Dark Warrior Rising

by Ed Greenwood

  “If the head and heir of House Maulstryke are so deeply concerned about the competencies of my sons,” Lord Evendoom said calmly, “they are welcome to accompany my heir, to see for themselves that the honor of Talonnorn is ably defended.”

  “I will go,” Shoan Maulstryke snarled, “and shall begin to ready myself this instant!”

  He stormed out of the ring, the high priestess hastily working its barrier magics to let him pass unscathed.

  In silence they watched him stride off down the Long Hall, cloak streaming in his wake.

  “Unlike Lord Evendoom,” Lord Ohzeld Maulstryke said then, “I am aware of my duties, and cannot undertake vengeful escapades when Talonnorn stands threatened. There is much to do, and overbold talk and dispute will get none of these needful things done. I take this opportunity to gift Lord Evendoom with a promise—some might call it a warning—that dire consequences will follow if his decision to send his heir on such a fool’s errand is revealed to have been mistaken or if any treachery is worked against my heir. May you all enjoy an excellent converse, hereafter.”

  And with a nod to the Holiest of Olone, Lord Maulstryke followed his son out of the ring, his cloak trailing sparks of its Power as he began the long walk.

  Orivon frowned down at the weapons he’d brought from the Rift. “All of these are too long to fit you with.”

  Taerune held up her stump. “Just a dagger, perhaps? We’ve plenty to choose from, now.”

  There arose a sudden crackle behind them, and they both whirled around.

  Close enough to tug at their limbs as it snarled into eerily blue, humming life, a wall of glowing air they could see through was rising, building slowly up from the stones by their boots into the darkness high overhead. Magic was now cloaking Talonnorn.

  Orivon stared at the humming blue fire rather grimly, watching it lick and dance across the tunnel, around the door that was still ajar. “The wards.”

  “Yes,” Taerune said softly, and let out a great sigh. “Protecting Talonnorn from dung-worms and attacking Niflghar of Ouvahlor alike. Walling us out, too.”

  Orivon shook his head. “You Nifl are so … dramatic. Overblown. Everything’s so—florid.”

  Taerune’s smile was as sad as his words had been wry. “And I had to teach you eloquence, didn’t I? Just to have a slave who could appreciate my own cleverness.”

  Orivon gave her a hard look. “Is that why you did it?”

  She went pale, looked away, and then said quietly, “This probably isn’t the best of times to tell you, but I’ve almost no magic left. This Orb isn’t …”

  Orivon sighed. “‘Magic,’ you were going to say? Or ‘useful’?”

  12

  Glee Among the Ravagers

  When there is glee among the Ravagers

  Prices will be high, and selection short.

  —old Niflghar traders’ saying

  “Took a lot of rockfalls, that did,” the Nifl everyone knew as Old Bloodblade commented, looking down from the high ledge at a crew of younger Ravagers busily clambering over (and through) the huge skeleton of a raudren, scraping and hewing flesh and hide into baskets for the cooking fires and the tanning cauldrons. “Yet we slew it in the end.”

  Gruffly pointing out the obvious was what Old Bloodblade did, so the one-eyed Ravager lounging beside him didn’t bother getting irritated. Instead, Blind Lharlak transferred the strip of raudren hide he was chewing on from one cheek to the other with his tongue, and through its movements made the grunt that signified agreement. His eye patch and ever-present curved sword made him look villainous indeed, and he did nothing to discourage that image—though his mustache was far tidier and more slender than the bristling foliage of his ledge-mate.

  Needing no further encouragement, Old Bloodblade growled on. “Heard only six raudren flew back to Talonnorn, when they blew the horns, and one of them was so sorely wounded that it flew headlong into a castle tower and got itself killed—smashing the top off the tower, too! Crushed a lot of Haraedra, that did!”

  “Unfortunately, they were Nameless,” Lharlak replied. “Servants, warblades—our sort of Nifl. Not the purebloods and spellrobes, priestesses and crones.”

  “Hmph,” Old Bloodblade commented. “Those sort of Nifl never get killed—except on the sly, by their own kind. Rat eating rat, you might say.”

  “And many do,” Lharlak murmured, a favorite saying that Old Bloodblade heard all too often. “And many do.”

  Orivon thrust his sword into the narrowing crack at the end of the ledge, where it grew too small for his body to go farther. The steel bit into nothing, and he heard and smelled no beast. “I think it’s safe,” he muttered. “We sleep here?”

  “You’re the one with the lashes, and I’m the one who gets tied up,” Taerune reminded him softly. “You must decide.”

  Orivon’s mouth’s tightened. “We sleep here.”

  She promptly nodded, let out a long sigh, and sagged back against the rough rock. “Good. I’m … more than weary.”

  “And we have no food, nor anything to drink,” Orivon said grimly, “and no map. With Talonnorn shielded against us.”

  Taerune nodded silently, eyes on his.

  “Well?” Orivon growled. “Aren’t you even going to say anything?” Taerune shrugged. “We’ll both be happier about this disaster after we’ve had some sleep?”

  Her longtime slave snorted. “Thank you, Lady Evendoom.”

  “This isn’t going to be comfortable,” she complained. “Can’t you dump the weapons out on the ledge and give us both another cloak to put under us? This stone is very … hard.”

  Orivon snorted again, amused despite himself at her brilliant observation. “Any more requests?”

  “Yes. Could you bind me faceup, this time? Just tie my wrist to my side.”

  “As my Lady commands,” he said sarcastically, getting out the lashes.

  “Ho, luggards,” the new arrival on the ledge greeted Old Bloodblade and Lharlak casually.

  “Ho, Daruse,” they mumbled back, waving at an empty stretch of ledge in an invitation to sit down.

  Daruse accepted. He looked even more like the Talonar view of a Ravager than his fellows: dirty, clad in tangled scraps of weathered, salvaged armor, and hung about with a fearsome arsenal of rusty, well-used weapons. He looked battered, with the edge of one ear torn and gone, his not-so-obsidian skin sporting more than a few scars and nasty-looking scaly areas. He wore several gaudy things seized from the bodies of Nifl he’d slain that he believed were amulets, and an eye patch. Unlike Lharlak, Daruse’s eye patch was for show, and when the whim took him, he moved it from one eye to the other, or dropped it down around his neck to dangle and leave both his eyes free.

  “Barandon,” he said, using Old Bloodblade’s real name because it irritated the stout old Nifl immensely, and because doing so got him Bloodblade’s immediate attention, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Oh, no! Gird yourselves for battle, all! It’ll be raining spellrobes in a bit, and Olone Herself’ll be down to personally kiss our backsides! Daruse has been thinking!”

  “Gently, gently,” Daruse drawled amiably. “My ire’s a terrible flame when aroused, you know!”

  “So the shes have said,” Lharlak jested, “but they were giggling something fierce when they said it!”

  “Chortle, chortle,” Daruse replied with a yawn. “Anyhow, listen: Talonnorn’s badly weakened, yes?”

  “Yes,” the other two chorused, having heard many vivid descriptions of the Eventowers half-collapsed, fires and corpses everywhere, and towers fallen all across the city.

  “Well, now! Stands to reason this is a great chance for us to raid, and do some real damage! Raudren almost all slain, their Hunt and their warblades both cut to tripes and every House eyeing every other House; all suspicious, and wanting to keep their blades at home to use on each other … and once they start to rebuild, and everything is chaos and confusion and supplies heaped everywhere for the taking …�
��

  “I’m hearing you,” Old Bloodblade grunted. “And nodding for once, too.”

  Lharlak saved himself the effort of speaking, and just nodded.

  “So what say, brave blades? Do we sit here, camped out in the Wild Dark, waiting for the next creeping monster to gobble us? Or do we seize this ideal time to attack, and really loot and pillage Talonnorn at last?”

  “Me for looting,” Old Bloodblade growled.

  “Me for pillaging,” Lharlak chimed in laconically, shifting his chew back to the other cheek again.

  “Oh, you luggards!” Daruse growled disgustedly. “I might have saved myself a lot of breath—”

  “By asking us straight out if we’d already agreed to muster a raiding party,” Old Bloodblade told him. “Which we have.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say—”

  Blind Lharlak turned on Daruse, pouting his lips in a parody of a lusty wanton Nifl-she, and said, “Because we so love to hear you cajole, Ruse, we do! You could cajole a crone to lick your behind, you could!”

  “Oh, now,” Old Bloodblade rumbled, “that’s something I’ll be wanting to see him demonstrate, once we’re lording it in some Talonar castle! Could you spare a crone for me, Ruse, old friend?”

  “For you, Lord Barandon, no less than four—if your aging heart can take it, that is!”

  “Olone rut,” Old Bloodblade snarled, making the lewd hooked-fingers gesture that went with that oath.

  He made it again when the others on the ledge both chuckled mockingly at him.

  It was rare indeed for Lord Ohzeld Maulstryke to stand in this particular chamber of Maulgard—and rarer still for him to be there without a silently waiting cluster of servants.

  They were all just beyond the outer doors, of course. Neither father nor son wanted them closer, and the scrying-foil glows of both their wards warred soundlessly in the air around them to keep subtler spies—the crones of their own House—at bay. The castle of House Maulstryke, for all its habitual silence, was a place of energetic spying and vicious betrayals, and none of the Maulstryke rampants were eager to cross their crones more than they had to. So by all the magical means either Nifl could muster, this was, and would remain, a strictly private meeting.

  Disdaining any of the chairs his son seemed to think must crowd a robing-room, Lord Ohzeld stood like a statue of icy anger on the largest clear expanse of gleaming black marble. “You have said and done many stupid things in your life, Shoan, but this surpasses all. I am appalled. More than that, I am disgusted and disappointed. That a son of mine should let a dolt like Evendoom goad you—goad you like a child!—into declaring you’d set boots outside Talonnorn in the company of that grinning fop Jalandral—as lazily a poison-using murderer as this city has ever held—hunting some matter-nothing Maimed One, who when she was whole was fit only to flog slaves, at that!”

  The Firstblood of House Maulstryke was just as angry, but his ire was hot forgefire to his father’s ice. He strode around his marble chambers with swift, abrupt whirlings, anger in his every movement, slapping on armor and fetching forth his best weapons with impatient rattlings.

  “Father, I have my own honor to avenge. She once struck me with her lash. In … a private moment, something too small and shameful to demand redress in the normal way of things. Yet it’s fitting that if Taerune Evendoom be struck down, my hand be the one to grind her face into the rock and make her beg vainly for mercy, through her own blood!”

  Ohzeld stared at his heir in expressionless silence for too long a time for either of them to be comfortable … and then nodded, slowly and curtly. “Fitting, yes. This, I was unaware of. Because you kept a secret you should not have kept. Secrets, Shoan, are weaknesses; take care you not carry too many, lest your best armor become a cloak full of holes.”

  Jalandral Evendoom moved around his chambers with unhurried, languid grace, buckling on the last of his sleek black armor, and flexing its sliding plates experimentally by swinging and bending his arms thus and so.

  Ravandarr was certain that if he hadn’t been present, Jalandral would have been humming.

  Oh So Holy Olone, why was Dral always so happy? Was he … oriad?

  “Dral,” he snapped, unable to keep silent any longer.

  His older brother looked up from the array of weapons laid out on his bed. “Hmm?”

  Ravandarr was leaning against the door frame, scowling, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of his face and voice. “I should be the one to hunt Taera down,” he grated, bouncing a fist morosely off the unyielding stone beside him. “I was the one she was closest to. The one who has been most betrayed.”

  “Nay, brother,” Jalandral said dryly, sighting along the glossy edge of a favorite blade with every evidence of satisfaction, before sliding it back into its scabbard. “Our dead sisters have been the most betrayed.”

  “Perhaps.” Ravan’s scowl deepened. “No, you speak truth. Yet they are dead, and so feel no scorn-fire. Whereas I—”

  “Seethe and bubble like cauldron-simmer, brother.” Jalandral shook his head, turned from equipping himself, and wagged one long, elegant finger. “Cloak that rage, gather it within, and master it, Ravan. When you have mastered it, you can forge from it whatever you need … to see your aims fulfilled, your whims made deeds … your battles turned to triumphs.” He scooped up an evidently succulent amraunt from a handy pedestal dish, smiled and winked at it, and ate it with impish grace.

  Ravandarr swung his hand angrily, as if slicing the air with a sword he did not have. “But that’s just it! What battles? Father never lets me so much as—”

  “Ah, but he will. Soon after I depart. His own neck is at risk in this, and he sees me as far too much the self-minded, pert little puppy. You are his burningly loyal back-blade. He will send you off after me with a force of your own, to strike if I fail or falter or just decide to do something other than slay Taera and bring her severed head back here for him to parade before the crones.”

  “‘Something other’?” Ravandarr frowned. “Such as?”

  “Such as rape her—now that she’s maimed, and thus no longer our kin. I’ve wanted to taste her charms for a long time, haven’t you?—and then help her get to the Ravagers, to find a new life there.”

  Ravandarr gaped at his brother, aghast. “But-but-why? Every moment she still breathes is an affront to Olone! House Evendoom can’t help but sink into divine disfavor, and be—”

  “Nay, brother,” Jalandral interrupted jauntily, “every moment she still breathes is an affront to the crones, as it reminds all that their power isn’t absolute. Olone cares nothing for what we do to others—or haven’t you been listening to the holy chants?”

  He turned back to the bed, took up the sword they’d both known he’d choose, and began buckling it on. “Olone cares only about our personal quests for perfection—‘beauty,’ if you will. Needlessly putting a sword through a Maimed One does nothing at all to make us more perfect.”

  Settling the sword belt in place with a nod of satisfaction, Jalandral took up another sheathed dagger and chose the best place to strap it on. “A Maimed One, moreover, who is outcast—and out of Talonnorn to stay, probably soon to perish out in the Dark if we did nothing about her at all. No threat to us, and no threat to the city.”

  Sliding home another dagger into its sheath and gracefully patting his amulets in swift succession to make sure they were where they should be, he murmured, “See to yourself, as I do, and obey Father and the crones carefully and attentively—and as little as possible. Let their mistakes be their mistakes, not yours. You’ll live longer, that way.”

  Flicking fingertips in a jaunty farewell across his younger brother’s chest with a backhanded wave of his hand, the Firstblood of House Evendoom awakened the amulet at his throat, the one that turned aside daggers. As its faint singing rose around him, he strode out, leaving Ravandarr staring after him.

  Imdul ran a swift hand down the front of his favorite serving-she, who gave him
a wink and a smile before adroitly twisting away. Grinning at her amiably, he fell into his usual chair.

  “Gates still down?” Urgel grunted, by way of greeting.

  “As well you know,” the poisoner murmured. “My, but their lack makes the street seem different.”

  “The street is different,” Clazlathor said flatly, cradling his goblet of aehrodel. He was seated facing the doors. Not so long ago, whenever they opened, he would have seen the great, now-fallen gates House Evendoom had raised to guard their Forgerift, looming mere strides away across the street. Now, when the doors of the Waiting Warm Dark opened, there was nothing but the forlornly empty anvil and table of Orivon Firefist, and the angry glow of the Forgerift, beyond. “Evendoom’s talons no longer hold it in an unshakable grip.”

  “Ho, ho,” big Munthur agreed, from his end of the table, “and won’t all our lives be interesting, these next few Turnings? Will it be House against House in the streets, d’you think? Or just a few swords drawn in alleys?”

  Urgel shrugged. “We’d best keep low and silent while the Houses snap and snarl and settle things—or they’ll quite happily turn on us to vent their fury. And if they do that, no matter how ridiculous their claims about our treasons are, we’ll all be a little too dead to scoff—or care overmuch about the future of Talonnorn.”

  Tarlyn shrugged. “As to that, they could have slain any of us whenever they wished, all our lives. The High Houses have always done as they pleased in Talonnorn. We should all be pleased whenever they don’t get their every idle whim fulfilled—such rarities are their only reminders that Olone’s the Goddess, not each and every one of them.” He drained the last of his aehrodel, sighed as he savored it, and added, “If nothing teaches them even a little prudence, we’re all doomed.”