WoP - 02 - Istu Awakened

by Robert E. Vardeman

  A door streaked with a rainbow array of fungus was pushed open. Fost caught a glimpse of Uriath slamming a book closed and slipping it into a compartment on his desk. The courier was too exhausted to care what the volume was or why the High Councillor acted so furtively.

  He nodded to Uriath, spotted a blond wood stool, navigated to it as the door shut behind him with a groan like an arthritic giant. He gave the stool a quick once-over before sitting. The wood was warped and water spotted but showed no signs of mold. He sat and leaned back against the wall with a sigh.

  'I think I've got the damage patched up,' he said without preamble. 'Rann, or whoever is handling interna! security for Synalon, actually struck too soon. We didn't give out the fina! assignments until this afternoon, which means no one they netted knows our exact plans or dispositions. As a bonus, it's easier to change assignments and then distribute them instead of changing them abruptly after they've been issued and confusing hell out of everybody.'

  'Your idea,' said Uriath, more curtly than usual. Crediting the courier irked him.

  'All our reports indicate Synalon's going to be locked up tight in the Palace, working her magics from there. So I've cut the number of people on other squads, the ones attacking the aeries and Monitor stations, to get the full complement for our push at the Palace. What we really need . . .'

  A chime shimmered in the air of the room. Hairs rose on the back of Fost's neck though the sound was now familiar to him. He still wasn't used to sudden tones issuing from tubs of water.

  Energized again, he stood and went to peer into the tin vessel. Uriath swiveled in his chair, gave Fost an annoyed look, and bowed his head to the water.

  The surface turned murky. The cloudiness began to swirl without stirring the liquid. The murk coalesced into Moriana's tired but radiantly beautiful visage.

  'Fost,' she said smiling, 'you're upside down. Good evening, Uriath. I trust everything proceeds according to plan.'

  'We have experienced some difficulties, Princess,' said Uriath with a sigh, 'But we are persevering, even in the face of such great adversity.'

  Fost saw that Moriana tried hard not to laugh at his sententious manner.

  'It pleases me to hear that, good Uriath. Now, as for our plans tomorrow, we must coordinate . . .'

  A door opposite the one through which Fost had entered swung inward on oiled hinges. Councillor Tromym entered unsteadily. His nose glowed the color of Uriath's florid face.

  'Uriath, I have to talk with you,' he said with the meticulousnessof the truly inebriated, seeming to pick each word out precisely and exactingly with a pair of tweezers.'It is about this. . .oh. Ah, well, yes. Hello.'

  Fost grimaced. Tromym showed every sign of collapsing completely under the strain. In the courier's opinion the best thing the whiskered little man could do was climb into a rumpot and stay put until the shouting was over.

  Uriath was visibly unhappy.

  'Tromym,' he said sharply. He heaved his substantial bulk from the chair. 'If you'll excuse me - I'm sorry, Your Highness. I'll be but a moment.'

  Moriana nodded graciously as the pair left her line of sight. Fost looked at her wondering if she was eager to have him gone so they could speak privately. He held his own passions in check. He had more important things to tell her.

  'Listen, I've got to tell you something,' he began.

  'No, I have something I must tell you,' she said. 'Oh, Fost, I can't express how it makes me feel to see you. When I stabbed you, I knew I was doing the right thing, though part of me died with you. Or when I thought you died.'

  In his befuddled state it took him until now to realize that what he'd taken for a necklace about her neck was the all too familiar pendant, a big-faceted stone in an elaborate silver setting. Half of the stone's surface shone white, half radiated blackness. He had only seen the gem once, briefly, but was unlikely to forget it.

  'But . . .'

  She raised a hand, cutting off his words.

  'No, you need say nothing. Even though you didn't die, I can never atone for what I did, not in my own heart.' A tear welled from one eye and rolled down her cheek. 'I . . . I'll try to make it up to you, Fost. I promise!'

  But the courier wasn't I istening. He stared in horror as a wave of black slowly washed over the Destiny Stone entirely blotting out the white.

  'So,' a voice said from the outer doorway.

  Slowly, Fost turned though he knew what he'd see. He would have felt better at meeting Istu himself awakened from a ten-millennium-long nap. Luranni stood there, her gaily colored smock in sharp contrast to the dull gray of her expression. She looked as if she'd just been struck in the belly.

  'Fost? Fost, what's wrong?'

  He didn't answer Moriana. Luranni's oval face was stricken. She knew. As Fost opened his mouth hoping some inspiration would make the proper words come forth, she turned and ran.

  He caught her in the antechamber of Uriath's office, at the foot of the slimy stairs. Rows of mushrooms stood at attention in boxes, rank on rank until they were lost in the gloom. An eerie pallid glow rose from some of them to mingle with the green shine of the tube filled with miniscule luminous beings that lit the room. Other than sunlight and moonlight, the light vessels provided the only form of illumination by which it was safe to conspire in the City.

  He seized her wrist as she tried to race up the stairs. Her arm seemed ridiculously skinny against his scarred fist and burly forearm. He thought with a pang how such restraint wouldn't be possible with a woman like Moriana.

  'Wait,' he said. 'I can explain.'

  Her eyes called him a liar. He felt shame at uttering the faithless lover's age-old plaint.

  'You still want her,' she accused. Her voice, normally so musical, rang out in the cellar as husky, broken.

  'I do.' He released her slender wrist and moved closer to her rigid body. 'I'm sorry, Luranni. We . . .'

  'Don't say anything. I thought you believed in our cause - in me.'

  He took a deep breath and let out a sigh.

  'I care for you, Luranni. But I came to the City to help Moriana. I chose to help the princess because of. . . the way I feel about her, and because I fear what Synalon intends.'

  'But I thought you believed in our revolution! Don't you want to bring popular government to the City?'

  He hesitated, unsure how to answer.

  'I guess my upbringing warped me. When I look at any government, no matter how popular or benevolent, all I see is the field of spearpoints holding it up.'

  'So you did it all for the love of her!' she cried. She was gone before he could deny it.

  But then he could never have denied so plain a truth.

  The tattoo of her steps faded up the stairs, ended with the bang of a door. He turned back and raced for the office.

  'Moriana, you've got to listen to me! The pendant . . .'

  'Yes? What about a pendant?' Uriath's eyes glittered,

  Fost looked into the tub. Water. He turned and walked out without another word.

  Evening settled on the camp of Moriana's army. The clink of the armorer's hammer drifted to the ridge of the human's camp, along with the murmur of talk around the cooking fires, occasional snatches of song. From the dark pavilions of the Zr'gsz nearby came only silence, as ominous and complete as that in which their oblong skyrafts flew. Rarely, she heard a stacatto burst of syllables, and once came a chanting in a voice she recognized as Khirshagk's.

  'Come,' she said, taking Darl's hand. She led him down the far side of the rise, toward the stream above where it curved around the bluff to run beside the twin encampments. The cool, moist air danced with the smell of growing things, and the songs of crickets and frogs and tree lizards hummed and reverberated. Once below the lip of the hill, it was impossible to tell or even believe that within half a hundred paces beings of two races prepared for war.

  She led him to a fallen log by the river, shaded and covered with moss. They sat together, watching the sun light the nearby Thails
with evening colors. Darl looked robust and heroic in tight whipcord breeches and a silken tunic of the palest blue. This evening Moriana dressed feminine and soft in a long beige gown that made her eyes glow like emeralds.

  She hadn't worn her swordbelt; at her waist rode a sheathed poignard. No satchel bounced at her hip. Many things had to be resolved, and she would speak of them herself without having Ziore to soothe her.

  'There's something I must tell you.' Her thoughts echoed Fost's earlier in the eveing: I care so much for this man. Why can't I think of anything that's not inane?

  'I know,' he said, a tiny smile wrinkling his lips. She looked at him in surprise. 'You do?'

  'Yes. I've known for some time.' He laughed at her stricken look, took her chin in his hand and kissed her. 'A blackness lay upon your soul, Moriana. When I came back from the City States, it had vanished. I don't know how it happened but one thing alone could have lifted that burden from you.'

  'He lives.' Her whisper tried to lose itself amid the sighing of the stream.

  'I told you before,' he said, his arm encircling her, 'he must be a man indeed to leave so deep a mark upon you.' He smiled lop-sidedly. 'I wish that I could meet him.'

  'Oh, but you can! Tomorrow, if . . .' She couldn't bring herself to say if either of you live.

  He shook his head.

  'I have but one tomorrow remaining to me.' 'What do you mean?'

  He pointed to the evening star twinkling on the saw-toothed edge of the wall of the mountains to the west.

  'I shall not see the Crown of Jirre again, Bright Princess. I know this.'

  'How can you know?' She wanted to jar him from this prophecy, but a thought jarred her instead. 'You have the Sight.'

  'it may be so. I've felt at times 1 have a Gift. How else could I stir men as 1 do with simple words any can utter?' He hugged her tight, kissed her forehead. 'But don't grieve for me. Bright Princess. The end comes for us all. And this I know - tomorrow I shall have that which I desire most. No man can ask for more than that. And many receive much less in their lives - and deaths.'

  'You're rationalizing,' she said weakly. 'You're trying to spare my feelings.' She tried to convince herself that Darl's belief he wouldn't live out the next day was only morbid imagination. Something within her knew better.

  'Will you love me one last time?' she asked, her voice barely audible above the rippling of the stream.

  'Princess, I'll love you forever,' he said.

  Tenderly he touched her breasts, dipped his head, nuzzled her cheek, touched his lips to hers. Her mouth opened to his. In the last light of day they stripped and made love beside the river, with the bittersweet languor of those who know there will be no other nights for them.

  A trumpet skirled from the highest tower of the Palace of Winds as the dawn spilled over the rim of the Central Massif and fell upon the swarm of shapes rising from the hills ahead. A thunderclap broke the City's stillness as four thousand eagles seized the air with eager wings. For a moment, they hovered like a feathered cloud above the buttressed towers of the City in the Sky. One eagle broke to rise above the rest, a huge bird as black as the bedchamber of Itsu but for the scarlet crest blazing on its head. The tiny figure on its back waved a lance. Eight thousand throats, men's and birds' together, answered him with a fearsome cry. Then the aerial legions of the City in the Sky formed and flew to meet the attack of Moriana and the Fallen Ones.

  Moriana's heart quailed as she saw the arrowhead flights streaking toward her. She had known all along that her quest must end with this. She faced the eagles of the City in the element they had ruled for eighty centuries. More than anyone else she knew how near that course skirted outright suicide.

  But the skyrafts had plied the air for uncounted generations before the first of the giant war eagles were bred by Kyrun Etuul for the armies of Riomar shai-Gallri, first human queen of the City. More than a thousand of the rafts formed Moriana's aerial armada, from small swift two-man flyers to great stone barges mounting powerful war engines and carrying scores of men. Her own raft fell midway. It was thirty feet long and fifteen wide, ringed with a stone bulwark that came waist-high on the princess.

  A wooden box atop the bulwark gave added protection. With her rode forty men in the green and brown of the Nevrym foresters. The only Hisser aboard was the pilot, a stunted male in a loincloth who hunkered at the stern, moving his clawed hands over the surface of an obsidian ball. The globe somehow steered the craft. Moriana had felt magic tingling beneath her palms when she had handled one experimentally, but she couldn't attune herself to it.

  It was Vridzish magic, like the skyrafts themselves.

  Most of the craft were less well protected than hers. Most made do with movable screens of wicker or wood, and some augmented the stone ramparts with sandbags. It wasn't solely to protect the princess that her craft carried so much cover. Along with four other craft similarly equipped and crewed, hers would be running the gauntlet of the defenders in advance of the main force and land in the City to link up with the Underground's rebels. The other rafts would engage the bird riders while Moriana fought her way into the Palace of Winds and the meeting with her twin.

  The princess looked to her right. Darl stood resplendent in plate armor, the golden slanting sun turning him into a demigod. He had one booted foot on the bulwark of his raft and his head was thrown back, grinning into the wind with his long brown hair streaming out behind. He saw Moriana, brought hilt to lips and kissed it. She mocked a smile and waved.

  To her left rode Khirshagk. Like Darl's, his raft was mostly open and like the Count-Duke's his vessel had a mixed crew. There seemed two classes of Zr'gsz: tall, well-built males who were possibly nobles and resembled their Instrumentality. The other type of lizard men was more numerous and seemed of the same caste as the pilots. They were smaller and armored rarely, if at all. They carried shortbows, slings, javelins; another was assigned to every noble, Darl included, and bore only a large shield.

  Here and there on the other rafts Moriana glimpsed the paleness of human skin. There were many more of the green Hissers. She wondered where they had come from, as she had many times since the first columns marched to Omizantrim from the keep at Thendrun in strength greater than she would have believed the Zr'gsz could muster. This was no time to question their presence; the eagles were on wing and she could only be thankful for the numbers of her allies.

  A wedge of birds flew straight for the three long rafts in the lead. Moriana appreciated having the three paramount commanders each on a different skyraft - she had insisted on it - but at the moment she wished fervently she had Darl at her side.

  Or Fost.

  Spears, stones and arrows arced to meet the attacking formation. From the way the bird riders flew, Moriana knew these weren't Sky Guards. She nocked an arrow but kept her attention high. Far overhead an echelon lined out with mathematical precision. The Guard, no doubt led by Rann himself, waited for the common bird riders to draw the attention of the enemy so they could swoop and kill.

  'Above!' she called. 'The Sky Guard. Rann!'

  Darl turned, then shouted back, 'I see them! Thank you, Bright Princess!'

  She had to shout again to attract Khirshagk's attention. The king-priest of the Hissers solemnly bowed but didn't look above. Moriana considered shouting again to be sure he understood, then decided to save her breath.

  He would discover soon enough what he faced.

  The nearest attackers were three hundred yards away and closing fast. Without thinking, Moriana drew and loosed. The lead bird rider somersaulted over his mount's tail feathers and fell, flailing his arms in a futile attempt at flight. Moriana heard a buzz of admiration from the Nevrymin. A half-dozen of them had shot and none of their shafts had found a mark. They considered themselves fine shots, and so they were - by groundling standards. The princess was a full-fledged Sky Guardswoman and could put fifteen shafts into a palm-sized mark at two hundred yards in a minute's time.

  The foresters
loosed another volley. This time one eagle fluttered groundward and another shrieked mourning for its fallen rider. Only a few of the Nevrym men could shoot through the firing slits at a time. The others hunkered on the deck and grumbled. But they weren't meant to shoot it out with the bird-borne marksmen. They must be preserved as shock troops for the landing.

  'Well shot,' she called to her men. They turned rueful smiles in her direction. She obviously outshot them. They applied themselves to the attack, concentrating in an attempt to better her towering skill with a bow.

  Shooting methodically, Moriana emptied four more saddles with five shots. Then the eagles were rushing past in a whirlwind of sound. A bluff blackbearded forester to her right gurgled and sank with an arrow through his neck. Arrows fell like the sleet against the plank protection of her raft.

  She darted a glance at Darl's raft. He still stood exposed, his foot on the low wall.

  'You fool!' she cried out

  'But a magnificent fool,' said Ziore from her secure spot at Moriana's hip.

  The powerful eagle Terror uttered a brief cry to its master.

  'I see her, old friend,' Rann said, leaning forward to pat the sleek black neck. It took eagle-keen eyes to make out the princess's slim form through the slits of the covered raft. Rann's tawny eyes were second only to those of the great bird he rode. He smiled, raised a gloved left hand. Then he put Terror into a steep dive

  Moriana glanced up, saw the Guards peeling from their echelon formation and streaking down. She widened her stance, nocked a new arrow, waited.

  'Damn the bitch!' cursed Rann. 'She sees me.' But to his surprise, the prince found himself laughing in sheer delight. He had personally trained his cousin. He would hate to have her disappoint him. He nocked his own shaft, grinning a taut grin devoid of all humor. This would decide so very much. Him against her, arrow against arrow, teacher against prize pupil.

  'Goodbye, Moriana,' he said softly. 'If only I could consummate my love for you at greater length.'

  He drew.

  Darl's raft bucked upward. Before either cousin could loose an arrow, his craft had swung protectively over the princess's. Rann shrieked a curse and shot at Darl. He'd at least take care of Moriana's damned lover.