Dark Warrior Rising

by Ed Greenwood

  “Old and of these hills.”

  “So how is it you knew Ashenuld? As small a place in these uplands as any?”

  “I was of Ashenuld, once.”

  Men were creeping up behind Orivon now, with shovels and pitchforks and rakes in their hands, but he kept his back to them, and his eyes on the smith, who raised his voice a little, so that all could hear it, and asked, “Want work here, and a roof and bed? I’m getting no younger.”

  Orivon smiled slowly and said, “Why not? Back to the forge. An anvil was my life for long years; I can rebuild that life at yours. Aye, if you’ll have me.”

  The smith nodded, and smiled too. “I will.”

  “Can you fight nightskins?” a man called, from behind Orivon.

  He turned slowly, lifted his sword a little, and said firmly, “No nightskin will ever take me alive again.”

  There was a murmur; women were joining the onlookers now, peering at him curiously from between the men.

  “And if you dwell here and work our smithy,” a raspy voiced man asked suspiciously, “will you take that sword of yours to us?”

  “Only to someone who attacks me. Yet hear this, folk of Orlkettle: I will not be driven from here. This will be my home.”

  Orivon took a step closer to the watching villagers, and raised his sword on high. “I am Firefist, the Dark Warrior,” he shouted, and it seemed to them that flames rose in his eyes.

  Lore about the Dark Below has always been both scarce and suspect. To this day scholars cannot agree about the true nature of That Which Sleeps Below, the Ghodal so feared by Niflghar, whose awakening presaged the Great Doom.

  Yet it is clear that in the winter after the Second Summer of Araum, the greatest Niflghar spellrobe of all, Klarandar, rose to prominence in the city of Ouvahlor. In the Fourth Summer of Araum, Ouvahlor made war once more upon its traditional foe, the city of Talonnorn.

  Whereas Talonnorn, greatest of the cities of Olone, had prevailed in previous strife between the two cities, such was not the case this time. The city of Talonnorn was shattered by the attack, and whereas some sages assert that the Talonar hurled back their attackers, most read the more reliable accounts to mean that the armies of Ouvahlor withdrew and let the Talonar fight among themselves, bringing their own city down around them.

  What is certain is that the city of Talonnorn fell into turmoil at this time, its temple of Olone riven and the grasp of the Goddess on the city broken. Much murder was done within the houses, most Eldests and ruling Lords perishing, and House Evendoom, long dominant in Talonnorn, fell far from ruling might.

  It is from this time that the legend of the Dark Warrior rose, the scourge of Niflghar whose adventures are so vividly told and retold. Most sources agree that he was of, or from, Talonnorn, and name him Orivon, or Firefist or Forgefist. Some say he was a renegade Nifl, others an exiled Lord or heir of a fallen House. Perhaps, as some of the wildest tales claim, he was no Niflghar at all, but an escaped human slave. Some even claim the Dark Warrior was an Evendoom she who turned against her house and brought about its fall. Inevitably, the holy writings of the priestesses of the Ever-Ice claim the Dark Warrior was the Ice itself, thrust into the body of a mortal, to walk the Dark Below and cleanse all.

  All that can be said for certain is that the Dark Warrior rose, and the Dark Below was changed forever.

  —from Dynasties of Darkness, penned by Erammon the Elder, published the Sixth Summer of Urraul

  Little is known of the Dark Below in the years before the Great Doom, but from the writings and testimonies of the few Niflghar and humans who came up into the light in those times, some truths can be told.

  The two most numerous races of the lightless lands were then the Niflghar or dark elves, called “nightskins” by most humans for their obsidian-hued bodies; and the brutish gorkul or “grayhides,” whom some have called “orkhs” and worse.

  The tusked, hulking gorkul were of greater physical strength, but spent their lives in rages, fighting among themselves whenever they weren’t raiding others, or wandering the Dark Below in nomadic clans.

  They were easily enslaved by the agile, swift-minded Niflghar, who mastered fell sorceries, tamed lizards of the lightless lands to be their packbeasts and the deadly darkwings to be their flying steeds, and raised great cities in the largest caverns of the Dark.

  Most Niflghar followed one of two faiths: They either worshipped the Ever-Ice at the heart of Niflheim, the all-seeing source of the greatest magic, or they cleaved to the goddess Olone, whose beauty was matchless. To achieve physical perfection was to so ascend in Her holy favor as to join Her, and know true power and fulfilment.

  Niflghar saw the Ever-Ice as something greater than Nifl themselves, an everlasting Silence that perceived all, spoke to Nifl in dreams, and granted mastery over, and new knowledge of, sorcery to those who served it best and so made all Niflghar stronger. Many of these wizards, called “spellrobes” by Nifl, were male Niflghar, and they ruled the cities that worshipped the Ever-Ice, such as Ouvahlor, Arnoenar, and Imbrae, taking advice from the priestesses of the Ever-Ice and seeking their interpretations of events and holy signs.

  Olone was the mother and future of all Nifl, the ultimate Nifl-she, and her priestesses enacted all justice and kept order in cities that venerated the Goddess, such as Uryrryr, Nrauluskh, Oundrel, and the greatest of all, Talonnorn.

  The cities were ruled by councils of the greatest Nifl houses or families, a nobility dominated from within by the elder Nifl-shes, or “crones,” family shes beyond birthing age, who sought power and respect among the Consecrated priestesses of Olone by their furthering of the church’s aims and influence–and who in turn ruled their families using the might of the church. The crones of every house were led by the Eldest of that house, but every house had a ruling Lord, a war commander and public face of the house who kept his throne only at the pleasure of the crones. Whereas in the cities of the Ever-Ice male Nifl spellrobes were great lords, they were little more than useful house weapons in the cities of Olone.

  Otherwise, the cities were socially much the same: the priestesses on top, a dominant house among noble houses, each having a nobility ruled by a Lord but truly ruled by the crones (the unmarried shes of the house), overseeing many servants and warblades (the warriors). Beneath the houses were Nifl merchant traders, shopkeepers, crafters, and laborers of no house, deemed “the Nameless,” who dwelt outside the fortified compounds of the houses in a central cluster of homes and hovels … and beneath all were the slaves.

  Slaves in the Ever-Ice cities were prisoners of war, and tended to be few and well-treated. Slaves in the cities of Olone were constantly expended necessities, for the pursuit of the perfection made necessary non-Nifl hands to do all work that could scar or maim, and the cruelty of crones and others caused the deaths of many slaves. Moreover, one road to greater power among houses was the ability to build more weapons, fortifications, trade goods, and finery, and do so faster than rivals—and one way to accomplish such things was through ever more slaves.

  Hence, the Niflghar cities of Olone took to raiding surface lands, coming to the surface through mines and caverns to seize humans first by the score and then by the village, by thousands upon thousands, and drag them down into the Dark to lives of cruel, dangerous work.

  In both sorts of cities, the Houses made constant and covert war on each other, striving for supremacy. These struggles were tempered by the churches of the Ever-Ice and Olone, and often twisted into open warfare between rival cities, warfare that never truly ceased.

  The churches carefully balanced House against House, moving to let a House be brought down only when it had truly offended the authority of the church or the power of its city. Their weapons were knowledge, church aid, slayings, and the bestowal of magic items, notably the powerful enchanted swords of many powers, known as “spellblades,” into the hands of those not gifted by the gods with mastery of magic.

  Those who offended against the laws of
the church and the authority of the houses were slain or exiled—or escaped out into the Wild Dark. Most such perished, but some banded together to dwell in small roving bands, raiding the caravans and fighting the patrols of the cities, the Nifl they called the Haraedra or “Towered Ones.” These outcasts were known as the Ravagers, and in time they became the chief slave-takers raiding the surface, and the slaves the trade goods they exchanged with Nameless Nifl merchant traders operating from city to city.

  With others doing their drudge work, the dominant cities of Olone rose to ever-greater power over time—and ever-greater decadence. Riven by constant strife between houses and raids between rival cities, they were societies of vanity above all, where murder was a mere means to an end, and cruelty the way of life—as their non-elven slaves from the surface all too often found out.

  —from Dynasties of Darkness, penned by Erammon the Elder, published the Sixth Summer of Urraul

  Tor Books by Ed Greenwood

  Dark Warrior Rising

  BAND OF FOUR NOVELS

  The Kingless Land

  The Vacant Throne

  A Dragon’s Ascension

  The Dragon’s Doom

  The Silent House

  Afterword

  Of Dark Elves, Wonder, and Danger

  It all began a long, long time ago.

  How long ago, no one knows. Probably the first humans, daring to duck into caves for shelter, had legends of dark-skinned, evil beings dwelling in the darkness at the back of the cave … and below, under the earth.

  Long before the Mines of Moria, long before Menzoberranzan—well, let’s dispense with a lot of the “long agos” and stop at Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241), an Icelandic historian who wrote:

  There are many magnificent dwellings. One is there called Alfheim. There dwell the folk that are called light-elves; but the dark-elves dwell down in the earth, and they are unlike the light-elves in appearance, but much more so in deeds. The light-elves are fairer than the sun to look upon, but the dark-elves are blacker than pitch.

  Snorri called those “blacker than pitch” beings svartálfar (“black elves”) and dökkálfar (“dark elves”), as he sorted through and summarized Norse mythology. They may or may not be the same beings as the duergar (dwarves), but they are certainly dark-skinned creatures who dwell under the earth, and are regarded by humans as evil (whereas the light-elves may be proud, magically powerful, and capricious, but are fair and essentially good).

  Both light and dark elves appear in hundreds of fantasy stories; to pluck up just one example: the “svarts” of Alan Garner’s classic children’s fantasies The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (1963).

  In part this modern popularity of “light” and “dark” elves in literature is due to the elves of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, phenomenally influential The Lord of the Rings, but in part it’s also due to the same root tradition Tolkien borrowed from: the elves (or faeries) of European folklore, who lived under hills or burial mounds (or within trees, springs, or wells). Many English fantasy writers, from Kipling (Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies) to Enid Blyton (too many titles to list), drew on this tradition. Creatures who grant wishes, or dance with humans as hundreds of years pass in a single night, or play tricks, or are proud and terrible in their dealings with humans—these populate the fairy tales all fantasy writers grow up with, and become inspired by.

  As Brian M. Thomsen puts it in his book The Awful Truths (Collins, 2006): “J.R.R. Tolkien did not invent Middle-Earth,” which “predates Tolkien by over a thousand years.” Skipping over the scholarship, Thomsen summarizes matters thus:

  Middle-Earth is another name for Midgard which is the domain where men dwell in ancient Norse mythology which was the source for the original Beowulf tale. It is located somewhere between the realm of the gods and the realm of the underworld (more simply in Judeo-Christian terms heaven and hell). Midgard/Middle-Earth is also the setting for Beowulf (mentioned specifically in the text no less than six times), a manuscript that Tolkien spent many hours studying, and as it turns out being inspired by.

  Indeed, Thomsen’s anthology The Further Tales of Beowulf, Champion of Middle Earth (Carroll & Graf, 2006) includes the stirring tale “Beowulf and the City of the Dark Elves” by noted fantasy writer Jeff Grubb. In this story, Beowulf travels to a far place, discovers that the local human trade with the elves who dwell under the mountains there has ceased because those elves have revealed their grim preferred diet: the meat of human children. As might be expected, a heroic adventure ensues.

  Interestingly, Tolkien has his dark elves, too, although the main epic bypasses them, and most readers know nothing about them: the Morquendi (the Elves of Darkness) are elves who chose not to journey over the sea to Valinor.

  In his book The Real Middle Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages (Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002), Brian Bates reminds us that when Celtic tales mention the sidh-folk, this means “creatures of the burial mounds,” and there is a long tradition of humans treating with elves and giving them gifts or feasting in their honor, to stay on their good side. Gaelic calls these elves daoi-sith (“dark elves”) and du-sith (“black elves”).

  Celtic traditions include many tales of humans who danced with elves for a night, only to discover that years upon years had passed and all the folk they knew were long dead; humans tricked by elves or who managed to trick elves; and tragic romances and fatal bargains between humans and elves. The fey faeries are never lurking far beyond the firelight of human encampments, as they dance in their faery rings and glide or fly through their forests.

  If The Lord of the Rings was the first great stir in modern fantasy, founding today’s commercial fantasy genre and spawning countless imitators, the second great stir was Dungeons & Dragons®, the fantasy roleplaying game released in the 1970s. It, too, spawned many imitators and made new fantasy fans by the thousands, drawing imaginative people into participating in new fantasy storytelling rather than just reading fantasy stories.

  Gary Gygax, cocreator of the game (joined in the final adventure by cowriter David C. Sutherland III), introduced dark elves to D&D® gamers as the “drow,” in a classic series of “adventure modules” that began with an above-ground trilogy wherein game players’ characters battled different sorts of giants in high, cold mountains. A second trilogy took the characters through a rift down into the depths of the earth, into a vast subterranean realm known as “the Underdark,” where the action reached a city of the dark elves, in The Vault of the Drow.

  The D&D® dark elves were obsidian-skinned and pointy-eared; sophisticated and cruel slavers and merciless slayers who worshipped a spider goddess, Lolth (or “Lloth”). In Queen of the Demonweb Pits, the adventure saga took surviving adventurers onto another plane of existence, the abode of that fell goddess. Gygax’s drow were warring families or merchant clans, akin to the Borgias and their rivals in historical Venice under the Doge. In these adventures, the matriarchal clergy of the spider goddess were ruthlessly destroying priests of an unnamed “Elder Elemental God” that was obviously losing the battle for religious supremacy in this drow city.

  It was a setting that fascinated players, myself among them. In 1986, the drow adventures were revised and collected into Queen of the Spiders, which a 2004 DUNGEON® magazine poll voted the “greatest D&D® adventure of all time.”

  Mr. Gygax almost certainly took the name “drow” (rhymes with “cow” and not “show”) from the evil drow (dark elves) of the Shetland Isles (related to the “trow” of the Orkney Islands; both are likely local versions of the Norse dökkálfar). The drow he presented to gamers back in 1978, in the Descent Into the Depths of the Earth adventure (white-haired and black-skinned, elegant and agile and cruel, with male fighters and wizards ruled by female priestesses), are essentially the drow of fantasy fiction today. After the D&D® game itself, they are arguably Gary Gygax’s greatest, most influential fantasy creation.

  A year after Queen of the Spiders
appeared, gamers saw the first Realmslore outside the pages of DRAGON® magazine. The Forgotten Realms®, the fantasy world I’d created as a child, had been adopted as the setting for the D&D® game. One of the many modifications of my original made in the published Realms was sweeping aside my nebulous subterranean kingdoms, the “Realms Below,” to bolt on the Underdark of D&D® (drow and all).

  A flood of Realms novels from many pens appeared. Among them was The Crystal Shard by R. A. Salvatore, featuring a band of heroes that included an outcast drow, Drizzt Do’Urden. “The” dark elf was then just one adventurer among equals, but caught the imagination of readers, soaring swiftly to prominence as a major character in fantasy fiction.

  Salvatore’s second trilogy began with a book now rightly regarded as a classic: Homeland, the story of Drizzt’s coming of age in the drow city of Menzoberranzan. Readers were thrust into the heart of life and politics in a city ruled by the cruel faith of Lolth, where betrayals among family were as icily keen as the attacks of foes, females ordered males about, and those females (from the matrons who rule each House downward) engaged in an endless struggle for supremacy. This was “real life” for drow, brought vividly alive on the printed page; I loved it, and eagerly accepted a role in detailing Menzoberranzan in D&D® terms, detailing its spells, food, customs, and minutae in a boxed game set.

  Drizzt’s saga has continued for book after book, many of them departing the Underdark for surface adventures, and other writers have been welcomed aboard to tell stories of the drow, from Elaine Cunningham’s highly regarded Liriel Baenre series to the recent multiauthor War of the Spider Queen saga.

  I share the fascination many readers obviously have for the drow of the spider goddess, and yet …