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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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That was all he had time to see, as the grinning dark elf finished killing old women and came leaping at him like a fox in a hurry.
Orivon dodged away, and ran hard for the nearest trees.
A great roar erupted behind him—a voice he knew.
He twisted around, not slowing, and saw Dargar, the great warrior
of the village, burst into view from behind a wagon, sword flashing in hand.
The nightskin chasing Orivon turned and sprang at Dargar, who snarled defiance and swung his blade viciously, its edge shimmering back firelight. Dark shadows were leaping at him from all sides.
“For Ashenuld!” he roared.
“For Ashenuld!” Orivon shouted back. “Dargar! Kill them, Dargar!”
He was still shouting as four shadows lunged with contemptuous ease, four long and dark blades met in Dargar's body, and the great warrior of Ashenuld reeled, wide-eyed, and started spewing blood and dying.
“No!” Orivon shrieked. “No!”
And then something that stank of spring flowers, odd nose-prickling scents, and something sour all at once, descended over his head and blotted the night out. The something was thick, coarse cloth that pulled tight across his face, sawing at his nose …
And the starry night went away, and true night came.
Darkness.
Just darkness.
The Towers of Talonnorn
Drink, drink down the juksarr,
Let none now moan nor mourn,
For we fare forth fast and far
At last to bright Talonnorn.
—Niflghar way-chant
I
t was as long as four large wagons, yet looked like a tiny insect flitting among the stone fangs of the Outcaverns. Silently it flapped and banked, dodging through the great columns of rock with smoothly scudding familiarity. It was batlike and black, and held its long neck as straight as a lance, baleful eyes burning in the darkness.
It was afraid.
So was its rider, Naraedel of Oondaunt, glancing all about warily and often, crouching low and wrapped in a half-cloak to hide the house targe on the breast of his leathers. For this Niflghar was an envoy of one house, skulking home expecting trouble from others; not a loud, wildly laughing blade of the Hunt cavorting in the air with many well-armed fellows. In lone, swift silence the messenger sped homeward.
Suddenly empty air in front of the batlike beast flared into a warning glow—but the Nifl sat back in his saddle, sighing with relief, as the darkwings under him left that brief flare of magical shieldings fading in its wake, and glided serenely out into the great cavern beyond.
The spires of proud Talonnorn awaited, many lights glowing among six soaring castles, and twinkling here and there in the broad dark swath of lesser dwellings sprawling between them like a flung-down cloak.
Everywhere was beauty and elegance, for the greater glory of Olone demanded such, and all Talonar Nifl worshipped the Kiss of Beauty. Or died.
A spellrobe—young Ondrar, his cruel face raised to watch Naraedel intently—was standing watch in an ornately curved turret on the highest walls of the fortress of Har Vigilant, home to the rival House of Raskshaula. He gazed steadily at Naraedel as the envoy flew overhead, but did nothing. Nor did the warblades standing around him, bannerpoints in their hands. Custom was all in Talonnorn, and where there were gaps in custom, pacts had been woven long ago to bridge those gaps.
The envoy guided his mount lower, banking over the crowded central Araed, where the Nameless lived. Its winding streets were choked with scurrying servants and slaves, heavily-laden pack-snouts and wagons. As usual.
Everyone in haste, but no one getting anywhere all that swiftly. As ever.
Lower still Naraedel scudded, trusting in his wardshield to protect him from darts or things hurled up out of malice or mischief, wanting to see what he could of whatever was unfolding on the streets.
Whips cracked yonder, where overseers—Nameless Nifl wearing the rival targe of Evendoom—were lashing a trudging line of newly arrived slaves to a sale pen. Weak, hairy, repulsively light-skinned humans, all of them stumbling along in drugged obedience in their stinking capturehoods. Hairy Ones, tamed but not trained.
Then the envoy was past, too soon to properly see and know the pattern of the colored scarves knotted along the rope that bound the necks of the slaves together in their long line, that would tell him which slave-takers owned that rather pitiful brawn.
Not that it mattered much; humans were slow-witted and seldom lasted long, being both weak and lazy. Thank Olone that the Blindingbright seemed to hold an endless supply of them.
The next street held rather better slaves: a gang of great muscled and tusked brutes, the gorkuls of the mountains. The weakest of such could match the straining strength of three large humans—and Talonar needed many slaves to do all the things that might otherwise scar them, or make their sleek selves bulge overmuch and mar their strivings to be ever more beautiful—and so please Olone, and rise in Talonnorn.
Some among the Nameless went masked—as the ruling crones of the six ruling Houses did, while all Talonnorn pretended not to see their
wrinkles and sagging withering—but the truly maimed or deformed were slain and burned, or driven forth into the Wild Dark beyond the Outcaverns, so as not to offend Olone.
Naraedel sighed inwardly. Talonnorn was a vain and ruthless place, but it was home.
In truth, he liked most the scheming traders and struggling shopkeepers of the Araed, who mumbled prayers to Olone but spent their lives seeking to stay alive and a few stones to the better. He understood them, even if every alley bristled with knives and every tavern housed a waiting succession of brawls, with only the rogue priests and potion-brewers who healed for stiff fees getting rich.
It was the murderous whims of life in the house compounds that made him shiver.
The envoy sighed again, casting a regretful glance at a particular roof below: the tavern called the Waiting Warm Dark, where he'd much rather be heading.
Perhaps later …
Then he straightened and unwrapped his cloak to proudly display the Talon of House Oondaunt, and used his spurs almost gently; his steed was already gliding, banking sharply and sweeping its wings back so as to dart through the narrow, waiting opening between the two guardspires.
Home again.
The tingling of the inner wards was still raging through Naraedel when the first brutal probes of the Oondaunt spellrobes' magics flooded into his mind, sending him reeling back in his saddle, eyes rolled up in his head and lip bitten through.
A gentler homecoming than usual.
 
 
“Voices
down,
” Urgel muttered warningly, leaning forward over his drinking horn and pointing warningly at the feeble flicker of the hear-not shield on the table in their midst. It had been old when he'd bought it, and that had been long enough ago that Urgel's hair had still been lush and thick. “What we speak of is as much treason as if we were invoking the Ever-Ice with every breath!”
Tarlyn rolled his eyes in disgust. “Gel, this is the Waiting Warm
Dark,
not a Kissers' temple. I mean, look around you! Who here would dare go to any High House to tell them about us? Hmm?”
The subterranean tavern around them was quiet just now, which meant that most of the loungers on its stools—as opposed to the Nifl decorating the floor—were gowned pleasure-shes, winking hopefully at the handful of Nameless clustered around their usual table. Beneath those gowns were the brandings, piercings, and deep body sculptings—holes right through sleek bellies and torsos—that drove most Nifl rampants wild. Those charms would, however, stay hidden until tally-stones enough—rather more than the rampants around the table had to spare—were proffered.
The shes knew Tarlyn and the others, of course, and weren't really expecting these particular rampants to pour out gems enough to tug at nipple rings or ring rows of little bells set into flanks, but a pleasure-she has to keep in practice somehow …
Most of Talonnorn knew Tarlyn, if only by reputation. He was handsome even among Talonar Nifl, the very elegantly smiling image of a “prancing rampant.” His pair of two tiny horns that all Nifl males have at their brows were exquisitely twisted and arched—and polished to a high sheen, with his hair sculpted back and away to display them. His eyes and jaw had the strength of command, and yet his mouth was as soft and sensual as that of the most yieldingly desirable Nifl-she. His wits might be a trifle thick, but that mattered not a whit to the lusty Talonar shes he was so skilled at “servicing,” from alleyhips here in the Araed to ladies of the grand Houses. He almost never stopped smiling.
Many in Talonnorn knew Urgel by sight. A maker of masks for aging crones—every one of them beautiful, and most of them magically augmented with the minor glamors he could cast—he never took off the mask he was wearing now. He took care that as few Talonar as possible knew it had been magically bonded to his skin, after his face had been ravaged by magical fire hurled by a spellrobe hired by a rival. He hoped no one knew that his knife had slashed out that wizard's throat, diced the mage's brain, and burned it in a back alley brazier. The spellrobe had been a prominent member of House Dounlar—and all of the Houses were more than accomplished in matters of vengeance.
The other three at the table didn't want Talonnorn to know or notice them. Tall, slow-tongued, amiable Munthur was their “strongfists,” whose punches could break necks or bestow senselessness in an instant. Wry-tongued old Clazlathor was a rogue spellrobe—something none of the High Houses liked to think existed in Talonnorn, or wanted to see visit their city for even a single breath, given how swiftly some spells
could be hurled. Handsome and soft-spoken Imdul was the sort of viper the Houses wanted cleansed out of the Araed, so they alone could control certain vices; he was a poisoner-for-hire, a forger, and a buyer and seller of stolen items. Just now, the goblet in his hand should have been adorning a table in the private chambers of the Lord of House Maulstryke, which was one of the two large and secret handfuls of reasons why he was smiling.
“Nifl have always pondered great changes in Talonnorn aloud around tables like these,” he murmured. “So long as we plot nothing specific against any House, I see nothing wrong. Why, even Lord Evendoom has spoken of turning to coins, as some cities do, and away from gemstones as currency. The metal's sturdier.”
“Yet, so?” Clazlathor growled. “Gems I love the feel of, gems I know the worth of; tally-stones I trust. Any fool can set slaves to stamping out endless coins, making mine worthless—but he who sends slaves gemmining is a
fool.
”
“A murderous fool, aye,” Urgel agreed. “Or a slaver with too much brawn in his pens to be able to feed them all.”
“Some have done just that with slaves,” Imdul murmured, “so as to be able to heap up gems enough to buy themselves a name.”
“Huh,” Munthur grunted. “More fool them.
Willingly
stepping into all that sneering and poisoning—beg pardon, Imdul—and daggers up backsides?”
“All of that very rarely goes on within Houses,” Imdul told them, “unless the family is already doomed, and collapsing. Houses have too many foes outside their own ranks not to stand together. A Nameless who marries into them, if not personally useful, may well be allowed nothing more than a place inside the door—but some Nifl spend their lives striving for such advancement. If they find meaning and worth in it, who are we to cavil?”
“We're the smarter Nifl who waste no time at all on such hollow achievements,” Urgel replied, draining his horn and looking around to find a serving-she to bring more aehrodel. The tallspout on the table seemed to have gone empty. Again.
Clazlathor cradled his goblet in both hands, shook his head, and snorted. “Can't see a House that'd be willing to let you join them, Gel. Or me. Or any of us.”
“Be not so sure,” Imdul purred. “Some crones play long games indeed, assembling skills and bloodlines among their servants and well
nigh ordering matings. After all, an oriad can always meet with a convenient accident after the breeding's done.”
“Quite so, quite so,” Urgel said soothingly, for smiling Naersarra was at his elbow, holding up two full tallspouts with a questioning smile. “Both,” he told her gently, and by way of thanks received a warm and almost bare bosom in his face as she leaned forward to set them on the table. Inhaling her warm, faintly musky scent, Urgel grinned to himself. There were worse taverns in the Araed than the Waiting Warm Dark, to be sure.
“Me,” Munthur rumbled unexpectedly, “
I
worry about Raskshaula's tamperings with yeldeth. I don't want to end up eating poison, with one of
them
smilingly holding out the cure—in small doses that I have to pay and pay and pay for!”
Tarlyn chuckled. “Have you ever
seen
a yeldeth cavern? Hot and damp and all aglow, walls thick with the stuff—yellow-green growths like fried
brains,
look you—dripping with sticky rose-blue slime! It'll put you off yeldrau and dethen for a while, I tell you!”
Clazlathor regarded the plate by his hand, well-sprinkled with dethen crumbs—and they'd been round, firm, good loaves, too—rather sourly, looked down the table to where Imdul's empty bowl of yeldrau stood, and then asked, “And just where, Tarlyn, did you discover what fried brains look like? Or taste like? And were they Nifl brains, or gorkul wits, or … ?”
“I believe I'll have another bowl of yeldrau,” Imdul observed unconcernedly, and Clazlathor recalled that the poisoner had finished his first bowl of the soup with swift and eager enjoyment.
Tarlyn laughed. “No, I'll not say! Yet, Munthur, you I will answer: If ever what you fear comes to pass, I'll do what many will, I'm sure: turn only to eating meat, and drinking beast blood to slake my thirst.”
“Oh? Saving the Nifl-she breast milk for late dining?” Clazlathor asked the low ceiling overhead slyly, and the table exploded in laughter.
 
 
Vaeyemue stretched, the ever-present whip in her hand slicing the air with a soft sigh that would have passed unheard elsewhere in Talonnorn.

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