Netheril - Mortal Consequences Part 23

The cramped chamber looked like the inside of a wicker basket, dark and smoke-stained, though without fire. In the chilly dimness, Sunbright thought the hovel deserted. Then he noticed a white glow illuminated by leaks of light through brush, and feared the owner had died, it was so cold in here.

"M-Milady Brookdweller?"

"Eh?" the old elf woman cracked, startled from sleep. "Who is there? Ah, I see. Come in, come in."

Her dark clothes rustled as she edged to a tiny fire pit. Without flint or steel, she struck a fire in a handful of twigs. There was barely enough tinder to fill a pipe, yet it instantly warmed the hut.

Somehow, the shaman sensed, this ancient elven priestess drew more heat from wood than a human could draw. The warmth brought to life scents of exotic herbs.

"A human," croaked the priestess. "I don't see many of those. And a creature of our blood. Nice to have company. I am so old, I spend more time in the next world than this one. So 'tis well to commune with the young. Your names?"

Sunbright gave their names, added that the queen's chancellor, Tamechild, had told Sunbright of Brookdweller's wisdom.

"My grandchild. One of many," the elder rambled. "May I take your hand, my dear?"

Even sitting cross-legged, Sunbright ducked his head under the brush roof. He offered his hand, but found it was Knucklebones the priestess addressed. The small thief sat on her heels, her single eye s.h.i.+ning under a mop of tousled black curls-hair as wild and free as these elves'.

"Who are your people, dear?" The priestess spread Knucklebones's hand in both her own as if reading a book.

"I-I don't know," stammered the part-elf. "I was born, or will be born, in the city of Karsus. I was hurled into the gutter, grew up in the sewers, never knew my mother."

"Father."

"Eh?" Knucklebones was so startled she jerked back her hand.

Carefully, Brookdweller took it again, saying, "Your father was an Old One. Your mother a New One."

"My father was elven, and my mother human?" the thief breathed so fast Sunbright thought she'd pa.s.s out. "I-I always thought it the other way around. I don't know why...."

"Of the High Forest," Brookdweller continued. She closed her sunken eyes as she stroked the thief's hand. "Not a Moon Elf, not Illefarni, not of the forest . . . Eaerlanni, most ancient of the Shadow Folk ... A sad folk, beaten and blaming themselves, given to wandering ... But, but..."

Human and part-elf strained forward, barely breathing, as the priestess hissed,"... But also Moon Elf, also Illefarni! The signs are jumbled, many streams flowing to one river, and the river running backward. Blood creating blood, and flowing through time ... I-I-" She stopped as Knucklebones yanked her hand free. The small thief s.h.i.+vered and rubbed the limb.

Brookdweller opened her eyes slowly, fed twigs to the fire, though the first ones had barely burned.

"I understand, dear. Second sight is a frightening power. Many who possess it wish they did not, eh?"

The last was addressed to Sunbright, and he nodded. "Visions are a blessing, and a curse, my mother told me. It was years before I understood why."

The old woman nodded as if they discussed the weather. Straightening her back, she asked, "And what do you seek, northman?"

"An elf. A-a friend. One Greenwillow, who was lost, killed ..."

Quickly, Sunbright told of Sysquemalyn's pocket h.e.l.l. How, as the floor crumbled, Greenwillow confessed her love, and shoved Sunbright to safety. How the barbarian had turned to find only a gaping chasm roiling with h.e.l.lfire. "Her death," he finished, "if she's truly dead, haunts me. And if dead, I fear her soul is trapped in those awful depths, unable to escape. I've searched for years, by magic and other means, but learned nothing. Can you-"

"She is dead." Seeing the p.r.o.nouncement jolt the human, the priestess explained, "We People of the Woods are charged with magic, as a fish is charged with water. Yet no elf could survive h.e.l.lfire. No living thing can. So the question is to Greenwillow's soul. And that is no question, for souls have no bounds. They come and go, or linger forever, as they wish. Even ghosts d.a.m.ned to walk the earth do so of their own will, though they deny it. Nothing can trap a soul; Greenwillow has indeed walked on."

"Where?" Sunbright blurted. "Do you know where?"

The priestess closed her eyes, pondering, but snapped them open when Knucklebones added, "Yes, please! Tell us where! I must know!"

"You?" Sunbright stared at his small lover. "Why should you-"

"Because I'm tired of hearing about Greenwillow!" she blurted. Sudden tears spilled down the thief's cheek from one good eye. Knucklebones wiped them frantically, fearing to look weak. "I'm tired of you talking of her! I'm tired of living in her shadow! These Moon Elves are beautiful and slender and tall and graceful. Not short and homely and scarred and starved and one-eyed like me!

Compared to Greenwillow's memory, I'm nothing but a louse, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d half-breed pitched in the gutter to die because my own mother couldn't bear the sight of me! But even if I am only a sewer rat, I love you, Sunbright, and want you to myself. I can't compete with a n.o.ble half-G.o.ddess who's dead, so I can't even confront her!"

The small woman sobbed, covering her face. Stunned by her outburst, Sunbright touched her shoulder, but she shook him off. In the meantime, Brookdweller had closed her eyes to rock back and forth, crooning aimlessly like an idiot. Had the whole world gone mad? the shaman wondered.

"Knucklebones. Knuckle'." Sunbright struggled for words. "I love you. Please don't think otherwise. And I don't compare you to Greenwillow. She was sweet and lovely, true, but so are you.

You've a kind heart and gentle core that I admire so. I don't care about your origins. Mine are no better. And despite your hard life, you've kept your heart pure-Wait!"

He grabbed, but the thief slipped away like an eel, slithered out of the brush hut, and vanished down the trail. Fuddled as a hammer-struck cow, Sunbright clambered up, banged his head on brush and fetched up Harvester's pommel, almost tore the hut down.

At that moment, Brookdweller broke from her dream. "It clears! I see the links!" the old woman cried. "I know where Greenwillow's soul has gone!"

Far down the trail, sobbing for breath, blinded by tears, Knucklebones ran helter-skelter past fork after fork, not caring where she ended up. The part-elf stumbled far off the beaten trail, reached the end of a path, and kept going, bulling into rushes in a swamp. Dimly she perceived her feet splashed in brackish water, but she didn't care. If she drowned, her sorrows would end. For no matter how long she followed Sunbright, nor how deeply she loved with all her heart, he'd always compare her to the slender, beautiful Greenwillow, and Knucklebones couldn't live as his second-best love. And without Sunbright, with no links to the past and her future lost, she had nothing and had nowhere to go. Any place was as bad as the next, and death no worse than life.

And too, she felt so queer lately, her guts churning all the time, her emotions running hot and cold, as if she were two people fighting for control. She'd never felt this way, and couldn't explain it. And right now, she didn't care. Saw gra.s.s tore at her hands, cut her red cheeks, stabbed her clothing. The water to her knees slowed her. And her breath tore for crying. Soon, part of her mind knew, she'd collapse, and cold and the short winter night would claim her- Strangled, she jerked to a halt. A tree branch had snagged her throat, but it snapped shut like a mink trap and cut off her wind.

Suddenly Knucklebones didn't want to die.

Las.h.i.+ng out, her fists struck stone, not wood. Gasping for wind, she forced open her one eye, swollen from crying.

And beheld a monster.

Inches from her face leered a bald head of stone. No eyelids, no ears, no hair. Bulging blue eyes shot with red bored into her face. A gash of a mouth hissed like a volcano pit.

Knucklebones was hoicked from the swamp water. Her neck popped and creaked at the strain, her vision dimmed. Windmilling her legs only banged her toes on a stony body. Punching sc.r.a.ped skin like a rasp. Slapping her belt, the thief whipped up her dark elven knife, jabbed at the bulging eyes, the stony mouth and skin. The knife tip didn't even scratch the stone hide. A claw flicked the knife away.

The helpless thief writhed like a rat in a trap.

"You," hissed Sysquemalyn, "I can use."

"Where the in the nine h.e.l.ls can she be?"

Sunbright was disheveled, sweaty, and pale. He and Blessedseed had tracked Knucklebones's flight through the forest and into the swamp, and found where her footprints disappeared in churned mud and saw gra.s.s. Other prints, long and clawed, marked the spot. Elves had joined the search, and turned up her dark elven knife, but no other trace. Old Brookdweller closed her eyes and stated that the thief was vanished from the forest. Charging from the enchanted wood, Sunbright had run to his mother's hut in the valley, asked outriders on the prairie, and finally bolted to Drigor's forge. The old dwarf had seen everything.

"Mud churned by long feet with claws, eh? I'm afraid to name the culprit. It must be that monster that attacked us in the Iron Mountains."

"Monster!" Sunbright slapped his forehead. "By the Wild Fire, I'd forgotten that! But why does this fiend pursue me? And why take Knuck-Oh, no!"

"The monster punishes you by seizing your little lady. That's plain enough."

The dwarf fiddled with a five-pound hammer, flipping it end over end without realizing it. Others stood around helplessly: Monkberry, Magichunger the war chief, Forestvictory, a handful of other barbarians, the elven guide Blessedseed. With the sun directly behind the mountain, shadows gathered around the forge, the air was so chilly their breath steamed.

Drigor's forge lay below the wide streak of rust that named Sanguine Mountain. The dark soil was black volcanic ash mixed with red ore, folded like a rumpled blanket around the mountain's foot. Rich soil made gra.s.s grow head-high, and fed many stands of poplar trees that s.h.i.+vered in a breeze. To the east, a crazed dropoff overlooked rolling prairie. A bubbling cascade that spilled down the mountain had been deepened into a pool that would someday power a water mill. Drigor's workshop was logs and bark with a brush roof. The forge was made of dry-laid rocks. A flat slab served as anvil.

Drigor flipped his hammer while his two helpers, Agler and Erig, worried a lumpy hunk of iron with mauls. Life and death might teeter around, but dwarves kept working. Over their regular bangs, Drigor called, "It strikes me queer you don't know your enemy. It's got a powerful hatred of you."

"I don't know!" Sunbright's hands windmilled, plucked at his s.h.i.+rt and straps in his frenzy. "I'd remember if a giant, stone-hided monster tried to kill me, wouldn't I?"

"I'm not criticizing your memory, lad." The old dwarf said, flipped the hammer again, and Sunbright ripped it from his hand. "Oh, sorry. I just say, fathom its craving for revenge and you'll know how to combat it. So think."

"I've thought till my brain aches!" the shaman said. "Until it's caught fire! There's nothing-"

"Look!" hollered Magichunger.

Standing at the cracked dropoff, a half-bowshot away, the monster clasped Knucklebones in its claws. In the gathering gloom the fiend was black except for bulging blue eyes like lamps. Held by her throat, the exhausted thief hung as if dead. Yet a glimpse of Sunbright revitalized her. Gasping for air, she scratched and pulled with b.l.o.o.d.y fingernails at the monster's claws, solid as iron bars. People stared, hollered, and reached for weapons. Sunbright charged.

To attack with Knucklebones helpless was not smart, but the shaman warrior wasn't thinking.

Hauling Harvester over his shoulder with a shriek, he crossed the s.p.a.ce in seconds, slung the fearsome sword behind- -and crashed into an invisible wall.

He struck so violently that his neck snapped, his nose spurted blood, his jaw almost dislocated, and his knees folded. Harvester fell from numbed fingers onto red-black dirt. The shaman slumped to a heap holding his bruised face. But immediately he grabbed up his sword, and stuck out a hand to explore the s.h.i.+eld wall. Its bounds extended above his reach and far past the dropoff. He growled like a rabid dog, for the monster and its victim were only five feet away. Poor suffering Knucklebones watched him with fear-haunted eyes, pleading for rescue, but also begging he not die foolishly.

The flint monster chortled, a gurgling like lava bubbling, then spoke: "As with Candlemas, as with Polaris, so you, the easiest of all. There, at dawn." A claw pointed to the prairie. "I'll bury you in your ancestral land, and throw your poppet atop your corpse!"

Shaking Knucklebones like a doll in Sunbright's face, the fiend vanished.

With it went the magic wall, and Sunbright's hand touched only empty air. With a curse, the barbarian slung Harvester far back, then hurled it through the s.p.a.ce the monster had vacated. The glittering sword pinwheeled over the dropoff. Fists furled, Sunbright screamed rage at the sky, d.a.m.ned every G.o.d he knew for rendering him useless.

By and by, a hand like a bear paw clamped his shoulder. Sunbright slumped on his knees, a ball of misery and anger and helplessness. By the light of birch torches, he saw Drigor and many others gath- ered: dwarves returned from exploring, elves from the forest, barbarians with tools and weapons in hand.

Erig offered Harvester pommel-first. Slowly Sunbright climbed to his feet and took the sword, though it hung limp in his hands, point trailing in dirt, something he'd never done before.

"So you must fight the monster," drawled Drigor, as if proposing a horse race." 'Pears to me you need help."

Sunbright mopped his face. He was exhausted, wrung out mentally and physically, too weak to wrestle a kitten, and despondent. "Yes," he said quietly. "Dig my grave and carve a tombstone. 'Here lies Sunbright, who failed both the women he loved.' "

"Now, now," rasped the old dwarf. "It's not as bad as all that. We've talked, the elves and us, and we've got an idea. Show him, 'Seed."

Across Blessedseed's palms lay a strip of white metal as long as a man's arm, but no wider than a thumb. Sunbright couldn't imagine what it was.

Drigor took the strip reverently as a king's crown. "This is elven truesteel. Magic steel such as only elves make, such as I've seen only thrice in my many years. They fetched it from the forest. For you."

Dully, Sunbright croaked, "And what do I do with it?"

"Not you. Me and my helpers," the dwarf said. He stood only breast-high to the crowd, but was clearly in command. "With luck, and help from these pointy-eared blokes, we'll weld this strip to Harvester of Blood's edge. With our mumbling, and their enchantments, you'll gain a sword that'll cut anything-anything. A magic sword from a legend. A sword such as no dwarf or elf could ever create alone, but together...."

"Tarry a minute!" Magichunger called, then shouldered to the front of the crowd. A war axe big as a shovel hung in his belt, and his s.h.a.ggy head still sported the full beard and unshaved temples of town men. "Our tribe don't hold with magic. It's taboo." The gruff man hesitated.

"I'm sorry, Sunbright, but enchanting is disallowed. We'll help you fight the fiend. The lot of us ganging up will bring it down, same as killing a mammoth."

Drigor turned angry eyes on the war chief. Wiping his big nose, he rasped, "What flavor of fool do you be? He needs a king's sword! And never before have elves and dwarves collaborated to make one!

This monster killed three dwarves, and tied up the rest without hardly lifting a finger. It killed Lady Polaris, no less than one of the empire's archwizards. It blew the top off a mountain and started a volcano!"

"And killed Candlemas," Sunbright almost whispered. Only now did he recall the creature's boast.

Poor, fat Candlemas, who worked so hard at the wrong things, but saved Sunbright and Knucklebones when the empire fell. Magichunger, no great thinker, only shook his head stubbornly and grumbled, "I'll help any way I can. We all will, but anyone practicin' magic is cast out! It's tradition!"

Cursing, Drigor turned to Sunbright. "Well, which shall it be? Will you accept our magic, or not?

You don't stand a chance without it!"

Sunbright surveyed the crowd, saw his mother quietly urging him on. For she knew, as did he.

Sucking air, Sunbright announced in a strong voice, "Always I needs make the hard choice. Yet this one is easy. I need magic to rescue Knucklebones, yet magic-using would banish me. Thus I must choose between my love, and my people. Hear this. Twice my tribe banished me, so a third time can't hurt much. Yet in all my trials, Knucklebones stood steadfast by my side with narry a complaint. And so I choose: Love over loyalty!"

Frowning and grumbling, his tribesfolk filtered away, until the only one left was Sunbright's mother, with tears in her eyes. Sunbright extended Harvester of Blood to Drigor pommel-first. "Fire your forge," he said.

Chapter 20.

Dwarves and elves crowded around Drigor's workshop to witness a new event in the long, long histories of both races: the combination of elven and dwarven magic to fas.h.i.+on a sword fit for a hero.

Hammers big and small rang and pinged. Elves slipped from the darkness bearing magic herbs and potions. Drigor bellowed for more charcoal. Musical elven voices rose above dwarvish growling.

Forest folk related ancient tales of other swords, other heroes, other crises, their whispering like the rustle of poplars. Dwarves whooped when a spell took, howled when it failed. Arguments sailed back and forth, for both races were loathe to reveal their secrets and enchantments, yet heads of long black hair b.u.mped scruffy mops over the stone anvil.

Not far off, poised at the dropoff where Knucklebones had disappeared, outlined by winter stars and night sky, Sunbright sat with his legs crossed, only dimly aware of the hubbub. The lack of Harvester hanging at his back made him feel light, insubstantial, weak. The lack of Knucklebones by his side made him cold. His only support was his mother, for Monkberry sat nearby to watch over her son. Her quiet presence gave him strength.

But his heart was heavy. Sunbright had sat most of the night, trying to meditate, striving to summon shamanistic powers from the earth underneath, the sky above, and the other worlds beyond less obvious veils. He eschewed the traditional trappings of shamans: the spiral-carved stick, the circle of stones, the pyramids of crystals, and other gewgaws. Sunbright knew a shaman's greatest tool was his mind.

For hours the young shaman concentrated, especially on his ancestors, shamans all, who stretched through history to before there was a tribe called Rengarth. He vied to pull ancestors from the depths of time. Past Sevenhaunt, his father. Past Shortdawn, his grandfather. Past Waterfly, his great- grandmother. Past Crystalfair, mother of Waterfly. And other shamans such as brain-crazed Owldark and crusty old Deertree, many more, until in his half-dream Sunbright was crowded by shamans so thick he could smell fur and musk and sweat and hair.

They all possessed powers. Sevenhaunt could talk with the dead. Waterfly could fly the polar night.

Shortdawn could fas.h.i.+on walls with his mind: walls of ice, fog, light, or noises of beasts. Crystalfair could shapes.h.i.+ft to swim with seals or run with wolves. Deertree could wear horns of wisdom granted by Mother Reindeer.

May I have a power? asked Sunbright in his mind. Just a little. To save Knucklebones, whom I love. It seems a small thing to ask.

Any power would help. Sunbright prayed to his ancestors for the power of the Thunderbeast, that his skin might boil and curdle and harden, and his footfalls crash like thunder. Or the wind wings of Sky Pony. Or the ferocity of Red Tiger, or the quickness of Gray Wolf, or the mad fury of Blue Bear.

Even the roar of the Black Lion would aid him.

But his ancestors stood silent as mountains, cold as glaciers. They did not condemn, nor did they aid, but only seemed to wait with the eternal patience of the dead. Why? Did they disapprove of Sunbright's begging? Jealously horde their spells? Or resent his lack of concentration?