Dark Warrior Rising
Page 34
I have always wanted to explore my dark elves, my conception of a nearly-but-not-quite-human subterranean obsidian-skinned race. The elves I imagined before D&D was created and before Gary Gygax gave us his superbly realized drow culture.
Drawing on the Moondragon character of Marvel Comics® and Eartha Kitt femme fatales, on dozens of pulp tales of sensuous deadly vampires and ghosts, and on fantastic art from Erté to Virgil Finlay, I had already envisaged a long-fingered, deft, elegant, sophisticated (even jaded) race of tall, slender, ruthless elves. A ghost story told to me by my grandfather gave me jet-black skin—and fingernails—to go with those long, reaching fingers.
Yet my dark elves weren’t called “drow,” and they dwelt in a world that held no trace of a spider goddess. I wanted to explore dark elves without Lolth and her faith determining every aspect of dark elven existence, where religious obedience took a backseat to personal moral choices and necessity and state law. I had a writer’s problem with the vicious society of the D&D® drow: Those ruthless strivings and sharply defined roles made for plenty of gaming adventure opportunities and a race of readily recognizable villains, but restricted opportunities for dark elves to be individualistic, to argue (without someone dying in a hurry!), to pursue different goals and philosophies, and to display hobbies and gentleness and playfulness (as something more than a glimpse or a perceived and ridiculed weakness).
And of course, I wanted to tell stories of human dealings with such elves.
So in this book, at last, you’ll meet my dark elves, in my Underworld. I’ve stepped back to Norse mythology, and entered Niflheim.
Why Niflheim, a world of mist, chill, and ice (the realm of the frost giants in many Scandinavian tales) when in Norse tradition the dark elves dwelt in Svartalfaheim?
Well, Norse mythology tells us that there are nine (linked, coexisting) worlds. There’s an upper level of three worlds: Asgard (the land of the gods or Aesir), Alfheim (abode of the elves), and Vanaheim (home of the Vanir); a middle level of Midgard (the “Middle-Earth” of humans), Jotunheim (land of the giants), Svartalfaheim (where the dark elves dwell), and Nithavellir (home of the dwarves); and a lower level of Muspelheim (a realm of fire) and Niflheim (the home of the dead, the dark, cold and misty lowest region of the underworld). The World Tree, Yggdrasil, holds all of them together—although Niflheim is home to the adder Nidhogge (darkness) who gnaws ever at the roots of Yggdrasil.
In the beginning, there were only fire (Muspelheim) and ice (Niflheim), with a great chasm, Ginnungagap, between. Where the heat met the frost, the frost melted and formed “eitr,” a substance that kindled into life and became the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. In the Norse story of creation, Odin killed Ymir, whose outpouring blood killed all but one of the frost giants, and whose body Odin shaped into Midgard.
I’m skipping quite a lot here, but Niflheim remains dark, cold, and misty, and ends up depopulated of frost giants. It’s the home of the dead, and is often seen as an endless series of caverns. (It also acquired the name Hel, which in early Germanic mythology became the name of the goddess who ruled the dead in Hel/Niflheim.)
I don’t want to offend anyone by cleaving closely to mythic traditions and then twisting or gainsaying or embroidering them, so that some will be angered because I “got it wrong.”
Rather, I want to explore a fictional Niflheim of darkness and the dead (ghosts and undead). I chose Niflheim rather than Svartalfaheim for my dark elves because of the cold and mist. I have plans for that cold and mist. Dark plans.
What dark plans? Well, as many tale-tellers say across dying fires: In the fullness of time more will be revealed.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DARK WARRIOR RISING: A NOVEL OF NIFLHEIM
Copyright © 2007 by Ed Greenwood
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429968157
First eBook Edition : August 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greenwood, Ed.
Dark warrior rising : a novel of Niflheim / Ed Greenwood.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1765-0
ISBN-10: 0-7653-1765-6
I. Title.
PR9199.3.G759D37 2007
813’.54—dc22
2007017375
First Edition: September 2007