Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  “Where are you going?” she pleaded. “I am right here.”

  “I need to think,” he said. “If I am to betray Rellen, I must settle it inside me.”

  “Garrett—”

  “I need to think,” he said again. “I will return.”

  Before she could utter another word, he left her. He strode away as sudden as a breaking wave, shoulders set squarely for Lyrlech. The weather answered her misery. The wind savagely whipped her face and the sea sprinkled droplets like ice against her shoulders. Her heart slowed, her skin cooled, and the farther Garrett walked, the number she felt.

  What were you thinking? she scolded herself. Fool of a girl!

  She watched him go, unable to speak, unable to breathe. He trudged past the hut, shirt flailing against his lean, steely limbs, and then he was gone.

  Expressionless, she clambered down to the beach. Despair was her instinct, misery her most familiar state of mind, but these she knew she must defy. He will come back. He has to. He would not leave me to suffer the Ur alone.

  Would he?

  Garrett would return, she made herself believe, and the dark space between us cleared.

  It has to be.

  Ambling back toward his hut, she shut her tears out.

  The rest of her day was as quiet as any in her life. The skies over Shivershore went strangely inert, and neither sun nor storm seemed able to break through. With Garrett gone, she remained indoors. She built a crackling fire, warmed a bowl of soup, and made a nest for herself atop his fur-strewn bed. To pass the time, she perused a trio of Lyrlech leaflets, used a sliver of spent charcoal to draw pictures on their backs, and dwelt for hour after hour in the corridors of her imagination. It was a day easily spent, for somehow hope still lived within her.

  At dusk, Garrett returned.

  He opened the door, hesitating as the night’s breeze blew in behind him. Her heart fair leapt out of her chest when she saw him. Her feelings were poorly hidden.

  “Hello.” She sat up in bed.

  “Hello,” he answered.

  He crossed the threshold. Sweeping his cloak off his shoulders, he dropped down beside her on the bed. The shadows in his eyes were less than before. His tension seemed absent.

  “Did you do what you needed to do?” she asked.

  He laid his hand atop hers. His fingers felt like fire against her skin, igniting her.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Tell me.” Her eyes brightened.

  “I wandered the streets,” he told her. “I needed to clear my mind.”

  “And?”

  “I met many people. Most of them are fearful for what your weather has done. I talked with them, ate supper with them, but I admit my mind was elsewhere. My thoughts traveled to unexpected places.”

  Her stomach knotted. “Tell me everything,” she asked. “Please.”

  He squeezed her hand. A shock of warmth traveled the length of her body. She might have melted, were she not terrified.

  “I thought about what you asked me today,” he said. “You wanted to know if we were cowards.”

  “I remember.”

  “Maybe you were right. Here we sit, idle as rocks. We are afraid. We have defeated ourselves.”

  Her heart sank. This was not at all what she hoped he would say. “But you said…you said we were not cowards. You were so certain.”

  “I know. I feel different now.”

  “Did you think about anything else?” she begged to know. “Maybe something other than death? What about what you said this morning? What about you and me? That is what I care about.”

  “Yes...” His hold of her hand loosened. “I meant what I said. You are the one. You always have been. Rellen is gone. I can accept it.”

  “Then…?” Her heart soared.

  “But there is still the one thing. I cannot get past it. I think about what we want, and it feels less than moral. If we spend our last days tangled on the floor while the Ur come crawling in, we would be awful, selfish creatures. We would deserve our deaths.”

  “You would rather die sooner?”

  A shadow flashed through his eyes. “It is not as simple as that.”

  “You know what we would have to do,” she said. “We would have to go to Sallow. We would perish trying to smoke the wolves out of their hole or die trying to stop Grim. You said he was immortal. If ever I doubted it, you convinced me.”

  He fell frighteningly silent. Chin in hand, eyes blazing cold, he tore his gaze from her and stared at the window. “Yes. Our deaths are certain.” His tone was grim. “I have inflicted things on Grimwain no man could survive, but still he lives. Fire, steel, and venom…all of them he has survived. If it is as you say and your father is reanimated, they will slay us the moment they see us. Fighting is at best a symbolic thing. The Ur will have us one way or another. All of this, I admit.”

  I am a fool. I never should have asked the question.

  I just want him to love me.

  She opened her mouth to say it, but he rose from beside her. He walked to the window, and his shadow fell like twilight across her.

  “Talk,” she begged. “Do not let it end this way.”

  “I am going to Sallow,” he said. “And I am going alone.”

  Coldness came thereafter.

  Shuttering the windows and snuffing the hearth, he sank into his pile of blankets on the floor. She wanted to say a thousand things more, but her tongue went dry and words escaped her. Say it, she tormented herself. He is right there. Say it!

  Twilight turned to darkness. The wind battered the walls and the Selhaunt raged against the shore. He is right, she began to believe. I am a coward. To live a few weeks longer is meaningless. We should have died in Cornerstone.

  She slept none that night.

  She was too restless, her mind tortured. The wind wailed outside, shaking the shutters loose. She wondered whether Garrett laid awake the same as she, but she did not go to him. The screaming in her head drowned out all other sensations.

  If I stay here, will I die without love? she asked herself.

  Selfish child. The voice inside her snapped back. What use is love if you are too dead to enjoy it?

  None, she answered. But if I go to Sallow, will it make any difference?

  Why must it make a difference? The voice scolded her. It is the right thing to do.

  But we will die horrible deaths. Why live our last days in pain? Have we not suffered enough? What is the point?

  There is no point. Nor is there any in staying. Love cannot save you from the coming darkness. To linger is to die a slow, sleeping death. To go is to look your fate in the eyes.

  So it matters not what I do? Stay or go? Die at the tip of a sword or drown alone in darkness? Either is meaningless?

  It is not meaningless to the one you love...

  No, she knew. He cares. And thus…so should I.

  Yes.

  * * *

  The next morning, all was grey. The shutters, shattered by the night’s wind, creaked on their hinges. Father Sun’s weary light crept through the clouds and slunk through the wide-open windows. Even the Selhaunt was almost silent, its waves lapping against the shore much the same as on Cornerstone.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in white but clad in shadow, she waited for Garrett to rise. No sadness lived in her eyes anymore, no misery or self-pity. Her face was a mask of determination, and her gaze as hard as tempered steel.

  When Garrett stirred, she bounded to the floor, erecting herself above him as though she were a tower and he the ocean far below.

  “Ande.” His voice betrayed his lack of sleep. “About last night…”

  She knelt above him. Silencing him with a forefinger across his mouth, she gazed into his eyes. “We are going to Sallow,” she told him. “You and I, not just you. Take me to Daed’s.”

  He tried to stand. She set one hand on his shoulder and pushed him back to his bedroll. “Gather your things,” she said in a tone she did not
think herself capable of. “All of them. I will lead the way to Daed’s. We need his help if we are to go. He has food, clothes, and…swords.”

  “You do not have to do this,” he replied.

  “Yes, you are right. I could stay here and pine for after you are gone. I could beg you to my bed and weep my little heart out while waiting for you to break. Or I can do what is right. What do I care if Grim kills me? At the very least, I can make it harder for him.”

  He rose. This time she did not try to stop him.

  “You did not sleep,” he observed.

  “Neither did you,” she countered.

  “You stayed up all night thinking about this.”

  “Yes,” she said. “So?”

  “This is what you desire.”

  “It is.” She nodded. “You were right. I am going to Sallow. You are welcome to join me. I will go alone if I must.”

  “No. We go together.”

  Diary, From Shore to Shiver

  Shivershore, Late Spring

  I have you back, beloved diary. I did not know how much I missed you. You are dry and safe, more than I can say for anything in Lyrlech. Thank Daedelar. Bless him for keeping you whole. He filled our ink and dried out our old satchel. He gave us food, blankets, a tent, and water. He gave Garrett a black cuirass and a stolen sword. I almost promised to repay him, but he knows better. He knows where we are going. He knows we will not return.

  The night is young.

  I feel the need to write quickly.

  Tonight. Far from Daed’s tower. One eve’s walk from Lyrlech. Might as well be a thousand. I linger in the tent. No lamp. Writing with the Nightness. I hear Garrett outside, learning the subtleties of his newest sword. Just him and me now. Our moods are the same.

  Our plan is agreed on. Tomorrow we march for Sallow. If we reach the wretched wood and the Ur do not smoke us to ash, we attack the Wolde. Fools, most would call us. They are right. It does not matter.

  Daedelar did not join us. Wise of him. He would not have come even had we asked. He saw the truth. He knows no light exists at the end of our tunnel. All I gave him was a kiss, which I owed him for a promise he long ago fulfilled. Writing about him makes me sad. He deserves better than he will get. Goodbye, my salty friend. I will miss you.

  My quill feels light this eve. Might as well be made of air for all its quickness. Darkness settles outside the tent. Mother Moon looks like a lamplight on a graveyard. I feel my eyes glimmer with Nightness. One night from Lyrlech, and I sense the power crackling in my blood. I am surprised to feel this way. I thought Cornerstone had ruined me. I am stronger than ever.

  I do not know what to write. My usual eloquence is gone. The Nightness grows in strength, but my storm is absent. It is late spring, summer’s threshold. Every time the wind blows the tent flap open, I look for the Ur moon. I see nothing. Where did it go? If it had fallen, as the pamphlets said, we would know.

  The sky over Shivershore is cloudless and starry, and the air warm and humid. Why? Should not the storm be at its worst? Should not the ghosts of Thillria cry out from their graves in anticipation of the end? Strange that the world should be so quiet.

  Strange.

  I adore it.

  My fears are lesser now. The thought of death no longer terrifies me. If we should carve our way to Sallow’s heart and die gruesome deaths, I will not wail. Why be afraid? What happens will happen.

  I will not write much longer. No point in it. Besides, I am running out of pages. I had a foolish thought just now. If Garrett and I should survive, if we live to see the end of this, I would like to fill these last sheaves with the tale of our victory. What would that be like? What taste would success leave on my tongue when failure is all I know?

  I laugh aloud. I am a daydreamer. The summer solstice draws near, and here I am, writing instead of practicing my magicks.

  Grimwain and Father await.

  The night invigorates me.

  I must prepare.

  I hear the Ur whispering.

  The Grass South of Sallow

  Eight days from Lyrlech, Sallow came into focus.

  The last place we might ever go.

  Far from home.

  Far from Graehelm.

  From Gryphon.

  From Mormist.

  I would have liked to see mountains one last time.

  It is not to be.

  The shadowed wood was not nearly as desolate as Garrett remembered. It lurked at the northern boundary of a far and lush field, whose grasses swayed to the hymn of the evening breeze. The trees at forest’s edge pricked the sky with thousands of thorny fingers, but each limb was greener than any grass in Shivershore, and each leaf more alive than any surface on blighted Cornerstone.

  Even so, I like this place none, he thought as he and Andelusia approached.

  He halted some five-hundred steps from the first of Sallow’s twisted flora. He saw no fires scorching the lapis sky or Ur shadows belching between the trees. For the moment, all seemed quiet.

  “A hard land indeed.” He smirked. “To recover from your storm.”

  Andelusia sighed at him. “Home sweet home,” she quipped. “Looks different without all the snow.”

  Clad in black, Thillrian longsword swaying from his belt, he surveyed the forest’s edge. “I see no Wolde.” He nodded. “No Black Moon. No fires.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  He dropped his gear into the grass. “The wolves…we will see them soon enough. Tonight we get to live. The dark is coming. We camp right here.”

  He knelt into the grass, and for a few breaths the weight of the world lifted from his shoulders. I am tired. He unpacked the brown satchel of stakes, canvas, and tent-cloth. More than ever in my life. I have never been so tired.

  But Ande. She gets stronger every night.

  As he built the tent, he watched her. He saw her kick her sandals off and shrug her satchel from her shoulder and into the grass. He hammered in one stake, then another, and he was grateful for her sake, for the prairie grass she walked in was far softer than anything in weedy, rock-strewn Shivershore. He saw her wander to the cool, sparkling streamlet chortling nearby. She sat at its bank, dipping her toes in the water, and he envied her.

  Happier here. Somehow.

  “My last bath,” she called to him as she splashed in the shallows. “At least I will be clean for dear Grim.”

  Yes. At least.

  A bath. I should have one, too.

  At length, he finished his work. His tent stood strong against the breeze, not that Ande much uses it, and a supper of broth warmed over a tiny campfire. He looked to Sallow again, knowing in his heart no Wolde were coming, that none spied from the distant, dagger-like trees. No need to, he believed.

  They think they have already won.

  Without ceremony, he stripped off his black cuirass and stabbed his sword into the earth. He walked to the streamlet, surprising Ande when he knelt right beside her. He caught her secreting a smile away, though he pretended not to notice.

  “Grim, Grim, Grim.” He wrenched his boots off and rinsed his feet in the water. “Like a burr in my boot.”

  “Worse than that.” She splashed her face. “A burr in everyone’s boots.”

  “Infectious,” he agreed. “An illness without a cure. We never see him, but still he spreads. I know you hate him worse than I. Even so, I expected you to turn back before now.”

  She smiled a dangerous smile. “And why should I run? He should be more terrified of me than of you. With the things I know, I could probably kill twenty Wolde faster than you could kill one.”

  “No doubt.” He knew it was true.

  With a deep breath, he rested his palms atop the grass and exhaled. His tension left him all at once. For the first time since leaving Lyrlech, he felt at ease. Death will have to wait for another night, he made himself believe. We are alone here. The sky is open. I should savor this.

  And I will.

  Ordinarily, evenings such
as these were reserved for work and nothing else. There was supper to finish and Shivershore muck to be cleaned from boots and clothes. As Father Sun burned on the western horizon, he knew he should not relax.

  And yet he did.

  “Beautiful,” he said of the twilight.

  “Every time I think I might never see him again, there he goes.” Ande beamed at the falling sun. “Will tonight be the last time? Maybe tomorrow?”

  “I wonder the same.” He nodded. Ever since I was a child.

  “Most days I would rather it thunder and pour,” she admitted. “But sometimes the sun is what I need. Sometimes I crave the light more than the dark.”

  “But only sometimes,” he added. “The rest of the time, the clouds are more suitable. Better to war beneath. Better to suit our moods.”

  “I never knew you felt that way,” she said.

  “I never told anyone.”

  The way she looked at him melted some of the hardness in his heart. “Garrett.” she said his name. “When did you know? When did you feel you were different?”

  She means the old blood, he knew. She asks when did I know I was more powerful than other men.

  “I trained in Triaxe under Lord Ahnwyn. They used to make us fight.” He looked skyward. “Not practice fight or spar, but really, truly make war against our fellow soldiers. They put us in pits. I was twelve, maybe thirteen. I stood there with my sword, and I saw other men’s movements before they made them. I looked right into their eyes, in the darkness behind their thoughts, and I knew none of them could ever kill me. Or even hurt me. I was faster somehow. Ahnwyn knew it. He made me fight three, four, even six at a time. The more men he sent, the easier it was. After a few years, I knew. I just knew. It was nothing good, my power. It came from my father. The same darkness that drove him to fling himself from a mountain. It was in me. Only worse. I knew my power. I only wish I had known what to do with it.”

  He expected his admission would frighten her, but he saw only sympathy in her eyes.