Mortal Consequences

Chapter 6

"Hogwash! He's lying!" The shout came from Knucklebones, to Sunbright's surprise. She whapped his elbow. "Go! Pound him! Knock him aside!"

The crowd mashed against pipes and shelves, creating a corridor for the two men. Without a clue why, Sunbright advanced, hands poised to grapple or brawl. Instantly he saw that Senon had been exposed at some trick, for the fat man's face changed from helpless fright to rage. Whirling from the door, he snatched at a boot top, and yanked up a triangular spike four inches long. Enough steel to pierce a heart through the ribs. Bellowing like a bull, the man charged.

Sunbright yanked his belt knife, thin and a foot long, and caught it tightly in his right hand. He wished he could unsheathe Harvester, but he had to stop the fat man's rush.

Hollering, Senon bunched an arm thick as a hog's leg to stab straight. His left he put on guard, but he counted on Sunbright quailing and falling back.

Sunbright didn't budge. Rather, the tundra-born fighter rotated both hands in circles to distract his foe. And when Senon closed, the barbarian attacked from an unexpected corner.

As Senon lunged to strike, Sunbright's left foot snapped up. Senon's fat knee smacked into Sunbright's sole, jolting him to a halt, but the fat man stabbed wildly, hoping to land a lucky blow.

Luck was no part of Sunbright's fighting. Skill and instinct drummed into him by training saved his life. As the deadly spike slashed by, he snagged the fat wrist in his free hand, locked his wrist, and twisted cruelly. With his arm crooked backward, Senon stumbled helplessly. Sunbright neatly slipped his blade into the pudgy elbow and severed the tendons. Blood erupted to spatter a half dozen folk squashed along the walls, who winced and yelled. Dragging Senon like an ox to slaughter by his trapped wrist, Sunbright inverted his own wrist, and bashed the stag horn pommel on the fat man's temple. Thin bone popped, Senon's eyes flew wide, then slammed shut. Sunbright kicked the falling body against the far wall. Senon's flopping head bashed the door frame. A fountain of blood soaked his clothes.

Amazed at the cool savagery, the crowd whispered and gasped. Knucklebones squirmed past them all, and rattled the far door's handle. It opened easily onto a wet cave smell. "Come on!" she called.

Sunbright sheathed his belt knife, and straightened his shirt. "He'll bleed to death!"

"Let him! He's a ferret!"

That word again. Rather than shove, Sunbright let thieves rush by. Finally, the impatient Knucklebones grabbed the barbarian's thick wrist. "Let's go!" she said.

They scurried into wet darkness that echoed like wide-open chambers. "What's a ferret?" Sunbright finally asked.

"A crawler. A squealer. A spy in the pay of the guards." Her panting voice led him on. "I saw the door wasn't locked because he was pulling it shut. You could see the muscles in his arm work, and the handle couldn't be glyphed, or his fingers would have been singed. He must have thought us stupid gulls!"

"Quick of you to spot that in a second." Sunbright's voice was warm with admiration.

Her voice floated back, "It's nothing." But he imagined she smiled.

"Where are we bound?" he asked. The dark made Sunbright's neck ache, for he feared bashing his skull.

"Wherever this leads. We've lost everyone else. They went up at the fork, but I suspect a mousetrap awaits there. South by west will get us out, I hope."

Sunbright had known they jogged alone. Now cold light glowed as Knucklebones striped her vest. Underfoot ran dirt and gravel and creases dappled with water that reflected silver. The passage opened overhead, and he heard bats squeak, a comforting sound because it promised an exit. Abruptly the trail slanted, and Sunbright had to hold Knucklebones's shoulder to keep from overrunning her. She trotted as confidently as a cat until her foot crunched something hollow.

"Whoa!"

"What is it?" he said. "That sounded like-"

He squinted at more light. Knucklebones stroked a round rock aglow, but it bore eye sockets, an underslung jaw, and yellow fangs. "Skull of an orc," she said.

"Orcs," he corrected. "Look."

What looked like yellow sand around them was actually bones. Knucklebones lobbed the luminous skull, and they saw that the boneyard extended farther than the glow could reach. Thousands, perhaps millions of bones littered the cavern.

"I don't… understand…" murmured the shaman.

"Sure you do," Knucklebones hissed. "Remember? In my time, the cities warred, and prophecies came true? The Rain of Skulls.

"An explosion hit Ioulaum's underside, and bones spilled out in the millions. The legends recalled Ioulaum was sheared from one of the Unholy Mounts, Redsnow or Bloody Hill, where an orcish army was wiped out. This is that cavern."

"Yes…" Sunbright squinted upward. "I keep forgetting the natural caves lie upside-down so we walk on ancient ceilings. But all this death. There should be-" He swallowed the word "ghosts" before it escaped. No sense in conjuring the spirits of thousands of slain orcs.

"Come. Quickly," she said. Even steadfast Knucklebones was spooked, and led him by the hand. They couldn't walk without stepping on bones, so they closed their ears to the crunching and grinding. They made for the far end of the cave.

A quarter-mile on, dawn light sparkled on cave walls. They reached a grate where the thief pronounced, "Wisht!" to pop the rivets. Rattling it aside, they crawled into a culvert and up to the street. Merchants called to their friends and neighbors, clucked to ponies, and lugged their wares to the marketplace.

Sunbright was bewildered by the abrupt transition from death to life, but the city-born Knucklebones was already towing him into the crowd, saying, "Come on."

"Where?"

"East side. Street of the Faithful Protector. Bly's. To have her scry what you've sought so long."

"It's no good, Cholena. It's foolish to fight the yak-men."

"Oh, so, Drigor? Ayaz died for nothing? And Ridon and Nodin, their deaths were meaningless? Best their ghosts haunt your nights until all turns black before your rheumy eyes."

"Berate if you will, woman. I only speak from three hundred years' experience. That counts for nothing, I suppose."

Deep in the Iron Mountains, Drigor and Cholena, his sometimes wife, worked at a stone bench littered with crude axe heads and blades. The weapons had been puddled in antique molds. By candlelight reflected from copper and brass holders, the dwarven artisans worked with craggy hands to etch the old designs deeper: entwined dragons, bold kings, noble steeds, and fierce sailing vessels. They polished or darkened the swirls and whorls, and brought a glittering luster to all. They argued as they talked, an argument years old.

"We must defend our homeland," Cholena chided. "The Sons of Baltar have inhabited these mountains for centuries. It's-"

"Aye, centuries," Drigor interrupted, "but not forever, not since the first dwarf sprang from a glacier by the breath of Igashum. I've lived here all my life, three centuries, but my father, Yasur, came from the Rampant Mountains, which tall men call Gods' Legion. If my father could leave his homeland-"

A scream cut him off. Not a scream of pain, as someone scalded by molten metal at the forges, but a scream of terror, pure fright. Drigor and Cholena grabbed a mattock and stabbing spear, clumped in tarry boots, and thundered down a wide tunnel toward the foundry.

Lights sputtered like sparks from a forge. Above the screams of the mortally wounded the dwarves heard a screech like a dragon's.

"Where is the bright-haired one? Where is my enemy? I smell his tracks! He must die! You will die for sheltering my foes!"

Drigor and Cholena burst into a scene from hell. The cavernous foundry, lit by red and yellow fires from iron slotted doors and smoldering heaps of charcoal, was crammed with a writhing mass of black tentacles. A dozen dwarves were snared in hundreds of slimy arms that grew before their bulging eyes. The slither and rustle of these thousand arms was deafening, like the crash of surf in a storm or the roar of an avalanche. Kicking dwarves hung ten, twenty, even thirty feet in the air. Tentacles coiled around them, sliding into their clothing, wrapping arms and legs, circling their necks, as if the plantlike assassin had a mind and a will.

Centermost in the room, in a hollow the roots avoided, a tall scarecrow of stone shook misshapen fists and screamed. "I'll destroy you all! I'll rip the flesh from your bones, then crack them and suck the marrow! I'll rend your children before your eyes unless you tell me where lies my enemy!"

Drigor went for roots, Cholena for the monster.

A dozen feet high, Cappi and Pullor hung upside down. They kicked and writhed, yanked at the vines around their necks with powerful, work-worn hands, but couldn't squeeze even a finger under the tendrils. Only the solid muscle of necks and chests kept them from being suffocated, and Drigor saw they couldn't hold their breath forever. Slinging his keen-edged mattock over his head, he scraped the blade within a hair's breadth of a stone wall, and sheared through a dozen dark roots. The devilish web sagged, and Cappi's boot thumped Drigor's shoulder. Savagely the old dwarf yanked his comrade down, towing a snarl of roots along.

Deft slashes of a worn knife freed Cappi from the thickest vines. The young dwarf sucked air like a bellows, and retched from a raw throat. Turning to the wall, Drigor leaped, chopped, tore magic vines, and tugged Pullor free. The dwarf's face was white, and Cappi had to bang on his chest to get him breathing. By then Drigor had waded deeper, hacking at the jungle growth toward Oredola trapped farther on. The stink was terrible, for the slimy vines reeked like something dead and rotten raked from a river bottom. Drigor gagged on the stench, spat, but kept cutting.

By reddish hell-light he saw scuttling movement and cursed freely. The black roots he'd sheared curled in the air. Not alive, but not dead, they clung again to the wall, and spawned new vines from bare rock. Cappi yelled as vines twisted around his boot, and he had to stomp them loose while dragging Pullor clear.

They'd never defeat this spell, Drigor could see, but he cleaved valiantly, and called, "Hang on, Oredola! I'm coming!"

All the time, the monster screeched madness. "Where is my enemy? I'll punish you all! I want the bright-blond barbarian! These caves will be your boneyard!"

Cholena didn't know what this flinty monster was-golem or crypt servant or wight or troll-but few creatures could stand a thrust of dwarven steel. Charging head on, stifling a war cry rather than warn the fiend, Cholena bunched her arms to stab straight and hard. The fiend turned from its ranting too late, and the hand-forged blade jarred its spine just above the cockeyed hips.

Yet the monster must have been true stone, for the hollow-ground blade only knocked loose a shale chip. Red blood flowed from a jot no bigger than a dwarf's hand. Cholena was shocked at the toughness of the hide, and how easily the blade had skipped off. Frantic, Cholena stamped to set her feet, slashed upward with her stabbing spear to strike again at the small wound. Only by prying it open could she hope to kill the fiend.

But the flint monster whirled with clawed hands, fire flickering in its blue, staring eyes. "You dare? You would harm me, who crawled alone from the depths of hell to gain vengeance? You would halt my quest?"

The last thing Cholena saw was twin tornadoes issue from the unmatched hands of the fiend. Then she was blinded by the hundred-mile-an-hour winds that erupted before her. Blistering, killing winds roared over the dwarf, tearing away her eyes, ripping loose her hair, then the scalp from her skull. Hissing zephyrs like a basket of knives stripped the unfortunate dwarf to shreds in seconds, until hair and flesh and bones and then chips of bone were scoured to splinters and blown in a gory trail across the floor of the foundry. The spear was flung away to clatter in a corner.

Drigor looked up at the first shrill of wind, and howled like the tornado himself as Cholena died. He'd dragged Oredola free of the death-dealing vines, was cutting his way to the next dwarves, so enwrapped he couldn't tell their identity. Whirling winds filled the cavern with noise and destruction. Backlash from the tornadoes whipped around the monster so magic vines were wrenched from the walls. The flint creature became a center of snapping, flailing tentacles that spattered into slimy fragments or else wrapped around their creator like seaweed around a shipwreck.

Drigor howled in outrage, and champed on his beringed mustache over Cholena's death. Yet even in grief the old dwarf analyzed the enemy, and saw that the monster had made a mistake.

The dark roots sprang from stone, and now they'd touched the monster's frame. On the stone-like skin, they took root and grew anew. Vines sprouted across the monster's back, on its bald head, on the backs of its knobby legs. Within minutes, the rampaging fiend was festooned with vines thick as hedgehog quills. It screamed and slashed at the onslaught of its own magic, gibbered as it raked the vines from its skin with obsidian claws.

Elsewhere the vines curled and writhed and thickened, but a large hole had been blown in the jungle growth, and several dwarves wriggled free. They hit the ground running, sprinting on stumpy legs past the weedy monster. Yet three still hung in vines, and kicked more feebly, or hung limp as rag dolls.

Drigor hacked at roots until even his famed strength began to fail. Freed dwarves and others came running to chop and flail. The vine-wrapped monster screeched, blathered nonsense, and sputtered like a rabid wildcat.

Finally, in an eye-smarting blaze, it scorched the air with a shifting spell and vanished. The only things remaining were a blackened patch of cave floor, the reek of charred vines, and a forest of slithering vines that fell still, then withered and died. By the time the dwarves had cut the last three dwarves free, the vines were dried stalks, no thicker than burned hay.

But the three victims were dead. Strangled, they lay in heaped stalks with bulging eyes in blue faces. Many dwarves, unused to showing emotion, broke down and wept at the loss to their tribe.

While someone stoked the coal forge, Drigor rested his mattock head on the ground and leaned on the shaft. Death coming to young ones made him feel uncommonly old. And the death of Cholena, who'd given him a son years ago, tore at his heart like iron fingers. Red firelight glistened on tears dripping from his pouchy face, like icicle melt from the crags of a mountain in spring.

Yet even his grief was interrupted, for one young dwarf blubbered, "This is the fault of those humans! The tall barbarian and the one-eyed part-elf! They brought death to our house!" Others agreed, anger and resentment growing to a muffled outrage.

Drigor cut them off. "The upperfolk could not know this monster pursued. We would have read their faces, heard fear catch in their throats. They are ignorant of this fiend's quest for revenge, and I owe the big man a boon."

"Owe?" Cappi's voice rasped from near-strangulation. "You'd return a favor to a human? After your tribe has suffered?"

"I would," stated Drigor. "For in times of crisis the trivial burns away and important matters lay bare, as grease burns off iron in the forge, as winter winds scour dirt to bedrock." Images of wind brought pictures of Cholena ripped to flinders before his eyes. "This visitation is an omen."

"Omen?" echoed a dozen.

"Just before the attack, I talked with Cholena about how these rooms have sheltered our tribe for centuries. Centuries, but not forever. She bade me stay. Then the gods sent us a test. I survived while Cholena was killed. An omen of blood is strongest of all."

"I don't understand," squeaked Pullor. "You blame the gods for Cholena's death? And you'd go where? For what purpose?"

Drigor just shook his head, and with aching arms shouldered his beslimed mattock. "I don't presume to know the gods' will, nor the heart of a woman, nor my own. I only know to go forth and seek what needs to be found. And to warn the barbarian, Sunbright Steelshanks of the Raven Clan of the Rengarth Barbarians, that a deathdealer comes calling."

From a mile in the air, Sunbright and Knucklebones watched the dawn light flare on the horizon. Edged by the saw-toothed peaks of the Abbey Mountains, brilliant light filled the sky and washed the clouds golden, so the tundra-dweller and thief saw why the Netherese worshiped the sun, and paid a premium price to welcome it. With the caroling of choirs in temple belfries, the trill of birdsong in gardens, the cry of vendors of oysters and shoes and sharpening echoing from the walls, the wicker of horses and laughter of children at games, the empire could be seen as a glorious and happy place-providing the visitor could ignore memories of marching armies, oppressive taxes, wasteful practices, and the blind and stupid disregard and neglect of any non-Netherese "undermen."

The Street of the Faithful Protector sported a statue of Tyche where it branched from a roundabout. The goddess-more capricious than faithful, Sunbright knew-was tall and willowy with a clinging gown. The statue was etched from some iridescent metal, or else enspelled, so dawn light scintillated across the surface like a rainbow. One outthrust arm of the goddess arched down the street as if to point their way.

It was warm, so Knucklebones wore only leathers and knucklebone pendant and knife, with a rucksack slung over one shoulder. Sunbright wore a shirt of washed-out yellow and tall boots, and lugged weapons, satchels, and their blanket rolls so he looked like an itinerant peddler. As they passed along the street of square white stone buildings with particolored doors, the big man asked casually, "Do they erect statues to the god of thieves in the enclaves?"

"They try," Knucklebones said as she counted houses, alert for a red and green door. "They erect statues to Shar with big purple agates for eyes, but thieves steal the eyes, leaving her blind. It's a funny tribute."

"The only one of your gods that makes sense to me is Kozah the Destroyer, lord of storm and wildfire and rage. Or Vaprak the Destroyer, god of ogres. To brave the tundra, you need a tough god. Clingy-Robe back there would freeze her melons off in my country."

"Which is why the empire leaves your country alone, I suppose," Knucklebones joked. "Who wants frozen melons? Ah, here!"

The door of Bly the Seer was indeed red and green, as they'd heard, and decorated with a glaring eyeball surmounted with bat wings. Knucklebones tripped up the stairs and rapped sharply on the eyeball. "Perhaps I should steal this. I could use a spare," she said, and winked at Sunbright with her one good eye.

A servant looked them over, then admitted them down a long hall glittering with gold mirrors and candelabra to the rear of the house, where they descended a short stair, passed outside through opulent gardens, and entered a two-story workshop against a high fence of white brick. Climbing to the second floor, they found the workshop of Bly lined with books and racks of odd cards in wooden holders, with sheaves of herbs hung from the rafters. Centermost was a table so black it absorbed light like a square hole gaping to another world.

Bly was so old her white skin was like parchment etched with unreadable writing. Drawn-back hair was white, and her face was painted on. She wore a quilted gown of silver and blue that failed to hide a rail-thin figure. Sunbright reflected that, if these archwizards could sustain life for centuries, Bly must be near the limit.

Knucklebones introduced them, her cultured accent and easy poise marking her as Neth-born. Bly stared at Sunbright until the thief wondered if she wasn't dotty and man-crazed. When they explained their wish, Bly creaked, "You seek the whereabouts of these Rengarth? And this man is one? Simple, then. Let me work."

Plucking a sprig of sage from the rafters, the arch-wizard walked circles around Sunbright, bidding him stand still as she brushed the herb up and down, from topknot to toes. The barbarian frowned, but the thief shook her tousled head. Finally, Bly stepped to the black table.

There was nothing on the tabletop, yet Bly bid them stand back. Raising her skinny hand, she dropped the sage. It struck the table once, bounced, then sank from sight, as if into water. The visitors gasped. Without touching the table, Bly bent over and peered deeply, all the while crooning some ancient air. Then she smiled and said, "Look you."

Sunbright and Knucklebones craned. Below the surface of the table, as if seen through polar seawater, he glimpsed a shaggy head. The man wore his hair like Sunbright's, shaved at the temples, with the distinctive roach and horsetail of the Rengarth.

"Rattlewater! He's a cousin, many removed! Who else is there?"

Slowly the image widened, until Sunbright saw Rattlewater talking to Leafrebel, his wife. The two argued, it was clear: the man stabbing the air angrily, the woman shaking her head, tight-lipped. Behind them Sunbright saw a reindeer hide painted with a raven, totem of his clan. The picture widened further, and he saw other folks sitting around the common house fire. He recognized Forestvictory, and thought he saw Archloft. The picture lit up as the fire itself was revealed. A copper pot of cornmeal bubbled at its side, and Sunbright could almost smell it. The familiar sights sent a pang through him, a wistful stab that almost stilled his heart. He hadn't known he was so homesick until he saw home. It took all his willpower not to leap into the black tabletop and see if he could plunge into the scene. The picture widened, and he held his breath, for there was his mother A scrawny hand slapped the table, and the vision vanished.

Wrenched from his waking dream, Sunbright cried, "Don't! Let me see! Please! I must know-"

"When I'm paid," Bly said simply. The archwizard's mouth was prim and dry as a parrot's beak. "You know I can locate your tribe. As we widen the sphere of the scrying spell, you'll see some landmark you recognize. Then you'll know the way home.

"After I'm paid."

"What do you want?" Sunbright babbled. "I'll get you anything, find anything!"

Knucklebones tsked, rolled her one good eye at his hopeless non-haggling. Promise the moon to this rich archwizard and she'd demand it. The way her rheumy eyes assessed Sunbright, Knucklebones disgustedly thought she knew part of the payment.

But oddly, the archwizard gathered her silver-blue hem in one claw and waved toward the stairs.

Bemused, thief and barbarian followed the sweeping train down the stairs, past the first floor, to the cellar. Knucklebones knew that, since the enclave was honeycombed, the archwizard might have any number of basements or storage rooms beneath her estate, as many as she wished to pay for.

One vast cellar matched the lot. Bly spoke a word to make the ceiling light. Along the outside wall a locked door obviously gave onto thin air. The room was packed with crates and heaps and furniture under dusty covers. But also two vehicles they recognized. Sunbright groaned.

"Oh, no! Not flitters!"