Words formed in its mind: Why turn away? Blank refusal met the query. Again the Presence probed, gently, insistently. Why turn your (ace from those who love you?
Asleep, the demon could shape no coherent thought. Yet the emotion wrenched from it was as unmistakable as it was inchoate.
Betrayed! The Presence read the outpouring of agony, the loneliness and helpless cruel confinement.
Help me! silently shrieked the demon. You could have helped me! The Presence recoiled from the plaintive violence of the last emotion. It poured forth its own thoughts like balm into the tortured Sleeper's mind. ‘ have not the power to help you. Not even those I serve - whom you serve - can free you unaided. But I bring tidings of joy. Soon, your time may come. You must prepare yourself to again serve.
NO! The Sleeper's denial was an eruption of negation. The Presence rode the blast like a free-floating leaf making no attempt to oppose its strength with the Sleeper's. Even asleep, the Demon of the Dark Ones possessed power of cosmic scope.
But freedom, the Presence promised. You may soon stretch your limbs to the skies again. Is that not worth much? All?
The Sleeper felt anger. Betrayal had come ingrained in its view of the universe. It knew the Presence lied. The emotion dropped low and sullen. It knew it would receive no help. It was alone, doomed, betrayed!
The Presence stifled its own surge of annoyance lest it anger the Sleeper more. The sleeping demon's mind only functioned in the most basic fashion, considering only appetite and the simplest of feelings. In its hurt anger the demon would spurn any offer of help hoping to wreak infantile vengeance on those who had betrayed it.
The Presence bided its time. It felt Istu's hatred. Reason would never pierce the shell of truculence.
Yet time grew short. The Aspects neared a critical conjunction. And the Lords of Infinite Dark had to know that their sole begotten child would be obedient to their wishes were he released.
A child cannot be reasoned with, the Presence thought to itself. Yet a child can be bribed. It turned from the sleeping, imprisoned giant and fled through the corridors of night. A plan formed in its mind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
'I have been betrayed before,' Synalon raged at Rann. 'I have been spurned by my own family, I have been schemed against, lied to, abused, and made to suffer for the failings of others. But never have I been subjected to a more humiliating failure. Never!'
Rann's guts trembled before his cousin's fury. If he got away with only being skinned alive, his luck would be extraordinary.
It was impossible for anyone else to have survived the ice fall. It had been only the wildest chance that an edge of the block had struck the portico of the Palace of Esoteric Wisdom and thus failed to crush all life from Rann; for all his resilience and the sorceries of the palace mages he had still not healed. None of the others could possibly have gotten out alive. Not Moriana, not Fost. Even the demon Erimenes should have had his jar pulverized.
Yet not an hour ago a messenger had arrived from Tolviroth Acerte with the stunning message: Princess Moriana lived.
Bringing the word to his royal cousin had been the hardest task the warrior-prince had ever faced.
Synalon stalked paving stones that carried the scars of her last foray into demonomancy. Not even Rann knew what the queen had done that night, though he had a few shrewd guesses. The next morning five mages of the palace had been found dead in their beds with expressions of horror twisted into their features. Whatever Synalon had done was potent.
It had also left her in a state of nerves that had sent eight of her lovers and three advisers into exile through the Well of Winds. Whatever else Synalon's ensorcellments had granted her, she had not been given peace of mind.
'You have my life, Your Majesty,' the prince said, eyes locked on the floor. 'You should have taken it before when I allowed your sister to escape.'
She gazed at him narrowly. Today she wore a gown of rich purple, almost indigo, which clung to her like mist. The fanciful condiment of feathers adorning her head fell in wild disarray.
'You -' she began, but her lips trembled so badly she had to start over. 'You dare accuse me of misjudgment in leaving you with your foul life? Oh, you wretch, you rogue, you groundling!' Along with the epithet Synalon hurled a bolt of lightning that shattered a five-thousand-year-old statue. Guards and attendants scattered in all directions.
'Dark Ones!' she shrieked. Her hair began to crackle. 'Witness my mortification! I am served by dolts!'
She hauled a quivering Anacil from under the Beryl Throne by one skinny white ankle.
'Must I cast all my advisers down the Skywell? Come out of there, you miserable old fool!'
'Majesty,' he quavered. 'Y-your headdress, O Mistress of the Clouds. It's on fire!'
Synalon raised a hand to cinder her chamberlain. The hand stopped in the region of her right temple. With it frozen there, the queen cocked her head and sniffed. Then she snatched her bonnet, now billowing smoke, and hurled it into the arms of a guard.
'Throw that out the window, worm!'The man trotted to obey. 'Very well,' Synalon said at length, struggling to control her rage. 'We are on the verge of taking the first step on our road to conquest. I know the penalty of failure as well as any. I cannot dispose of you, my cousin, if for no other reason than that your Sky Guardsmen will follow only you. But be warned. I will tolerate no further failure from you. The invasion will succeed or you will know my full wrath.'
Rann's mouth went dry. He remained kneeling, unable to believe what he'd heard. His cousin allowed him to live.
'Do not fear, Majesty,' he cried, springing to his feet. 'I will lead our troops to victory!'
He bowed and turned to go. 'One moment.' Synalon stopped him with that smoothly seductive, bitchy voice she used when she had something particularly vicious in mind. He swung slowly to face her. 'Those captives we took, spies trying to get into the City. How many still live?'
'Twelve, Majesty.''And they are in your safekeeping?' 'Certainly, Your Majesty. I plan to attend to their disposal personally.'
'How thoughtful.' She touched a finger to her chin and smiled wickedly. 'You have so much to do with the preparations for the coming invasion. I cannot ask you to sacrifice your time on such pursuits. Captain Tro!' The commander of her personal guard stepped forward. 'Send a party for my cousin's prisoners. Convey them to my dungeons. I shall see that they receive due punishment.'
The queen favored all in the room with a special look, seductive and promising. Rann's groin was empty but the nerves remembered. Too well, they remembered.
'See what a gracious sovereign you're blessed with,' she declared. Rann tightened his face into an impassive mask. Twelve prisoners, twelve! And she robbed him of them. The torments he'd planned, the sweet expectation he had been nurturing, carefully allowing it to grow so that his ecstasy would be complete-all wasted.
'Your Majesty is too generous,' he said. 'I only hope to repay you in kind someday.' He left quickly before his queen spoke again.
The rulers of Bilsinx officially scoffed at the notion that their town had anything to fear from the Sky City. The townsfolk were in an uproar and weren't calmed when a score of rumormongers were flogged in the Central Square. The rumors stopped totally when Mayor Irb had five housewives dismembered by dray hornbulls.
Despite his official posture, the good lord mayor was plagued by a private uneasiness as he revealed to a distinguished visitor on the eve of the City's arrival.
'We are honored by your presence in our fair city, Count Ultur,' he said, slopping rakshak into his visitor's cup. 'Quite honored.'
'I thank you, my lord mayor,' said the Count Ultur V'Duuyek as he sipped at his potent liquor.
The mayor plunked his mug down on the arm of his chair. The green velvet upholstery was a mass of circles matching the underside of his mug. Irb was a man who liked his rakshak.
'Well? You're bound for the Sjedd, is it? Helpthem put down those beastly Thail savages?' He looked clos
ely at the count and framed his eyes with what he thought to be a look of perspicuity. Dissolute shrewdness was all he managed.
'My dog riders are versatile and up to the task, I'm sure,' said the count. 'Besides, theThails are quite low at their southern end, and the Sjedd is mostly savannah. A shaman has identified some of the southern tribes as those who've seized Sjedd territory. I will retake the country, then proceed into the foothi I Is to chastise the tribesmen.'
The mayor nodded his understanding in the manner of those who don't really understand. He had heard of the disturbances in the Sjedd. Quite alarming. The Sjedd lay across the end of the Thails along the side of the Quincunx running between Brev and Thailot. Upheavals there always had a deleterious effect on trade. The military ramifications were beyond him.
He knew little of military matters, but he did know that the count's twelve hundred, heavily armored dog riders from the Highgrass Broad constituted considerable force.
'The Sky City goes overhead tomorrow,' he said slowly. 'You've doubtless heard the rumors, milord, that they plan to attack us. I've squelched such talk, to be sure, but still the rumors persist.'
When the count said nothing, Irb persisted.'Do you think there's anything to it?' 'If they were to try it without substantial ground support, they would be foolish, indeed,' V'Duuyek said, his manner scornful.
The mayor sat back, nodding with satisfaction. The Bilsinx militia wasn't large, but it was kept in reasonable practice battling brigands and occasional nomads drifting in from the steppes. The token Sky City garrison of two hundred dog riders and a score of flyers could be dealt with easily.
'If the Sky City were to attack us, ridiculous as that seems - but if they did — your people would not idly sit by?'
'My lord mayor,' V'Duuyek said, smiling thinly and smoothing one horn of his meticulously waxed moustache, 'should fighting break out, I quite honestly doubt I could keep my people out of it.'
This satisfied the mayor, who bellowed out for more rakshak. With the problems of defense all solved, it was time for serious drinking.
For once, Erimenes found nothing to carp about in Fost's choice of a destination. Even the spirit's obsessive appetite for sensation was almost glutted by the brawling, splendid bazaar that was Kara-Est.
From its vantage point at the tip of the Gulf of Veluz, Kara-Est laid claim to being one of the great cities of the day. Younger and more vibrant than Medurim, earthier than the City in the Sky, possessed of an exuberance foreign to the staid merchants of Tolviroth Acerte, and vastly more cosmopolitan than her sister cities of the Quincunx, Kara-Est dinned her self-image into a visitor like an unceasing clangor of cymbals. Built on a cluster of hills that rose steadily as they marched inland, bounded to the northeast by swampland, and giving way to the steppes in the southwest, the seaport looked anything but prepossessing. Boxy homes clumped like hives on the hills. Each painted a different hue, they caught the morning sunlight and presented a chaotic impression. But after the initial shock wore off, the garish splashings of color assumed a curious harmony of their own.
Like giant balloons, the ludintip of the Mires swamps floated lazily above the city, propelling themselves by venting gas through sphincters in their air bladders. The beasts had long been domesticated by the Estil. The Estil alone of all the Realm's inhabitants shared the dominion of the sky with the Floating City. The occasional contrivances of hoops and rings and cross-braced frames on the higher rooftops were engines for defense against attack from the air.
Fost and Jennas rode in from the steppe side by side. With his usual lack of grace, Erimenes jounced along in his jug. A Northern stranger and a barbaric warrior woman from the south mounted on immense and fearsome bears would attract attention enough without a pale blue spirit hovering beside them like a friendly cloud.
The sentries on the New Wall gaped at the newcomers as the bears rolled through the city gates. The guardsmen fingered crossbows. The barbarians from the steppes seldom penetrated to Kara-Est, but when they did they seldom came for peaceful reasons. Nonetheless, this pair seemed well enough behaved.
To Erimenes' immense glee, Fost set a course for the waterfront district.
'At last!' crowed the spirit. 'To visit the fabled fleshpots of Kara-Est! From anecdotes I've heard, the cultural demonstrations to be seen at Madam Tinng's, particularly those involving Highgrass Broad warrior-girls and their dogs, are most educational.' He chortled. 'I'm sure healths, hot-blooded youngsters such as yourselves will require no schooling from me in the full appreciation of Kara-Est's fabled vices.'
Fost sighed. The philosopher, after giving up his ascetic principles on death, had settled into a perpetual adolescence. Since he lacked the physical equipment to sate his newly acknowledged drives, they grew constantly sharper all the time. Jennas eyed the satchel with more pronounced distaste than usual. Erimenes' mention of the fanciful displays put on by the warrior-maidens had touched a raw nerve. From the morning they'd set out, Erimenes had been suggesting a novel manner for Jennas to improve rapport with her bear. While the Ust-alayakits lived on terms of intimacy with their beasts, the kind of intimacy espoused by Erimenes was regarded by the nomads with acute horror. Jennas in turn had taken to proposing new and colorful ways in which Fost might dispose of his all-too-familiar spirit.
'I thought you'd been to Kara-Est before, Erimenes,' said Fost, as they jogged down a cobbled street accompanied by the stares of the townsfolk.
'Not so. I am always receptive to experience, even repeated experience. In my wisdom I've learned to eschew the young's insistence on novelty.' He sighed. 'Besides, when I came through here before I was in the charge of an acolyte mage from Duth. He'd taken some silly vow of celibacy and wouldn't sway from it. Were it not for your sterling example, Fost, I would sorely fear for the manhood of those from the north.'
'I hate to damage your high opinion of me,' Fost said sarcastically, 'but we aren't going to be exploring the dives. We haven't time. And don't protest,' he continued over Erimenes' outraged cry, 'or I may reconsider Jennas's suggestion that we sell you to a merchant captain for a chamberpot.'
The spirit shut up. Fost smiled. The verbal infighting helped take his mind off the three weeks he'd spent in the saddle - and Moriana.
They climbed a hill, the bears' strong claws giving purchase on the ice-slicked cobblestones. Jennas gasped as the harbor came into view. They paused to take in the impressive sight, then rode down into the city's heart.
For Jennas it was almost too much. She'd been briefly in small trading towns south along the Gulf of Veluz; Kara-Est was a hundred times larger than the greatest of those. Even Fost, raised in the Teemings, the stench-ridden and overcrowded slums of High Medurim, couldn't help being impressed.
Bars and brothels, houses of gambling and houses of worship, government offices, warehouses, theaters, dwellings rich and dwellings shabby, all jostled each other around the wide sweep of the bay. Hundreds of ships rode at anchor in the largest harbor of the Realm. And with the ships came sailors from around the world: surly, shaggy traders from the Northern Continent; blond savages from the Isles of the Sun who powdered themselves with gold dust and were followed by gaggles of mute, drugged slaves; wide-eyed scholars of the Far Archipelago, their wan otherworldliness reminding Fost of the Ethereals of the Great Crater Lake; black merchant captains from hot jorea forced by the coming antarctic winter to supplement their usual garb of kilts and sandals with heavy fur cloaks.
They tethered the bears to a hitching post in front of an establishment whose sign proclaimed it the Storm-Wrack Inn. Riding dogs whined and cringed away from the gigantic newcomers. A stout townsman started to protest. Jennas glared at him and hitched at the strap of her greatsword. He gulped, unhitched his mount, and rode off looking nervously over his shoulder.
They went inside. Fost made his way to a hardwood bar with a gleaming rail of juggernaut fish ivory, ordered sack for himself, and with a shudder, amasinj for Jennas. The barkeep, a tall man with a glazed eye, too
k the order without comment. He didn't even comment when Erimenes demanded loudly to know when the indecent displays began. In a cosmopolitan town such as Kara-Est, not even disembodied voices emerging from jugs excited comment.
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