Istu awakened wop-2

by Robert E. Vardeman

  'Now, where's that foul pact-breaking Khirshagk?' demanded Moriana. 'I'll scatter his ashes over the Keep of the Fallen, and the Heart of the People be damned!'

  The warriors raised a cheer. Fost started to ask what the Heart of the People was, but a giant hand slammed into his ribs and dumped him on his rump in the street. An instant later, a tidal wave of sound crashed into him and sent him sprawling.

  He rolled, recovered, found himself tangled with Moriana. A strange, dead silence descended. Moriana's lips moved but no sound emerged. Fost wondered what had happened to her voice. to the sounds of battle and the soothing song of the aeroaquifer. Then he saw a Sky Guardsman sitting a few yards away. A trickle of blood ran from one ear.

  Fost felt his own ears. His fingertips detected no wetness and a quick inspection of Moriana showed her ears weren't bleeding either. The concussion had deafened them but hadn't burst their eardrums.

  The Guardsman had gone as rigid as a marble statue. His arm was extended, pointing along the street they'd just cleared of the Hissers. Fost and Moriana exchanged looks and turned their heads that way.

  A rolling black cloud rose above the dizzying spires and rooftops of the Sky City, burning a hole in the sky as it climbed. Blackness shone from it like light from the sun. They had to look away, the bright afterimages dancing in their eyes.

  Moriana's cry pierced the armor of Fost's numbed ears. He looked back to see the great shape hovering just above the steep roof of the armory directly below the rapidly receding cloud. It was manlike in shape, though many times larger than the largest of men. And the horns that grew from either side of its blunt head were anything but manlike. It was the very image of the Vicar of Istu. No, you idiot, Erimenes's voice rang in his head. It's the original. The Demon of the Dark Ones shot upward and was gone. CHAPTER THREE

  The spells were sung, the aspects properly aligned.

  The mystical forces Felarod had forged to contain Istu had been hammered thin like gold beaten on an anvil. Yet still they held the ancient and mighty Demon caged in his stone prison. It would still take unearthly power to break the barrier.

  'And now that which we have awaited so long,' cried Khirshagk, 'shall come to passV For a long minute, he held the blackly blazing Heart high above his head. The others turned up their faces in rapture. His own twin hearts close to bursting, the Instrumentality brought his arm down and flung the diamond aganst Felarod's magic.

  The giant gem exploded. The ancient door was volatized by a ball of jet flame, as was the living stone for yards in all directions. Khirshagk and his twelve followers had only a split second to scream out their ecstasy before being engulfed and destroyed. Khirshagk and the others had known what fate awaited them and embraced death with the fanaticism of true martyrs. Not just their own lives but ten thousand years of their People's history had built toward this instant.

  Khirshagk fulfilled his role as Instrumentality. His hand released the Demon Istu and began the Second War of Powers.

  Free!

  The Demon's being crackled with unfamiliar energy. Its first reaction had been the reaction of its id: sheer terror. But its awesome mind awakened to the knowledge that centuries-old chains were no more. Free!

  With the fullness of that knowledge, awful and magnificent, Istu soared upward following the path the dark fireball had slashed through the foundation of the Sky City. Nothing dimmed his exaltation. Not even the sunlight, the contact with that hated aberration Light. He shouted defiance at the sun and soared upward to once again touch the Void, the disruption of order that was Dark. Free.'

  In a single beat of the massed hearts of the tiny paleskinned ones who infested the City of his children, Istu surged above the atmosphere, filling this being with the essence of the Void and Dark. The sun ball blazed at him, furious and impotent, and the stars looked down with malice. His laugh rang among them, echoing to eternity. In Dark and Void had the Universe begun, and to them it would return. Once again would the Dark Ones rule over placid oblivion, and their child and servant Istu would become One with them, One with Nothingness. Free.'

  Great joy surged at being liberated from the walls of stone and magic that had pinioned His mind and body for so long. Greater still would be the joy of revenge. Free! The Demon of the Dark Ones turned his attention downward.

  Stunned, Fost, Moriana and the rest scarcely had time to pick themselves up from the flagstones before Istu descended again like a flaming black meteor. With a strange, high keening the Demon flashed over their heads to touch down out of sight among the towers of the portside quarter of the Sky City.

  'Moriana?' asked Ziore from her jug. 'What happened? I feel the most peculiar presence…'

  'Don't!' screamed the woman. 'Keep your mind away from it. Don't try to read its thoughts or emotions. Don't even tryV

  'But… oh.' Ziore read the knowledge of what had just occurred from Moriana's mind. She knew better than to disregard such advice. If Moriana told her to keep her perceptions clear of the Demon, she must obey. The sorceress-queen had more intimate experience of Istu than did any living entity. Ziore read exactly how intimate that knowledge was and sent ripples of mental horror radiating outward.

  Fost wiped tears from his light-blinded eyes. First Moriana's fire-bolt, then the eruption from the center of the City and now the

  Demon's return had all etched their patterns on his retinas.

  'It's real, isn't it?' he asked, appalled at the power of the thing he'd witnessed. 'A demon. A real demon.'

  'The most powerful of all,' announced Erimenes, managing to sound melodramatic despite the enormity of the moment.

  Fost didn't feel his knees give way. He was simply standing one second and sitting the next.

  'Itsu. He's real.' He had seen the Demon manifest itself before, had seen the Vicar touched with unholy life, seen the hellglare of the Demon's soul burning yellow through the slits of the statue's eyes. But the Demon, the Demon, Istu, child and servant of the Lords of Infinite Night, had never been real to him. The Vicar had been evil and horrifying, but no more than a golem to be outsmarted with a simple cunning twist from an agile mind. Fost had defeated it and rescued Moriana. A mortal had vanquished an animated statue.

  But that force animating the Vicar had been the tiniest splinter of an immensely potent and incomprehensibly ancient mind. Before, Fost had faced only Istu's id, childlike and primal, a mass of drives and desires. He had witnessed awesome power – and this was only the smallest fraction of the true fore*3 of the Demon. And this!

  Above the highest spires of the portside district Istu reared up from the street, appearing to be a man-shaped hole cut into the overcast sky. His eyes blazed like windows to the surface of the sun. From them darted beams of impenetrable blackness. The tower of the Palace of Winds exploded. Moriana cried out as if her nerves were twined with the tower as it was dashed into a million fragments.

  Gazing numbly into the sky, Fost watched a block the size of a hornbull turn end over end and crash through the starboard wing of the Lyceum. Head-sized fragments rained into the intersection about them, knocking smaller chunks from the edifices. One boulderlike fragment struck the magic-powered aeroaquifer, forever stilling its voice and stemming its waters. The Demon laughed.

  His laugh pierced souls, rimed hopes and aspirations with quick-frost like that which Fost saw glazing the shards blasted from the Palace. Warriors whose bravery had gone without questioning a dozen times that day fell to their knees sobbing in dread.

  'He's real,' Fost repeated over and over to himself. No one else listened to his dazed litany. 'It's all real. Gods, Dark Ones, the War of Powers and all.'

  'Yes, you bemused jack-fool!' Erimenes snapped acerbically. 'Don't you understand? This day has truly seen the opening of a Second War of Powers!'

  Fost's response was to drop his face into his hands and moan. It did add up. One didn't need to be a bespectacled clerk in a Tolvirot counting house to arrive at the sum.

  He felt someone tugging at h
is shoulder. He shook his head with a peevish motion. All he wanted now was to crawl into his mother's lap – what did she look like? What was her name? – and cry himself to sleep. And maybe if he were very lucky, he'd awaken and find this all a nightmare sent by Majyra Dream Mistress to bedevil him.

  An openfisted blow slammed into the side of his head and sent him sprawling. Hispanic had been stripped from him like a wrapper, to uncover sudden fury.

  Moriana stood over him. Her expression was one of stark contempt. She thought him a cowardly groundling seeking the comfort of despair. He snarled and started up.

  When he gained his feet he saw the hauteur was gone from her face. Her eyes met his and he understood. 'Let's go,' she said simply.

  They raced back toward the center of the City and the broad promenade of the Circle. The Sky Citizens who had not been there to acclaim the new monarch now gravitated there naturally after escaping the Hissers and their demon ally. Moriana rapped orders, briskand businesslike in the face of calamity, marshalling her armed forces for resistance.

  A warning cry sounded. A platoon of Zr'gsz broke from a nearby avenue. An arrow storm cut them down. A triumphant shout rose from the crowd.

  'They don't know what they've got to contend with yet,' said Erimenes. 'But they will soon. All too soon,' muttered the spirit. Fost didn't bother listening. He stood frozen, his gaze riveted to the spectacle unfolding in the Sky City.

  Far down the avenue the Demon appeared, striding on two legs like a man. Edifices of grown or graven stone slumped into ruin as his swinging arms casually brushed them. The Vridzish were massed about him, insignificant insects beside the stories-tall entity.

  Arrows winnowed the ranks of the People. Dauntlessly, they came on, trotting to match the bandy-legged strut of Istu. Unbidden, the Sky Citizens rushed to the attack, black and purple-clad troopers and Underground fighters together, brandishing swords and spears.

  Istu stopped. The horned, misshapen head bent down to inspect these presumptuous pale worms. The burning eyes narrowed, reminding Fost of shutters closing on a magical vessel containing a fire elemental. But the glare of a salamander was mere heat and mindless malice. Istu's eyes burned without heat, but the hatred of old, soul-destroying evil that shone forth made Fost shrivel inside.

  Istu blew forth a black breath. The miasma billowed downward, impenetrably dark. Some of the advancing Sky Citizens quailed and fled. Others stood their ground. The same fate took all. Like a living fogbank, the black breath rolled over them. As it did, each of the soldiers exploded into a pink cloud of bodily fluids and shards of skin, leaving the skeletons to clatter hollowly to the street. The bones, still joined by sinew, gleamed pale and white.

  The black breath cloud enveloped all those who had been so bold as to rush upon the Demon of the Dark Ones. The noise of the explosions reminded Fost of unpierced fruit popping in the oven, a sharp sound with wet undertones. His stomach gave a queasy heave. Onward came the clouJ. The crowd realized it would soon overtake them. In terror some of them turned and flung themselves into the Skywell rather than have the Demon's breath on them.

  Moriana stepped forward from the line of troops she'd ordered across the avenue. Istu stood impassively, waiting to see what this golden-haired mortal made of its deadly exhalation. Silence seeped up from the very stones of the Sky City as Moriana raised her hands. A golden radiance sprang from her, resolved itself into a spear of light that leaped forward to pierce the cloud of darkness. The cloud exploded as had its victims. A few tatters of blackness danced on the wind, then vanished.

  An avalanche of sound rumbled deep in Istu's throat. 'It recognizes Moriana,' suggested Erimenes.

  Fost's throat constricted. For the queen's sake he hoped the Demon didn't realize this wasn't his first encounter with the tall, slim, defiant woman.

  Moriana flung out her arms. Her fingers reached, grasped, drew back toward her breast. The facade of a tall structure on Istu's left toppled forward onto the Demon.

  Istu roared and staggered. His horned head was above the level of the buildings and mere stone couldn't harm him. But the torrent of masonry affected him like a sudden gout of water would affect a human. He was driven back even as the falling stone crushed the Zr'gsz clumped around his feet.

  'She's learned a great deal, that girl,' Erimenes remarked approvingly.

  The black beams lashed from Istu's eyes. Moriana was prepared. Her hand was already in motion, drawing a curtain of shimmering flame across the air in front of her. The black radiance struck the flame shield; both disappeared.

  Breath pumped rapidly in and out of Fost's powerful chest. He felt helpless in the face of such magic. He clutched his sword, wishing for action and knowing this battle far outclassed his abilities.

  'Can she defeat him?' he whispered. 'Has she gained power greater than Felarod's?'

  Somewhere in the fracas, the lid of Erimenes's jug had come loose. In a whirlwind of blue fog and sparkling light motes, the genie appeared at Fost's elbow. As his long narrow head took form, it was shaking, a look of paternal disappointment on his ascetic features.

  'i hardly think so. Nor would you, if you truly thought on it. Consider, my foolish young friend. How alert are you after waking from a long, long sleep? Especially one deepened by wine or drugs. I suspect the after-effects of Felarod's compulsion have a similar effect on the Demon. Yes, they are definitely analogous to those of more mundane soporifics used extensively in the…'

  '! get the drift,' said Fost, waving a hand to stem the tide of Erimenes's pedagogy.

  Istu had shouldered through the rubble. He strode purposefully up the street, and Fost wondered if it was only his imagination that perceived a fiercer light in those yellow eyes.

  With a crack like thunder, a vast circular pit yawned before the Demon. Istu dropped instantly from sight in a welter of debris. Buildings to either side, their fronts undermined, slid into the hole. From the rush of air through the Skywell at his back, Fost knew the hole went all the way through the stone slab on which the City rested.

  Almost at once a black hand appeared, three fingered and taloned like a Hisser's. Once more Moriana had cast magic of incredible power at the Demon – and had only succeeded in delaying his progress along the avenue. With icy shock, Frost realized the Demon was playing with his mortal opponent. He could simply have flung himself to the Circle of the Skywell with the speed of rushing wind had he so desired.

  'Perhaps Istu treats this duel as a warming up exercise,' said Erimenes, reading the courier's thoughts.

  A look of alarm gripped Erimenes's features, and he shouted, 'Oh, no, you can't take that upon yourself!' The genie had mind read Fost's intentions.

  Unheeding, Fost looked around, then went to the young loyalist officer Cerestan, who stood with bow and arrow in his hands and glared with impotent fury at the Demon.

  'We need balloons and birds,' Fost shouted as the lieutenant's head whipped around. 'We have to evacuate the City. Now!' he added as the young Sky Guard started to protest Still Cerestan objected, 'We cannot abandon our City!'

  'This goes beyond the fate of your damned City! Any human who stays here will be dead within the hour. Don't you see? A new War of Powers is upon us. We need live humans to fight back, not dead fools who threw away their lives in useless heroics.'

  Fost watched as understanding sank into Cerestan's mind. He nodded, lank black hair falling across his forehead. He turned to obey, then halted with a jerk like a dog reaching the end of its tether. He faced Fost. 'The queen! What of her?'

  Fost read the look in those fervent blue eyes and inwardly groaned. He may have battled against Moriana but Cerestan was smitten with her all the same.

  'I'll take care of her,' he said, emphasizing the first word more than was necessary.

  Cerestan wheeled and raced off, calling to uniformed men and women as he passed. Some wearing Moriana's ribbons hesitated, but only for an instant. What side each had fought on before didn't matter now. They were all the same in th
e yellow eyes of Istu. And Cerestan was an officer of the Sky Guard, which meant that his orders were worth heeding. Rann promoted no fools to command his elite.

  Fost worked his way through the crowd, yelling to warriors and unarmed civilians alike to evacuate. Erimenes floated by his side, pleading with him to stop this folly and see to the security of his own hide. For Erimenes to encourage the courier to flee the scene of imminent violence was tantamount in likelihood to the spirit again adopting his old philosophy of abstinence. Fost realized the situation was grave if Erimenes was willing to forego bloodshed in favor of what he had termed cowardice on many prior occasions.

  'Get out, it's hopeless, get out!' was all the genie said. But he repeated it continually, his voice rising to shriller and shriller pitches.

  To Fost's astonishment, Cerestan led a tentacle of the frightened crowd aft from the Circle along one of the lesser streets – seemingly into the face of the Hissers. Even though his wits were dulled by fear and fatigue, Fost figured out the ploy. Istu himself was playing cat and mouse games on the main avenue with Moriana and most of the Zr'gsz were with him. The Hissers Cerestan and the rest ran into could be quickly dispatched. Then the Sky citizens would get to work inflating the huge cargo sausages in the aft hangars. Since Istu fought forward through the City, they'd be safer there than those who retreated to the City's prow, at least until Istu and his reptilian allies consolidated their hold on the Sky City. Then no human would be safe.

  '- have you impaled for impertinence, if she doesn't feed you to Istu,' babbled Erimenes as Fost broke from the ranks of soldiers and raced for Moriana. 'Great Ultimate, you know how fanatical she is about her City!'

  Moriana had blocked the avenue with a shimmering, rippling curtain of light burning scarlet and blue and gold and white. Buzz-ings and fat black sparks burst forth as Istu touched it. The Demon fell back with a bellow of pain. Fost saw all this as he sprinted after Moriana.

  With a sound like water sizzing on heated iron, a black hand reached through the shimmering curtain. With another anguished, angry roar, Istu hurled himself through the auroral wall. It caused pain but no damage. Pain was enough to infuriate him; he reached a clawed hand for Moriana.