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Dangerous Games
Book 2 of the Netheril Trilogy
By Clayton Emery
Ebook version 1.0
 "The empire is going to die!" Candlemas shouted in desperation. "This is the end of the end! You
said so yourself!"
"Not if Karsus succeeds!" She gazed at her cousin, who shouted threats at the ceiling as he floated
higher. "He will ascend to godhood and save the city! Save the empire! He's the greatest mage . . ."
Candlemas only stared, unsure if his lover was trying to convince him, or herself. Then her words
were lost as the building's ceiling blew off.
Tons of stone, slate, timber beams, granite, carved cornices, and other elements exploded upward
like wheat chaff. High up, yet almost close enough to touch, frowned the cloud face of Lady Mystryl,
Controller of the Weave, the stuff of all magics. And facing her, still shouting, was the presumptuous
mage who would steal her power, usurp her place, walk into the firmament and take the throne of the
gods themselves.
The Netheril Trilogy
Clayton Emery

Sword Play

Dangerous Games

Mortal Consequences
(available April 1997)
Dangerous Games
Clayton Emery
Dedicated to Seamus, Powerhouse of the South
 Chapter 1
"There! It's nice to beтАФ"
"Move!"
The pudgy wizard was knocked flying by a shove from the tall, scarred barbarian. Candlemas
caromed off a table, slipped, and crashed to the workshop floor. The stumble saved his life, for a
monstrous red insect had leaped to the table, scattering jars and crockery and priceless artifacts,
clashing steely mandibles to snap the arcanist's head off.
Fighting instinct saved the barbarian's life. Mistrusting magic, Sunbright had unsheathed his sword
before Candlemas could invoke the shift spell. One minute they'd been standing in a dusky rainy forest
then, at a fast-rattled spell, they were whisked to a cluttered workshop with high, airy windowsтАФa
room besieged by a horde of rust-red insects as big as wild hogs.
Had Sunbright thought about danger, he would have been dead long ago. Reared on the tundra,
where death was always just a whisker away, he reacted instinctively, attacking the menaces with
might and sinew and the fighting agility bred deep into his bones. Training seized his hands and body.
Before Candlemas even recognized the threat, Sunbright had attacked half a dozen marauders.
The great hooked sword Harvester of Blood flashed as Sunbright fell to slaughter. The insects were
thick in the body and hunchbacked, like giant fleas. They were giant fleas, he realized. Myriad
scuttling legs were pointed as daggers, claws bore pincers like a scorpion's, mouth-mandibles were
jagged as broken razors. A dozen insects rushed the two men. Sunbright was hard-pressed to beat them
back, both from himself and from the chunky Candlemas, whom the barbarian considered helpless.
The first insect to chomp onto Sunbright's iron-ringed moosehide boot lost its head to a downward
slash. But even that was difficult, for their carapaces were thick as boiled-leather shields and they had
few vital organs to shear. Sunbright barely wrenched Harvester free before another flea hopped up and