Dark Vengeance (38 page)

A gate that seemed to be
moving
as they approached it. Orivon stared for a moment, and then rushed forward and started to hack at those bones, hewing furiously, trying to stop them from whirling up into . . .

“Bloodbone magic!” Taerune hissed, drawing back in revulsion. “
Strictly
forbidden by Olone!”

Orivon laughed mirthlessly. “Oh? How well have Talonar heeded Olone at the best of times?”

Taerune's reply was a heartfelt curse, as she watched four—no, five—whirling columns of flying Nifl bones coalesce in front of Orivon. Seemingly unaffected by his slashing swords, they hovered; Nifl skulls above Nifl arms and shoulders, awaiting the arrival of rusting Nifl blades into their hands.

Orivon shattered two of those blades as they drifted up from the gate that had spawned these fell guardians, but then had to draw back to avoid being surrounded.

The gate was little more than a gaping frame now, but Taerune doubted they'd have a chance to plunge through it unscathed. Cold flames were flickering in the eye sockets of the skulls looming up over her, and she knew one thing with cold certainty:

The fighting was about to
really
begin.

 

Klarandarr stopped walking across rubble toward the next mansion to blast, and lifted his head to listen. Yes, there
was
another
rumbling aside from those he was causing—a deeper, distant, ongoing shaking that was . . . growing stronger.

Getting nearer . . . and, yes, making the great cavern of Talonnorn, all around him, shake!

Even as he felt that growing thrumming through the soles of his boots, a tower toppled, far to his right, and crashed down through other buildings. A moment later there was a similar fall in the distance behind him, right across the city.

No doing of his, this, and something even Klarandarr of Ouvahlor just might not be able to defeat, if it struck at him.

He raised his hands, but not to blast another building; his blastings were done for now. It was time to cast spells enough to surround himself with a protective shell of magic, a shielding of interwoven spells that could armor him against anything, and move with him.

His conjured destructions had wrought too much chaos all around for any simple translocation spell to work, and take him out of this peril.

If he wanted to flee by those means, he'll have to buy himself time to walk out of ruined Talonnorn, trudging until he'd left rubble far behind—and not using other magic, even if facing dozens of Talonar with swords, or spells of their own.

So a shield it would have to be . . .

The shaking was strong, now, the rumbling rising into a constant rolling booming, as if many marching drums were being struck at enthusiastic random. Another building toppled, nearby, and then—

The cause of the shaking revealed itself, startling him almost into faltering and ruining a spell.

Dung-worms, dark and gigantic, were bursting forth into the cavern from its every entrance, rushing at full speed, converging . . .

Yes, on
him!

Ignoring Nifl spears and a few paltry spells, slamming through carts and running Nifl rather than swinging around them, coming at him from all sides and ignoring all else in their rush to get at him.

Klarandarr finished his spell and started on another, moving now with frantic haste.

As he gabbled incantations and danced about weaving the gestures that went with those words, so fast he started to gasp amid fast-flowing sweat, a part of Klarandarr of Ouvahlor started to wonder, with calm curiosity, if he'd manage to craft his shield-shell in time.

I had four good reasons
For returning to Talonnorn
And at least two revenges
Plus the face of a certain Nifl lady.

—
words of Orivon Firefist,
as remembered in Orlkettle

“
O
rivon!” Taerune panted as she danced frantically away from yet another whirling blade that sought her life.

“Have you any magic at all?”

“Me?” The forgefist gasped as he sprang high into the air and whirled his blade hard around his head, shattering two skulls before he fell to the floor with a grunt. The bones of those two guardians clattered to the floor around him, bouncing and breaking. A floor that had begun to shake as the rock it was carved out of awakened into thunder.

That left three bone guards, two of them without swords—but no, they'd just swooped across the chamber to catch the swords of the two he'd just destroyed!

As the thunder of vibrating rock grew louder and stronger all around them, Taerune tried the same tactic Orivon had, leaping
high and slicing with all her strength, but her bone guard spun back out of reach. It plunged after her as she fell, stabbing viciously—but was parried by Orivon at the last instant as he hurled himself across the room to smash aside its blade. As that rusty sword clanged off the ceiling, Orivon landed hard on shattered bones, chest-first, and slid helplessly on, into the wall.

Taerune rolled away in the other direction, wasting no time in watching the bone guard chase the sword Orivon had struck from its control. She was too busy dodging the other two skeletal guardians and trying to scramble across the shaking floor to the gate that had spawned them.

The gate that was now an empty frame she wasn't sure if she dared to dive through.

The gate whose destruction she
knew
would destroy the bone guards, too. If only they had some
useful
magic . . .

The guardians were little more than whirling bones, remains kept together by magic, not bones still joined by the joints living Nifl possessed. Skulls floated above shoulders, that in turn floated above arms—arms that could wield swords without grasping them, somehow, swinging those blades with the cold strength of a strong Nifl rampant or whirling them like chain-flails.

Smashing the skulls destroyed them, Orivon had just shown—and if they lacked a sword to wield, they could do little more than belabor the face and body of a foe with bony arms that annoyed, and could perhaps blind, but did no greater harm.

The floor bouncing under her hard and rapidly now, Taerune rolled onto her shoulders and kicked upward, desperately, driving a blade aside and winning herself time to roll again, this time to her knees, with the gate only a temptingly small distance away, and—

Orivon came crashing down in front of her nose, both hands locked around a skull that he drove hard against the vibrating floor.

Old Nifl bone shattered satisfyingly, and the flailing skeletal arms collapsed into mere bouncing, lifeless bones. Evidently her former slave had got to the disarmed bone guard before it had reached its errant sword.

That left two, and Taerune spun around on her knees with her blade up before her, seeking the whereabouts of those two guardians in the now thundering and shaking chamber.

They were as high above her as they could get, moving from above the gate she'd been thinking of racing for, to above Orivon. As he rolled over, they descended menacingly, their whirling blades foremost.

It was Taerune's turn to defend the human who'd so ably rescued her. Thrusting herself up from the floor, she thrust out her blade into the whirling steel of the nearest bone guard, trying to shove it sideways into its fellow guardian.

Steel rang off steel numbingly, the rusty sword disintegrated into dust and shards, and Taerune fell, off-balance, across Orivon. Who cursed as the other bone guard came down on them both, and then frantically grabbed hold of the blade he'd fitted to Taerune's missing forearm and thrust it up to defend them both, twisting her like a straw doll.

She cried out in pain—but the bone guard's rusty sword rang off that steel and exploded into shards like the other one had, and that gave Orivon time enough to fling Taerune's body up into the second bone guard, temporarily scattering the bones it was made of, and then launch himself up through the whirling heart of the other bone guard, plunge two fingers into the eyesockets of its skull, hug the skull to his chest—and crash to the floor with all his weight atop it, shattering it.

That bone guard sighed back into lifeless bones, too, leaving only one swordless guardian—a guardian still drifting back together after Taerune had slammed through the midst of it. She was groaning on the floor, holding her flank and glaring at Orivon, but he raced right past her to get his hands on the skull, before it could rejoin the rest, wrestle it to the ground, and pummel it with his fists until it broke apart.

In their sudden lack of skeletal foes, Orivon and Taerune looked at each other and managed wry grins.

“If you tell no one about throwing me right through a dancing skeleton, I'll forgive you these bruised ribs,” the outcast Talonar lady told her former slave, speaking almost severely.

“We have agreement,” Orivon told her, reaching for her far more gently than he'd done just a breath or three earlier. “Are they truly . . . gone?”

Taerune shrugged. “It wouldn't hurt to stomp on the biggest bones—all but one. Keep a thighbone to thrust through yon gate. I don't entirely trust it.”

“Do Talonar Niflghar entirely trust anything?” Orivon teased her.

“Only the truly stupid ones,” she replied tartly, taking up a bone she judged long enough and thrusting it through the open space in the gate. Nothing happened, but she tried her blade next, before daring to insert her hand and undo the latch.

The gate yawned wide, and Taerune Evendoom turned to the Hairy One she'd once flogged so often, smiled, and indicated the dark passage beyond the gate with a flourish. Warm and damp air was rising from it, and the thunder of vibrating rock that was loud everywhere else around them seemed somehow muted when wafted up to them on that air. “The yeldeth caverns await.”

“Should we expect other guards? Traps?”

“No traps; they have slaves bringing
food
through here constantly, remember? Overseers, yes, but such are usually old, weak, or disfigured Nifl, armed with whips. A few have daggers, but it's discouraged.”

Orivon nodded. “Ah. If a slave snatches one . . .”

Taerune nodded back.

Orivon took up his swords again and shouldered his way through the gate. There was a strong, nose-prickling smell he remembered, faint but growing stronger with every step he took. Yeldeth.

He looked back over his shoulder. Taerune was holding her side, but was walking right behind him. She gave him a slight smile.

“Of course I'm coming,” she said, before he could ask. “You, I
almost
entirely trust.”

Orivon grinned. “Likewise.”

He went on down into the darkness, the passage becoming a smooth, damp ramp down into the soft warmth of the yeldeth caverns. Whimpers arose ahead of him, and he stopped and peered.

The pale faces and staring eyes of young, bony, naked humans looked back at him. “Where are the overseers?” he asked them.

“You're—”

“Human? Yes. Where are the overseers?”

“Gone. Fled. When the rumblings started. They left us to die.”

Orivon nodded and strode forward, picking his way carefully as he waded in the soft, deep, clinging fungus. Most of the slaves shrank back from him, whimpering in utter terror. When they saw Taerune behind him, sword-armed and sleek, every inch an elegant Nifl-she, most hid their faces, or tried to burrow into the yeldeth and hide.

Orivon went on a long way, from cavern to cavern, until he was beginning to despair. The four could be long dead, of course, or killed after they got here and fed to gorkul . . .

Then he blinked. Was that a face he knew?

“Brith?” he called, as gently as he could. “Brith?”

“Firefist?” came the disbelieving, weeping response.

 

Dung-worms loomed up, dark and vast, and then rushed together, striking his shieldings hard enough to make the not-quite-completed shell flicker, shrink in on itself a little, and then . . . hold.

Around him, Talonnorn had vanished, blotted out by all the vast, pressed-together maws that were so busily biting and gnawing.

Klarandarr's shieldings collapsed a little more under that hungry onslaught, but kept him—thus far, at least—from being bitten into small, bleeding fragments.

As the spellrobe sat down to think, the incomplete shell gave
way a little more—and then, suddenly, it was too late for leisurely thinking, as the shell became a small sphere around him, and he was being battered and hurled about and then . . . swallowed whole.

One of the largest dung-worms had won the struggle over him, and closed its jaws over him completely.

Swirling about in the juices of its mouth and then gullet, tumbled and churned, Klarandarr of Ouvahlor pondered his situation.

When the shell failed, his flesh would begin to melt in this churning bile, even before he drowned. Yet if he freed himself by causing the shell to burst violently, destroying the dung-worm, he'd be hurled into the air, probably stunned—and defenseless against all the
other
dung-worms.