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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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“Yes,” Lord Evendoom said heavily. “Very shortly I shall be announcing your
aching
willingness to undertake this task. See that you play the part accordingly.”
“Lo, in this hour of impending peril, Lord Evendoom sends forth the mightiest force he commands, his flippant and decidedly indolent heir, to do the dirtiest of misplacedly vengeful deeds ever ordered,” Jalandral declaimed grandly, spreading his arms.
Striding past, Lord Evendoom jerked one of those arms sharply down, spinning Jalandral around, and snapped, “
Cease
playing the fool and behave as befits an Evendoom until you're gone! Then you can go back to being what you are!”
Jalandral sketched an airily florid salute. “Jalandral Evendoom stands ever ready to serve his family, his city—and every spiteful crone with a misplaced whim within them!”
“F-father,” Ravandarr said then, stepping into Lord Evendoom's path, so that they almost collided, “let
me
go.”
“What?” Lord Evendoom loomed over his son, swaying from his hasty halt. “Ravandarr, this is to be a
killing.
We're all well aware of your … closeness to Ta—to your sister, but she must be slaughtered, and her head brought back to be presented to the Eldest, as proof!”
His younger son was trembling, as pale as a sword blade, but he stood his ground. “I—I
will
do it, Father!”
“Bah!” Lord Evendoom whirled away, and stalked back across the chamber. “Look at you! You look
sick,
not capable! You picked a fine time to go rampant; pity you've not shown such spirit ever before!”
“Well, of
course
he's sick,” Jalandral said soothingly. “Sick with disbelief—as we all are—and then revolted at Taera's treachery. See how he trembles with determination?”
Lord Evendoom whirled around again to face them both, cloak swirling. “Jalandral,
have done
! I look bad enough sending you, but at least it can be passed off as testing my heir and letting all see his true mettle! If I send
him,
the crones will openly accuse me of mocking their will, trying to see their decrees thwarted!”
“Ah, yes.” Jalandral nodded, inspecting the backs of his fingernails critically, and dropping into mimicry of his father's strong, deep voice. “I see, I quite see. And we all know where
that
supposition of our dear crones would lead, don't we?”
Lord Evendoom burst into a wordless roar of rage that sent Ravandarr, already trembling on the edge of tears, into headlong flight. Then he found his voice again.
“Ravandarr,
halt
! And turn and stand your ground like an Evendoom, damn you, or by Olone and all Her temptations, I'll sword you myself, here and now!
Do this!
”
The power of his voice brought Ravandarr, already stopping and turning, cowering to his knees.
Lord Evendoom looked at them both, one after the other, and then
said in a voice as cold as any crone's, “You will obey, and you will behave so as to impress our Eldest and every crone of this House.”
Ravandarr hastily stood up straight, still trembling.
Lord Evendoom gave him a curt nod, and added, “For if you fail, the crones will put us all to death. Go and prepare yourselves; this audience is at an end.”
Turning his back on them, he strode to the massive arched double doors that opened into the Long Hall.
Magics that had been old before Erlingar Evendoom was born made them open by themselves at his approach, grinding thunderously apart as the privacy wards flickered and died around them like ghostly flames. His two sons stood like statues, watching him go.
Out across the unbroken expanse of mirror-glossy tiles that stretched from the audience chamber into and throughout the cavernous Long Hall. A very long walk, even for a tall Nifl, to meet the Nifl gathered waiting there.
The heads of all the Houses of Talonnorn were standing inside a winking, glittering ring of multiple defensive magics. Between and around them were priestesses of Olone in full holy regalia, and many senior crones in simple robes, there to keep the peace between the Houses and to bear witness.
“We are gathered here in the House struck hardest,” the softly lilting voice of Aumaeraunda, Holiest of Olone, rolled into every ear without being raised in the slightest, “to confer as to what Talonnorn should do now.”
“Make war on Ouvahlor,” Lord Oszrim snarled, ignoring the normal precedence of speech; an effrontery that made Oszrim's Eldest and Oszrim's heir both pale in embarrassment. “What else?”
“Rebuild in a manner that forewarns Talonnorn against all attacks,” Lord Dounlar put in.
“Attacks from without,” Maharla, Eldest of Evendoom, added icily, “and from within.”
“And who, exactly, are you?” the Eldest crone of Maulstryke asked in tones of sweet venom, a reminder to all of the suddenness and recent vintage of Maharla's self-appointed authority.
Maharla whirled, white with rage, but Aumaeraunda called upon a little of the Power of the magic ringing them all to render all crones in the ring momentarily frozen and voiceless.
“Lord Evendoom,” she said, gathering the Power around her that
none of them could withstand, “you have just taken private audience with your sons. The Will of Divine Olone Herself demands to know what orders you gave them.”
Lord Evendoom gave her a little bow to signify that his obedience was a matter of his own assent as well as her coercion, and said with dignity, “In the strife just past, one of my daughters slew three of my daughters—in her bedchamber, not in formal combat—and fled. The Eldest of Evendoom has declared her Nameless, and I have just ordered my heir to hunt her down and slay her, to restore the honor of our House. My Secondblood requested that this duty be given to him, but upon him I ordered attendance at the death rites of our kin. I also ordered them both to behave befittingly, as Evendooms.”
“He speaks truth to us all,” the high priestess confirmed. “We are satisfied.”
“
You
may be, Most Holy,” burst out a tall, handsome young Nifl who stood a head taller than everyone except Lord Evendoom and Holy Aumaeraunda, his words a rudeness that made some of the elder crones emit indignant gasps that sounded like short, chirping shrieks, “but I am not. Your sons are widely known in Talonnorn—in
my
House, even our slaves know it—as disgraces to all Niflghar! The one a prancing, posing buffoon, the other a sniveling coward;
ordering
them to behave is easy enough, but will prove futile emptiness; Lord Evendoom, you should have
compelled
them to ‘behave befittingly' many, many Turnings ago!”
“Maulstryke,” Lord Evendoom said mildly, speaking to the father rather than to the son, “your heir is most … eloquent. Yet in Talonar society we cleave to customs of etiquette. Is”—he waved his hand gently in the direction of his cold critic—“
this
befitting behavior?”
“As my heir, what Shoan has said is both rude and out of place,” Lord Ohzeld Maulstryke replied, his voice somehow both silken-sharp and deep. “Yet I rebuke him not, nor will do so, because he spoke then not as my heir, but as the battlelord of Maulstryke, quite rightly identifying weaknesses in House Evendoom—the House most damaged in this strife, let all remember; something that speaks more tellingly of their preparedness than all the words we may care to utter here—that affect all Talonnorn. To be blunt, Evendoom, Shoan points out the obvious, and we all know it is something you should have addressed long ago. Your eldest daughter—Taerune, is it not?—is thrice the warrior your heir and Secondblood put together will ever be. So—”
“The one to whom you refer is now
Nameless
!” Maharla hissed. “Speak not of her!”
“Ah. I find myself unsurprised,” Lord Maulstryke observed coldly, well aware of the enjoyment glittering in the eyes of most of the gathered crones. “She no doubt acted out of rage at the behavior of her kin in this time of Talonnorn's need. I understand that rage.”
“If the head and heir of House Maulstryke are so deeply concerned about the competencies of my sons,” Lord Evendoom said calmly, “they are welcome to accompany my heir, to see for themselves that the honor of Talonnorn is ably defended.”
“I
will
go,” Shoan Maulstryke snarled, “and shall begin to ready myself this instant!”
He stormed out of the ring, the high priestess hastily working its barrier magics to let him pass unscathed.
In silence they watched him stride off down the Long Hall, cloak streaming in his wake.
“Unlike Lord Evendoom,” Lord Ohzeld Maulstryke said then, “I am aware of my duties, and cannot undertake vengeful escapades when Talonnorn stands threatened. There is much to do, and overbold talk and dispute will get none of these needful things done. I take this opportunity to gift Lord Evendoom with a promise—some might call it a warning—that dire consequences will follow if his decision to send his heir on such a fool's errand is revealed to have been mistaken or if any treachery is worked against
my
heir. May you all enjoy an excellent converse, hereafter.”
And with a nod to the Holiest of Olone, Lord Maulstryke followed his son out of the ring, his cloak trailing sparks of its Power as he began the long walk.
 
 
Orivon frowned down at the weapons he'd brought from the Rift. “All of these are too long to fit you with.”
Taerune held up her stump. “Just a dagger, perhaps? We've plenty to choose from, now.”
There arose a sudden crackle behind them, and they both whirled around.
Close enough to tug at their limbs as it snarled into eerily blue, humming life, a wall of glowing air they could see through was rising, building
slowly up from the stones by their boots into the darkness high overhead. Magic was now cloaking Talonnorn.
Orivon stared at the humming blue fire rather grimly, watching it lick and dance across the tunnel, around the door that was still ajar. “The wards.”
“Yes,” Taerune said softly, and let out a great sigh. “Protecting Talonnorn from dung-worms and attacking Niflghar of Ouvahlor alike. Walling us out, too.”
Orivon shook his head. “You Nifl are so … dramatic. Overblown. Everything's so—florid.”
Taerune's smile was as sad as his words had been wry. “And I had to teach you eloquence, didn't I? Just to have a slave who could appreciate my own cleverness.”
Orivon gave her a hard look. “Is that why you did it?”
She went pale, looked away, and then said quietly, “This probably isn't the best of times to tell you, but I've almost no magic left. This Orb isn't …”
Orivon sighed. “‘Magic,' you were going to say? Or ‘useful'?”
Glee Among the Ravagers
When there is glee among the Ravagers
Prices will be high, and selection short.
—old Niflghar traders' saying
“T
ook a lot of rockfalls, that did,” the Nifl everyone knew as Old Bloodblade commented, looking down from the high ledge at a crew of younger Ravagers busily clambering over (and through) the huge skeleton of a raudren, scraping and hewing flesh and hide into baskets for the cooking fires and the tanning cauldrons. “Yet we slew it in the end.”
Gruffly pointing out the obvious was what Old Bloodblade
did,
so the one-eyed Ravager lounging beside him didn't bother getting irritated. Instead, Blind Lharlak transferred the strip of raudren hide he was chewing on from one cheek to the other with his tongue, and through its movements made the grunt that signified agreement. His eye patch and ever-present curved sword made him look villainous indeed, and he did nothing to discourage that image—though his mustache was far tidier and more slender than the bristling foliage of his ledge-mate.
Needing no further encouragement, Old Bloodblade growled on. “Heard only six raudren flew back to Talonnorn, when they blew the horns, and one of them was so sorely wounded that it flew headlong into a castle tower and got itself killed—smashing the top off the tower, too! Crushed a lot of Haraedra, that did!”
“Unfortunately, they were Nameless,” Lharlak replied. “Servants,
warblades—
our
sort of Nifl. Not the purebloods and spellrobes, priestesses and crones.”
“Hmph,” Old Bloodblade commented. “Those sort of Nifl never get killed—except on the sly, by their own kind. Rat eating rat, you might say.”
“And many do,” Lharlak murmured, a favorite saying that Old Bloodblade heard all too often. “And many do.”
 
 
Orivon thrust his sword into the narrowing crack at the end of the ledge, where it grew too small for his body to go farther. The steel bit into nothing, and he heard and smelled no beast. “I
think
it's safe,” he muttered. “We sleep here?”
“You're the one with the lashes, and I'm the one who gets tied up,” Taerune reminded him softly. “You must decide.”
Orivon's mouth's tightened. “We sleep here.”
She promptly nodded, let out a long sigh, and sagged back against the rough rock. “Good. I'm … more than weary.”
“And we have no food, nor anything to drink,” Orivon said grimly, “and no map. With Talonnorn shielded against us.”
Taerune nodded silently, eyes on his.
“Well?” Orivon growled. “Aren't you even going to say anything?” Taerune shrugged. “We'll both be happier about this disaster after we've had some sleep?”
Her longtime slave snorted. “
Thank
you, Lady Evendoom.”
“This isn't going to be comfortable,” she complained. “Can't you dump the weapons out on the ledge and give us both another cloak to put under us? This stone is very … hard.”
Orivon snorted again, amused despite himself at her brilliant observation. “Any more requests?”
“Yes. Could you bind me faceup, this time? Just tie my wrist to my side.”
“As my Lady commands,” he said sarcastically, getting out the lashes.
 
 
“Ho, luggards,” the new arrival on the ledge greeted Old Bloodblade and Lharlak casually.
“Ho, Daruse,” they mumbled back, waving at an empty stretch of ledge in an invitation to sit down.
Daruse accepted. He looked even more like the Talonar view of a Ravager than his fellows: dirty, clad in tangled scraps of weathered, salvaged armor, and hung about with a fearsome arsenal of rusty, well-used weapons. He looked battered, with the edge of one ear torn and gone, his not-so-obsidian skin sporting more than a few scars and nasty-looking scaly areas. He wore several gaudy things seized from the bodies of Nifl he'd slain that he believed were amulets, and an eye patch. Unlike Lharlak, Daruse's eye patch was for show, and when the whim took him, he moved it from one eye to the other, or dropped it down around his neck to dangle and leave both his eyes free.
“Barandon,” he said, using Old Bloodblade's real name because it irritated the stout old Nifl immensely, and because doing so got him Bloodblade's immediate attention, “I've been thinking.”
“
Oh,
no! Gird yourselves for battle, all! It'll be raining spellrobes in a bit, and Olone Herself'll be down to personally kiss our backsides! Daruse has been
thinking
!”
“Gently, gently,” Daruse drawled amiably. “My ire's a terrible flame when aroused, you know!”
“So the shes have said,” Lharlak jested, “but they were giggling something fierce when they said it!”
“Chortle, chortle,” Daruse replied with a yawn. “
Any
how, listen: Talonnorn's badly weakened, yes?”
“Yes,” the other two chorused, having heard many vivid descriptions of the Eventowers half-collapsed, fires and corpses everywhere, and towers fallen all across the city.
“
Well,
now! Stands to reason this is a great chance for us to raid, and do some
real
damage! Raudren almost all slain, their Hunt and their warblades both cut to tripes and every House eyeing every other House; all suspicious, and wanting to keep their blades at home to use on each other … and once they start to rebuild, and everything is chaos and confusion and supplies heaped everywhere for the taking …”
“I'm hearing you,” Old Bloodblade grunted. “And nodding for once, too.”
Lharlak saved himself the effort of speaking, and just nodded.
“So what say, brave blades? Do we sit here, camped out in the Wild Dark, waiting for the next creeping monster to gobble us? Or do we seize this
ideal time to attack,
and
really
loot and pillage Talonnorn at last?”
“Me for looting,” Old Bloodblade growled.
“Me for pillaging,” Lharlak chimed in laconically, shifting his chew back to the other cheek again.
“Oh, you
luggards
!” Daruse growled disgustedly. “I might have saved myself a lot of breath—”
“By asking us straight out if we'd already agreed to muster a raiding party,” Old Bloodblade told him. “Which we have.”
“Well, why didn't you
say
—”
Blind Lharlak turned on Daruse, pouting his lips in a parody of a lusty wanton Nifl-she, and said, “Because we so
love
to hear you cajole, Ruse, we do! You could cajole a crone to lick your behind, you could!”
“
Oh,
now,” Old Bloodblade rumbled, “that's something I'll be wanting to see him demonstrate, once we're lording it in some Talonar castle! Could you spare a crone for me, Ruse, old friend?”
“For you, Lord Barandon, no less than four—if your aging heart can take it, that is!”
“Olone
rut,
” Old Bloodblade snarled, making the lewd hooked-fingers gesture that went with that oath.
He made it again when the others on the ledge both chuckled mockingly at him.
 
 
It was rare indeed for Lord Ohzeld Maulstryke to stand in this particular chamber of Maulgard—and rarer still for him to be there without a silently waiting cluster of servants.
They were all just beyond the outer doors, of course. Neither father nor son wanted them closer, and the scrying-foil glows of both their wards warred soundlessly in the air around them to keep subtler spies—the crones of their own House—at bay. The castle of House Maulstryke, for all its habitual silence, was a place of energetic spying and vicious betrayals, and none of the Maulstryke rampants were eager to cross their crones more than they had to. So by all the magical means either Nifl could muster, this was, and would remain, a strictly private meeting.
Disdaining any of the chairs his son seemed to think must crowd a robing-room, Lord Ohzeld stood like a statue of icy anger on the largest clear expanse of gleaming black marble. “You have said and done many stupid things in your life, Shoan, but this surpasses all. I am appalled. More than that, I am disgusted and disappointed. That a son of mine should let a dolt like Evendoom goad you—goad you like a child!—into
declaring you'd set boots outside Talonnorn in the company of that grinning fop Jalandral—as lazily a poison-using murderer as this city has ever held—hunting some matter-nothing Maimed One, who when she was whole was fit only to flog slaves, at that!”
The Firstblood of House Maulstryke was just as angry, but his ire was hot forgefire to his father's ice. He strode around his marble chambers with swift, abrupt whirlings, anger in his every movement, slapping on armor and fetching forth his best weapons with impatient rattlings.
“Father, I have my own honor to avenge. She once struck
me
with her lash. In … a private moment, something too small and shameful to demand redress in the normal way of things. Yet it's fitting that if Taerune Evendoom be struck down, my hand be the one to grind her face into the rock and make her beg vainly for mercy, through her own blood!”
Ohzeld stared at his heir in expressionless silence for too long a time for either of them to be comfortable … and then nodded, slowly and curtly. “Fitting, yes. This, I was unaware of. Because you kept a secret you should not have kept. Secrets, Shoan, are weaknesses; take care you not carry too many, lest your best armor become a cloak full of holes.”
 
 
Jalandral Evendoom moved around his chambers with unhurried, languid grace, buckling on the last of his sleek black armor, and flexing its sliding plates experimentally by swinging and bending his arms thus and so.
Ravandarr was certain that if he hadn't been present, Jalandral would have been
humming.
Oh So Holy Olone, why was Dral always so
happy
? Was he … oriad?
“Dral,” he snapped, unable to keep silent any longer.
His older brother looked up from the array of weapons laid out on his bed. “Hmm?”
Ravandarr was leaning against the door frame, scowling, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of his face and voice. “
I
should be the one to hunt Taera down,” he grated, bouncing a fist morosely off the unyielding stone beside him. “I was the one she was closest to. The one who has been most betrayed.”
“Nay, brother,” Jalandral said dryly, sighting along the glossy edge of a favorite blade with every evidence of satisfaction, before sliding it back into its scabbard. “Our dead sisters have been the most betrayed.”
“Perhaps.” Ravan's scowl deepened. “No, you speak truth. Yet they
are
dead, and so feel no scorn-fire. Whereas I—”
“Seethe and bubble like cauldron-simmer, brother.” Jalandral shook his head, turned from equipping himself, and wagged one long, elegant finger. “Cloak that rage, gather it within, and
master
it, Ravan. When you have mastered it, you can forge from it whatever you need … to see your aims fulfilled, your whims made deeds … your battles turned to triumphs.” He scooped up an evidently succulent amraunt from a handy pedestal dish, smiled and winked at it, and ate it with impish grace.
Ravandarr swung his hand angrily, as if slicing the air with a sword he did not have. “But that's just it!
What
battles? Father never lets me so much as—”
“Ah, but he will. Soon after I depart. His own neck is at risk in this, and he sees me as far too much the self-minded, pert little puppy.
You
are his burningly loyal back-blade. He will send you off after me with a force of your own, to strike if I fail or falter or just decide to do something other than slay Taera and bring her severed head back here for him to parade before the crones.”
“‘Something other'?” Ravandarr frowned. “Such as?”
“Such as rape her—now that she's maimed, and thus no longer our kin. I've wanted to taste her charms for a long time, haven't you?—and then help her get to the Ravagers, to find a new life there.”
Ravandarr gaped at his brother, aghast. “But-but-
why
? Every moment she still breathes is an affront to Olone! House Evendoom can't help but sink into divine disfavor, and be—”
“Nay, brother,” Jalandral interrupted jauntily, “every moment she still breathes is an affront to the crones, as it reminds all that their power isn't absolute. Olone cares nothing for what we do to others—or haven't you been listening to the holy chants?”
He turned back to the bed, took up the sword they'd both known he'd choose, and began buckling it on. “Olone cares only about our personal quests for perfection—‘beauty,' if you will. Needlessly putting a sword through a Maimed One does nothing at all to make us more perfect.”

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