Dark Warrior Rising

by Ed Greenwood

  “Well, now,” Lharlak murmured, sliding his eye patch out of the way to peer with both eyes at the moving figures far below. “Talonar warblades hunting someone with a gorkul’s nose. Curious.”

  “How so?” Old Bloodblade rumbled, as quietly as he knew how.

  “Warbands from Ouvahlor lurking everywhere, their city in turmoil, and they go hunting? In numbers so few? They’re hunting someone, or one beast, or a pair at most. Now, who could be so valuable to warrant such attention just now? Such quiet, private attention?”

  “A Nifl fled with the treasury of his house?” Daruse offered, joining them. “That’s an Evendoom, down there, and those are Evendoom warblades.”

  Old Bloodblade shrugged. “I’m intrigued. So we follow them for a bit before slaying the lot of them, to see if they unfurl their little mystery for us.”

  Daruse showed his teeth. “I like Talonar treasuries.”

  It was not unusual for crones to slip out of the grand fortresses of their noble Houses from time to time, to taste the pleasures of the Araed. By unspoken agreement, crones who recognized each other among the Nameless pretended not to, and because what a Consecrated does to other Consecrated is quite likely to be done back to that same Consecrated, it was unusual for Eldests and other crones to spell-reach from their towers out into the Araed after them.

  Wherefore the almost bare Nifl-she dancing atop a table in the Waiting Warm Dark—who none in that tavern knew to be Naersarra of House Dounlar—was shocked indeed when Maharla’s spell rolled into her mind, dashing aside the warm happiness born of her favorite wine and the eager caresses of low rampants.

  She stiffened and gasped, “What madness is this?”

  One look at Naersarra’s face had the Nameless carters and pack-snout tamers hastily letting go of her thighs and ducking away, even before she raised her hands to cast a spell.

  The tavern master reached under the bar for his slowsleep-tipped darts—and then swallowed, drew his hand back, and awaited his doom. More Turnings than he cared to count ago he’d seen a furious Ruling Hand of Olone clear a street with a spell that hurled, tumbled, and shredded Nifl, gorkul, and pack-snouts alike—and he knew what he was looking at now. No dart he could hurl was going to save the Waiting Warm Dark, if—

  The barefoot, sweat-bedewed Nifl-she atop his corner table finished her spell with an angry flourish, her eyes blazing. She turned slowly in the tense silence that had fallen around her, met many frightened gazes, and snapped, “Watch and listen, all of you, to what the Eldest of Evendoom has the effrontery to show every crone and priestess in Talonnorn. I want you all to see an arrogant and dangerous attempt to claim the mantle of Holiest of Olone over all of us. For your hands are the ones that may have to clean up the rubble of our fair city in Turnings soon to come—or your backs may well feel her lash. Behold!”

  Naersarra of House Dounlar flung her arms wide, heedless of her last scrap of garment falling away—and the ceiling of the room above her became a great window into the Wild Dark, a cavern lit by the flaring wards of noble Talonar.

  Everyone in the Waiting Warm Dark was now seeing exactly what Maharla was showing the minds of the crones and priestesses. In silence they stared up at warblades with drawn swords trudging forward in that unfamiliar cavern, tightening a menacing ring around a one-armed Nifl-she in dusty battle-leathers and a Hairy One who stood tall in motley garments, bracers strapped to his upper arms, forearms, and lower legs. His muscled bulk showed clearly through the too-small cloak clasped around his shoulders, and long, wicked-looking blades gleamed back ward-glows in both of his hands. There was a glimmering heap of swords at his feet, and a bleak warrior’s look on his face that promised death to anyone who came within reach of his warsteel.

  Tarlyn and Clazlathor shook their heads grimly, Munthur gaped, and Imdul and Urgel just stared frowningly. Like all the rest, they said not a word.

  Not a wager was spoken in that room, but Nifl who often bet and blustered about duels and Hunt takings leaned forward eagerly, and grew bright smiles.

  It seemed they were about to see a death-duel, large and clear, wherein Nifl would butcher a large, formidable, and well-armed human. It didn’t get any better than this.

  Taerune and her uncle stared into each other’s eyes briefly, as Faunhorn’s arc of silent warblades became an encircling ring, but they said nothing at all to each other. Everyone’s face was grim.

  “Orivon,” Taerune murmured, out of the side of her mouth, “this Orb of mine has nothing much left in it that can be of help in a fray. We’re going to die here.”

  “This is it, then,” Orivon said grimly—and sprang at the nearest warblade who danced aside almost contemptuously from the Hairy One’s wildly slashing sword, only to be astonished by the human leaping to keep pace with him—and drive the second blade through his throat.

  Orivon whirled away to meet a second, onrushing warblade even before the first started to fall.

  There was a shout from behind him as Taerune flung herself at the ankles of the warblades closing in around her, and toppled one over. She had only the one arm to stab him with, so the warblade escaped with his life as she sprang up, behind him, and raced around his back as he whirled. The Talonar cursed, spinning around to follow her—and then spat blood in mewing disbelief as a sword burst through him from behind, and Daruse announced calmly, “First blood to me, Old Bloodblade.”

  “Second!” Sarntor said a moment later, as another warblade started to slide moaningly off the youngest Ravager’s sword. From across the cavern there came a snarling, a wild rattle of chains, shouts—and a shriek that ended abruptly.

  Groaning, another warblade went down as Daruse tugged his blade free of the dark elf’s ribs.

  “Ravagers!” Faunhorn spat. “Lorand! Imbrel! To me!”

  “I’m afraid,” rumbled the fattest Niflghar the Evendoom Lord had ever seen, as Lorand fell like so much dead meat and his slayer rose ponderously out of the shadows behind him, “’tis me you’ll have to greet instead!” He winked at the astonished Faunhorn, and his bristling mustache twisted in what might have been a grin. “Old Bloodblade himself, Sometime Scourge of Talonnorn!”

  A filthy Nifl wearing an eye patch and mismatched tatters of armor now stood where Imbrel should have been, bloody sword in hand. He waved that sword meaningfully, and Old Bloodblade cast him a glance and continued, “Er, me and Lharlak here, I should have said! We’ve been strolling along behind you for three caverns now—and that’s two caverns too many for Talonar to be tolerated, out here in our Dark.”

  Faunhorn gave them a cold smile. “You’ll find the price of my death rather high,” he promised, bending to pluck a poisoned dagger from his boots.

  A rock the size of an Evendoom Lord’s head crashed into the side of his face before he could straighten, and he collapsed silently to the stones underfoot.

  “That,” Daruse of the Ravagers told the senseless Talonar with a grin, “is why we don’t want to cross blades with you. We’ll probably all throw stones at you from a distance, so all your death-spells will hurl themselves at nothing, after we deal with—”

  He swung around to face the Hairy One, who now stood back-to-back with the maimed Nifl-she, ringed by wary Ravagers now that the Talonar had all fallen.

  “Ravagers, spare us!” the Nifl-she cried, her hand at her throat, where something glowed. “Down steel, all!”

  “Spare you?” Old Bloodblade grunted, frowningly watching the Talonar she calling on her Orb. “Why?”

  Taerune used the Orb to make her voice loud enough for every Nifl there to hear clearly, and cried, “Behold the Dark Warrior! Foe of the decadent Houses who practice misrule over Talonnorn! One who seeks peace between Ravagers and the City of the Spires! Nameless Nifl, Ravagers, and all who are oppressed by Evendoom and Maulstryke, Dounlar and Raskshaula, Oszrim and Oondaunt—this is your champion!”

  WHAAAT? Orivon mind-shouted, his back firm against hers.

  [I’m trying to keep us alive]
, Taerune mind-spoke to him fiercely. [Play the part, PLEASE.]

  Through the Orb, she felt his amusement. So you’ve discovered you want to live, after all …

  18

  Dark Champions, Going Cheap

  Yet when our follies at last we reap,

  Foes pressing hard our every doomed fray,

  Many dark champions, going cheap,

  Shall rise, mar their moments, and fade away.

  —from an anonymous Nifl tavern song,

  “A Lament for Talonnorn”

  In a sealed chamber in the Eventowers, Maharla Evendoom seethed, her rage making the mind-sending briefly flare ruby-red. The little bitch Taerune thrusting forward her slave as Olone’s champion? And aiming him like a hurlbow shaft right at House Evendoom and the other houses? How had she even known—

  Impossible. She hadn’t. She didn’t. She didn’t even know the crones and Holy-shes of Talonnorn could hear her. This was a desperate ploy to keep the Ravagers from killing her, no more.

  A ploy that seemed to be working, thus far. They were lowering their weapons, not closing in and hacking.

  Now Taerune was taking off her Orb and dropping it to the stones, and the Hairy One was grounding the points of his swords.

  And the Ravagers—bah!

  Ravagers couldn’t be trusted!

  Ever, and in anything!

  Fighting down her rage—the headaches of carrying on multiple mind-magics at once, and shielding one from the other always made her angry, even before this—Maharla clenched her fists and bent her will on Ravandarr.

  It helped to visualize stepping through a door, firmly closing it against the heavy mind-weight of the link that was showing what befell in that cavern in the Wild Dark to all the watching priestesses and crones of Talonnorn, and casting endless tapestries across her wake as she sped along a passage to the pale white light of Ravandarr’s stone.

  Ravandarr, Champion of Olone, she thought crisply—and a veil in her mind drew back, and she was suddenly on a ledge high up on the wall of a dimly lit cavern, looking down upon the heads of a cluster of armed Nifl and a lone human through rising anger that was not her own. Ah, yes; Ravandarr had liked Faunhorn. Seeing his uncle felled, but not obviously slain, would enrage him.

  Mahar—uh, Eldest? Ravandarr’s mental reply was as weak and tentative as ever.

  Maharla’s lip curled, but she was careful to keep the tone of her mind-voice warm and encouraging. Ravandarr, it is time. The escaped slave and the Nameless stand just below you, within easy reach of daggers you hurl. Your sister’s wards will deflect your steel, but a rock can down her, just as that Ravager’s stone struck down Faunhorn. Shout out that she’s famous for slaying Ravagers, and is readying a spell to use on them right now. I feel Olone, watching through me. She wants to see this dangerous human and this disgrace to our blood dead, without delay. Kill them both. Kill them NOW.

  She could feel his reluctance, his quivering distaste.

  You’re afraid, she mind-told him scornfully. Afraid of a few Ravagers, and what they’ll do. Afraid to obey Olone. What is a stinking human Rift slave to you?

  Ravandarr shook his head. Taerune, he said miserably. I can’t. His resolve and resentment flared together. I won’t.

  Maharla fought down her own rush of fury, and managed to make her next mind-speech stern rather than snarling. Ravandarr? Olone is watching you, judging you. To restore the honor of House Evendoom and make yourself favored, lifelong, you must do this thing. Two swift, simple slayings. Ridding us all of a dangerous Hairy One and an even more dangerous Nameless traitor—a proven, self-admitted traitor to our house, Talonnorn, and all we hold dear. Now find a stone, draw your daggers, and make an end to them both.

  Ravandar’s mind shivered, its turmoil and deepening misery making her feel sick. Maharla fought to keep from being swamped in his rising dislike, the swirling fear, the old, old resentment at being told what to do by cruel, ruthless crones …

  Ravandarr! She tried one last time, making her voice a disapproving, searing command.

  That met dark defiance of sudden strength. Get back to Olone, and share your schemings with Her! I doubt She wants this senselessness—I doubt even more you’ve told Her about it at all! And if She does, then I don’t want HER! You’re not telling me the TRUTH, Maharla! I can feel it, I can—Her own anger was letting his mind-shouts leak into her sending; it was going red again.

  Maharla Evendoom suddenly found herself right out of patience with this mewling weakling, this sullen waste of wine and food and air. Talonar wine and food and air. He wasn’t going to risk his own skin by attacking with Ravagers all around, and he wasn’t ever going to harm his beloved sister.

  With a sudden surge of satisfaction—that she knew would be all too short-lived—Maharla whispered the word that would make Ravandarr Evendoom’s necklace explode.

  She had just time to set her teeth in a wide and cruel grin, to ride out the shrill-shrieking mind-storm that followed.

  Headless, spattering the rocks around him involuntarily, Ravandarr clawed the air as Ravagers below spun around and sprang aside, and fell back down the narrow way he’d come, guts and blood and everything exploding wetly.

  Maharla turned back to her sending almost gleefully. Culling the rampants, purging weakness … “Ravandarr Evendoom, whose death was as futile as his life,” she murmured aloud.

  Thinking of which, it seemed Erlingar Evendoom was going to be undertaking a little kin-slaying expedition after all.

  “But Bloodblade,” Sarntor said frowningly, “a human to be our champion? To lead us to—what? Striding openly into war with the ruling houses of a dozen Nifl cities, so as to get ourselves swift graves just as fast as it takes us to reach them? I like skulking in the Dark and raiding. A slaying here, a slaying there, coins and blades and”—he gave Taerune a leer—“other spoils to enjoy, when we can.”

  “If that’s what you want,” Taerune told him, tugging meaningfully at her bodice, “take it.” She turned, her gaze a quiet challenge. “All of you.” She shrugged. “I’d do better washed and rested, and with two arms—but I’m hardly standing here in strength, to command such things.”

  Silence fell, in which the Ravagers around her shifted uneasily. It was Old Bloodblade who ducked his head and said gently, “Lady, ’tis no secret we … have our hungers, and welcome all Nifl-shes who’ll have us. But not surrendering in fear or anger, hating us. Where’s the satisfaction in that?”

  “Aye,” Daruse leered, shifting his eye patch from one eye to the other. “We likes ’em willing.”

  His grotesque parody of a drooling tavern rampant made Taerune snort with mirth.

  “If you don’t want a human to rally around,” Orivon said then, his voice deep and firm, “there was a gorkul hereabouts a moment ago. It’s even trained to flog Nifl.”

  “It fled that way,” a Ravager said, pointing with his sword down the cavern, into darkness. “I can’t see it lasting long. There’ll be all too few meals it can catch, locked into that collar and dragging half its weight in chain.”

  “Do you truly want to break the ruling Houses, Dark Warrior?” Lharlak asked quietly.

  “I am Orivon Firefist, and the forge is where I’ve done my fighting. What I truly want is to get back to the Blindingbright, to the village I was snatched from,” Orivon replied. “I want to go home.” He looked around the ring of Ravager faces. “And so do all of you.”

  “The homes we seek no longer exist,” Bloodblade said heavily. “Not since the priestesses and the grand Houses became open tyrants, and we were cast out or deemed dead if caught, each one of us.”

  “And we do well enough raiding and harrying,” Lharlak said calmly, “without a champion—figurehead or no, human or no—strapped to us. Nifl know who and what we are. Need we take on the hatred some—most—will have for a human?”

  “A human’ll certainly get us noticed,” Bloodblade growled.

  Daruse chuckled. “That’s truth. Noticed by ever
y last priestess of Olone, with the crones to echo ’em, that an unholy and accursed Hairy One is coming to despoil their daughters in their beds!”

  “I don’t want to despoil any Nifl, shes or otherwise,” Orivon said wearily. “I just want to go home.”

  “Aye, and I believe you, man,” the Ravager agreed, plucking off his eye patch to look at the human with both eyes. “But how are the Haraedra Nifl ever going to hear you say that, to have any chance at believing you?”

  The hall around him was cold, dark, and empty. Long abandoned, by the look of it, cracks and fallen stones and the faint speckles of ancient slime trails. It was tall and elegant, but deserted and old.

  “What is this place?” Jalandral asked curiously, gazing all around. Through a shattered window he could see several cave mouths, crowded like the frozen maws of blindfish on a platter; they were somewhere out in the Dark.

  The Evendoom crone came closer, as silently as drifting cavern mist. “Once this was a proud Niflghar city,” she said, “Evennar by name. Our family came from here—this hall we’re standing in—fleeing to found Talonnorn when Evennar was torn apart by battling Houses, with the priestesses of Olone urging them on to strife rather than constraining them. It all ended in death, for those who stayed to fight.”

  Jalandral turned to face her. “As you believe it will in Talonnorn, right now.”

  Klaerra shrugged. “I believe we should both be … unfound by anyone, until there is a new Holiest and House Evendoom, at least, has finished tearing itself apart. Taerune has just done something that may yet bring civil war to Talonnorn.”

  “So silent absence is prudence for both of us, just now,” Jalandral agreed. And sighed. “I’m going to grow dreadfully bored.”

  Klaerra glided closer. “Ah, now, that I should be able to prevent.” She did something to her robes that made them fall open.

  Jalandral let his gaze fall slowly from her smile to her ankles and back. Real admiration grew upon his face—for a crone of the age he knew she must be, Klaerra was magnificent—but he remarked pleasantly, “I’ve seen—and more than seen—friendly unclad Nifl shes before, you know. Even within the family.”