Rann felt fingernails digging into his palms. He was glad his sleeves hid his hands. He didn't want Maguerr to guess the intensity of his reaction.
'So the Long-strider lives,' he mused, almost glad. In his bumbling way, the courier had been a formidable opponent. 'And the chieftain of the bear riders accompanies him. What can this mean, I wonder?' His mouth stretched into a taut grimace. He had not forgotten the Ust-alayakits, how they came from the night to take his Sky Guardsmen in the rear and slaughter them like children when he had the Long-strider at swords' points and Moriana not much farther away. Not since that terrible day in the Thails had he suffered such humiliation.
'Glad tidings you bring me, Maguerr, glad tidings indeed.' He patted the adolescent on the shoulder. 'I must confer with Her Majesty now. But await me in my chambers. We must discuss how best to use this intelligence of yours.'
Without knowing why, Synalon came instantly awake.
She lay for a moment in her bed, straining to hear that which made no sound. She slowly identified those she could hear. From without came the noises caused by the wind in its ceaseless dance past the high windows. The low creakings and settling sounds of the floating City seemed to rumble up through her mattress and naked body. Steam from salamander-heated boilers whispered through a coil of brass pipes across the chamber from her great bed. The radiated heat kept away the worst of the night chill, but it was cold outside and the heavy quilted comforters felt good.
Yet the silken sheets matted to her profusely sweating body. Her well-honed instincts sensed a deadly danger lurking. She summoned up the mental clarity needed to cast firebolts before she scanned the darkened, sparsely appointed bedchamber.
One advantage to the austerity was that it left few places for an intruder to hide. The queen lay motionless, flickering her gaze along the walls: nothing. Lids low and feigning sleep, she rolled onto her back to search the other half of the chamber. The delightful, skin-prickling caress of the Wirix silk sheets on her nipples went unnoticed.
Still, the subliminal message of danger gnawed at her brain. Menace was near. She knew it. Finally, reluctantly, she looked toward the last direction from which a person in a raven-guarded citadel a mile above the earth would expect attack.
As she turned her attention to it, the window exploded inward. She lay stunned as the doubled arch of glass and metal bowed inward and burst in a blizzard of glittering fragments. The carnage occurred in absolute silence. And for all its violence, it happened with awful deliberation, as if time had grown tired of its endless race and had slowed to catch its breath.
A galaxy of shards cascaded to the floor. Her years of probing the dark corners of the mystic had inured her to both wonder and horror. Yet this was so strange, so unnatural, that all she could do was lie and watch as the glass became a diamond pool of granules on the floor.
She looked up. A figure stood on the sill. 'Guard!' she shouted, even as she reached for the sheathed dagger under her mattress.
The door slammed open. She winced at the abrupt loudness. Two Palace Guards stood with swords clutched in trembling hands.
Her coverlet had fallen away, baring breasts that shone blue-white in the light of the lesser moon. Making no move to cover herself, the queen gesturedat the black dwarf crouching on the sill. The guardsmen charged.
The figure shook its head. Synalon discerned no features in the darkness, nothing about the intruder save that its proportions were those of a human dwarf with head large, torso small, and arms and legs stumpy and short. It reared up, however, to the height of a tall man. She caught a glimpse of blunt projections from either side of the long skull, and then the thing turned to face the onrushing guards.
The being laughed. Its chuckle gusted forth like a desert wind. Synalon saw it emerge as a mist of darkness that blew toward her attacking soldiers.
The breath-cloud roiled about the leading guard. He stopped, dropped his sword, and clapped hands to his face. The chamber rang with the sound of his shrill scream. Behind him, his companion stopped. He raised his weapon. The cloud enveloped him. He began to quiver and a gibbering sound, half laughter and half sobbing, bubbled from his lips.
The first guard dropped to his knees. His fingers turned mottled and dark. Synalon watched as the flesh dropped away, leaving the bones as naked as dead twigs. The flesh of his face blackened, too. His eyes met hers, immense orbs goggling from pits of bone, in a look of agony and supplication. Then he fell forward. Seconds later the other guard joined him in death. Through the rippling of mail on mail the queen distinctly heard the soft squashing of putrid flesh.
She moved quickly from the bed, the chill of the flagstones against her soles. With a conscious effort, she forced down the nausea she felt. She raised a silvery arm and aimed her hand at the apparition, palm foremost, fingers wide.
Power raged within her, fueled by fear and hatred and hot anger. The coverlet, bunched and fallen against one smooth thigh, began to smolder. Her hair lifted in a crackling cloud.
White fire blasted from her palm, Her eyes glowed like beacons as heat waves shimmered up from her pale, naked body. Never had she called up such power. The lightning bolt should have spattered the black apparition all over the room. It should have fused the very frame of the window into a vitreous lump.
It should have, it didn't. The lance of stark, raw energy lashed fully into the being's chest, then disappeared.
Synalon reeled. The stink of charred feathers from her coverlet seared her nostrils. She squinted at the glowing suns orbiting in front of her eyes. Beyond them, solid and black and impervious, stood the dwarf.
The thing chuckled again. The harsh and lifeless sound seemed more familiar to her now. Synalon poised for rapid action, but no cloud of corruption accompanied the laugh.
'Poor child,' the creature said. It stepped from the sill. The huge, ungainly figure seemed to float to the floor as if being lowered gently from a balloon.
Synalon let her head slump. Her hair hung in midnight swirls down the slope of her breastbone. Her arms hung limp at her sides. The intruder chuckled again in approval of her apparent submission.
But it was only feigned. As the black soles noiselessly touched stone, a wild cry ripped the night and a bird streaked in through the gaping window. The raven darted in for the kill.
With venom-gleaming claws inches from its broad black shoulders, the intruder raised a finger. The raven's wings shot from its sides. It veered in the air and hurtled toward its mistress, who had mentally summoned it to her defense.
So astonished was Synalon by the raven's perfidy, she could do no more than stand and stare. Talons reached to rip tender flesh. The intruder laughed again, gesturing.
The raven vanished. A black rose fell to the floor at Synalon's feet. She raised wide, stark eyes to meet the intruder's ebony gaze.
'Have you not guessed the truth, little sister?' the apparition asked. 'Or is this the way you greet the answering of your most fervent prayers?'
Then she knew. She had heard this voice before when the messenger of the Dark Ones had assumed the place of the fire elemental. At the realization, the being's form became familiar. With the stubs of horns jutting from its head, it was like a dwarfed cousin of the Vicar of Istu that stood in the Circle of the Skywell.
She fell to her knees. Exultation filled her. But it was exultation tinged with dread.
'Pardon, O messenger of the Great Lords,' she said. 'I could not know . . .'
The being shook its head cutting off her protestations. 'No harm done, except to your unfortunate bodyguards. It is what they are paid for, however.' It chuckled again. 'Besides, your precipitate action provided a useful lesson in the futility of opposing your will to even the lowliest servitor of the Dark Ones.'
The queen slowly stood. Her limbs had turned weak and fluttery. She knew something was amiss. The sense of danger heightened.
'How may I serve you, Lord?' 'No lord I,' the creature said, shaking its head. 'And it is not my will you serv
e but that of my masters.'
'Convey their commands, I beg you.' Such humility was as alien to her lips as the taste of spoiled food. Yet it wasn't hard to muster deference in the face of such power.
'No commands - now,' the messenger said, placing blunt fingertips together. 'I am merely to tell you that the Aspects are almost right. Soon will come the time.'
'Soon?' Synalon cried, her heart lurching within her breast. 'And will I be the instrument of the Dark Ones' will?'
'It is as I have said,' the apparition said. 'But you must reaffirm your obedience to my masters.'
'How?' Synalon asked, breathless with eagerness. The creature smiled. Its teeth sent back curved glints of moonlight like twin rows of dusky pearls. It dropped gnarled hands down past its belly. Something dark grew from the juncture at its squatty legs.
Synalon watched in fascination as it stretched toward her like a snake. The blunt head glistened like a dome of obsidian.
The Queen of the City in the Sky dropped again to her knees before the dwarf. Her hands, as hesitant as a virgin's, reached up to enfold the black member. She felt the pulsing of the great veins, as hot and fervent as any man's. Yet the skin was dry and leathery, a perfect match with the being's voice.
She opened her mouth to receive the benediction of the Dark Ones.
In the womb of night a dream of hate turned to one of pleasure.
Istu moaned in eternal sleep. The sleeping portion tensed for new disappointment. The last time it had known this peculiar excitement, this tingling delight in stony loins, it had been cruelly jerked away by rending agony. The demon slept, but it remembered.
But this pleasure was no ephemeral delight. It lingered. It grew. It crept like a vine up the imprisoned demon's spine. Softness, moist-ness, supplication, filled the sleeping mind with lusty sensation.
Images swarmed before the sleeping demon: a white body spread-eagled on a stone altar, with golden hair strewn in wild disarray; a silvery pale body bathed in moonlight, kneeling, faced a whiteness glimpsed through jet hair. The images expanded. The Sleeper felt the brush of thighs on hips taut with fear and horror; willing lips caressed its stony pillar. Hot tightness and futile struggle for escape drew the Sleeper's soul into a knot of delectable tension. Wet pressure, slipping, sliding, moving faster and faster. No longer chained to the altar. But still helpless. The demon's excitement soared.
And the familiar black hair, the pallid skin, the musk scent of excitement reached the Dreamer's nostrils. The one who had summoned him before only to tantalize and torture moved before him with deliberate actions. Certainty pervaded the sleeping demon that it would not be denied again. The black-haired one would make good the pain she'd caused him before.
Hands reached to grip her. Black hands, thick-fingered and familiar, yet alien felt and caused the Sleeper to feel. They gripped, twisted, pulled. Blue eyes flicked up, wide with anxiety. Istu felt himself sinking into a bottomless pit of ecstasy.
Vicarious ears heard the squeal of pain and fear. The Sleeper felt acquiescence enfolding it and gave itself up to pleasure.
A rushing dragged the Sleeper onward filling it with tautness, and the pressure exploded outward in a blaze of dark light. Squeals mounting like steps came to its ears like a song of joy. Blind delight pounded in its loins. In time the fury ebbed. The Sleeper's mind sank into a soothed and peaceful slumber. The bribe had been accepted.
Sleeping, the demon was little more than a child. It might not be reasoned with, but it could be bought with pleasure.
The Dark Ones would have Istu's obedience when released from bondage, even if his mind remained locked in the torpor imposed by Felarod. And far above the stone bubble still ringing with the bellows of a demon's ecstasy, the messenger of the Dark Ones reflected that a job well done brought more rewards than one.
'Aren't you worried that Cabric will find you, Fost?' asked Erimenes.
'That eunuch' said Fost, making a face in his ale. 'He'd be too busy counting his klenorto notice his own building burning down around his ears.'
The tavern bustled around them. Locations might change, Fost mused as he sipped his brew, but taverns, never. The alehouses of Kara-Est differed little from those of Medurim; those here in Tolviroth Acerte weren't distinguishable from any others. Perhaps inland taverns had a different milieu, but seaport taverns were all the same.
In his current state, this insight represented profound thinking on Fost's part. He had drunk too much. At his side Jennas, who had been induced to try the local dark ale instead of her amasinj, matched him mug for mug and showed no effects. He displayed a tendency to rock gently from side to side as though he stood on the si ickened deck of a sea-tossed ship.
It might have been newly acquired habit, though. The pair had just spent twenty-three days beating up the choppy Karhon Channel in Captain Karlaya's Wavestrider en route to Tolviroth Acerte. It had been a trying voyage. Two days running they had to stand in along the coast while a gale blew down the channel. Winter weather wasn't too extreme due to the slight axial tilt, and the considerable extent of the polar caps owed mainly to the smallness and coolness of the sun. However, the world also orbited near the primary, giving moderately short seasons. Midwinter had come and gone while the Wavestrider worked her dogged way toward Tolviroth Acerte.
Karlaya's predominately female crew inspired Erimenes to new heights of inventiveness. Sailors the world over being what they are, the spirit's imaginative lechery was greeted with much amusement by the crew.
Fost had a vague suspicion that some of his companion's more outrageous proposals had been carried out. The equinox celebration had occasioned much merriment and consumption of potent Jorean rum among Karlaya's crew. The Jorean mariners kept on good terms with Somdag Squid-face, God and Protector of Realm seamen. But he was not their deity. Instead, the Joreans worshipped Gormanka of the Wind-Wheel, like Ust the Bear, a patron of the Realm couriers. But so they would slight no one, they saluted all the deities, singing and dancing, during which the revelers became progressively less clad. Naked bodies, black and white, goosefleshed and sweat-polished, writhed passionately under the yellow light of the torches. And after that, in Karlaya's snug cabin in the sterncastle . . .
He didn't really remember more than the gaiety on deck. But the next day Jennas seemed more subdued than called for due to the aftereffects of the rum, and Fost had overheard her informing Erimenes in a low, lethally serious voice that if he ever so much as alluded to the activities of the night before, she'd heave him into the channel.
Now Fost did his level best to recapture the state he was in for the equinoctial festivities aboard the Wavestrider. He had arrived in Tolviroth Acerte to find that Moriana, Darl, and their carefully screened cadre had departed eight days before for the Continent. Jennas could hardly hide her satisfaction at the news.
Fost's reaction to his latest failure to catch the princess was to get stinking drunk.
'And whom are you calling a eunuch?' a voice bellowed from the tavern door.
Fost pulled his snout out of the earthenware flagon. The rude, grating voice hailing him sounded familiar, though in his befuddle-ment he couldn't quite place it. Nonetheless, his guts tensed in anticipation of trouble.
Broad shoulders blocked the tavern door. Below them the shape gave way to an equally broad chest and still broader belly, strong legs firmly planted. Above, the outline rose to something of a point without the apparent intervention of a neck.
The image snapped Fost's brain into focus. He raised mug to lips, sipped insolently.
'Well met, Merchant Gabric,' he said. 'How's business?' 'As good as may be expected when my top courier takes unauthorized leave.' Gabric stepped into the room, arms laid like hawsers across his chest.
'If I'm your top courier, you should pay me top money.' He took a measured draft. 'But that's academic now. I don't work for you any longer. You can consider my resignation retroactive to the beginning of my last assignment. That way, you needn't worry about severance
pay.'
'It's not that easy, you rogue,' Gabric shouted, his jowls turning ruddy. 'You have commitments to me! You've taken my coin. You can't just say, "I quit," and have done with it.'
Fost shrugged. He turned away, feigning disinterest. 'Fost's right, you know,' a voice commented at the courier's crooked elbow. 'You are a eunuch, Gabric. In fact, has anyone informed you that you bear the most striking resemblance to a gelded hornbull?'
Gabric's face slowly went from the hue of a cherry to a beet to a ripe eggplant. Worn-thick blood vessels throbbed at his bald temples as he leaned forward, blinking in the gloom at the thin, translucent figure wavering beside Fost.
'Aha!' the merchant roared in a voice that made his earlier outbursts sound like whispers. 'You're not just a contract breaker, you low cur. You're a thief, as well!'
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