Istu Awakened

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  'It matters little,' he murmured. 'The Children have waited many centuries for this moment. After such patience, the Dark Ones will forgive them their impetuosity. It will not alter the outcome.' And so saying, Khirshagk, Instrumentality of the People, raised his black diamond that was the Heart of the People and resumed the chant to weaken the spells laid long ago by Felarod.

  'Come, lads, we've got them on the run!' cried a bearded North-lander, brandishing his broadsword so that the rings of his mailshirt tinkled musically. Up the narrow street a clot of low caste Zr'gsz in loincloths broke and fled under a vicious rain of arrows from Nevrym foresters and grounded bird riders. Knowing something of the Nevrymin and their attitudes toward the Hissers, Fost had been concerned over which side they'd take in this tight. However, the Vridzish had made savagely clear their intention of slaying everything human in the City. The foresters allied with the Sky Citizens by default. Their longbows did much to roll back the advantage of surprise gained by the Zr'gsz.

  Seeing Moriana's troops strike the attacking Hissers with spear, sword and a singing cloud of arrows, a group of defenders had veered down a sidestreet to meet a probe by the lizard men. Fost had gone along, and already felt useless. By his own estimation the very worst archer in the world, Fost wished to close and use his sword.

  He trotted up the street between the clanking mailed City States man and a rangy Nevrym forester with one eye. They passed the bodies of several of the Zr'gsz quilled like porcupines by the human archers. An obsidian-tipped spear lay by one's outflung talon.

  'Ha! What fuss to make over these decadent savages,' Erimenes said scornfully. 'If they craft weapons of stone they cannot be too formidable.'

  The one-eyed forester glanced at Fost. Having accompanied Moriana and Ziore in the assault on the City he was accustomed to disembodied voices emerging from satchels.

  'You'd soon learn better had you a body, old one,' he told the genie. 'The volcano glass of the Zr'gsz holds -'

  A small, light-skinned lizard man popped from the doorway of a shop a few steps ahead and brought his arm whipping forward. An obsidian axe whirled to embed itself with a crunch in the mailed chest of the bearded Northlander. The man coughed astonishment and blood. His legs gave way beneath him. The Nevrymin drew and loosed his arrow as the Hisser dodged back into the doorway.

  '- holds an edge far sharper than the finest steel,' he finished. He paused, only slowing the fluid rhythm of his run, and confirmed with a quick glance at the City Stater's unnatural posture and unwinking, glazed stare that he was beyond assistance. 'Course, obsidian'!! shatter against steel plate, or even good iron. But it can bust right on through mail.'

  Fost gulped. In his imagination, his own mail vest already rent by ill-use took on the consistency of wet paper. His grip tightened on his sword as he loped past the doorway from which the axe-wielding Hisser had emerged. The Nevrymin didn't spare a glance. The Vridzish lay huddled inside the pointed archway with his sharp chin slumped to the shaft of the arrow jutting from his sternum.

  Fost's peripheral vision noticed the timeworn frieze graven around the shop's arched door. The architecture and ornamental stonework of the City in the Sky had disturbed him before, though he'd never been able to understand the reason. Now he knew the cause of that uneasiness. The City had originally been constructed by the Zr'gsz. The many additions later wrought by humans had imitated the original style. Whiie these additions lacked the eldritch quality of the older structures, they still jarred the unaccustomed eye. But it was the ornamentation that bothered Fost the most. The figures in the bas relief were wrong in nameless ways, subtly distorted, yet apparently human. But they were not human; they were Zr'gsz or the products of Zr'gsz imagination.

  The City turned alien and cold around him.

  The two of them continued their curving course and spilled into an intersection. Fost yelped as a streak of yellow lightning crackled past his elbow and blasted the cornice of a building. Glowing gobs of stone spattered in ail directions, drawing sharp yips of pain when they struck flesh.

  'Fost!' cried Moriana. 'I'm sorry. 1 didn't know it was you.'

  'Think nothing of it,' he said sarcastically. Her deathbolt hadn't singed him, nor had the molten masonry hit him. But he now had a fused patch in the mail beneath his left arm to match the one a salamander had given him that morning. 'I didn't know you could do that.'

  She showed her teeth in a grin of wolfish satisfaction.

  'Neither did Synalon/ she said. 'I've learned a few things since we parted, my love.'

  A shout turned her attention back to the street, where more Zr'gsz had massed. Fost jumped to avoid the javelins and slung stones that glanced off the walls and clattered on the paving.

  Several of their followers died from the missiles. The rest dodged back into doorways or around corners to avoid fire. Moriana stood her ground. She held a Highgrass bow in her left hand, but made no effort to pull an arrow from the few remaining in the quiver slung across her back.

  She raised her right hand. A short arrow whirred by and dug a furrow in her cheek.

  'Damn you, treacherous serpents!' she screamed. 'Die for your faithlessness!'

  The hand came down. Blinding white exploded from her fingers.

  Fost saw bright orange and blue after-images dancing before his eyes, but from the corners he glimpsed Zr'gsz bodies fiung in all directions by the blast.

  'A most impressive display, Queen,' remarked Erimenes. 'However, I wonder if your prowess will suffice against the forces I perceive are about to be -'

  'Silence, rogue!' squalled Ziore from her jug. 'Moriana is the most powerful mage in all the world.'

  Weaving like a reed in a breeze from the energy spent on the deathbolt, Moriana turned a stunned look toward the leather bag carrying Ziore. Her expression showed she was unused to this facet of the genie's personality.

  Moriana staggered. Fost caught her arm and supported her. Her fingers gripped his forearm and squeezed down weakly.

  'You've grown more powerful,' he said, 'to be able to toss lightning around like that so soon after your duel with Synalon.'

  'I have.' She swept hair from her forehead with a quick thumb movement. 'And my anger gives a greater store of power than I'd have otherwise.'

  'You should rest and marshal your power.'

  'No! If I stop now I'll collapse.' She shook her head tiredly. 'Even without my magics, we're winning. The human warriors of my army and Synalon's are too many for them.'

  She gestured up the street. As far as a distant curve, it was strewn with arrow-skewered Zr'gsz corpses. Near at hand several Underground fighters fished a limp green-scaled body from the sunken stone pond of a aeroaquifer. The magic fountain continued to produce water and music alike from thin air. The calm beauty of the sound drove back the warlike clamor from the surrounding streets.

  'Now, where's that foul pact-breaking Khirshagk?' demanded Moriana. 'I'll scatter his ashes over the Keep of the Fallen, and the Heart of the People be damned!'

  The warriors raised a cheer. Fost started to ask what the Heart of the People was, but a giant hand slammed into his ribs and dumped him on his rump in the street. An instant later, a tidal wave of sound crashed into him and sent him sprawling.

  He rolled, recovered, found himself tangled with Moriana. A strange, dead silence descended. Moriana's lips moved but no sound emerged. Fost wondered what had happened to her voice.

  to the sounds of battle and the soothing song of the aeroaquifer. Then he saw a Sky Guardsman sitting a few yards away. A trickle of blood ran from one ear.

  Fost felt his own ears. His fingertips detected no wetness and a quick inspection of Moriana showed her ears weren't bleeding either. The concussion had deafened them but hadn't burst their eardrums.

  The Guardsman had gone as rigid as a marble statue. His arm was extended, pointing along the street they'd just cleared of the Hissers. Fost and Moriana exchanged looks and turned their heads that way.

  A rolling black cl
oud rose above the dizzying spires and rooftops of the Sky City, burning a hole in the sky as it climbed. Blackness shone from it like light from the sun. They had to look away, the bright afterimages dancing in their eyes.

  Moriana's cry pierced the armor of Fost's numbed ears. He looked back to see the great shape hovering just above the steep roof of the armory directly below the rapidly receding cloud. It was manlike in shape, though many times larger than the largest of men. And the horns that grew from either side of its blunt head were anything but manlike. It was the very image of the Vicar of Istu.

  No, you idiot, Erimenes's voice rang in his head. It's the original.

  The Demon of the Dark Ones shot upward and was gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The spells were sung, the aspects properly aligned.

  The mystical forces Felarod had forged to contain Istu had been hammered thin like gold beaten on an anvil. Yet still they held the ancient and mighty Demon caged in his stone prison. It would still take unearthly power to break the barrier.

  'And now that which we have awaited so long,' cried Khirshagk, 'shall come to passV For a long minute, he held the blackly blazing Heart high above his head. The others turned up their faces in rapture. His own twin hearts close to bursting, the Instrumentality brought his arm down and flung the diamond aganst Felarod's magic.

  The giant gem exploded. The ancient door was volatized by a ball of jet flame, as was the living stone for yards in all directions. Khirshagk and his twelve followers had only a split second to scream out their ecstasy before being engulfed and destroyed. Khirshagk and the others had known what fate awaited them and embraced death with the fanaticism of true martyrs. Not just their own lives but ten thousand years of their People's history had built toward this instant.

  Khirshagk fulfilled his role as Instrumentality. His hand released the Demon Istu and began the Second War of Powers.

  Free!

  The Demon's being crackled with unfamiliar energy. Its first reaction had been the reaction of its id: sheer terror. But its awesome mind awakened to the knowledge that centuries-old chains were no more.

  Free!

  With the fullness of that knowledge, awful and magnificent, Istu soared upward following the path the dark fireball had slashed through the foundation of the Sky City. Nothing dimmed his exaltation. Not even the sunlight, the contact with that hated aberration Light. He shouted defiance at the sun and soared upward to once again touch the Void, the disruption of order that was Dark.

  Free.'

  In a single beat of the massed hearts of the tiny paleskinned ones who infested the City of his children, Istu surged above the atmosphere, filling this being with the essence of the Void and Dark. The sun ball blazed at him, furious and impotent, and the stars looked down with malice. His laugh rang among them, echoing to eternity. In Dark and Void had the Universe begun, and to them it would return. Once again would the Dark Ones rule over placid oblivion, and their child and servant Istu would become One with them, One with Nothingness.

  Free.'

  Great joy surged at being liberated from the walls of stone and magic that had pinioned His mind and body for so long. Greater still would be the joy of revenge.

  Free!

  The Demon of the Dark Ones turned his attention downward.

  Stunned, Fost, Moriana and the rest scarcely had time to pick themselves up from the flagstones before Istu descended again like a flaming black meteor. With a strange, high keening the Demon flashed over their heads to touch down out of sight among the towers of the portside quarter of the Sky City.

  'Moriana?' asked Ziore from her jug. 'What happened? I feel the most peculiar presence . . .'

  'Don't!' screamed the woman. 'Keep your mind away from it. Don't try to read its thoughts or emotions. Don't even tryV

  'But. . .oh.' Ziore read the knowledge of what had just occurred from Moriana's mind. She knew better than to disregard such advice. If Moriana told her to keep her perceptions clear of the Demon, she must obey. The sorceress-queen had more intimate experience of Istu than did any living entity. Ziore read exactly how intimate that knowledge was and sent ripples of mental horror radiating outward.

  Fost wiped tears from his light-blinded eyes. First Moriana's fire-bolt, then the eruption from the center of the City and now the

  Demon's return had all etched their patterns on his retinas.

  'It's real, isn't it?' he asked, appalled at the power of the thing he'd witnessed. 'A demon. A real demon.'

  'The most powerful of all,' announced Erimenes, managing to sound melodramatic despite the enormity of the moment.

  Fost didn't feel his knees give way. He was simply standing one second and sitting the next.

  'Itsu. He's real.' He had seen the Demon manifest itself before, had seen the Vicar touched with unholy life, seen the hellglare of the Demon's soul burning yellow through the slits of the statue's eyes. But the Demon, the Demon, Istu, child and servant of the Lords of Infinite Night, had never been real to him. The Vicar had been evil and horrifying, but no more than a golem to be outsmarted with a simple cunning twist from an agile mind. Fost had defeated it and rescued Moriana. A mortal had vanquished an animated statue.

  But that force animating the Vicar had been the tiniest splinter of an immensely potent and incomprehensibly ancient mind. Before, Fost had faced only Istu's id, childlike and primal, a mass of drives and desires. He had witnessed awesome power - and this was only the smallest fraction of the true fore*3 of the Demon.

  And this!

  Above the highest spires of the portside district Istu reared up from the street, appearing to be a man-shaped hole cut into the overcast sky. His eyes blazed like windows to the surface of the sun. From them darted beams of impenetrable blackness. The tower of the Palace of Winds exploded. Moriana cried out as if her nerves were twined with the tower as it was dashed into a million fragments.

  Gazing numbly into the sky, Fost watched a block the size of a hornbull turn end over end and crash through the starboard wing of the Lyceum. Head-sized fragments rained into the intersection about them, knocking smaller chunks from the edifices. One boulderlike fragment struck the magic-powered aeroaquifer, forever stilling its voice and stemming its waters.

  The Demon laughed.

  His laugh pierced souls, rimed hopes and aspirations with quick-frost like that which Fost saw glazing the shards blasted from the Palace. Warriors whose bravery had gone without questioning a dozen times that day fell to their knees sobbing in dread.

  'He's real,' Fost repeated over and over to himself. No one else listened to his dazed litany. 'It's all real. Gods, Dark Ones, the War of Powers and all.'

  'Yes, you bemused jack-fool!' Erimenes snapped acerbically. 'Don't you understand? This day has truly seen the opening of a Second War of Powers!'

  Fost's response was to drop his face into his hands and moan. It did add up. One didn't need to be a bespectacled clerk in a Tolvirot counting house to arrive at the sum.

  He felt someone tugging at his shoulder. He shook his head with a peevish motion. All he wanted now was to crawl into his mother's lap - what did she look like? What was her name? - and cry himself to sleep. And maybe if he were very lucky, he'd awaken and find this all a nightmare sent by Majyra Dream Mistress to bedevil him.

  An openfisted blow slammed into the side of his head and sent him sprawling. Hispanic had been stripped from him like a wrapper, to uncover sudden fury.

  Moriana stood over him. Her expression was one of stark contempt. She thought him a cowardly groundling seeking the comfort of despair. He snarled and started up.

  When he gained his feet he saw the hauteur was gone from her face. Her eyes met his and he understood.

  'Let's go,' she said simply.

  They raced back toward the center of the City and the broad promenade of the Circle. The Sky Citizens who had not been there to acclaim the new monarch now gravitated there naturally after escaping the Hissers and their demon ally. Moriana rapp
ed orders, briskand businesslike in the face of calamity, marshalling her armed forces for resistance.

  A warning cry sounded. A platoon of Zr'gsz broke from a nearby avenue. An arrow storm cut them down. A triumphant shout rose from the crowd.

  'They don't know what they've got to contend with yet,' said Erimenes. 'But they will soon. All too soon,' muttered the spirit. Fost didn't bother listening. He stood frozen, his gaze riveted to the spectacle unfolding in the Sky City.

  Far down the avenue the Demon appeared, striding on two legs like a man. Edifices of grown or graven stone slumped into ruin as his swinging arms casually brushed them. The Vridzish were massed about him, insignificant insects beside the stories-tall entity.

  Arrows winnowed the ranks of the People. Dauntlessly, they came on, trotting to match the bandy-legged strut of Istu. Unbidden, the Sky Citizens rushed to the attack, black and purple-clad troopers and Underground fighters together, brandishing swords and spears.

  Istu stopped. The horned, misshapen head bent down to inspect these presumptuous pale worms. The burning eyes narrowed, reminding Fost of shutters closing on a magical vessel containing a fire elemental. But the glare of a salamander was mere heat and mindless malice. Istu's eyes burned without heat, but the hatred of old, soul-destroying evil that shone forth made Fost shrivel inside.

  Istu blew forth a black breath. The miasma billowed downward, impenetrably dark. Some of the advancing Sky Citizens quailed and fled. Others stood their ground. The same fate took all. Like a living fogbank, the black breath rolled over them. As it did, each of the soldiers exploded into a pink cloud of bodily fluids and shards of skin, leaving the skeletons to clatter hollowly to the street. The bones, still joined by sinew, gleamed pale and white.

  The black breath cloud enveloped all those who had been so bold as to rush upon the Demon of the Dark Ones. The noise of the explosions reminded Fost of unpierced fruit popping in the oven, a sharp sound with wet undertones. His stomach gave a queasy heave. Onward came the clouJ. The crowd realized it would soon overtake them. In terror some of them turned and flung themselves into the Skywell rather than have the Demon's breath on them.