Istu Awakened

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  A barbed spear struck a humped rock in Fost's path. Erimenes howled incoherently as a hammerblow landed on Fost's left shoulder.

  The man bent and spun with the force of the blow. Instinct made him draw steel as he turned, and the training he'd bought from renegade fighting masters in High Medurim made him turn the draw into a savage backhanded cut at the black shape looming on the fringes of his vision. A black-clawed hand released its grip on a mace to make a frantic, futile effort to stuff back in the greasy, green ropes of guts spilling from the lizard man's opened stomach. The intestines tangled the Hisser's feet as it fell.

  Fost kept spinning until he faced the way he had before the attack. He lit out running after Moriana. With his left arm numbed by the slung stone, he was at a worse disadvantage than usual against the inhuman reflexes of the Vridzish.

  'Stand and fight!' Erimenes yelled at him.

  'You're crazy,' he howled back. 'That's what you always say!'

  'No, you idiot! They're almost on top of you!'

  Fost flung himself to one side without even looking. A vicious spear thrust missed him by scant inches. He tumbled onto his rump among the jagged rocks. A screaming Hisser lunged at him. He brought up both feet and kicked the creature in the belly. It fell away. He scrambled to his feet, hacked as he rose. The blade bit flesh. He didn't wait to see where. He just ran.

  Perhaps the furor of the eruption was subsiding or perhaps it was his imagination that he heard the lizard men on his heels hissing triumph and baying like a pack of hunting hounds closing for the kill. There was no doubting they were almost on him. Over a long run his superior endurance would have told, but in this short, desperate sprint over jagged ground they were fleeter than he.

  Fost dashed up a long slope of relatively smooth lava and found himself flying across a crack that yawned abruptly under his feet. On the far side of the crevice, he turned and lashed with his sword taking a Hisser in the torso as it leaped after him. The lizard man fell back into the six-foot gap.

  The crack ran up and down the slope as far as he could see in both directions. It was a natural place to make his stand.

  'Run!' he shouted at Moriana as he set his feet and took his sword in both hands to prepare for battle.

  Moriana's voice rang in his brain: No! Don't be a fool. You haven't a chance!

  He took this mental communication as an indication that Ziore still relayed their messages.

  'It's the only chance,' he shouted, not sure how to form the thoughts for Ziore to translate. He immediately regretted even opening his mouth. His throat was raw from breathing dust. 'You're the one who matters. Now run.' He saw Moriana start to protest. He shouted her down. 'Do you think I like being a hero?'

  He had no chance then to see if she obeyed. A second Zr'gsz scrambled up the lava ramp and launched itself at him, only to meet the same fate as its comrade. The tall, feathered helmet of the officer appeared, bobbing purposefully toward Fost.

  Movement made him glance upslope. A stream of thin, fast moving lava slopped over a lip of rock and splashed down onto a ledge a hundred yards above. Fost swallowed, though it felt as if a metallic rasp worked on his throat.

  The lava rushed straight for him.

  'Moriana, don't go! Save me from this lunkhead's folly!' For the first time in Fost's recollection, Erimenes pleaded to be taken from a promising fight. He obviously didn't like the notion of spending the rest of eternity entombed in a lava flow. The courier had little time to savor the spirit's abject fear because the big, dark-scaled officer was closing fast.

  Had he been smart, the Vridzish would have waited for his men to come up and had them finish Fost with darts and slung stones. But either he lusted for personal revenge or was simply headstrong. He gripped his mace in both hands and swung at Fost.

  Fost knew how fortunate he was that the officer had immediately attacked, but his heart dropped just the same. He recalled his last duel with a mace-wielding Vridzish noble.

  Even the mace's long haft had a hard time reaching across the crack. Fost avoided the first swing simply by leaning back. He couldn't retreat from the brink, however, without allowing the lizard man to jump across. With the Vridzish's advantage in reach, Fost doubted his own ability to win should the lizard man succeed in crossing the gap.

  The Zr'gsz swung again, leaning dangerously far out. Fost staggered as the volcanic glass head of the mace brushed across his belly. He cut recklessly at the Vridzish. The lizard man jerked away. The rest of the patrol had come up to join their leader. Only a half dozen could stand with the officer on the narrow lava ramp. The others milled behind, one of the javelin men hopping impatiently from foot to foot hoping for a clear cast.

  Savagely, man and Zr'gsz duelled over the abyss. Fost held out longer than he thought possible and even managed to chop a feather from his opponent's green metal helmet. But the lizard man was quicker and stronger and could commit himself further due to taloned feet gripping the rock. They traded blows, wood cracking on steel with impacts that jarred Fost's arm. Then the inevitable happened. Fost extended his blade too far; the Vridzish swung with awful force and knocked the broadsword to the side, almost tearing it from Fost's grip.

  Time flowed like the molten rock as the heavy mace swung back at Fost's unprotected body. He didn't have time to even duck. He took a breath and braced himself for the impact, the stabbing of shattered ribs through lungs and heart, oblivion.

  A lava tide washed over the officer and swept him and his death-giving mace away like a twig in a mill race. Fost heard awful croaking cries as the molten stone engulfed the other Vridzish. He stumbled back, tears welling in his eyes from the awful heat.

  He saw Moriana rise from the shelter of a boulder. She smiled.

  'Did you bring down the lava?' he asked.

  'No. The mountain did that.' The smile widened. 'But I diverted it where I wanted it to go.'

  She took his hand and led him off across the badlands. The lava river gurgled at their backs.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Morning found the volcano quiet, at least in comparison to the prior day's cacophony. But its tip still smoked like a North Keep forge. The greasy smoke trailed off toward Lake Lolu in the north, but it was unadorned black smoke without lightning or glowing clouds or hurtling bombs. A constant peevish grumbling rolled from the depths of the mountain, as if it suffered indigestion. Erimenes, who claimed knowledge of volcanoes, said that the rumblings would subside over the next few days until the mountain lay quiet again. Unless, of course, it decided to once again erupt. Neither Fost nor Moriana found the tidings particularly cheering.

  They had reconnoitered cautiously, Moriana alert with her bow, Fost ready to snatch out his sword at the first hint of danger. As expected, Erimenes derided him for not going forth with naked blade in hand like a proper hero. Fost decided it would be unheroic for a rock to turn under his foot and cause him to fall on his sword, as was likely to happen in such treacherous landscape.

  They had worked their way well south of the smouldering mountain, both in the hopes that any fresh lava flows wouldn't extend so far and to come on the Watchers' village from above rather than from below. Otherwise, they'd have had to pass near the ledge where the Ullapag had kept watch over the skystone mines and the steaming fumarole into which Felarod had cast the Heart of the People. Moriana had a total horror of the place. Since yesterday they had exchanged snippets of their respective stories when they stopped to rest or eat, and Fost had learned enough of what had happened at that spot to understand why Moriana dreaded it so.

  The sun had barely struggled above the humped flows to the east when they came upon the first new stream of lava. They guessed it to be the one which had swallowed the Hissers the day before. The surface had already hardened into a crust that showed rusty black in places through its coating over the ubiquitous gray ash. It looked solid enough.

  Fost and Moriana exchanged looks, then Fost said, 'There's only one way to make sure it's really hard enough to support
us.' He took a deep breath, then boldly stepped out, only to find the thin crust cracking beneath him at the same instant the stench of burning leather rose. He jackrabbited back to solid ground, scalding his feet thoroughly in the process.

  'Look at him dance. Have you ever seen such a fine tarantella, even in the courts of High Medurim?' Erimenes howled in laughter which infuriated Fost even more.

  'Fost,' said Moriana over the genie's ridicule, 'we must get across. The Zr'gsz will be after us. And I ... I am uneasy in this place.'

  He agreed with her. He sat beside the solidified but still hot river of rock and thought. Eventually, he hit on the plan of lashing bits of loose lava to their feet and walking across using them as insulation.

  'Yes,' she cried, 'it'll work. It has to! If the pieces of lava we use are wide enough, it will be like snowshoeing. The larger the stone, the better our weight will be distributed.'

  'And we won't break the crust,' Fost finished. 'Do you think the insulation from the rock will be enough?'

  'Certainly,' said Erimenes in his best professorial tones. 'The thermal gradient in such a portion of the stone will be sufficient to prevent a repetition of your hotfoot.' The genie began snickering again.

  With her archer's skills, Moriana deftly wove strong cord from the tough bunchgrass that grew among the dogthorn bushes. Then the two tied the chunks to their boots using projections to anchor the cords so they wouldn't come in contact with the hot crust more than necessary. Before they set off, Moriana insisted that each cut two stout staves of ofilos wood to use for balance. Reluctantly, Fost agreed. They spent an hour hunting for relatively straight limbs. Fost's allergy to the ofilos caused his hands to break out in a rash but this discomfort was offset by his enhanced ability to balance. With the ofilos poles to prop him, he made it to the other side with a minimum of flailing, cursing and heartstopping attempts to go facefirst onto the hot stone crust.

  In less than an hour they came to another flow, the one into which their raft had dived. Fost was amazed at the distance between the two flows. Either they had diverged considerably in their course down the mountainside or the fleeing pair had made record time crossing the saw-toothed terrain.

  'The same trick should work,' stated Fost, gently prodding the tip of his ofilos pole into the semi-solid rock beneath the hardened surface. He pulled out the shaft when it began smoking. He beat out a tiny blaze, then began tying new lava rock to his boots.

  Halfway across, the lashings on Fost's right foot burned through. He stood with one leg upraised like a nesting stork. His mind raced, trying to decide what to do next. Fate decided the issue for him. The other set of cords burned through, leaving him stranded twenty yards from cool, safe gound.

  'Fost!' yelled Moriana. She had safely reached the far side of the frozen stream.

  'Dark Ones take Fost,' shrieked Erimenes. 'Save me! I'll be marooned in this rock for all eternity. And gods, it is hot!'

  'Of course it's hot,' cried Fost. 'It's molten stone. I thought you knew all about vulcanism.'

  'Don't drop my jug,' pleaded the genie. 'I don't want to roast for a thousand years!'

  The crust began bending inward beneath Fost's feet despite the weight-distributing lava rock. In seconds he would be ankle deep in the fiery river, in minutes only his charred skeleton would remain. He forced himself not to panic. That meant instant death.

  'Moriana!' he shouted. 'Use some magic to get me out of here!'

  'I can't, Fost. I ... I'm too drained.' Even as she spoke, she worked at weaving new cords. Fost watched uncertainly. He didn't think much of tying new lashings to his chunks of rock; the balancing act that would require seemed beyond his ability. He settled by perceptible degrees into the lava. He could only trust her.

  Instead of bringing the new cords out to him, though, she sat down and tied them to her own feet, reinforcing the charred lashings that had already carried her across the flow. Then she trudged out to him.

  'Climb on,' she ordered, bending down and bracing herself on the balancing poles. 'You're joking.'

  'No, she's not,' screeched Erimenes. 'Believe her. Fost, damn you, do as she says! Don't let us die out here!'

  'Hurry, Fost,' said Moriana. 'For once, Erimenes is right. Unless you like it out here, climb on!'

  Despite the dryness of his throat, Fost swallowed. Casting aside his own poles, he gingerly climbed onto the woman's back. She sank alarmingly beneath him, then rose again, seeming to support his weight with ease. Though her own stone shoes made deep impressions in the elastic crust, they didn't break through. After a few heartpounding minutes, they gained solid ground.

  'She's quite a woman,' Erimenes said now in a natural tone.

  Fost agreed.

  Crows crossed the disk of the setting sun, black cruciform motes on an angry eye, an eye whose upper lid was a layer of dark, heavy cloud and whose lower was the tortured lunar landscape of the lava drifts south of Omizantrim. A bloodshot, angry eye.

  Had Fost believed in portents he would have been catatonic with fright.

  It had been a night and a day since the hazardous landing on the slopes of the exploding mountain. After Moriana's sorcery had changed the course of the lava stream to kill the Zr'gsz patrol, they had headed south away from the erupting cone and had laid up for the night in a wild land of knife-edged ridges and razor-cut draws. Their only company was the mournful howling of the hot wind down the slope of Omizantrim and the stunted vegetation that somehow thrived. The gnarled ofilos possessed a beauty of sorts. Early summer was their blooming season and the trees exploded with yellow-rimmed fragrant white blossoms that defied the gray dust all around. Such delicate beauty against the backdrop of stark desolation reaffirmed their faith in life itself.

  After running, Fost decided it was time to be more aggressive. They had picked up spoor from the reptilian Hissers all day and had avoided it. Now he crawled on belly over what felt like broken glass, but the discomfort proved worthwhile. Fifty feet away he spied a Zr'gsz sentry. He waited, watched. The lizard man's partner approached and the two exchanged words, then resumed walking their posts.

  Fost cursed the ofilos and its beguiling blossoms. He was violently allergic to the frail five-petalled flowers. His nose streamed the way Omizantrim had leaked lava the day before; his eyes watered and his nose felt as if it had been broken again. Worst of all, he didn't

  know how long he could contain the sneeze caused by the pollen. If a sneeze escaped . . .

  'It is only a histamine reaction,' came Erimenes's soft explanation. 'The body attempts to reject the formation of. . .'

  Fost stiffened. Why in the name of hell had he brought Erimenes along with him on this furtive mission? The same spirit who, when Sky City troops pursued Fost, had repeatedly called out to attract their attention to Fost's hiding spot and provoke a rousing fight?

  'Ust,' he moaned. He stifled a powerful sneeze and felt the pressure almost explode his eardrums.

  'Bless you,' Erimenes said softly. 'And you need have no fear that I'll betray you, friend Fost.' The shade was bottled up in his jar, but Fost felt the weary, wounded head-shake. 'To think you put so little trust in me.'

  He huddled, trying to make himself appear part of a dogthorn bush. Its two-inch spikes stung like fire ants as they pierced his flesh. The only consolation for the man was in the bush's cycle; it didn't bloom until fall.

  Cautiously, he raised his head. The Vridzish sentries went on down the arroyo and disappeared around the southwest corner of a compound wall. He cursed to himself. The wall was impressive, built to more than man-height with blocks of dressed lava looted from demolished buildings and topped with dried branches of dogthorn in much the same way a rich man of High Medurim might top his wall with broken glass. But there was a difference. The wealthy Medurimite did it to keep out intruders; this barrier kept the occupants inside. As Fost spied, he came to the conclusion this was the prison for the Watchers.

  Moriana had been astonished and horrified to see what had sprun
g up on the former site of the Watchers' village. What had cut deepest of all was the realization that in spite of her orders that the captives be well treated, her erstwhile allies had enslaved the Watchers the instant she left. The Zr'gsz must have worked dozens to death to build this compound so quickly.

  The discovery had almost thrown her into another spell of depression. Ziore had said or done something to pull her out of it. Fost didn't know what since their communication hadn't been oral. Even lying on his belly being perforated by thorns, he felt jealousy at the intimacy Moriana and Ziore shared, an intimacy no amount of love would ever make it possible for him to share.

  The guards came around again and this time Fost successfully timed their patrol, counting monotonous seconds with a childhood chant: one fat courtesan . . . two fat courtesans . . . three fat courtesans . . .

  When he reached three hundred and four the pair passed by his hiding place again. Five minutes.

  He mentally directed the information at Erimenes and hoped the spirit passed it on. It had taken an hour's arguing, cajoling and threatening to get the two genies to form a communications link between Fost and Moriana. They weren't far apart - Moriana lay a hundred yards downslope hidden in a cave - but the mental noise from the captive Watchers inside the black thorn-topped wall made it impossible for Ziore to make out Fost's thoughts at that distance. Fost guessed that they passed most of the long, hot afternoon in psychic squabbling, which was fine with him. He couldn't hear it.

  Erimenes beamed Moriana's acknowledgement. The sun had sunk so that only a dazzling silver remained in view. As Fost watched, it sank beneath the skirts of Omizantrim.

  From the south came shouts and the tramp-tramp-tramp of trudging feet. Craning his neck and getting his left ear pierced by a thorn, Fost saw some of what was happening. A file of people, men, women and children, in drab clothing rendered drabber still by sun and dust and toil, dragged themselves up to the wooden gates of the compound. The Vridzish guards hurried them along with strokes of lizard hide whips and switches made from thornbush, chivvying them in wheezy pidgin manspeech. The lizard men were eager to get their captives penned up before the cool evening rendered them torpid. The Vridzish could function after dark, but their reflexes slowed.