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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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He swung around to face the Hairy One, who now stood back-to-back with the maimed Nifl-she, ringed by wary Ravagers now that the Talonar had all fallen.
“Ravagers, spare us!” the Nifl-she cried, her hand at her throat, where something glowed. “Down steel, all!”
“Spare you?” Old Bloodblade grunted, frowningly watching the Talonar she calling on her Orb. “Why?”
Taerune used the Orb to make her voice loud enough for every Nifl there to hear clearly, and cried, “Behold the Dark Warrior! Foe of the decadent Houses who practice misrule over Talonnorn! One who seeks peace between Ravagers and the City of the Spires! Nameless
Nifl, Ravagers, and all who are oppressed by Evendoom and Maulstryke, Dounlar and Raskshaula, Oszrim and Oondaunt—
this
is your champion!”
WHAAAT?
Orivon mind-shouted, his back firm against hers.
[I'm trying to keep us alive],
Taerune mind-spoke to him fiercely.
[Play the part, PLEASE.]
Through the Orb, she felt his amusement.
So you've discovered you want to live, after all …
Dark Champions, Going Cheap
Yet when our follies at last we reap,
Foes pressing hard our every doomed fray,
Many dark champions, going cheap,
Shall rise, mar their moments, and fade away.
—from an anonymous Nifl tavern song,
“A Lament for Talonnorn”
I
n a sealed chamber in the Eventowers, Maharla Evendoom seethed, her rage making the mind-sending briefly flare ruby-red. The little bitch Taerune thrusting forward her
slave
as Olone's champion? And aiming him like a hurlbow shaft right at House Evendoom and the other houses? How had she even
known—
Impossible. She hadn't. She didn't. She didn't even know the crones and Holy-shes of Talonnorn could hear her. This was a desperate ploy to keep the Ravagers from killing her, no more.
A ploy that seemed to be working, thus far. They were lowering their weapons, not closing in and hacking.
Now Taerune was taking off her Orb and dropping it to the stones, and the Hairy One was grounding the points of his swords.
And the Ravagers—bah!
Ravagers couldn't be trusted!
Ever, and in anything!
Fighting down her rage—the headaches of carrying on multiple mind-magics at once, and shielding one from the other always made her
angry, even before
this
—Maharla clenched her fists and bent her will on Ravandarr.
It helped to visualize stepping through a door, firmly closing it against the heavy mind-weight of the link that was showing what befell in that cavern in the Wild Dark to all the watching priestesses and crones of Talonnorn, and casting endless tapestries across her wake as she sped along a passage to the pale white light of Ravandarr's stone.
Ravandarr, Champion of Olone, she thought crisply—and a veil in her mind drew back, and she was suddenly on a ledge high up on the wall of a dimly lit cavern, looking down upon the heads of a cluster of armed Nifl and a lone human through rising anger that was not her own. Ah, yes; Ravandarr had liked Faunhorn. Seeing his uncle felled, but not obviously slain, would enrage him.
Mahar
—
uh, Eldest?
Ravandarr's mental reply was as weak and tentative as ever.
Maharla's lip curled, but she was careful to keep the tone of her mind-voice warm and encouraging.
Ravandarr, it is time. The escaped slave and the Nameless stand just below you, within easy reach of daggers you hurl. Your sister's wards will deflect your steel, but a rock can down her, just as that Ravager's stone struck down Faunhorn. Shout out that she's famous for slaying Ravagers, and is readying a spell to use on them right now. I feel Olone, watching through me. She wants to see this dangerous human and this disgrace to our blood dead, without delay. Kill them both. Kill them NOW.
She could feel his reluctance, his quivering distaste.
You're afraid,
she mind-told him scornfully.
Afraid of a few Ravagers, and what they'll do. Afraid to obey Olone. What is a stinking human Rift slave to you?
Ravandarr shook his head.
Taerune,
he said miserably.
I can't.
His resolve and resentment flared together.
I won't.
Maharla fought down her own rush of fury, and managed to make her next mind-speech stern rather than snarling.
Ravandarr? Olone is watching you, judging you. To restore the honor of House Evendoom and make yourself favored, lifelong, you must do this thing. Two swift, simple slayings. Ridding us all of a dangerous Hairy One and an even more dangerous Nameless traitor—a proven, self-admitted traitor to our house, Talonnorn, and all we hold dear. Now find a stone, draw your daggers, and make an end to them both.
Ravandar's mind shivered, its turmoil and deepening misery making her feel sick. Maharla fought to keep from being swamped in his rising dislike, the swirling fear, the old, old resentment at being told what to do by cruel, ruthless crones …
Ravandarr!
She tried one last time, making her voice a disapproving, searing command.
That met dark defiance of sudden strength.
Get back to Olone, and share your schemings with Her! I doubt She wants this senselessness
—
I doubt even more you've told Her about it at all! And if She does, then I don't want HER! You're not telling me the TRUTH, Maharla! I can feel it, I can
—Her own anger was letting his mind-shouts leak into her sending; it was going red again.
Maharla Evendoom suddenly found herself right out of patience with this mewling weakling, this sullen waste of wine and food and air.
Talonar
wine and food and air. He wasn't going to risk his own skin by attacking with Ravagers all around, and he wasn't ever going to harm his beloved sister.
With a sudden surge of satisfaction—that she knew would be all too short-lived—Maharla whispered the word that would make Ravandarr Evendoom's necklace explode.
She had just time to set her teeth in a wide and cruel grin, to ride out the shrill-shrieking mind-storm that followed.
Headless, spattering the rocks around him involuntarily, Ravandarr clawed the air as Ravagers below spun around and sprang aside, and fell back down the narrow way he'd come, guts and blood and everything exploding wetly.
Maharla turned back to her sending almost gleefully. Culling the rampants, purging weakness … “Ravandarr Evendoom, whose death was as futile as his life,” she murmured aloud.
Thinking of which, it seemed Erlingar Evendoom was going to be undertaking a little kin-slaying expedition after all.
 
 
“But Bloodblade,” Sarntor said frowningly, “a
human
to be our champion? To lead us to—what? Striding openly into war with the ruling houses of a dozen Nifl cities, so as to get ourselves swift graves just as fast as it takes us to reach them? I
like
skulking in the Dark and raiding. A slaying here, a slaying there, coins and blades and”—he gave Taerune a leer—“other spoils to enjoy, when we can.”
“If that's what you want,” Taerune told him, tugging meaningfully at her bodice, “take it.” She turned, her gaze a quiet challenge. “All of you.” She shrugged. “I'd do better washed and rested, and with two arms—but I'm hardly standing here in strength, to command such things.”
Silence fell, in which the Ravagers around her shifted uneasily. It
was Old Bloodblade who ducked his head and said gently, “Lady, 'tis no secret we … have our hungers, and welcome all Nifl-shes who'll have us. But not surrendering in fear or anger, hating us. Where's the satisfaction in that?”
“Aye,” Daruse leered, shifting his eye patch from one eye to the other. “We likes 'em
willing
.”
His grotesque parody of a drooling tavern rampant made Taerune snort with mirth.
“If you don't want a human to rally around,” Orivon said then, his voice deep and firm, “there was a gorkul hereabouts a moment ago. It's even trained to flog Nifl.”
“It fled that way,” a Ravager said, pointing with his sword down the cavern, into darkness. “I can't see it lasting long. There'll be all too few meals it can catch, locked into that collar and dragging half its weight in chain.”
“Do you truly want to break the ruling Houses, Dark Warrior?” Lharlak asked quietly.
“I am Orivon Firefist, and the forge is where I've done my fighting. What I truly want is to get back to the Blindingbright, to the village I was snatched from,” Orivon replied. “I want to go home.” He looked around the ring of Ravager faces. “And so do all of you.”
“The homes we seek no longer exist,” Bloodblade said heavily. “Not since the priestesses and the grand Houses became open tyrants, and we were cast out or deemed dead if caught, each one of us.”
“And we do well enough raiding and harrying,” Lharlak said calmly, “without a champion—figurehead or no, human or no—strapped to us. Nifl know who and what we are. Need we take on the hatred some—most—will have for a human?”
“A human'll certainly get us noticed,” Bloodblade growled.
Daruse chuckled.
“That's
truth. Noticed by every last priestess of Olone, with the crones to echo 'em, that an unholy and accursed
Hairy One
is coming to despoil their daughters in their beds!”
“I don't want to despoil any Nifl, shes or otherwise,” Orivon said wearily. “I just want to go home.”
“Aye, and I believe you, man,” the Ravager agreed, plucking off his eye patch to look at the human with both eyes. “But how are the Haraedra Nifl ever going to hear you say that, to have any chance at believing you?”
The hall around him was cold, dark, and empty. Long abandoned, by the look of it, cracks and fallen stones and the faint speckles of ancient slime trails. It was tall and elegant, but deserted and old.
“What is this place?” Jalandral asked curiously, gazing all around. Through a shattered window he could see several cave mouths, crowded like the frozen maws of blindfish on a platter; they were somewhere out in the Dark.
The Evendoom crone came closer, as silently as drifting cavern mist. “Once this was a proud Niflghar city,” she said, “Evennar by name. Our family came from here—this hall we're standing in—fleeing to found Talonnorn when Evennar was torn apart by battling Houses, with the priestesses of Olone urging them on to strife rather than constraining them. It all ended in death, for those who stayed to fight.”
Jalandral turned to face her. “As you believe it will in Talonnorn, right now.”
Klaerra shrugged. “I believe we should both be … unfound by anyone, until there is a new Holiest and House Evendoom, at least, has finished tearing itself apart. Taerune has just done something that may yet bring civil war to Talonnorn.”
“So silent absence is prudence for both of us, just now,” Jalandral agreed. And sighed. “I'm going to grow dreadfully bored.”
Klaerra glided closer. “Ah, now,
that
I should be able to prevent.” She did something to her robes that made them fall open.
Jalandral let his gaze fall slowly from her smile to her ankles and back. Real admiration grew upon his face—for a crone of the age he knew she must be, Klaerra was magnificent—but he remarked pleasantly, “I've seen—and more than seen—friendly unclad Nifl shes before, you know. Even within the family.”
Klaerra smiled, and her empty hands were suddenly holding a decanter of superb wine and a cluster of amraunt, the succulent mushrooms so sought after among Nifl. “Ah, but think of the fun of the chase,” she purred. “If you don't find and catch me, you don't eat.”
And she winked out, leaving only a cold and empty hall—and a glow at its far end, wherein she'd reappeared, beside an archway.
Jalandral shrugged, smiled, and started running lightly toward her. Laughing, Klaerra ducked through the archway, and was gone.
 
 
“Spewing
Ravagers
!” Maharla Evendoom snarled, beating her fists against the nearest wall in frustration. “Kill the human!
Kill him!
”
But no, they were smiling now, and clasping forearms, the lot of them, relaxing like friends at a tavern, moving companionably together to plunder the Evendoom fallen.
Squawking in wordless fury, Maharla shattered her spell, saying the words and inhaling the powder that would instantly break her mind-link.
The powder exploded behind her nose and down her throat, just as it was supposed to, leaving her staggering—but in and through her mind the Ravagers and the slave and Olone-utterly-cursed Taerune paraded on, chatting, their every word making it more likely that the watching Talonar would think Maharla Evendoom had utterly failed, or even that the
human
was the champion she'd crowed about!
How could it still be going on? She'd
ended
the spell, its magic was fled and gone from her mind and limbs!
How could—? Not Holy Olone, surely?
Maharla cast a frantic quelling-spell on the air before her and charged into it, not quite daring to cast it directly on herself and so leave herself powerless for more than a Turning …
The scene that every crone and priestess in all Talonnorn was seeing still proceeded in her head, bright and clear.
Maharla went to her knees, howling in frustration.
 
 
“Oh,
no,” Naersarra Dounlar murmured, standing naked atop her table in the Waiting Warm Dark. “Oh, no you don't.”
She'd always been one of the fastest spell-hurlers of House Dounlar, and she used all of that swiftness now. The rising anger in Maharla Evendoom's mind had warned her, and she'd already cast the bridging spell—slowly and carefully, too—that would link her to all the crones and priestesses. She left its other end hanging, the incantation unfinished and slowly fading, rather than link herself to Maharla. She needed Maharla's link to that cavern full of Ravagers …

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