WoP - 02 - Istu Awakened

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Fost and Jennas rested their tired bears in a copse beyond what had been the right flank of the Sky City army. The field lay deserted now, save for the dead - and the feeding vultures.

  It had been a long, desperate journey from the south where his lovely and beloved Moriana had left him dead in a city swallowed by a glacier. It seemed half a hundred years since his sorcerous resurrection by the Amulet of Living Flame, since he and Jennas, hetwoman of the nomadic Ust'alaykits, had arrived in Tolviroth Acerte, the City of Bankers, to find that the Princess Moriana had departed days, hours even, before they appeared. Now they had missed her again.

  Fost considered Moriana's possible fate. Fled? Killed? Captured? The thought of the latter possibility turned him cold. Capture meant return to the Sky City to face the vengeance of her sister Synalon - and of her cousin Rann, warrior, genius, sadist.

  Death would be better by far.

  They rode on through the eerie stillness of dusk. Fost couldn't rid himself of the sensation that the limp bodies strewn so recklessly about would rise up at any instant with a friendly greeting or outstretched hand. He was no stranger to death; he'd dealt it himself on occasion. But he had little experience with such wholesale slaughter. And no stomach for it at all.

  He had been horrified at the carnage at the battles of the cliffs, when he'd helped the People of Ust defeat the Badger Clan and their foul shaman. That had been the mildest of diversions compared to this awful carnage. Together in a heap to Fost's right lay more men and women than lived in either Bear or Badger tribe. He shuddered. He wanted to throw up.

  Though they kept careful watch they saw no eagles. The bird riders were off chivvying the defeated, butchering stragglers and the wounded. The wind babbled to itself of the sights it had witnessed that day, stirring fallen banners and mocking the dead. The wind even spoiled the clean and optimistic odors of early spring with the gassy rankness of corruption. Fost took hold of the strap slung over his shoulder, held a leather satchel high.

  'See, old smoke,' he said to the bag. 'This is the reward for your passionate desire for bloodshed. Don't your non-existent nerves pulse with excitement at the sight?'

  A sniff came from the satchel.

  'What could I possibly find to excite me here?' a voice asked peevishly. 'This is rubbish.'

  Furious at the spirit's callousness, Fost swung the satchel up to dash the jug it contained to pieces on the ground.

  'No,' said Jennas. 'Let him be.'

  Ashamed at his angry outburst, Fost pulled the strap back over his shoulder and let the satchel fall to its riding position. He knew he was only venting his ire at not finding Moriana on the genie in his jug.

  —Hollowing the path the routed army and its pursuers had taken, they passed the hill with its crumpled pavilion and heard the murmur of running water.

  'I'm thirsty,' said Fost, 'and there were too many corpses in that stream back there for even the bears to touch the water. Let's see if this one is less clogged with dead.'

  Jennas nodded. They rode toward the sound, angling toward a stand of trees well beyond the hill. Though none of the bird riders had shown themselves so far, neither felt like taking chances.

  They were almost to the water when they heard the moan.

  Without thinking, Fost booted Grutz's sides. The big bear rolled over the bank and into the water, never breaking stride. The icy water numbed Fost's legs. He barely noticed in the urgency that gripped him.

  Another sad knot of bodies lay at the treeline. Dogs and men in the distinctive armor of the City States had been struck down by the equally distinctive arrows of the Sky City. The missiles protruded at angles that told they had come from above.

  Fost pulled Grutz to a stop beside a young man who stirred feebly. His fingers raked furrows in the mud. An arrow had penetrated his backplate and jutted horribly from the center of his back, as if that, in all the broad earth, was where it belonged.

  The knight had been trying to reach the creek. His first words to Fost confirmed this.

  'Water. Need . . . need water.'

  His voice rattled like a handful of pebbles on a tile roof. Fost dismounted and squatted by his side, studying the extensive injuries. A trail of bloody spittle ran from the corner of the young man's mouth. Fost doubted the youth was twenty.

  'You're in a bad way,' said Fost, trying to remember the rough but practical healing lore he'd learned in his career as a courier on the highroads of the Sundered Realm - literally a lifetime ago. 'I don't know if you should have water.'

  'You don't honestly think it matters, do you, you dolt?' asked Erimenes acidly from his jug.

  Fost shrugged. The shade was right, though it surprised Fost that Erimenes had responded in this fashion. Compassion was not a trait he normally associated with the long-dead philosopher whose ghost rode in the jug at his hip.

  The youth drank greedily from Fost's water bottle, which had been taken and filled by Jennas and tossed back to the courier without comment. Fost held the blond head cradled in his lap as the dying boy drank. Jennas urged her mount out of the stream and slid off beside them. Her boots went deep into the cold mud. She was as tall as Fost and just as strongly built.

  The boy coughed. The fit came so violently that he jerked himself free of Fost's arms. To Fost's horror, he fell backward onto the arrow still in him. His weight drove it deep and snapped it off. He stiffened, coughed up bloodshot phlegm, then sank back with a sigh, as though sliding into a warm and soothing bath.

  Fost bit his lip. The boy's chest rose and fell raggedly within his armor.

  'The princess,' Fost said, hating himself for troubling the dying man. 'Do you know who I mean? The Princess Moriana.'

  'Princess?' The boy nodded, then frowned, his face a bloody mask. 'Failed her. Failed her. . .'

  Fost felt a cold black hand clamp his throat.

  'She didn't - she's alive, isn't she?' he demanded. To his relief the youth nodded. A grimace twisted the young features as if the slight motion had pained the boy. 'Where did she go?' The knight did not respond. By dint of great effort, Fost kept himself from shaking him. 'Where did she go?' he asked again.

  'The . . . three of them.'

  Fost frowned up at Jennas.

  'Three?'

  'Ah - aye. Princess, Lord Darl and . . . Great Ultimate, is it getting dark so soon? And the spirit ... the woman in the jug . . .'

  'Woman in a jug?' asked Jennas, as confused as Fost,

  'It must be the other spirit that Guardian told us about,' said Fost, trying to remember more of what the speaking, sorcerously living glacier had said. 'The glacier's name is Guardian,' he told Jennas, seeing her baffled look. 'When we left Athalau, the glacier told us Moriana had a spirit jug with her. He said something about the genie inside, but other matters pressed me then. Guardian had mistaken the other spirit for Erimenes. It put him into a fine rage.' Fost glanced at the blue form wavering by his elbow. He did not remember having uncapped the jar to let him out. Erimenes's face acquired a faraway look.

  'A woman,' the spirit said musingly. 'As I live and breathe, a woman! This has interesting aspects 1 had not considered. Imagine, another such as I!'

  'By Ust's snout,' muttered Jennas, 'one of you is more than enough. And you do not live and breathe.'

  'A woman!' cried the philosopher. 'I can at last vindicate my teachings! What the two of us might do together. . .'The misty body of the shade glittered with dancing blue motes of light, spark-bright in the darkness.

  'Be quiet, you,' snapped Fost. 'This man is dying, and you rant about another genie.'

  'Not just any genie, friend Post,' crowed Erimenes. 'A female! I wonder if it might be possible that we . . .'His face glowed with a lechery so luminous it astonished even Fost, though the courier knew the shade's ways by now. Erimenes had preached stark abstinence throughout his life, and then had thirteen hundred years to think better of it. The long, lonely centuries trapped in his ceramic jug had been devoted to developing a totally hedonistic philo
sophy; disembodied, Erimenes could only experience his newfound ideals as a voyeur. Until the promise of another - female - genie. Jennas scowled.

  'The boy, Fost, the boy is dying.'

  Fost swallowed and turned back to the dying knight. Erimenes's crude enthusiasm shamed him. And he was no closer to finding out what had happened to Moriana. He leaned closer to the youth.

  'Where did she go?' No response. Fost dribbled water across the parched lips and asked again, slowly, 'Where-did-she-go?'

  The young knight tried. In his fading mind he was glad that with his dying breath he could help his princess, the Bright Princess whom he and his friends had let down so badly.

  'She went to . . .' His blurred, fading mind struggled to concentrate. 'Went to . . .'

  Another coughing spell wracked him. He sprayed bloody foam all over the front of Fost's tunic. Fost gripped the boy's shoulders, trying to steady him.

  The boy tried to say, 'To see the ones who built the City in the Sky,' but the coughing hit him again.

  'To . . . City . . . Sky,' was all Fost Longstrider heard in the instant before the boy's head lolled back on lifeless muscles.

  Gently he lowered the boy. He rose and looked at Jennas.

  'The fool,' he groaned. 'She went back to the damned City.'

  'And you will follow her.'

  'And I'll follow,' Fost said. 'I'll follow.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  The fugitives rode north following the course of Chanobit Creek as it flowed toward its meeting with the mighty River Marchant. Moriana intended to keep to that course until they could cut northeast to the Mystic Mountains and avoid passing through the lava flows surrounding Mount Omizantrim like a skirt. Those dead lands of tortuous folds and black stone tentacles were well avoided at the best of times. Fell creatures stalked human prey there. Besides, Moriana had no appetite for a meeting with the Watchers, descendants of the loyal few entrusted by Felarod after the War of Powers to guard the flows of skystone. The Fallen Ones had used that gray igneous rock to build their flying rafts of war and commerce, and huge chunks of the skystone formed the base of the City in the Sky itself. The Watchers had passed long ago into legend, keeping vigil over the lonely centuries against a return of the Fallen Ones. How could she look any of them in the eye knowing she went to enlist the aid of their ancient enemies?

  Nor was this the best of times to approach Omizantrim. Sometime during the night after the Chanobit Creek debacle the volcano had belched into deadly life again. Lightning and choking poison vapors now ringed the jagged crest of the mountain, and a spume of black smoke grew from it like a bloated, ghastly phallus raping the sky. Such was the power of that single eruption, that from time to time Moriana and Darl passed through areas rendered gray and unreal by falls of ash from the crater two hundred miles to the east. Glancing uneasily at the vast smudge defiling the eastern sky, Moriana wondered what unholy message the mountain had uttered.

  She had the gut feeling that it boded her no good.

  In another year Moriana might have appreciated the soft beauty of early spring. Leaves burgeoned on the trees, and fields and meadows exploded with a profusion of wildflowers, pink canthas, ovuei as gold as the sunset on placid waters, even the rare royal minsithen mimicking the colors of the Empire of High Medurim. In contrast to Moriana's grim mood, those minsithen shone cheerfully, each a bright yellow star inset in five rounded petals of blood-rich maroon, enriching the air with subtle scents. The trees were deciduous, mostly sturdy spreading anhak, their bark as brown and shaggy as a hornbull in winter coat. Interspersed with the anhak rose stands of Upland tai, straight, slim yellow boles as graceful as elf dancers against the great gnarled shapes of their neighbors. Birds molted to show rainbow colors to the new season and sang to the travellers.

  But neither the Princess nor Darj had eyes or ears for the splendor all about them. The bulk of the Sky City army had hurried south the day after Chanobit, but that did not mean she and Darl were spared the horrors of pursuit. With breaking of the weather, the war eagles once more had the freedom of the sky. They could range north to harry the refugees and then wheel southward to catch up with the lumbering columns of dog riders and infantry in time for a hot supper and boots of mulled wine. Moriana's every sense concentrated upward, eyes scanning the sky for sight of wings outstretched in the distance, ears cocked for the cry of a death-giving war bird carried to them on the spring breeze already laden with the smell of spring flowers and moist fertile earth. She wished Darl would rouse from his stupor long enough to take some of the burden of the searching off her.

  If anything, his depression grew worse with every mile. His thoughts turned inward and he seldom responded, even when directly spoken to. After two days, Moriana ceased trying to communicate with him. She decided it was best to let him work alone through his depression, if he could. She knew no magic to pull the man back to the world outside his skull. Darl seemed momentarily a lost cause to her, lost like the battle, lost like her precious City, lost, lost, lost.

  On the third day, they approached the juncture of Chanobit Creek and the River Marchant. As they rode, Moriana had collected dazed stragglers, tatters of her once-proud army. Her battered army was now sadly composed of knights in dew-tarnished armor turned as gaunt as their quarrelsome, hungry dogs by fear and deprivation; of Great Nevrym foresters slipping on foot through woods flanking the riders, graceful and lethal as panthers even in defeat; of peasant footmen stunned and stumble-footed; and of adventurers hard-eyed and angry at seeing their dreams of conquest and plunder evaporate with the morning mists at Chanobit. Some still hailed Dar! as their commander, in spite of his temporary mental infirmities. Gratifyingly, others called out her name with fervent loyalty on encountering the party. She felt small and soiled at the satisfaction she took in knowing that some, at least, gave allegiance directly to her instead of to her through the charismatic wandering hero who had taken her cause at Tolviroth Acerte.

  Tolviroth Acerte. So long ago. Lifetimes ago. And a lifetime of struggle lay in front of her.

  Since that first day after their defeat, Moriana had said nothing more of her intention of journeying to the keep of the Fallen Ones. Part of her disliked being less than candid with men so loyal. The practical side pointed out that there would be plenty of time to leave for those who disapproved. But that had to be later, when they were beyond the joining of the rivers, and most likely beyond the vengeance of the City in the Sky. Besides, her cynical self observed, even among the survivors were many who followed whomever was in motion at a given moment, not caring where they headed. They were like Darl, who needed to be led. Others realized that their numbers and the princess's intimate knowledge of the bird riders who pursued them gave the best chance of survival. Moriana knew the callowness of attributing faith to all who followed her simply because they followed.

  The woodlands rose gently to a ridge that dropped off steeply toward the northwest. Moriana rode point with a bow in her hands. She felt responsible for the fate of these groundlings who followed her.

  Before she reached the crest of a rise, she slipped from the back of her war dog. She patted the beast's blunt muzzle and whispered encouraging words in one cropped ear. The animal was trained to stand stock still and to make no sound. She had no fear of it running off or betraying her presence with barking when she scouted the ridgeline on foot.

  It's a sign of becoming human, child, a calm, gentle voice said in her mind. This concern (or those you once would have deemed beneath your notice.

  Moriana paused, still hunkered below the crest of the rise.

  'Aye, perhaps I'm not fully human. Perhaps my people had lived in the splendid isolation of our City too long.' Her mouth twisted bitterly. 'Certainly I can send humans to their deaths as easily as if I were of some other race.'

  Don't use that stick to beat yourself, the voice said. That is the most human trait of all.

  Moriana smiled briefly. Ziore of Athalau had spent her entire long life cloistered in a
convent devoted to the ascetic teachings of Erimenes the Ethical. Like Erimenes, the nun had survived the death of her body, living out long, dusty centuries as a cloud of mist contained within the enchanted red clay of an Athalar spirit jar. Moriana had found the genie while stumbling in a haze of exhaustion and self-hatred through the streets of the glacier-entombed Athalau. Though Ziore's existence had been remote from human experience, the spirit was wise with a wisdom as deep and placid as a sheltered pool. Her soothing presence and loving words had been all that enabled Moriana to keep her tenuous grip on sanity through the brutal trials and disappointments of the last few months.

  'Thank you,' Moriana whispered, feeling an immediate answering caress in her mind.

  Arrow nocked but undrawn, the Princess of the City in the Sky moved up the slope. She placed her feet carefully to avoid slipping and falling headlong on the slippery mulch of fallen leaves underfoot. The anhak trees grew right to the crest where the soft black earth fell steeply to a broad flood plain. Here and there she saw great raw gaps in the terrain where the spring flood had undercut the bank and toppled a hunchbacked anhak. None was recent. Winter had been too brief for the melting snowpack in the far-off Thail Mountains to engorge the Marchant till it overflowed its banks.

  She dropped to her belly. Nothing in the act struck the princess as incongruous. In years past when an heir apparent to the Beryl Throne and not an outcast, she had trained as a bird rider of the elite Sky Guard, a course designed to break all but the fiercest, most determined and toughest in mind and body.

  Moriana had passed without the slightest favor being accorded her due to her station. Under the command of the youthful leader of the Guard, her cousin Rann, she had leda flight of Sky Guardsmen into battle against the Northern Barbarians. Now Rann was head of all Sky City soldiery, and Moriana's sworn enemy. But Moriana had not forgotten the hard lessons she'd learned from him. Not the least among them was that survival never took second place to dignity in the field.