Istu Awakened

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  With bits of sodden leaf and rich black loam clinging to her belly, she snaked to the crest of the slope. Above her and to the left grew an oval-leafed urylla bush. The short shrub sported no flowers and would not blossom until the white sun of high summer glowered down from overhead, but it provided excellent cover. The princess knew not to silhouette her head against the sky.

  Noiselessly she wriggled to the bush, raised her head to peer through the branches. To her left the Chanobit made its final dash to meet and merge with the Marchant. Man-high rushes marked the banks of the river. She scanned them carefully. If the Sky City forces wished to mount a final ambush on the ground, this would be an ideal place to do it.

  For ten long minutes she lay staring intently from between the leaves of the bush, eyes scanning the river, the mile-broad plain, the sky. The surface of the river rippled strangely clear. This time of year it usually clogged with flotsam, branches, barrels, scraps of cloth. The decaying corpses of trees, animals and feckless men were often carried downstream on the spring torrent, too. As she completed her thorough reconnaissance, Moriana pondered the shortness of the winter. Though it lengthened the growing season for the groundling farmers, a magnificent boon in the cool Sundered Realm where the planet's three-hundred-day year rendered the fertile time between frosts precariously brief, she found only ominous portent in it. Powers were afoot that interfered with the very order of the universe.

  'And I'm about to unleash still more powers,' she said to herself, 'and fell ones indeed, unless the legends lie.'

  Nothing moved on the plain, and Moriana saw no movement among the reeds other than the restless scurrying of a southwesterly breeze. High piled clouds rolled across the sky, but Moriana's practiced eye placed them many miles away. If the fluffy cumulus contained the wheeling shapes of war eagles, the birds would be too distant for her to see. Finally, as satisfied as she could be with an inherently risky situation, she nodded to herself and slid back down from the crest-line.

  She rolled onto her back to descend the hill and instantly froze. Reflex drew the bowstring halfway to her ear before Moriana recognized the tall, broad-shouldered form who had stolen up to stand a handful of yards behind her.

  'Walk warily, Stormcloud,' she said throatily. 'I might have let fly without thinking had I not heard you approach.'

  The man smiled. His face was that of a fallen angel surrounded by a nimbus of curly golden hair. There was a decidedly not cherubic light in the cat-green depths of his eyes, but he nodded and courteously refrained from pointing out that the princess hadn't heard him.

  'I trust your capabilities, Bright Lady,' he said. In spite of herself, Moriana smiled back and smoothed a wisp of sweat-lank hair from her eyes. 'I'm glad somebody in this party does.'

  'Oh, but all admire you, Your Highness. The way you rallied us together after the slaughter at the creek is commendable. No man could have done better.'

  Moriana frowned. Was this some implied criticism of Darl? She saw no sign of guile on that open face. But then she suspected that latic Stormcloud could plot foul murder and continue to beam like a seraph in a religious mural.

  Still, she had no firm reason to mistrust him and many to be grateful. It was the young mercenary, Stormcloud, who had led the reserves in turning back a flank attack that by rights should have been the final desperate thrust of the Sky City army. Had a war dog not panicked at the smell and upset the brazier Moriana used for her weather magic, the princess would have been able to maintain the ground-hugging clouds that kept eagles from the sky, and handsome latic Stormcloud would have taken his place beside Darl Rhadaman as architect of a great victory.

  In spite of a lingering unease about the young mercenary, Moriana had been happy when she and Darl had encountered Stormcloud and ten survivors in the woods a few miles from the battlefield. Alone of the Northblooded officers of her army, he had taken her military abilities seriously. He had proved invaluable in persuading the other survivors of the rout that she knew what she was doing and that her commands should be heeded. And with Darl lost in a fog of melancholy, unable to cope with this first shattering defeat of his career, Moriana had found herself relying more and more on latic Stormcloud's air of authority and calm counsel.

  Moriana became aware of the way her truncated skirt had ridden up her hips, baring pale skin. She wore nothing beneath the soiled, faded garment. Moriana's fine silk undergarment had chafed her unbearably as she rode, so she had dispensed with it. Deliberately, she drew the ragged hem of her skirt down to cover herself better.

  'As far as I can tell, the crossing is clear,' she said, relaxing the bow, clamping the broadhead arrow to the staff with her thumb while pushing herself to her feet with her other hand. 'There's no knowing whether bird riders wait above the woods for someone to venture out on the open flats.' She paused, considering. "I'll scout. Stay here and cover me.'

  latic frowned.

  'My lady, is it wise for you to risk your. . .' 'Down! Get down!'

  The shrill warning sang from the satchel at Moriana's hip. Without hesitation, Moriana cast herself forward, rolling down the slope into a clump of tai near Stormcloud. The mercenary hesitated, looking dumbfounded by the sudden voice from nowhere, but quickly recovered and threw himself into the scrub.

  An instant later a flight of eagles swept overhead in a thunder of wings. The bird riders barely cleared the treetops, and leaves rattled on branches from the wind of their passage. Gazing upward, Moriana counted a score of them in chevron formation, javelins and short-bows ready to slay the unwary.

  Let me out, a voice urged in the back of her skull.

  Knowing how slight a movement the great Sky City eagles could detect, Moriana reached down, groped in the satchel without taking her eyes from the deadly formation swinging out over the flood plain and painstakingly untwisted the basalt cap of Ziore's spirit jar. She sensed the genie flowing like mist from her jug. Moriana concentrated and sent a thought warning to Ziore not to assume her usual form. A pink apparition swaying among the trees would be certain to attract the attention of any eagle looking that way.

  The compact cloud of the nun's vaporous being went swirling into the bushes that hid Moriana, lending an almost imperceptible rosy glow to branches, leaves and the bole of a tai by the princess's elbow.

  Never fear, my child, came Ziore's familiar thought pattern. I've learned a few things since meeting you. 'What are you doing?' whispered Moriana. Trying to control the leader's emotions, came the mental reply. I can read his intentions clearly enough. He means to hide his men in the reeds by the river and wait until you try to cross the open space.

  'Can you control him at such a distance?'

  My powers grow greater with use. I think I can. Now hush and let me concentrate.

  Flashing the shadow of a wry smile at the thought of being reproved by the cloistered, innocent spirit, Moriana lapsed into silence. Straining her every sense, the princess detected small, furtive sounds of the forest, little creatures scurrying from cover to cover or digging holes against the coming of night and predators. She felt a definite kinship with the tiny, hunted woods beasts.

  So acute was her hearing that she heard the slow rise and fall of Stormcloud's breath ten yards away. She heard the wind whispering above the murmur of the river, heard the mighty throb of distant wings, heard now and then a scrap of human voice as the riders called to each other. The squadron turned slowly above the south-eastern bank of the Marchant looking for a likely place to land and lie in ambush without the necessity of remaining airborne for long, tiring hours.

  They've seen no sign of us since immediately after the battle, Ziore said in Moriana's mind. I'll try to convince the leader that we've passed long since, or crossed by another route.

  Moriana nodded. She watched the flyers through several more of their aerial circuits. One dropped out of formation, his bird's claws stretching down to seize the earth. Another rapped a command at him so sharply that the sound came clearly to Moriana's ears, tho
ugh she couldn't understand its sense. The meaning became clear soon enough: the landing bird hammered the air with its spread wings and soared again, tucking its talons up against its pale belly feathers.

  A bird rider peeled from the formation and arrowed his bird straight at Moriana's hiding place. Moriana caught her breath. Had her sister protected these men with a spell that allowed them to sense magical tampering with their senses? Was it possible they detected Ziore's subtle compulsions and now homed in on the source? Synalon and the sorcerors of the Sky City were cunning and knowledgeable. Moriana alone knew of the long hours of arcane studies her sister had devoted to such matters. But the lead eagle rose quickly, the others rolling into a long line after it, climbing toward the heights of the southern sky. They were a thousand feet up when they passed overhead and vanished from Moriana's view in the treetops.

  A long sigh gusted from Moriana's lips. A branch tickled one cheek and she brushed it away. Still cautious, she rose from the bushes.

  A moment later the foliage stirred off to her left and latic Stormcloud rose from his own cover, as silently as she. His eyes widened as he looked past her. Stormcloud blinked at the sight. Moriana -— turned to see Ziore's form hovering at her side.

  'I take it we owe your familiar thanks for the warning,' the mercenary captain said, jerking his head in the direction the departing bird riders had taken.

  'Yes, but she's not my familiar. Ziore is my friend.'

  Stormcloud nodded polite acknowledgement at her emphasis.

  'I was able to control the emotions of their leader,' Ziore explained aloud.

  Moriana looked sharply at her spirit friend. Was the flush of success rendering the shade too talkative? Then she relaxed. If she couldn't trust Stormcloud with the knowledge of the genie's power, there was no one left she could trust. Not unless Darl came out of his damned self-hating fog.

  'That could prove handy,' said Stormcloud, eyeing the pink figure appraisingly.

  'Yes,' Moriana agreed curtly. Tugging down the hem of her skirt, she walked past him into the woods, aware of the man's eyes on her all the while.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Preoccupied, Prince Rann Etuul walked along a back street of Bilsinx, his stride eating up a surprising length of ground for one so short. Bulbous towers loomed on either side of the cobblestoned street, and in the distance in front of him rose tall minarets. Pale, drawn faces peered out at him through glass rippled with age and purpled by the sun. He gave them no more attention than he gave his surroundings. All his thoughts centered on the great gray oval of the City in the Sky floating a thousand feet above his head, drifting to the east like an immense stone cloud.

  He similarly paid little attention to his companions, the three armed men in black and purple swaggering in a loose wedge before him and the thin and pimply adolescent mage who trotted behind. Hard-pressed to keep up with his prince despite longer legs, the young wizard Maguerr half stumbled and half ran while managing to stroke a wisp of ginger-colored beard and cradle a geode the size of a human head against his hollow chest.

  Rann hummed a wordless tune as he walked and thought. The events of the past few days amounted to nothing more than history for him now. Past glory faded with the promise of future triumphs. His destiny, the destiny of Queen Synalon, the destiny of the City in the Sky lay to the east.

  East. The City in the Sky, by some process forgotten even before men wrested control of it from the reptilian Hissers who had built it, could have picked one of three directions to move after it floated into Bilsinx from the west. From the central city of the Great Quincunx, the pattern it had followed immutably over the center of the Realm since Felarod had confined it after the War of the Powers, the Sky City could have gone north to Wirix, south to Brev, or east to Kara-Est. Brev was the smallest of the Quincunx cities and had already made proper obeisance to Synalon. Wirix raged defiant and strong in the midst of Lake Wir, almost as remote from the land as the City itself. There would be little profit in conquering Wirix immediately.

  The city that Synalon must subdue next was Kara-Est, richest seaport of the Realm, most powerful of all the five Quincunx cities. And it was toward Kara-Est that the City now headed.

  On its last transit of Bilsinx, the Sky City had dropped a deadly rain of stones on the ground city's defenders, as bird riders wheeled down unleashing a steel-shod storm of arrows. An attack by the Highgrass Broad mercenaries had completed the defeat of Bilsinx, along with a commando attack on the Mayor's Palace by Sky Guardsmen under Rann's command. The city had fallen quickly under his brilliantly waged campaign and fighting prowess.

  And more important than the fighting, the prince's honeyed words had soothed the anxieties and resentments of the subject Bilsinxt. They had even sent a body of their light cavalry to fight Moriana's army beside the very bird riders and heavy dog-mounted lancers and bowmen who had stormed their city. His diplomatic ways had turned a defeated enemy into a wary ally.

  Now giant shapes grew in the large central plaza of Bilsinx like arcane fungi, turning into vast bloated sausages and rising upward toward the City silently floating overhead. Eagles harnessed to long, stout tethers guided the cargo balloons with a precision otherwise impossible. Time weighed heavily. Preparations for further battle occupied all of Rann's waking thoughts and even haunted his dreams.

  He nodded in silent pride. Below the elongated shapes swung gondolas fairly straining with their cargoes of arrows, foodstuffs and a hundred other necessities in preparation for the coming battle of Kara-Est. Alone of all the Quincunx cities, to say nothing of the cities of the Sundered Realm, Kara-Est had substantial defenses against attack from the air. As it was the greatest prize of the Quincunx, so it would be the dearest won.

  Everything proceeded well ahead of schedule. He had been inspecting warehouses of goods assembled since the occupation began, among them bundles of rare and expensive herbs sent over the Thails from Thailot, westernmost Quincunx city. Rann smiled wickedly as he thought of the aromatic bundles. Perhaps the smug engineers gazing through the complex ring sights of the rooftop-mounted ballistae of Kara-Est would have a few surprises as they strove to bring down their swift-winging Sky City foe. And the men of the seaport's aerial defense force, riding in light platforms beneath the living gasbags called ludintip - Rann had plans for them as well.

  A high wash of shirred white clouds drifted between the City and the sun. Rann's sensitive nose sensed the promise of rain sometime that afternoon. He must expedite the loading. The Sky City eagles hated to fly in the rain, and it was injurious to their health to do so. The specially bred, intelligent birds were mighty engines of destruction, but they had definite vulnerabilities. For the birds' lungs, strained from hard flying, to breathe in cold damp air could lay them low as readily as iron darts from Estil catapults.

  Rann needed his eagles if the assault of Kara-Est were to succeed. And he would have them.

  'Maguerr,' he barked, not bothering to look back at the weedy journeyman mage who trotted at his heels. He scarce could stand to look at Maguerr, with his lank hair that seemed stranger to comb and soap alike, his inadequate beard, his beaklike nose with nostrils that seemed to exert an unbreakable fascination for his fingertips, his watery eyes and spiderleg fingers and pimples without number. But the boy was a genius in that special branch of magic that enabled the Sky City's forces to communicate verbally over great distances, and hence, indispensable. There were times when he annoyed Rann so much that the prince began to itch uncontrollably with the need to tie the horrid youth to some handy fixture and flay the skin from his wretched and unsightly face. Yet because of Maguerr's undeniable ability, and in a perverse way as partial penance for his own failure to make an end of Moriana and her clever groundling, Rann had attached the wizardling to himself as his personal amanuensis.

  Maguerr's slippers scuffled along the cobblestones. 'Yes, Your Highness,' he whined. A tic twitched beneath Rann's left eye.

  'Pick up your feet when you walk,' he rappe
d, 'and for Istu's sake try to learn not to talk through that damned proboscis of yours.'

  'Yes, milord.' Maguerr's tone was obsequious and unruffled by his master's brusqueness.

  Rann bit back a curse. He saw the slight head motions of the three escorts who walked before him. The prince seldom had need to raise his voice, yet here he was on the verge of screaming at his own secretary. Rann knew quite well that his Guards made sport of him, and he promised silently they would pay for it. At the same time, he toted up yet another debit owing to Maguerr, a debt he planned to collect with the most usurious interest once the mage was no longer necessary to his plans.

  It had been long since his taste for torture had been sated.

  'Take a memorandum,' Rann said. 'To Her Excellency Gomi Ashentani, Governor of Bilsinx by grace of Synalon i Etuul, Mistress of the Clouds, First among the Skyborn, of the Dark Ones Most Favored, and all the other usual honorifics.' He chopped the air with one hand.

  Behind him Maguerr murmured to himself, impressing the words on his spongelike mind. Among his other unbearable attributes was numbered an eidetic memory. Rann gritted his teeth and continued.

  'Milady Governor: You are hereby instructed to dispatch the ground forces left at your disposal, holding back a suitable reserve, to Kara-Est by no later than nightfall -'

  Although Bilsinx was not just a conquered city but a thoroughly subjugated one, the hands of Rann's three Guards rested on sword pommels, and their eyes were never still. Bowstring-taut alertness was the rule of the Sky Guard elite, and even though they expected no trouble they scanned the street and storefronts with eagle-sharp eyes. They made no idle chatter; Rann would not permit it. They allowed themselves a measure of relief that the prince, impatient with crowds clogging the main thoroughfares, had chosen this side-street where no assassin could sidle to dagger range of Rann in the anonymity of a mob.

  But they allowed themselves no laxity.