'Duck!' screeched Erimenes. The courier had only a split second to evaluate the situation. Moriana stood poised, her face strangely calm, a blue nimbus of energy scintillant around her form. Herarms slowly rose, as if imploring the gods for aid. Fost dived headlong, not wanting to be caught in whatever defensive magic Moriana was about to unleash.
He felt a tingling close about his middle like a noose. He hung suspended in midair, the pressure around his waist threatening to crush him. Fost gasped, then reached out and gripped a protruding cobblestone with his fingertips. Straining every muscle in his body, he pulled. Like a seed squeezed between thumb and forefinger, he squirted out of the magical grip holding him. He tucked his shoulder and rolled on the hard street.
'What're you doing here?' Moriana's voice sounded odd, flat. Fost sat up and saw that they were encapsulated by a dome of dull silver. 'The force shield will keep him out for a few minutes.' She shook her head tiredly. 'I learned this magic years ago but have never been strong enough to use it before.'
Fost thought about frail mothers who lifted impossibly heavy blocks to free their trapped infants. In those moments of adrenaline fury, they became more than human. The urgency of battle against this cosmic being had elevated Moriana's powers in the same fashion.
'The City is being evacuated,' he told her. 'I came for you.' 'Evacuated!' she screamed. Her face twisted in rage. 'On whose craven order?'
'I told you, friend Fost, nothing good would conic from that rash action of yours, but you didn't -' 'My order,' Fost said, cutting off Erimenes.
Moriana raised a slender hand. Fost stood firm, though he knew magics capable of fending off Istu for the barest fragment of a second would blast him into a scorched cinder. 'You.' By what authority?'
'As your acknowledged consort. But mostly common sense.' He cast a quick glimpse upward at the pewter-colored wall of force. It held. The Demon seemed unsure how to deal with it, but Fost didn't doubt that Istu would eventually penetrate the curtain.
'The City's lost. All that remains is for her people to save themselves. And you, too. You most of all.' 'I'm holding Istu!'
'You hold him – barely. He hasn't fully recovered from his enforced ten-thousand-year nap.'
'But I grow stronger with every instant. I feel it!' Her eyes burned like balefires. She had won her City at horrendous cost. The thought of losing it almost in the same instant of seizing it drove forth her sanity like a beast.
'Are you Felarod?' he shouted at her. The dome began to bulge inward like a tent roof filling with rainwater. Istu had decided to push his way through using brute strength. 'Do you control the power of the World Spirit? Can you overcome a demon born among the stars?'
'He's right, Moriana.' The calm voice seemed to come from nowhere. Fost finally realized it emerged from the satchel so much like his own that Moriana carried over her shoulder.
The queen's shoulders slumped. The sight squeezed tears into Fost's eyes. He knew again how much he loved her, and her loss was a shared wound.
'Come,' she said, almost imperceptibly. Serpentlike her hand darted out to catch Fost's wrist. She dragged him toward the wall of the dome. He hung back, recalling what it had felt like going through the barrier as it formed.
The silvery hemisphere burst like a soap bubble. Istu's iron-black claw plunged deep into the pavement where they'd stood only seconds before.
The Circle was almost deserted when they reached it. At the fringes of the great plaza Zr'gsz began filtering in from the side streets. Moriana stopped to gather a full quiver of arrows and kept running, pausing now and then to cast some enchantment at the Demon following them. Fost didn't even look back to see what spells she hurled at Istu. It was too painfully apparent they were little more than annoying inconveniences to Istu.
Forward of the Circle, they ran into a crowd. Off to their left an elongated cargo balloon surged into the sky. Screaming people dangled from its gondola as the sausage rose from the streets to be dragged clear of the City by a laboring eagle. Bird riders helped refugees mount eagles. Each could carry only a single passenger, and Fost saw more than one scimitar fall and come up red as hysterical men and women tried to fling themselves onto already overburdened warbirds. Moriana's step faltered. 'My poor people!' she cried. 'Only a handful will escape!'
Fost knew beyond doubt she was about to decide that she had to remain until all the Sky Citizens possible had been saved. He prodded her with his broadsword.
'Go on, damn you! We need your magic if we're to have a prayer of winning this!' Her eyes were green daggers, but she picked up the pace again.
Something whined past Fost's cheek. He slapped at it, thinking it an insect. His palm came away red.
He glanced back. The Vridzish had taken the Circle and were slaughtering refugees intent on fleeing forward to the prow decks. The lizard warriors moved with inhuman swiftness, their weapons all but invisible as they struck yielding flesh. Behind them, Istu stood in the Circle of the Skywell, horned head thrown back, raping the sky with his basso profundo laughter.
A pressure on Fost's arm brought him up short. They were at the waist-high wall ringing the City. 'Now what?' he asked.
Moriana's answer was to sling her bow over her shoulder, jerk out her longsword and parry the blow of a mace with one smooth motion. This snarling lizard man riposted with increasing speed. Moriana scarcely weaved out of the arc of the flanged mace before Fost lopped off the gray-green arm and plunged his blade through the Hisser's chest. Other lizard men ran toward them. 'Can you hold them?' shouted Moriana. 'No!'
Ignoring his response, Moriana turned and leaped as lithely as a cat to the top of the rimwall. She stepped forward into space. Fost cried out in loss. Her despair had driven her to suicide!
'It's you who's about to suicide, dolt! Turn around. Fight!' At Erimenes's urging, Fost moved to slap away a spear jabbing for his midsection. The spear pulled back only to shoot forward again and take him in the belly. He doubled over, gagging. The Hisser's throat swelled in triumph.
Grabbing the haft of the spear, Fost stabbed out with his sword. The Hisser gave a croak of surprise as the blade pierced his throat sac.
Fost rose, ripping his sword free and wrestling the spear from the lizard man's death grip. The Vridzish hadn't struck with enough force to drive the obsidian-pointed spearthrough Fost's mail, though links had parted under the force of the blow. Luck had been with him this time.
A high caste Zr'gsz stood before him, breastplate gleaming green. The finely scaled skin of face and hands were so dark as to be almost black. The Vridzish flicked a two-handed mace at Fost. Instinct made Fost turn and block with the spear, which was almost knocked from his grasp. He cut at the Hisser's head. The mace knocked his sword aside, iashed out again. It struck chips from the wall as Fost dodged to one side.
Recovering his balance, he launched a whining multiple attack, one-two-three cuts in rapid succession. The mace met and countered each. He only saved himself from the crushing head by falling forward. The wooden shaft that had saved his life once now slammed into his left shoulder. He gasped in pain as his clavicle snapped.
He hacked at the Vridzish noble's side. His blade met the metal breastplate and was robbed of its force. He heaved, bringing his sword up along the inhuman's armored side to slice into the unprotected armpit. The Hisser dropped the mace between his body and Fost's and shoved the courier back.
Wary of the head with its five ugly flanges, Fost was caught off-guard when the Vridzish shifted his grip and whipped the butt of the weapon into Fost's face. Fost heard the crunch of his nose breaking. Lightning ricocheted inside his skull and nausea turned his flesh to water. He reeled, blinking to clear his eyes, saw the gleaming metal head rise up, up, up, poising to smash in his brains. ..
Shot from pointblank range, the broadheaded arrow stuck the Hisser in the neck with such force tt nearly severed the neck. Fost saw the lizard man's look of final surprise as the head lolled to one side. Then the Zr'gsz fell flopping and kic
king while black blood fountained from its neck to spray the lower caste Hissers behind.
They shrieked mad sibilants and lunged forward with weapons raised.
'Jump, you fool! It's your only chance!' Impossibly, the voice was Moriana's.
His skull pounding, his sight blurred, his left arm swinging at his side like so much dead meat, Fost couldn't hold back the reptilian Hissers for even a heartbeat. Knowing he was going to his death and loath to fall to these villains from a child's fable, he spun and dived over the rimwall into open air.
The ground loomed up at him from a thousand feet below. CHAPTER
FOUR
Fost Longstrider fell only four feet.
He had both arms crossed in front of his face. They took most of the force of his landing on the slate gray stone platform. His broken nose smacked hard against his forearm, sending a white-hot lance of pain into his brain. The wire-wound grip of his broadsword twisted in his hand, giving him a nasty cut on his left forearm. Even worse than the other abuses to his body, the force of his fall caused the stone platform to sink beneath his weight, leaving his stomach inches above his spine.
He felt the platform stir, rise. Fost lay dazed, watching the fireworks in his head and wondered whether or not he was glad he hadn't plunged the other 996 feet to the ground. The stone slab rocked gently like a boat bobbing at a dock. The nausea he felt from his broken nose was made all the worse by the motion. He guessed what had happened and where he was, but he kept his eyes clamped tightly shut. At this stage he didn't want to know.
'Is he all right?' he heard a worried feminine voice ask. Since it wasn't Moriana, it had to be Ziore. Her voice came out sounding elderly but strong and resonant and distinctly different from the screeching sounds she'd made at Erimenes.
A thump and a scrabble of claws came only a foot away from his head. The raft rocked under the impact of the added body. He heard the swish of a weapon cleaving air, the thunk of Moriana's longsword intercepting the axe-cut aimed at the back of his head.
The reek of Zr'gsz stung acridly in his nostrils. Anger filled and drove back nausea and pain. If the reptilian bastards weren't going to let him lie in peace, he'd make them sorry for it.
He seized the lizard man's ankles. The skin rippled smooth and dry, its texture differing only slightly from human skin. Before the reptilian Hisser reacted, Fost yanked hard on the ankles and flipped the creature into space between the blunt nose of the slab and the City wall.
He still wanted little more than to lie down and die, but the berserk fury he'd come to know in moments of battle settled on him like a cloak. He rose up and scythed three Zr'gsz from where they stood poised to leap from the rimwall.
'Bravo!' cried Erimenes, as the three sundered bodies plunged from view to the ground so far below.
Moriana thrust by him with a spear, not at a Vridzish swarming up onto the sky wall to attack but at the gray stone of the Sky City itself, pushing the skyraft clear. With a speed he didn't know himself capable of, Fost parried the stab of an obsidian-headed spear, then severed with a rapid backlash the claw that gripped it. Surprised, the Zr'gsz spearman lost his balance and fell into the rapidly widening gap betwen skyraft and City.
With the raft slowly drifting from the City, Moriana flung the spear at the Hissers, striking one in the shoulder. Panting with the fury of his own bloodlust, freshly roused and scarcely satisfied, Fost chanced a glance at the young queen.
'Faith-breakers!' she screamed. 'I'll pay your folk back as I pay you now!'
Like sheet lightning, a wave of red flame burst from her body. The dozen Zr'gsz crowding onto the rimwall screamed, not screams of agony but the screaming of superheated air blasting from their lungs as the flame consumed them. So frightful was the energy blazing from Moriana that when the fire died it left a huge glowing yellow spot etched on the very stone. The few Zr'gsz left alive in the vicinity of the rimwal! broke and fled toward the Circle of the Well of Winds and the comforting presence of the Demon.
Fost opened his mouth. Before he could speak Moriana's sea green eyes dimmed and closed. She fell heavily. Only reflexes honed to unnatural keenness by the berserker fit enabled him to catch her before she pitched headlong over the nose of the raft.
Squatting, he lowered her to the stone. Strength drained from him like water from a tub with its plug pulled. His legs refused to lift him upright. Instead of trying to stand, he sat beside her, staring back at the City as it slowly receded.
His first thought was of pursuit. Hundreds of rafts nosed against the forward edge of the City as the one they now rode had been, bobbing gently on passing air currents. Had the Zr'gsz wanted to, they could have sent flyers to run down the fugitives in a matter of minutes like hawks bringing down a fleeing dove. Somewhere in the dizzy whirl of that day, Moriana had mentioned to Fost that she didn't know how to operate the Hissers' skyraft. He certainly didn't have the foggiest idea how to maneuver it or to speed it up. If the Zr'gsz wanted them, they were easy pickings.
But the Vridzish obviously didn't care about the fugitives. The pale green faces of lower caste Hissers watched the raft blankly from the ramparts of the City. Here and there the darker features of a noble turned their way to scrutinize them briefly, only to turn away again. Fost sensed that they knew well that the potent human sorceress whose friendship they'd betrayed, whose vengeful might had actually given the mighty, eons-old Demon of the Dark Ones pause, escaped them on the tiny raft. And they did not care. Their indifference chilled him more than pursuit.
Nowhere did the Zr'gsz show any sign of pursuing the humans as they fled from the City in the Sky. Fost saw shrieking women and children hounded like beasts through the streets, saw the shapes of the Vridzish hunch over the bodies of fallen human warriors, some of which still writhed with life, tearing at the bloody feast with their sharp, inhuman teeth. Only those humans they brought down did they bother with; their main purpose seemed to be to rid the City of the pale, soft-skinned creatures who had stolen that realm from them so long ago. Like men hunting vermin. Fost's flesh crawled at the thought.
And the vermin were fleeing the City. The sky above the lofty spires and buttressed wall of the Sky City seethed with eagles winging away in search of refuge, burdened with human cargo. Balloons broke from the confines of the City and floated downwind, humans dropping from their gondolas like ill-shaped raindrops. Too numb to feel horror, Fost wondered distractedly how much of the City's populace had escaped. There had been so little time, though Cerestan and the rest seemed to have wrought miracles in saving those they could. A large number of the sausage kites and round passenger balloons drifted in the City's wake.
But there were too few balloons, too few eagles to hope that any significant number had been rescued. As Fost watched, scores of giant warbirds beat back to the City gathering frantic humans onto their backs or into their strong claws to make a second, or third or fourth trip to the ground. The sheer number of refugees mocked their efforts. Those not fleet enough to outrace the hissing, croaking Vridzish died horribly. Those who outdistanced their pursuers, only to reach the rimwall with no means of transport to the ground, cast a single look over their shoulders at the horror being wrought on their City – and jumped. In the middle of the Sky City Istu made sport.
He was kicking the haughty Palace of Winds to pieces and flinging giant building blocks for miles in all directions. Great pillars of smoke rose from a dozen locations within the City. A minaret of some noble merchant's mansion collapsed in the street, undermined by unseen claws. Streams of trotting low caste Zr'gsz made their way to the rimwall and back into the tangled streets bearing varied bundles: rolls of cloth from warehouses, tables and chairs, cabinets and crates. Some bundles had human shape and some of these still kicked with frantic life. All to no avail – over the edge they went, along with oddments and artifacts of human existence in the Sky City.
'See what they do, my young friend,' intoned Erimenes. During the battle he had retreated into his jug, leery of get
ting caught in the nimbus of some stray battle-magic. Now he appeared in the air at Fost's side once again. 'They seek to expunge all trace of the hated interlopers from the City in the Sky. I suspect that even those structures they originally built themselves, but which have been extensively modified by men, shall be razed.' He shook his head. 'It is an awful hate that can bide for eight millennia.'
Fost had no ready retort. His head felt like a ball of lead and his eyelids like leaden shutters. His own exertions overwhelmed him. He had fought two desperate battles, faced dangers mortal and mystic a dozen times, and seen the realization of the fear that had been nurturing since Jennas of the Ust-alayakits had begun hinting to him months ago that a new War of Powers could be in the offing. It was enough action, danger and horror to last a hundred lifetimes. He had no idea how Moriana felt after her ordeal. He was only glad she was unable to see the singleminded ferocity with which her former allies cleansed the City, even to the point of casting her people over the side like so much rubbish.
He heard a vast, many-throated squawk and a cracking of wings like sails snapping to a stiff breeze. His last sight before unconsciousness was of Synalon's ravens billowing upward from the rookeries like a huge evil black cloud.
'Good morning, friend Fost,' a cheery voice said. The words were muffled by layers of fog and pain. 'You know, you actually look quite dashing with your nose mashed down like that. It makes you seem positively rugged. And since it has never lain altogether true, it's no detraction from your personal beauty, such as it is. An improvement on the whole, I'd say.'
'Shut up!' bellowed Fost, heaving himself to a sitting position. His roar set his head ringing like a bell. He groaned and fell back, clutching at his temples.
'Tut, tut, my dear boy.' He heard the philosopher's infuriating tones as if they came from far away. 'You really do need to curb that impetuous nature of yours.'
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