Dark Vengeance

by Ed Greenwood

  Bryard was there waiting for him, and Harmund, too. The old smith and the weaver held Orivon’s armor ready in their hands, and the rest of the swords and daggers he’d brought from the Rift in Talonnorn were laid out like a bright swordsmith’s wares along the smithy counter.

  Orivon stopped at the sight of them, smiled, and then went forward again, walking slowly because he had to: the crowd of women were all tending to him, now, scrambling to help lace this on and heave that into place.

  “We’re here,” came the deep voice of Harkon, the best hunter in Orlkettle, from the smithy door behind Orivon. “What’s your will?”

  The forge-giant turned to face the hunters. “You must patrol and guard Orlkettle of nights, from now on. Don’t grow lax if days upon days pass with no nightskin raid—they’ll be watching you, and waiting for that. Yet I need you to help me now, too: to track the Nifl who fled, back to whatever caves they came from.”

  Orivon settled his two best swords in their scabbards, made sure his favorite daggers were sheathed where he wanted them, smilingly accepted a skin of water and a hastily proffered haunch of roast boar, rolled them into the blanket he used when sleeping beside the forge, and looked at the door.

  Then he turned back to the softly weeping Larane, and gave her a firm handclasp and the words, “I will do my best to bring your lost ones home. This I swear.”

  Before she could choke aside her grief to reply, he was striding away, back out into the night, the hunters closing in around him.

  “I . . .I wish I was going with him,” Larane whispered at last, tremulously.

  Old beak-nosed Meljarra looked at her sternly. “No, you don’t. You’d not last ten breaths before fear froze your heart. Since when did you learn how to see in the dark, anyway? The nightskins have some sort of spell they put on their slaves, but the rest of us’d be fair blind. Even Harkon would come running back mewling, if you tried to take him down into the caves.”

  She plucked at Larane’s sleeve, got a good grip, and started towing the forlorn cloth-dyer across the smithy by main force, her beak of a nose parting the crowd of women as if by magic. “Now stop talking such foolishness and come and help me make soup. He’ll have your little ones back as soon as he can, and it’ll help them none if you’ve pined away for lack of them, and left them motherless!”

  Harmund the weaver was careful to make sure Meljarra was a good few hurrying strides outside the smithy before he told its ceiling thoughtfully, “Now if you could nag nightskins to death, you’d want Meljarra Sharptongue at your side, to be sure. I can’t see Orivon Firefist or anyone else managing to creep past anything with ears if they have Meljarra along.”

  Bryard and a few of the older men chuckled at that—but only after they’d peered swiftly about to see if any women of the village were listening.

  The hunters said little, which was just as Orivon wanted it.

  If the Niflghar raiders were going to attack the human who’d just slain so many of their fellows, he wanted enough warning to get himself set, with sword and dagger ready.

  They were well into the higher ground, now, where the rocks were many and the trees gnarled, many-rooted things. Harkon came back to him, pointing repeatedly and silently into the night until he nodded to show he’d understood. They’d found the cave mouth.

  Orivon went forward until he could see the hunters standing uneasily on either side of it, and then turned, clasped Harkon’s hand, and waved him back toward Orlkettle.

  Thankfully the hunters slipped away, most of them clasping his hand on their way.

  They were happy to be leaving him, and Orivon was happy to see them go. Even if they all turned out to be braver and quieter than he’d judged them to be, they’d be as useless as witless men, blinded by their lack of darksight. If every one of them groaned along under more than his own weight in prepared torches, they’d not have light enough to reach Talonnorn—to say nothing of the fatal foolhardiness of striding through the Wild Dark bearing bright light to signal your presence to everything that lurked and watched . . . or carrying torches when you should be carrying food.

  Oondaunt raiders could be waiting inside the gaping darkness in the rock, but Orivon doubted it. Once they fled, they’d move far and fast, either hurrying deep into the Dark, seeking Talonnorn as swiftly as they could, or moving well away, to raid for Hairy Ones elsewhere.

  Hairy Ones . . . well, beware this Hairy One.

  Orivon watched the last of the hunters slip around the rocky shoulder of a hillside, heading back home. Then he gazed up at the starry sky, to fix its awesome array in his mind to revisit later.

  A sudden movement brought him back to the rocks around him, sword out. It was Harkon, with a sack.

  “From Larane. The meat left over from this night, and all the cheese in her larder. Meljarra came all this way with it cooking; can you believe it?”

  Orivon smiled. “Meljarra can do anything. She just lacks enough very deaf and very patient folk to lord it over. Don’t tell her that last part.”

  Harkon’s teeth flashed suddenly in the darkness. “I won’t, fear not. If you’re safely down fighting nightskins where she can’t get at you, ’tis me she’ll savage.”

  Orivon nodded, looking at the faint beginnings of coming dawn on the horizon. “Tell Larane thanks, and I’ll bring back her lost ones and kill a score of nightskins for each. It may take me some time.”

  Harkon said quietly, “Orlkettle thanks you, Orivon Firefist. You have given us hope.”

  “That’s a great thing,” Orivon replied, “but I intend to return with more than that. Brith. Reldaera.”

  He turned and stepped into the cave.

  A few paces in, Harkon heard him mutter, “Aumril.”

  Then Harkon heard the forge-giant’s quiet voice again, coming from a little farther off. “Kalamae.”

  Harkon stood listening a long time at the cleft where the deeper darkness had swallowed Orivon Firefist, but if the onetime slave of the nightskins said anything more, he didn’t hear it.

  4

  Scheming, Bloodletting, and Endless Spite

  Six houses rule Talonnorn

  That knows no end to their spite

  The Holy of Olone the deadly seventh

  So revere the Ice

  The Ever-Ice that endures

  And be free of such foolishness

  And self-serving venom

  At least until Talonnorn seeks to conquer here.

  —old saying of Ouvahlor

  Searing magical fire spat from the crones’ scepters in great stabbing lances of bright light, needles of blinding brilliance that thrust at the wheeling, swooping darkwings of the Hunt.

  Transfixed and aflame, one of those fearsome beasts tumbled out of the air, shredded black wings curled up and flapping. Another screamed, scorched and riderless, and fled wildly away across the cavern.

  Yet the flying Hunt wasn’t toothless. One rider had a scepter of his own; its first strike blasted one of the two crones standing with Jalandral Evendoom right off the podium. She made not a sound on her fall into the Nifl-crowded forecourt below, but that was probably because she fell in several tumbling pieces.

  The other crone shrieked in fearful rage—and then in pain, as a second scepter-bolt lashed along her arm, baring it not only of garments, but of skin.

  Then another scepter flashed, and the scepter-wielding Hunt rider spun headless from his saddle, his weapon spinning harmlessly down to land somewhere amid the turrets of the Eventowers.

  Jalandral Evendoom smiled, hefted the scepter no one knew he’d had, and slid it back into his sleeve again.

  “Klaerra,” he told the empty air pleasantly, watching another Hunt rider lean down with a long, barbed whip and lay open the face of the last burned crone, “Now.”

  As if in reply, the air above the Eventowers blossomed into a vast, eerie blue glow, so vivid and splendid that the crowd of assembled Nifl gasped in almost perfect unison.

  From out of that thr
illing blue cloud more darkwings came flying fast—every one ridden by an armored Niflghar with a longlance glittering under his arm!

  A second Hunt, swooping out of the heart of the spell that had brought them there, fell upon the flying Hunt in savage battle, spearing Hunt riders out of their saddles and slamming their darkwings head-on into anyone swooping too close to Jalandral Evendoom.

  Who stood watching with a triumphant smile on his face, as his own hitherto-secret Hunt, which he’d trained in hiding for precisely this task, butchered the famous flying Hunt of Talonnorn. Beside him, the last crone gasped his name through bleeding lips, begging him for aid, but he ignored her.

  What cared he if one more crone lived or died?

  By the time the last darkwings of the original Hunt were torn bloodily apart in midair by five eager darkwings from among his own replacements, and Jalandral Evendoom turned again to face the forecourt full of shocked, struggling-to-flee Talonar Nifl, the crone was dead. He planted a boot on her body to make himself that much taller, to tower just a little more over his new subjects, sneered at the swaying, gingerly retreating banners of the rival noble Houses, and gently cast the little spell that ensured his next words would be heard by every Talonar Nifl—even in the minds of those asleep—from end to end of the City of the Spires.

  “Talonar, hear me, and have my thanks,” he told them all. “I, Jalandral Evendoom, am pleased and proud to begin my duties as High Lord of Talonnorn.”

  He carefully ended the spell before adding, to himself alone, “And do just as I please, slaughtering you all if the whim takes me.”

  Aloun blinked in astonishment, his face lit by the shifting glows of the whorl. “Was he really that blunt? Does he think they’re so afraid of him that he can get away with that? Or do Talonar expect their nobles to speak thus, by now?”

  Luelldar was careful not to sigh. “Did you not notice that little lift and unfolding of his hands, after announcing the title he was bestowing upon himself? That was him ending his ‘great proclaiming’ spell. Evendoom fondly believes that only he—and perhaps a few spellrobes standing with his rival nobles, and he’d be amused if they conveyed his every last word to their masters—heard his last sentence.”

  He waved at the open expanse of floor in front of the junior Watcher, and ordered, “Cast your whorl. Revered Mothers seldom like to be kept waiting.”

  Aloun did as he was bid, showing no surprise at all when Luelldar worked a small second whorl tucked under the edge of his larger one, spinning around itself in the opposite direction as it scudded along under the slowly turning edge of his great eye.

  At first, all the great whorl showed them was a restless sea of deep, rich violet that gaped from time to time in menacing but momentary fanged black mouths. The Anointed of the Ever-Ice did not welcome watchers upon their doings, and Coldheart’s defensive wards were powerful indeed.

  It was not long, however, ere the purple parted in a whorl of its own, a swiftly expanding iris whose inner edges were black and seemed to burn with little tongues of ravaging flame. Luelldar stepped forward, and Aloun was only too eager to obey his waving hand to stand well back.

  Ever-more-accomplished Watcher of Ouvahlor he might be, but he was frankly terrified of the new Revered Mother of Coldheart, and did not welcome the thought of being questioned by Lolonmae at all.

  Wherefore it was Luelldar who bowed gravely to the three priestesses that the shadows behind the spreading flames soon revealed, and Luelldar who murmured, “Revered Mother, we Watchers obey your outstanding command, to be informed immediately of what befalls over the rule of Talonnorn. We have news to report.”

  “Speak, Senior Watcher,” Lolonmae replied, almost gently. Barefoot, bare-armed, and in plain robes, she looked like a young Nifl lass of low station. Seated on a throne shaped of clear ice, she was bared to it, her robes laid atop her body like unfitted cloth and gathered to her only at her waist, with a simple cord. She looked neither cold nor ill at ease.

  In contrast, the two priestesses who stood flanking her had drawn themselves up tall and terrible to glare at the intrusion. They wore gleaming black hide robes and matching gloves and boots, all a-crawl with blue runes of the Ever-Ice that shifted shape and pulsed with restless power. Cold-faced and cold-eyed, Ithmeira and Semmeira stood with their arms folded across their breasts as if in disapproving judgment. Aloun found himself very glad to be back in the shadows, as Luelldar stood forth under the weight of their unfriendly gazes.

  “Talonnorn has a new High Lord,” the Senior Watcher said calmly, his quiet, carefully spaced words falling into a vast and cold silence, as if they were stones falling into a bottomless well.

  “Jalandral Evendoom has just proclaimed himself, at a gathering of Talonar whereat some of the few nobles to survive his purges sent the flying Hunt to publicly slay him—and he surprised everyone by destroying that force with a similar one of his own, created in secret and magically brought to the confrontation in an instant. So the City of Spires is remade, under one commander who has none of the scruples—nor obedience to law or tradition—of the Talonar rulers of old.”

  “Your opinions mean less than nothing—” Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira began cuttingly, almost strutting forward.

  She halted both stride and speech in the next instant, stiffening into frozen silence, when the eyes of the seated Lolonmae suddenly blazed with the vivid deep blue of the Ever-Ice.

  “Our thanks, Luelldar,” the young Revered Mother said calmly, as if Semmeira hadn’t spoken. “Keep watching this Jalandral Evendoom; there will be strife in Talonnorn, and we should miss nothing.” She lifted a finger without waiting for the Senior Watcher to begin to agree—and the great whorl vanished in an instant, leaving only a brief stirring of torn air behind.

  Luelldar’s smaller whorl shot away from that turbulence like the head of an arrow sent streaking from a bow, to turn in a swift arc and glide to a smooth stop, intact and spinning slowly, under Aloun’s nose.

  Even before the Senior Watcher bent over the far side of the small whorl, Aloun found himself swallowing—as he stared fearfully at the same temple chamber they had just been seeing in the large whorl.

  “Revered Mother,” Semmeira was saying excitedly, “we cannot wait longer! The time to strike is now!”

  Lolonmae seemed amused.

  Shifting on her melting throne of ice to a lounging pose, she replied, “Semmeira, to those who share your character, the time to strike is always ‘now.’ Convince me—with a reason rather better than ‘we have the might, so it should be used,’ please.”

  “Klarandarr has said that we should—”

  “The great spellrobe Klarandarr says many things, and it was he, working with you, Semmeira, who so fervently urged Ouvahlor to muster this new army. Of course you both want to use the force you have built, and win more praise—and real power, in Ouvahlor—thereby. Yet I am not disposed, just now, and without him standing here himself to give us his words in person, to be swayed by your report as to what Klarandarr may have said to you.”

  “Forgive me, Revered Mother Lolonmae, but I intend to give you no such thing,” Semmeira replied, contriving to sound contrite, wounded, and scandalized all at the same time. “Klarandarr spoke to all the elders of our city—the Revered Mother who came before you among them—and convinced them that this army should be assembled despite our then-fresh victory over Talonnorn . . . assembled for one purpose: attacking our rival again, at the very moment when Talonnorn is weakest. That moment is now!”

  Lolonmae shook her head, not bothering to hide the utter dismissal in her expression.

  “Your recollection of Klarandarr’s purpose and Ouvahlor’s acceptance of it are correct, but your identification of the ‘moment of weakness’ is your own opinion—one which I consider both unsupported and wrong,” she replied. “Jalandral has named himself High Lord, and thereby done the unthinkable. Now the rest of Talonnorn has been forced to start to think. The bloodletting the Watchers ju
st reported is nothing to the bloodletting that will now come.”

  “Forgive me, Revered Mother, but the Watchers of Ouvahlor aren’t the only ones who have been watching over Jalandral Evendoom. You charged me with this same duty yourself, and I have been attentive to it. I have watched this Lord Evendoom, and he is clever, and energetic, and cunning—very cunning. Most of his foes are already dead, and although it can be argued that slaying a Talonar noble just transforms his blood-kin into your next deadly foe, Evendoom has already eliminated most of the capable and influential Talonar nobles, and subverted the Holy of Olone who might have stood against him. His hands are already around Talonnorn’s neck; any who dare to oppose him now will have to flee smartly, or be dead even more swiftly. Talonnorn’s time of greatest weakness is right now.”

  Excited by her own unfolding words, Semmeira started to stride about the chamber, waving her hands dramatically. “If we give Jalandral Evendoom the time he needs to get Talonar defenders into the habit of obeying his orders without dispute or delay, and those defenders better ordered and deployed, Talonnorn will soon become even more formidable than it was when we defeated it. Far weaker in spellrobes and sheer numbers of fighting sword, yes, but with the internal dissension that so sapped them then—infighting that mattered more to Talonar even than our invading forces striding their very streets!—banished. Smaller swords than Talonnorn could once assemble, yes, but swords that obey one command, not fighting each other with a dozen masters more interested in settling Talonar disputes than the intrusions of Ouvahlor or anyone else.”

  “And if this Evendoom is already arming Talonnorn for war, and our attack on him becomes the very flame that forges the Talonar into one blade against us? What price your bright scheming then?”

  “Why, then we will at least strike at them before they are ready and have taken their forces out into the Dark, so the fighting will again be at the very doors of Talonar houses, bruising their pride and shaking their loyalty to this new High Lord to whom they have given so much authority, in exchange for . . . what? No protection that they can credit! We may well doom Evendoom to face new knives at his back, new traitors in ‘his’ streets who otherwise would dare not challenge him!”