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Authors: Ed Greenwood

BOOK: Dark Warrior Rising
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“Their bracers? That turn aside shards and forge cinders?”
“Yes, and arrows, flung stones, and the like; those bracers.”
“What magics?” Orivon looked hastily about. “I feel nothing.”
“Magics are down, now. We broke them to get here.” The Nifl's voice had faded to almost a whisper.
“What magics?”
“Ever wonder why dung-worms don't thrust their snouts into Talonnorn every Turning? And the packs of wild darkwings and raudren—and all the other beasts that maraud out there in the Dark—don't come raiding through our streets?”
“There are wards.”
“Yes, wards. Well, the biggest ward in all Talonnorn is—or was—anchored right here. The beast-ward, that keeps all such at bay, unless or until they start wearing those bracers or carrying in their jaws Talonar corpses who wear them.”
“So you broke this ward, and let the dung-worms in?”
“No, they were almost as much an unwelcome surprise to us as they were to the Evendooms. Someone else sent them in—and that took powerful spells, to get them past the beast-ward. The beast-ward circles the city, and turns. Always.” The Nifl's whisper was becoming slurred, and Orivon hurried forward to hear better. “Very slowly, but it's always moving. Something—I'm no spellrobe, mind—to do with denying some sort of spell-attacks on it. It turns, and once around Talonnorn is a Turning, see? To you—d'you remember the Blindingbright, man?—that'd be about a month. I think.”
“You've been to the Blindingbright?”
Orivon shouted. “You know the way there?”
“I've been,” came the weak whisper, sounding apologetic, “but I know not the way. They cast spells on warblades to keep us from knowing the passages through the Wild Dark, and lead us when we go. So we can't so easily go rogue and join the Ravagers, see?”
“So
spellrobes
know the way?”
“I … guess,” the warblade said very slowly, his whisper wet and rattling.
“Who knows the way?” Orivon snapped. “Are there maps?”
There was no reply.
“Damn you,” Orivon snarled, bending close to pluck at the breast of the Maulstryke armor. “
Live!
Live long enough to
tell me
!”
The Niflghar turned his head, gave Orivon a beautiful, welcoming smile, and gasped, “Olone …”
Then he went still. Orivon shook him, shouting, “Where are the maps? Who knows the way?”
Smiling happily, the dead Maulstryke stared at nothing. Orivon threw back his head and roared out wordless frustration.
And then he let go of the dead Nifl and said gently, “My thanks, warblade. May Olone find you worthy.”
 
 
“Much as I dislike hampering the fun of
any
of my kin,” a deep, familiar voice came from behind Ravandarr, making him stiffen, “this particular pewling unworthy happens to be my son. And Secondblood heir of this House. Harm him in any way, Valarn, or by your neglect or deliberate action cause him to be harmed by another, and I shall personally remove your organs—one at a time, and slicing them
very
thinly—and fry them in your own blood, and feed them to you. Several of the crones of our House have offered to provide recipes and assist in the cooking, so long as they get a taste, too. No less than three of our spellrobes have offered their services to keep you alive and fully conscious throughout, so you'll miss none of the fun—or the pain.”
“L-Lord Evendoom,” Valarn said stiffly, “I was but jesting.”
“Ah, good, good. Valarn, I'd hate to think you were doing anything else with your carelessly chosen words to my son and to our honored kin Faunhorn. It is my personal opinion that you become steadily more unloved, and that is both regrettable and dangerous. Oh, and one more thing.”
Lord Evendoom fell silent, until Valarn was forced to ask, “Yes, Lord?”
“There's a battle unfolding.
Try
not to waste my time.”
And with a flash of the ring that whisked him from place to place in an instant, the Lord of House Evendoom was gone as abruptly as he'd arrived.
It was almost as if he could listen to words from afar.
“By the Burning Talon,
die,
Ouvahlan scum!” Jalandral Evendoom shouted jovially, driving the sword in his left hand through a Nifl throat and slashing a gorkul across the eyes with the blade in his right hand.
They'd reached the Long Hall before meeting with any of the foe—but the Long Hall could hold hundreds, and right now those hundreds happened to be warblades and fighting slaves of Ouvahlor, conferring and gathering loot and laughing over their kills.
Until Raereul's best spell lashed through them, and sent them howling up the stairs to the handful of armed Evendooms.
Raereul's second magic slew only a handful, and it was his last battle-spell.
“Well,” Presker said, kicking a gorkul in the face and driving his sword over its shoulder right down the snarling gullet of the one behind, “we're just going to have to kill the rest of them the old way.”
“Uncle, stop killing
my
gorkul,” Taerune told him happily, plying her warsteel at his elbow.
“Pray pardon, Lady Evendoom,” he replied in formal tones. “I regret to inform you that my regrettably aged eyesight has caused me to mistake one of yours for one of mine. Again.”
“No doubt you tell all the shes something similar,” she laughed, causing the warblade on her other side to chuckle before an Ouvahlan long-claws thrust through his throat, and he died.
 
 
“So a Turning is about a month, perhaps,” Orivon muttered, turning over corpses. “Would you happen to remember just how many Turnings you've had Orivon Firefist as your slave, Lady Taerune Evendoom? Aye? Well, speak up!”
He shook a dead Evendoom warblade by the shoulder until slack jaws in a lolling head clacked and clattered—but still it wouldn't meet his gaze or answer him.
Grinning wryly, Orivon let it fall and went on searching.
He'd found four corpses—no, five, now—he was certain were of House Evendoom. He even recognized one face: a guard who'd often accompanied Taerune of the Whips.
From them he took the three best pairs of bracers, strapping them to his upper arms, his forearms, and his calves, hoping their magics wouldn't react with each other and harm him in some strange way. He wasn't going to risk Maulstryke bracers in the Eventowers, in case the strange
magic raised alarms—or even unleashed waiting spells left ready by spellrobes. He knew just enough about magic to know that he knew nothing that could be trusted, noth—
A shadow fell over him.
Orivon looked up, froze—and then sprinted for the tunnel mouth faster than he'd ever run anywhere in his life, one half-buckled bracer flapping.
Overhead, a raudren was gliding.
Like a huge black living arrowhead, it looked—a sleek, leathery arrowhead as wide as the Rift itself. Peering up from the tunnel mouth that was thankfully too small for it to enter, Orivon saw its manyfanged under-slung jaw, wide enough for about five Orivons, several fanglike claws set in trios along the edges of its body, two rows of liquid black eyes that were gazing back at him knowingly, and a long, sinuous tail studded with razorlike projecting bones. Lots of them, lashing back and forth with slow, sinuous lassitude as it drifted through the air. Hunting.
There was another raudren behind it, and another. Large and silent and relentless, hunters of Talonnorn's foes and fugitives, and so guardians of the city. Unleashed, they'd hunt at will until called back with horns—but each raudren would return only after it had eaten.
A Talonar had become desperate enough to release them, a menace to Niflghar and Ouvahlan alike. Probably they were intended to harry the invaders well out into the Wild Dark—but they were proferring a starkly simple fate to Orivon Firefist: If he tried to escape now, he'd be devoured, swiftly and messily. Raudren liked to tear their prey apart in midair, wheeling and darting—in pairs and trios, or more—to bite off pieces as the bleeding meat fell.
Bleeding meat. Orivon's smile held no mirth at all as he stepped through the door again and started down the tunnel. Either he was going to find the way blocked by fallen rock, and try to hide here or somewhere in the clefts until the raudren were called back in—or he was going to the Eventowers dungeons, and up through them to back storage rooms he dimly recalled, and thence by the servants' stairs to the only relatively safe place in all the Eventowers he knew to hide,
if
spellrobes were finished hurling down towers: the attics of the older part of the castle. There to await the best time to take his plunge out into the Wild Dark—unless he could make his way unseen amid the chaos, with so many Evendooms dead, to one of the Eventowers libraries, and somehow find a map of the
Wild Dark. Preferably one with a bold and clear marking on it that read “Ashenuld.”
 
 
“The one with the eye patch is
mine,
” Taerune said grimly, hacking aside a squalling human with a greataxe. “Dral,
get that door open
!”
They were now only seven, and there were still hundreds of Ouvahlans. Wherefore they'd retreated to a corner of the Long Hall where an ornate pillar held a secret door all of the Evendooms had used countless times before to duck out of boring feasts or slip into meetings without having to endure the tedious greetings of disliked guests or Talonar officials. Unfortunately, it seemed Jalandral was having great difficulty in getting the door open.
Of course, the dozens of blades he was acrobatically fending off while trying to do so might have had some part in that difficulty. Or perhaps it was the scarred elder Ouvahlan Nifl with the eye patch who seemed to know exactly what they were trying to do, and was ordering his forces to their deaths with a ruthless precision of attacks designed to keep Jalandral Evendoom from ever accomplishing anything.
“No,” Presker gasped, between furious rounds of parrying, “I've never seen him before. He's not some former slave or servant, as far as I know. Perhaps he came into the Hall in the past posing as some trade envoy or other. It's one of the few rooms we've always let them see.
Ha
!” His sudden thrust caught a human by surprise—and in the crotch. Trying to scream and weep at the same time, the man doubled over and fell, clutching himself. His fellow Ouvahlans trampled him and finally kicked him aside.
Taerune threw herself at the ankles of the pair of clumsily thrusting humans in front of her, bowling them over. She came up lunging, sharply putting her blade right into a hurrying Nifl behind the humans: her quarry with the eye patch.
He screamed and hopped his way off her blade, howling, his leg collapsing under him the moment it touched the floor. He fell sideways with a speed that took half a dozen Ouvahlan Nifl by surprise, as he came crashing into them and they all went sprawling. The warblade beside Taerune sprang forward to thrust at throats and mouths and faces, despite her snarled, “
No,
you fool!
Don't break our line!
”
She was still shouting that when four Ouvahlan blades met in the warblade's ribs. He stiffened, spitting blood, reeled—and fell dying atop
the Ouvahlans he'd just killed. Leaving Taerune to face both the two gorkul pressing forward at her from behind the humans she'd felled—and those four Ouvahlan warblades now whirling to strike at her side.
Blood pounding in her ears, Taerune suddenly finds the whirling moments of bloody battle slowing to a crawl, with her own heartbeat thundering in her ears …
She strikes aside the first Ouvahlan blade, managing to steer the first gorkul's long-claw with it, into a tangle with the second seeking sword. Which leaves her unprotected against the other two blades
—
and the second gorkul, who is swinging a greataxe with savage disregard for his fellow Ouvahlans in such a cramped affray.
Taerune takes the only way left to her, hurling herself into a rush to embrace that gorkul, whose eyes have time to start widening in amazement as she thrusts her breast forward into the path of his onrushing ax
—
and then goes to her knees at the last possible instant, so his rising knee almost shatters her face, brushing her cheek instead, and the ax sweeps over her, slicing off a lock of her hair ere it slams into the third blade with force enough to break it.
And it does break, with a shriek of its own that no one will begin to hear until Taerune is shrieking, too.
The last Ouvahlan Nifl is smiling ruthlessly as he twists his way through this rushing press of combatants, every bit as adroitly as Taerune has ever done in battle. He manages to avoid both the lumbering gorkuls and the blades of his fellows, and yet find room enough through it all to thrust his blade at her spine.

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