Dark Vengeance (22 page)

He sneered down at the bloody and broken bodies of the stragglers he and his band had just slain, and over at the five pack-snouts they had thereby managed to remove from the tail of a long and lightly guarded Nifl trading caravan, and plucked up a knife he had left in a throat that had seemed to need it. A moment ago this had been a solid triumph; now, it seemed but a waste of time.

Grunt Tusks stalked into the midst of his band of followers, and grinned into their bewildered faces.

“So it begins,” he hissed. “The proudest city still, but the strongest no longer. Soon, Grunt Tusks will feed in the heart of Talonnorn—and the skulls I crack open to scoop warm brains out of will be Evendoom heads. Screaming Evendoom heads.”

“I
know
the wards are down,” Jalandral snapped. “You at least should know I'm not the overbold, empty-headed young idiot half
Talonnorn likes to think I am! What I want to know is:
why
are the wards down? Who did this, and why haven't they been raised again?”

Klaerra was white to her very lips with fear. “I—I know not,” she whispered, her bloodless lips trembling. “All that our spellrobes have been able to learn is that the wards were almost certainly brought down by a spell that originated within the city.”

“ ‘Almost certainly'? What good is that? Why've they wasted their time on such frippery when they could have been—
should have been
—restoring the wards?”

“I . . . High Lord Jalandral, the surviving spellrobes residing in Talonnorn now lack the might to raise the wards. Even if they all worked together, in utter trust and with the best of assistance from us all, they lack the collective power to cast the right spells.”

“Whaaat?”
Jalandral roared, so loudly that the echo of his shout made even him wince. He towered over Klaerra, hand raised to smite her, lifted to slam down and break her bloody neck—

Weeping silently as she stared up at him, she tore open the front of her bodice and threw her head back, to offer her throat to his fury.

—And all the anger drained out of the High Lord of Evendoom, as suddenly as it had come, leaving him feeling weak and sick.

“Oh,” he whispered, sitting down with a jolt beside Klaerra and putting his arm around her. “Oh, dung. Olone be merciful. Dung, dung, dung.”

After a moment he turned to her. “
All
our most powerful spellrobes?”

“Y-yes,” she whispered. “Dead or fled. You are right to feel aghast.”

Jalandral shook his head, and absentmindedly reached out to caress her bared front, still shaking his head.

“Ouvahlor will be delighted,” he said mockingly. “And then Yarlys, and then whoever else gets here next. Olone spit . . .”

He shook his head again. He felt weary and lost, not furious. How could matters go from the triumph of his lordship in the forecourt to this, so swiftly? So Olone-accursed
quickly
?

“Klaerra,” he asked, with a calm he did not feel, “what shall I do? You live still because you stand by me when others do not, and your guidance is always good. Guide me now.”

“Jalandral,” she replied, taking his hands from her breast and gently shifting them up to encircle her throat, “what I am going to say now is not going to please you.” She settled his fingers into a throttling grip under her chin and whispered, “So please, if your anger masters you and you slay me, remember that I loved you.”

The High Lord of Talonnorn gently drew his hands back from his loyal crone's throat. Taking hold of her torn bodice, he held it up to cover her. “Go ahead. Anger me,” he commanded quietly. “Speak.”

Klaerra drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment—he could feel her trembling, under his hands—and then looked straight into his eyes and said, “If you want the wards of Talonnorn restored, you must go to the temple and ask what Consecrated of Olone we have left to do it. Nicely.”

Jalandral glared at her, face twisting into a snarl, and then spat, “I
must
?”

“If you want the wards restored, they have power enough,” Klaerra whispered. “
Just
enough. If I and some of the junior crones of our House work with them.”

Jalandral's eyes narrowed.

“And I'll be able to trust all of you?”

Silent tears were streaming down Klaerra's face again. “High Lord of Talonnorn,” she whispered, “you must begin to trust someone. Or—forgive me—your death will come sooner rather than later.”

 

“Ah, here 'tis. No lurking monsters, no dung nor leavings, no fallen blades. Nothing in all the Dark comes here, look you, but us!”

The three weary, trudging Niflghar would not have been held in high regard in Talonnorn. Their lives had been long and less than easy, and it showed in their scars and wrinkled faces and hunched, limping walks.

By what bulged in the packs strapped to their six old, lean pack-snouts, they were the sort of trader known as peddlers. By the state of their clothes and condition of their boots and weapons and everything else, they were less than successful peddlers.

Yet they had come trudging through the Wild Dark with the calm certainty of veterans who know their surroundings well. The lone lurker on the ledge high above them hesitated. Guides this good might be very useful, after all . . .

The three peddlers spat into the rocks, more or less in unison, and then belched, broke wind, and started scratching themselves.

No.

Not useful enough.

“Same old cavern,” the rearmost, shortest Nifl said sourly, stepping into just the right spot. “There's—”

Grinning mirthlessly, the lurker on the ledge rolled a rock as large as her head over the edge.

It crushed the shortest trader's head right down to his jaw without even slowing, smashing his body to the ground and rolling wetly away.

His two fellows cursed, finding themselves suddenly wrestling with the harnesses of bucking, eye-rolling pack-snouts who were rearing in fear—and who each no doubt outweighed both traders put together ten or more times over.

“Easy!” one of them tried to croon, his voice higher and louder than it should have been to achieve any sort of soothing. “Easy, there! I—”

He was the one who chose that moment to stare up at the ledge, to see where the rock had come from so suddenly and silently, and if any more might be ready to follow it—so he was the one whose face the lurker loosed Daruse's hurlbow into.

Grinning, she flattened herself down on the ledge to hide from the frightened, frantic stares of the last peddler.

If she awaited just the right time to strike, taking down a lone and aging Nifl who probably hadn't been rampant for years should be Olone's ease itself . . .

 

“Trusting others is a weakness,” Jalandral murmured, “for all that Klaerra says not doing so is also a weakness. If I rely on no one but myself, no one can ever let me down. My preparations shall be done right, because I am doing them. Yet powerful magics I cannot do—so I am here. In peril, and again trammeled by the very sorts of lesser, spiteful, and unfriendly failures that brought proud Talonnorn down in the first place.”

He stood alone in a room whose floor was glossy-smooth black stone, and whose walls were veiled in draperies that hid all the exits. He could see nothing else of interest; nothing on the ceiling, no furniture, nothing. Not even any cracks or discolorations to meet his eye, as he stood waiting.

Cold, and bored, and being treated like a servant. Or a prisoner.

“Olone,” he asked then, raising his voice a little but keeping his tone calm and even reverent, “have you priestesses still, in Talonnorn? Or have they all left this temple and this city, leaving you unserved? I—”

“Your mockery, Jalandral Evendoom, is even less attractive than your self-assumed title.”

The voice from behind him was cold, and just this side of openly menacing. Jalandral smiled, and turned to face its source leisurely.

“Now I feel properly welcome,” he said pleasantly. “Being High Lord of—”

“Dispense with your airs, Firstborn of Evendoom. We Consecrated of Olone mirror the feelings of the Holy Goddess Herself, and accordingly dislike both your fanciful title and the high-handed
behavior that has accompanied it. We do not see a Talonnorn made any greater, or any closer in reverence to Holy Olone, by your office or performance. Many within these walls would prefer your swift elimination. Can you give us good reason why we should not slay you, here and now, while there is still a Talonnorn to rescue?”

“Yes,” Jalandral drawled.

“Well?”

“I prefer not to share my
good
reasons. When priestesses presume to involve themselves in matters of ruling and city policy, they stray far from their holy duties and their rights—and, I daresay, from the holy favor they profess to seek. I will, however, share my most brutish and immediate reasons for you not to harm me in any way.”

He strolled a step closer to the priestess. “Spells cast upon my person will unleash enchanted items I am carrying, and many mightier items hidden all over the city—including within these holy walls. Their discharges will utterly destroy this temple, and all Consecrated within it, plus many of you who are elsewhere in the Talonar cavern, if I am harmed or feel displeased or upset enough to trade my life for all of yours.”

He held out the hand that bore the Evendoom ring, and added, “And whether you choose to recognize me as High Lord of Talonnorn or not, I do happen to be
Lord
of Evendoom, not Firstborn.”

“I see.”

The priestess facing Jalandral was one he'd never seen before.

She was impossibly tall and slender, possessed a beauty both dark and deadly—and was staring at him with open hatred in her great dark eyes. “Your certainty in correcting me leads me to conclude that you are responsible for your father's death. Such an act is an affront to Olone and a crime in Talonnorn—or did you begin your office by changing that law?”

“I had no part in my father's death, not that it is any business of yours,” Jalandral replied, giving her back icy words for icy words. “Or is it? When he had been absent for so long, and none of the crones of our House could find the slightest trace of him
with their most powerful spells, we turned to you Consecrated to try to do so, and shortly received report of a similar failure to find any trace of Erlingar Evendoom. So we came to the sad conclusion that he was with the living no more, and House Evendoom therefore needed his heir to become Lord in his place. An ascension this temple spoke no word against. Are there things about my father's death, or perhaps his continued life, that Consecrated of this temple know, and are keeping from me? Or is your charge mere passing insult? Ruling Talonnorn is an endless series of tasks and responsibilities that consume much time, and I do not have an infinite supply of it to spare. I came here for a specific re—”

“We know why you are here, Jalandral Evendoom. You did something that shattered the wards of Talonnorn, and you need us to raise them again. Thus far I have heard nothing from you to indicate why we should aid you in this way, or even a polite request from you regarding—”

“I can interrupt rudely and make empty and false accusations, too,” Jalandral drawled, clasping his hands behind his back and starting to stroll, “so why not let the coldly hostile negotiations begin?”

The priestess almost smiled. “Why not, indeed?”

Bellowing and brawling kill many
Overly hasty choices slay more than a few
But watching and listening never killed anyone
Unless they started too late, or kept at it too long.

—
Orlkettle saying

“
W
e're close now, Lady-lass,” Bloodblade growled warningly. He was constantly peering this way and that as they skulked forward along the jutting prow of rock, both in wary crouches. “Best be quiet and careful. If the wards rise again . . .”

“They would fry our fellows,” Taerune murmured, casting a look back at the handful of Ravagers Bloodblade had managed to rally to foray with him, as they'd traveled the Wild Dark, “and trap us out here on this tongue of rock.”

“Arrr-uh,” the infamous Ravager war captain agreed. “So
hurry
.”

“I'm crawling over rocks as fast as I can,” she replied good-naturedly, “with only one hand. Elbows don't grip too well.”

“I can have Arthoun add claws to some harthil—harthem—err, elbow-plates,” Bloodblade offered.

“No,” Taerune said firmly. “Only Hairy Ones work on
my
metal-skins, I've decided.”

“Heh,” the fat Ravager agreed a little breathlessly, amid the clinks and clanks of a very fat Niflghar clad in a belted chaos of mismatched plates of salvaged armor and a bristling arsenal of sheathed, scabbarded, and chained-on weapons, clambering over sharp and uneven rocks. “You really mean one particular Hairy One, I'm thinking.”