Mortal Consequences (31 page)

More incredibly, how had he once passed through this forest without seeing its otherworldly beauty? For as a boy, banished from this tribe, he’d crossed the Barren Mountains and cut through this forest toward the heart of the empire. But on that journey he’d seen no elves, and sensed no magic. Was it true what men said, that an elven wood wasn’t part of a man’s world, but rather a shadow realm that existed side by side, unseen unless the inhabitants wanted it to show? If so, where were they now? Sunbright shook his head as if to dislodge idle ramblings. He needed to concentrate on his mission.

If the elves had a city, or town center, or if that elven queen owned a castle or mead hall, Sunbright never saw it. Blessedseed led them over rill and vale along narrow and ancient trails. In some places the paths were worn knee-deep. Where they crossed oak roots, soft elven soles had polished inches deep into tough wood. Occasionally they passed wigwams of branches, or glimpsed tree huts high up, or saw paths wending toward caves trickling smoke. Sunbright guessed these elves didn’t have proper homes, only sleeping hollows and nests like birds and badgers. Perhaps they simply lived outside year round. When he asked the guide, Blessedseed only smiled, so Sunbright gave up wondering. He had more important questions.

“There.”

In the silent forest, the elf’s quiet word startled him. The archer pointed out a trail to a hogback ridge. Sunbright peered. There seemed only tangled rhododendron atop the ridge. Then he saw a dark slit, hardly wide enough for a fox, and he asked, “That’s her home?”

“Yes,” said the elf. “I shall wait here.”

“We might be a while,” the shaman warned.

“I shall wait here.” Blessedseed leaned against a tree, folded his arms, and scanned the sky as if reading a book.

Shaking his head over these queer and muzzy-headed fairies, Sunbright strode up the trail. He had almost forgotten Knucklebones followed, looking out of place in her lion skin coat. Her voice startled him.

“Are you sure you want what you might find?”

“What?” The shaman turned, fuddled, and said, “Of course I want to know! I’ve wanted to know since forever. Years, now.”

Knucklebones’s one eye stared at the ground. “I hope the answer makes you happy.”

Sunbright didn’t understand her comment, nor her reticence. Grabbing her hand for clumsy comfort, he towed her to the slit in the tangled bracken, and squeezed through.

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 shining 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 pass 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 shivered 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 hell. 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 hellfire. “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 pronouncement 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 hellfire. 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 damned 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 bastard 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 noble half-goddess 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 grass 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.

Lashing 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 scraped 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 hells 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 grass. 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 grass grow head-high, and fed many stands of poplar trees that shivered 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 shirt 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 bloody 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 space in seconds, slung the fearsome sword behind—