Nether Kingdom by J Edward Neill

Author:J Edward Neill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

Part II

A Glimpse

You’re sure?” The campfire flames licked at the bottom of Saul’s beard. “This is what you want to do?”

So tired she thought she might topple, Andelusia closed her eyes. It was not the first time Saul had asked, nor will it be the last. Since fleeing Sallow five days ago, nearly all of her conversations with Garrett and Saul had been the same. There is a task needing doing, and none but me to do it, she had told them again and again. Grimwain’s men will sail to Cornerstone and recommit Father into servitude. From there they will return to the Undergrave, and at the black tower in the lake’s middle, they will utter the Ur hymnal.

If that happens, everything dies.

“Yes.” She reopened her eyes. “This is the only way. If you two will join me, I will not refuse you. If not, I understand.”

The looks in their eyes told her they had already made up their minds. They believe me. At last. With a sigh she dropped her chin into her palm and turned her attention to dinner.

“Do either of you remember how to sail?” She absently turned the smoking strip of rabbit on its stick.

“Poorly,” admitted Saul.

“There was the Furyon galley,” Garrett recalled with a quarter-smile. “But we know how that ended.”

“Splinters on the shore,” Saul ruefully remembered. “Oars and barrels and planks scattered like toothpicks in the water. A fine testament to our skill at sea.”

“But we survived,” she reminded them.

Saul smirked. “So we did.”

Tugging her dinner away from the fire, she took a tentative nibble. Eating hardly seemed important now, and this particular dish reminded her too much of Marid. “No choice then,” she said while chewing. “Grim’s men are already on their way. We will charter a ship in Lyrlech and race him to reach Father first. The world forgive us if we fail.”

Saul shook his head. “If we survive, my wife and child will never forgive me.”

She caught Saul’s gaze and held it. For an instant, the firelight shone pale as death in her eyes, and the wind whipped wildly at the flames. “Sorry to say it,” she said, “but if we die, you will have no wife and child.

“None of us will have anything.”

Saul fell silent. Wishing she had not said so harsh a thing, she lowered her head. I need sleep. I am not myself tonight. Her calves throbbed from another daylong hike through southern Sallow, and her thoughts were stretched paper-thin from hammering out her plan a thousand times in her head.

Bone-weary, she looked to the sky for comfort. The stars winked at her through the leafless trees. A crescent moon glowed in the north, white and smiling. Crunching on a last bit of rabbit haunch and sipping from Saul’s waterskin, she felt her eyelids plummet. The shadows…like pillows.

“Sorry.” She murmured. “Sleep needs me. Tomorrow we will talk more.”

Lying down before the fire, she plunged into a dreamless void. She forgot the world of the living, and for a time was at peace.

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