by Ed Greenwood
“You are persuasive, Semmeira. Yet ears are all too often bent by loud and oft-winded war-horns, where softer warnings should perhaps be better heeded. Ithmeira, what say you?”
The other dark-clad priestess spread her hands and said mildly, “Revered Mother, you know that I have long clung to another view. I cleave to it still. That if ever we truly humble Talonnorn, we make our greatest mistake.”
Semmeira shook her head in exasperation, but Ithmeira raised her voice a trifle and continued. “So long as Talonnorn proclaims its peerless and ‘rightful’ greatness, and in its prideful folly presumes to publicly hold opinions as to what all other Nifl should do—and lashes out at other cities at will, with their Flying Hunt raids and by various Talonar noble Houses sponsoring their own attacks on merchants and slave-bands just as they please, they are seen as the great evil.”
Ithmeira turned to face Semmeira directly, and added, “Against the great and ever-restless peril of Talonnorn, other Niflghar see Ouvahlor as a lesser evil, and a useful bulwark against Talonnorn’s ambitions. We are the traditional foe of the City of Spires, the rival who feels its armed might most frequently and heavily, and who strives ever to ‘get even.’ Is this not so?”
Semmeira shrugged. “It is so, yes, but—”
Revered Mother Lolonmae held up a hand to silence her, and then inclined that hand toward Ithmeira, bidding her to say on.
She obeyed. “Wipe Talonnorn away, however, or reduce it to a few Talonar huddling in ruins, and all the other cities across the Wild Dark, far and near, of Olone or the Holy Ice, will begin to see Ouvahlor as a greater threat than boastful Talonnorn ever was. For do we not have the great Klarandarr, and mighty Coldheart, and apparent peace between both?”
“Oh, come!” Semmeira burst out, unable to contain herself longer. “You raise the prospect that city after city will send their armies far, across great stretches of dangerous Wild Dark, against us? Or even ally, combining their forces against us? These are the fears of drunken younglings, who babble endlessly of the Hairy Ones coming down from the Blindingbright with sword and fury, unless we cease taking slaves! Or warn that taming darkwings will awaken the wrath of the dragons, who will claw aside the very Rock itself to tear the Dark asunder and let in the Brightness that they may devour us! You raise wild tales told to children, that have never befallen and never will! We cannot flourish—cannot even live, as free Niflghar know ‘life’—if we fear such impossible ‘may-haps’! Aside from long-ago legends, have you ever known Niflghar cities to muster together, against another city?”
Ithmeira shrugged. “And if Nifl only ever did just and only what they have done before, why are we not wearing the robes Ouvahlans wore when our city was founded? And still eating only guth-worms, that turn our stomachs today? How could our city have been founded at all, if Nifl had not dared to venture far through the monster-haunted Dark, to reaches never seen by Niflghar before? Semmeira, you seek not to assail your desired plans and beliefs with the same swords you thrust at mine!”
“I would be delighted never again to thrust a sword at anyone’s plan,” Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira said bitingly. “I want to be thrusting swords at the foes of Ouvahlor—before they put their swords through us! While we stand about doing nothing, but talking and talking and talking!”
“So before we all become truly enfeebled crones,” Lolonmae asked her mildly, “talking until our teeth fall out and you become utterly deranged through drowning in the seething spittle of your own impatience, what do you want to do right now, Semmeira? If you could do anything at all, what would it be?”
“Command our army—and attack Talonnorn just as fast as we can get there!”
Lolonmae nodded.
“Every third or fourth rampant in that army thinks he should be leading it,” she pointed out. “So with so many commanders to choose from, why you?”
“I—I—” Semmeira struggled for a reason, seeming for a moment like a trapped beast in a cage, looking around wildly, her hair swirling. Then her eyes flashed fire, and she said triumphantly, “On your orders, Holy Lolonmae, I have watched Jalandral Evendoom more closely than anyone else in all Ouvahlor! I know him and his preparations! Even more than the Watchers, I know exactly where and how to strike!”
“More than the Watchers?” the Revered Mother repeated, in gentle disbelief.
“More than the Watchers!” Semmeira thundered, striking her fist against the nearest pillar. “May the Ever-Ice bear witness!”
“Oh, it does,” Lolonmae said mildly. “It always does. Well, then, Exalted Daughter Semmeira, hear my will. I have no power to command the army nor name its commander, for there are those in Ouvahlor who respect Coldheart but fall short of trusting us. Wisely.”
She rose from her throne of ice, releasing a small flood of water, and added, “I have, however, been entrusted with a few of the most untried swords of Ouvahlor—the younglings, who have never fought before—who are intended to serve as a guard for we Anointed, when we venture into battle. A way, I doubt not, to free the most capable warriors of our city from having to wait upon priestesses they fear rather than do their best work, in battle—and to give them some chance of surviving, by putting them beyond reach of any truly foolish orders we may give. These untried few, Semmeira, I can put under your command.”
“To lead into death and disaster, when I need so many more to bring down Talonnorn?” The most ambitious priestess of Coldheart did not trouble to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“To lead in a successful attack, bold-for-blood Anointed,” the Revered Mother replied reprovingly, “on the Ravager trademoot of Glowstone. Wherein you and our untried swords can taste battle and learn, and do Ouvahlor great service thereby. It is agreed by all of us who debate and decide what swords our city shall swing, and against whom, that Glowstone must be retaken before we assault the City of Spires.”
“Yes?” Semmeira was afire with excitement now, but wary of a snare in this bright offer. “Retaken why?”
“To serve as a way-base for attacking Talonnorn, so our forces can advance on the Talonar cavern from Ouvahlor in one direction and Glowstone in the other. Anyone trying to flee Talonnorn will be caught between us, and slaughtered.”
“Yes!” Semmeira agreed excitedly, and then cocked her head in open suspicion and asked, “But why does it need ‘retaking’ at all? Didn’t we conquer it with ease when last we struck at Talonnorn? Is some sort of peril hiding in Glowstone?”
Lolonmae tossed aside her robes and gestured to Ithmeira, who caught up a dipper of water from the icy pool and delicately drenched the Revered Mother from her throat downward.
“N-no,” Lolonmae told Semmeira, starting to shiver. “When we took Glowstone, most of the Ravagers there knew its tunnels much better than our rampants, and fought their ways out into the Wild Dark and escaped—only to creep right back to Glowstone the moment our forces returned home. As to why they returned: unlike Talonnorn, Ouvahlor has no interest in conquering cavern after monster-roamed cavern of the Wild Dark, and making ourselves known targets for all in doing so.”
Whatever else she might have been going to say was lost in a sharp gasp of pain as Ithmeira finished casting the spell that turned the water still running down Lolonmae abruptly into a hard casing of ice.
A deep blue glow in the ice under their feet brightened and started to rise; the Ever-Ice was responding to Lolonmae’s yielding of herself.
Semmeira stood watching it impatiently, almost dancing in her eagerness. “When can I make ready?” she snapped, courtesy forgotten in her excitement.
“Now,” the Revered Mother replied, managing a smile. “Yet mind you return here, to me, before you depart Coldheart. The Ice desires your surrender.”
“Of course!” Exalted Daughter Semmeira almost shouted, ere she darted from the chamber. “The Ever-Ice be with me, in everything I do!”
“Indeed,” Lolonmae murmured. “For all our sakes.”
“Revered Mother,�
�� Ithmeira murmured, running reverent hands up the slick, cold ice she had caused to coat the body of her superior, “is this wise?”
“Of course not,” the ranking priestess of Coldheart replied, stiffening as the cold blue light of the Ice reached her ice-locked feet and started to ascend through her body, causing it to glow. “Semmeira and wisdom never consort together in comfort. Yet better she be out heroically roaming the Dark than skulking around Ouvahlor stirring up dissent with her impatient mutterings about the Revered Mother being an indecisive coward unworthy of the Ever-Ice, and Coldheart a fraud that has fallen away from the holiness that she—of course—alone embodies. Let her cause trouble outside our walls, for once.”
Ithmeira winced. “It only has to be once, if she causes trouble enough.”
Lolonmae’s smile was as bright as it was sudden. “Semmeira said those very words, once. About me.”
“The Anointed,” Aloun said carefully, “never fail to surprise me. To us, they’re all cold superiority and orders not to be questioned, but within their walls, they’re—”
“Just as Nifl as the rest of us,” Luelldar replied softly. “Thank the Ever-Ice.”
He turned his head suddenly, to give Aloun the same sort of bright grin favored by reckless Niflghar younglings, and added, “Yet to speak of the passing entertainment they afford us, what think you thus far? I think Semmeira is almost certainly overeager in rushing to her own doom.”
5
To Fall in a Duel in Talonnorn
If life you spurn and pain you scorn
Seek out a duel in Talonnorn.
No cause too great nor too forlorn
To be worth a duel in Talonnorn.
Better yet you’d never been born
Than to fall in a duel in Talonnorn.
—Talonar tavern song
“New arrivals?” Vaeyemue murmured, settling her whip onto her shoulder.
Children of Hairy Ones were always largeeyed with fear, and either mute or weeping.
Not that it lasted long.
They went mad and went to the stewpots, or found a way to kill themselves, or grew up fast.
Their snivelings were muted in the soft, damp warmth of the yeldeth caverns.
Everything was muted in the soft, damp warmth of the yeldeth caverns.
The rampants who’d brought the new slaves in hadn’t bothered to answer her.
They seldom did.
Perhaps they considered a Nifl-she who oversaw mere yeldeth slaves was beneath answering.
Vaeyemue smiled a crooked smile, and lashed out to crack her whip around the ankles of the largest, surliest-looking rampant. Time to teach this lot of rampants a thing or two—and terrify the new Hairy Ones while she was at it.
Besides, she was bored, and she hadn’t enjoyed a big, strong rampant on his knees weepingly begging her forgiveness in too long a time.
Last shift, at least.
To the tune of the rampant’s startled yell, her crooked smile widened.
“The proverbial stench of magic fills the air,” Opaelra murmured, not caring if the nearest warblades heard her. “Pity it smells like ashes—and strong oldworms cheese.”
The old crone managed a smile, wondering idly if she’d live to see another feast in House Evendoom. The shaking fits took her often, now, and without warning—and as far as she knew, she’d lived longer than any of the Evendoom blood in all the long history of Talonnorn.
Warblades of the house in full battle-armor, standing rigidly at their guardposts, stared at her stonily as she shuffled past them. Opaelra gave them a disapproving look and a snort of dismissal. New ways were well enough, but a little respect for elder kin, please.
Or House Evendoom would be no better than all the rest, much as that would annoy young Jalandral.
Ah, pardon: young High Lord Jalandral.
Opaelra wondered briefly what Klaerra thought of him, under the insistent velvet assault of his lovemaking. Or did they couple, anymore? After all, Jalandral could have his pick of all the shes in Talonnorn—though if he didn’t tie them down and have a spellrobe or three cast spells over each and every one, that would be a swift way into the jaws of treachery, and his own death. Yet perhaps he dared not taste Klaerra unless she was tied down, either . . .
These idle thoughts took her along the mirror-polished tiles of the new passage and into the gigantic new hall that had been built onto the battle-ravaged front of the Eventowers. His “throne room,” Highest and Mightiest Jalandral had presumed to call it.
Hmmph.
When she was his age, being Lord of Evendoom and having an audience room was grand enough. Back then, everyone knew the Lord of the Doomhouse was the true lord of all Talonnorn, anyway; there was no need to loudly proclaim it and waste a lot of slaves on too-large and tasteless rooms to prove to everyone what they already knew.
Someone she knew was standing in the vast, gleaming expanse of tiles inside the throne room, waiting for her.
Someone not nearly as old and bent and huddled into her robes as she was: Baerone, a crone of House Raskshaula who was barely older than Jalandral.
Which probably meant that Lord Morluar Raskshaula was in attendance at the High Lord’s first Court.
“Ho ho,” Opaelra said, a little too loudly. “This ought to be good.”
How would these glossy new tiles look, she wondered, with blood all over them?
“I thought I had more sense than to let you talk me into coming here,” Naersarra of House Dounlar murmured. “This is no safe place for Consecrated of Olone.”
“True,” Auree agreed, “but if Jalandral dares make a move against us, we have a surprise ready for him. One that’s apt to be fatal.”
“For us, or for him?”
“For us all,” Quaera murmured. “Which at least will mean he perishes, spectacularly, and so Talonnorn is delivered from the sin—the utter folly—that he has offered it. No High Lord should ever rule the City of Spires; it is the very tension between temple and House crones, and between House and House, that keeps the city strong and alert and ever-striving.”
“I wish—” Naersarra hissed, unshed tears gleaming in her eyes. “I just wish you were right. For my part, I fear that particular sin is not so easily eluded. Now that he has built the door and shown it to us all—and we Consecrated remain in disarray—stone-headed rampant after stone-headed rampant will set himself up as High Lord, no matter how swiftly and surely we fell or humble all previous High Lords. All will see themselves as stronger, or more cunning, or at least less foolish and more worthy than their failed predecessors. All of them. They have seen their chance, now, and will not be denied it.”
Huddled in their dark robes, shrouded in their cloaks up to their chins, the four priestesses stared back at her grimly. None welcomed her words, but not one denied them.
Auree, Quaera, Zarele, and Drayele had rarely been parted from each other in all the time since Ouvahlor bloodshed had come to the temple, and they all openly wore scars from that battle; none of them had prayed to Olone to be made unblemished again.
Naersarra knew it was because they did not want to forget how violently life in Talonnorn had changed, and how wrong or mistaken Talonar worship of Olone must have become. Yet she also knew how blindly many Talonar saw matters; many of the surviving older crones of all Houses regarded the four as “gone-oriad,” and as blasphemous to the Goddess in their madness as any priestess-butchering House warblade.
Most Talonar saw not Olone, but only the rules and customs of Olone, to be clung to blindly no matter what befell.
Even if dangerously mad young House heirs reached higher, and styled themselves High Lord of all the city, and slaughtered every true and loyal Talonar who stood in their way.
She sighed, then lifted her chin and said, “We should go in. He won’t wait to begin the butchering if we’re not standing there to witness it; he wants to show everyone he’s not beholden to Consecrated of Olone, remember? He’ll start without us.”
“He started some time ago,” Drayele murmured bitterly as they started forward in smooth unison, Zarele working the spell that silently moved the doors wide at their approach, when the gleaming battle-armored Evendoom warblades rigidly flanking it made no move to open them.
Quaera felt a glare from one of the guards, and returned it as coldly as only a Consecrated of Olone knew how, flinging the stinging mind-message at him: The Goddess marks you. See that you please her, if you want her dark regard to fade.
Jalandral Evendoom was the rampant she should have been delivering that threat to—but Jalandral was one of those it would have been wasted on. He obviously believed in Olone not at all.
And, the Ghodal take him, Quaera Thrice-Consecrated was beginning to believe the very same thing.
The vast and gleaming new throne room was silent—but it was a silence so singing with tension that a shriek would have been lost in it.
Talonnorn was tense with infighting, and every Talonar stared at fellow citizens, keeping their own faces as much like expressionless masks as they knew how. Everyone sought to know just which side everyone else stood on. Though some Nifl would have heatedly proclaimed their own ignorance of just what any “side” stood for, they all knew the underlying truth: the city was being torn asunder between those who sided with Jalandral Evendoom, and those who dared to stand against him. Fear over what he’d do to them, or someone else would do to thwart him, or what would befall all Talonnorn, crawled untrammeled through the darkness inside every mind.
The darkly handsome Lord Evendoom rose from his throne, then, to stand on the broad dais before it looking slowly around at the many Niflghar ranged along the walls. No one had quite dared to stand in the open space before the throne; its gleaming tiles stretched empty.
