WoP - 02 - Istu Awakened

by Robert E. Vardeman

  He didn't.

  Darl watched the arrow, calmly awaiting death. With contemptuous ease, the Zr'gsz at the Count-Duke's side thrust up his shield. The arrow Chunked into it. Darl stared at the malformed head gleaming an inch from his breastplate.

  'My thanks,' he said dryly.

  The lizard man grinned.

  Moriana tracked Rann the instant Terror plummeted past Darl's craft.

  'Die, you devil!' she screamed, and shot.

  The Destiny Stone went black. The glue binding one of the three feathered vanes to her shaft gave way. The arrow slewed wide. Moriana wept with frustration as Rann and Terror were lost to sight beneath her skystone raft.

  More bird riders rocketed in. Archers Zr'gsz and human got the feel of aerial shooting and took a grim toll of the attackers. But the Sky City riders took a toll of their own. Men and lizard men fell writhing on the decks. Red blood mingled with green.

  A clump of riders bore down on Khirshagk's raft. He stood as defiant as Darl. The Heart of the People smoked in his right claw. Only one rider reached the raft and that one died as he flew overhead. But he cast down the heavy clay vessel he carried.

  It shattered on the prow of the Instrumentality's raft. The Zr'gsz leader turned at the acrid odor of turpentine. Four hundred yards away, three bird riders dropped fire lances, heard the chittering of salamanders, released them.

  Moriana gasped as three lines of blinding fire reached for Khirshagk. He revolted her, ally or not, but it was hard to see him die in this diabolical manner.

  Khirshagk uttered a laugh that' resounded above the clamor of battle. He held the Heart high. Smoke boiled into the sky. The salamanders streaked straight into the core of the huge black diamond and were absorbed without sound.

  Deadly quiet filled the sky. Watching from her throne room in the Palace, Synalon choked out an obscenity and raised her arms in invocation. The sleeves of her robe flapped like wings in the wind streaming through the open windows.

  'It's time!' Moriana cried to her steersman. He shook his head in Zr'gsz affirmation and the raft plunged ahead. She heard a wolf cry from the Nevrymin foresters in the skystone rafts behind as they sped up to keep pace.

  'Moriana and victory!' she heard Darl cry.

  She raised her bow in salute. There were no words adequate.

  Rann's death plunge had carried him far below Moriana's raft. Levelling out at the bottom of his attack, he found himself in the midst of an angry swarm of two-man rafts. Rann's bowstring snapped in a furious exchange of arrows. Terror finished that duel by clutching the stern of an eight-foot raft with his mighty talons and bodily flipping the craft, sending its occupants tumbling to their deaths.

  Angrily Rann flung the useless bow away. Not even he could restring a bird rider's bow in flight. He satisfied himself that the rafts were being dealt with successfully - even at the high cost of half his elite flight - and put Terror into a climb, searching the sky above for Moriana's raft.

  He found her. A mile in advance of the others he saw the five wooden-clad skyrafts, almost to the ramparts of the City itself. There was little point in pursuing now. Rann allowed himself a sardonic smile. Synalon would soon be learning the extent of the powers she'd accepted from the Dark Ones.

  He drew his sword and led the flight steeply toward the armada floating overhead.

  Eyes as wild as an animal's, Fost glared up and down the street. He had hacked down three Monitors in a storm of blood without being aware that he did so. Erimenes still cheered hysterically.

  He tested the heft of the round shield he carried. This was his first real, full-dress battle. He wasn't fool enough to go into it with no more protection than his broadsword and chainmail shirt.

  'Back!' cried Erimenes. Fost jumped into a doorway. An arrow splintered the doorpost near his head. A girl with close-cropped red hair popped out of the next doorway and let fly her arrow. The sniper did a high dive from a minaret across the cobblestone street. His scream ended in an ugly thump.

  'Excellent shot!' applauded Erimenes from his jug. Fost's lips curled back from his teeth in a wordless snarl. The genie's bloodlust sickened him, but Erimenes still seemed inclined to help - and help he had. He'd just saved Fost's life.

  'Where's Luranni?' came the inquiry from the street.

  Fost cautiously peered from his niche. Two young men trotted toward him surveying the heights all around. He recognized Prudyn and Chasko, two of the ablest of the lower caste recruits. Short and stocky Chasko carried a javelin and bird rider's target shield. Prudyn loomed over him, holding a bow with professional ease, brown eyes keen beneath the rim of a stolen helmet.

  'I don't know,' Fost replied as the two ducked into the niche with him.

  'We thought she'd be with you,' said Chasko. Fost shrugged and turned away. He'd futilely sought her at her apartment the night before and wound up sleeping with his assault squad in a warehouse. By the time the unit had to move, the High Councillor's daughter hadn't shown up.

  A sea-gray eagle flecked with brown swept over the rooftops. Prudyn whipped up his shortbow and shot. The rider tumbled off and disappeared behind the buildings. Prudyn whooped delight. Chasko and Fost pounded him on the back.

  They calmed enough to take stock. The tumult of street fighting raged all around. Smoke sprouted from a dozen fires. To his right, the soaring architecture of the Palace lorded it over lesser buildings. Two hundred yards away, Fost judged. He had an appointment on the steps of that edifice. He prayed fervently to gods he still didn't fully believe in that the other party would arrive unharmed.

  The door opened behind them.

  They jumped into the street snapping weapons around. A pudgy feminine-looking hand reached out holding a green glass bottle. Prudyn hesitated, accepted it and lifted it to his lips and drank.

  'Thank you kindly,' he said. The arm withdrew and the door closed once more.

  The three passed around the wine bottle until it was drained. Fost called for the rest of his squad and they moved toward the Palace.

  A melee raged among the rafts of the People. Sky City men had birds shot from under them and if luck favored, they managed to drop to the decks of the enemy rafts and continued the fight at close quarters. Others, out of arrows or simply eager to come to grips with the ancient enemies of their kind, landed deliberately to fight side by side with their birds. Riderless eagles plucked Zr'gsz and Nevrymin from the skystone slabs and cast them down.

  Both sides fought with fanatical intensity. More than a few of the bird riders passed under the rafts after firing their arrows, only to have the hissing Vridzish fling themselves onto them so both fell, struggling viciously until the hard earth mingled their substance and rendered all issues moot.

  Darl's great blade reaped lives like grain. A wareagle knocked his shield-bearer to the deck and disembowelled him with his talons. Darl decapitated the bird with a single cut and spun to split the rider's skull to the teeth as the man closed with a spear.

  The deck teemed with battling men and near-men. A green-clad giant loomed over a knot of wiry little bird riders, flailing at them with his bow. So great was his strength that he batted three of the black and purple clad troopers over the edge before the others brought him down.

  Darl leaped upon the giant's slayers. They turned as quick as serpents, but their speed and skill meant nothing against the Count-Duke. They died.

  Behind him Darl heard a boom of wings, a scrape of talon on stone.

  'Very well done, my good Sieur r'Harmis,' came a cultured voice. 'We seem to find ourselves alone. Shall we?' Darl turned and slowly smiled at Prince Rann Etuul.

  In eerie suspended silence, Moriana's raft soared over the rimwall of the City in the Sky. She fancied she floated on the wings of a dream until a ballista thrummed and a barbed iron head punched through the wooden shielding to kill a Nevrymin. She came out of her reverie and shot an artillerist as he bent to the windlass of his engine.

  Eagles screamed and circled. Arrows hammered the wa
lls and roof. Moriana cast aside an emptied quiver and stooped to pick up another as a sweating forester drew his dagger across the throat of the howling man with the ballista-bolt in his guts. She said nothing. She understood battlefield mercy all too well.

  Quiet and outwardly untroubled by the carnage around him, the Zr'gsz steersman guided the raft between the airy spaces of the City, making for the Circle of the Skywell in the center of town. Moriana peeked through the slit to check on the craft following hers.

  She saw only three. Something had happened to the other; its pilot slain perhaps or it might have been knocked down by the catapults. As she watched, the next raft behind hers careened abruptly to the right. She caught a glimpse of its steersman slumping from behind his globe, arrows sprouting from his back.

  The raft brushed a thin tower and brought it crashing into the street. The impact caused the raft to straighten.

  'Please, survive,' the princess called quietly. She had little hope they would.

  It ran headlong into the forward wall of the Lyceum and disintegrated, flinging Nevrymin about like dolls. And then there were only two rafts remaining.

  She felt the deck tip beneath her. Her heart missed a beat but a quick glance aft showed her steersman intact and in control. She looked out again.

  The Circle wheeled lazily below. The Skywell opened onto a pastoral landscape a thousand feet below. The pilot banked to follow the Skullway to the very portals of the Palace. To the left she saw armed men and women racing for the Palace. Ahead a squad of Monitors fled toward the same destination, heedless that their feet were defiling the skulls of the City's past rulers.

  Some sense made her turn and look back toward the battle she'd left behind. With terrible certainty she knew what she'd see.

  A thousand yards ahead of the City's prow two figures fought back and forth across the deck of a raft crewed by corpses. Moriana knew the splendid black bird who stood to one side watching the humans; she knew the tall figure in shining armor who swung his broadsword with skill apparent even across the distance; and all too well she knew the smaller black and purple figure darting in and out while his scimitar parlayed with the huge straight blade.

  As the princess watched, Rann tripped and fell back toward the bulwark of the raft. Darl rushed. Rann ducked under the blow and swung with his scimitar. Darl's plate was sturdy but Rann's strength belied his size. The curved blade sank into Darl's side.

  The Count-Duke spun, snapping the sword from Rann's grip. Rann danced away. Darl's heels came against the bulwark. He raised his broadsword to salute his foe. Then he turned, looked at Moriana and saluted again.

  And fell.

  'He knew,' came Ziore's anguished words. Moriana returned his salute with her own broadsword. Her eyes stung but she wouldn't cry. Tears would cloud her vision.

  And then they were down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lungs burning, Fost pounded across the pavement towards the Palace. Fifty rebels raced at his side, while a score hung back among the buildings on the perimeter of the grounds to cover the attack with bow and arrow. As he ran Fost kept staring at the spectacle before him. One after another, three large slabs of gray stone flew over the Skywell and turned up the Skullway to approach the Palace.

  The leading raft bumped to a halt. The walls fell away as foresters hacked at lashings with sword and axe. Green and brown clad men tumbled out - and one in achingly familiar russet and orange. Even in helmet and hauberk, Fost knew Moriana.

  Shouting incoherently, he angled to meet her as she led the foresters up the Skullway. Her last trip along that avenue had been as a captive, jeered by multitudes as a traitoress, regicide, matricide. Now spectators had even better reason to name her traitor - but the only watchers on hand were the rebels swarming across the paved Palace grounds, and a platoon of Palace Guardsmen on the steps.

  'Moriana!' shouted Fost. She cried his name in return and they flung themselves violently into each other's arms. Rebels and Nevrymin clasped forearms and pounded backs, instant comrades. The exuberance of the rebels was partly due to the humanness of their new allies. They'd expected green scaly skins.

  Fost and Moriana wasted precious seconds in a kiss. They reluctantly broke apart, laughing, weeping, dabbing at the blood streaming from their nostrils. The Destiny Stone swung free outside Moriana's armor. It shone benevolent white.

  Fost pointed at it.

  'Moriana, that's not . . .'

  'Eureka!' screeched Erimenes. 'May this day be blessed forever! I've found a woman of my own kind!'

  'Don't "my kind" me, you perverted mountebank!' Ziore screamed back.

  Dead silence. Moriana goggled at the satchel by her side. The foresters gaped, too, having come to recognize the princess's familiar as sweet and shy.

  The sweet, shy presence proceeded to deride Erimenes with the profane bravura of an Estil fishwife.

  When Ziore paused to think up even more insults, Moriana spun quickly to face the Palace Guards, who stood clumped at the portal to the Palace wondering what was going on.

  'Surrender at once!' she ordered. 'I, Moriana Etuul, your rightful queen, command it!'

  For long seconds nothing happened. Then a Guard pivoted on his heel and split the chest of the man next to him with a stroke of his halberd. The Guardsmen quickly paired off and slew one another. Fost grinned. A little subversion was a wonderful thing.

  Moriana raced for the portal. Fost followed, shouting for her to listen, that she didn't have the Amulet, that she carried another talisman instead, that her life depended on getting rid of the Destiny Stone. But Monitors poured into the far side of the Circle and men shouted and moaned and butchered each other on the steps of the Palace, and the mysterious shade Moriana carried still berated Erimenes the Ethical at the top of her nonexistent lungs.

  A fleet-footed rebel darted past Moriana as she mounted the steps and heartily kicked open the centermost pair of doors. A flight of arrows buzzed out like angry hornets. Most of them struck the impetuous youth, lifted him from his feet and tossed him lifeless down the narrow steps.

  The foresters' bows sang in reply. Screams echoed in the Palace's vestibule. Moriana plunged in, sword in hand. Fost followed. He prudently sidestepped as he passed through the door to prevent being silhouetted. When his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, he saw a groined chamber radiating out in three directions. From the one ahead came the sound of running boots.

  Moriana.

  As he followed, from the hallway to the right poured a stream of Palace Guards. One lashed at him with a halberd. Fost took the blow on his shield, grunting as the blade split hide and metal and bit into his arm. He swung the arm violently, letting go of the shield's handgrip. The halberd flew wide as the shield's mass carried it along. Fost lunged and slashed the Guard across the face.

  Rebels and foresters were crowding through the doors. Two Guards attacked Fost from opposite directions. Prudyn shot one, then cast his bow aside as another Guard rushed him. Prudyn stayed alive by seizing the haft of the Guard's weapon and battling him up against a wall.

  The other Guard intent on Fost lunged, the spiked head of the polearm spearing for Fost's midriff. Fost whipped Erimenes's satchel off his left shoulder and swung it. Erimenes screamed.

  The heavy satchel knocked the halberd aside. Fost thrust. The Guardsman sank. Fost ripped his blade from the foeman's chest and ran for the corridor Moriana had taken.

  Above the fighting, Synalon waged a battle of her own from the throne room. Even as Moriana's flotilla surged ahead of the other rafts, the air began to dance as the immense air elemental took form.

  A tornado howled toward the armada sucking boulders and uprooted trees high into the air. Khirshagk brandished the Heart of the People. A beam of blackness exploded from the center of the jewel and struck to the core of the approaching whirlwind.

  A frightened, gusty wail split the sky. The elemental diminished, drawn down the black tube into the diamond. In a heartbeat it vanished. A rain of
rocks and trees spattered the countryside below.

  Shocked, Synalon stared in wonder and dread. She spoke new words of Summoning. She pointed to the earth. It heaved, a hill appearing where none had been before. She pointed to the sky. The hill shot upward toward the raft carrying the Instrumentality.

  Black rays from the Heart stabbed into the soaring hillock. It exploded in all directions sending out a cascade of dirt and stone lasting for long minutes. Synalon screamed. She waved her arms. Sinkholes appeared among the hills below as boulders buried underground winked out of existence . . .

  ... to rematerialize above the vast fleet of skystone rafts.

  Now Synalon's magic took full effect. A dozen rafts were stricken and fell, dooming a hundred of the People and scores of humans. A huge boulder dropped straight down for Khirshagk's raft.

  The Heart radiated black energy. The boulder slowed, then stopped in midair, defying gravity above Khirshagk's head. He gestured with the Heart. The boulder soared away toward the City to plow a furrow of ruin from the prow halfway to the Palace.

  Synalon tore her robes to free her arms for uninhibited gesturing. The fleet drove inexorably onward. She shrieked and the heavens rained fire. Men died screaming in the embrace of flames, some of them her own bird riders; the queen was beyond caring who died as long as she blasted the monsters who dared assail her City. But the Heart emitted a funnel of total blackness into which the flamedrops were drawn. The smoking diamond absorbed the rain of fire and glowed with even greater energy.

  As the queen hurled spell after frantic spell against the Instrumentality, the earthly battle raged with undiminished fury. Khirshagk's raft was the nexus of a cloud of eagles, diving and slashing as their riders swept the decks with arrows. Shield-bearers kept their leaders from harm, though they died with the regularity of the Heart's black pulsation.

  Still holding the Heart, Khirshagk tossed down his shield and caught up his mace. A bird dropped at him, claws extended. He swung the heavy mace and crushed the eagle's breastbone with a single stroke.