'But why?' asked Ziore.
'The ways of gods are not the ways of men,' pontificated Erimenes. The spirit fell silent when Jirre scowled in his direction.
'We have grown apart from your world. Even brief visits to it are tiring for us. There is also the fact that we tried our might against the Demon of the Dark Ones before. We failed. And we were stronger then.' Jirre spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. 'There are other reasons, but those are the primary ones.'
'Well, we're grateful for the help you've given us this far,' said Fost, wondering at himself for speaking so familiarly to the Wise Ones. 'Lord Ust,' he said turning to a huge bear sitting a few feet away down the table, 'you especially have my thanks for aiding me.'
Ust frowned and rubbed his cheek with a claw.
'You've been a dutiful son,' he rumbled, 'though like all of them you think of me most often when in distress. But I cannot recall intervening on your behalf. You seem well enough equipped to sort out your own problems.'
'But,' Fost sputtered, confused, 'but that time the Ust-alayakits rescued me from Rann and his killers and spared my life because I called on you . . . and those other times when Jennas told me you had aided me. You didn't?' He felt hot tears of frustration stinging his eyes. He had come to have faith in Jennas and her forecasts. He felt cheated she'd failed him in this way.
'Jennas is my chosen,' the bear god said in his rolling bass. 'Her I do watch over, for she leads my people. But you - if someone's been helping you, it hasn't been me.' He scowled, his eyes turning red. 'An impostor, is it? Just let me find out who -'
'Ust, control yourself,' chided Jirre. 'Your muzzle is growing.'
'I won't sit next to a bear,' declared Majyra. 'They smell!'
Reddish hair retreated from the bear god's face, and his face and brow took on a more human appearance. But he huddled himself down and growled as if hating the shape change.
'Best I return you to your bodies,' said Jirre. 'I am truly sorry. Our hopes and best thoughts go with you, for what they're worth.'
Fost felt the chair dissolving under him. He stood rather than be dropped to the floor. Beside him were Moriana, Erimenes and Ziore. They bowed. There was nothing to say, although Fost's mind churned with unanswered questions. Jirre had dismissed them. When a goddess bids a mere mortal leave, it was best to depart.
As they walked back the way they had come along the auroral hall, the shifting hues of the walls faded from view and were replaced by swirling fog. Gradually the others drew ahead of Fost. Though he picked his own way through the foggy terrain as quickly as he could, they moved inexorably away, hardly seeming aware that they did so. Fost felt panic grip his throat when they vanished into the misty distance.
'Be calm,' a voice said beside him. 'I wanted a word with you in private.'
Fost turned and saw one of the Wise Ones. The goddess seemed tantalizingly familiar, yet he could place no name to her. She had remained silent in the hall while Jirre spoke.
As if reading his mind, she reached out and plucked a tiny rose from behind his ear, saying, 'Now do you know me, Fost? I am Perryn.' A dulcet laugh filled his ears, yet had a peculiarly flat quality to it. 'Perryn Prankster, some call me.'
The goddess of laughter and anarchy handed him the miniature rose.
'I will tell you something, my friend,' Perryn said, laughing at Fost's discomfort. 'It might be that the Wise Ones, aligned together, could defeat the Dark Ones and cast Istu back into spaces between the stars. It just might be,' he said, grinning savagely. 'And it might be that you should thank me for helping prevent it.'
'Thank you?' cried Fost. 'But you've thrown us to the Dark Ones, left us defenseless!'
'Not defenseless. Felarod defeated Istu before without our aid.'
'But the World Spirit. . .'
'Is a thing apart, closer to you than to us. It is not of Agift but rather of a more basic origin. In many ways, it and Istu are so similar.' She shook her head. 'Because you're ignorant in matters of the gods, I will state the obvious and not think less of you for it. We are us and you are you.'
Fost looked blank.
'Our interests are not yours,' said Perryn, eyes boring into Fost's gray ones. 'If we fight for your world and conquer it, it will be ours. No longer yours, except by our sufferance.'
'That is all . . . hard to accept.' Fost licked dry lips.
'It'd be harder for one raised a pious believer. We are good allies but poor masters.'
She clapped Fost on the shoulder and said, 'You'd best get along now. Remember not to count on assistance from us.' Perryn smiled wickedly, adding, 'Well, perhaps a little. I do like you, mortal. You're cute.' The goddess laughed and this time the waves of mirth smashed into Fost's brain like ocean waves against a beach. His head rang as he felt himself spinning away.
He cried out, 'Perryn! Who was it who helped me before, if not my patron Ust?'
Ghostly laughter brought Fost awake. He sat upright, drenched in cold sweat, his heart triphammering wildly in his breast. He took several deep draughts of the fish-smell laden air and calmed down.
'What a dream,' he said to himself, reaching up to brush away the perspiration on his forehead. A single tiny rose was clutched in his right hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
'Wasn't that the most lovely aurora last night?' chirped Zunhilix the chamberlain as he flitted about the apartment. 'I'm sure it was a most auspicious sign for your investiture.'
Fost and Moriana looked at each other.
'We didn't see it,' the princess said.
'Oh, but I'm sure you had better things to do than watch the sky, didn't you?' He tittered, hiding his petal-shaped mouth behind a delicate white hand.
Fost felt exasperation and a tightening of the muscles in his belly. It had been some time since he and Moriana had lain together, and the strain he experienced now was as much emotional as physical. But paramount in his mind was the question of what had happened the night before. Aurora? His eyes darted to where one of the servants made up his bed. Nothing but a withered stalk of the miniature rose remained on the bedside table. Yet he had clutched that delicate, living flower in his very own hand the night before. A sense of being little more than a leaf caught in a millrace seized him.
'Most certainly my companions had something better to do than watch the sky,' Erimenes piped up. 'But unfortunately, all they did was sleep. I'm beginning to despair of those two, chamberlain.'
As two plump stewards, painted even more gaudily than their master, laced Fost into a molded gilt breastplate, the courier rolled eyes up in his head in mock horror at the genie's words. It seemed nothing kept Erimenes's libido at bay.
'Now, Erimenes,' chided Ziore. 'I thought I kept you too busy to care what they did.' The nun's spirit produced a throaty and quite unvirginal chuckle.
'Of course you did, my love. I simply find myself grieving that our young mortal friends are so profligate of the little time they have in life as to waste the nocturnal hours on a pastime as unrewarding as sleep. They actually went to bed to sleep! Great Ultimate, what a waste! It is solely concern for their well-being that motivates my interest in this matter, nothing more.'
Ziore made a skeptical noise. She may have been besotted with the lecherous old ghost but she wasn't that besotted.
Ignoring this byplay, Zunhilix busied himself attending to Moriana's coiffure. It was her one concession to Medurimin mores. She would wear a sculpted breastplate and back, a kilt of gold-plated strips of hornbull leather and glittery gold greaves, just like Fost. Zunhilix had pleaded with her to wear one of the stunning selection of ceremonial women's ensembles he had at his disposal, from weblike concoctions of Golden Isle shimmereen that left breasts and pubes bare to a chaste, long-trained robe of green lacebird silk. Sternly she had shaken her head. She was not eager to be invested as a noble of the Empire, no more than Fost, but both had deemed it impolitic to refuse the great honor Teom had offered them. Not only did they need the help of the Empire in battling
the Fallen Ones and the lizard folk's Demon ally, the situation in city and Palace was such that they needed his goodwill to continue living. The mobs demanding Moriana's head grew increasingly bold. But if Moriana had to add some insignificant Imperial title to that which was her birthright as lawful heir to the Sky City's Beryl Throne, she was going to do it as a warrior, not as one of the simpering damsels of the north.
To mollify Zunhilix, who had fallen to weeping and tugging at his pointed beard on learning how adamant Moriana was, the princess had agreed to allow the chamberlain and his staff to do as they liked with her hair. The warrior's investiture garb included a helmet of dubious value in real battle due to its impractical design. To their mutual relief the helmets needed only to be carried beneath one arm during the ceremony. This gave Zunhilix free rein with her hair.
Eyeing her sidelong now as the stewards laced up her cuirass at the sides, Fost had to admit the chamberlain and his elfin crew had performed admirably. Moriana's hair had been washed in aromatic herbs, then brushed by giggling stewards until it shone like spun gold. Then it was swirled atop her head and held in place with golden pins, then hung about with fine gold chains bedecked with glittering emeralds that set off her seagreen eyes.
In her gleaming breastplate, with long, slim legs carelessly sprawled beside the stool on which she sat, her finely-coiffed head held high with great hoops of gold wire dangling from either ear, the princess made a fantastic spectacle, splendid and exotic and enticing. Fost felt himself hardening futilely against the steel cup of his codpiece. He squirmed on his own seat, eliciting further laughter from his own attendants who immediately noticed his predicament.
A cool breeze gusted through their suite, tinted with subtle fragrances of the Imperial garden and tainted with tar and rotting fish from the harbor. The Imperial Palace, unlike the Temple of All Gods, was no product of barbarians obsessed with mass and size. Justly famous Imperial architects at the height of their craft had wrought their superb best in the design. Everywhere were cool white marble and clean lines. And meticulous care had been paid to the circulation of air so that even the northern wing of the Palace where guests resided remained comfortable throughout the sultry summer days.
Fost rose and examined himself in a full-length mirror.
'Not bad,' he said, more to himself than to the others. He was a tall, powerfully built man, raven-haired, with startling pale gray eyes looking forth from a tanned and considerably battered face. The Medurimin ceremonial armor was silly, but the frivolity of the outfit somehow made the man within seem more rugged. Secretly, Fost was delighted. He had been uncomfortable being dressed by others. However, he had to concede that the half hour perched on the stool trying not to fidget or growl when a steward squeezed him under the pretext of sizing him had proven worthwhile.
'Magnificent,' applauded Erimenes. 'I have never before truly appreciated how well-matched a couple you are. Tall, lithe. Moriana as radiant as the sun, Fost dark and brooding. In that gear even your habitual expression of surliness is not unbecoming, friend Fost.'
Fost winced.
'Oh, Erimenes,' said Ziore. 'I think they both look marvelous.'
'Yes, yes.' Zunhilix bobbed his head, basking in the reflected glory of his creations.
Cradling his sharp chin in one palm, Erimenes studied first Fost and then Moriana, and nodded judiciously.
'The design of those kilts is quite propitious,' he said, 'in that merely by elevating a few of those strips fore and aft the two of you can easily clear for action. The good ship Fost can ram Moriana in the stern, or perhaps seat himself on a chair and ready his pike to accept boarders!' He smirked with delight at his own risque metaphors.
'Erimenes,' Fost said sharply. Moriana turned away, color burning high on her cheeks. Ziore reached with an insubstantial pink hand and tweaked one of the philosopher's ears.
'Ouch!' he exclaimed. 'How could you do that, woman?'
She leered.
'The same way I can do this,' she replied, and reached for the front of his loincloth.
'You don't have to go,' Moriana said quietly.
'Huh?' was Fost's confused reply. His mind churned, as he tried to figure out what she meant.
Her shoulders rose and fell in a sigh.
'You don't have to come with me. I'm the one who loosed the Fallen Ones on the world. I must deal with them or fail in the attempt. That's my destiny. This is no fight of yours.'
Fost turned a foreboding thunderhead of a look upon Zunhilix. A query died in the chamberlain's throat and he hurriedly gathered up the skirts of his robe and his covey and underlings and fled. When the doors had shut behind them, Fost turned to Moriana.
'It's my fight, too,' he said, low-voiced.
She shook her head, and her eyes were jewel-bright with unshed tears.
'I've lost too much already by letting those I care for follow me into peril.'
His heart thrummed like a bowstring, and though he knew he should not, he blurted, 'Is that why you've been so cold to me? Because you're afraid of drawing me into danger?'
She nodded and turned away.
'First I feared you would reject me because of my . . .my heritage. Then it came to me that I was a bane to all I've loved, or who have loved me. Darl died on my behalf, along with so many fine men and women. Brightlaugher the Nevrym boy, and poor old Sir Rinalvus, and before that Ayoka my faithful war bird, and Kralt'i and Catannia whom Rann tortured to death to torment me . . . and you, whom I loved most of all!'
'And me,' Fost said, nodding. 'Alone of all those, I died by your hand, and for my death alone you bear responsibility. And yet here I am.' He raised his brawny arms to shoulder height and made a deep, courtly bow. His eyes remained fixed on Moriana's slender frame. He saw a delicate shiver of dread pass through her and the silent word 'why?' form on her lips.
He straightened and laughed softly at his own tangled, often confused motives. A question Erimenes asked beside a campfire in the days before Chanobit and the treacherous battle there - a question he had since asked himself a hundred times in a hundred different ways with no better answer than the one he had given the sage.
'I could be romantic and say that I would rather die at your side than live without your love. And -' With a surprised twitch at the corner of his mouth, he finished, '- and that would be true, oddly enough.' He looked quickly away. Such words embarrassed him. 'But let's be practical. If you fail, neither I nor any other human of the Realm will long survive you, save for ones like Fairspeaker and others who play traitor for the Dark. And even they wouldn't last for long, not if they depended on the sufferance of the Dark Ones. Let me put it this way. I'd rather be with you than away from you, and I'd be in no more danger at your side than anywhere else.' He smiled, regaining some of his composure. 'And perhaps I can even be of service to you, milady.'
She stretched out a hand to him.
'Never call me that. To you I am Moriana - or, if you will, love.' She smiled through tears running down her cheeks and spoiling Zunhilix's carefully applied makeup. 'And you have done much to help me already.'
He went to her, mouth pressing to hers, tongue questing. He felt her cool fingers moving urgently against his thigh. He drew his face back from hers.
'Much as I hate to gratify Erimenes by following his advice . . .' Her mouth muffled his words.
With a brave shout and a clash of spears on bronze round shields, the Twenty-third Light Imperial Infantry marched in review past the wooden bleachers that had been erected in Piety Plaza. Squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun, Fost was able to conceal his reflexive grimace of distaste. They made a brave show with their brightly feathered round helms and their shield devices of a fist gripping a barbed spear, and their hobnailed boots rang in perfect unison on the broad blocks of blue-veined marble. But at the Battle of Black March they had bolted like frightened lizards, tails high and elbows pumping. They were typical Imperials: parade ground beauties.
The four-story structure vi
brated in sympathy to the measured tread of the regiment. Instinctively, Fost clutched at the bench beneath him.
'I hope this damn thing doesn't collapse,' he said sidelong to Moriana. She cocked a brow at him. 'It's happened before,' he said defensively.
She shrugged slightly and turned her attention back to the parade, but not before giving him a smile that caused a comfortable warmth to grow in his groin. When they had permitted Zunhilix and his attendants back into their apartments, the chamberlain's emaciated features had crawled with horror and his hands fluttered like agitated white birds when he saw the dishevelled condition his charges were in. He had only a half hour before the investiture ceremony to patch up the damage. Nonetheless, he had rapped out brisk orders to his underlings, and by the time the brightly-plumed officers of the Life Guards had arrived to escort them to the Plaza, they both looked as good as new. Zunhilix might have been effeminate and prone to twitter, Fost reflected, but he got things done. All things considered, he might do a better job commanding the Imperial armies than the officers now in charge.
Fost glanced to his left, where Teom and Temalla sat side by side, a particolored parasol shading the stinging sun from their pasty white skins. The Emperor and his sister-wife smiled and waved at the marching troops from the midst of a flock of courtiers and dignitaries, all as brightly hued as so many tropical birds, and chattering as loudly. Temalla noticed Fost and favored him with a lewd wink, at the same time dipping one pale shoulder slightly so that her milky gown exposed an ample, burgundy-tipped breast to his view. He swallowed and looked across the square, over the heads of the marching troops.
A detachment of the Watch tramped by beneath. These were special riot troops, as well-trained as the regulars and vastly more experienced, given the Medurimins' penchant for rioting. They sported burnished blue plate armor, short swords at their hips, small spiked target shields on left forearms and over each right shoulder lay a halberd with an eight-foot ironshod haft.
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