Dark Vengeance (24 page)

“Senior Watcher,” she said politely, showing no sign of discomfort from the embrace of the solid ice that encased her from just below her throat on down, though her lips were white with cold, “your wisdom, perceptiveness, and your attentive care for the well-being of Ouvahlor have long impressed us. We appreciate that you have interrupted private and holy deliberations for good reason, because you do nothing without good reason. You have our full attention; speak.”

Luelldar made a swift reverence, and lifted his head to say in humble tones, “Revered Mother, we Watchers have noticed that
the wards of the city of Talonnorn are not only down, but have been down for some time now, implying that there is something preventing or at least delaying their restoration.”

“Wherefore, you are suggesting—?” she asked silkily.

“As Watchers,” Luelldar said flatly, “we suggest nothing unless requested to do so.”

“Then I am making such a request,” she informed him, just as flatly.

Luelldar blinked. He was so used to Anointed laying verbal traps with their every utterance . . .

“Then I would suggest,” he said carefully, “that you use holy spells to contact Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira from afar, and order her to attack Talonnorn immediately. If the force she commands can slay this new High Lord, plunder the city, and then withdraw, Talonnorn will remain a needy chaos, at war with itself, for some time.”

“Probably a long time,” Lolonmae agreed thoughtfully.

“This would at last free Ouvahlor, for that long time, to turn its attention to our other rivals, rather than our traditional foe,” Luelldar added.

The Revered Mother smiled.

“And that can only be a good thing. Luelldar, you serve Ouvahlor as diligently as ever.”

The whorl in front of the Senior Watcher winked out of existence, astonishing Aloun.

Luelldar, who was not at all surprised that the Revered Mother could casually shatter his magics from afar, merely shivered.

 

“. . . Well,
I've
always wondered why they don't suffocate when they sleep,” the familiar, harsh voice of the older Nifl overseer said, from right above her. “The stuff grows so fast.”

Kalamae lay still, taking care not to change her breathing or open her eyes. She could tell from the slight quiver of Aumril's
flank, pressed against hers, that she wasn't the only one who'd come awake.

“Exhausted or not, you'd think they'd lie on their backs, just to keep from
feeling
like they're going to smother,” he added.

“Who knows why Hairy Ones do anything?” The other overseer—the lazy one—sounded as bored as he always did. “They don't, that's all.”

Kalamae couldn't feel Reldaera or Brith, on the far side of Aumril, but she knew from the faint hitch in their breathing that they, too, were awake and just feigning sleep, now. They always slept whenever they got too exhausted to go on, at a place where they'd dug away a lot of yeldeth. It regrew around them with its usual uncanny speed, but if they got most of it off the tunnel ceiling, there was little chance enough would fall on them to crush or smother them, and that was all that mattered.

To the overseers, nothing involving slaves—aside from keeping the yeldeth yield up—seemed to matter at all.

The two were literally standing right over the four children. Kalamae felt the sudden warm wetness as the older overseer spat on her back, ere speaking again.

“I've been wondering,” he said slowly, “if we should shift all the slaves back a few tunnels, to where they'll be more out of the way of the High Lord's warblades—should the sword-swingers need to move through here in a hurry, if the city comes under attack.”

“Too much trouble moving them,” the lazy overseer said promptly; more to stave off the effort of shifting slaves anywhere than for any other reason, Kalamae thought. “Keep the yield up, that's our job. Which means we keep the slaves here, in these outermost ways, where the yeldeth's younger and the yields are highest. That keeps
our
necks healthy. I'm not thinking the city'll be attacked by anyone—and if it does, and the warblades come charging through here, keeping Hairy One brats alive will be the
least
of our worries.”

Kalamae felt the barbs of his whip just touch her behind, in the lightest of touches, and move on in the direction of Aumril. Then
the lazy overseer added, “If anything happens to these, they'll just send out more raiding bands to the Blindingbright, and get more. They're only slaves.”

 

Daruse might have known right where he was, but copying his shape and wearing his filthy clothes didn't help her recognize anything at all out in the Wild Dark. She needed a map.

Luckily, that last peddler had been a careful keep-all-things sort. Old etched metal map plates had been used to line the insides of three of his oldest, leakiest chests.

Wherefore she thought she now knew where she was. Looking up at the soft glow glimmering in the distance that was probably Lightpools, Lady Maharla Evendoom smiled.

Talonar noble crones, Eldest of Evendooms or not, always liked to know where they stood.

 

“You don't think we'll have fighting in Talonnorn?”

“Ah, now, I didn't say
that
. I don't think Ouvahlor will bother to march all the way here, and everyone else is even farther off, with the worst of the Wild Dark to get through. I think if we do have warblades down here, it'll be Talonar seeking to run around behind Talonar. What with all this strife and tumult over the High Lord . . .”

The listening children cowered, and tried not to show it. Luckily, the overseers had largely forgotten them. Seeing the bared bodies of slaves was hardly a thrill when they were this young—and were Hairy Ones, to boot.

“Aye. Now that he's hiring wildblades and poisoners out of the Araed, to hurl against the noble Houses—”

“Not that they haven't long needed taking down, right and harsh, mind you!”

“—and now, I hear, against the Consecrated of Olone when they can catch them, too!”

“What?” The lazy overseer was shocked. “Holy One, that's a . . . that's another thing entirely.”

“No good will come of this,” the older one said grimly.

“Agreed,” the lazy one said quietly, still aghast. “Oh, agreed.” After a moment he added, “I need a drink.”

“Ah.
Now
you're spewing sense!”

“But of course!” The overseers chuckled, and the four slaves who were not asleep heard those hoarse chucklings dwindle away down the tunnel.

Brith, Reldaera, Aumril, and Kalamae all opened their eyes and turned to look at each other, sitting up warily to do so. “We're going to
die!
” Reldaera hissed, eyes wide with fear.

“We all die,” Kalamae said dismissively. “We just have to make sure we don't die
here.
And soon.”

Around them, the moist, warm yeldeth grew. Visibly.

Take your sword, take your sword
Your armor and your pain
Take your spells, take your spells
Your tricks and battle-brain
And for the glory and the gold
Try for Talonnorn again!

—
old Ravager trail song

“
L
eave me,” Semmeira ordered her four handsome bodyguards crisply. “I must renew one of the magics that shields us. To be near to me, or to spy on me, will be more than dangerous.”

She strode away across the cavern without looking at them or waiting for any reply. It really didn't matter if they correctly suspected she wanted some privacy to relieve herself, so long as they stayed where they were. By the Ice, but there
were
limits.

Warblades' leathers were designed for moments such as these. Unbuckle the codpiece, swing it aside and catch it on the belt-hook provided, use the same hook to hold the end of the crotch-leathers, and—let fly.

A little bare and breezy, but no need to crouch or worry about
skirts, and turning her outermost shielding to the semblance of solid stone blocked all prying eyes.

Semmeira threw back her head, let out a shuddering sigh, and relaxed.

For just long enough to gasp in alarm, as a face appeared in her head—a face that should never have been able to pierce her weakest shielding, let alone all six of them!

Including the two that had so painfully ended the scrying and spying of Coldheart in the first place . . .

Revered Mother Lolonmae was cold-eyed, taking no seeming pleasure in Semmeira's astonishment, dismay, and flaring fear. Yet they both knew there was a note of silent triumph in her mind-voice as she said crisply,
Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira, before the Ever-Ice you are bound to hear and obey this my command: you are to take all of your force of war and travel with them as swiftly as possible to the city of Talonnorn, and attack that city. You are to slay its newly proclaimed High Lord, Jalandral Evendoom, do as much damage as possible to its forces of war and leadership, plunder what you can of its wealth, and withdraw, returning here to Coldheart without delay.

“Uh . . . Of course, Revered Mother!” Semmeira stammered, trying to seem eager—and Lolonmae was gone, leaving Semmeira with a ringing headache and a deepening feeling of dread. Surely Lolonmae had some fell punishment in mind for her, but what? And when would it be visited upon her? When she stood in peril, embattled in Talonnorn, or as a humiliation before all at Coldheart, after she'd done all the bloody work for Lolonmae?

“That little bitch,” Semmeira whispered. “If she can do what she just did, she has the power she needs to do
anything
to me . . .”

Semmeira stood swaying for a moment, pale with fear, and then spat out curses as fast as she could and strode briskly away, heading . . . she knew not where.

Maharla Evendoom didn't have to be a Ravager to know that the approach to any meeting-place out in the Wild Dark would be
among the most dangerous terrain in all the Dark. So while lurking monsters and outlaws may have seen only a lone Ravager leading six pack-snouts who seemed as old and lean as he was along the trade-trail to Lightpools, an invisible shielding-spell was moving with that trudging figure, and another unseen magic was darting about peering here, there, and everywhere among the rocks and deep shadows beneath and behind rocks, seeking out anyone—or anything—that might have been waiting to pounce.

There were snakes, and cave-rats, and even something like a headless, all-wings bat that marked the approach of the Ravager with interest . . . but none of them tarried to attack, and Maharla did them no harm. She needed to keep her strongest spells for when they would
really
be needed.

Because that moment of need just might be very soon.

Lightpools, she now knew—that last peddler had kept
everything,
including old guidebooks to the Dark!—was a cavern that held a cluster of glowing pools of drinkable water, where springs bubbled up from below. From the pools, streams spilled out to wander far throughout the Dark, though their waters soon lost their glows. Lightpools was also a moot where Ravagers and traveling Nifl traders alike gathered, usually in peace. There seemed to be a code among those who lived out in the Dark, involving not hurling spells or shedding blood near drinkable water . . . but then, codes did not apply to Maharla Evendoom.

She was smiling the tight smile evoked by that smug thought as she led her pack-snouts out into the Lightpools cavern, earning some swift looks and hastily-taken-up swords from the motley-clad Nifl rampants who were already sitting around the pools.

She counted eight of them, all clad in worn and dirty leathers and scraps of armor.

Every one of them was scarred, and every one of them was dirty. They all had weapons in their hands, now, one a ready hurlbow, but no one had scrambled to his feet, and no one looked to have any battle-magic, let alone showing any signs of getting ready to hurl it.

Walking warily closer, Maharla marked two traders who were probably traveling together; the other six all appeared to be loners, spaced careful distances apart around the pools. All were watching her in expressionless, not-particularly-friendly silence, but she could see that they'd relaxed. One aging Nifl rampant, clad like any other Ravager and leading six bony pack-snouts with no trace of eagerness or good humor did not measure up to “pressing threat” in their shared judgment.

Good.

Eight armed foes, raging about on all sides, just might manage to get a hurled knife or an arrow past any crone's spells.

“Have a name, do you?” one of the nearest Ravagers—or traders, or whatever they were—asked calmly.

“Daruse,” she replied, trying to keep her voice low, rough, and terse. Better to be thought surly than uncertain—or too different from the Daruse someone remembered to seem “right.” If Talonar had heard many tales of shapeshifting monsters and spells that did the same thing, then so had Ravagers out here, not all that far from Talonnorn.