by Ed Greenwood
Luelldar leaned closer to him, and said slowly, loudly, and firmly, “Ouvahlor does not intend to conquer Talonnorn. Now or in time any of us are likely to see.”
“You … you mean it,” the younger Watcher whispered. As he saw Luelldar roll exasperated eyes, he snapped, “Swear this is truth! Swear by the Ever-Ice!”
Luelldar reached into the front of his robes, drew out the blue-white shard that he wore glimmering against his breast, and held it up on its chain so Aloun could see it well.
Then he closed the fist of his other hand on it and said formally, “By the Ever-Ice that sears all falsehood, I swear: Ouvahlor does not intend to conquer Talonnorn. Now or in time any of us are likely to see.”
Aloun’s mouth hung open as the older Watcher calmly restored his Ice shard to its customary place. When he found the use of it again, it was to splutter, “But—well—why then—?”
“While you speak, you are slower to listen.” Luelldar quoted the very old saying in an almost droll voice, and waited for the younger Watcher to blush, find silence, and get over his emotions. Something the young fool would not have time for in battle; he was far from ready for this duty yet.
When Aloun was truly listening once more, Luelldar said gently, “We’ve discussed trade among Nifl cities more than once—and recently, too. Yes?”
“Yes.” The youngling said that one word and then stopped. Good; he was learning at last.
Luelldar made him wait, just to see if the flood of questions would burst forth … and almost smiled, when it did not.
“Talonnorn destroyed,” he explained almost gently, “benefits Ouvahlor little. We gain greater loot, if our warblades don’t destroy overmuch in the fighting, and lose more of our warblades, just to win two things: the enmity of a few surviving Talonar, who will be death-sworn to avenge their city and so willing to do anything to work us harm; and the fell regard of all Nifl cities—not just those of Olone—who will see us as too great a threat to be allowed to survive.”
“They’d ally in arms against us?” Aloun’s disbelief was clear. “Even two Nifl cities can’t trust each other enough to rise in arms together, to say nothing of three or more, and Olone and—”
“They would. A Pact exists to prove it.”
“The Darksway Pact?”
“Is more than just an empty phrase we chant as infants, Aloun. If invoked, it will be answered. And, sooner or later, Ouvahlor will fall. Probably later, but it will be a long and wearying fight that consumes all of our lives, leaving us no time for laughter or pride or lording it over anyone.”
Aloun was going pale again. Luelldar hid his smile. After all, this might be far from the last shock the attack on Talonnorn would deal this young Watcher.
“But let us turn away from such grim contemplations, and consider how Ouvahlor benefits if we shatter Talonnorn, and then withdraw. We are seen to be merciful—or at least, not so wantonly destructive as to be worth trying to eradicate. Any call for the Pact will go unheeded by city rulers mindful of the cost. Yet we stand no longer in the shadow of mighty Talonnorn, fast rising to be powerful enough to seriously threaten Ouvahlor with conquest. Rather, we hold the dominance, and the riches to come.”
“‘Riches to come’?”
By the Ice, but the youngling was a simpleton! “A weakened Talonnorn will see its rivals close around it in the Dark, rivals they’ve given ample cause to hate them. They will fear these rivals, and seek to rebuild their defenses and their trade. So they’ll turn to the same Forgerift and ores that enrich them now, and enrich us by offering payment in magic and weapons and coin for the slaves, food, and goods our traders will offer them, purporting to be risking much by doing so illicitly, and therefore demanding much higher prices! Then we shall have Ouvahlor on high, and Talonnorn in its shadow.”
“So will they not scheme and plot in turn attack us, and win back their dominance?”
“Yes,” Luelldar said sweetly. “Yet we shall work to delay that attack for as long as possible. First, our attack will fall most heavily on the foremost ruling House of Talonnorn, the Evendooms. If they are nigh—but not quite—eradicated, the struggle among the various Houses to establish a new local order will occupy the Talonar for the longest time we can hope to cause. This delay will be aided by specific damages we seek to inflict in this attack: the magic we seize, the crones we slay—and the eradication of the Hunt of Talonnorn. Those are the true goals of this strife we’re launching: the slaughter of as many crones and darkwings as we can manage. All else is adornment.”
“Adornment?”
“A little less incredulous disgust, please. Remember, you are a Watcher of Ouvahlor, and a Watcher—”
“Has no use for incredulity, yes,” Aloun said heavily. “I remember that lesson.”
Luelldar smiled. “Well,” he said gently, turning back to the watch-whorl, “that’s something.”
Grunt Tusks lurched past again, but Orivon kept his eyes on the red-hot bar he was hammering, raining swift blows along its edges to flatten it out into what would soon be another blade. You’d think every last Nifl in all Niflheim would have a dozen swords by now, but someone kept buying them from Talonnorn’s traders, so perhaps Nifl were “numberless in their rightful might,” as that longest chant of Olone claimed.
Well, all the more to slay, then. Starting with those hated most: the Nifl of House Evendoom, the she-elf who thought of him as her pet first of all. It would be a pleasure to dismember her slowly, listening to her screams and smashing her down whenever she tried to struggle.
He might well have to slaughter a lot of other Nifl first, though, to win himself leisure enough to make Taerune the Whipping Bitch’s death slow and fittingly painful. And she might well use that time to flee, or gather magic to use against him that he’d have no shield against. So perhaps she needed to lose her hands and feet as swiftly as he could manage it—oh, and her tongue, too, to keep her from snarling out spells—so she’d have no choice but to just lie there and bleed while he dealt with the rest of House Evendoom.
Not that he’d take all that much delight in maiming a female—even a female Nifl. Nor, come to think of it, would he enjoy striking down the heir of the house, the one who laughed so much—Jalandral, that was his name, aye. Though he tasted no whips, and sweated over no Rift, he felt as trapped as Orivon Firefist, Taerune’s pet Hairy One. Or so he’d seemed, at least, on every one of the handful of occasions when Orivon had seen him in the Eventowers.
“Oh, aye, that one prowls as restlessly as I do,” Orivon told the nascent blade he was hammering so deftly, as his sweat rained down around him and the Rift raged, bubbling as it flowed past. He took care to keep that comment under his breath, even in the clanging, ringing heart of a flurry of hammer blows. The nightskins had magic that let them spy and listen from afar—and who knows when they might use it?
The Whipping Bitch probably spied on her big brute of a pet often. It was not out of whim that Grunt Tusks checked to make sure he never tried to cover any part of his body except his eyes—and came growling to drag him back if he strayed too far or too often from the area lit by the ring of braziers. Braziers that were not only burn perils, but utterly unneeded heat and light, here on the lip of the Rift. All they served to do, aside from lighting him from shoulders to nethers to any magically unseen eye, was make him glisten with sweat all the while he was working. They also made necessary the slakethirst that Grunt Tusks provided so grudgingly—but attentively, clearly under orders.
Oh, yes, Taerune was watching. Perhaps not this particular moment, but often. She’d pounced on his every trifling carelessness, insolence, and defiance—even those he’d done when he was certain he was quite alone—when he’d first come under her sway, training him well with her whip to behave as the perfect slave.
Often, in those early days, when he’d roared curses and hauled hard on his chains, she’d flogged him bone-deep, used a dagger to slice muscles into uselessness, and even hurled handfuls of salt into his
open wounds—only to revive him and heal him with magic.
It had been a long time since she’d cast such spells on him—but then, it had been long indeed since he’d offered her the slightest defiance, either. She liked it more when he seemed eager to receive punishment—and in her delight, dealt out less pain.
They’d come to know each other, far more than he was sure other Evendoom even noticed their slaves, and … well, she had spirit, he’d grant her that. A certain reckless tossing aside of fear, a defiant “well, what of it?” that he admired. She was a fool, but a magnificent fool.
Aye, magnificent—that was the other thing. She was beautiful. Achingly, exquisitely beautiful—by Thorar, they all were, these Nifl, for all their cruelty and sneering. Sleek, rounded where they should be, with … with …
He shook his head, trying to banish memories of velvet black flesh he’d glimpsed when Taerune and her sisters wanted the thrill of revealing themselves to a slave. Orivon growled as he held up his blade to sight along it. Straight and true. Of course.
He could barely remember what human women looked like. He’d seen none in the Eventowers, and from talk among the gorkuls and nameless Nifl he’d overheard, he knew how short a time human “playpretties” were likely to last when dragged to Talonnorn. They were called “screamers” by most Nifl for good reason.
He might share their fate, in time to come, if ever he displeased Taerune or her fellow Evendooms sufficiently. House Oszrim was reputed to prefer male slaves for bedchamber play, and he’d seen hunger in the cold eyes of the Oszrim brothers when they’d encountered Taerune in the streets and exchanged smoothly cutting insults—or as Taerune termed them later, “the usual pleasantries.”
He had to escape Talonnorn, had to get away from these cruel dark elves and back to sunlight and green growing things and … forgedark, why couldn’t he even remember their faces?
There’d been women in Ashenuld, women he’d scampered after and spied upon when they stole off into the deep forest to bathe in the streams. Long, wet hair, curving over drenched, dripping breasts as they murmured pleasure at washing away the stink and grime, standing up in the stream to toss their heads back and—why couldn’t he remember their faces? Thorar damn it!
He brought his hammer down so hard on a new, red-hot forgebar that it shattered, shards clattering everywhere and making Grunt Tusks, even at a safe distance, belch and stagger aside in startlement. Disappointingly, the gorkul didn’t fall into the Rift. Kicking the largest shards aside with complete disregard for the burns he’d acquire—mere adornments on the battered and much-scarred things that his feet had become—Orivon reached for another bar.
Oh, he had gauntlets for handling red-hot metals, and even boots and breeches at the back of his forge floor, near the gates, for wearing on his rare chained journeys through the streets. He was never ordered into them if he was going to the Eventowers through the Evendoom back tunnels, and could barely remember the last time he’d put them on.
Breeches. Boots. What did such fripperies matter, when he lacked freedom?
Just running away, if he smote down Grunt Tusks and somehow avoided the fireghosts and warblades—probably by leaving through the tunnels and then up and out through Eventowers, not trying to win out past the Rift gates—would be futile. The Hunt would pounce on Orivon before he’d drawn a dozen breaths. Even if the Hunt itself was busy elsewhere, gleefully plying their whipswords to slice up and behead some other fleeing slaves, aspiring to join the Hunt was the heartiest pastime of many young, reckless Talonar he-Nifl, and some of them had cavegaunts and even darkwings of their own to ride, and were aching for a chance to prove their worthiness to fly with the Hunt. So how to elude them?
His hammer fell on the bar. And again.
No trader would dare hide him in a pack-sledge or manywheels wagon, no matter how much he offered. Their lives were worth more to them than any payment—and after all, what was there to keep them from taking the fine blades or gold and then straightaway betraying him, and keeping it?
Bahhhrang … bahhhrang … another blade-to-be, shaping up nicely …
Oh, yes, he had some gold. He’d managed to collect soft gold as forgesplash over the years, and work it together into a lump about as large as both his hands, that he kept coated with pitch and stuck down a crack in the stone floor, under his side tables.
Not that he had anything to spend that gold on, or any chance to buy anything.
Bahhhrang.
The only other wagons that regularly left Talonnorn were the dung carts that took daily loads of excrement out to distant caverns, to be devoured by giant dung-worms: blind, mindless deepserpents that were thankfully too large to fit through the tunnels to reach the city and gnaw on Nifl—and Nifl slaves—instead.
He’d pondered this possible way out many a time, but it seemed desperate slaves had tried to hide in wagonloads of dung in the past; the wagons and their loaders were guarded at all times by armed and armored Nifl who were both watchful and belligerently suspicious of anyone and everything, probably out of anger at drawing such duty.
Talonnorn had something worse than the Hunt, too, but he doubted they’d unleash it for one fleeing slave. A handcount or more, yes, but not for just one. Once the raudren were loosed, they had to feed—and he knew, from talk he’d overheard, that even the Nifl feared the raudren. He’d only caught a fleeting glimpse of one, frozen by spells and caged, but he knew what they were: flying hunters even deadlier than the darkwings, creatures whose entire bodies were a great leathery wing—a wing with a razor tail and even sharper jaws and claws.
Not knowing any spells, let alone how to cast one that would freeze a swooping raudren, he’d just have to take the chance he’d not have to try to outrun one. Or more than he could count of them, sleek and silent and deadly.
Orivon sighed, gave the cooling bar one last deft tap with his hammer, and held it up to peer at it critically.
Slave tales always claimed it was easy to swarm a Nifl guard, don his armor, and fool everyone thereby—but words were easier to spin than finding any Nifl large enough to have armor that might even begin to cover the shoulders of Orivon Firefist—let alone fooling anyone into thinking this pale muscled mountain of a human was actually a sleek, black-skinned Niflghar. Even saying airily that he was a Nifl trying out a magical disguise would mean having to speak convincingly like a Talonar Nifl, and answer swift questions well enough to satisfy suspicious dark elves who would no doubt have sharp swords ready in their hands.
Moreover, most Evendoom Niflghar—and probably the warblades of all the other Houses as well—wore bracers or amulets that turned away cinders, shards, small missiles, stinging insects. To even touch one he’d need a determined, full-strength attack with a weapon. Tossing rocks or even daggers would accomplish nothing.
Orivon sighed sourly, and turned to put the shaped blade—flawless, as always—carefully down on his sidetable.
It was then that he saw it.
The tall, rune-adorned gates of the Forgerift stood alone in their arched frames, flanked on either side by apparently empty air. As every Talonar who’d blundered too close to them knew, however, that air was alive with invisible piercing spikes and crawling lightnings, a treble barrier of unseen magics that meant sure death even to the most powerful Nifl spellrobes—unless they had the leisure to stand and work spell after spell, exhausting themselves just to fleetingly breach those mighty spellwalls. The Evendoom warblades who guarded the gates wore something—Orivon knew it was their belts, but only because he saw something he hadn’t been meant to see—that made the spikes and the lightnings nonexistent for them, but even they were stopped by the third barrier: the solid, invisible unbroken wall of pure force that soared from the very solid rock underfoot up through the air to the lost-in-darkness cavern ceiling, so high above. More than once, Orivon had seen darkwings shatter themselves against that solid air and tumble down in dying ruin, spilling their riders to lesser dooms.
Just now,
and suddenly, as he stood staring, the air outside the gates was flickering. Closest to that stirring, the unseen lightnings of the wallspells were becoming visible, gathering and crackling viciously, like a guard-wolf baring its fangs and leaning forward, straining to strike. The gate guards drew their swords and approached warily.
Those flickerings became a sudden flare of orange flame, out of which stepped a Nifl in dark armor unlike any Orivon had ever seen or had a hand in crafting. There was a sword in his hand, and in brisk, calm silence he stepped forward to lunge at the nearest Evendoom guard.
The warblades charged him—which was when orange flames flared behind them, and more unfamiliar armored Nifl burst out of that roiling air, swords thrusting. Some of the guards were dying even before they turned.
Orivon stopped watching the newcomers viciously sword the Evendoom warblades just long enough to snatch up a red-hot pair of forge tongs, so he’d have a weapon against whoever these fools were.
He was hefting the long tongs in his hand—reassuringly heavy they were, too—when the very stone under his feet trembled. The solid stone of the cavern floor.
“Thorar!” Orivon breathed. Anything that could shake the great cavern of Talonnorn was—
The trembling became a real shaking, a long and rolling thunder that threatened to hurl him off his feet.
Orivon strode hastily away from the edge of the Rift, as dust and stones started to rain down on him. He tried to peer past the Great Gates, out into the city proper, but saw only that dust and stones were falling on all of the city he could still see. Which wasn’t much, and would have been less had the runes on the gates not been blazing up bright and angry.
The mysterious attackers were gone into the gloom, slaves were screaming up and down the Rift, Grunt Tusks was cursing with more amazement than anything else in his rough deep voice—and as Orivon watched in growing awe, something reared up under the stone before him, forcing the gates open from within.