused. Maybe this is sand beneath my sandals, and not a banquet of death. Wishing, she shut her eyes and tried to imagine the island as something other than what it was. A sunlit realm, she daydreamed. Pristine blue waters and white shoals. Trees and fauna from the books in Saul’s library.

  She reopened her eyes.

  Cornerstone was yet a graveyard.

  If opening her eyes to the White Island made her feel sick, much greater was her illness when Bretaen jumped off the dinghy and stopped beside her. A crate in his grasp, a crossbow nocked and slung over his shoulder, the unlikable Thillrian came to a halt a half step away. “So then, grey girl.” He shot her his familiar smirk. “Where to?”

  Defiant, she swiveled on her heels and gazed him coldly in his incurious eyes. “We head for those towers. Me and my husbands. You steer your little boat straight back to Daedelar. If you are lucky, Grimwain will see us slain by the time the sun goes down tonight, though I would not count on if I were you.”

  Bretaen snorted once at her and again at Garrett, who watched over her with dark eyes.

  “Oh no, lassie. Tis not so easy. Master Daed, you see, he wants me to march with you. He wants assurance that Grimwain’s dead. Much as it poisons our conscience to make land with you lot of suicidal fools, we’re here to help.”

  “This was not agreed to,” she said.

  “No matter,” he retorted. “We mean to follow you. Our cut of the plunder from Grimwain’s galley rests on our seeing the damnable bastard dead.”

  She disliked this new twist, disliked Daedelar for crafting it without telling her. Looking to Garrett, she searched his eyes for sympathy, but found nothing. “Did you know about this?” she asked. “Did Saul?”

  “We did not,” said Garrett.

  “Does it matter?” Saul leaned on his staff. “You said you’d be rid of Grim with a flick of your wrist. ‘One breath,’ you said. ‘And then we can all go home.’”

  I did say that, she remembered. And I meant it, too.

  Bretaen hoisted his crate atop his shoulder and walked between her and Garrett. “No sense in fretting now,” he said smugly. “Here we are, all damned together. You should be glad for it, else you’d die here all alone.”

  One by one, the remaining seamen vacated the dinghy. Each brought a crate, attesting to the unavoidable fact: Daed really does want them to follow us. While the others labored to tether the dinghy to a great, skull-like boulder, she gazed to Cornerstone’s heart. He is here, she thought. Already on the move.

  “Grim’s here,” she said to Saul.

  “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes.” I think.

  How long she stood and challenged Cornerstone with her watchful gaze, she did not know. When the sounds of the men unloading the dinghy faded and their voices dried up, she faced the sea again. All seven men were waiting for her, their faces pale against the Selhaunt gloom.

  “Lead us, Ande.” Saul played his battlestaff between his palms. “The isle’s bigger than we reckoned.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, wishing she knew where to start.

  “Think,” Saul urged. “Where would your father go? Surely nowhere on this dreadful plain, where there’s no food or water. He’d go inland, like as not toward those towers. But you know him better than we do, the same for Grim. What does your heart say?”

  That you are madmen for following me.

  Saul was right, she knew. If she was to find what she sought, instinct was her only recourse. She sucked in an inhalation of the cool, breezeless air and took a last glance into the clouded midmorning sky. And then, without a word, she took her first steps into the realm of her father’s exile.

  Ahead of everyone, she strode straight for the distant towers, directly toward the place she dreamed her father might go. The gargantuan towers seemed together a necropolis, deathly giants watching her from far across a lifeless graveyard. Beneath them, she felt the Nightness course through her body like ten too many swigs of wine. Her heart beat as slow and powerful as any drum. She felt empowered, and terrified.

  So it was that she led them the entire day, striding straight as an arrow toward the central behemoth tower.

  She wended through misty fields whose grounds reminded her of cemeteries. She navigated her way through groves of frozen boulders. And she plodded patiently across grassless meadows whose surfaces were covered in snowy ash. The color of Cornerstone never changed beneath her sandals. Everything seemed coated in a sheen of ice, every grim stone and stretch of bone-buried earth bleached whiter than salt. If it ever grew cold, none of the men suffered from it. They complained of nothing, and never once did she witness so much as a shiver.

  At twilight, after a long, wearying day, she looked behind her. She had crossed half the isle. The Selhaunt was lost, but she sensed she was little closer to her goal. No Father. No Grim. Maybe they both sank before they got here.

  I hope.

  Dusk descended. The skies, draped with ashen clouds, glowered over every surface, casting the sleeping isle in such eerie light that it seemed a great undusted coffin. The greyness of the day collapsed into shadow, and it was during this eerie hour when at last Bretaen spoke to her again. Dragging a sled upon which three crates of provender were tethered, he hailed her from the rear of the line.

  “Hoy. Grey girl,” he shouted. “Best we stop now, aye? Best to make camp ‘afore darkness. We’d rather not die tired.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks. The fool is right, she surmised. What lurks here after the sun abandons us, no one knows.

  “Until dawn then,” she replied. “And tomorrow we rise with the sun.”

  “Agreed,” said Bretaen, for once without sarcasm.

  “A fire…” She faced Saul and Garrett. “Use one of the crates. If anything hunts us, it will fear the flame.”

  Night descended.

  The blackness fell, a funerary pall atop the island. The campfire blazed like a tiny red star, alone in the void. Saul and Bretaen took first watch, and she sat before the fire, whose flames licked meekly at the darkness. Two of Daed’s men shouldered crossbows, bolts nocked and at the ready, while the other two kept wickedly sharp swords on their belts. If Grim dared to bring the fight to her, she was glad at least for the semblance of preparation.

  An hour passed, and the night’s meal cooked simmered atop the fire. All was
quiet, eerily so, for Bretaen and the mates of Shiver’s Pride had little to say. As the soup rose to boiling, she huddled beside Garrett. His brooding settled like dark stones within his eyes, and yet she could not help but want to be near him.

  “I have wondered,” she said so that only he could hear. “Is everything as it seems?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “I want to believe Grim is here.” She leaned ever so slightly into him. “But we did not see his ship. There are no tracks, no signs of fires closer to the towers. He is somewhere near, but my eyes see nothing.”

  To her surprise, Garrett wrapped his arm around her. “Wait until the others are asleep.” he said. “And then use your gifts. I remember your powers. Now is the time to use them. Take to the darkness. Take to the sky. Search the island from above.”

  He reads my mind, she thought.

  “So be it. At midnight.” She rested her head upon his shoulder, wishing she were alone with him. “Distract the others if they are still awake. No need for them to know what I can do.”

  His smile, visible only in the shadows, was all she needed.

  The dinner hour arrived. Yawning, one of Bretaen’s fellows set bowls of stew in her and Garrett’s laps. The broth steamed, smelling of herbs. With Garrett so near, her senses thawed and her hunger rose. She ladled spoonful after spoonful into her mouth, savoring the meal. The broth was not poorly made, being stuffed with leeks and dried greens from Daedelar’s stores. She cleaned her bowl and felt better for it afterward. Though Garrett, she imagined, is not so hungry. He ate nothing. He just stared at Cornerstone’s towers, whose shadows she felt even at night.

  She awoke much later.

  Her mouth felt dry, her Nightness vision clouded. Stirring from the bone powder, she tried to sit up.

  Garrett? she meant to say, but her lips failed to part, and her mouth made none of the words she wanted. She looked to Saul, who sat on the fire’s far side. Saul? she tried to call to him. Are you awake?

  But nothing.

  It happened so quickly. She was only partly aware of Bretaen and his men slinking behind her. While she lolled in half-consciousness, one of them locked his hands upon her wrist and shoulder. She felt Bretaen jerk her chin up and lift a dagger to her throat, and the only thought she managed was: where did he get the knife?

  She felt her wrists burning, then freezing. Her Nightness vision fled, replaced by the ordinary sight of an ordinary woman. In the heavy darkness, she heard shouts, and only after a dozen breaths did she realize:

  Irons. They put me in irons.

  With two iron manacles clapped around her wrists, she felt a sensation not unlike falling into a lake of frigid water. All the dreadful powers of the Pages Black fell away, replaced by a swift and stunning return to ordinary consciousness. Unable to move, and with many hands roughing her, she felt Bretaen hoist her to her feet.

  Poisoned. They poisoned me. Of all the ways…

  “Wolves! Release her!” Garrett’s voice swam amid her muddled thoughts. “Or die.”

  She saw Garrett, a shade looming before the fire. She heard the sound of Bretaen’s men lifting their crossbows and pulling the triggers. Her surprise came when no bolts streaked toward Garrett’s chest. Her hero flinched, but then he realized he was still alive.

  “Cut?” Bretaen cursed. She felt his dagger graze the soft flesh between her ribs. “You cut the damnable triggers? A clever move, Seaman Daed. But not enough!”

  What does he mean? Her thoughts felt like mud. Seaman Daed? But he isn’t even here.

  Her ears ringing, her vision blurred, she saw Garrett swim through the shadows. His sword flashed too brightly in her tortured gaze. She knew she should be afraid, but the poison in her blood drowned her. She wanted to care, but could not.

  She heard Garrett shout. She felt Bretaen’s dagger on her neck, a thin line of blood from her belly on the blade. She wanted to resist, to dash her elbow into his eye. She wanted to move, to breathe, to run. Everything felt impossible.

  “Another step, and the grey girl breathes her last,” Bretaen crowed.

  “No!” someone else shouted. “Stop this!”

  Someone died. Someone else hit her on the head. The world dulled, then sharpened, then blurred. She felt herself being dragged through the bones, the campfire receding in her eyes. The iron manacles burned her, the midnight clouds wheeled, and all the while Garrett fell away.

  Garrett! She mouthed his name. Garrett, please!

  “Ande!” she heard someone say.

  Who it was, she never knew.

  The Nether Stair

  At daybreak, the sun blazed in Andelusia’s eyes. The surprise of waking to something other than shadows made her briefly believe she had died in the night, that her spirit had risen to a place where clouds and darkness did not exist.

  No, she quickly discerned. I am still alive.

  She closed her eyes to the white fire in the sky and listened. Voices charged the air around her, brusque and busy, many tongues thick with an accent she could not place. She knew only that men were giving orders and weapons being sheathed.

  This is no afterlife.

  The memories of yestereve drifted into her thoughts. They felt the same as the tattered remnants of a far off dream, but vivid enough to steal her hope. The poison Bretaen’s men had slipped in her soup had worn off, but her limbs still felt heavy and languid, her heart thumping hard beneath her battered skin. If her body hurt deeper than the skin, and if she was slow to sit up and see just where it was she had slept, it is the Nightness’s absence affecting me.

  Her manacles were tight, too tight. The chain links between them were so short she could tug her wrists no farther apart than the width of her waist. The irons hurt with more than just pain. So snug to her flesh, they carved out a hollow inside her, a cavernous void where all her shadows and powers collapsed and were no more. Were she not a daughter of Archithrope, the sensation might be welcome. But I am. And this hurts.

  She opened her eyes again. Father Sun greeted her, smoldering on the horizon, glittering between two of Cornerstone’s behemoth towers. It was then she realized just how far Bretaen’s men had stolen her. Three gargantuan towers stood within a stone’s throw, their ice and ivory flanks vaulting from the dead earth like the bones of some ancient, world-devouring creatures. Sitting up, she squinted at them. If one of those things falls, she imagined, all of Thillria will feel it.

  After too long of staring, she forced her gaze away from the towers. Focus, she told herself. Where are you? What will you do? How will you survive?

  My bed…timber and thin downy. Better than sleeping on bones. I sit in the middle of a camp…a valley between the three towers. More men are here. Twenty at least. Armed and armored for battle. Bretaen is here, his fellows too. The rest are unfamiliar. Not Thillrian, these new men. Stouter, their eyes darker, their skin tanned by some other sun than Shivershore’s. Wolfskins shrouding their shoulders. Daggerlike teeth dangling from their necklaces. These are Grim’s men. These are soldiers of the Wolfwolde. Garrett and Saul were right.

  Garrett and Saul...

  A chasm opened in her belly. Garrett and Saul were dead, she believed, slain by the wolf-skinned men. She might have dropped her head into her hands and sobbed to the ends of time, if not for Bretaen, who chose this worst of moments to recognize she was awake.

  “If only, grey girl.” He knelt next to her, his narrow frame barely blocking the sunlight. “If only you’d listened and told Seaman Daed to turn around, this n’er would’ve happened. You’d be safe with your husbands, and I’d not be the dagger in your back.”

  She wanted to hate him, to rip off her manacles and use the Nightness to char his bones to ashes. His gaze speared her the same as the sunlight, and it was all she could do to turn her chin and pretend to ignore him.

  “T’would be easier if you weren’t so pretty,” he said. “I’m sorry it came to this. But it’s my lot. Resist the wolf-men and get strung up like meat, they said. Or stri
ke a bargain to stay alive. You’ll forgive me, I hope.”

  Forgive? She looked at him. Not gloating today. He is sincere. Afraid. Like a boy marked for the gallows.

  “What are the soldiers for?” she asked quietly. “You are Thillrian. They are not. Are they here for my father?”

  Bretaen smirked, though it was hardly the same loathsome look she remembered. “Nay. They’re for the Hunter and the Elrain man. Seems your husbands’ve earned my patron’s wrath. The wolf-men’s swords won’t be shiny much longer. They’ll be red when they get a bite of the Hunter.”

  Alive? She beamed inwardly. How? That Garrett and Saul might live was a small thing to cling to, a moment’s hope. She tried to be happy for it, but the feeling died like a wind-snuffed candle.

  “Twenty will not be enough.” She showed a slender, broken-hearted smile. “Not nearly.”

  Bretaen shook his head. “Aye lass, twenty’ll serve. Even if not, another twelve await at the shore. T’was clever of Seaman Daed to cut our crossbows’ triggers, but your Hunter won’t be so lucky again. He should’ve drank his poison. Would’ve been easier for everyone.”

  Two tears streaked from her eyes, while a shiver shocked her from head to toes. “You think this is funny.” She clenched her jaw. “A day will come when you regret this.”

  “Aye grey lass. Maybe so.” He stood and backed away. “But were I you, I’d save some of those tears. We’ve a little ways to take you, and you’ll not like where we’re going.”

  She watched him walk away. Her shoulders sank, and her hair fell in stark lashes across her eyes. She felt smaller than dust, less significant than a star lost in a wheeling midnight sky.

  Grim will have his way.

  The Ur will come.

  All of us will die.

  My failure.

  Mine.

  When eighteen of the Wolfwolde moved past her, she hardly noticed. They marched like men toward their own funerals, clad in dark wolfskins and black hauberks, grasping razor-tined spears, swords, and wicked daggers. She peered up long enough to see shadows of fear darkening their faces. Slay them all, Garrett, she mused. Add their bones to Cornerstone.