Dark Warrior Rising Page 5

  Watching them go, Taerune discovered she was trembling in excitement. “Icy defiance fades before icier dismissal,” she murmured, “as usual. A pity they didn’t dare more. Ah, well, perhaps next Turning.” And she spun around stylishly, one hand on hip, to stride onward, satisfaction a cold mantle about her. She’d known a moment of fear, facing the five of them with her Orb back in her chambers, but they’d proved as craven as she’d expected. She might or might not be an overbold, foolish she—but she was of Evendoom. Tremble, Talonnorn, tremble, as the saying went, for Evendoom is risen and a-prowl.

  Ah, yes, prowling; what she sought was but a little way ahead now, and no other obstacles or defiances awaited her. Taerune barely had time to quell the lightnings and gather her wand back up onto her shoulder before the last pack-snouts and goad-waving Nifl porters parted before her—and she was facing the gates of the Forgerift.

  Tall and stark black those doors were, two massive forged slabs as tall as four Nifl. Onto each had been bolted the Black Flame of Evendoom, great cast metal representations that stood out from the doors more than the thickness of a large Nifl’s body—and below them were descending rows of black metal runes, also standing forth from the door boldly, that crackled with restless power. Of fabled ordauth, the only metal that could have held so much magic, they were the largest spellrunes ever forged in Talonnorn. Their snarling power—an endless muted thunder Taerune could feel as well as hear, even this far from the doors—was a standing boast of the might of House Evendoom.

  They were grander even than the Great Gates before the Eventowers, and it was common lore in Talonnorn that their forging had cost hundreds of lives—Niflghar finesmiths and forgehammers as well as slaves—though House Evendoom never spoke of such things. And if whispered rumor grew such tales in their retellings, what of it? Rumor did as much with all its whispers touched.

  Touch. Though she was still a dozen strides from the gates, Taerune stretched out her hand, feeling her wardshield sing and surge eagerly toward them—and the flare of deadly power that responded, shouting silently in her mind. To all but the most strongly warded Nifl, unless they were of Evendoom, merely touching the Forgerift doors meant death. Yet they and the tall gate arch around them were guarded by no less than six warblades of the House, who now grounded their drawn swords and raised open hands to her in salute.

  They were expecting her, of course, and at her nod stepped back to open the gates, revealing the angry, ever-present red-orange glows of deepfire beyond. The Forgerift was House Evendoom’s greatest treasure, and even if the runes and warblades had both been thrown down and swept away, flitting fireghosts of the spellbound Evendoom dead guarded the Rift itself from intrusion and seizure by others. Only those of Evendoom, and bound to Evendoom, could pass through the gates and live.

  Head held high, Taerune of Evendoom strode through the opened gate. In perfect unison, heads lowered, her darmarch followed her, the House sigils painted on their bared shoulders flaring into wary life as the gate-magics probed and clawed at them. They would bear her Door of Fangs hence, and up through the Eventowers to install it, under the watchful eyes of two House spellrobes as well as her own—and though they knew it not, they would be seared by it, deep enough to leave scars they would bear to the ends of their lives.

  For the door, promised ready for her, was to be all of ordauth, grandest of metals, smelted from the blackest veins of ore in the deepest rifts closest to the Ever-Ice at the heart of Niflheim. The ore whose mining slew so many, and so kept it scarcer than any wanted it to be. Ordauth the Bearer-of-Magics, the metal that can hold more and mightier spells than any other.

  Oh, and spells her door would have! Taerune had commanded the best spellrobes of the House—save the crones, to whom she dared not reveal the full extent of her schemings—to work spells upon spells, melding their castings into the unfinished doors even as the sweating forgehammers, led by her Dark Warrior, did their louder, cruder work.

  Taerune smiled, as she always did, at the thought of him: her loyal mountain, the one creature in her life that did her bidding without cold looks of challenge. The only being in all Niflheim she could trust. More than any other, the door was of his making.

  Not the enchantings, no. Slaves worked no spells. She had thought and dreamed of what she wanted, and told the best spellrobes of the House—and they had argued and experimented and argued anew for a very long time, ere they finally managed to enspell the door as she wanted it.

  Many staring eyes had been torn from living creatures and embedded in the door while still warm and working, so the finished door could “see” intruders approaching. Many fangs had been dissolved in spellslake and been mixed into the smelting vats; intact, gore-dripping, enspelled jaws had been ripped from living beasts and melded into the formed but unfinished door.

  The spellrobes had worked their magic, and assured her that her will had been fulfilled and all was in readiness.

  Which meant that once her Door of Fangs was in place guarding the way into her chambers high in House Evendoom, unauthorized hands that dared touch the handle of the door would be greeted by a manyfanged jaw thrusting forth out of the smooth metal to close on and sever them.

  The very thought made her smile. And this beautiful thing was her conception, so she’d shown herself worthy of cronehood while still—

  It was waiting for her, black and gleaming, lying flat on stone plinths before her. Fire flared as she drew near, and the door reflected its reaching greed toward her.

  Her Dark Warrior at the forge was silhouetted against that flame, a broad-shouldered black figure with steady tongs that looked small against the gout of flame—and then, as the fire fell back and he turned in her direction, looked large.

  Very large, as he came hastily toward her, a sword blade angry red in his tongs, his bulging, sweat-slick upper arms twice as thick as her waist. He set it on a blackened stone side table, drew off the black cloth mask he’d bound over his eyes—a bit of one of her old cloaks, that she’d given him when she’d first broken him to her will—and went to his knees, lowering his gaze to her boots.

  He stank, of course. All humans did. Yet it was a smell she was getting used to, that clung to beautiful things he fashioned at her command.

  “You,” she whispered, so softly that he’d have no chance of hearing her, “are mine.” With a fond smile she brought her whip forward, cracking it across his back with a stroke that rocked him. Slaves need to taste the lash often.

  Yet it was a gentle stroke, that drew no blood, and she drew back the whip without giving him another. Too gentle a stroke, her sisters would say—but then, this was probably the best firefist in all Talonnorn, he was her firefist, and just now she was very proud of his work.

  “Orivon, tell me of my door,” she commanded, using his name rather than her more customary “Slave.” By the looks of the gleaming dark door at her hip, he’d earned that, and more.

  “Highest, it is ready. Its last oiling sinks into it. If you tarry long enough to look at it before the darmarch lay hands on it, it will be ready.”

  That deep, soft voice. He might be a Hairy One, a stinking, muscled brute who just happened to be a superbly skilled smith, but her Orivon Firefist had the voice of a pleasure-dancer.

  “And its magics?”

  “Highest, the spellrobes have been, and pronounced all well.”

  Taerune smiled down at the scarred back of her Dark Warrior. He wasn’t dark at all, of course, but repulsively pale, except down his back where she’d marked him.

  He bore many brands—she surveyed them now, smile widening—and she’d ground his own forge ash into the raw, freshly burned flesh of each one, to blacken them permanently. Even when floggings laid his back open, the healing scars stayed black.

  “I am pleased, and more than pleased,” she hissed. “You have won yourself a new brand, Firefist! Expect my return two Embers from now!”

  “Highest, I who am unworthy am yet honored,” he replied, soft vo
ice carefully and slowly—reverently—saying the words she’d trained him to say, with more lashes than she cared to remember. Yet was there, this time, the faintest hint of eagerness in his rough, quietly rumbling voice?

  She shrugged. Humans are so hard to read, so … brutish.

  Taerune tossed her head by way of reply, turned her back on the brute, and cracked her whip sharply on the floor in an imperious signal to her darmarch to take up the door and bear it back through the streets to the Great Gates, so that all might see.

  She did not look back at the kneeling slave. Her Dark Warrior was her favorite toy, but he was just a toy.

  4

  Schemes and Servings

  Look ahead into darkness. Waiting dooms should be greeted properly.

  —old Nifl saying

  Fire flared again behind him, a brightness that warmed his backside.

  As if that had been a cue, the kneeling man rose slowly to his knees and then stood, watching the door move steadily away from him between two lines of marching Nifl.

  At their head he could see that slender, familiar, now tiny figure, the whip that had visited so much pain on him riding her shoulder.

  Bitch. He uttered that savage naming in his mind, not with his lips. Yet he thought it with dark amusement, not rage; he was pleased at her delight in the door, despite his hatred.

  Just as he was her favorite, and she was pleased to watch him, own him, and give him pain.

  For which, one day—he remembered days, the sunrises and sunsets, and had long ago vowed he’d one day see them again—he’d give her death, slow and terrible.

  And preferably involving floggings.

  He knew better than to let any of what he was feeling show on his face, even here in the Rift, with the fires the nightskins feared so much spitting and flaring around him. You never knew when they’d be watching.

  Silently spying from afar with their spells, of course. Craven fear not all that far under their oh-so-supreme pride, to be sure.

  “To be sure,” Orivon Firefist murmured slowly, watching his hated tormentor disappear back into the busy streets of Talonnorn. He stood like a statue, watching as the great doors closed in her wake—and only when they stood like an unbroken black wall once more, blocking his view of the city beyond, did he turn back to the fires and the blade that would need to be heated again.

  There would come a day of death, and he would be at the heart of it. And on that day more than those doors would fall, and more than one impossibly beautiful, vicious elf-bitch would die.

  Oh, yes. I’ll be her Dark Warrior, all right. And it will be her turn to learn how loud and long she can scream. Yes.

  “Kiss of the Goddess, how she preens and prances! Like a silly little just-weaned brat!”

  “Ah, but that’s just it: she’s young, Maharla! We were all young, once.”

  “Oh? We never taunted Mauls in the streets in one breath and drooled in open lust over hairy human slaves the next! At least I didn’t, Klaerra. Perhaps things were more lax in your time.”

  “Then our House must plunge into, and rise out of, decadence as swiftly as you don and doff that favorite cloak of yours. As I recall, you were a silly little just-weaned brat when I was about the age our Taerune is now.”

  Maharla’s hiss of fury was as sharp as a knife. She liked to think of herself as the senior crone of House Evendoom—and, of course, of all Talonnorn—not the third eldest.

  “Behave, Maharla,” the oldest crone said sharply, startling everyone around the watch-whorl. Orlarra never spoke; her voice was thick and raw from disuse. “Or be still. Your snarlings and spittings demean us more than the youngling you decry so.”

  Seething, Maharla held silence, knowing that the chamber held more than a few inward smiles just now.

  So it was one of the youngest crones—Galaerra, one of those she’d coached—who dared to voice what she’d been going to say. “Yet is it wise, this value Taerune places on the human firefist?”

  “A good tool has value,” Orlarra replied. “It is unwise not to see the value of what we can make use of. You may be sure that Maulstryke and Dounlar envy us our Forgerift, and the skills of our slaves there. Raskshaula often sends their spellrobe Ondrar to openly watch the work at the Rift—openly, when he could easily use his spells to farwatch without anyone being the wiser. And Oszrim only has gorkul firefists.”

  “Oh, Oszrim,” someone said dismissively, amid a general murmur of wordless derision—and out of it Maharla spoke, daring to challenge the eldest crone openly.

  “I fail to see how humans can be valued so much more highly than gorkuls at our forges. Both are witless, stinking beasts, after all, fit only to be slaves.”

  “Not food? Not breeding fun?” someone asked mockingly, in a voice deliberately pitched high and childlike, so as to escape being identified.

  “How dare—”

  There were many dry chuckles around the flickering glow of the watch-whorl, and Maharla fell abruptly silent again. It seemed her longago experimentations had become more widely known than she’d thought.

  “Yet, sisters,” Galaerra said a little timidly, “is there not danger as well as wisdom in valuing a human slave? Taerune entrusts more and more knowledge of House plans and intentions to this … this animal. What if he should—”

  “Fall into the hands of Maulstryke or another House? And just how will that happen, when our spells can make the Forgerift itself spit its fire at intruders? Nifl turned to shrieking bones make poor captors of anything!”

  “That was not,” Galaerra said with unaccustomed fire, “what I was going to say. I am pondering what damage the human she so fondly calls her ‘Dark Warrior’—as if he’s a pet, look you!—might do if she tells him too much. What mischief he’ll think up, to harm us all.”

  Maharla saw her chance to seize her accustomed verbal dominance, and firmly took it. “Humans?” Her laugh was half a sneer. “Hairy, stinking beasts—with wits and malice enough to ape what we do, yes—but they can’t truly think. They’ve nothing in those lust-ridden heads with which to reason! Remember that.”

  The hammer rang, rose, and rang again, the blade under it flowing and thickening like a living thing.

  Orivon worked without thinking. He didn’t need to, after so many thousands upon thousands of such blades. The hue and smell of the metal told him all he needed to know.

  It was other knowledge he hungered for: everything he could learn about House Evendoom, and about Talonnorn beyond it. About the city—beyond Evendoom sneerings and boastings—he knew all too little, but he’d seen a lot of House Evendoom over the years since he’d been brought to Talonnorn. Many years, it must have been, though there were no seasons in the Dark to help him mark the passing years. The Nifl spoke of something called “Turnings,” but he’d no idea what a Turning was; it didn’t seem to be nearly as long as a year, or even a season. Yet in this dark and endless time of forge work, while plying his hammer, he’d grown large, and sprouted hair on his face long since.

  Taerune came to see him often, to indulge her taste for whipping slaves raw, and had taught him much of how Nifl talked—yet she’d avoided, time and again, telling him anything useful about the wheres and hows of life in Talonnorn.

  Not often, but more times by now than he could easily count, he’d been chained and led through back tunnels—never the city streets—from the Forgerift to the huge, sprawling castle of House Evendoom. “Eventowers,” they called it, though the one time he’d been up high enough in the gigantic cavern that housed Talonnorn, and had tried to count its many towers, he thought there’d been an odd number.

  He’d managed to snatch only a few glimpses out of the windows when inside Eventowers, and never on the city side of the castle. Yet in the other direction, gazing at the tunnel-riddled walls of the great cavern that held Talonnorn, he’d seen several interesting things—among them some small but deep clefts in the rock, in a little area littered with rubble. An area the Nifl seemed to avoid. It m
ight serve to hide things, if ever he needed to hide something.

  Always he’d been brought to Eventowers for the same task: shifting furniture around the grand rooms of the castle, as changing fashions demanded high seats and tables be dragged into attics, to be replaced by the latest sculptings. There were no trees in Talonnorn, and Niflghar made most of their furnishings, it seemed, from stone sculpted and melted to smoothness with magic. So the larger pieces—tables and the round bases of beds, mainly—were cursedly heavy. That meant strength, and far more deftness than pack-snouts dragging things with ropes, or tusked gorkuls snarling and straining, could manage.

  Wherefore, to keep breakages to a minimum, Evendoom stripped its forgefists, brought them up from the Rift in chains, surrounded them with the cruel hooded Nifl wizards called “spellrobes” and even more warblades wielding lightning-whips, and set them to work sweating furniture from one chamber to another—under the sharp eyes of the impossibly beautiful female Nifl of the House.

  Some of the nightskin shes were interested only in seeing the furnishings moved safely to just here—or no, perhaps over there—but others (he could tell by his fleeting glimpses of their faces, and the weight of their gazes) wanted to see the naked slaves work, sweat glistening on their straining muscles. Daring to look up at the shes brought instant punishment—and so did any visible arousal that such looks might evoke—so the forgefists kept their faces down unless ordered otherwise.

  From time to time a forgefist got taken away, and once or twice that had been Orivon’s fate—to be flogged to weak helplessness, chained down tightly, blindfolded … and then caressed by wandering Nifl fingers, while excited nightskin shes giggled and sighed and made playful or wonderstruck comments over him. Sometimes they bit him, though older female voices gave sharp, swift orders quelling any cruelty that might maim or do lasting harm.