Dark Vengeance (35 page)

Taerune saw the freed human slaves go pale and thin-lipped, and raise the weapons they'd seized from the fallen. They feared being made to go back into Talonnorn more than death—and she did not want to see the outnumbered House Dounlar warblades and Ravagers face so many desperate foes, even if they were ill-treated, untrained-for-war Hairy Ones.

“For now,” she announced, raising her voice just enough to be heard clearly, “we draw back.”

Then, quite deliberately, she turned her back on the humans, to say to the Ravagers and Dounlar Nifl, “These Hairy Ones desire to get well away from here, not return to the embrace of those who enslaved them.”

A long, loud rumble made them all look again at Talonnorn; several towers were collapsing, with a sort of slow inevitability, one crashing into the next and bearing all down into a flood of tumbling stone.

“With everything burning,” Taerune added, “the fighting will be wild and everywhere. There will be much butchery.” She pointed at the cavern mouth they'd burst out of, earlier. “For now, we go back into the Outcaverns, to wait and watch. There will be a better time to return to Talonnorn.”

“
You
go back,” Orivon said grimly. “I'm going in.”

Silently, many of the surviving Dounlar warblades, bloody swords in hand, walked over to stand with him.

Taerune frowned. “Why? Man, are you
still
hungry for our blood?”

The forgefist shook his head.

“I came back down into the Dark to recover four children—human younglings—who were taken by Oondaunt raiders not long ago. If they yet live, they are somewhere in there.” He waved at the burning city.

“Young? If they live, they'll be picking yeldeth, in the caverns,” Taerune said grimly. “
If
they live.”

“And where are those caverns?”

“Beneath our feet—and under all this rock you see, from here
all the way back to the towers,” she replied. “Yet the ways into them are hard to find; they are guarded, and in the cellars of the great Houses. Food is power.” Silence fell, and the forgefist and the Nifl-she stared at each other, not speaking, for what seemed a long, long time—until another distant tower fell, shattering all silence.

“Lady Evendoom,” Orivon said quietly, then, “I don't even know which of the towers on the far side of the city belong to Oondaunt. I need you.”

His onetime tormentor stared at him, and slowly and silently walked over to stand at his side.

It was Bloodblade's turn to frown. “Taerune?”

Taerune lifted her chin and gave him a steady stare. “Those who would tarry are yours to command now,” she told him. “I have—”

She patted her forearm, where it became a blade, and then used that blade to point at Orivon. “—something I must do. A debt I must pay.”

The House Dounlar Nifl drew back from them both, in the same silence they'd walked to them.

Garlane Dounlar, who was bleeding freely from a sword slash across his cheek, gave them both a glare and said coldly, “Rescuing Hairy Ones defends Talonnorn not at all.”

“I am thinking,” Orivon told him softly, with a grin that promised much death, and soon, “that there will be many Ouvahlans between here and the yeldeth caverns that our blades will have to deal with. And Nifl beyond them who stand with whoever cast you out.”

“Jalandral,” Barrandar Dounlar snarled. “Jalandral Evendoom, who calls himself High Lord of Talonnorn now.”

Orivon's eyes blazed up in anger. “Then your fight is mine, too. My vengeance against the sister is done if she aids me in this; my vengeance against her brother demands his death.”

“As it happens,
I
have a score to settle with darling Dral, too,” Taerune hissed angrily. “Let's be about this!”

 

·   ·   ·   

 

It was unseemly to hurry in Coldheart, but Tariskra was too worried to care overmuch about “unseemly” just now. She bowed her way past the two senior Anointed who guarded the way into the holy inner chamber, and hastened to report to Revered Mother Lolonmae.

Who lay embracing a great rearing tongue of the Ever-Ice that was jet black and yet seemed full of trapped stars—a wonder that Tariskra would ordinarily have fallen on her knees before, to whisper prayers as she studied it intently. Lolonmae was bared to the cold, as usual, and holy Meltwater was running from under her body, and being collecting in vessels by the silently kneeling priestesses clustered all around the Ever-Ice.

“Tariskra, you are more than uneasy,” the young, slender Revered Mother observed. “Speak freely; why?”

“Ah—uh—Revered Mother, my magic . . . my touch to the mind of Exalted Daughter Semmeira has been broken! Several times I've tried to restore it, taking great care over the castings and in the end using some of the holy water of the Ice. Failure, always failure. I—I tried another spell, and Lolon—ah, Revered Mother!—I found that my spells are now being deliberately blocked!”

“Now why would that be? I wonder,” Lolonmae asked, sounding almost amused.

Twisting away from the Ice to look over one shoulder at the priestesses bearing the holy Melt away, she commanded, “Set your vessels down, all of you, and work a magic together. All of you are to try to contact the mind of Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira—right now.”

She turned back to Tariskra. “Not you,” she added. “You shall go now to the Watchers, and bring the Senior Watcher here to hear our will. If we are unable to see Semmeira's mind, that does not mean we should be blind as to her doings; the Watchers' whorls will show us what befalls in Talonnorn.”

Tariskra bowed in deep reverence, and hurried to obey.

She was well away from that chamber, down one passage and
then another, when she realized what had struck her most about the Revered Mother's voice, upon hearing her news.

It wasn't that Lolonmae had sounded amused—it was that she hadn't sounded surprised.

 

The younger crone balled her elegant fingers together into shaking fists and burst out, “Who
is
he?”

The two crones stood on a high balcony in Talonnorn, watching not the dying flames—now noticeably fewer and more feeble, fading as swiftly and as unheralded as they'd come—but a whorl of their own conjuring, that hovered horizontally in the air by their ankles.

They were watching a lone tall, robed stranger striding through the heart of Talonnorn, going from one great tower to another, always heading for the grandest structures. He slew all who sought to stop or harm him, again and again blasting such Talonar with contemptuous ease.

“Does it matter?” the older crone replied balefully. “We can see what he's doing—seeking magic, everywhere it's most likely to be had, and regardless of how it's defended.”

They had just seen seven House spellrobes work their mightiest spells in unison, to bring their own tower down, destroying it just to try to kill the stranger while he was inside. They had also seen that Nifl, who hurled magic so much more powerful than theirs, emerge unscathed from the rubble, in shieldings of his own magical making—and slaughter the seven spellrobes without even slowing his steady walk toward the
next
grand tower.

“C-could this be the one they call Klarandarr?”

The older crone's lip curled. “Klarandarr is a myth. A tale woven by Ouvahlor to keep the more ambitious of our own House heirs and spellrobes from destroying that city—as they should have destroyed it long ago. Klarandarr—”

“What's
that
?” The younger crone pointed at a sudden white
flare of light, a pulse that shone brightly and then faded just as quickly as it had come, leaving . . . the hands of the stranger empty.

“Sending his loot home,” the older crone snorted. “He was carrying too much magic to keep from staggering, so he rid himself of his load. So now he can assault the Eventowers in untrammeled comfort.” She leaned forward, sounding very satisfied. “So
now
we shall see some sights. Evendoom humbled, or yon stranger destroyed—or both.”

Flashes of spell-light promptly appeared in the windows of the Evendoom gate-spires, and muffled explosions could be heard. House Evendoom, it seemed, stood not unguarded.

“How can one man . . .”

The younger crone's fearful whisper trailed away as the greatest tower of the sprawling and interconnected Evendoom fortress was suddenly shattered from within, as if a great but unseen fist had punched upward from its heart. Shards of stone hurtled in all directions, pattering or crashing down all over Talonnorn—and that great domed tower fell in on itself, in a titanic collapse that shook the cavern, hurled up a huge cloud of blinding dust, and caused nearby towers to crack and topple. A great cloud of dust blossomed in the wake of their falling, amid rumblings . . . and when that deep tumult and noise faded, the dust rose still, expanding in eerie silence.

The Talonar crones stood frozen on their balcony, hardly daring to hope—and then moaned in despairing unison, as the stranger came striding into view out of the dust, evidently unharmed. He was smiling, and the flickering glows of great destroying magics swirled around both of his bare and empty hands.

A relative quiet had fallen over Glowstone. The prowling beasts of the Wild Dark who'd been arriving in great numbers to see what wounded and carrion could be easily had were all dead now, or had been taught prudence by ready Nifl blades and had slunk back out into the darkness, to lurk and await better opportunities.

Yet the most respected Niflghar in Glowstone suddenly stiffened,
causing Lord Erlingar Evendoom to frown in alarm and stride toward him.

Before he could reach Faunhorn, his brother turned to face Erlingar and announced grimly, “Something is happening in Talonnorn.”

“What?”

Faunhorn shook his head. “I know not. But it is very bad.”

Erlingar turned to face in the direction of distant Talonnorn, then threw up his hands. “There is nothing I can do, beyond trudge there and see the aftermath. Nothing.”

He turned away, striding aimlessly across the cavern, and then came to a halt, and shrugged. “I am no longer of Talonnorn.”

Faunhorn silently walked to his side, and put an arm around his shoulders.

“I should have stayed and died,” Erlingar whispered, after a time.

“No,” Faunhorn replied firmly. “That would have been the easy way. And Lords of Evendoom do not take the easy way.”

 

The place where Jalandral had imprisoned Klaerra Evendoom “for her own safety” was a chamber deep in the cellars of the Eventowers.

Jalandral led the way to it in silence, grimly satisfied to hear all converse among the merchants of the Araed and the priestesses following him slowly die away in awe as the descent went on, and on . . . and on. Stairs after stairs, halls after passages. None of them had ever seen such extensive underways before, nor such wealth; the Eventowers went down a
long
way.

At least a dozen times during their journey, the stone rocked and rumbled all around them, shaken by great explosions or tremors from above. Once, one of the priestesses shrieked in the heart of those shakings, and more than once, as dust and small stones rained down around them, the merchants cursed.

When Jalandral finally reached the door he was seeking, it
stood open, causing him to frown and quicken his stride. Keeping pace beside him, the merchant Ondrar muttered something under his breath, and a faintly glowing aura suddenly swirled around the High Lord of Talonnorn, shielding him against . . .

Nothing, as it happened.

The chamber beyond the door was comfortably furnished, with a high oval bed whose rim was set with a fringe of fine silver manacles; they were the only suggestions of confinement or compulsion in the room. A scrying-whorl floated in the air beside the bed, and a barefoot crone in light chamber robes stood before it, gazing into it. She turned to regard the Nifl now crowding into the chamber with a polite smile and a nod of greeting, and held out her hands to Jalandral.

Who stopped well short of stepping into them, and said, “Klaerra, I am here on matters of state—”

“Dral,” she said gently, her soft voice causing sudden tense silence in the room, “be welcome. I know why you've come.” She aimed one finger at the whorl in explanation, and then stood silent, waiting.

Silence deepened, as everyone stood staring. Jalandral stared down at his hands as if expecting to find something unusual had appeared in them, and then threw up his head almost briskly—only to say softly, “The door . . . it was open.”

Klaerra shrugged. “The chamber pot became full, and as I
wasn't
a prisoner . . .”

Jalandral winced. “But the spells on that door . . .”

The Evendoom crone smiled at him, her eyes unreadable. “Mere trifles, High Lord. You really should get someone competent to work magic for you. Me, for instance.”

Several of the Araed merchants and all of the priestesses took those softly spoken words as a threat, and recoiled, expecting spells to lash out at them without warning.

Klaerra's face acquired a sad smile at their reaction, but nothing else happened.

Jalandral stood his ground, kept his eyes on hers, and said quietly,
“I have made several mistakes, Lady of Evendoom. Yet I do not believe any of them had anything to do with the current crisis besetting Talonnorn—a crisis that compels me to request your help.”

As if it had been listening for a cue, the room rocked, rock dust falling in a light shower, and the stone walls boomed and echoed.

“Klaerra,” Jalandral said unnecessarily, “Talonnorn is under attack.”

The response was a nod. “From Klarandarr of Ouvahlor within our walls, and several small fighting bands approaching out of the Dark.”

“So, Lady,” Jalandral said gravely, “you know our need.”