"'Maanda Samilchut is Party Chairman,'" he quoted. 'Up till a year ago, North Keep was a republic; the President for Life was Maanda Samilchut. Before that it was a parliamentary democracy, and the Premier was Maanda Samilchut. And just before that, the dwarves had a constitutional monarchy, with, as self-crowned queen, Maanda Samilchut.' He fell back across the bed and rubbed his eyes. 'Need I go on? Dwarves have devilishly long life-spans.'
Sitting as much at ease as he could on a chair built for someone with legs a quarter the length of his, Fost batted idly at the fly circling his head and studied the bust of Chairman Samilchut in its alcove on the wall.
'How much longer will they keep us waiting?' Moriana stopped pacing a groove in the worn stone floor long enough to ask.
'A while longer, I suspect. The folk we're dealing with are bureaucrats as well as dwarves, and both groups tend to have cosmic sense of time.'
Over by the wall the two satchels had been laid side by side so that Erimenes and Ziore could carry on their perpetual squabble in relatively soft voices. Though every now and then a voice rose in a crescendo of indignation, for the most part their quarreling blended in with the incessant murmur of North Keep.
The North Cape Mountains lacked the size of the Mystics or the Ramparts, but they were second to none in ruggedness. Taking the coast road along the western face of North Cape had spared Fost and Moriana from struggling through the sawtoothed range until the road forked inland to the southern gate of North Keep. Northernmost was the tallest mountain in the North Capes, home to that peculiar, industrious, delving, grasping race, the dwarves.
The dwarves were the miners and smiths of the Sundered Realm. Their metalwork, especially blades and armor, were renowned throughout the world. The Thailot were more skilful artificers, the Estil unsurpassed in civil engineering, but in matters involving stone or stone worked with the principle of fire to become metal, the dwarves were unexcelled.
No one knew where they came from. Some said they had lived in their mountains, which like them were short and craggy and inhospitable, when humans first arrived on the Southern Continent twenty-two thousand years before. Others claimed they predated the Hissers; still others maintained they were descended from a troupe of freaks imported to entertain a Northern Barbarian lord in the sixteenth century before the Human Era. So the stories went.
Their patron was Ungrid An, the dwarvish goddess, one of the few members of the Three and Twenty to belong to a particular race. She was a harsh, dour goddess personifying fortitude, determination and sheer hard labor. She was also goddess of political upheaval representing both repression and rebellion, which helped account for the odd political climate in North Keep.
Keep and mountain were actually inseparable. Like the Nevrymin, the dwarves made their capital inside the dominant physical feature of their domain, but unlike them they didn't work upward from ground level only. Over uncounted millennia the dwarves had burrowed deep into the roots of the mountains, some said for thousands of feet below the surface.
Fost started to rise to offer Moriana his stool. She motioned him back and went around the paper-strewn miniature desk and sat in the absent functionary's chair. Fost grinned, partly in acknowledgement of her small defiance and partly because she looked silly with her piquant face framed by her knees.
He turned to study the bust again. It had been carved recently. He could tell because Samilchut wore a severely cut tunic with a high buttoned collar. Last year at this time, her representations had been draped in a graceful toga that left one massive deltoid bare, in imitation of Jorean state garb.
Moriana started tapping her fingers on the desk. Fost allowed himself to focus on the spirits' debate.
'- obvious to anyone with the least knowledge of etiology that this couldn't possibly -' '- piffle! That doctrine was decisively refuted by -'
He sighed and let the faraway sounds of thousands of dwarves at work in the bowels of the mountain, that strangely rhythmic pulse of North Keep, drown them out again. Their argument grew more and more abstruse with each passing day. If they followed their usual pattern, in a short while they'd degenerate to name calling and, with luck, fall into silent sulking for a blessed interval until one or the other said something and started the argument afresh. 'Ahem.'
Fost jumped, blinking away the drowsiness that had been coming on him. The obvious target of the guttural throat clearing sat behind the desk holding steepled fingers to her lips.
'You certainly took your time,' Moriana said to the stumpy woman in the shapeless black gown who stood glowering at her from the office doorway. 'You have a favorable reply for us, I trust?'
A smile shoved up the tips of the official's thin, dark moustache. Inwardly Fost groaned. All too well he recognized the unpleasant triumph of a bureaucrat presented with the opportunity to put the dagger to a member of the public displaying inadequate respect for the nobility of the petty functionary's calling. If Moriana read the same message she showed no sign. Given her background, Fost doubted she did.
'No.' She had a fine baritone, Fost noted. 'Worker Samilchut has no time to spend on discarded royalty – or self-proclaimed royalty – who try to disturb the peace of North Keep with bizarre tales and schemes.' 'She won't even talk with us?' Moriana stared in disbelief.
'Not at all.' The official consulted the sheaf of papers in her hand. 'Further, I must advise you that even if all you claim is true, you can still expect no help from the dwarves. For we sympathize with the so-called Dark Ones, as we do with all those who rise up to cast off the yoke of feudal oppression.'
She snapped her fingers to summon guards to escort the visitors out. Moriana was too stunned for words, which was probably fortunate. Fost took her by the arm, helped her from the chair and led her past the smirking official into the corridor.
Both had to bend down almost double to follow their escorts, militiamen in brown corslets topped by flat-bottomed iron hats resembling inverted pie plates. Each guard carried a lead-tipped cudgel in one hand and a lantern in the other, with short-hafted throwing hammers at their belts. Dwarves hurrying in the opposite direction either flattened against the walls or backpedalled until they came to a cross corridor they could pop into.
Fost and Moriana stood blinking in brilliant sunlight as the massive iron western gate slammed shut behind them. Fost yawned, gazing out over the Outer Town and the oily gray heaving of the North Cape harbor. With the hooked tip of the Cape itself shielding the bay to north and east, and the added protection of a long stone breakwater projecting south from the rocky, gull-decked headland, the harbor should have provided decent anchorage. It didn't. The breakwater was too short and too low, disappearing completely just before high tide each day. After a southwesterly gale, the dwarves made handy sums dragging ships off the stone docks and refurbishing staved-in hulls. Fost suspected the arrangement wasn't exactly coincidental.
At the moment, a dozen craft chanced the unseasonal southeasterly blow. Largest was a lethal and lean war-dromon flying the red and black flag of the Tolviroth Maritime Guaranty company.
'If,' Moriana said, speaking with the slow deliberation of anger, 'if and when I am restored to my throne and powers, I will come back to this North Keep and repay the dwarves for their friendliness and hospitality. By pulling their damn mountain down around their hairy ears!' 'No, you won't,' Fost said louder than he intended. 'What did you say?' she snapped. With that look in her eyes, his only defense was the truth.
'I said you'll do no such thing. Even if you – and humankind -loses this new War of Powers, life in North Keep will go on pretty much as always. Forever, if the Vridzish have any sense. Northernmost is a fortress no amount of mining, bombarding or ramming will bring down. The dwarves can and will fight for every inch of every tunnel with the ferocity of a cornered weasel. In the days of the Barbarian Dynasty, somebody estimated that there were more miles of passageway in their Keep than there were miles of Realm roads on the entire continent. They go down for miles.
'And I'd think even the Hissers' pet Demon would think twice about going down too far in the shafts of Northernmost Mountain. There are things lurking in the roots of these mountains that are only a little younger than the planet. Some of the things living there the dwarves made peace with; others they keep at bay with sheer ferocity and arts not even you can guess at. If they get loose aboveground, not even the Hissers are going to want the Realm.
'Other than that, I'd imagine you can just stroll in and take over anytime you please.'
'Quite impressive,' complimented Erimenes. 'You display hitherto unsuspected depths of erudition.'
Fost had the uncomfortable feeling Moriana was trying to decide whether to cinder him or merely turn him into a newt. A gull wheeled overhead, crying down mockery on both man and dwarf. Abruptly, Moriana laughed.
'Come along,' she said, grabbing Fost's arm. 'Let's get back to the inn before dark. I'm tired of watching the proletarian regime in action.'
The gradually opening door brought Fost awake with all senses wire-taut. A greenish dawnlight spilled across the floor from the partially shuttered window. Outside, a handcart creaked and thumped over the potholes in the street.
A hesitant footfall sounded; another. Fost lay still, forcing himself to breathe with the metronomic regularity of a sleeper, while he mentally estimated distances. In a leap he came to his feet, broadsword snatched from the scabbard hung at the bed's head post.
'Eek!' The innkeeper cringed back against the doorpost, eyes popping, trying to pull his head into the collar of his jerkin. He looked like a frightened turtle. 'P-please, gentles. I meant no harm!'
Fost became acutely aware that he stood naked in the middle of the floor menacing a three-foot dwarf with a sword nearly as long as the dwarf. Moriana stirred on the bed, wondering drowsily why her nude body was so precipitately uncovered. 'Fost, what's – oh!'
His initial fear dissolved into embarrassment. He resorted to the old masculine position: blustering rage.
'What do you mean by this, sneaking into our rooms? Come to murder us in our beds, no doubt!'
If the dwarf shook any harder, pieces of his body would come rattling to the floor. 'No, no!' he moaned.
'Aha! You voyeuristic scoundrel! Come to peep at the Princess Moriana in her nakedness, then, are you?'
'But the princess is so skinny and malproportioned, gentle sir. Why would I do that?'
Moriana cleared her throat. The conversation was clearly out of control.
'Just what is it you want, innkeeper?' she asked, sitting and making no effort to cover herself.
The dwarf glanced at Fost, who was still standing with sword menacingly pointed, then made the effort to calm himself.
'It's the militia. They're searching all over town. You must flee at once.' 'But why? What do they want from us?'
'Because of the news,' the dwarf choked out. 'The Sky City has stopped!'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The ship sang. The lyre sang harmony.
Soprano sang the rigging, squeaking on the blocks, sighing in the warm west wind. Bass sang the hull, moaning and cracking as seams opened and closed to the play of the sea. High sang the lyre, as silver and fleeting and lonely as the cries of seabirds. And low sang the lyre in bell-shaped tones. Standing by the starboard rail with Moriana at his side, Fost thought he'd never heard a sweeter sound or one sadder.
The song dwindled and became one with the past. Fost and Moriana looked up at the ship's captain, who had folded his unlikely body between two crenellations of the stout forecastle looming over the deck. He smiled and inclined his head. 'It was Jirre herself who taught me to play,' he said.
Moriana turned questioningly to Fost. He answered with a silent shrug. That the captain of the ship Wyvern was mad was indisputable. But knowing him as he did, Fost couldn't be wholly convinced he wasn't telling the truth.
Five days ago Fost's brain had reeled in incredulity at the innkeeper's tidings: the Sky City had stopped. Impossible! was his first reaction. The City had not simply kept immutably to following the Great Quincunx for all Fost's relatively short life, it had done so since before even humans had seized the City from its rightful owners eight thousand years ago. It had done so for two thousand years of the Hissers' tenure, since the end of the War of Powers when Felarod had confined the once free-floating City to its pattern above the center of the continent…
Since the War of Powers not even the Hissers had been able to alter the City's course. Since the binding of Istu. But Istu was no longer bound.
The word had come first to the Outer Town courtesy of a Wirixer factor who lived in a sprawling marble pile built during the occupation by the Northern Barbarians. The Wirixers had a sorcerous communications network, as did the Sky Citizens, though the Sky City had had no direct representative in North Keep for several years. The news that the City had come to a halt in the air after passing over Wirix soon spread to the Keep itself. The reaction was immediate.
The grapevine hummed with news that Chairman Samilchut was drafting an offer of alliance to be transmitted to the Zr'gsz, though how it was to be sent was still uncertain. The Wirixer wasn't going to do it, not while his home city was besieged by an army of the Fallen Ones. While it was true, as Fost said, that even with Istu on their side the Hissers would take years to reduce North Keep, Samilchut deemed it wise to try to get on the good side of a power that could stop the ten-thousand-year progress of the City in the Sky. The fact that she would be a long time losing didn't encourage the dictator to seek war.
It took no great deductive powers to realize that the former ruler of the Sky City, onetime ally of the Fallen Ones, might make a nice gift for North Keep's chairman to send the People as a token of her friendship. Fost and Moriana had found themselves shivering in the wet dawn wind on the swaybacked docks of the Outer Town, wondering how they were going to reach the ships anchored out in the harbor.
Teeth chattering, Fost eyed the ships. Apparently no one left small boats moored at the dock overnight and whatever boatmen plied the harbor were still in bed on this bleak morning. He wondered if they could swim out with their dogs to one of the vessels. He and jennas had escaped Tolviroth Acerte in similar fashion a few months ago plowing right into the bay on the backs of their bears. This time, they couldn't be sure of the reception awaiting them once they clambered over a strange ship's gunwales and asked for asylum.
His gaze kept coming back to one ship in particular. It was the largest, anchored next to the Tolvirot warcraft. Fost knew little of ships but could tell there was something peculiar about this one. Its proportions were wrong, as if its designers had set out to make it one thing and midway decided to change it into another. And it had a familiar aura to it as well, a combination of sloppiness and a shipshapeness that reminded him of a man he knew to be dead.
'Down there,' Moriana said, tugging at his sleeve. 'There's a boat.' Bumping its nose against the seawall like an amorous dolphin bobbed a square-prowed dinghy. They walked the hundred yards to the boat. Three men stood on the deck near it. One leaning against a pile of cordage was obviously the crewman who had rowed the boat to shore. Another, a tall storklike man in a flapping black cloak whose sleeves fluttered in the wind as he gestured gave the impression he was trying to become airborne. He had to be a local merchant. And the third…
Fost stared hard. He was well above average height for a dwarf, but there was no mistaking the shortness of limb and the sturdiness of body. His kinky hair was a golden cloud floating around his head – no pure-blooded dwarf had any but straight hair. As the disbelieving courier grew closer, the aristocratic fineness of the man's profile became apparent, another blatantly un-dwarven characteristic.
'What a strange man,' Moriana whispered. 'I've never seen the likes of him before.'
Fost said nothing. His eyes remained on the man. He was certain there couldn't be two such men in the world – and the one Fost knew was dead.
The golden dwarf turned in irritation at the intrusion
. Immediately, his face transformed into a mask of sheer joy. Ortil Onsulomulo smiled and bobbed his outsized head. Luck had finally smiled on Fost and had continued during the past five days aboard the Wyvern.
'Yes, a goddess taught me the arts of the lyre. Do you doubt it?' He struck a chord and the listeners felt their eyes fill with tears. He strummed another chord and mirth bubbled up inside. A third and Fost and Moriana felt that some ultimate truth hovered just beyond their fingertips waiting for the tiniest exertion before they could grasp it.
'No, Captain Onsulomulo,' Moriana said, shaking her head. 'I don't doubt it.' 'I'm sure the captain speaks metaphorically,' put in Erimenes.
Onsulomulo shook his head stubbornly. His jaw set and the expression on his cheerful face hardened.
'I speak unvarnished truth, blue ghost who thinks too much about screwing.' He bounced to his feet and tucked the instrument under one arm. 'The Wise Ones love me. Because Fate has cursed me, the goddesses and gods pity me.'
'I can almost believe it,' muttered Fost. He had last seen Onsulomulo peering over the rail of the dwarf's ship Miscreate, which was being drawn up in a waterspout formed by an air elemental Synalon had called to devastate Kara-Est harbor. It was impossible that Ortil Onsulomulo lived. Yet it obviously took more than a howling elemental to stop him.
The courier still had the eerie feeling that the Three and Twenty kept their eye on him, too, just as Jennas maintained. Not only was the half-dwarf captain overjoyed to see him, he insisted on providing Fost, Moriana and the ghosts and dogs immediate transport to High Medurim – free. And more than mere transportation, Onsulomulo also offered the pair the protection of his escort, the TMG dromon Tiger.
'You, my friend,' Onsulomulo had said, hugging Fost to his barrel chest, 'you are the source of all my good fortune!'
It was hard to deny. Instead of smashing him and his ship to splinters, the air sprite had deposited Onsulomulo and the Miscreate in the Central Plaza of Kara-Est with loving care. It had presented the city's conquerors with a knotty problem. No matter what their eventual plans of conquest, the City in the Sky couldn't afford to alienate either the dwarves or the Joreans. The fact that since siring his bizarre bastard Ortil's father Jama Onsulomulo had become Minister of Education for the western Jorean province of Sundown made it difficult to adopt the expedient solution of bashing in Ortil's head and claiming the elemental had killed him in combat. Ortil Onsulomulo was just not the kind of neutral one could kill with impunity, in the heat of battle or otherwise.
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