As always, Fost felt time pressing him onward. Yet now he had stayed with the People of Ust for a week. His hurts needed healing, but the luxury of relaxing among friends uncovered deeper wounds. Sometimes in the night he clung to Jennas and whimpered like a whipped puppy. She held him, comforted him, and thought no less of him. The Ust-alayakits did not believe in hiding their emotions. And any who could answer the Hell Call and return sane needed no further proof of strength and courage.
But the time had come for leaving. Tomorrow Fost would go north in pursuit of Moriana. Tonight he, Jennas, Vancha and Vancha's young consort Rinzi - and Erimenes - had gathered for a quiet celebration.
'Care well for my people when I am gone, Vancha,' said Jennas smiling. But her expression wasn't reflected in her eyes. Vancha laughed uproariously.
'I shall be a mother to them all,' she declared. 'But it hurts me to be left behind. Put Lurnum or Vixo in charge and let me accompany you. Little Sister is vexed at having missed the bloodletting at the caves of the Hurinzyn.' Little Sister lay on a pillow on the other side of Vancha's bulk from the slender Rinzi. Vancha patted her affectionately. Little Sister shifted, sending shafts of reflected firelight dancing from her blue steel blade.
The ax was of the same monumental proportions as its owner. A three-foot shaft of black hardwood from the Tanzul Forest, as rare as valuable silver on the treeless steppe, was affixed to a broad, spike-backed head weighing fully five pounds. The weapon filled Fost with awe. Despite the exploits of the brawny heroes of Medurimite romance, five pounds' total weight was usually the maximum. Vancha could wield Little Sister with one meaty hand while she held a beaten-brass buckler in the other.
He had always assumed the barbarians of the Southern Steppe chose their leaders by combat. Vancha was easily the strongest of all the several hundred Ust-alayakits. She outweighed Fost and Jennas combined and could break either like a reed in the wind. Yet Jennas seemed to feel no compunction about naming her subchief guardian of her daughter Duri and going off with Fost, leaving Vancha to rule in her absence.
'I fear your Little Sister will drink her fill all too soon,' said Jennas, staring moodily into the flames.
'What's that, girl?' Vancha demanded. 'Have you had a vision?' Jennas nodded. 'What are you talking about?' asked Erimenes. 'Is there a nice, bloody war in the offing? If so, I may stay here and let Fost wend his weary way north without me. I shouldn't like my jar to get cracked by some ignorant ruffian.'
'Ust should so favor me,' Fost said dourly.Jennas's glance was sharp. 'You, of all people, shouldn't use Ust's name so lightly.' Fost dropped his eyes from hers, feeling warmth touch his cheeks. The hetwoman gripped his arm in an iron band. 'I go north with you because you have done the Ust-alayakits greater service than we can ever hope to repay - and because I want to be with you, though your heart is with that northerner wench. But these things aren't enough to make me leave my people, even in Vancha's capable hands.'
Fost looked up at her, the question in his eyes. 'No,' she said with a bitter laugh. 'I'm no young girl to go mooning off after you like a pet goat. You're a man like no other I've known, Fost Longstrider, but not even you can take me from my people, not even if you gave me all your love and forswore this princess.' She shook her head. 'Not unless the welfare of my people lay in my going with you.'
Fost stared at her. Her proud, high-cheekboned face was set into grim lines. He looked at the others. Erimenes looked bored, Ranzi diffident. A hard glint showed in Vancha's eyes.
'What do you mean?' he asked. 'Danger is building in the world like a storm gathering thunder-heads,' Vancha said. 'Our hetwoman fares north to assess the danger. She fears the wind may soon blow foul for the People of Ust.'
'I don't know what you're talking about. There's peril, to be sure, but that Meson the path before me. It doesn't have anything to do with your folk.'
'But it does,' said Jennas. 'I feel it. Ust sends me dreams. There is a power - and malice - in the north. They grow. They shall soon break free, and their fury will not spare the people of the steppes.'
'Do you mean the Sky City? They plan for war, true enough. They might conquer the Quincunx Cities, but they can't harm you here. Their city won't leave its travel pattern, and the bird riders have too much trouble with the winged foxes in the Ramparts to carry on a campaign against you.'
'It's not their soldiers we fear,' Vancha said, 'but their sorcery.' A chill wind blew along Fost's spine. He recalled the ape-thing that had pursued him through the keep of Kest-i-Mond the mage. And unbidden came the memory of the yellow hellfire glowing in the Vicar of Istu's eyes as it lustfully raped Moriana.
'But they're hundreds of miles to the north. And Synalon can't come here to work her magic against you. She's tied to the City itself. She derives her power from it.. .'
'From the Child of the Dark Ones,' whispered jennas. 'From That Which Sleeps in the foundations of their accursed city. Whom Felarod bound in the War of Powers . . .'
'. .. for all time,' Fost finished. Vancha leaned forward. Joviality slipped from her as if it were a cowl. Her face glinted like brass in the flamelight.
'We live here beneath sky and wind, outlander. From them we've learned nothing lasts forever.'
'But Felarod had the aid of the Three and Twenty Wise Ones. The World-Spirit itself helped him bind Istu. That's a power not easily overcome.'
'Not easily,' Vancha agreed. 'But the Dark Ones have had ten millennia in which to work. In that time, a tiny rivulet can wear a deep cleft through the hardest stone. They are no tiny dribbling. Their evil is a rushing torrent.'
He looked from one to the other. He accepted the existence of beings beyond his plane of existence. Fireelementals, the occasional demon, even Erimenes, were more or less part of everyday existence. The gods, though, whether the Wise or the Dark, were distant beings aloof from the affairs of men. Fost didn't entirely believe in them for all that Jennas claimed he was a sending from Ust. And if they did exist, it seemed to him they ought to keep a decent distance from the mortal world. That they might again take more of a hand in earthly events.. .
'I think you go too far. You're talking about a Second War of Powers.' He shook himself as a wet dog sheds water. 'I am,' Jennas said flatly.
Uneasy quiet filled the tent. Fost gulped his amasinj, welcoming now the acrid taste. It distracted him from the foreboding that grew in his guts. A War of Powers! But that was ancient history so far in the past that it had slipped into legend. Something so distant, so immense could not belong to the present day. The cosmic disruption, the deadly struggle of powers that tipped the very world on its axis couldn't intrude on the life of Fost Longstrider. Could it?
Vancha sighed, belched, and drained her cup. 'Ahhh,' she said, smacking her lips in satisfaction. 'We're in deadly danger of becoming serious. Let us drink, my friends. Drink to Fost and Jennas and their epic journey to the wild and unknown lands of the North!' She caught up the amasinj pot from the brazier and filled their cups to the brim. A robust infusion of the beverage brought gaiety back. But it was strained, fragile, as if the revelers sensed an intruding monstrous presence lurking in the shadows of the tent.
When the evening was done, when the two moons had come down from heaven and Vancha had gone reeling off to her own tent with one arm wrapped around Rinzi, Fost and Jennas turned blindly to each other. They strove furiously, savagely, bodies guided by the dying light. When their passion and energy had been spent, they fell into a troubled sleep.
Fost would always try to convince himself that he did not dream that night. But in later days he often wondered if that were true.
Moriana scarcely believed her good fortune. The blizzard that had blown for two days out of the Thail Mountains to the northwest had left most of its snow on the prairies of the Quincunx, with only flurries and biting winds to lash at the steppe. She need fear no further snowbanks, but still she was almost out of her mind with worry thinking of what her sister planned - accomplished - while she plodded endlessl
y beneath the lifeless gray sky. Neither Ziore's soothing touch on her mind nor the nimble erotic tricks that left Moriana gasping with passion could ease the princess's fear.
But now chance gave her a gift so great she scarcely believed the testimony of her eyes.
She huddled in an arroyo beneath the husk of a ground-hugging bush, peering over the lip of the cut-bank. Not fifteen yards away sata man. He was small, and the tunic sleeve on the arm appearing from within the folds of his cloak was purple edged in black. Near him stood an eagle, almost twelve feet tall at the crest of his skull, wings spread over a tiny fire for warmth.
The bird was a lean, wide-winged scout and not a deep-chested warbird like Moriana's lost Ayoka. But it was a riding bird of the City. The storm winds from the north and west had brought snow, but they had brought this hapless bird and its rider, blowing them miles from Sky City-patrolled terrain.
The princess rolled her amulet between her fingers as she pondered. The many-faceted gem showed only a thin fingernail of black along one edge. Otherwise, it was as white as the snow left behind by the blizzard. Ziore had given her warning that they approached another human. Moriana had ducked into the gully until the spirit told her they were near the presence she sensed. By good fortune, the stranded bird rider had his back to the gully.
The eagle shook its wings and gave a racking cough. This wet, frigid weather didn't agree with him. The cold didn't agree with the bird rider either. His form trembled beneath his cloak. Now and then he shook his head, muttering curses to himself. The wind died to sporadic blustering. It wouldn't be long before he took to the sky again and began the long fl ight to the blessed warmth of barracks and aerie.
Moriana consulted with Ziore. She had no wish to kill this unfortunate soldier because of her need to remain anonymous. Synalon thought her dead, and she must remain that way until she confronted her sister.
Fortunately, she didn't have to kill him. She had only to walk up to the soldier and ask him for his mount. He would be only too happy to oblige, never caring that it would put him afoot in the middle of the Southern Steppe. Such was Ziore's power to mold emotions. Moriana would leave him enough of her Athalar rations to keep him alive for several weeks. He could walk out on his own, or maybe if - when, she amended mentally - she overcame Synalon and recovered the Beryl Throne she could send out search parties to bring him in.
She drew the edges of her capacious hood forward to hide her face and distinctive hair and boosted herself up over the bank.
The sighing wind covered the sounds of her approach until she was within a few feet of the bird rider. The eagle raised its head, saw her, and shrilled alarm. The man rose smoothly, sword poised before him. His jaw dropped at the sight of the tall, cowled figure who had stolen upon him out of nowhere.
'I require the use of your mount, my good man,' she said from the shadows of the cowl. 'I will leave you rations. You will come to no harm.'
The trooper opened his mouth to scorn this impertinent offer. 'Yes, my lady,' he said, confused that he mouthed those words. And yet. . . yet he couldn't refuse. He had been offered rations. It was a fair exchange. He was only too happy to oblige the wishes of this mysterious apparition with the glowing black-and-white pendant.
Or was it a black pendant? A gust of wind struck Moriana in the face. Before she could react, it peeled the hood from her head. Golden hair spilled forth.
'Princess!' the soldier cried, his eyes widening in recognition. 'But they said you were dead!'
Moriana cried in despair as her fingers found the hilt of her sword. Steel glinted dully in the leaden light. The eagle drummed its wings and screamed at the copper smell of blood.
Moriana's secret remained intact - at the cost of a human life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Prince Rann stood at the window watching the ground slowly slide by.
The Sky City was an immense stone raft two thousand feet long and eleven hundred at its broadest point. At the fore and aft ends of the great ellipse, stone piers jutted like the mandibles of some giant insect. Between these piers and the ground moved the hot-air balloons supplying the City with foodstuffs and other necessary supplies.
A broad avenue ran the length of the City from pier to pier. In the center of the City it was bisected by another artery running from port to starboard. At their juncture, the Circle of the Skywell ringed the great Well of Winds, through which malefactors were 'exiled' to the ground five thousand feet below. The avenue running to port from the Well had a peculiar, bumpy, off-white appearance due to the materials used in the paving stones: the skulls of past rulers of the City in the Sky. At the end of the Skullway rose the Palace of the Winds, sharply arched, fluted, attenuated, looming high above even the tall buildings.
The far side of the Palace lay flush with the guard wall ringing the City. Standing now at the narrow arch of a window partly opened to admit a chill blast of air, Rann had an incomparable view of the Sundered Realm.
At the moment, port meant northwest. Looking straight out from the City, Rann saw the Thail Mountains reaching their northernmost extent and dwindling into the high hills of Kubil and the Black March, duchies that gave nominal allegiance to the much-shrunken Empire of High Medurim. To the left, the Thails rose to become a wall blocking all sight of Thailot, westernmost of the Quincunx Cities. To the right, if Rann put his head out into the rush of the wind, he could see the sheen of Lake Wir glinting like a sheet of beaten silver in the early morning sun. Beyond that a pall of thick black smoke gripped the horizon like an iron band. Omizantrim breathed today.
Throat of the Dark Ones, the name meant in the harsh speech of the Fallen Ones who had built the City millennia before human feet trod the soil of the Realm. The alien, humanoid, reptilian folk had hewn the foundations of the City whole from the lava flows of the twenty-five-thousand-foot volcano. They had made smaller rafts from the skystone the Throat belched up from the bowels of the earth, but by what arts no man living could say. Rann doubted if even the degenerate remnants of the Fallen Ones still possessed the knowledge to fly the skyrafts. The City itself was the sole surviving artifact of that era.
He sighed and drew his head back inside. It was unhealthy to brood over the Fallen People. They'd been gone from the City for thousands of years, but still, deep down, every inhabitant of the floating citadel had the unvoiced conviction that some day they would attempt to reclaim their creation.
He looked down again. The land below teemed with movement. Minuscule toy wagons pulled by insects crept across the snowy plains. Around them milled ants, dark against the snow. They were really vast freight wagons drawn by dray dogs and hornbulls broken to harness dwarfed by distance. Northeast, in the path of the City, bloated gray finger-shapes lifted from the ground, the block-long balloons raised on air heated by captive salamanders. The wind brought h im the cries of bi rds and men as one of the gigantic sausages was steered to its mooring on the forward pier by harnessed eagles.
Day and night now the cargo balloons moved between City and earth. The enormous legless, sightless ruby spiders in the catacombs of the City were being forced to turn out ever more of the silk from which the skycraft were made. And still there were too few balloons. Even the mightiest could only hoist a few tons to the skydocks. The City armed for war. Its appetite had become voracious.
The prince shook his head. He was responsible for the success of that initial stroke in the coming war.
The Quincunx Cities had become nervous due to the City's recent feverish trade activity. It was widely known that rule in the City had changed hands. Expansion of the City's trade was given as a reason for the sudden influx of material, with the concomitant increase of military reserve to keep surface trade routes secure. In the past, such a move had always pleased the Quincunx Cities, who otherwise bore the expense themselves. Unofficially, the rumor also went forth that internal unrest had followed Synalon's succession to the throne. While nothing serious, the new ruler felt it necessary to import large quantities o
f arms from the foundries of Port Zorn and North Keep.
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