by Ed Greenwood
Nothing but the sprawled, silent bodies. Orivon listened to nothing for a long time before he turned and went back to his longtime tormentor.
Taerune was sitting in the tunnel, staring at the stump where her arm had been. She looked up quickly at his approach, hand going to the sword she’d laid on the tunnel floor—but then relaxed, her hand going back to cupping her other elbow.
“The way is clear,” Orivon told her. “I want you to stay close beside me; I’m going to one of the clefts to recover some blades and tools I brought from the Rift. I’ll bundle them in this spare cloak, and tie them into a bundle with the lashes.”
Taerune nodded.
“You know where we’re coming out, right?”
She nodded again.
“Good. So from the clefts, where do we head, to get out into the Dark?”
She shrugged. “Dozens of tunnels will take us there. Some are usually guarded, but now—who knows? When we’re in the cleft, I’ll point them out to you. You choose.”
Orivon nodded, and they went forward together—walking slowly, Taerune a little ahead to give both of them room to swing swords freely. She paused by the open door and looked back in a silent questioning, and Orivon nodded and came up close behind her. If the Nifl noticed the point of his sword was almost touching her back, just where it met her behind, she gave no sign of doing so.
They came out into the great cavern that held Talonnorn, darting glances this way and that, but though the half-ruined Eventowers loomed dark behind them and they saw a distant darkwings with a rider on its back flapping across the huge cave, this little corner of Talonnorn seemed deserted.
Thankfully Orivon plunged into the cleft, clawed aside the stones he’d so carefully arranged, and bundled the swords and tools into the spare cloak. “Watch the entrance, behind me,” he growled, busily knotting lashes.
“Orivon,” Taerune replied, warningly, and he spun around.
The local landscape was deserted no longer. Standing in the entrance to the cleft were a dozen warblades: a spellrobe; a Nifl-she wearing robes that bared her charms to every eye, in a lusty display that contrasted oddly with her coldly haughty expression; and an older Nifl rampant clad in black, who wore a cruel smile on his handsome face.
“Hello, little Nameless bitch,” he drawled. “My, you’re even lovelier than when you were Taerune Evendoom. It would have been frowned upon to force myself upon my own niece, but now … I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Are you, Uncle Valarn?” Taerune asked, her question a biting challenge.
He laughed and drew his sword with a flourish; it kindled instantly into a ruby-red glow. Taerune touched her Orb and hissed something—and lightnings were suddenly leaping among the warblades like dancing snakes.
They avoided Valarn, the spellrobe, and the priestess of Olone altogether, and seemed to do no harm to the grinning, advancing warblades.
Valarn laughed again. “You’re that much a fool, Taerune? To think we go into battle unprotected against lesser magics? Could it be that you fight unprotected? Oh, yes, of course you do; how forgetful of me! A pity you can’t forget that missing arm for an instant, isn’t it?”
Sword and hammer in hand, Orivon stepped past Taerune, curling his lip and saying to her contemptuously with a wave of his hammer in Valarn’s direction, “This is a pureblood House Nifl?”
Valarn gave him a momentary—and withering—glance, and drawled one dismissive word: “Human.”
Orivon replied, his voice an exact mimicry of Valarn’s tone: “Niflghar.”
Valarn stiffened and spat, “Slave!”
Orivon shrugged. “Slave-keeper!”
The warblades were only three strides away from Orivon now. “I weary of this,” Valarn said dismissively. “Kill him. Disarm the former Lady Taerune, and prepare her for me—across that rock will do.”
Then the leaping lightnings playing harmlessly around the Talonar changed—and warblades stiffened and screamed as their own swords and armor twisted and grew spikes in all directions, butchering them where they stood. The spellrobe and priestess shrieked as their metal rings and belt buckles did the same, severing most of their fingers and stabbing through their bellies. Even Valarn swore and shook a hand that shed fingers—and their rings, turned into vicious stars of bladed metal—as he did so.
“No, of course I don’t think you go into battle unprotected against lesser magics, Uncle,” Taerune said sweetly, watching everyone but Valarn die. “However, yes, I do know you’re a fool. I have since I was old enough to mewl, as you like to put it.”
Orivon stalked forward, and Valarn snarled and turned to flee. Orivon threw his sword—but it struck something unseen just before it would have bitten into the back of the Nifl’s knee, and was hurled aside in a storm of sparks.
“His spellblade protects him,” Taerune murmured. “Orivon, leave him to me. Please.”
Orivon took one look at her face and stepped aside.
“Thank you, my Dark Warrior,” she murmured, striding past him. She didn’t seem to see him stiffen and give her a dark look; her hand was at her throat, fingers on the Orb.
It flashed once, and Valarn’s quickening flight suddenly stopped. He was hurrying just as much, but going nowhere, walking—and then trotting—in place.
Then he looked back at her, scowled, and slashed all around himself with his glowing sword—and stumbled forward again, almost falling.
By then, Taerune was almost upon him, striding swiftly, no sword in her hand—the hand that was busy at the buckles of her leathers. “Why, Uncle,” she said, “don’t you want me?”
When he whirled around with a snarl, she pulled open the front of her leathers.
“Well?” she asked, challengingly. “Don’t you?”
Taerune swept leather back off one shoulder, baring it, then the other, in a long, steady tug that bared her down to the waist. Her fingers dipped lower as she tossed her head, long hair swirling. “Uncle?”
Valarn snarled, “Bitch!” and swung his spellblade viciously. Orivon launched himself forward in sudden horror, sprinting and shouting—there was no way the he-Nifl could miss slicing her open!
Thorar, she’s chosen this way out!
“Nooo! Taera, no!”
Spellblade and Orb flashed in unison, the sword raced through the space where Taerune’s arm was missing and plunged into her, she threw back her head and screamed, the sword sliced on through, she turned as metallic all over as the blade was, the sword came out the other side of her and swept on, trailing silvery blood—and Taerune lunged forward, embraced Valarn, and bit his mouth, hard.
Valarn’s arms flew up and started to flail, his spellblade whirling away to bounce and singingly clang its way to a skirling rest, on tumbled stones.
He went silvery, too, and made a sort of sobbing sound in Taerune’s arms.
And then she arched over backward and threw herself away, kicking off from him as she went, metallic no longer. Orivon had just time to fling away sword and hammer and catch her in his hands, in an awkward collison that took them both to the stones, bouncing and winded.
Valarn Evendoom staggered back, agonized face raised to the unseen cavern ceiling above, and started to really scream. Smoke curled up from him as the metal melted into him, cooking him alive.
And then, cooking him dead.
Orivon watched him blacken, fall, and die, and swallowed down sudden nausea.
Then he realized that Taerune was lying face up on his stomach, in his arms, as unmarked as if that sword had never sliced through her. And he realized something more: just which smooth parts of her he had hold of—and snatched his hands away as if he’d been burned.
Taerune twisted her head around and grinned up at him, making no move to rebuckle anything. “That reminds me: We haven’t brought along any food.”
After a long, breathless moment of staring at her in astonishment, Orivon burst into shouts of laughter.
“Firstblood of the House, Secondblood o
f the House,” the steward intoned formally, “I present to you Lord Erlingar Evendoom.” He bowed deeply and withdrew, sealing the door. It caught cold and silent fire in his wake, to signify he’d activated the wards that bound the chamber into absolute privacy.
“Yes, Father?” Jalandral drawled. “Is all this grandeur truly necessary? Or is this something else Maharla’s enjoying shoving down your throat?”
“Be still,” Lord Evendoom snapped, in a coldly, venomously furious voice that drove Ravandarr into cowering openly and made even Jalandral flinch. “Know that I am beside myself with rage. Over the losses we have suffered, and even more because of, yes, our Eldest and her aims and decrees. I would tell the both of you what I truly think of you, and spend far longer bellowing to the very spires of our castle what I think of her—but I lack the time for such trifles.”
He started to pace, his grand cloak billowing out behind him, the great voice that dominated any chamber and tamed assemblies regaining its dire thunder. “The Eventowers can be rebuilt, and I can raise flesh-rending magical fields to defend the breaches in its walls and cloak it against flying attackers until that time. However, I find myself in personal peril. To avoid being executed for allowing the honor of our House to be so stained, I must dramatically avenge all slights to that honor—and that means eliminating my maimed, mad, and disloyal daughter.”
“Taerune?” Ravandarr burst out, too incredulous to keep silent.
“Taerune,” Lord Evendoom confirmed gravely, “though the Eldest has now cast her out and made her Nameless. She alone did murder in our innermost chambers, spilling the blood of kin.”
“What?” Jalandral raised an elegant, disbelieving eyebrow. “Taera? What lie of Maharla is this?”
“No lie,” their father thundered, “and you risk your own necks—even here, with the wards up—for saying so. Ardranthra, Nelvune, and Qellarla lie dead on the altars of Olone right now, bound for the crypt; the rite is called for feasting-time. Ravandarr, you shall attend with me, in full mourning garb.”
“Taerune killed … ?” Ravandarr said haltingly, staring at his father in horrified disbelief. Lord Evendoom, glaring hard at his Firstblood, never even glanced at his younger son.
Jalandral sighed theatrically. “Which means I must be attending to some errand or other, probably involving the bloodthirsty, vengeful, and very public slaying of dear Nameless Taera, yes?”
“Yes,” Lord Evendoom said heavily. “Very shortly I shall be announcing your aching willingness to undertake this task. See that you play the part accordingly.”
“Lo, in this hour of impending peril, Lord Evendoom sends forth the mightiest force he commands, his flippant and decidedly indolent heir, to do the dirtiest of misplacedly vengeful deeds ever ordered,” Jalandral declaimed grandly, spreading his arms.
Striding past, Lord Evendoom jerked one of those arms sharply down, spinning Jalandral around, and snapped, “Cease playing the fool and behave as befits an Evendoom until you’re gone! Then you can go back to being what you are!”
Jalandral sketched an airily florid salute. “Jalandral Evendoom stands ever ready to serve his family, his city—and every spiteful crone with a misplaced whim within them!”
“F-father,” Ravandarr said then, stepping into Lord Evendoom’s path, so that they almost collided, “let me go.”
“What?” Lord Evendoom loomed over his son, swaying from his hasty halt. “Ravandarr, this is to be a killing. We’re all well aware of your … closeness to Ta—to your sister, but she must be slaughtered, and her head brought back to be presented to the Eldest, as proof!”
His younger son was trembling, as pale as a sword blade, but he stood his ground. “I—I will do it, Father!”
“Bah!” Lord Evendoom whirled away, and stalked back across the chamber. “Look at you! You look sick, not capable! You picked a fine time to go rampant; pity you’ve not shown such spirit ever before!”
“Well, of course he’s sick,” Jalandral said soothingly. “Sick with disbelief—as we all are—and then revolted at Taera’s treachery. See how he trembles with determination?”
Lord Evendoom whirled around again to face them both, cloak swirling. “Jalandral, have done! I look bad enough sending you, but at least it can be passed off as testing my heir and letting all see his true mettle! If I send him, the crones will openly accuse me of mocking their will, trying to see their decrees thwarted!”
“Ah, yes.” Jalandral nodded, inspecting the backs of his fingernails critically, and dropping into mimicry of his father’s strong, deep voice. “I see, I quite see. And we all know where that supposition of our dear crones would lead, don’t we?”
Lord Evendoom burst into a wordless roar of rage that sent Ravandarr, already trembling on the edge of tears, into headlong flight. Then he found his voice again.
“Ravandarr, halt! And turn and stand your ground like an Evendoom, damn you, or by Olone and all Her temptations, I’ll sword you myself, here and now! Do this!”
The power of his voice brought Ravandarr, already stopping and turning, cowering to his knees.
Lord Evendoom looked at them both, one after the other, and then said in a voice as cold as any crone’s, “You will obey, and you will behave so as to impress our Eldest and every crone of this House.”
Ravandarr hastily stood up straight, still trembling.
Lord Evendoom gave him a curt nod, and added, “For if you fail, the crones will put us all to death. Go and prepare yourselves; this audience is at an end.”
Turning his back on them, he strode to the massive arched double doors that opened into the Long Hall.
Magics that had been old before Erlingar Evendoom was born made them open by themselves at his approach, grinding thunderously apart as the privacy wards flickered and died around them like ghostly flames. His two sons stood like statues, watching him go.
Out across the unbroken expanse of mirror-glossy tiles that stretched from the audience chamber into and throughout the cavernous Long Hall. A very long walk, even for a tall Nifl, to meet the Nifl gathered waiting there.
The heads of all the Houses of Talonnorn were standing inside a winking, glittering ring of multiple defensive magics. Between and around them were priestesses of Olone in full holy regalia, and many senior crones in simple robes, there to keep the peace between the Houses and to bear witness.
“We are gathered here in the House struck hardest,” the softly lilting voice of Aumaeraunda, Holiest of Olone, rolled into every ear without being raised in the slightest, “to confer as to what Talonnorn should do now.”
“Make war on Ouvahlor,” Lord Oszrim snarled, ignoring the normal precedence of speech; an effrontery that made Oszrim’s Eldest and Oszrim’s heir both pale in embarrassment. “What else?”
“Rebuild in a manner that forewarns Talonnorn against all attacks,” Lord Dounlar put in.
“Attacks from without,” Maharla, Eldest of Evendoom, added icily, “and from within.”
“And who, exactly, are you?” the Eldest crone of Maulstryke asked in tones of sweet venom, a reminder to all of the suddenness and recent vintage of Maharla’s self-appointed authority.
Maharla whirled, white with rage, but Aumaeraunda called upon a little of the Power of the magic ringing them all to render all crones in the ring momentarily frozen and voiceless.
“Lord Evendoom,” she said, gathering the Power around her that none of them could withstand, “you have just taken private audience with your sons. The Will of Divine Olone Herself demands to know what orders you gave them.”
Lord Evendoom gave her a little bow to signify that his obedience was a matter of his own assent as well as her coercion, and said with dignity, “In the strife just past, one of my daughters slew three of my daughters—in her bedchamber, not in formal combat—and fled. The Eldest of Evendoom has declared her Nameless, and I have just ordered my heir to hunt her down and slay her, to restore the honor of our House. My Secondblood requested that this duty be give
n to him, but upon him I ordered attendance at the death rites of our kin. I also ordered them both to behave befittingly, as Evendooms.”
“He speaks truth to us all,” the high priestess confirmed. “We are satisfied.”
“You may be, Most Holy,” burst out a tall, handsome young Nifl who stood a head taller than everyone except Lord Evendoom and Holy Aumaeraunda, his words a rudeness that made some of the elder crones emit indignant gasps that sounded like short, chirping shrieks, “but I am not. Your sons are widely known in Talonnorn—in my House, even our slaves know it—as disgraces to all Niflghar! The one a prancing, posing buffoon, the other a sniveling coward; ordering them to behave is easy enough, but will prove futile emptiness; Lord Evendoom, you should have compelled them to ‘behave befittingly’ many, many Turnings ago!”
“Maulstryke,” Lord Evendoom said mildly, speaking to the father rather than to the son, “your heir is most … eloquent. Yet in Talonar society we cleave to customs of etiquette. Is”—he waved his hand gently in the direction of his cold critic—“this befitting behavior?”
“As my heir, what Shoan has said is both rude and out of place,” Lord Ohzeld Maulstryke replied, his voice somehow both silken-sharp and deep. “Yet I rebuke him not, nor will do so, because he spoke then not as my heir, but as the battlelord of Maulstryke, quite rightly identifying weaknesses in House Evendoom—the House most damaged in this strife, let all remember; something that speaks more tellingly of their preparedness than all the words we may care to utter here—that affect all Talonnorn. To be blunt, Evendoom, Shoan points out the obvious, and we all know it is something you should have addressed long ago. Your eldest daughter—Taerune, is it not?—is thrice the warrior your heir and Secondblood put together will ever be. So—”
“The one to whom you refer is now Nameless!” Maharla hissed. “Speak not of her!”
“Ah. I find myself unsurprised,” Lord Maulstryke observed coldly, well aware of the enjoyment glittering in the eyes of most of the gathered crones. “She no doubt acted out of rage at the behavior of her kin in this time of Talonnorn’s need. I understand that rage.”
