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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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The Ravager standing next to him gurgled around a shaft suddenly sprouting from his throat, and toppled. His fall took him hard into Daruse, driving the amulet-festooned Nifl into a swift stagger aside.
Which left Old Bloodblade alone to face the warblades rushing out of the darkness.
Or, if one preferred, gave him a clear field of fire to cook them in.
He seized his opportunity, well-used sword in one hand and wand in the other, bathing the Talonar in bright, blinding flame before anyone else could aim a hurlbow at what was, after all—before Olone, even he admitted it—a large and imposing target.
Their screams were so loud that the Ravager leader had a hard time hearing Daruse say warningly, “There'll come a moment in some battle or other when you'll boldly unleash that toy, and discover Alathla's magic has run out. And it won't be a pretty moment.”
“Ah,” Old Bloodblade growled, “but
this
one is! Aye?”
They stepped back around a stalagmite bigger than both of them and watched the flames fade, many licking along the limbs of staggering, falling blackened things that had been warblades of Talonnorn a breath earlier.
“D'you think we got them all?”
“No,” said Lharlak, Daruse, and Sarntor, all together.
“Well, then, all you experts on the defenses of Talonnorn, d'you think we blundered into one band out on a foray, or is this part of a ring of defenders?”
“Doesn't matter which,” Daruse replied. “A city ruled by rival Houses, all of them rich in spellblades; if these were but warblades out on a foray, we have to think they've now managed to tell everyone we're—”
“Which
means,
” Lharlak interrupted urgently, “we shouldn't
be
here, longer! We should get gone—along there—and come at Talonnorn by another way.”
“A brilliant plan, Lord Bloodblade!” Sarntor said enthusiastically, and darted off down the passage Lharlak had indicated. There was a rush to follow.
“I didn't—” Old Bloodblade snarled and found himself addressing empty air.
With a smile and a shrug, he stopped talking and lumbered hastily after the band he thought he'd been commanding. 'Twouldn't do, to find
himself standing alone against a score or more Talonar warblades. 'T-wouldn't do at all.
 
 
The glow around his feet told him he'd arrived.
Which was good, because he could barely think through the shrieking pain … and even through his agonies he could
feel
blood pumping out of him. Olone
damn
Shoan Maulstryke!
Well, now … she undoubtedly had. Jalandral started to chuckle at that—unwisely. The fresh pain left him sagging helplessly against the nearby stone wall, groaning.
Do it, Dral. Do it or die.
He told himself that, again and again, as he fumbled along the ledge. The flagon, the vial … and Goddess, yes, the row of little hollows with dusty gemstones in each. The healing stones, the spells on them his deliverance. He'd need at least three …
He almost dropped the vial getting its stopper off, but managed to empty the hissing acid it held into the flagon instead. This was going to hurt worse than anything he'd yet felt on this little journey … and for a very long time before that, perhaps ever.
With trembling fingers he dropped the gemstones in and watched the smoke rise and the hissing intensify as they dissolved.
It soon died again, and the Firstblood of Evendoom lifted the flagon, murmured, “Hail, all you crones,” and—tossed it down his throat, letting the flagon fall and sinking to his knees before the burning agony could choke him.
He made it, or thought he did, before the eternity of moaning through a ruined mouth and throat, their burning agony like swallowing coals. It went on searing him long after soothing relief had spread slowly—oh, so slowly—out through the rest of his body.
His torture sank down into a dull aching at last, and Jalandral found himself curled up on his side on the cold, hard stone floor. He was whole again, or nearly so, and had best be up and out of this place before some busynose tried to trace him with spells …
With a sigh of relief at finding the agony gone, leaving only a tightness in his limbs where he'd convulsed and fought against collapse, like a remembered echo of unpleasantness, Jalandral stood, stretched, and—froze as he became aware that someone was watching him.
It was a Nifl face he knew—a she of his own House—and it was wearing a grim smile.
As Evendoom crones often did, when they weren't looking haughty or coldly displeased.
Klaerra Evendoom.
Jalandral straightened as swiftly as he'd ever done anything in his life, plucking and hurling a dagger from his sleeve. Lightning-swift he threw another, spinning right behind the first—and watched them both come to a sudden halt in the air, to hover in front of her throat and breast.
Her wards were up and waiting, and they were stronger by far than any he'd yet seen. Those blades bore runes that carried them through most wards as if those defenses didn't exist …
Klaerra lifted her hands between his motionless daggers and then casually spread them apart, thrusting the steel fangs aside—whereupon they regained their former swift spinning in an instant, and flashed past her to crash and clang off the stone walls behind her. Her smile never changed.
“We must talk,” she said softly.
 
 
Sarntor turned to the rest of the Ravagers and pointed, saying not a word. He didn't have to.
By the glow flooding down it, they all knew the cross tunnel opened into the great cavern that held Talonnorn. His manner of pointing told them the tunnel didn't
seem
to be guarded.
Lharlak and Daruse held up their hands to the other Ravagers in clear “stand and stay” commands, and went with Sarntor.
All three returned almost immediately to signal “clear, come!” and the Ravagers started forward—only to be jostled aside by a puffing Old Bloodblade, who'd been hurrying along in their rear. Spreading his arms wide to hold everyone back, he aimed his wand down the cross tunnel at the waiting city and triggered it.
Bright flame burst forth—and then rebounded back at the Nifl leader, even as it raced outward in all directions, to form to a huge sheet of roaring flames that filled the tunnel, and made more than one Ravager whirl and run.
The heat smote their faces, and unlike the wand-bursts they'd seen their leader hurl before, the flames crackled on hungrily, fading only slowly.
Old Bloodblade turned, inclined his head to them all in the manner of a vindicated House lord regally forgiving those who've doubted him, and growled, “We older, wiser Nifl have our uses.”
Sarntor frowned, and nodded at the flames. “So what is that, exactly?”
“The wards of Talonnorn. If you waited until all the flames are gone and the air looks empty again, you'll still be dead if you stepped forward too far.”
“What?” Lharlak asked disbelievingly, watching the flames die.
Old Bloodblade nodded. “To reach Talonnorn, we'll have to wait until the Talonar open a breach in their wards, to let some of their own in or out, and try to rush through—and by the Dark, we'll have to be quick! Some of those crones don't care how many of their own warblades they slay, so long as they fell any foes and get their way in all things!”
“I've spied on Talonnorn before,” Daruse said suspiciously, “and the wards
glowed
then. And hummed. A sort of blue sheen that was always in the air …” He waved at the air in front of him, up and down, as if shaping a wall.
Old Bloodblade nodded. “Those are the everyday wards, a wall of glowing air you can see through, that's solid and blocks arrows, flung stones, prowling monsters, slaves seeking to run out—and Nifl like us. They stop some spells, but let others through.” He waved at the tunnel, and the glow of the castle-filled cavern beyond. “These, here, are invisible wards, that stop all magic”—he pointed at the flames—“and slay creatures blundering into them. Including Talonar, which is why they're so seldom used.”
Lharlak sighed. “Should we feel honored?”
“It takes six or so spellblades quite some time to raise this sort of ward,” Old Bloodblade told him. “Longer than it's been since we came within sight of Talonnorn. Unless a sentinel saw us way out in the Dark, and somehow came to believe we were a huge army, they don't even know we're here.”
“That last band of warblades know,” Daruse said. “Now.” Around him, Ravagers chuckled mirthlessly.
Lharlak hefted his curved sword. “So, do we tarry and wait for a way in to open, or work our way all around the wards, testing them at every tunnel? Or turn away, and try again another time?”
“We turn away,” Old Bloodblade growled. “We came to raid and make ourselves richer, not launch a war. Every moment we stay here
makes it more likely they'll see us and send out warblades enough to overwhelm us. No, we go back. Out into the Dark, and hope to find traders coming in or one of their fighting bands coming home—so we can pounce. Or if the band's too strong, skulk after them and see if we can learn the way in. A signal, or a token they carry, or sentries and a pass phrase … it must be something simple, or no Talonar would be able to understand it, aye?”
 
 
“You,” Orivon growled accusingly, “just don't want me to get my hands on spellblades or bracers—or any other Nifl magic I can use!”
Taerune shook her head. “No, Orivon, I just don't want us to be hunted from now on, by foes who know exactly where to find us! Do you
want
to spend all the life you have left—and it'll be short, believe you me—doing nothing but fighting and running and fighting, against foes who never, ever stop attacking?”
Orivon shook his head. “You'll say anything to stop me getting any Talonar magic!” He reached again for the bracers—and when Taerune made an exasperated sound and thrust her hand in his way, whirled around and slapped her hand away, glowering.
She glowered right back.
No Cause for Doom-Crying
Bloodshed among the Holy Ones is no cause for doom-crying. When they're truly in peaceful accord, then should Niflghar tremble.
—
The Words of Dounlar
T
he Place of the Goddess, beautiful though it was, seldom saw Lords of Houses striding through its halls. Even less so, a Lord in everyday garb, with naked sword in hand and anger riding face and utterances.
“Out of my way or die,” Erlingar Evendoom snarled at the guardians of the gate, two Holy-shes chosen for their looks and clad in armor designed to ensnare the eye and warm the loins of rampants, not protect the sleekly rounded flesh beneath against anything. Yet the magic throbbing in their gauntlets, bracers, open helms, styled pectorals, thigh-high boots, and the various blades and whips sheathed and scabbarded at various locations about their bodies made them formidable holy defenders indeed. Moreover, they wore two invisible armors: All Talonnorn knew their every word and deed was backed by the ready spells of the Holy Ones of Olone, and they acted with the cold, certain hauteur born of the approval and authority of the Goddess Herself.
A lone, angrily striding Nifl seeking to enter the temple with a drawn sword would customarily have been ordered to withdraw, and lashed with a pair of long, spell-crackling whips if he kept coming. No matter what rank he declared, nor urgency and right to passage he claimed.
Not that Lord Erlingar Evendoom knew this would be their customary reception of such visitors—wherefore he was unaware that something within the Place of the Goddess must be amiss indeed, when the guardians murmured something he didn't bother to listen to, and stepped back to let him pass between them. He heard the alarm gongs they rang in his wake, but paused not, nor cared; all servants seemed to get excited when he arrived anywhere.
“Aumaeraunda!” he shouted, as he strode down a grand hall lined on both sides with tall statues that upon another occasion he might have paused to examine appreciatively. “Where are you? And why have you snatched my Secondblood from me?”
Answer came there none, nor hastening priestesses, despite the gongs ringing on and on—and that
was
unusual. He slowed, frowning. “Aumaeraunda?”
A face peeked momentarily around the edge of a doorway ahead, then hurriedly withdrew. Taking another stride on, toward that door—there were many on both sides of this stretch of the vaulted hall, most of them closed—Evendoom spotted something else unusual.
A large scorch scar on the polished stone floor ahead … and a little way beyond it, something that was unmistakably a large pool of blood. Nifl blood.
Had they not cleaned up after the attack? For some holy reason, perhaps? The blood looked wet, freshly spilled, but might not be. Everyone knew the temple was a-crawl with spell upon spell, many of them preservative, to keep beauty at its perfect peak. Yet surely—even with the legendary pride of the Consecrated—Aumaeraunda would have said
some
thing about the fighting she and her Holy Ones had done on Talonnorn's behalf, the losses the Holy of Olone had suffered, to win respect among the Lords and Eldests of the Houses that would have made things much easier for her during that little council gathering that had probably cost Ohzeld Maulstryke his Firstbrat.
Still no priestesses. No, something was very wrong in the temple of Olone. He reached the doorway where the peering priestess had been, and looked inside rather warily, sword at the ready.
The great chamber beyond was shrouded in darkness, its customary braziers unlit. Dead priestesses—many of them—lay strewn about the floor and the exquisitely curved couches.
Lord Evendoom blinked at them in astonishment, dimly recalling
this as a brightly lit room of ostentatious splendor, clearly intended to show any visitor that the Holy of Olone were wealthier and more beautiful than even the haughtiest of the city's Houses, and had taste and reach to outmatch even House Evendoom.
“Olone forfend,” he muttered, seeing sudden radiance kindle far, far away—through a gaping hole at the far end of the chamber, that let him look through a wall into an even larger room beyond. Powerful magic had been hurled about here, to blast that hole and hurl and tumble bodies and furniture and even the magically floating aerial plants the priestesses so loved everywhere.
The glow he was watching outlined the busily weaving hands of a priestess casting a spell; the glow was the mustering power of her magic. By her pose and the way she moved, she was angry, hurrying—and gazing at a foe or target Evendoom couldn't see.
A bright bolt of magic suddenly burst into his view, from a part of that distant room hidden from him by the wall that still stood around the jagged hole, and struck the priestess.
Evendoom had a momentary glimpse of her, silhouetted against the ravening light that was slaying her, as she arched back, convulsing, as magic stripped flesh and all from her bones—and then the bolt faded, its deadly work done, and he was blinking as her skeleton collapsed, tumbling from view.
“Olone
spew
!” he cursed, ducking back out of the room and along the passage before whoever had hurled that deadly magic might think to seek targets in his direction. Had the Holy Ones gone mad?
He hadn't reached the next door before a priestess burst through it, sobbing and running hard, with another Consecrated hard on her heels. They both rushed past the Nifl Lord and his raised sword as if he were invisible, and as he watched, the pursuing priestess caught the other one up, trod hard on her heels so she stumbled and crashed down—and pounced on her, stabbing repeatedly and viciously with a long dagger that was wet to the hilt with Nifl blood after its first strike, and dripping by the last one.
“By Olone, you deserved that, Narazmra!” the murderess hissed, rising from the sprawled body of the priestess she'd just slain. “Now to see to Paerille!”
She dashed away down the passage, ignoring Lord Evendoom as if he were just another of the statues, and raced up the stairs just inside the gates. The Nifl Lord sighed, wondering if he should follow. Or venture
on—carefully, mind—into the other great chambers of the ground floor of the temple. Or, by Olone, turn and flee out of the Place of the Goddess while he still could.
“Die, traitor to Olone!” an unseen priestess shrieked, from somewhere in the chambers beyond, and there was a sudden roar of magic, a booming that shook the walls and made tiny pebbles bounce and hail briefly around him. In its wake, dust curled—and an eerie silence fell.
Lord Evendoom frowned, drew a dagger to keep his spellblade company, and strode on down the passage, stepping through the first door that stood open on his right.
Where he almost tripped over a Nifl-she he knew: Draurathra, Eldest of Raskshaula, who lay on her back, blood running from her mouth and her legs gone—melted into what looked like black tentacles, that had then been hacked and diced like runthar-meat on a cook's board, leaving a dark pool of most of her blood.
Her eyelids flickered. “Hail, Erlingar,” she murmured, voice faint, slow, and slurred. “What brings you here, to this pit of she-malice?”
“Demanding an answer of the Holiest of Olone,” Evendoom told her grimly. “Who did this to you?”
“Askrautha of Dounlar, but it was the last thing she ever did. I caught her with whirlblades, and she was headless before she could even stop gloating.” Her voice faded. “Go, Erlingar. Go while you still can. I always liked—Olone damn it, I always fancied you. I'd plead for a kiss, but you don't want to be near me when my death-spells go off.”
She waved one hand bonelessly. “Go! You won't get any answers out of Aumaeraunda. Ever again.”
“Oh?” Erlingar asked, backing away and frowningly anticipating the answer he was about to receive.
“She's dead, Erlingar. All this chaos you see is the fight to succeed her, just beginning. We go through this every time, and learn
nothing.
Pah! It's
all
nothing to me, now. Farewell, Erlingar. I loved you a little, but took care you never knew it … I took sufficient care, didn't I?”
“I—you did, Draurathra,” Lord Evendoom said, surprised to find his throat thick and his heart heavy. “You did.”
He never knew if she'd heard him. That weakly waving hand fell as the first word left his lips—the explosions and wraithlike billowings were well underway by the time he finished speaking—and spun around to flee as fast as he'd ever run in his life.
As he sprinted out of the Place of the Goddess, between the saluting
gate guardians, he heard an agonized scream from somewhere above and behind him—and from somewhere deeper in the temple, another spell blasted through what sounded like another wall.
“Truly,” he muttered sarcastically, pausing in the street—the surprisingly empty street—to catch his breath, “yon's a testament to Olone's beauty.”
The temple shook again, and a plume of smoke burst out between the two beautiful guardians.
Lord Erlingar Evendoom shook his head, turned away, and started back toward the Eventowers.
The struggle to succeed Aumaeraunda had more than begun.
 
 
The Eldest of Evendoom casually kicked a flow-sculpture that had been old before the Eventowers were built off its pedestal, ignoring the servants' frantic dives to save it, and propped her boot heels on the vacated pedestal. Three cushions had served to make Erlingar's throne fairly comfortable to a Holy-she reclining languidly sidewise upon it, and Erlingar's best wine was
very
good.
Maharla sipped again from the Lord's own grand goblet—Olone, it was heavy, but then if Erlingar could wave it about, so could she, and the more she drank the lighter it would get—and smiled as she contemplated just how to make herself the undisputed head of House Evendoom without having to slaughter too many of her kin and senior servants, and anger the rest of them, in the process. Fear forged the best loyalty, but not if she left strong foes alive to band together against her, and—
The searing pain in her head was as sudden as it was blinding. Maharla shrieked despite herself. Wine splashed across her face and lap as she clutched the goblet against her breast, hugging herself against the stabbing agony.
Nothing but a temple-summons should be able to reach her through the House wards, and Aumaeraunda could hardly need aid urgently enough to call on the newest Eldest in Talonnorn, that she clearly despised … yet neither was the Holiest of Olone stupid enough to try to spell-harm Maharla Evendoom just now, with Ouvahlor still on the prowl and—
Sickening pain flooded through her mind, swirled and washed away, and then returned again, stronger than ever. What was going
on
?
The servants, drenched with relieved sweat as they looked up from
righting the unshattered sculpture, saw the Eldest make the swift, impatient gesture of a simple spell.
Then they saw her go very pale, mouth falling open at about the same time as her hand did. The great goblet plummeted, unregarded.
“Oh,
no
!” she gasped, her voice a ragged whisper almost lost in the goblet's bounce, musical clang, and loud splash of spilled wine. “Oh, flaming, blood-spewing Olone!”
 
 
Orivon and Taerune warred with their glares, as sharp and bright as if they'd been thrusting at each other with swords.
“
You're
wearing magic bracers,” Orivon told his longtime tormentor, his frown fierce. “Or rather,
one
bracer, now.”
“Thank you for reminding me,” she said coldly. “And I have my Orb, which masks this ward-bracer—and
only
this bracer—from anyone trying to magically locate it from afar.”
“There's much you're not telling me about Talonar magic,” Orivon growled.
“Yes,” she replied flatly. “There is.”
They traded glares again, and then the Nifl sighed and said quietly, “We need to get far from Talonnorn. Quickly. I think you know that.”
Orivon's nod was grim and grudging, but they turned away together from the blackened thing that had been Shoan Maulstryke, and walked off side-by-side.
They were two caverns away before something quivered and started, very faintly, to glow.
Something that lifted a little, trailing one severed Nifl hand that held it in a death grip, and another that was on the verge of falling away.
Silently, with no living thing in the cavern to see it, the spellblade that had belonged to Shoan Maulstryke rose into the dark air.
 
 
“Lord!” one of the warblades said urgently, pointing.
Faunhorn Evendoom made the gesture for silence rather sharply. Olone have mercy, if Tersarr couldn't see things until he was about to stumble over them …

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