'Sir… uh, Fost,' she said. 'Is it true you, urn, you killed a war eagle? All by yourself?'
A rustle of silk, a waft of cinnamon and Luranni's arm slipped cool into his.
'It is indeed true,' she said. 'He's quite a man, my Fost.' Luranni smiled more widely than necessary.
'I, uh, I see.' Syriana licked her lips, then turned and joined the file of departing students. Luranni looked up at the courier, a glint in her eyes.
'You weren't thinking of letting that lowborn fluff turn your head?' she asked in a fierce whisper Fost was sure must be audible all the way to the Palace of Winds. 'I'll have to braid another knot in my hair to bind you more closely.'
He smiled reassuringly at her. The smile ran no deeper than his lips. He wondered what would happen if – when – Luranni discovered that he was still devoted to Moriana. Given the perilous nature of his very existence in the Sky City, where discovery meant a lingering death at Rann's hands, there was danger of more than an unpleasant emotional scene if Luranni became jealous of the princess.
He donned a cloak, pulled the hood up to obscure his features and let Luranni lead him out into the narrow streets of the Sky City. Sunset was beginning to tinge the western horizon in outlandish colors. Despite the promise of cooling evening breezes, Fost sweltered inside his cowl. Still, this was better than roasting over a grill lit by Rann.
He had killed one of the gigantic eagles of the City's armed forces in single combat. But he hadn't intended to. He had meant to ride up to the City on his captive bird and slip away into the maze of streets hoping to meet some member of the Underground who could tell him where to find Moriana. Only later did it occur to him that he had let fatigue and horror cloud his judgment. The bird could communicate to its keepers in its own speech that it had been forced to bring a groundling into the Sky City. There was no reason for Rann or his secret police to guess the identity of the intruder, but they'd turn the City inside out looking for him. This of all times, the City's rulers couldn't afford to allow possible spies to roam at large.
After flying over the grisly battle between the poison-taloned ravens and the Estil suicide squad, the eagle had touched down in a sidestreet near the starboard beam of the City. Fost had leaped to the pavement. 'Look out!' Erimenes shouted from his jug.
Fost flung himself face down, not even pausing to ask himself why the genie had warned him again of impending danger. Perhaps the long-dead philosopher thought a fight would be small entertainment if terminated at the first stroke by the great decapitating sweep of the eagle's sharp beak that swooshed inches above his back.
Fost rolled desperately. The bird struck again, scoring his hide and striking the flagstones with a jarring screech. Yellow talons groped. Fost got his legs under him and sprang away.
The bird advanced, its eyes bright with the determination to shed his blood. It was bright enough to know Fost must try to kill it; it had struck the first blow. Fost fell back step by step, weighing his chances. He didn't care for them at all. The bird was almost twice as tall and fast, very fast. If he stood, the beast would shred him with beak and claws. If he ran, it would be on him in an instant like an owl falls on a fleeing mouse. The street was little more than an alley between hostelries and shops shuttered for the battle. He had little room to dodge and no place to seek refuge.
'Go past him, you fool!' hissed Erimenes. Unquestioning, the courier obeyed.
Shrieking rage, the bird whirled as Fost dived past its legs. The great white head struck a jutting cornice of gray-green stone. As the bird reeled, stunned, Fost regained his feet and closed to make a quick kill with his broadsword.
Bleeding from wounds he didn't remember receiving, wounds dating back to those given him by the demon-bird in the Black River, Fost ran. Most of the City's police and military were occupied on the walls, but it still took every bit of streetcraft he'd learned growing up in the poverty of High Medurim's slums to reach the familiar short building with its wood facade. The door inside the triple arched entryway was barred by magical means.
'Allow me,' Erimenes said with sardonic satisfaction, and the door swung open to admit the courier.
Luranni's eyes showed no astonishment when she had later entered her third floor flat to find him lounging among fat cushions she used for furnishings.
'I knew you'd come,' she said, a smile spreading across her face.'l made magic to bring you to me. See?' She reached and undid a braid of brown hair which had been wound around her head. The intricate plaiting made it hard for Fost's eyes to follow.
'Well?' Luranni asked. 'What are we waiting for?' She let her gown drop to the floor.
With an unusual degree of discretion, Erimenes viewed their love-making from within his bottle without tendering his normal lewd commentary. When Fost and Luranni paused to rest, he introduced himself. Once again Luranni showed no surprise. Naked, she pulled the philosopher's jug from Fost's satchel and examined it.
'I've not met you before, have I?' she asked. 'But you spoke to me when I met Fost and the Princess Moriana and guided them to where their eagle waited.' 'Just so,' replied Erimenes.
'So,' she said, turning coin-colored eyes to Fost, 'this is the property Moriana stole from you.'
'Yes.' Like her well-born comrades in the Underground, she may have lacked a sense of the realities of intrigue and insurrection, but she was a highly intelligent woman who had earned high responsibility in her father's import-export business because of her abilities. It was well for Fost to be reminded in a minor matter. It might mean his life if he didn't consider her in more ways than one.
He had to be circumspect in what he told her. Praying that Erimenes wouldn't see fit to contradict him, he explained that he and Moriana had gone off in search of some unspecified treasure, pursued all the way by Rann's bird riders. In Athalau, deep inside the glacier that called itself Guardian, they had become separated.
Fost had been trying to catch up with the princess ever since.
'I just missed her at Chanobit Creek' he said, lapsing back into truth. 'We found a survivor of her retinue. He didn't live long, but before he died he told us that Moriana was coming here. And so I came to find her.' 'But she didn't come here,' said Luranni. Fost groaned. His stomach turned over.
'Wh-where is she? Are you sure?' he demanded when he recovered from the shock.
'Synalon claims she has gone to make a compact with the Fallen Ones in Thendrun' she said. 'It might be a lie. You know what our beloved queen is like.' Fost knew. 'But my father says she appeared to be speaking the truth when she told the Council of it. She was in a rare fury. Sparks were flaming off her the way they do when she's angry, like hot wax from a taper. Poor Tromym got his side-whiskers set on fire. A servant had to pour a beaker of wine over his head.'
'How did Synalon come by this information?' Erimenes asked. 'I only enquire to expedite this discussion,' he added with a courtly bow, having insisted on being let out of his jug, 'so that Fost can get back to sampling sundry carnal delights with you as soon as possible.'
Fost winced. Luranni only smiled. The courier noted the broad patches of her areolas and the way her nipples stood erect again.
'She divined it, she said. It was hard to tell what made her more furious, her sister betraying humankind or the Dark Ones betraying her. She seemed to think they allowed the Fallen Ones to ally with Moriana in spite of promising to aid her.'
'Mightn't the Vridzish have decided to take matters into their own hands?'
Luranni shrugged, then said, 'Synalon seemed not to think so.' She went to a pewter bowl on a shelf, took up a long slender fruit and began to peel it. 'She spends most of her time brooding and trying to make contact with the Dark Ones, and occasionally torturing some poor soul to death to take her mind off her problems.'
'Synalon has grown rather exalted in her own esteem,' Erimenes remarked, 'if she thinks she can summon the Lords of Infinite Night like some lower caste djinn.' He stroked her nose with a skinny forefinger. 'But enough talk.' Lur
anni took a bite from the fruit she held.
'I agree' she said, reaching for Fost.
Not only did the Sky City woman not seem to mind Erimenes's appreciative presence, she went out of her way to indulge in erotic variations that left Fost gasping for breath. The philosopher was elated. To each her own, thought Fost, then settled back to enjoy.
Since then he had found himself a full member of the Underground. He had been less than enthusiastic until Luranni pointed out that Fost wanted to join forces with Moriana again, and that Moriana, one way or another, was bound for the Sky City. He might as well lend a hand in the interim both to further the princess's cause and pay for his keep among the City's resistance.
Behind his normal congeniality Luranni's father had not been overjoyed to see the courier again. Fost took it for granted that if he did nothing to justify his continued existence, the High Councillor was fully capable of having him dropped over the skywall some night when the moons were down. In fact, he suspected Uriath might not be beyond hinting to the Monitors where a prize Rann would value highly could be located, but he kept that suspicion to himself.
Fost soon found himself enjoying his role as revolutionary. The subterranean life was far from unfamiliar to him. He had spent his early years dodging the Emperor's police and the goons of the various guilds until opposition to authority had become a part of him. Wandering through the Grand Library of Medurim under the guidance of Ceratith the pedant, Fost had come upon many works on the theory and practice of revolution. He had read them with the all-consuming eagerness with which he approached all learning in that halcyon stage of his life.
His first suggestion had been resisted vigorously by Uriath and the senior members of the Underground. Fost wanted the resistance to be broadened to include middle and lower classes as well as the noble-born.
'I'm a sorceror,' Fost told Uriath, 'and I can teach your people the secret of invisibility.' By that, he explained, he meant that the Underground was ignoring the best source of intelligence in the entire City.
'Who pays attention to servants? More than that, who heeds the glaziers who repair broken windows, the workmen who clean and polish the building stones, the maids who dust Queen Synalon's bedchamber?'
Uriath looked skeptical. Grinning, Fost gestured past the High Councillor. Plying a feather duster over the elaborate wooden screens hung on the walls stood a servant in the yellow and blue livery of Uriath's own household. Uriath turned a deeper red and agreed to try Fost's scheme.
It had borne fruit. Through workers in the barracks of the bird riders, the Underground had made contact with malcontents in the City's military, the first such breakthrough in the movement's history. Actual armed insurrection against Synalon became for the first time more than a dream as unreal as any evoked by the Golden Barbarians' drugs.
His spectacular rescue of Princess Moriana from the Vicar of Istu gave Fost a reputation with the Underground. It was enhanced by rumors of his victory over a war eagle, which he saw no need to balance by pointing out that the bird had smacked its own fool head against a building. When in spite of initial sullen resistance to the idea of recruiting members of the service class into the movement Fost's outrageous scheme produced results, he could do no wrong.
He'd made further innovations. The Underground's internal security was little more than wishful thinking. As far as Fost could judge, the only reason it survived was that Rann was too occupied with planning and executing Synalon's grand scheme of conquest to give much mind to the business of spying on Sky Citizens. Additionally, the leaders of the movement were too highly placed and valuable to the running of the City bureaucracy for Synalon to arrest without concrete evidence. So far, all the Undergound members had died before revealing the names of anyone important. But it was only a matter of time.
In the existing organization, the damage was done; each member knew the identities of too many comrades. For new recruits, including servants and disgruntled soldiers, Fost introduced a cell system. An individual never knew anyone outside his own three-person cell and those whom he or she recruited. Contact with superiors was done through those who had recruited the cell members themselves, and the recruiters kept their own identities secret. In this way the damage would be minimized if a captured rebel lived long enough to spill his figurative guts along with his literal ones.
While Fost played rebel leader, Erimenes consulted with various mages in the Underground about means of short-circuiting Rann's magical surveillance net. By using captive fire elementals, Palace sorcerors spied on any events near the direct glow of fire. It netted a fair number of disaffected citizens overly fond of sitting down before their evening fire and spouting off about the oppressions of the crazy queen.
Since that was unlikely to remain the only trick in the secret police's repertory, the fifteen-hundred-year-old sage was also trying to foresee and forestall new approaches of the opposition and to come up with ideas of his own. Though Erimenes's powers were limited, only coming into full potency when he was near his natal city of Athalau, he possessed what Fost grudgingly had to admit to be an excellent knowledge of the theory and practice of Athalar magic, magic involving the intrinsic powers of one's own brain. The Athalar, and Erimenes, were less knowledgeable about extrinsic magic involving the manipulation of powers external to oneself, such as elemental or demons. But even here Erimenes was a fount of useful lore.
To all appearances Erimenes was enjoying his role as hugely as Fost was his. He didn't even seem to mind that his labors and researches prevented him from watching the carnal antics of Fost and the willing Luranni, which grew increasingly more frantic as time passed and the inevitable but as yet unscheduled confrontation neared. Through the grapevine Fost heard intriguingly lubricous rumors about orgies among the younger mages and apprentices fomented by Erimenes. He didn't ask the spirit if there was truth in them. If there was, Erimenes would tell him in vastly more detail than he cared to hear.
But Fost worried. In the past, the genie's sole allegiance had been to gratifying his own lust for vicarious experience, particularly sex and violence. Back in the days of a more innocent eon, when Fost had been a mere courier delivering a parcel of unknown contents to a sorceror, Erimenes had repeatedly gotten Fost into trouble by calling pursuers down on him when he sought to hide. To hear the philosopher, he saved Fost from a life of cowardice. Fost knew Erimenes merely wanted to enjoy the ensuing bloodshed. When Moriana had stolen the jug from Fost and returned to the City to make her fateful reconnaissance, Erimenes promptly transferred his loyalty to the princess. And when Moriana was captured by Synalon, again Erimenes had switched his perfidious loyalties, seeing in Synalon and Rann the chance to sample their offerings of perversion and sadism.
After the escape from the City he helped Fost and the princess.
But he had aided them because they provided him legs and the chance to gain for himself the life-restoring Amulet of Living Flame. Since then, he had befriended Fost consistently, though he was always ready to provoke a good fight whenever he found things dull. Erimenes seemed to be genuinely on Fost'sside. But the courier could not forget Synalon's determination to exhaust the possibilities for perversion nor Rann's dark genius with knife and heated iron – or the attraction their activities had for a shade of Erimenes's tastes.
As long as Erimenes acted helpful, there was nothing Fost could do about him but worry. Which he did.
Like metal in a forge, the days warmed and stretched as summer came on. Fost taught urban guerillas in the day and engaged in sweaty sexual encounters every night. He started losing weight and growing dark circles under his eyes. Sometimes he worried about Jennas, who had helped and loved him, even knowing that she could never truly have him. And he thought of Grutz, his war bear; he had grown fond of the beast. But he told himself worrying was both futile and unnecessary. Jennas could care for herself, as could Grutz.
As time passed, he thought less and less about the hetwoman. But all the time he thought of Moriana.
He was not the only one preoccupied with thoughts of the princess.
'But Uriath!' Tromym's whiskered jowls bobbled mournfully above his goblet. 'The princess is laying plans to march against the City with the thrice-cursed Hissers. She might actually win. And then what becomes of us?'
Uriath sat at apparent ease, fingers steepled, allowing his eyes to rove over the screens adorning the walls of his study. They were quite ancient, depicting the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift: Gormanka with his Wind Wheel, Ust rolling the ball of the sun, lithe Jirre and her lyre whose music was irresistibly aphrodisiac, Ennisat blessing the first human settlers of the Realm with the knowledge of double entry bookkeeping, along with the other nineteen. Urialh used the pictures for both relaxation and as an excuse not to meet Tromym's eyes.
Uriath sighed, thinking what a congenital fool Tromym was. And fools quickly outlived their usefulness. 'She might, Tromym. She might also lose. Our most exalted queen has fought three major battles in as many months. And won each, but every time at a cost. What will remain of her strength after the final confrontation with her sister?' He blew out a long breath. 'And if Moriana wins, how strong will she be? In the disorganization following the invasion of the Sky City, it will be easy enough to eliminate her.' He picked up his own goblet and sipped. 'We might become heroes for doing away with her. She's turned traitor to her kind, after all, by enlisting the help of the Hissers.'
He belched lightly, rose, went to the window. It lay open to admit a breeze heightened with the sweet growing smells of the plains a thousand feet below. The two moons hung above the lower reaches of the Thai Is, pink and blue, casting the High Councillor's shadow behind him and across the table where Tromym sat.
'Don't forget the gift that subcurator of the Palace library made us. We have magical forces at our disposal now, too, ones our own mages don't even know of. That could give us the needed edge.'
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