Dark Vengeance

by Ed Greenwood

  “Jalandral,” she said quietly, leaning forward and extending an entreating hand to him before he could say anything, “you can trust me. I live at your pleasure, and am quite content to do so. I am yours, loyal only to you, and will remain so. You need have no fear that I’m plotting anything against you. Truly.”

  Jalandral managed a smile. “I do trust you—as much as I dare trust anyone. Thanks, Klaerra. I need someone to trust in.”

  He sighed. “As usual, I’m unsure of what best to do next in any number of matters, large and small. As I sit here acutely aware that all Talonnorn is watching me, awaiting my slightest misstep, I believe I have learned or anticipated all that the rival Houses can do against me, right now, and have managed to blunt their daring. So long as I don’t break down their doors and come for them, they’ll plot and arm and let their hatred of me fester for a time. A foray from Ouvahlor is only to be expected, seeking to take advantage of the turmoil of my coming to power. Even Klarandarr I’m prepared for, thanks to the Consecrated fearing him more than they do me, and crafting their manyspells-trap. It’s whatever else might come against me, unlooked-for, that I worry over. Some surprise foe out of the Dark, Ravager survivors or fallen raised to undeath by some scheming spellrobe or other or even . . .”

  “Absent kin,” Klaerra said softly.

  Jalandral reared back as if she’d slapped him, and then sprang from his chair to tower over her. “Hey? What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

  Klaerra rose, forcing her way into his arms, and stood eye to eye as she said firmly, “Nothing, Lord Jalandral. Nothing. I merely know what truly matters to you, and that is House Evendoom. Of course you would think of your sist—”

  Jalandral tore free of her, toppling her back into her chair, and strode away across the bedchamber like a black, scowling storm. “Yes, Olone take her! She and the Ravager Bloodblade managed to catch me between them, up near the Blindingbright, and escaped without my being able to slay either one of them. They’re somewhere out there in the Dark right now.”

  He whirled and strode back, teeth clenched. “I should have had them hunted down the moment I got back to Talonnorn, but needed the loyal crones here, to guard my own skin, as I sought the lordship. I dare not delay longer; they must be hunted down and slain as swiftly as possible, before they can do anything against me!”

  Klaerra nodded, not smiling. “And yet—”

  “And yet my father and Faunhorn are by far the greater threat. Some Talonar will turn to them, where none but the lust-ridden—and the lust-ridden who dare blasphemy and can stomach deformity, at that—will fight alongside Taerune. Oh, ’tis clear Faunhorn and my father are the more important danger . . . but can they be left unhindered longer? They’ll do nothing overly reckless, that endangers Talonnorn, whereas Taerune and her Ravagers . . .”

  He growled, threw wide his hands in dramatic bafflement as he turned, and then strode across the room again.

  “Dral,” Klaerra said gently, “you can send whomever you trust—”

  Jalandral’s bark of laughter was as sudden as it was bitter. After a moment, Klaerra joined in his mirthless laughter, and then held up a hand and amended her words: “Whoever can best be spared, to go after Taerune and her agents, or Erlingar and Faunhorn—or both groups, or neither. What matters is that your place and full attention must be kept on unfolding events here in Talonnorn.”

  Jalandral had halted and spun around to face her, standing in silence, hands clasped behind his back, eyes glittering as he stared at her.

  “You gathered malcontent merchant commoners from the Araed and ambitious younger crones to your side, in your bid to become High Lord,” Klaerra reminded him calmly. “They have expectations. They also have discontent, restlessness, and daring. You must keep firm control over them or they’ll turn on you, in a whirlwind of different cabals and assassination attempts that will almost certainly fail and frustrate each other—but may well claim your life just because they’re so numerous and are all centered on you.”

  Jalandral nodded, and took a step nearer.

  “In short, Dral, you must rule Talonnorn. ‘High Lord’ must not be an empty title, must not be seen by Talonar to belong to someone whose attention is elsewhere, whose energies are spent on other things than what is talked of in the streets and taverns. You have claimed the herd of wild-eyed slaves, and must now whip-tame it and watch over it—or lose it all. Crises will be served up to you just as fast as Talonnorn can make the platters to proffer them; you must be seen to be ready for them.”

  “Crises such as—?”

  Klaerra didn’t hesitate for an instant. “We hear many reports of various Talonar fleeing the city, stealing away to places they deem safer. If enough of them leave, those other places will be safer; you’ll be left lording over the most desperate and dangerous, in numbers too few to hold this cavern against the next Ouvahlan foray—even if Klarandarr and even his weakest apprentices stay home! This is but one of the crises you must stay and deal with—and be seen to deal with—as swiftly and firmly as possible.”

  Jalandral started to pace across the room again. “As for those fleeing fools, best we were rid of them,” he sneered. “Better vipers out in the Dark than vipers right here in our beds! Those who remain are more likely to be loyal—or too scared or weak to do anything against my rule.”

  “True,” Klaerra agreed, “but they’re departing in such numbers that the perils of the Dark won’t claim them all. Your foes may gather, out in the Immur, and prove deadly indeed. Remember, they know the secret ways in, how the wards work, the—”

  Jalandral spat a heartfelt curse, and then snarled, “So who shall we find to hunt them all down?”

  Klaerra shrugged. “Offer rewards. Use the wealth of Raskshaula and Maulstryke—both yours, now—as bait to the ambitious of the Araed. Let them be rich beyond their dreams, so long as they bring you the Nifl heads you demand. Their lazier neighbors in the Araed will thank you for sending them away for a time and removing their ploys and energetic competition from the alleys.”

  “Yes”—Jalandral smiled, brightening—”and slaves can be flogged harder, to make up the lost work. Talonnorn was humbled at the hands of Ouvahlor because we have slowly come to coddle our slaves, treating too many of them as precious skilled workers, and too few of them as expendable, stupid brawn. They spring up as endlessly and abundantly as yeldeth, and should be treated as such.”

  Then he frowned again.

  “But with everyone out hunting traitors, who shall raid the Blindingbright for slaves?”

  Klaerra smiled.

  “The last House-lord left who really knew the old Talonnorn: Randreth Oondaunt. Too witless and lazy to turn traitor, and certainly cruel enough to be a good slave-taker. He’ll be so glad to be out from under your close regard—have you not seen him cowering, when you thunder?—that he’ll leap in his eagerness to serve you.”

  Jalandral smiled.

  “The perfect Talonar. May they all behave the same way. Soon.”

  “Rub yeldeth into them,” hollow-eyed Lareldra said wearily, crawling through the soft, damp, golden brown spores to get a better look at the ribbons of blood crisscrossing Brith’s back.

  Vaeyemue had used her whip ruthlessly, knowing just how hard she could flog without killing a slave or—quite—cutting right through the muscles of their backs and shoulders.

  Brith’s shoulders still heaved, and his body still spasmed and shuddered with agony from time to time, but his screams had ended long ago, and the warm, damp yeldeth muffled his weeping.

  Two of the girls clung to him as much for their own comfort as for his, crying as freely as he’d been. Kalamae, as usual, had kept silent, even when Vaeyemue’s whip had cut right across her face.

  It was she who now bent to take up handfuls of the clinging fungus and rub it into the blood-filled scars. Brith howled, but the yeldeth muffled his frantic noise, and Kalamae didn’t even pause.

  “That’s it,” a Nif
lghar said from on down the tunnel, coming toward them and clawing away great threads of the swift-growing yeldeth as he came. “Rub it in well. He’ll scar, but heal as fast as this filth grows.”

  The dark elf was a slave, not a Talonar, and the Hairy Ones didn’t shrink from him or turn their backs in sullen silence. No doubt he’d come crawling just to see why the yeldeth in this stretch of tunnel was now growing faster than its harvesting, not to gloat or make trouble.

  Almost gently he shouldered past them all, and went on down the tunnel, dragging a growing heap of yeldeth as he went.

  Reldaera watched him dwindle into the distance, then whispered something so softly that even Aumril, just across Brith’s body from her, could hardly hear.

  “I hate them. I hate them all.”

  “That’ll do you no good,” Lareldra told her. “They’ll—”

  “Ah, but it will,” Kalamae hissed, turning to glare. “If we cling to our hatred, it becomes a shield—and the heavier and darker it gets, the stronger we become, by dragging it around with us. We are going to get out of here, somehow.”

  Lareldra stared at her, not even bothering to shake her head. What did it matter? Let them scheme and snarl, if it kept them sane longer. They hadn’t been here long enough to break, yet.

  After Urmreth had died, it’d been, her first sight of the four. They’d all been brought here at various times by Talonar slavers working for House Oondaunt.

  How long since the most recent arrivals, she was not quite sure. Time passed in endless, unmeasured work in the yeldeth caverns. If you harvested too slowly, the filth overwhelmed you and buried you. So you ate, and slept, and worked, and did those things again, over and over again, taking care only not to eat yeldeth you’d just relieved yourself into, or that had eaten the flesh of a slave who’d died.

  Never knowing that, the Nifl in the city above ate it all, whatever gods there be take them.

  She remembered the coming of these four, though, the boy and the girls, one of them a little older.

  Darksight had been cast on them, and they’d been examined.

  Not that the choice of what to do with them had been difficult. Too young for strong-work or to be attractive to any Nifl rapist, they were best suited for yeldeth harvesting . . . and so here they were.

  With the smallest, quietest lass—Aumril, her name was—turning now to ask Lareldra fearfully what she thought would happen to them.

  Wearily—she was always weary, these days, for what did anything matter?—Lareldra tried to give them her best smile.

  Then she listened hard for any sounds of Vaeyemue and her whip approaching; both were greatly feared for good reason.

  Nothing.

  So she shrugged, there in the soft, damp warmth of the yeldeth caverns, and replied, “You will pick until you die.”

  Scooping up a handful of the warm, wet fungus, she let it fall back to rejoin what had already grown to cover her knees, in just this brief time of watching yeldeth being rubbed into the boy’s wounds, and added, “No one ever gets out.”

  “And this is . . . everything?”

  Semmeira kept that question silken-soft, but there was no mistaking the calm menace in her voice.

  Arothral, Helbram, and Lorrel were veteran warblades, and had heard superiors quietly promising them death before; not one of them paled, swallowed, or stumbled over their words.

  “This is everything,” they replied, more or less in unison, spreading their hands to indicate the dozen-some opened chests and coffers they’d placed before her.

  “Everything magical, or that we suspect might be magical,” Arothral added carefully, “as you commanded.”

  Hmmph.

  The most glittering loot of Glowstone was paltry enough.

  Semmeira pointed at one of the chests, and Helbram bent, retrieved the item she’d indicated—some sort of slender metallic scepter, set with many tiny, winking white gems—and held it before her for inspection.

  The Exalted Daughter of the Ice peered at it briefly, and shook her head. Carefully Helbram returned it to its chest. When he turned in his crouch, she was pointing at something spherical and metallic, two chests along.

  This, too, she rejected. Another three items she spurned, ere eagerly seizing three small, glowing gems, all carefully encased in little metal cages to protect them against damage if dropped. She held the trio of gems up by their chains, gazed at them critically, and then nodded and waved lazily at the chests at her feet.

  “These three I’ll have,” she told the three warblades. “You may keep the rest.”

  Veterans they might be, but the officers were unable to keep their astonishment—and greedy joy—entirely off their faces as they plucked up the chests and departed.

  Semmeira smiled and watched them go. When there was no one close to her in that corner cavern of Glowstone, she turned her back on the carnage of the watch-moot and the distant boasting of strolling Ouvahlan warriors, held up the gems, and touched a finger to her tongue and then to each stone in turn.

  The incantation she murmured then was long and complicated, and she looked somehow older when she was finished.

  Her smile, however, was broader than ever, though it held not a trace of mirth.

  It grew even brighter when countless tiny sparks faded into existence in a ring about her forehead, an aura of silently whirling points of light that danced excitedly, flared—and then fell and faded, sinking not into oblivion but rather, it seemed, into her head.

  Whereupon the dancing sparks promptly reappeared in Semmeira’s eyes, causing them to glow balefully.

  “I’m tired of being spied upon,” she announced softly, to the empty air around her.

  Her smile went mean.

  “As Coldheart is now discovering.”

  A shriek arose from one whorl, and then another. Luelldar leaned forward to glare at them—and was hurriedly closing them and turning to peer at others even before Aloun started to gape.

  Whorl after whorl was showing the two Watchers of Ouvahlor the same thing.

  Each whorl held the same priestess it had held moments earlier. Back then, all of those Anointed, each alone in her chamber, had been individually scrying the distant Semmeira.

  Now they were all doing the same thing, but it was a different thing. Rather than calmly spying from afar, they were now all shrieking, clutching, and clawing wildly at their heads as if to reach inside and tear out utter agony raging within—and then collapsing and falling senseless.

  Priestess after priestess of Coldheart, until—

  Luelldar flung up his hands and shouted a word that rocked the chamber with rolling echoes, and snatched every last whorl out of existence in an instant.

  Panting in the sudden darkness, the two Watchers stared at each other as low, feeble light slowly returned, stealing hesitantly in around their ankles as if afraid to enter the room.

  “You . . .” Aloun lacked breath enough to say more, but the Senior Watcher knew very well what he’d meant to ask.

  “I ended all the whorls, yes. In time, it seems; before Semmeira’s magic could lash out at us, and deprive Coldheart of its only trained Watchers.”

  “D-deprive?”

  “Yes,” Luelldar said simply. “That spell would have slain us.”

  He strode across the room and did something to a panel Aloun had seen him open only once before.

  Behind it were the same drinkables it had been hiding last time. The Senior Watcher selected a decanter, unstoppered it, and took a good long swig. He was gasping when he turned and offered it to Aloun.

  Who took it in a kind of wonderment, sipped tentatively, winced, and then took a longer quaff.

  “We lack some of the sacred bindings of the Ice that the Consecrated enjoy,” Luelldar explained. “Most of them should survive what we just witnessed. Some may never regain the ability of scrying, or even full mastery of holy spells they’ve hitherto hurled with ease . . . but they should live. No such kindness does the Ever-Ice show us
.”

  “So all scryings of Semmeira . . .”

  “Are abruptly and painfully ended. Even the Revered Mother would have been mind-smacked by that magic. Many higher-ranking priestesses know how to work it, but all of them except Lolonmae—or someone else calling on the full power of the awakened Ever-Ice—lack the spell-might to do it. Klarandarr himself couldn’t manage it.”

  “So why did Semmeira do that? It helps her not at all to make more foes among the Consecrated of Coldheart!”

  “Aloun,” Luelldar replied patiently, holding out his hand for the decanter, “Semmeira can’t make any more enemies at Coldheart. Every last priestess and would-be priestess within its walls hates her already. What she did was free herself from their scrying. Even Lolonmae will be able to watch over her only for short periods, now, and with intense pain.”

  “I know that,” Aloun said carefully. “What I meant to ask was: what good does ending their scrutiny of her do? What does she intend to do, that she doesn’t want them to see?”

  “Betray Coldheart or defy her orders, obviously. Just what she intends, I know not—but I do know that the Revered Mother will be calling on us, very soon, to scry the wayward Exalted Daughter just as subtly and briefly as we know how, so that we can all discover what Semmeira is up to.”

  “Briefly and subtly,” Aloun muttered, “so we can avoid being mind-blasted, right?”

  “Right. Semmeira’s little army has taken Glowstone with ease, slaughtering most of the Nifl there, and we saw her rejecting most of the admittedly paltry magics brought to her. Which means she’s quite confident in her own power right now—given that she’s alone in an army of rampants, the most capable of whom she’s just relinquished all that magic to, so they just might at some point stand together and use it all against her. So she might be planning anything, from conquering Talonnorn to slaying Klarandarr to establish a reputation as the most dangerous Nifl in all the Dark, to setting up some sort of a lure for the Anointed of Coldheart, so she can slay them one by one as they arrive to investigate it. These are but three whims of conjecture I’ve just indulged in, mind, and should be treated as such.”