Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  No sleep tonight, he knew.

  Nor ever again.

  Hatework

  At dawn, the Pale Knight’s hut sat in silence. The sounds of the outer world had dwindled, the Wolde’s clanging drowned out by the long night. The hearth, stuffed full of Ur shadows only yestereve, existed in lifeless repose. Stacks of unburned kindling looked as dead and cold as piles of frostbitten bones.

  And bones are all we’ll be.

  Archmyr returned to life at the earliest of hours. A silver shaft of early sunshine defiled his perfect darkness. It gleamed into his dirty window, striking him where he hunkered at the table. He winced and peeled himself out of his chair, limbs slack as noodles and eyelids heavy as lead curtains. Grunting, he dressed in his usual black hauberk, grey pants, and steel-shod boots. Warlord, he scoffed at himself. I look like a highwayman. And that’s what I am. A stealer. Of everything.

  Once dressed, he breakfasted on two hunks of salted pork and a cup of flavorless Shivershore tea. He gulped his food down while glaring into nothingness. Today, with Their voices still ringing in his bones, he would rather not have awakened at all.

  He might have lingered likewise the entire morn, but his misery was interrupted. As he leaned back in his chair, sipping from the last of his tea, two heavy knocks thudded against his door. ‘Tulu. He grimaced. Or one of my captains.

  With more bad news.

  He hoisted himself to his feet and did his best to reassume the Pale Knight’s demeanor. He did not know it, but his appearance was as fearsome as ever. Black shocks of dagger-straight hair framed his colorless, beardless mien, while his mouth, hard as bleached bone, hinted at oceans of disdain. His raiment only added to his grimness. His hauberk, twin scabbards, and underlying garb were all the hue of midnight, further likening him to a ghost.

  “Who goes?” He opened the door.

  A hard, haunted glance into the dawnlit world, and the darkness in his eyes lessened. Standing on his stoop was Hanonn, among the most useful of his Wolfwolde soldiers.

  “You’re not the maggot.”

  “No, Sire,” Hanonn answered. “He’s still sleeping.”

  Hanonn, one of his many captains, looked much the same as always. No different than back in Roma. The stocky soldier was bundled in black wolfskins, the thickness of which made his barrel chest seem impossibly broad. With his braided beard, articulated armor, and a head as bald as a vulture’s egg, Hanonn cut an intimidating figure. Just a shame he’s so short. If he were bigger, his men would work faster.

  “What news?” he asked, leaning in the doorway.

  “Reporting, Sire,” replied Hannon. “Third Shift is finished, and First Shift descends in an hour. Progress is faster these last few days. The deeper we go, the sloppier the Thillrians’ work is. They caused only a few cave-ins deeper in, and blocked our way with soft-quarried stone from a hill a few thousand paces north. You’ll be pleased to know we brought up forty carts of rock in the last two nights. We’re clear three hours deep.”

  “Any casualties?”

  Hanonn nodded. “Aye. Five injured: two broken legs, a hand mangled, and a pair of lads sick with the ash. And then we’ve the dead: two men crushed by a collapse in grotto twenty-three. We recorded their names and buried them with the others.”

  Feigning concern, he raised an eyebrow. “Two is too many, I suppose. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Clear the rocks. Double Third Shift’s pay for the next seven days.”

  Hanonn winced at the final command. “Sire? Double pay? But our coffers—”

  “Will hold. Our Master doesn’t want for money.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  The conversation wearied him. Hanonn’s reports, sounding the same every day, were but reminders of how near he drew to fulfilling the Master’s purpose. With a yawn, he extricated himself from the doorway and gestured at Hanonn to follow him inside. Once the door was shut and the shadows thick once more, his mind began to wander.

  “Sire?” Hanonn stood in the center of the room. “Permission to ask a question.”

  “Just say it.”

  Hanonn furrowed his bare, sunburned brow. “Sire...many of the men…or should I say all of them...they’ve questions. As do I.”

  “Yes. I know. What of it?”

  “We wonder…” Hanonn’s gaze descended. “The Master brought us here with promises of glory. He delivered, for Thillria is fallen and its coffers are ours, but now…now we do nothing but dig, dig, dig. Our hands are raw, but not from battle. We’re serfs, not soldiers. We’re slaves in the dark. Every tunnel we open reveals a hundred more. The ‘Grave goes down forever, so we think.”

  “Yes. And straight to the treasure promised.” He glared. “The Master said as much. And so it must be true.”

  As though injured, Hanonn blinked. “Sire, I’d say nothing but for the things we see and hear.”

  I know where this is going, he thought. “Things?” he said. “What things?”

  “The deeper we go, the more we feel it. It’s like a yoke hanging on our necks. Something’s down there, Sire. Something’s wrong. There’s a reason they call it the Undergrave. It’s believed you and the Master’s other favorites know more than you’ve said. I know better than to think it aloud, but the others…”

  He gazed into the hearth. The Undergrave, he thought. Every bit the dreadful place Unctulu said it would be. Labyrinthine. Full of old death. Grottos alive with whispers. He did not blame the Wolfwolde for hating the place, for I hate it just the same.

  “We’re evil men, you know,” he said with grave deliberation. “We’ve worked wretched things on Thillria, and we dare question our luck when a few tiny ills befall us.”

  “But Sire, it’s war. And these ills aren’t small, not to us.”

  It matters none.” He grinned morbidly. “Consider, Captain Hanonn, our singular duty. We do as the Master commands, and he promises us reward. Trust me when I say we’re near the end, and that on the night the last spade falls we’ll forget all our worries. Meanwhile, we must persevere. Ghosts or no ghosts. Whispers or not. Nothing in this world will help us should we fail.”

  Hanonn, aware of nothing beyond the palest shadow of the Master’s plan, did not understand.

  “Sire? What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He summoned his deadliest tone. “That you’ll work until it’s done. You’ll ignore the things you catch in the corners of your eyes, and you’ll carve your way through the Thillrians’ obstacles until I tell you to stop. When it’s finished, when the Master arrives and marches to the bottom, the Undergrave’s treasure will be ours. Thillria’s wealth will pass to Roma, and you and your families will know what it’s like to be kings. If that’s not motivation enough for a few months’ labor, then perhaps you’re not the indomitable men Lykaios seems to think you are.”

  Hanonn fell silent. Archmyr understood the man’s mind. Like all the others, he’s afraid. No longer did the brash, boastful Wolfwolde reign in Sallow. The atmosphere was darker, and every man’s movement shadowed by the terrible fear of the Master’s retribution.

  Obedient, Hanonn backed against the door and lowered his gaze to the dark, fur-strewn floor. “I understand, Sire. Work faster, work harder, get richer. I’ll remind the men.”

  “Good.” He frowned. “See that you do.”

  * * *

  It was later, much later, when next he clambered up from the abyss at his mind’s bottom. Hanonn was long gone, and the hut quiet once more. His hearth popped with a low fire, spilling scarlet light into the rafters. A clouded afternoon reigned outside, but as his window was curtained and his door locked, he knew not whether the world still lived or the darkness of the Undergrave had spilled into the sky.

  I’m made for waging war, not for digging. I should be thankful. My time’s almost done.

  He might have brooded longer, had he the time. But dusk was already dimming his window, and another day waiting to die. He knew what lay ahead. Unctulu. And a new minion from Archaeus.

&nb
sp; Dutifully, he tossed a black brocade cloak over his shoulders and arose from his chair. After buckling his sword belt, he lingered before his hearth, gaze dangling low. His work felt too easy now, and the dull routines of the last weeks as familiar as the hard lines in his twice-born hands. He hated his idle position, hated himself for enduring it, and he wondered for the thousandth time where his spirit for war had vanished to.

  With a slow shake of his whiplike hair, he left the hut behind. Out the door he marched, falling like twilight across the Wolfwolde camp, which bristled beneath Undergrave Hill in a miasma of tents, spiked fences, and thirsty soldiers’ steel. Wending between a dozen mounds of shattered slate and skirting the husks of a hundred trees slain by the girl-witch’s winter, he wondered what the hollows beneath Undergrave Hill had looked like before their ruin. Nothing like this. Nothing lives here anymore. A graveyard, this place. Rocks and tombs.

  After another thousand steps, his deep thinking ended. He strode into the main of the Wolfwolde camp, and rather than let the soldiers see him as soft and subdued, he shaped his expression into the manner of the warlord he used to be. Dozens of men saw him, chained prisoners and loitering soldiers alike, and all of them fell silent as he passed. For at least one moment, he relished the effect his falling shadow had upon every man’s mood.

  Unctulu’s camp, obvious for its ugly, rot-planked wagons and malnourished horses, lay at the lowest point of the Wolfwolde camp. He glided toward it like a dagger through the smoke-saturated air, looking the part of passing apparition. The Wolde stopped in their tracks whenever they saw him, and the cold gazes he returned shot cut them like moonlight through the clouds.

  You should all thank me, he thought of their wickedness. My deeds will save your souls. Without me, the Ur would’ve had all of you screaming.

  All of you. Forever.

  He marched onward. The grey and lavender twilight swept across the sky, and the deepening shadows put him at ease. Quietly, he passed a hundred tents, stepped beyond the outer teeth of the camp’s defenses, and planted his boots into the mire at the edge of Unctulu’s camp.

  Awaiting him were ten of the fiend’s bodyguards, three treelike Yrul and seven swarthy-as-smoke Romaldarians. Each of them held a scarlet torchlight, and each was armed well enough for two warriors, bedecked with two swords and two hooked daggers apiece. He made to move through their wall of torches and into Unctulu’s tent, but the Yrul blocked his way.

  “Step aside,” he ordered. “I’m here to see the maggot.”

  “We know,” answered the tallest, his accent thick as mud. “He and his guests will receive you soon. He promises.”

  “How soon?” His eyes narrowed.

  “His lordship didn’t say. He has visitors tonight. He’s not to be disturbed until he’s ready.”

  In another time, another place, he would have planted daggers in the Yruls’ necks and swept straight into Unctulu’s tent.

  Tonight he had no stomach for it.

  “I’ll wait.” He gave them his back. “But not for long.”

  Dour, he returned to the edge of Unctulu’s loathsome camp. The ugly gazes of Unctulu’s bodyguards beat like hearth-fires on his back, but he ignored them. He stared into the clouded twilight sky, and as he folded his arms and allowed his thoughts to wander, his mind descended into its darkest place.

  Like going home.

  His eyelids drooped and his senses dimmed. After ten slow breaths, he imagined the horrific ways They might enter the world. He dreamed the earth as he thought it soon might become: a smoking wasteland, the world’s tortured terrain mutilated by a million ebon, bone-topped spires. He dreamt of oceans, their waters frozen, the sunless sky over the endless black ice torn apart by ghostly lightning that made no sound.

  He did not understand why his mind chose this moment to reveal such visions. He knew only that he was helpless against it, the same as when he slept. The visions conquered him so swiftly and completely he did not recognize dusk falling into darkness, nor did he sense Unctulu creeping up behind him until the fiend coughed up a bubble of phlegm.

  “Pale One, Pale One.” Unctulu startled him. “Come, come. Meet the Master’s apprentice.”

  His vision ended.

  He snapped back to reality, disoriented by how much time had passed. His skin was clammy, his forehead beaded with sweat. Only when he opened his eyes and saw the Wolfewolde campfires wounding the Sallow vale did he know he was still alive.

  “Pale One.” Unctulu’s hideous grin greeted him. “You’ve been wandering. Welcome back.”

  Three figures stood before him, three shapes silhouetted by torchlights. He first laid eyes upon Unctulu, bloated as ever, a bulbous tick with fat fingers busily wriggling.

  “I have guests.” The fiend drooled. “Just as promised.”

  He narrowed his eyes and glared at the figure to Unctulu’s left. The slender, angular man’s raiment was as grey as a sunless sky, his eyes so sheltered by the night he read no emotion therein. The apprentice, he assumed. The little man possessed an eerie, ageless polish, a countenance incapable of human expression. Even in the dark, Archmyr needed just two breaths to discern he was neither Romaldarian, nor Thillrian, nor Yrul.

  What did ‘Tulu call him? Archithropian?

  Grimly, he looked to Unctulu’s right, where stood a much larger, darker creature. He immediately thought of Thresher, for the semblance is stunning. Encased in a suit of armor whose plates were the color of coal and whose helm featured neither eyelets nor holes for breathing, the creature beside Unctulu loomed like a mountain. He heard no breath and saw no movement, and so presumed that whatever lived behind the armor was human no longer.

  “What’s he?” he asked. “Thresher, only bigger?”

  The slender, soulless apprentice placed his palm on the hulking knight’s armored shoulder. “You don’t remember the Master’s friend, Pale Knight? You’ve met him before.”

  He clenched his jaw, glaring down his nose at the much smaller man. “The apprentice.” He cocked his most sardonic smile. “What’s that, exactly? Apprentice of what?”

  The little man matched him smile for smile. “I’m the one they call Wrail.” His eyes sparkled like dying stars. “Like you, I’m our Master’s servant. You, Pale Knight, are his warlord, but I’m a subtler thing. I’m the keeper of the Pages Black. I’m the eye who sees everything.”

  His muscles tensed. His bones felt colder. He did not know why, but Wrail’s presence set him on edge. “You didn’t answer my question.” He looked to the armored hulk. “Who’s this?”

  Wrail traced a line, dragging his finger from the creature’s hard, graceless pauldron down to its rusted grey vambrace. “Myklokain.” Wrail pinged the armor with a flick. “Merciless as a living soldier, invincible now that he’s raised. Roma’s armies were his once, generations ago. No other sword but his tasted so much gristle and gore, none save perhaps your own. You should consider him an ally. He and the rest of the Sarcophages shall guard the Undergrave against any who try to stop us.”

  He remembered the name. The Master’s hated father. He recalled the warehouse in Lyrlech, the oily black tine sliding out of the Master’s neck. Though previously no more than a cloud of cadaverous dust, when the Master had touched Myklokain with the tine, his ghoulish body had regenerated. The same way ‘Tulu resurrected me, he mused. And yet I look nothing like this mountain of bones.

  “I think not,” he said to Wrail.

  “Pardon?” Wrail looked at him.

  “The Undergrave needs no more guards. I’ve a thousand men on permanent patrol, and another three thousand who spend their every hour with spades in hand, gutting the Undergrave for the Master. This is to say nothing of our outer defenses. We’ve felled nigh a forest to finish a double ring of stakes, and beyond that, five-hundred cavalry circle like ravens. The nearest two cities are under our lock and key, and every duke, knight, squire, and chamber-pot maiden caged like dogs at the northern end of this camp. Who is it you fear so greatly? Wha
t can this slow lunk of dead skin and iron do but dispirit my soldiers and make them dig slower out of fear?”

  Wrail pinged Myklokain’s armor again. The horror behind the plates shifted ever so slightly, seeming uncomfortable beneath the little man’s touch. “I’ll explain everything, Pale One,” Wrail said flatly. “If you’d walk with me from here to the Undergrave.”

  He gazed down upon the little man. “Why? I’ve no missive from the Master obligating me to you. Our defenses are perfect, and the path to the Undergrave bottom very nearly carved. If you’ve questions, ask ‘Tulu, whose nose has lurked over my shoulder ever since the beginning.”

  Wrail glanced at Unctulu, whose smarmy smile thinned. He then placed his palm on Myklokain’s breastplate, somehow commanding the armored ghoul to take two steps backward. “It’ll be just you and me, Pale Knight. Myklo and ‘Tulu will wait here. There’re be no interrogation, no judgment of your clear and evident mastery of the Wolde. There’re but a few things you and I might discuss, a few secrets evenly shared.”

  “A walk? No more?” he questioned. “And then I can retire for the eve?”

  “A walk. Nothing more,” agreed Wrail.

  He dreaded the idea of being alone with Wrail. He feared no physical danger, but rather the eerie sensation that the little man isn’t right. He felt the same cold curdling in his blood he endured whenever They came to mind.

  It mattered little. Wanting to show no weakness, he raised his chin high and forced his usual frown into a dark and menacing smirk. “So be it,” he conceded. “When shall we go?”

  Wrail’s eyes glimmered. “Now.”

  “Just as well.” He gazed into the night. “Follow me. Try not to fall too far behind.”

  Eyes alight with hate, he shot a last glance at Unctulu and Myklokain, and then started swiftly into the darkness. From the loathsome depression of Unctulu’s camp, the ways to reach Undergrave Hill were many. Gravel lanes crisscrossed the entire valley, stretching like knives from all sides of the encampment before converging at the underworld’s mouth.