Moriana took her place at the ship's rail by Fost's side, pressing her hip against his. He smiled lopsidedly. He didn't dare turn from the rail now, not without revealing the state of his scanty loincloth and displaying to the entire crew of the ship Endeavor the extent of his interest in the nearly naked woman. She sensed his discomfiture - or maybe read it from the surface of his mind. Since recovering Ziore's jug from the glacier-swallowed city of Athalau, Moriana's mental abilities had been increasing. She began to rub her hip slowly back and forth against his, teasing him until he felt as if he would explode.
'You shouldn't start something you don't mean to finish,' he said.
'Why not finish it? You seem to have a good start. A very good one, from what I can see from this angle.' She leaned forward and peered down meaningfully.
His mind tumbled and roiled like a storm-wracked ocean. For no reason, he remembered the conclusion of the final talk with Oracle. The others had gone ahead after offering their farewells. The projection of the 'man' had requested Fost to stay behind.
'Will you win?' Oracle had asked.
'I'd hoped you could tell me,' Fost answered.
'I have insufficient knowledge.'
'I don't know,' Fost said, sighing deeply. 'Moriana is as powerful a sorceress as lives, perhaps the strongest in centuries. But is she Felarod?'
'Even Felarod needed Athalau and the aid of the World Spirit.'
'Athalau lies buried in a living glacier, an intelligent being named Guardian. He - it - was created by the first War of Powers and is entrusted with . . . guarding Athalau from intruders.'
'Yet you penetrated it once before.'
Fost ran fingers through his hair.
'We've had this out, Moriana and I. I think she knows we'll have to return to Athalau to seek the means to overthrow Istu - if it can be done again. But now she's concerned mainly with getting to the City of Bankers with this draft Teom has given us so she can raise troops and supplies to try to check the Hissers in the Quincunx.' He shook his head. 'I have to admit the menace of Istu and the Dark Ones is great enough that it's easy to forget the purely physical peril the Fallen Ones pose. If their armies defeat us in battle, the relative strengths of the Powers is moot. But I think Moriana fears - or maybe resists - the idea of confronting the Powers with which Felarod trafficked so long ago.'
'But it must be done. I know enough to tell you that.'
They sat in silence for a time, flesh and blood man and a figment of an alien mentality.
'If you win,' Oracle finally said, 'will you come back here? You are my friend. And you look upon me as a friend rather than a challenging project in scientific sorcery or a surrogate offspring of a man who fears both he and his era will be without issue.'
'I'm touched,' Fost said truthfully. 'I'll come back.' He mentally added, If I can, if I live, if there's anything to come back to.
'I can tell you one thing, friend Fost,' Oracle said diffidently. 'Though I don't know if I should.'
'Go ahead.'
'You have been troubled by the profound question of why you continue with the mad adventure. At first you thought it was because you were in love. Erimenes claimed you continued because you feared being alone. Now you have the added motive of wishing to do all possible to preserve humanity and throw back the ultimate orderliness offered by the Dark. There's truth in all these, I think. But I perceive a further, even more fundamental truth.'
'What's that?' He tapped fingers tensely on one thigh.
'Why,' said Oracle, a broad grin splitting his moon face, 'you go along because you want to see what happens next. You have a great curiosity.' The grin widened even more. 'And that's as good a motive as any.'
A seabird's cry passed Fost on its way downwind, breaking his reverie. He let his fingers trail down Moriana's back until he found the wet, warm curve of her rump. She jumped when he pinched her and jammed an elbow into his ribs. Laughing, they came into one another's arms for a long kiss. Breaking apart, they headed below to the portside cabin they shared. Though most of his thoughts were for happy lechery and enjoying Erimenes's pitiful, futile pleas to be brought along to watch, he still had time to tell himself Oracle was right.
His curiosity about what would happen next drove him onward.
Considering the difficulties they'd encountered on their way to North Keep, the twice-longer journey around the northeast shoulder of the Realm passed with almost ridiculous ease. A huge Imperial Navy ship had escorted them to the delta of the River Lo marking the easternmost extent of the Imperial dominion. Teom's parting gestures to them were of a truly Imperial magnitude, as well they should be. Not only did he owe his continued life and throne to them, specifically to Moriana, the king actually felt a certain kinship with her and her companions. Alone of all those surrounding him, these stalwarts were objects of Teom's real affection. Getting them out of the Empire safely was the most gracious thing he could do. Two serious attempts to overthrow him in a matter of weeks, interspersed with a desperate battle with the reptilian invaders, constituted an ominous record even by High Medurim standards. The intervention of mercenary Captain Mayft and her heavy dog riders on the day of the investiture had broken up the mob and foiled the plot hatched by the commanders of several Imperial Army regiments in concert with the mad Sir Tharvus to overthrow Teom and Temalla and murder Fost and Moriana. It had also caused such a violent reaction on the part of the populace that the mercenaries had to be released from their contract and sent trotting home with a huge bonus. Tharvus was still on the loose crying for Teom's downfall and Moriana's death, and it seemed that more Medurimin citizens heeded his call each day. So Teom was only too glad to see the last of his controversial guests and did all in his power to speed them on their way.
One last bit of ill-tidings had arrived before they could quit the Imperial city, however. The day before the Endeavor was to sail there was a great commotion at the gates of the Palace ground. After hurried consultation with Teom's surviving advisors, the gates were opened to admit a ragged, desperate, footsore band of refugees.
Grimpeace, King in Nevrym, and a scarred and battered retinue sought asylum.
'That damned Fairspeaker came back,' Grimpeace told Fost as they had gripped forearms in greeting. 'With fifty skyrafts laden with Hissers. They dropped down on Paramount just as dawn turned its upper branches gold. They drove us - drove me - out of the Palace like ferrets starting rabbits from their hole.'
Fost and Moriana had nodded with grim understanding. Someone, Fairspeaker or the canny Zak'zar of the People, had a shrewd grasp of tactics. Had they attacked the Lord of Trees from the base, as many others had tried and failed at, they would have found themselves battling upward level by level against a foe who couldn't run but must fight and sell themselves as dearly as possible. Attempts had been made to force Paramount before; none had succeeded.
But with skyrafts dropping in from above, the startled defenders would be driven downward, level by level along a path to safety their foes had thoughtfully left open. A quick strike by the Hissers and their turncoat allies and the defenders found themselves in the foyer of their own keep, with the enemy holding the rest against them. A simple plan, and a deadly one.
Moreover, an assault borne on skyrafts avoided the problems of passage among the eldritch trees of Nevrym. Fairspeaker and his ilk were foresters and could never be seduced from the trail by the sleights of the trees. But as intruders had often found in the past, those who walked the ways of Nevrym unbidden met with a multitude of fates, none pleasant. The Hissers had flown above; the trees were impotent to stop them.
'What are you doing here?' Fost asked his friend in puzzlement. Nevrym had seceded from the Empire during the Barbarian Interregnum and had kept its king and sovereignty when the rightful native dynasty was restored. There was little love between High Medurim and the Tree. Lifestyles and modes of government were too different.
Grimpeace's brown eyes had slipped from Fost's, and the courier knew the answer bef
ore the man spoke it.
'I've come to make submission to the Emperor and beg his help,' the exile said softly.
Fost's first impulse was to shout, 'You can't!' but he schooled himself against it. Grimpeace bore a heavy burden of responsibility, weightier than Fost could readily imagine. Also, Fost himself had bent his knee to Teom just a few days past with no good result. He pointed that out to Grimpeace.
'Teom can barely cling to the Sapphire Throne with both hands and all his toes,' he said. 'If you must sell the free birthright of the forest, can't you at least get a better deal?'
Grimpeace shook his great head, bone-weary and bitter at all that had happened.
'Where else can I go?'
'Back to the forest. Fight a guerrilla war against the intruders. Make a treaty with the trees and unicorns. They can't desire Hisser masters.'
Still the king shook his head.
'Too many of my people chose to go in with Fairspeaker. The Hissers control too much.'
'They can't be everywhere,' pointed out Moriana.
'No, Princess, not everywhere. Not yet. You have stymied them at the Marchant - for now. And the Watchers of Omizantrim have all but closed the skystone mines.'
'See!' cried Fost, eagerness seizing him. 'It can be done. You can do it, too! Go back and fight them on your own ground, where all the advantages are yours.'
'The advantages are those of Fairspeaker and the other traitors,' Grimpeace said bitterly. He sat heavily in a creaking chair. 'Besides, the heart's not in me for such a war. I must face reality. Mayhap all I'll find here is my own death fighting to defend these stinking crowded streets from the Fallen Ones. But better that than to skulk like a thief through Nevrym-wood, my wood, while the monsters at Thendrun sit like kings within the Tree.'
There'd been little more to say. Grimpeace parted from Fost with a few uncomfortable words, bowed courteously to Moriana, and was gone. The encounter had left Fost deep in black depression. It wasn't just the misfortune of his friend that possessed him or the triumph of the evil Fairspeaker. The tradition of almost fifty centuries, the tradition of Nevrymin freedom, lay in ruins at the clawed feet of the Vridzish. Kara-Est was a raw wound in the soil at the head of the Gulf of Veluz; Wirix had not been heard from, even via magical means, for weeks. The Empire was tearing itself apart from within, while the Hissers squatted in their fortifications across the Marchant and watched with chalcedony eyes, waiting until the stone thunder-head of the Sky City darkened the sky above the homeland of their enemies.
He had the awful sense that the People were victorious everywhere, that such pinpricks as the defeat in the Black March and the interruption of the Omizantrim mining operations were sad, silly, futile against the might and cleverness of the lizard folk and their patrons. Istu had scarcely shown his strength and yet the dominion of humanity fractured like rotten stone.
Fost was impotent with Moriana that night. Not even Erimenes found voice to complain. And Moriana hardly seemed to notice, her thoughts distant and her body tense. They clung to each other, unsleeping, unspeaking, needing the reassurance of closeness rather than the release of desire.
Oared galleys had warped Endeavor out of the harbor the next day, accompanied by her escort. No cheering crowds lined the waterfront to see them go. Teom's advisors had insisted on keeping the time and manner of the departure secret. Teom and Temalla took leave of them at the Palace with tears and presents and lingering kisses, but did not go with them to the dock. Only painted Zunhilix, his normal ebullience subdued, and a detachment of Guards had accompanied them to the docks.
They did not leave unnoticed, however. The tugs pulled Endeavor within a hundred yards of Onsulomulo's ship the Wyvern, already riding low in the scummy water with her hold swollen with the goods of refugee patricians. And there was Ortil Onsulomulo clad only in Jorean kilt and dawn light, golden on the rail of his vessel, dancing and playing a mournful hornpipe. He was a strange one, this half-breed, but he had in his way been a friend and they were sad to see the last of him. Somehow, though, Fost couldn't find it in him to worry about Onsulomulo. The half-breed claimed the gods and goddesses watched over him, and the evidence bore this out.
The wind came from the port quarter, fair for passage west to the turning of the land, fairer still for Tolviroth. They made good time to the place where the outflow of the Lo stained green seawater brown. Their escort made a slow turn, dipped flag in salute and began to pull back for High Medurim, a proud and lonely remnant of lost Imperial might and grandeur.
Despite Fost's apprehensions, there was not real trouble. A flotilla of galleys with drab sails set had come out of North Cape Harbor when the Endeavor passed in sight of the Northernmost Peak to try to claim this rich prize for the Dwarves' revolutionary government and its new allies, the Zr'gsz. Big as she was, Endeavor was a smart sailor with a good Tolvirot hull, and she put them easily in her frothy wake.
Down came the sails, out went the oars, and the Dwarven ships began a waterstrider crawl in pursuit. Endeavor's master, a native Tolvirot only a few years Fost's senior, medium built with the broad shoulders and dancing tread of a fencing master, casually ordered an onager unwrapped from its oiled cloth coverings. The Endeavor had been laid for deepwater and open sea storms. She was much more strongly built than any oared war craft, and could carry heavy engines, true shipkillers, whose workings would damage the lighter hull of a war ship. Captain Arindin stood with one hand in the voluminous pocket of the embroidered green coat he was never without, calmly munching a fruit held in the other, while his crew unshipped the onager and set it bucking, hurling great rocks against the pursuing galleys. The fourth shot sent a hundredweight stone smashing through the bottom of the leading vessel, breaking her back and foundering her in the rollers heaving in from the line of squalls hanging far to the north. Abruptly less avid for the chase, her companion ships crowded around to assist in rescue operations. One was so intent on breaking off the chase and aiding the damaged ship that the would-be rescuer rammed another just aft of the bow and holed her. The last sight the Endeavor had before twilight drew a dark curtain over the scene was a confusion of uncontrolled ships and angry heads bobbing in the swells.
'If the wind'd died we might have had hot work,' was Captain Arindin's only comment.
An eeriness, a foreboding, attended the rest of the voyage, or so it seemed to Fost. Dark clouds hung like a line of distant cliffs in an unbroken wall across the northern horizon, sometimes sending down dark mutterings of thunder, flaring by night with maroon lightnings like no other Fost had seen. Sometimes it seemed that huge shapes stalked among the clouds, and sometimes there were splashings and tumults in the sea, too far for Endeavor's lanterns to reach even with their cunning lenses of Tolvirot manufacture. The loudness became all the more unsettling for that. Alarum was cried shortly after midnight and Fost and Moriana came tumbling onto deck, she in a cloak, he naked except for his woebegotten mail vest. No attacker threatened.
A huge wheel of light, eight-spoked and hundreds of feet across, rose from the depths to make the surface bubble and glow a yellow-green a thousand yards ahead of the Endeavor. As the astonished passengers and crew watched, the monstrous colored wheel sank a score of feet, then, still clearly visible, moved toward them, spinning faster and faster as it came. It cleared the keel of Endeavor and passed beneath them without sound or heat, though the heavy ship rocked at its passage. It crawled along under the long wake of the ship and was soon gone from sight. Arindin ordered wine broken out and, fortified with drink, the vessel's folk went back to duty or bed.
Erimenes and Ziore chattered brightly about what the apparition might have been and where it might have come from. The Tolvirot mariners, hardheaded as they were, seemed disconcerted and exchanged muttered speculations of their own as they clambered into the rigging to dress the furled sails. Fost and Moriana said nothing about it between themselves. Privately Fost thought the wheel was a sign, a proof, that the reality he had grown up to accept was unravelin
g all around him.
The Powers intruded more and more into his daily life.
No further disturbance occurred until Endeavor rounded the coast, headed south for the Karhon Channel and Tolviroth. Fost was on deck drinking wine, enjoying the double moons, the stars, the velvet sky, the warm rich smells of the land breeze and the comfortable speculation as to what awaited him when he joined Moriana in their cabin in a few minutes. His reverie was broken by a footfall behind him. He turned to see Moriana, her face strained and pale. At first he thought the cunning light playing down on them from the twin moons caused the effect. Then he knew it was no illusion. Tears glowed brightly in the corners of her eyes.
'Come,' she said urgently, gripping his sleeve.
'What's wrong?'
'Come on!' she hissed at him. He went.
A lantern shed mellow light in their cozy cabin. Fost looked around, saw nothing unusual, said so.
'On the bed,' Moriana said tonelessly.
For the first time, he noticed the flower lying across the pillow they shared.
'A gift from the crew? Is that what's bothering you?' He laughed reassuringly and slipped his arm around her waist. 'It seems more thoughtful to me than anything else. Besides, I thought your emblem was a rose.'
'Look at the color.'
He frowned, took his arm away and went to the bed, bending down to more closely examine the flower.
'Don't touch it,' she said. He shrugged. To humor her, he didn't reach out for the flower.
He went cold all over. The flower was black. Not just the bloom itself, but the stem and long, long thorns, as well. He recoiled, fear clutching at his stomach.
'What . . .?'
'It means the Dark Ones wish us to know they've not forgotten us,' she said.
CHAPTER SIX
Wholly at ease and hoarding the sensation like a marooned man hoards crumbs of a rapidly dwindling food supply, Fost ate small, tart berries from an iced bowl and admired the scuff marks his boot heels made on the marble table in front of him. The bankers of Tolviroth Acerte had given the city its name. But the other residents of Tolviroth did not have to like the bankers, and his birthplace notwithstanding, Fost had come over the years to consider himself as much a Tolvirot as anything. So he ignored the scandalized looks from the reed-thin clerk behind the reception desk and propped his feet on the marble table while he relaxed in a soft chair and plied himself with iced fruit.
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