Dark Vengeance (28 page)

It was a darkwings, huge and stinking and ungainly, and Jalandral smiled at the ruin it was working down the passage—and then awakened his last ring.

It promptly grew a tiny, leaping flame that writhed vertically in midair above its band. Jalandral's smile tightened as he selected a Consecrated who'd ducked back through her door to avoid the darkwings, and was now stepping out into the passage again with a
spell snarling around her hands, as she looked balefully in Jalandral's direction.

Yes, she would make a good first victim.

Jalandral bent his will, and the leaping flame spat forth a small whirlwind of flame that spun and grew into a fiery pinwheel with astonishing speed.

The fire-wheel shot down the passage and crashed into that priestess, bursting into a roaring column of flames.

She didn't even have time to shriek.

Really smiling now, Jalandral selected his next victim. The rift at his back was still protecting him against anything more than half of the priestesses might try, and in front of him, the maddened and broken darkwings had already reached the end of the passage and burst out into the chamber beyond. He could no longer see it, but he could hear it roaring horribly. It was probably slaying anything living it caught sight of.

Good.

Matters were finally beginning to unfold as he'd hoped. Roaring flames claimed another priestess, and another, and the little dancing flame showed no signs of lessening.

Jalandral stalked down the passage dealing death until he reached its end—and then spun around, turning his back for now on the way to the gates and escape from the temple, and strode back down the passage to burn the rest of the priestesses.

When he got these down to a cowering handful, he would command one or two of them to take him to the most powerful priestesses. They were the ones he needed dead. All but the minimum needed to raise the wards again, and those he would imprison.

So much for the vengeful hand of Olone, reaching out to protect her oh-so-precious Consecrated. They deluded themselves, these preening shes, that their Goddess gave any thought at all to them, cared one whit—

Then he stopped, in the midst of happily immolating his thirty-fourth priestess, and stared.

A black, glossy altar had arisen from the smooth and seamless floor where he'd stood confronting Holyflame Alaedra—and she had just risen into view behind it now, with a dagger in her hand.

“Olone, be with us!
Aid Talonnorn now!
” she cried, her voice ringing around the room.

And then, eyes exulting as she glared at Jalandral, she plunged the dagger into her own breast, even as she leaped atop the altar to spread-eagle herself, dying, over it.

The room rocked and darkened, and all of the rings on Jalandral Evendoom's hands winked out, at once.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, in the last moment left to him.

Those who craft songs
And give great orations
Mirror sadness in me.
For life should be more
than armies, battles, and revenges
Yet sadly, fails in this.

—
saying of Lord Ereth Evendoom

N
o wards.

No
wards.

Orivon shook his head in disbelief.

Why?

He could see Talonnorn itself, now, a slice of towers standing tall and dark against the light of its great cavern, through the tall cleft at the far end of the cavern he'd just entered. Talonnorn was right
there
. . . and no patrols, no wards.

What had happened in the city?

Was this going to be ease itself, striding in to search for slaves at leisure, or had some disast—

There came screams, from behind him, the panting shrieks of Nifl who were running hard—and dying.

Orivon whirled around, swords up.

In time to see raudren gliding low and menacing above many wildly fleeing Nifl. Raudren who were diving down to snatch, and feed.

Raudren who were coming right toward him, three of them converging. There was no doubt that they'd seen him, and were heading for Orivon Firefist, and no one else.

Severed Nifl hands and feet spilled from one of them as it came. “Yathla,” Orivon snarled, “now would be a good time for some of your fire!”

The bracer kept silent; no voice sounded in his head.

“Yathla?” Orivon shouted, running hastily for the nearest cavern wall, and its rocks. “Yathla?”

There was no reply. The raudren loomed up, gliding swiftly.

 

Olone came. Not as a striding, raging cavern-tall shining female figure, all of shining bright fire, but as a great surge of force, a wave of silent, inexorable might that swept out of the altar and rolled through the temple.

As Jalandral stared helplessly at the altar, watching Holyflame Alaedra's body melt silently away, the great wave passed through him—and left him on his knees.

There was no blasting fire, no hammer stroke shattering his mind. Only rapture that left Jalandral weeping and gasping and
alive,
every inch of his body thrilled and delighted. His rifts were gone in an instant as the sensual force swept on down the passage, melting the dead and their debris as it went.

In dazed wonder he came to his feet, not quite believing he was unharmed, and staggered toward the passage. He should leave, he must go. That thought was suddenly there, and insistent, and would not leave him. He must depart the temple.

His limbs were spasming with pleasure, stretching and writhing, almost tumbling him into a fall. His fingers sought to stroke, his heart was hammering inside him . . .

Shuddering, Jalandral stumbled into the passage—and the empty air thickened before him. He'd waded a river in the Dark once, and this, barring the cold wetness, was the same; he was wading against a strong flow that now sought to sweep him back into the chamber with the altar.

The altar! He was going to be forced onto the altar, and horribly sacrificed! Torn slowly apart while Olone shrieked vengeance into his face and kept him awake to feel every last moment of agony!

He found himself driven back, the tide against him like a silent giant's hand shoving far more strongly than he could stand against. No!
No,
by Talonnorn! “Klaerra!” he called despairingly, and heard his cry muffled right in front of his lips. “Klaerra!”

She was not going to aid him, was not even going to hear him. Olone was in this passage with him, was all around him, held this temple in her titanic grasp . . .

He was going to die.

Arching and gasping in pleasure—unless Olone turned it to pain, plunging him into agony, and who was to say she would not?—he was going to die here.

Magic!

He had no spells, but he did have all of the rings and everything else he'd worn here or stuffed into his belt-pouches. The enchanted things of several proud Houses. Great magics, for all that Olone had extinguished the rings in an instant; magics meant to serve their wielders in triumphs for generations. Could they aid him?

They were meant to serve for generations longer, but what of that? If he died, they'd be melted on that altar anyway, and lost.

Jalandral bent his will—it was suddenly hard, through a storm of swirling pleasure in his mind—and called upon the endmost ring on his left hand.

It awakened, with its customary glow and tingling, and he called on its power. Not to summon Hunts or fry warblades or whatever it was intended to do, but just to pour its power into him, so that he could—

Yes!
He could walk as if there was no invisible tide against him,
could stride, even trot, down the passage as far as . . . a few doors down, as the ring darkened and crumbled and fell from his hand, and the tide rose against his slowing legs again, stopping him, and then—as he leaned desperately against it, to escape being arched over and flung back—dragging at him, clawing . . .

Frantically Jalandral called on the next ring, hoping it would also serve him. How many rings would it take to get a High Lord out of this temple? Had he brought enough?

 

“Run, Softfingers!” Oronkh roared, swinging a futile sword at the great gliding bulk.
“Run!”

The sharren was stripping off her gloves, smiling a little smile, as a raudren turned in the air, moving as leisurely as a gloating river-snake turns to strike at trapped prey, to sweep down on her.

“
Run,
Nurnra!” the half-gorkul roared, starting back toward her. “You can't bleed these if you're torn to bloody ribbons and are inside them!”

Twenty-some rocks farther along the cavern, Orivon blinked. Where had these two come from?

From among those rocks, yes, but how had they come so close without his even . . . ?

He swept that thought aside rather grimly, as the raudren coming for him blotted out all sight of the Nifl-gorkul half-breed and the beautiful Nifl-she with him, as well as the running warblades, beyond.

These were wild raudren, the great scarred hunters of the Wild Dark, not the smaller raudren kept caged as last-ditch defenders by Talonnorn. As if it mattered.

Orivon set his jaw, hefted his swords, and wondered how swiftly he would die.

 

Jalandral Evendoom put his head down and ran, lurching grimly along as another ring yielded up its power. He was just a step or
two from the end of the passage, where it turned and opened into a larger chamber. Dark streaks of darkwings' gore glistened on the walls all around him. Just a few more steps . . .

His pouches were empty of magic, and most of his fingers were bare of rings. His enchanted earring was gone, and all three of his daggers. Even the enspelled-against-rust scabbard that had held his sword—eaten away for its magic far back down the passage—was no more.

He turned the corner, hoping the tide of Olone's will would abate.

It didn't—and the ring sighed into dust and was gone, leaving another finger bare.

All that he had left was the Evendoom ring.

Jalandral gritted his teeth, kicked himself away from the wall he'd sagged against, and called on the ring.

It fought, resisting his will even as Olone's tide shoved him back toward the passage.

“I,” he gasped, gritting his teeth, “am Jalandral Evendoom!” He fought for breath. “Lord of . . . Evendoom.”

Olone seemed unimpressed, but the ring seemed to hear him. Suddenly it was flooding him with power, glowing bright upon his forefinger. The tide was suddenly nothing; with an ease that it seemed forever since he'd felt, Jalandral trotted through the chamber, along the forehall, and out of the temple.

He was perhaps forty swift strides away from the temple gates, heading for the nearest side alley, when the Evendoom ring flared into a flesh-searing flame, causing him to shout in pain, and—went out. His blistered finger was bare.

Memories suddenly surged through him, memories that were not his own but that had rooms he knew in them, the Eventowers. Which meant the shouting, fighting, and lovemaking people crowding through his head, who all looked at least vaguely like his father, must be Evendooms.

Must be . . .

High Lord of Talonnorn or not, Jalandral felt overwhelmed by
the flood of Evendooms. Overwhelmed, staggering, and then . . . swept away.

He collapsed, or thought he did, briefly feeling the street hard under his cheek, but was snatched up and away, still lost in a flood of Evendoom pasts, by Olone's might. It slammed him against hard stone—the front of a building that was far from where he'd fallen—dragged him along it shouting in pain, and then whirled him away to smash into even harder stone.

At some point during the battering that followed he broke an arm, and then a leg, and then perhaps his other arm—though by then, even with the broken ends of his own bones slicing him across the face, he barely knew what was real and what was . . . wild memory . . .

 

“Are they
all
there, in that same cavern?” Aloun asked, peering hard into an array of small whorls in front of him. “I've—whoa! What's
that
?”

Whorls were suddenly on the move, gliding away from under his hands and scrutiny as if an unseen, unfelt breeze was blowing briskly at him.

Whorls everywhere in the chamber were sliding in the same direction, back behind him. When he grasped one, or tried to, it frayed and shredded under his fingers, pulling away from him anyway.

There was real fear in his face as he looked to the Senior Watcher of Ouvahlor.

Luelldar looked up from his own collapsing whorl, sweating, as he gave up his own lost mind-battle to hold it where it was, and said grimly, “Behold the faintest echo of Olone's power. Were the Ever-Ice not shielding us, in this place, 'tisn't our whorls that would be falling into nothing and being swept away, about now.”

 

·   ·   ·   

 

The broken-limbed and senseless High Lord of Talonnorn struck one last wall, slid bloodily down it, and lay still, a huddled, bleeding heap.