Dark Warrior Rising

by Ed Greenwood

  Klaerra smiled, and her empty hands were suddenly holding a decanter of superb wine and a cluster of amraunt, the succulent mushrooms so sought after among Nifl. “Ah, but think of the fun of the chase,” she purred. “If you don’t find and catch me, you don’t eat.”

  And she winked out, leaving only a cold and empty hall—and a glow at its far end, wherein she’d reappeared, beside an archway.

  Jalandral shrugged, smiled, and started running lightly toward her. Laughing, Klaerra ducked through the archway, and was gone.

  “Spewing Ravagers!” Maharla Evendoom snarled, beating her fists against the nearest wall in frustration. “Kill the human! Kill him!”

  But no, they were smiling now, and clasping forearms, the lot of them, relaxing like friends at a tavern, moving companionably together to plunder the Evendoom fallen.

  Squawking in wordless fury, Maharla shattered her spell, saying the words and inhaling the powder that would instantly break her mind-link.

  The powder exploded behind her nose and down her throat, just as it was supposed to, leaving her staggering—but in and through her mind the Ravagers and the slave and Olone-utterly-cursed Taerune paraded on, chatting, their every word making it more likely that the watching Talonar would think Maharla Evendoom had utterly failed, or even that the human was the champion she’d crowed about!

  How could it still be going on? She’d ended the spell, its magic was fled and gone from her mind and limbs!

  How could—? Not Holy Olone, surely?

  Maharla cast a frantic quelling-spell on the air before her and charged into it, not quite daring to cast it directly on herself and so leave herself powerless for more than a Turning …

  The scene that every crone and priestess in all Talonnorn was seeing still proceeded in her head, bright and clear.

  Maharla went to her knees, howling in frustration.

  “Oh, no,” Naersarra Dounlar murmured, standing naked atop her table in the Waiting Warm Dark. “Oh, no you don’t.”

  She’d always been one of the fastest spell-hurlers of House Dounlar, and she used all of that swiftness now. The rising anger in Maharla Evendoom’s mind had warned her, and she’d already cast the bridging spell—slowly and carefully, too—that would link her to all the crones and priestesses. She left its other end hanging, the incantation unfinished and slowly fading, rather than link herself to Maharla. She needed Maharla’s link to that cavern full of Ravagers …

  To Taerune Evendoom, it must be, or—no! Taerune’s Orb!

  That was it! It had to be!

  Yet she’d no way of linking to that Orb directly; she had to find Maharla’s link and bind herself to it, without Maharla noticing …

  It had been like wading in hot, stinking ooze, that slow and subtle drift through the Eldest of Evendoom’s dark, nasty, raging mind, seeking the thread of magic at the center of those swirling emotions without getting noticed.

  “Fight! Kill the Hairy One!” someone in the Waiting Warm Dark had shouted disgustedly. “Olone drench us!”

  “Aye!” someone else snarled. “Are outlaw Nifl rampants so lonely desperate for pleasure they’re cuddling humans now?”

  But those had been the only shouts, ere eager silence had returned. No one had departed the tavern, or even taken their eyes from what they were seeing on the ceiling.

  And in the wake of those angry shouts, Naersarra had found the thread she sought, and—slowly, softly—melted into it.

  She was in it, but not yet bound to it, when Maharla had said words that echoed like thunder around her, heavy and hard, to shatter the thread.

  And that was when Naersarra Dounlar needed her fabled quickness. She hissed words that were hooks to pierce and cling to the thread around her—and then finished the incantation in a glib-tongued rush, a bare instant before Maharla’s mind went white-hot and powder blasted all around her, and she whimpered atop her table, trembling, and clung as hard as she knew how, throwing back her head and gasping in blind pain.

  And the link held.

  And the spell went on.

  Leaving Naersarra shaken but able to blink swimming eyes and behold the Waiting Warm Dark around her once more. A room so full of eagerly watching Nifl that no one had yet laid hand on her, or roared out something lewd, or thrown anything.

  She bent over languidly to retrieve her gauzelike shift—and then changed her mind and plucked up several drinks instead, to sip at her leisure. Their owners ignored her theft completely, intent on what was unfolding in that cavern out in the Wild Dark.

  At one of the tables, the large Nifl named Munthur was still gaping, his open mouth becoming as dry as rock dust. Tarlyn’s eyes were narrow with suspicion and forboding, an expression echoed more faintly in the sourness on Clazlathor’s face. Imdul and Urgel just watched, now, making no judgments. Yet.

  “I care not what Haraedra Nifl think of me,” Orivon said slowly. “To the Talonar, I was but a slave—a valued slave because I was good at the forge, but nothing more than a slave. I have seen nothing worse in my time in Talonnorn than what is done in the name of Olone. The constant cruelty, the … the Houses lording it over the Nifl they call Nameless, who do all the work and risk their skins daily so the crones and purebloods can stay unblemished. I was a slave, so of course they whipped me. Yet I saw more Nifl whipped than slaves, some of them struck aside with casual insolence in the streets of the Araed for no greater sin than being in the way of a Lord or Lady of a ruling House, or irritating such a personage, sometimes for no reason I could see. How is that wise, to goad those whose work permits you to stand, exalted, above them? How soon will they cast you down? In an ‘accident,’ perhaps? And if a true accident does befall one who rules, just whose hand do they expect will aid them?”

  “I never knew humans could talk so much,” Daruse murmured. “And all of it wiser than a priestess!”

  “I never knew humans could talk,” Lharlak said ruefully. “When did we start teaching them?”

  “I am most impressed that you care about how things are ordered among Niflghar at all,” Old Bloodblade rumbled, peering keenly at Orivon. “I’d have thought you’d want us all dead—speedily.”

  The tall, hulking human shrugged. “I hate not your race, but only a few, specific Nifl. I imagine most Nifl, when they hate, do so likewise. Even when you’re taught and expected to hate those of another city, I’m sure in truth you truly hate no one who hasn’t done you personal harm, or that you’ve been told hurt you.”

  “If we take you in as one of us,” Sarntor asked, “d’you think you can possibly avoid talking so much?”

  Orivon turned and said two heartfelt words in reply: “With pleasure.”

  Eyebrows went up, among the Ravagers, and someone chuckled.

  Someone else asked, “So do we hunt down this chains-trailing gorkul? Or is it time, and past time, to eat?”

  “So, now,” said an older Nifl, slapping the table. “Is this Hairy One our doom, once he’s finished mustering all the Ravagers? Or will he be just a human among them, one more ragtag misfit trying to raid us?”

  “If he brings down the Houses, I care not if he’s human or escaped slave or prancing Olone herself,” someone else muttered.

  “Hah!” an off-duty warblade snarled. “You complain about the Houses because they provide all. Were you not standing in their shadow, as they shield and defend you, you’d be too busy fighting every Nifl in this cavern—or dying—to complain about anything! The Houses are what make us strong, so we rule the Dark and not the motherless, uncounting and uncountable gorkul!”

  “The Houses make themselves strong,” a traveling merchant said bitterly. “You prattle about what the Talonar Houses do without ever having seen other cities, and other ways! You’ll not want to hear it, warblade, as no one likes to know they’ve been duped, but ’tis your blade, and those of your fellows in arms, that keep Talonnorn strong! Someone must command, aye, but why families? And if families, why this one and not that one? Why should one bloo
d sit thrones forever, clearly making decisions for their own gain, and retaining those thrones, rather than for the good of Talonnorn?”

  “Well, but the good of Talonnorn is their good, too,” the warblade said triumphantly, with the air of a Nifl who’s proved a point to a dimwitted opponent.

  “It is if you think it is, I suppose,” the merchant responded. “To me, it seems that is not thinking, but letting the ruling Houses think for you, and believing them when they say what is good for them is good for all. When was the last time you lounged for days on end in bed with enslaved shes, drinking the best wine and having splendid food brought to you without waiting for the next table over to be served first, and having to lay down hard coin to get the platters to come at all?”

  Several other warblades chuckled, turning from admiring Naersarra Dounlar’s unclad beauty, as she sat down on her table to accept several goblets of wine and the return of various garments.

  “Hah!” one of them said. “He’s got you there, Larravyn!”

  “As for me,” another merchant said, “I like this Dark Warrior. Even if he’s a fool, or a human lying to us who just wants to stir up trouble so he can do harm to those who flogged him—what of it? If he does the stirring, who cares why? I want the Houses to have to start behaving, to feel themselves again beholden to the rest of us! If he was Niflghar, I’d have to worry about embracing a tyrant, come to sweep the Houses away so he could step in and treat all of us as slaves! But he’s a Hairy One—there’s not a chance in all the Dark he’ll end up ruling us! So he can be the hand that shakes the cauldron without ever snatching the cauldron for his own!”

  “I hate humans,” another warblade put in. “They stink, and they make my skin crawl. Yet I like what that one says—and you’re right: He’ll be dead in less than a Turning if he ever tries to seize power. Let him talk, and muster swords, and raid the Houses. If he takes the sneer off the face of one Eldest or one Lord of a House, he’ll have done us all good.”

  At the next table, a listening Nifl exploded.

  “I-I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Tarlyn spat, white to his very lips. “Niflghar admiring a—a Hairy One!”

  He thrust himself upright, eyes blazing.

  “Tarlyn, listen,” Urgel began. “I—”

  “Listen to what? Sick love for a—a beast?”

  “A useful beast,” Imdul snapped, his voice raised for the first time any of them had ever heard. “This firefist is a goad and blade for change, who could keep Talonar and all other Nifl unsettled, and thinking. If he keeps crones from the sneering certainty of their righteous and unchallenged authority, and so moves them to doing things to help Talonnorn instead of just scheming as they wait for the next Eldest to die so everyone’s backside can shift one place closer to the high seat—he’ll be worth any strife and fighting off Ravagers we have to do.”

  He rose from his seat, too, to wag a finger and say firmly, “We need this human—we around this table, who make our livings dancing along the dark edges of Nifl society, and all Nifl, too, to keep the tyranny of Olone and the crones from becoming absolute, and all of us as enslaved as the humans and others we crack our whips on.”

  Eyes blazing, Tarlyn hurled his goblet down on the table by way of reply, and turned amid its bouncing and clanging to storm out of the Waiting Warm Dark, snarling, “Olone take you! Olone take you all!”

  Aloun had whooped his delight aloud, and was now laughing excitedly. Luelldar had said merely, “Well, now. Well, now,” but was sitting slumped back from his flickering whorl with a broad smile on his face. “A champion, Maharla Evendoom says—and what a grasping, overeager Eldest she’s made. A ‘Dark Warrior,’ and she makes him a human. Behold my puppet, ye of the Dark!”

  The Watchers of Ouvahlor turned and grinned at each other, Luelldar shaking his head. Maharla’s sending had faded from both their whorls, but Luelldar’s arc of lesser whorls had captured it thrice over, for later study. Where precisely was that cavern in the Wild Dark? What did any of the faces betray, as they spoke? Had Maharla revealed anything more than her bare words, by the way she said them?

  Ah, but this was … delicious. Talonnorn, tearing itself apart before their eyes.

  “My grand schemes unfold, so they do,” Luelldar chuckled—and was forever after grateful he’d said those words when he did, and not a breath later—at the moment when Exalted Lady of the Ice Naerbrantha burst in on them, eyes flashing in excitement.

  “You heard and saw?” she almost shouted. “Senior Watcher, I demand your wisest counsel: Is this Ouvahlor’s best chance to finally destroy Talonnorn?”

  Wearing a smile to match what was dancing in her eyes, Luelldar said gravely, “With regret I must say, Holy Lady, no. As the Talonar priestesses of Olone claw at each other and their city slides toward strife in the streets, we must wait and watch, to see if this Dark Warrior gathers an army that can threaten Talonnorn and keep its warblades and attention occupied. The moment he does, that will be the time to strike at Talonnorn’s unprotected backside.”

  19

  Burning the Talon

  If ever the Turning comes when one proud Lord

  Is so desperate-driven or plunged into fear

  As to burn the Talon

  Then I shall cower and weep

  Mourning lost Talonnorn.

  —anonymous Talonar lament,

  “All Niflghar Die in the Dark”

  “How can she do such a thing, at a time like this?” Auree was pale with rage, her white lips making the dark red of the fresh sword scar down her cheek even more stark.

  Drayele shrugged, and reached again for a goblet she’d already emptied.

  Across the table, Quaeva saw and pulled the chime for more wine, before making a bitter answer: “She cares nothing for the Goddess or for Talonar. Blind with power, drunk on it, she thinks not a moment about how Talonnorn will be smashed and diminished—as long as she ends up with more power.”

  Priestesses nodded around the table, faces pale with anger or fear—and all of them looking weary. Auree wasn’t the only one bearing a scar; every one of the five Nifl-shes crowded into the curtained-off alcove of the Proud House had fled in headlong desperation from the bloodshed still raging in the temple. They owed their lives to luck, agility, and sharing low station among the Consecrated. As near novices, they were casual targets rather than deadly foes of the most ambitious upper priestesses.

  Desperation had brought them here, to a private club in the Araed they’d have scorned—and felt unwelcome in—at another time. The Proud House catered to crones of the ruling Houses of Talonnorn, and rampants were shut out of it. In all Talonnorn, it was the only refuge of Nifl-shes they knew.

  “Maharla Evendoom is hardly the only crone reckless-hungry for power,” Zarele said tiredly, “not that I needed to remind you.” There was a fresh and bloody bandage on her arm, and a long streak down her flank where her robe and her skin looked melted together, her flesh frozen in clusters of bubbles that the priestess beside her, Velle, could not seem to stop looking at—though Velle’s darting glances made her lips visibly tighten in nausea.

  “I feel like hiding here until it’s all over,” Drayele sighed. “Which may be when our fair temple is a smoking heap of rubble.”

  Auree snorted. “Hide here? In the midst of the Holy One alone knows how many crones?”

  “Better we spend our waiting hunting Maharla Evendoom,” Velle said suddenly. “I could at least take some pride in that.”

  Zarele nodded, and then snorted, her mouth crooking into a wry smile. “‘Dark Warrior’! I quake, I cower, I quail!”

  “A human! Surely she meant it as some sort of sick jest!”

  “She’s sick, all right,” Zarele agreed heavily. “If I’m to die, I might as well do so rending Evendoom’s Eldest as drinking my lifeblood away at this table. So, does anyone know any Maharla-slaying schemes?”

  The curtain parted with more violence than a young winemaid would have done to it, and th
e priestesses looked up, blinking in sudden apprehension.

  “No, but I’m willing to help you craft some!” the unfamiliar crone standing over them said fiercely. She was tall, dark brows framing large, dark, and imperious eyes. “May I join you?”

  “You’ve been listening to us with a spell, haven’t you?” Zarele asked dully. “I knew it was a mistake to come here.”

  “Who are you?” Auree asked sharply, drawing back her hand as if the empty air she was cupping were deadly fire she could hurl.

  The crone smiled at her rather pityingly, shaking her head to let Auree know she knew all battle-magic must be long spent. “Baerone am I, of House Raskshaula!”

  “So, Baerone of Raskshaula,” Quaeva asked carefully, “who else on the far side of that curtain has heard our words? And why are you so eager to help us? Is House Raskshaula running low on dupes to be blamed for their next attack on Evendoom?”

  Baerone’s smile widened into real mirth. “No one; I want to help because I am as appalled as you are by Maharla Evendoom’s oriad idea; and House Raskshaula knows absolutely nothing about this. Yet. Though if any of you shout any more loudly, someone out in yon room won’t be able to help but hear you—and you know how crones gossip.”

  “Oh, yes,” several of the priestesses said, in wry unison, as the curtain parted again and two anxious-looking winemaids looked in.

  “Olone’s mercy, I beg,” one of them began, “we’re fair run off our feet out he—”

  “Just put the wine on the table,” Zarele told them without looking up, “and go and fetch more. A decanter for each of us, I’d say—including our just-arrived friend, here.” Not waiting for them to reply, she turned her head and told Baerone, “Sit down, and tell us precisely what you want to work together with us on.”