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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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Settling the sword belt in place with a nod of satisfaction, Jalandral took up another sheathed dagger and chose the best place to strap it on. “A Maimed One, moreover, who is outcast—and out of Talonnorn to stay, probably soon to perish out in the Dark if we did nothing about her at all. No threat to us, and no threat to the city.”
Sliding home another dagger into its sheath and gracefully patting his amulets in swift succession to make sure they were where they should be, he murmured, “See to yourself, as I do, and obey Father and the crones carefully and attentively—and as little as possible. Let their mistakes be their mistakes, not yours. You'll live longer, that way.”
Flicking fingertips in a jaunty farewell across his younger brother's chest with a backhanded wave of his hand, the Firstblood of House Evendoom awakened the amulet at his throat, the one that turned aside daggers. As its faint singing rose around him, he strode out, leaving Ravandarr staring after him.
 
 
Imdul ran a swift hand down the front of his favorite serving-she, who gave him a wink and a smile before adroitly twisting away. Grinning at her amiably, he fell into his usual chair.
“Gates still down?” Urgel grunted, by way of greeting.
“As well you know,” the poisoner murmured. “My, but their lack makes the street seem different.”
“The street
is
different,” Clazlathor said flatly, cradling his goblet of aehrodel. He was seated facing the doors. Not so long ago, whenever they opened, he would have seen the great, now-fallen gates House Evendoom had raised to guard their Forgerift, looming mere strides away across the street. Now, when the doors of the Waiting Warm Dark opened, there was nothing but the forlornly empty anvil and table of Orivon Firefist, and the angry glow of the Forgerift, beyond. “Evendoom's talons no longer hold it in an unshakable grip.”
“Ho, ho,” big Munthur agreed, from his end of the table, “and won't all our lives be interesting, these next few Turnings? Will it be House against House in the streets, d'you think? Or just a few swords drawn in alleys?”
Urgel shrugged. “We'd best keep low and silent while the Houses snap and snarl and settle things—or they'll quite happily turn on
us
to vent their fury. And if they do that, no matter how ridiculous their claims about our treasons are, we'll all be a little too dead to scoff—or care overmuch about the future of Talonnorn.”
Tarlyn shrugged. “As to that, they could have slain any of us whenever they wished, all our lives. The High Houses have always done as they pleased in Talonnorn.
We
should all be pleased whenever they don't
get their every idle whim fulfilled—such rarities are their only reminders that Olone's the Goddess, not each and every one of them.” He drained the last of his aehrodel, sighed as he savored it, and added, “If nothing teaches them even a little prudence, we're all doomed.”
“True,” Urgel agreed, “but if Houses fall and war erupts
within
Talonnorn, as opposed to being brought to us by invaders from without, all of us around this table are threatened, even if we
somehow
”—his tone made a mocking point of just how likely that would be—“fix it that every last pureblood in all the Houses think we're the most marvelous of Niflghar and their best friends and most valuable allies! We thrive with things as they are now; large and permanent changes could doom us!”
“Correct,” Imdul said firmly. “And I'd change that ‘could,' which after all is but stating a truism that has always held sway across the Dark, to ‘will probably,' and add ‘here in Talonnorn.' We have seized opportunities and done well by them while the Houses stood in uneasy balance, and therefore relative peace. If things fall apart, how can we continue to demand and receive gems for what hundreds of other Nifl will be doing for free, out of desperation or to redress wrongs done to them, or just out of sheer blind blundering? We do the unpleasant with swords and slyness in the alleys; if it comes to open war,
everyone
in Talonnorn will be ‘doing the unpleasant.' We may hate the Houses and complain about them every time we sit down at this table—but we need them to stay right where they are, lording it over us, seemingly eternal and sneering down at us and paying us no more attention than that! Leaving us to scurry past their noses like rats, and make our stones!”
“Why is it,” Clazlathor asked, apparently addressing his own goblet, “that I
hate
it when you point out truths? Absolutely hate it?”
“So what do you think,” Tarlyn asked with a frown, leaning forward on his elbows to look at Imdul and then at Urgel, “of the latest: this Evendoom-ordered hunt across the city for their vanished firefist? Orivon the Hairy One, Maker of Many Mighty Spellblades?”
“Can't blame the slave for running,” Munthur rumbled unexpectedly, waving at the Waiting Warm Dark's front door to indicate the empty forge floor they all knew could be seen outside, right across the street. “It's what I'd have done, in his place.”
Clazlathor shrugged. “Of course. Fell a few sneeringly overconfident Evendooms who're used to slaves cowering under their whips and make his escape—well, that's what humans
do,
if you let them see their chance.
If you haven't beaten all the life out of them, they'll leap at any scent of freedom. Every time.”
“Saw his chance and took it, that's just what he did,” Urgel agreed. “The Evendooms are fools to spread word. It's as if they think another House took him in, and are trying to threaten them into revealing by their blustering. Even if he was their best firefist, he was
only a firefist.
Rather than keeping quiet about it and raiding to gain replacement firefists, the Evendooms are bolstering this human's importance—and parading their own obsessions and weakness of character before all the city.”
“So we must soothe where they inflame,” Imdul murmured, “but how?”
“Too late to stop word of the firefist's escape spreading,” Urgel said, frowning down at his drink. “So we already stand in peril of slaves all over Talonnorn drinking deep of hope, and trying their own uprisings. Olone
spew
!”
“We must spread our own words,” Imdul said, dropping his voice and leaning forward over the table. “Hinting that the Evendooms are speaking of this to hide something darker. This
wasn't
a slave escape, and Orivon Firefist never fled out of Talonnorn. Instead, he's been snatched into the Eventowers and chained there, hidden from all, because … why?”
“The bored Evendoom crones want to breed with him?” Clazlathor offered, mockingly.
Urgel snorted at
that
old gibe. “No, they want to breed him with something else, to produce—what? Remember, this lie of ours has to
soothe,
not thrust Talonnorn closer to swords-out!”
“So no mightier monsters, and nothing at all to do with Olone or her priestesses—or the Ever-Ice, for that matter,” Tarlyn mused aloud. “What … what if they're using spells to alter his looks, and more spells to control his mind? So as to make him look like a different human, so they can send him up into the Blindingbright to spy for them?”
Urgel shook his head. “That'll have the other Houses hurling all they have at the Eventowers, to try to get this Orivon dead before he can be used to gain whatever advantage they fear the Evendooms will be able to achieve with him. We'll
cause
war in Talonnorn.”
Tarlyn shook his head slowly. “Not if the tale we spread insists that their use for him is merely to cloak their own shame.”
“Sending him to try to find a wayward Evendoom who fled with a lot of family magic,” Clazlathor suggested. “Perhaps a crone with a … heir under her wing? I'm sure in all the fighting the Evendooms lost
some
purebloods,
so other Houses, hearing our falsehoods, can believe them if they want to.”
Imdul smiled, softly and slowly. “And they
will
want to believe. Oh, by the Burning Talon, they will.”
Tarlyn and Urgel nodded eagerly.
“Now
that,
” Urgel said, leaning back with drinking horn in hand, “I like.”
“Slake throats, all, and let's be out and a-whispering,” Tarlyn urged, chuckling.
“I know
just
where to begin,” Imdul purred.
“Careful,” Munthur rumbled. “Must be sly, so no hint this is false.”
Imdul gave him a withering look. “I was born sly and careful—and by the time I was old enough to walk, I'd learned to be
thoroughly
false.”
Munthur stared down the table at the poisoner, frowning in thought. Then, slowly, he started to chuckle.
 
 
The roar shook the rock all around them, hurling Orivon and Taerune up off the ledge and awake even before they crashed back down onto it, bouncing hard on rock still quivering amid a hard rain of gravel. Shouts rang through the pittering of stones all around them. Nifl shouts.
Dust was swirling in the air, but not thickly enough to entirely cloak what had happened. Across the cavern, a Nifl spellrobe was standing atop a high horn of rock, hands still raised in the aftermath of the spell he'd hurled—a magic so strong that the fitful, dying glows and drifting sparks of its blossoming were still clinging to him.
Other Niflghar in war-armor were ranged along lower rocks, hurlbows strapped to their forearms, peering where the spellrobe was looking: down into the bottom of the cavern, where the roiling dust was thickest. They were obviously working with the spellrobe, and both Orivon and Taerune saw an Arc of Eyes, the targe of House Raskshaula, on the breast of one warblade ere there was a deep, groaning roar—and another great hanging tooth of rock tore free and plunged down to shatter on the cavern floor below.
This large Outcavern was angled like the arm of a giant, turning just beyond their ledge, the spellrobe's horn of rock rising on the inside curve of the angle. A plentiful stone forest of stalactites stretched away into unseen darkness, thinned only slightly by the six or so huge stone fangs the spellrobe's magic had already brought down.
One of the Talonar warblades pointed into the dust-shrouded depths, and he and several fellows aimed their arms and triggered their bows, firing down into the roiling dust.
Taerune drove her chin hard into Orivon's arm and then nodded frantically, in a clear plea to be ungagged. Throwing an arm over her to hold her prone on the ledge, Orivon tugged her gag most of the way out, enough to let her choke, husk, and hiss, “Release me! If we must fight—”
Orivon thrust her gag back into place and shook his head, holding her firmly down. “And have you shout out,” he whispered, “and betray me to these Nifl? Lie quiet a bit, and we'll see if unbinding becomes needful. I have your Orb ready.”
Taerune's eyes blazed her fury at him, but that was all she could do. She couldn't call on the Orb without touching it.
Or could she?
No Orb Too Mighty
In the striving of spell against spell, priestess against spellrobe, house against house, city against city, No Nifl lady can have an orb too mighty for her needs, for there will never be an end to her mighty needs.
—Talonar crones' saying
J
alandral Evendoom was unsurprised to find a priestess of Olone waiting for him at the gates. One who looked as young and agile as he was, and wore armor as sleek and fine as his own, the slender sword scabbarded at her hip doubtless a spellblade. Stunningly beautiful, unfamiliar to him, and—of course—coldly haughty, her eyes gleaming a frosty challenge.
“Firstblood of Evendoom, I shall accompany you until your task is accomplished.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “My father ordered me to do a slaying for the honor of House Evendoom. A purely family matter, one would think. I was unaware that the Consecrated of Olone indulged in prurient curiosity about such matters—or have you a better reason?”
“None that I see need to share with you, Heir of Evendoom.” Her tone was noticeably colder. “Other than to warn you that many in Talonnorn shall be watching you—and judging your behavior. Your father is one such. Consider me an ever-present gentle reminder.”
Jalandral gave her a casually elegant salute. “Welcome along, then. Have you a name, gentle reminder?”
“None that you need know.”
“Well, then, Gentle,” the heir said affably, “know you that I am Jalandral—or Dral, to my intimates—and that our time together can be as pleasant or otherwise as you choose to make it. I am cordial fellowship itself … when I am allowed to be. Choose your gambits shrewdly.”
She kept silent, and in that silence he regarded her from gleaming boot tips to crown of hair. “Are you expecting me to feed you, along the way? And have you chosen some role for yourself, beyond that of watcher? Do you give back rubs?”
“I do not,” the priestess said shortly, the faint paleness of a blush spreading along her jaw.
Jalandral smirked and watched that betraying hue spread.
“I will require no food nor drink from you,” the priestess added stiffly, “and am to assist you by guiding you to … the one you seek.”
“Ah. Well, it's certainly heartening to know that Olone doesn't want Talonar rampants stumbling around the Dark thinking for themselves,” Jalandral observed jovially, and waved a languid gauntlet at the gate, which the impassive guards had drawn open. “Shall we hence?”
The priestess gave no reply, but strode into the entrance and then stopped and turned, awaiting him—almost as if she suspected he'd order the gate slammed behind her and then turn and depart by another way. Jalandral grinned; her suspicions were quite correct.
However, he could see Shoan Maulstryke and another priestess waiting in the street outside. They would make sure to misconstrue such a prank, and enthusiastically spread false report of it across the city—cowardice and insolent renunciation of Olone, all at once—handing a pretext to the crones that might well cost both Lord Evendoom and his Firstblood their lives.
And as Jalandral happened to be the one and did not want to become the other—not for a long time, and not in such circumstances as prevailed now in Talonnorn—he ordered nothing, but merely waved cheerful farewells and salutes to the Evendoom warblades, who returned them with grins as broad as his own.
Jalandral's smile turned wry. Well, it was nice to stroll out to probable death knowing
someone
understood and appreciated you.
 
 
To me, center of my power. Come to me.
Taerune bit down on the gag savagely, willing her Orb to answer her.
Respond, by Olone!
Some of the oldest crones, their wills tempered over lifetimes, were reputed to be able to call
their Orbs swooping to their fingertips across half Talonnorn, or send their Orbs flying off to do their bidding, even to spitting forth spells when they were nowhere near.
Yet when she wasn't touching her Orb, Taerune had never been able to do more than make it change hue, glow or cease glowing, or flash with a sudden flare of light—and then only when she was within easy reach of it. Glaring now at where she knew it to be, gathering her will with such fierce force that her head began to pound and sweat started to run into her eyes and drip from her nose, she felt … nothing. Nothing at all from her Orb. Again and again she thrust out her will, reaching, probing.
Without result, until she collapsed, exhausted, and rested her chin on the rough rock, trying not to weep around the rough gag.
She was—had been—a spoilt lady pureblood, not a priestess or crone blood-offered to Olone, which meant her Orb stored a handful of spells, and with them gone it was no more than a toy and not a formidable weapon. She should have let Orivon plunder a spellblade. Yet not Uncle Faunhorn's, or Valarn's, or any Evendoom blade, for those they could trace with ease.
If they ever got a chance to pluck a blade belonging to another House, though …
Let her Dark Warrior wield it and strut with it—and see if she and her Orb couldn't quietly assume command over it, while he did so.
The gag prevented her from smiling, but she no longer felt like crying.
 
 
“So, Coward of Evendoom, your escort of Olone shamed you into setting forth at last,” Shoan Maulstryke sneered.
Jalandral yawned. “I'd hoped, yet not expected, an insult
slightly
more creative, Shoan, but I suppose that until House Maulstryke does something about its breeding habits, I should put such hopes aside.”
The eyes of the Firstblood of Maulstryke went flat and hard with hate.
“I see you, too, have acquired a Gentle Reminder,” Jalandral observed conversationally, ignoring Shoan's fury. “I believe I'll call mine ‘Gentle'—for I hope she will be, when we've time to know each other rather better—and yours ‘Reminder.' Unless, that is, you two Eyes of Olone will deign to favor us with your names?”
Jalandral's current collection of unfriendly stares grew, as two stony Nifl-she gazes joined Shoan Maulstryke's burning one.
The heir of House Evendoom grinned. “I bask in your warm, deep love. Lead on, holy guides. Shoan, I see we're both arrayed for battle. These vigilant priestesses by their very presence prevent us from slaughtering each other right away, but at the same time make a certainty of our trading cutting words—threats, insults, and the usual condescending observations—with each other. So have you anything truly colorful memorized that you'd like to share with us at this time, or shall I seize the moment?”
“You are an oriad
child,
” Shoan hissed contemptuously, “as wildtongued as Maulstryke younglings just after they learn to
walk.
”
Jalandral yawned again. “So, no, nothing memorized. I suppose the burden of entertainment must therefore fall to me.”
He drew his spellblade, and laughed at the triple whirlwind of leaping back and drawing steel this evoked. “The Outcaverns, it seems, are an even more dangerous place than I'd heard. Ladies?”
His elaborate gesture of courtesy was as flawlessly ornate as it was archaic.
“We are
not
ladies—we are Consecrated of Olone,” Reminder corrected him severely, but the priestesses did move forward. Three long strides, ere they turned in smooth unison and beckoned the two heirs to stride past them.
“But of course,” Jalandral replied, starting his long walk out of Talonnorn. A moment later they were all walking, bound for the Outcaverns with weapons at the ready, a careful distance apart.
 
 
Orivon hid a grim smile as he turned away from Taerune's furious face to watch the battle. Slaves have their desires denied at every turn; it was time, and more than time, that she knew what that felt like. And she
would
see this as probably her last chance to call on other Nifl, and so get free. If these were all Raskshaula, they might well aid her in return for what she could tell them that would let them defeat Evendoom, and—
Under his arm, Taerune started wriggling energetically, bobbing and squirming. Orivon turned back to her, anger flaring.
She was struggling to move forward to the edge of the ledge. Orivon lifted his arm to let her travel—but brought it down again to grasp her belt firmly. If she wanted to see the Nifl fighting, well and good; she might well see or learn something he wouldn't understand … but if she sought to hurl herself off the ledge to her death, and managed it, he'd
lose his guide, his envoy to talk to Nifl, and his possible bargaining bait, all at once.
When Taerune's chin reached the edge of the ledge she stopped moving, and gave him a look that might be angry thanks or might mean “So there!”
Orivon nodded and turned his attention back to the fray below. She'd used her lash on him for years, and accomplished little; how long would it take him to train her?
 
 
The oldest, deepest chamber in Coldheart was also the coldest.
Of the ring of priestesses standing around the huge scrying-whorl, gazing into its many moving, winking glows, only the Revered Mother of the Ever-Ice was wearing anything: her gown of Ice crystals.
The other Nifl-shes tried to stand tall and quell their shiverings under her watchful gaze: Lolonmae Daughter of the Ice, trying to seem serene but with trembling lips and clenched fists that shook at her sides; the chastened but still sane Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira; and six senior priestesses of lesser rank. No holy abbey of the Ever-Ice was as old and respected as Coldheart, and few in Arnoenar would have dared even try to spy on this chamber with spells—though every last Nifl of the city knew of this place, where the holy shes of the Ever-Ice spied on
them
.
Under the Revered Mother's brisk bidding, Trusted Tongue of the Ice Ithmeira had just reluctantly and tentatively ventured her opinion as to what Coldheart should do, in light of what could be seen in the scrying-whorl. She was now trembling almost as violently as the priestess beside her, Trusted Tongue of the Ice Darraeya, whose thin build shielded her not at all against the chill of the chamber—but Ithmeira's shivering was as much fear as discomfort.
“You are quite correct, Ithmeira,” the Revered Mother said softly, and waited for the priestess to let out her almost violent sigh of relief before adding, “We
must
become involved. Ouvahlor has succeeded not only in wounding Talonnorn deeply, but stirring up the Ravagers—and Imbrae and Yarlys, too; see, here and here? The Immur is now one great battlefield—and if Klarandarr starts hurling the spells around that I fear he's itching to, he'll awaken That Which Sleeps Below, and all Niflheim will again know
real
war.”
She turned her head and said calmly, “Semmeira, we will need the mindbolt spell you've been perfecting.”
The Exalted Daughter's jet-black skin went a sickly yellow-white. “The—?”
“The spell you've been practicing in secret, to use on me, Child of the Ice,” the Revered Mother said flatly. “Did you
really
think you could do such things here without my knowing? I feel every pulse and shift of magic from the topmost spires of Coldheart down to the rock beneath its roots. Go now, Semmeira, and meet me in my chambers as soon as you can. We must alter your spell together, to make it a lance to slay Klarandarr of Ouvahlor.”
Semmeira was trembling, almost white from head to toe, her eyes very dark. “H-how?” she whispered.
“Using some of his seed, of course.”
“Revered Mother,” Darraeya asked shakily, as she and Ithmeira eyed Semmeira as if the Exalted Daughter were going to die in an instant, right in front of them, “how will we ever get any of that?”
The Revered Mother sighed. “From my stock of such handy necessities, child. I didn't go to all that trouble seducing the rampant when he was much younger and fiercer than he is now—and win all the bites and bruises he gave me, too—for nothing.”
And she turned and swept out without another word, reacting not at all to the gasps of jaws dropping open all around her.
 
 
It was impossible to tell if the huge stalactites had crushed any foes when they'd crashed down onto the cavern floor. Atop his horn of rock, the spellrobe was bending and peering almost frantically, trying to see through the dust down there.
Then he sprang back as if stung, almost falling in his haste; something too small for Orivon and Taerune to see had come hurtling up at him from below. The warblades back along the cavern were cocking and firing their hurlbows in swift, deft earnest, firing at some foe below, some—there!
Taerune caught a glimpse of a dark, slender figure that was somehow
shimmering
…

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