Dark Warrior Rising (22 page)

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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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Maharla pretended fear she did not feel, shrinking back and putting a hand over her mouth so he'd not see her lip curling in contempt. “
I
sent no visions!” she wailed. “Hand your fury to the Goddess—or her holy priestesses! I merely stressed that scorning a divine vision would plunge his life into misfortune and a swift ending, and our House with him! Take your quarrel to them—and perhaps their magic can snatch Ravandarr back to us,
if
you can convince them!”
“Oh, I'll convince them, all right,” Lord Evendoom snarled, voice dire and eyes like two fire coals. He snapped out the word that brought his spellblade down off the wall, unsheathed and glowing, into his hand. It had to fly after Erlingar Evendoom to get there, as he strode across the room to the door, flung it open with a violence Maharla could feel, and stormed out.
The Eldest of Evendoom calmly sat back down in the throne again, propping her crossed ankles on one of its broad arms. Passing her hand over the glow-plate that would summon servants from the wine cellars, she let her face—at long last—acquire a triumphant smirk.
If the priestesses or their guards didn't slay him out of hand, his rude raging would give her all the pretext she could ever need to do anything she wanted to Erlingar Evendoom. Over and over, calling on Olone to drag him back to life so she could torment him anew, for the next thousand-thousand Turnings. Or so.
Swords, Spells, and Scheming
For I have yet to find mightier means of swiftly causing many deaths than swords, spells, and scheming.
—
The Words of Dounlar
T
here was a momentary shriek of fear, a moment of sobbing despair that drove him to his knees in sick pain, as the Dark seemed to fade into dimness and die away all around him—and then the steely presence of Aumaeraunda, Holiest of Olone, was gone from Jalandral's mind.
Utterly gone, vanished as if it had never been, leaving him back in this cavern in the Wild Dark, blinded by tears. Frantically blinking them away, Jalandral Evendoom hefted his spellblade in his hand and looked for the Firstblood of Maulstryke.
His hated rival was also on his knees, a bare three strides away on the lip of stone—and looking for him.
Without a word they sprang up and raced at each other, spellblades singing to life.
The first magics pouring forth from each blade met in a savage shower of sparks between the snarling, fiercely grinning heirs, and flung them apart even before their darting swords could meet.
Whirling helplessly away across hard stone, Jalandral momentarily glimpsed his sister and the slave staring up at him from the larger cavern below—before he called on his spellblade's ability to fly, and snatched himself away from what would have been a bone-shattering meeting with the cavern wall.
As he soared off the lip into the larger cavern, he saw Shoan Maulstryke doing the same thing, a golden plume of magical radiance to his own ruby-red flaming.
Jalandral took hold of his hilt in both hands to strengthen his grip, and brought his spellblade up and back, as if to rest it on his shoulder—whipping his aerial flight back on itself in a turn so tight it nearly snatched his arms from their sockets. Teeth clenched, he fought his blade around in a second tight turn—to bring himself swooping up at Shoan from behind and below.
The Firstblood of Maulstryke had lost sight of him, and was slowing to look around—so he'd time for only a frantic parry as Jalandral came racing right at him.
Jalandral called another spell out of his blade, to spit lightning at his foe, triggering it just before their impact. Which meant his power of flight ended and he plunged under Shoan's parry, grazing a Maulstryke boot with his shoulder and sending his foe cartwheeling helplessly across the cavern, wreathed in lightnings that struck and struck, causing Shoan more pain than real injury—but ravaging his wards down to feeble flickerings.
Grinning ruthlessly, Jalandral awakened his spellblade's flight again, snatching himself away from a crash into the cavern floor not far from his sister—who'd flung up the one arm she had left to hold back her human slave from running to hack at a handy passing Firstblood—and went after Shoan again, letting his sword tow him along so he hurtled across the large cavern point-first, like a gigantic hurlbow arrow.
Shoan was standing on a large rock bathed in surging spell-glows, calling magic out of his spellblade to heal himself and mend his wards. He cast a swift glance at his onrushing foe but set his jaw and kept at it, waiting until the last instant to spring aside and—
Get struck by a swerving Jalandral anyway, in a long slash that made his wards flare blinding-bright and then go down entirely, overtaxed as he was flung back hard against rocks at the same time as Jalandral's spellblade was slicing deep into Maulstryke magic.
The backlash left Shoan hissing a curse and watching Jalandral fight his racing blade around in another tight turn, coming back for the kill.
Shoan bent to his boots, plucked forth a dagger, and threw it, murmuring a word that made it flare into a baleful drifting crimson glow that Jalandral had to swerve to avoid—and found himself followed by.
Then the Maulstryke heir leaped into the air and made his blade fly
again, to get himself away from the Firstblood of Evendoom. The power of flight was one of the fastest-awakened spellblade magics, and Shoan found himself racing back across the cavern about a sword length ahead of Jalandral.
Who drew a dagger from his sleeve and awakened
its
power of flight, to hurl himself along even faster. He climbed, to get above and behind the Maulstryke heir, swerving from side to side as Shoan twisted his head around, trying to see just where Jalandral was.
Jalandral obliged him with a mocking grin and a roll in the air, slipping to one side as he came out of it. He only had to distract Shoan for a moment or two longer …
Shoan Maulstryke snatched a glance back at where he was heading, saw the jagged edge of the stone lip where he'd stood with Jalandral under the Holiest's control rushing up to meet him, and swerved desperately.
Or tried to. Jalandral pushed his speed to the utmost, and used it to slam hard into Shoan, lacerating his foe with the spellblade but also glancing him back in the direction he'd been swerving away from.
Shoan Maulstryke slammed full-tilt into the unyielding stone ledge, lacking even time to shout.
Banking sharply away to avoid a similar meeting with the cavern ceiling, Jalandral heard ribs snap behind him, and a grunt of pain. Fighting his way through yet another tight turn, he saw the Maulstryke Firstblood tumbling back up into the air, wincing and groaning, blinded by pain and blood—
Which made it Olone-blessedly easy to race back, spellblade held sidewise, and almost delicately slice through Shoan Maulstryke's no longer ward-shielded wrists.
The severed hands spun away, still gripping a spellblade—and the rest of Shoan, sobbing incoherently, fell toward the waiting cavern floor.
Smiling bleakly, his eyes as merciless as stone, Jalandral swooped around and down, almost grazing stalagmites as he raced along the floor, angling up …
Tumbling helplessly, the Firstblood of Maulstryke impaled himself on a waiting Evendoom spellblade, as Jalandral flew viciously upward and into him, hilt-deep.
Shoan's sobs ended in a great gasp and gout of blood. He slumped against Jalandral, arms and legs spasming.
Only then did Jalandral allow himself to laugh in triumph.
So he was laughing when Shoan died—and spells that had waited a long, long time burst into life, causing the Maulstryke heir's various hidden amulets and daggers to explode in shards and flame, that no enemy might come to possess them.
Jalandral's ward failed almost instantly under the onslaught of so much whirling steel, and he hadn't even time to roar in pain before it was all over, and he was flying along raggedly, burned and bleeding.
His innards felt wet and loose and … dangling. Goddess, he should have known …
His wounds were bad, probably fatal if he didn't see to them swiftly. He could barely see, his face was so twisted with the pain. Rolling over in the air to give Taerune a salute that began as an airy wave but ended in a spasm of pain, Jalandral called on his blade to translocate him from this place.
His long-unvisited dire-doom cache, with its healings …
Jalandral winced at the pain he was feeling—and at the much greater pain he knew was coming.
He was still wincing when he vanished.
 
 
“Ithmeira!” The hiss came from between her boots; the priestess stepped back so swiftly she almost overbalanced and fell among the jagged, blackened spars.
By the Ice, she'd almost stepped on Semmeira's face! No wonder the warning hiss had been so sharp.
Ithmeira knelt without a word, and started plucking aside the wreckage of Coldheart from around the Exalted Daughter's grim and furious face.
All around them was heaped and tumbled wrack—blackened stone and riven, splintered wood—amid scudding drifts of smoldering smoke. The abbey that had been Ithmeira's home for as long as she could remember was … gone.
And the vivid memory flooded her mind again: the Revered Mother exploding like a star, shouting out frantic spells to the last. She shuddered, and shook her head, trying vainly to banish what would not go away.
“Exalted Daughter of the Ice,” Ithmeira asked, as she struggled to heave aside a broken-off length of column that was larger than she was, “are you … whole?”
“I know not. Free me, and we'll see.” Exalted Daughter of the Ice
Semmeira might have meant to say more, but thick smoke swept over her, and she burst into a fit of helpless coughing.
Grimly the scorched, wounded priestess worked on. It was
so
tempting to just go, and leave Semmeira and her ruthless ambition to die here, buried and helpless … but this was a holy place of the Ever-Ice, even as desecrated and ruined as it was now. The Divine Ice would know what she'd done, and punish her accordingly.
Forever.
Wherefore Ithmeira dug and clawed and heaved, until at last a stiff and wincing Semmeira staggered to her feet, refusing to groan or whimper, felt her arms and legs with reluctantly probing fingers, and asked curtly, “Are we the only two living?” Then the coughing claimed her again, and she doubled over.
“No,” Ithmeira replied wearily, dragging her upright and pointing across the streaming smokes that had been Coldheart. “There's Lolonmae.”
“Of course,” Semmeira said bitterly. “Well, not for much longer.”
She fumbled through the tatters of what was left of her robes until her fingers reached the searingly cold dagger of enchanted Ice that all devout priestesses of the Ice wear against their thighs. She drew it forth and started through the wreckage, falling on her face almost immediately.
“No!” Ithmeira caught her by the shoulder and hauled her upright and around, so as to hiss in her face: “Try to slay her, and I'll see that
you
perish first!”
Semmeira gave her a look that would once have made Ithmeira tremble and shrink back, begging forgiveness.
This time the priestess stood unmoved, and it was the Exalted Daughter who looked away first—and then turned again to gaze upon Lolonmae.
Ithmeira felt her stiffen, and knew why. She'd seen that Lolonmae had been changed by the titanic magics in some way. The young holy-she stood dazed but physically unmarked, on a little patch of surviving abbey floor tiles, peering about vaguely—and her sightless eyes were spitting little lightnings.
“See?” she hissed to Semmeira. “Either by the foe who struck us all down, or by the Divine Ice, Lolonmae may have become the mightiest weapon in all the Dark. If we can but learn how to wield her.”
Orivon kept his sword ready in his hand. “Do you know who it is?”
“It
was
Shoan Maulstryke,” Taerune told him. “It's no one, now.”
The body was blackened and twisted, the arms ending abruptly without hands, the torso slashed away to bare bone here and there, the face frozen in a grimace of disbelieving agony that would last until some cave slitherer ate it away.
“No weapons,” Orivon growled, and lifted his head to look across the cavern to where the spellblade lay flickering, severed hands still clutching its hilt like two gnarled spiders.
“No,”
Taerune said warningly. “Spellblades can be traced from afar. Any Talonar who knows how can find you—and the spellrobes of House Maulstryke can probably awaken the blade, while they're still standing in their chambers back in Talonnorn and you're swinging it at someone, to harm you. If this hadn't been a Firstblood—if I didn't think Maulstryke was watching—there might be a chance to snatch a spellblade. Here and now, we dare not.”
Orivon gave her a frown and knelt down to peer at what still adorned the corpse's ruined forearms: the ward-bracers.
They'd both seen feeble glows arise from the metal bands earlier. They'd watched those dim radiances dance, flicker, and then fade away again, and Taerune had told the firefist that meant their wearer had died, and his last deathbound magics were spent. She'd also admitted that the bracers had their own magic, that yet survived.
Orivon reached for the nearest bracer.
“No!” his former owner hissed, striking aside his fingers. “Spellrobes can trace ward-bracers! If any Maul is scrying their heir, or thinks to seek his whereabouts, they'll find you!”
Orivon gave Taerune a grim look.
“Good,” he told her softly. “I
want
them to find me.”
 
 
Old Bloodblade waved at the many bright glows ahead in a mincing mockery of a sophisticated Haraedra Nifl's flourish, and declaimed grandly, “Behold Talonnorn!”
“Why,
thank
you, Barandon,” Lharlak replied sarcastically. “Once again your aged wisdom rescues us all! Such is my blindness, I would
never
have noticed it without—”
Lharlak was lacking an eye, but hadn't lost it by being slow in a fray. Wherefore he turned his head and reared back even faster than the
hurlbow shaft came streaking out of the darkness—so it snatched away his eye patch rather than bursting through his head.

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