Dark Warrior Rising (19 page)

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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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Take that not the wrong way
. His mind-voice was mocking.
 
 
It had been good to watch the Hunt wheel and laugh, chasing each other around city spires and flourishing their blades in salute. Yet after they'd flown forth from Talonnorn for the first time since the battles, winging out of the great cavern into the Dark beyond, Ravandarr Evendoom had turned away with a surprisingly heavy heart.
The ramparts suddenly seemed a cold and unfriendly place. Jalandral was out there, somewhere, and so was …
Savagely Ravan put all thoughts of his sister Taera out of his mind, his head swirling as wildly as his cloak, and stalked down through dark
and deserted passages, seeking his own chambers. There to brood, perhaps summon some Nameless shes to dance for him, or whip each other while he watched …
yes.
None of them would be Taerune Evendoom, but—
Something moved in the darkness ahead; something that was blocking his way. Ravan's hand went to his sword hilt out of habit, even as his wards flared. He let his real, rising anger put sparks into his frown. “Who—”
His wards faded away before a stronger radiance, a ruby-red glow that outlined a dark and slender figure. Shorter than he was, curvaceous … and all too familiar. Astonishment made him blurt out, “Maharla?”
“The same,” the Eldest of Evendoom purred, even before he could curse himself for not greeting the most senior crone of the House properly. “I am very pleased to have found you so swiftly, Ravandarr … and alone.”
Deepening astonishment. Friendliness? From
Maharla
? He was speechless as her hand—tingling with power, surging magic that swirled sparks from the hilt of Ravan's blade that almost certainly marked it being magically bound into its scabbard—took his, soft and warm and strong, and drew him toward the wall.
It parted before her, a door opening soundlessly to reveal a chamber awash in moving, surging red glows of her magic. Prepared beforehand, obviously; Ravan's bracers tingled with life of their own as his wards tried to awaken again, but were overwhelmed.
Maharla drew him firmly inside the room, her magic sealing them in together, and murmured, “Be not alarmed, Secondblood of Evendoom. You stand in the favor of Holy Olone.”
Ravandarr blinked. “I—I do?”
The Eldest was towing him, ever so gently, across the room of billowing red smoke to a chased oval coffer. It stood up out of the swirling smoke atop a plinth of smooth-carved, upswept stone, that was shaped like a frozen wave of water.
“You do,” she confirmed softly. “The Goddess has sent me a vision. A vision of you.”
She stopped beside the coffer. “You were walking alone, sword in hand, through the caverns of the Wild Dark—and you were pursuing your Nameless sister.”
“I …” Ravandarr realized he knew nothing safe to say, and so said merely, “I know not what this might mean, Eldest. Guide me.”
Maharla nodded, satisfaction in her solemn eyes. “You must go forth into the Outcaverns in secret, telling no one, and do what Jalandral will undoubtedly fail to do, and so prove your true worth to your father.”
“I must hunt T—ah, the Nameless.”
Maharla nodded and put her hand on the coffer. Her slender fingers slid into some of its carved grooves; using them as a handle, she lifted the top half of the oval, revealing its bowl-like base. Dipping her other hand inside, she lifted out a small stone threaded on a long, fine neck chain, and held it out to him.
“This,” she whispered reverently, “is the most precious thing in all Talonnorn!”
They gazed at it together as it swayed slightly, her fingers spread above it to hold the chain apart and let it dangle. No matter how hard Ravandarr stared, it remained a small, rough, nondescript stone. A thumb-sized fragment of cave rock, not a gemstone.
“This was once touched by Holy Olone herself,” Maharla told him, her voice still a whisper of excitement, “and holds great power. You shall wear it around your neck, and through it I can mind-whisper directions to you from afar, guiding you unerringly after … the one who must be slain. With this, you cannot fail.”
Dumbfounded, Ravan blurted out, “But I thought—you—”
“Despised you as a weakling? I did. Yet Olone is all-seeing, and Her will guides us all. Ravandarr, I despise you no longer, but admire you—for Olone has chosen you, which makes you greater than us all.”
Setting the lid back down on the coffer, the Eldest of Evendoom raised the necklace in both hands, stepped forward, and put it around his neck.
“Hurry, now!” she murmured, as they stood face to face. “It may take time to do Olone's will, but you must begin now.”
Then, as Ravan gazed at her in deepening disbelief, Maharla Evendoom took his head in her hands and kissed him.
Whereupon, as the old Nifl tales put it, it was too late.
Ravandarr stirred under her lips as her spell flooded into him, awakening the pendant's mind-link, and flooding him with waves of love, pride, and admiration.
Erlingar Evendoom himself could not have withstood that conquering—and Ravandarr was young and frustrated and weak-willed, a yearning rampant, not a wise and hardened foe.
He stiffened, against her, and moaned into her mouth in rapture,
and threw back his head wearing the widest smile it had ever worn, eyes a-glow. “Eldest, command me!” he gasped. “Hurry where, exactly?”
“Back to your chambers—speaking to
no one
of this—to properly arm yourself, and take pouches of food and water. Then go, seeking the Outcaverns by any path that will get you out of Eventowers unseen. Call on me—in your mind—for guidance if you encounter difficulties, and call on me again when you reach the Outcaverns, for the right way to take onward. Go.”
“Eldest,” he gasped, bending to kiss her open hands in reverence. Then he spun around and departed in eager haste.
Maharla did not allow herself to smirk in triumph until her mists had quite hidden the door that had opened before him and closed behind him again by its silent self and without Ravandarr Evendoom even noticing it.
What a fool.
When Lord Evendoom discovered his second son gone, his rage would be terrible. Whereupon it would be trifling ease itself to goad him into saying or doing something that would let her bring down Olone's doom upon him.
Then
she
would choose the pureblood who would rule the Evendooms. In her name, of course. In her bed it would take but moments to drift into the mind of that new Lord Evendoom and put it in thrall—probably, if she did it at a moment of rapture, without him even noticing.
Ravandarr could serve her as that Lord.
If
he returned. Even with one arm, Taerune could probably slay him in moments—and if Shoan Maulstryke hadn't managed to fell Jalandral, Ravandarr would be her sacrificial dart, hurled at his own brother heedless of what harm he took, to wound that laughing fool as sorely as he could.
No, Ravandarr was as good as dead already.
Ah, Olone was
such
a hungry goddess.
 
 
“What can you see?” Taerune asked cautiously.
Orivon opened his tightly shut eyes, tears swimming, blinked, swiped at his eyes with his forearm, and blinked again. “You,” he growled at last, trying to ignore the blurring that kept creeping back in long after he was sure the tears had gone, which his knuckling and grimacing had brought on. He shook his head several times as he strode up and down the ledge.
“Aye,” he said at last. “I can see.” He said nothing about his weak,
sick feeling inside, and the searing pain down his left side. Wizards' wards, it seemed, were … painful things. Next time, he'd throw a rock.
“So let's be moving,” he added. “It seems half Talonnorn can't help but find this ledge.”
Taerune smiled—the first time he could ever recall seeing a smile on her face that hadn't held a sneer, or cruel excitement, or pain. It changed her face completely.
His lingering stare made her flush—that creeping paleness Nifl got—and turn away. “Yes,” she agreed, her back to him. “Let's … be moving. The Ravagers are quite gone. On to raid Talonnorn.”
It was a shapely back. Looking at it, Orivon could forget the sting of her lash. For a breath or two.
“We need to find a cavern, or some crevice, where we can hide,” he growled. “One where we can roll a stone across like a door, or some such. A place we can rest without the Hunt being able to see us if they swoop past.”
Taerune opened her mouth to tell him she didn't think there was enough of the Hunt left, now, to fly anywhere—and then shut it again, without saying a word. What did she know, really? There had always been young rampants eager to join, lesser flyers scorned by the veterans—and the riders of other Houses forbidden or unwilling to fly under Evendoom command. Talonnorn was different, now. Too badly ravaged to merely forget a day of battle, rebuild and shrug aside sharp lessons and pretend it had never happened. Talonnorn had been changed, leaving her knowing … nothing.
“Rest would be good,” she agreed instead, watching Orivon collect blades and whips back into a bundle. He must have noticed that her gag and the severed ends of the lash were thrust through her belt, revealing that she'd freed herself, but he said not a word.
Over many, many Turnings of plying her whip, she'd noticed that some humans did that. Watched and smoldered, where a Talonar Nifl would have coldly confronted. Or perhaps being a slave taught that slow, patient anger.
The firefist turned and straightened. She'd forgotten just how
large
he was, how … muscled. Hulking. “Right, we're seeking a cavern where we can hide from the Hunt and rest, and I can affix a blade to your stump. So, Lady Evendoom, give me your wisdom,” he said formally. “Whither?”
Taerune shrugged. “Deeper into the Wild Dark; where else?”
He pointed at the lip of the ledge, silently ordering her to climb down first. She shrugged again, nodded, and swung herself over the edge.
The climb was easy, even under the tiny stingings of the little stones his boots dislodged onto her, the drift left behind by the dust of the spells that had smashed stalactites off the ceiling. Taerune was soon down in the tumbled stones, surrounded by bodies. Swift gouging-beetles were already swarming over some of them, eating holes in leather and flesh alike.
Orivon joined her with a grunt of distaste—and then waded into the gnawing frenzy, bringing his fists down like hammers on the beetles until he could reach flasks and pouches and belts, and tug them free. Food, and drink, and—
“See anything that might be a map?” he asked, waving a hand to indicate all the dead, across the cavern. There was nothing approaching hope in his voice.
“No,” Taerune told him truthfully. “I can tell you now that there's nothing here. Unless the Ravagers are more different from Talonar than I've been told.”
Orivon gave her a frowning look. “Oh? Different how? Couldn't there be a map on every dead Nifl here? A scrap of cloth? A folded parchment in a pouch?”
His longtime tormentor shook her head. “Maps can't be flat.”
“What?” Orivon's growl was disbelieving. “Of
course
they can. Why, in Ash—in my village, the elders scratched them in the fireside dirt with a stick. And the grand maps, the ones that lasted, were burned into tabletops with fire coals. They held the coals with tongs, and marked the rivers, the …”
His voice trailed off under Taerune's sad smile.
“The Blindingbright,” she half-said, and half-asked, “is land with sky above it, and nothing below—yes? Except graves you dig, and caves, and us.” She swept her hand through the air, as if running it along a gently undulating ledge or tabletop.
Orivon nodded.
The Niflghar shook her head. “So simple. Here in the Dark, there is always something above you, and something below, not just what lies this way or that way. Flat maps are useless, unless perhaps in assigning bedchambers to guests in the Eventowers.”
“So what does a Nifl map look like?”
“In Talonnorn, either a … a volume of air enspelled so colored
sparks float in it, marking the locations of features—or a sphere made up of stacked layers of metal discs, graven with features of the Dark. The layers are held apart, thus, by spines of metal they slot into, but it can all be pulled apart and collapsed into, ah …”
“A thick heap of metal discs, like shields stacked on a forgefist's ‘done' table,” Orivon growled. “So, not flat.”
“Not flat,” Taerune agreed, smiling that real smile again.
“So how do merchants—and armies—find their ways through the Dark, then? I can't see the Hunt flapping along trying to fit together a metal ball in midair!”

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