Mortal Consequences.

Book 3 of the Netheril Trilogy.

By Clayton Emery.

Heat belched all around him. Brimstone bubbled just under his nose. He was afire. His smock ignited, as did the skin on his elbows and knees. He screamed at the sudden pain, and forced his eyes open to see this new attack, to get away.

The water was gone. Instead, the creek bed roiled with black, sticky tar. Huge gas pockets burped sulfur. Things charred and long dead floated on the surface. The tar was near boiling, and Candlemas was elbow-and hock-deep in it. It stuck to his face and neck, and burned where it touched. He wailed with fright and agony as he plucked himself free and grabbed for the sh.o.r.e.

The monster was there to meet him....

Chapter 1.

"Watch it! It's a-"

The land around the pair extended for miles in all directions, flat as a white tabletop. Yet the part they'd trodden on suddenly erupted upward like a snapped rug, then twisted and curled high as a man's shoulder to engulf them.

Sunbright Steelshanks, barbarian, grabbed his much-smaller companion Knucklebones, part-elven thief, by one arm, and hurled her a dozen feet to plow into powdery snow. By the time the thief had rebounded to her feet and whipped snow from her eyes, the barbarian was gone.

Not gone, she realized, gulped down. Entrapped.

Some monster like a wide, flat rug, diamond-shaped like a manta ray from the ocean, had whirled upward from the tundra floor to snare Sunbright, then slammed itself and its prey hard against the ground.

The leathery thing was a dozen feet across, big as a tent, and strong as a yoke of bulls. Though hard to see against snow and winter-white sky, Sunbright was wrapped like a mummy in white folds so tight that Knucklebones could see k.n.o.bs marking his belt buckle, back scabbard, and the iron rings of his moosehide boots.

She didn't look for long. Whipping out a dark-bladed elven knife, she pelted toward the monster, powdery snow flying from her boots, and drove the slim blade into the creature's hide directly above Sunbright's head. As the creature jerked, she sliced sideways, fearful of scalping Sunbright. The hide was tough as a boot sole, and stiff with white hair sharp enough to pierce her hand. She heaved and sawed with her blade, parted flesh, but drew no blood, only a white ichor that froze instantly in the chilly air.

Her carving was rewarded by a brief glimpse of Sunbright's topknot and trailing horsetail, hair so blonde it was almost white, giving him his name. His face was dangerously blue from suffocating.

Sucking air as if drowning, he gasped, "My sword! Cut out my-"

The vision was whisked away. Astonished, Knucklebones saw the wound seal as if by magic. A white-on-white line glowed, then the hide was as smooth and tough as before. As impervious to harm.

Inside the rolled-up carpet-beast, Sunbright kicked, kneed, flexed, bit, tussled; all to no avail. Even his brawny arms, pinned alongside his head, could only shove the living walls away a hair. He was locked in a white chamber tighter than a coffin, lungs and stomach constricted. He would have blacked out already had not Knucklebones let in fresh air with her knife. The monster healed instantly, and would wrap tighter until he suffocated. After that, the snow lurker would take days to digest him, gaining life and warmth from his rotting carca.s.s. Sunbright had seen reindeer skeletons with the ribs and pelvis crushed, marking a lurker's attack.

He kicked, but both legs were trussed tight, as if roped. Bucking his back and b.u.t.tocks did little good, for he couldn't gain leverage against the ground. As part of its brutal attack, the snow lurker rolled over and over, humped, and flattened like a gigantic inchworm. Such gyrations would disorient and panic prey, squeeze air from the lungs. Whirled around and around, Sunbright felt his stomach lurch. He'd already banged his nose against the leather hide twice. Blood and snot were salty and bitter on his tongue, foul enough to choke him. Biting did no good, for the leather hide was slick with blood and sweat. Strength alone couldn't save him. He could only hope Knucklebones got his message. Otherwise this hot thrashing darkness was a preview of h.e.l.l.

Yet the elven thief fought two menaces. It was bad enough trying to catch the bucking lurker, it rolled as fast as she could run. Now, where the beast had left a diamond-shaped impression on the ground, there was exposed gray-green tundra moss. And from a hole in that lumpy ground issued a flood of white ants as large as her foot. Hundreds of them.

These arctic ants churned tunnels in the snow to chase the lurker. Knucklebones reasoned that the ants took advantage of the lurker's attack to scavenge leftovers. The thief got in their way as both struggled to catch the rolling monster and its prey. Ants swarmed over her. In pa.s.sing, they tasted her flesh. Pincers like pliers ticked hunks from her neck and hands. The insects must have found her sweet, for some unheard signal brought more ants rushing. Within a minute, a dozen white ants big as rabbits galloped up and down her furs and gear, nipping at exposed flesh, drawing blood.

Knucklebones yelped, swore, and swatted. With one hand she grabbed the thorax of an ant, cold as an icicle, and squeezed. Brittle legs windmilled as the carapace cracked. Acrid chilly glop stained her hand, and stung in an ant bite. Another bit her ear alongside her leather eye patch. She batted it away, losing a piece of her ear to icy jaws.

Yet Knucklebones was raddled with scars from years of fighting, and could ignore pain and distress to keep herself alive in a fight. So could Sunbright, for he still squirmed within the leather folds of the snow lurker.

Pushing aside the irritation and threat of the ants-enough of them could strip her to her bones- she pursued the humping monster. The beast slowed, tiring, but was still dangerous as a kicking horse.

The man trapped inside slowed too. Sunbright was running out of air.

Thinking furiously, Knucklebones tried to time the erratic flailing of the lurker, but found no pattern. It could as easily roll over and crush her legs as tumble the other way. Finally, she locked her elven knife in her right fist, blade sticking out and away, and leaped.

Though the lurker's hairy skin was slick with snowmelt, the nimble thief managed to wrap her legs around it, but only for a second. The creature reacted to the unnatural touch with new energy, humping high and slamming the earth, then rolling to toss Knucklebones off. She tapped a foot against the ground, slid her bottom along the slick skin, and stayed atop it. The horizon jumped and danced, her stomach lurched, but she only needed a second.

Slashing hard at the end of her arm, she sheared the skin along the ridge where Sunbright's mighty sword Harvester was strapped across his back. The wicked slash parted the flesh so it wept white ichor, though the ends immediately began to close. But Knucklebones's clever hands had done their work. Seizing the two-handed, leather-wrapped pommel, she yanked it free of the scabbard, a sword nearly as long as she was tall. As the heavy, back-hooked nose pulled free, the lurker's wound had already sealed around the blade, and Knucklebones cut it anew by drawing the blade.

Sliced twice, the tundra beast pitched her off with a sideways lurch. The small thief tumbled to hammered snow hard enough to jar her teeth, but she retained her grip on the huge sword.

Instantly she rolled to her feet, held the long blade high despite its great weight, and raced after the snow lurker again. The twin cuts she'd made were already invisible. She prayed Sunbright hadn't blacked out.

The lurker had enough intelligence to track Knucklebones as a threat, so it curled itself almost double and sprang to arch away. The grim thief pursued. Outlined in white leather, like a body under a sheet, she saw Sunbright's shoulders, his elbows vainly pressing against the living prison, and the thrust of his jaw. His hands, she guessed, were pinned by his ears. Bad, considering what she had to do.

Stumbling, diving, combining power and grace, she slammed the knife at Sunbright's face. The razor-sharp blade skimmed through the first layers of white hide, then parted to show tanned flesh.

The snow lurker twisted away, but she pressed on, twisting as if carving a steak from a mad cow.

From deep inside she heard a gasp, and took courage that her lover was still alive. With a final wrench, she hollered, "Give me your hands!"

The wound was healing fast, but Sunbright's fingers protruded through the slit for just a second. In that second, the nimble thief rammed the pommel of the great sword into Sunbright's numbed fingers.

Then the gap sealed, or tried to, for the sword blade projected from inside the monster.

Exhausted by her mad dashes, Knucklebones dropped, unable to close for fear of being sheared herself. She could only pray to Shar, the G.o.d of Thieves, the Greater Power of the Gray Waste; with herself trapped in a white waste.

The lurker fought, rolled, curled, twisted, but even banging the ground couldn't shake the steel blade from Sunbright's iron grip. Through a mist of her own breath, Knucklebones watched, fascinated, as the barbarian's trapped arms flexed, pushed, unbent.

Then the great hooked sword Harvester of Blood sliced through the lurker like an axe through fog.

One second the white rolled body was whole, the next a rent six feet long slit it like a fish. From the rent spilled a gasping, blue-faced, white-smeared Sunbright, who collapsed on the snow, melting it with his body heat.

Knucklebones wept for joy out of one good eye, ran to her huge lover, and grabbed his shoulder to pull him upright. The ravenous snow lurker was already curling back, slithering, pursuing.

"Run-at an angle-to its path!" Sunbright wheezed. He was pale but smeared with blood, eyes red, throat raw. a.s.sisted by the thief, he gamely jogged in his big boots across the trampled snow.

They ran and ran, stumbling and lurching, always at an angle from the deadly pursuer that rippled along the snow after them with the smooth grace of a manta ray swimming under water. Yet slowly the two humans pulled away, for the huge beast was tired. And finally, glancing over her shoulder, Knucklebones saw nothing.

"Wh-where did it go?"

Sunbright slammed to a halt, sobbed for breath so hard he drooled, but he pointed out a shimmering square on the snow. Knucklebones saw the white surface ripple and tremble, then lie smooth as if never trodden. The effect was all the weirder because their footprints began just at the edge of the silent square. The lurker had burrowed under the snow within seconds.

"Will it come after us?"

"No, but let's keep-walking-anyway." Plodding, trudging, they left the disturbed spot far behind.

Only then did Sunbright collapse to his knees and wash his bloodied face clean with snow.

"I must be-" he rasped, "-the only barbarian to ever-escape a snow lurker! Thanks to your deft hand."

"I was afraid I'd split your skin to the skull!" she admitted. Knucklebones's knees were weak, so she sank beside him. The barbarian didn't mind the snow and cold, but she found kneeling so chilly it was painful. Born in a lofty city that drifted south in winter, she had barely seen snow a dozen times in her life. Now she was surrounded by leagues of it. She'd never get used to this frozen wasteland. There wasn't even wind to fill it.

"There were ants, too," she panted. "Big white ones that bit."

"Just a nuisance. Brush them off."

Knucklebones fingered her ear, and found b.l.o.o.d.y scabs. Her flesh was too numb to feel much pain, despite a fur-lined hood.

The two were dressed for the weather, at least. Knucklebones wore a coat of brown sheepskin with the fur turned inward and the sleeves cupped into mittens. Her legs were clad in blue wool leggings tucked into boots made of reindeer hocks with the hair still on. At her back hung an ox hide pack stuffed with jerked meat, oatmeal, and dried fruit. Her long elven blade hung on a thong to thump on her small bosom, immediately handy. Beside it was strung a yellowed knucklebone, her namesake, the hardest bone in any animal's body. With the hood up, all that showed were tufts of dark, unkempt hair, a pale nose reddened by cold, and one good eye with a slight slant. The other bore an old knife wound and a leather eye patch. Under her coat she wore woolen sweaters. Her fingers were deeply indented from bra.s.s knuckledusters-hence part of her name-but she'd shucked them because the intense cold made her clumsy.

In contrast, the tundra-born Sunbright wore little.

Red woolen leggings were tucked into iron-ringed moosehide boots stuffed with moss for insulation. A long green shirt reached to his knees, but only a thick scarf and sheepskin mantle hung from both shoulders, with a pack and Harvester's scabbard binding the mantle in place. He wore no hat, despite that his temples were shaved and his white-blonde hair dragged back into a topknot and horsetail. When the wind blew and Knucklebones's teeth chattered, Sunbright dragged the scarf up to warm his ears. Just to look at his naked forearms and chin made Knucklebones shiver.

As did looking at the naked land. For the thousandth time, she turned a circle for a landmark.

Anything would do: a hill, a tree, a bush. But there was only snow-clad tundra, rising slightly in spots, dipping here, but altogether too flat. Even the horizon was a blur, white snow meeting a white sky. She had no idea of their direction, destination, or distance covered. Left alone, she'd go mad in hours, run screaming in circles, crying like a child until she collapsed and died. Or was eaten.

"Are there many carpet beasts out here?" she asked. Even her voice was lost in the wastes, like the squeaking of a baby rabbit. She barely reached Sunbright's breastbone. He could have slung her across his shoulders like a lamb.

"Lurkers? No, not many. There's not much for them to eat. And when they do catch something, reindeer mostly, though sometimes polar bears, they curl up and digest for months. My people kill them when they can. I should have been more alert, should have seen its track."

"Track?" Knucklebones said. She couldn't even trust the ground she walked on. White on white, it always looked too far or too near, so she blundered like a drunk.

"A lurker follows the vibrations of our feet. It swims under the snow, circles to get in front of you, so you step on it. Lucky I threw you clear."

Lucky nothing, the thief knew. A lifetime on the tundra had saved him. Both of them, actually, for she wouldn't last a night if Sunbright died.

"I should have seen the outline. And ant steam." To her puzzled look, he explained, "The ants are cold-blooded, but storing food underground in their burrows makes heat and wisps of steam. Ants often burrow near lurkers to pick up sc.r.a.ps of food, and they swarm over the beast's hide after lice.

They help each other survive. Everything up here works together."

And eats each other, Knucklebones thought. "How much farther to your tribe's hunting grounds?"

she asked, for perhaps the millionth time.

"Not far now," he answered patiently. "In fact, that's why I missed the lurker. I was excited about getting home." He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sunset. The sun had only risen a hand high in the southeast, and after only four hours sank toward the southwest. Nights were twenty hours long, so they mostly traveled by starlight. Why they hadn't been eaten long ago-by lurkers or polar bears or wolves or ants-Knucklebones couldn't fathom, but Sunbright's knowledge of the land and its inhabitants had steered them around danger. Usually.

He pointed into the gathering dusk and said, "There. Where the land begins to fall again. A shallow rill feeds a frozen stream that drops off a low cliff at a rookery into an arm of the Narrow Sea. My people ice fish at this time of year, then pack the sledges and search for reindeer before spring. It won't be more than six hours on."

"What will you do when you arrive?" Knucklebones phrased the question delicately.

Sunbright rubbed his stubbly jaw, picked an icicle of blood off his upper lip, and said, "I have no idea."

Knucklebones stifled a sigh. In the few months they'd been together, he'd explained how he left his tribe, the Rengarth Barbarians of the tundra. How his father, Sevenhaunt, a great shaman, had died suddenly, mysteriously wasting away. How Owldark, the new shaman, dreamed a vision that showed Sunbright the ruin of his people, and so demanded his death. How his mother, Monkberry, warned her only child to take his father's sword and flee. How he'd fled to the "lowlands," as barbarians called all territories south, for no single individual could survive on the tundra. And of his adventures to h.e.l.l and to the future, where he met Knucklebones, then returned. How he'd conquered death. How in a few years, the boy had grown to a man, then a warrior, and finally a shaman.

But a shaman was worthless without a tribe, and so, defying the sentence of death, Sunbright journeyed home. And Knucklebones, herself cast to the winds, went with him, knowing she might be executed too. So, without a plan, and with little hope, they trudged across the darkening wastes.

After a time, Knucklebones said, "It's a long way to come for revenge."

"I don't want revenge!" Sunbright snapped. "I want..."

"What?" she asked, peeking around her furred hood.

"I want to clear my name, and that of my father," the shaman, staring at the dark horizon, said. "I want to find out why my father died, if possible. I want to disprove the notion that I'll bring destruction to the tribe. I want-I just want to go home. And I feel-I know bad times are coming. I want to be with my tribe, for good or ill."

"Do you mean the fall of the Netherese Empire? That's not for three hundred and fifty-odd years yet."

"No, sooner trouble. I've dreamt of it." Knucklebones's sigh blew fog. "I believe you," she said. "A shaman's dreams are both a gift and a curse. Sometimes you thrash all night, then drag yourself through the day, half asleep."

The barbarian nodded grimly and said, "And sometimes dreams show the future, or distant events, and sometimes they mean nothing. Sorting them out is the ch.o.r.e."

"Why do it then? Why take the responsibility of being a shaman? It must be h.e.l.l trying to advise folk on what's true and what's false."

Oddly, the shaman grinned in the darkness, his fine white teeth glowing by starlight. "Better to be a thief," he asked, "see what one can steal without losing a hand? Like a jackdaw waiting to swoop down and steal a b.u.t.ton?"

"Yes, better that. Life is simple for thieves. If you can carry something off, fine. The owner should have been more careful. It teaches folks responsibility."

Sunbright laughed aloud, and swatted her f.a.n.n.y wrapped in wool and fur. "I'll remember that," he said. "But you were born to be a thief and I a shaman, like my father and forebears. We can't escape our destiny, we can only endure it."

Knucklebones cast about the barren landscape, which hadn't changed a jot to her eye. "I'll be glad to escape this wasteland."

"Wasteland?" Sunbright barked a laugh. "This is beautiful country! Wide open, bright and clean, sweet-smelling, sharp-edged, and simple. Either you adapt or you die."

Knucklebones saw snow and stars. "Perhaps," she mumbled. "Maybe in the summertime...."

"Oh, no. Summer's a sea of mud. Bog so thick and gooey it jerks your boots off. No, in summer you're a prisoner of the land, and have to camp by the sea and stay put. In winter you can hitch up dog or reindeer sleds, or strap on snowshoes or skis, and go wherever you want. No, this is the finest time of year!"

The thief swallowed a groan.

More walking, for the tenth straight day. A rest with cold rations, since they had nothing to burn.

Eating snow for water. Walking and more walking. Trudging through fog for two days once.

Darkness, daylight, darkness. Boots crunching a million times, and walking on.

Just when Knucklebones thought she'd go screaming mad, a spark glowed on the horizon. "Is that a village?" she asked.

"No. Northern lights."

The thief stared in awe. Reds and blues shimmered like rainbow curtains in the sky. The colors danced, dipped, soared, settled, jiggled, never still.