Some inches taller than Fost, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed accusingly at the black-haired courier.
'I hereby charge you with commercial malfeasance. To wit, that you did willfully and without authorization take leave of your duties in violation of your contract with Gabric Exports, Inc., and did furthermore misappropriate to your own use property paid for and duly consigned to one Kest-i-Mond, mage, county of Samadum.' He lumbered forward with heavy menace, looking like some shaved cousin of Grutz or Chubchuk. 'I take you into custody, as called for by the Tolvirot Commercial Code, Section Forty-six, Sub-paragraph A.'
Fost leaned back against the bar. He had no contract with Gabric, and there was no wrongdoing in his having Erimenes. Kest-i-Mond had been dead before the courier delivered the wayward spirit to him. The courier started to explain this to Gabric. He had forgotten, however, the full extent of Erimenes' waywardness.
'You and what army, blubber-belly?' taunted Erimenes cheerfully.
'Great Ultimate,' Fost moaned. Gabric had no claim against him. But if a scuffle broke out thanks to Erimenes' vicarious bloodlust, Fost could wind up in serious trouble. The Tolvirot authorities would not look kindly on anyone damaging a merchant as prosperous as Gabric.
Jennas hissed beside him. He looked toward the door and tensed. 'Fortunate you asked us along, good Gabric,' said a whip-thin voice. 'This ruffian seems of a mind to give you trouble.'
The. owner sauntered through the door, gauntleted thumbs thrust through his sword belt. He was a small man, his wiry frame clad in an impeccable livery of black and purple. The sword at his waist was curved as were the sidearms of the five men following him into the tavern.
'Aye, that he is,' smirked Gabric. 'When did you expand into the novelty pet line, Gabric?' asked Fost, eyeing the sextet of Sky City bird riders.
Gabric's pig eyes rolled from the soldiers to Fost. Beads of perspiration gleamed on his brow.
'I knew you might prove difficult since you've always been inclined toward fiscal instability and might prove unwilling to retire your debts. I asked these gentlemen to accompany me. They are the new Sky City trade delegation.'
'Trade delegation,' snorted Fost. If any of these bird riders had ever been involved in any exchange other than sword thrusts, he'd eat Grutz, hair and all.
A sinking sickness settled into Fost's belly. The soldiers' presence meant Rann had found out he still lived. At this stage in their conquest, the City in the Sky did not want to risk murdering a man in Tolviroth Acerte who was nominally a citizen of the City of Bankers. But if its agents accompanied someone with a commercial grievance against the courier in the expectation he might prove obstinate . . .
'Do what you want to the courier,' said the leader of the bird riders. 'But we get the barbarian girl. Remember.' His voice snapped at Gabric like a lash. The merchant bobbed his head.
The crowd pressed back. Gabric closed in and a sliver of steel sprouted from one hand, incongruously slim in the vast paw gripping its hilt. Behind Gabric the bird riders drew swords.
'You've got an insolent tongue, Longstrider,' growled Gabric. 'I think I'll cut it out.'
Fost swept his arm around in a blur, his half-filled mug slamming into Gabric's face. The merchant dropped like a bag of wheat. Seeing this, the bird riders lunged in. A whining arc of steel sent them leaping back as jennas whirled her greatsword. The leader spat a command. They spread out. Inn patrons vanished like quicksilver. Gabric moaned and tried to rise, fingers groping for his gilded dagger. Fost kicked him hard in the belly. 'Bravo!' cheered Erimenes. Fost feinted at a bird rider, spun, and hacked at another who'd closed in quickly believing the courier's back exposed. A frantic move interposed the smaller man's scimitar between broadsword and his flesh. The bird rider fell, stunned by the force of the blow. As he tumbled backward, he carried the others with him.
Fost couldn't fight well in the cramped interior. He motioned Jennas outside. She lunged for the door, then paused to look back at him. The courier waved her forward again. She ran out into the street with Fost close behind while the Sky City men tried to reorganize.
A staggering patron stumbled in Fost's way. The courier considered the cries from behind him, the drunkard and the impossibility of escaping quickly through the door. So he tucked Erimenes' satchel safely behind him and hurled himself through the large leaded-glass window fronting the tavern.
Glass exploded into the street. Riding dogs barked in surprise. Jennas had already mounted Chubchuk, waving her sword in the faces of a fresh trio of the men in Sky City colors.
Fost threw himself over Grutz's broad back and clung. Pursuers boiled from the door of the tavern, trampling the drunk. As Fost hauled himself to a sitting position, Jennas kicked Chubchuk into a shambling lope up the brick street.
Finally astride, Fost set off after Jennas. Grutz rumbled smugly to himself as he ran with surprising speed. From the other end of the block came a new commotion. The watchmen from Peacekeepers, Inc., had arrived on the scene.
Tarinvar the Steersman sat by the rail of the lugger Gallinule scrimshawing a piece of juggernaut fish ivory none too skillfully when he heard a frightful thrashing in the water.
He raised his head. The carving fell from numbed fingers. Clambering up the far rail was a demon twice the size of a man and dripping with water and weeds. Tarinvar's eyes tried to pop from their sockets. The demon returned his stare with a red-rimmed scowl.
'Grrr,' said the demon.Tarinvar leaped over the side, not waiting to hear more. The bosun emerged from the midship's cabin and came running aft. The first thing he saw was the inexpert idol of Somdag Squid-face which Tarinvar had left behind. The second thing he saw was the monster. Dark and malignant, it hunched near the stern, swiveling its misshapen head. Its gaze came to rest on the bosun.
Heart threatening to explode from fear, the bosun leaped to the railing, then pressed the back of one of his hands to his lips, wagged his fingers in imitation of Papa Squid's squiggly visage to invoke the deity's protection, and dived overboard.
'Monsters!' the cry came from the rigging above. A seaman dived past. He fell in the greasy water of Tolviroth Harbor with a prodigious splash, just as a second intruder clambered over the gunwales.
Blinking saltwater from his eyes, Fost cleared his vision in time to see another dozen men in seamen's garb erupt from a hatch, dash to the railing, and jump overboard in a formation that would have done credit to a squad of Sky Guardsmen. Every one piously wiggled fingers in front of his face before diving. The cry, 'Demons' came floating up from the water like a seabird's call.
Fost looked around in surprise. He had thought the skirmish in the tavern had sobered him up. A few feet away, Grutz pawed irritably at the seaweed wound around his head. Water had soaked his fur, matting the hair into flat, scaly wedges.
Chubchuk hoisted himself up through a gap in the rail, a thoroughly sodden Jennas still clinging to his back. She shook limp auburn hair from her eyes.
'Where is everybody?' she demanded. 'I may be insane,' Fost said, the eerie silence making him shiver, 'but I swear the crew jumped over the rail as I came aboard.'
A splashing by the hull drew their attention. They leaned over the rail in time to see a flotilla of bobbing heads round the Gallinule's stern and strike out for the wharf a hundred yards away.
'Demons’ they heard one call. 'Blessed Samdag deliver us from the dreadlings of the deep!'
Fost and Jennas stood for a moment, looked at Grutz, then broke out laughing. A damp, seaweed-festooned bear emerging from the sea had to qualify as startling.
'When you collect your feeble wits,' said Erimenes acidly, 'you might find out if there's someone aboard who knows how to steer this contraption. And you'd best be prompt about it. Your oaf of a former employer has just arrived at the wharf with his associates.'
Fost glanced shoreward. A crowd gathered on the dock. A number were plainly onlookers, but among the mob Fost spotted a knot of Sky City soldiers.
'Y
ou're right, Erimenes,' said Fost. 'Time to depart.' 'Before you rush off,' said Erimenes, 'would you please empty this damned water from my jug? I shipped a gallon of the foul stuff. It sloshes unmercifully. I just know I'll become seasick if you don't do something quickly.'
Laughing, Fost emptied a brown stream from the jar. Then he turned away in search of anyone who remained of the Gallinule's crew.
A breeze quested through tufts of dry, dead grass. Tiny hints of green could be glimpsed at the bases of the tufts where new shoots pushed up through the earth. Snow lay in clumps; more would fall before the season ended. But the hardy growth of the Sundered Realm began its annual struggle for supremacy quite soon after the days began to lengthen and grew imperceptibly warmer.
Moriana walked along a bluff with the stiff grasses brushing her legs. The grass clutched at the skirt of her pale beige gown. She nodded absently to herself, marking the feel of the cloth swaying against her skin. After so long in tunic, boots, and breeches, it was strange to be clad in this fashion.
A strap crossed one shoulder. From it hung the Athalar spirit jar, its lid open. Ziore hovered at Moriana's side like a benevolent pink cloud.
The princess sat, gathering her cloak about her. From her vantage point, she saw the camp marching before her: orderly rows of tents, columns marching and countermarching in a fallow field, soldiers at practice with sword and spear, shooting arrows at targets, the cordoned kennels for the cavalry mounts, the bawling herd of one-horned ruminants penned beyond to serve as provender for men and mounts alike. Banners sprouted from flagpoles of tents like exotic blossoms. Paramount flew Moriana's own device, an eagle's claw clutching a scarlet flower against a field of pale blue.
'I should be happy, Ziore, shouldn't I?' she asked, watching the banners dance in the wind.
'You make it sound like a duty,' the spirit said. Moriana shrugged. She had picked a bare spot of earth to sit on. Her forefinger drew random shapes in the dirt.
'Look, Ziore,' she said, sweeping her hand in a gesture encompassing the camp. 'Almost eight thousand men gathered at my feet. If Darl is right, we'll have ten thousand men by the time we march south. Ten thousand men, Ziore - the whole population of theCity is less than three times that. It's power, more than I ever thought I could muster against my sister.'
Ziore poised, waiting. The wind sighed through the bottomland of the tributaries of the great River Marchant. The main flow ran north-east a quarter mile away; on the far bank lay the Empire. Eastward, Omizantrim squatted like a stone effigy. A thin spire of vapor rose from its maw and was lost in the high haze drifting overhead. Ominous as the mountain was, it had laid a blessing on this land. The vomitus cast up over eons from the entrails of the earth was rich in minerals. Crops grew lush to the very brink of the badlands kept desolate by lava and poison vapors from the volcano.
Somewhere to the south floated the City in the Sky. In the weeks since Moriana and Darl had left Tolviroth Acerte, it had passed over Thailot where trade proceeded as if nothing untoward had come to pass. Wirix met the City's passage with sullen defiance - it was almost certainly the last the Sky City would assault. Brev and Thailot were easier targets, Kara-Est immeasurably more valuable. A few days before, the chance that guided the Floating City had turned it southward to pass over its new dominion of Bilsinx.
Ziore's patience had a relentless quality to it that Moriana could never outmatch. She inhaled, held it, then let it out slowly.
'I'm grateful to Darl,' she said. 'No one would-no one could-do for me what he's doing. And yet. . . yet it begins to feel wrong somehow. Events move past my control. And how can I complain? He's doing me a favor.'
A many-throated shout caught her attention. She turned to see Darl riding in from the wooded hills on his tall war mount. He raised a hand. Instantly, a mob surrounded him. Idlers, officers, soldiers at their soldierly tasks, all gathered around crying out their devotion and their love. He raised a salute now, turning his head this way and that. Moriana knew he grinned that grin of his, a look she had come to know well in the last few weeks, a look she thought turned to love.
Ziore laid a hand on her shoulder. She reached up to stroke it though she knew the warmth was no more than a comforting illusion produced by the spirit.
'Such devotion,' the nun's ghost said. 'It borders on adoration. These men had never before laid eyes on Darl Rhadaman six weeks ago, and now they would lay their lives at the feet of his war dog.' Moriana looked up at her. She looked deep into the living woman's eyes.
'I know little of this world, child, but it seems to me such loyalty is a potent force, as potent in its way as force of arms or numbers.'
'Loyalty, aye,' she all but spat, her face hardening involuntarily into bitter planes. 'Loyalty to him.'
'And this troubles you? You resent that their loyalty is given to him but not to you?'
'No.' But she turned her eyes away.
'It can be no other way.' Ziore smiled sadly. 'You admitted that your resources were inadequate to muster support among the northerners. Not even among the people of the Quincunx could you raise an army. Thanks to Darl's persuasion the emissaries of Kara-Est and Wirix have promised to help provision your armies en route.' She touched Moriana's cheek. 'I know it is hard on you. But you cannot evade the knowledge that without him you'd be unable to challenge Synalon.'
Moriana tried to hold in the tears that stung her eyes, tears of anger, of frustration, of the self-disgust that had grown to be an inextricable part of her soul in the weeks since that terrible day in the glacier when she'd had to murder the man she loved for the sake of her City. Her fingers groped blindly for the amulet hanging about her neck. She clung to it as if she could find strength in it.
'There's more to it than that,' she said. 'That, too, cannot be changed,' Ziore said. 'This is the North. Customs differ here.'
There was another reason Darl had become the focal point of the crusade against the City, and Moriana drew even farther from it. In the southern lands of the Sundered Realm, women and men existed in general parity. Armies frequently consisted of both sexes in the same proportion of the population. The second-in-command of the mercenary band Rann had hired as ground troops was a woman. Women had equal say in governments as well, from the chief deputy of Kara-Est to warrior-chieftainesses of the steppes like Jennas. In the Sky City women ruled by law and custom; though the rank and file of its military was male, Moriana had first been blooded while commanding troops in the war five years before with the Golden Barbarians who had invaded the savannah west of the Thails and terrorized the country between Deepwater and the Sjedd.
In the northern half of the Realm it was different. Darl's triumphant procession reached the pavilion he shared with Moriana. He dismounted, handing the reins to a soldier eager to do his least bidding. Then, as was his custom, he turned and knelt, abasing himself before Moriana's banner.
Moriana didn't need to turn back to Ziore to know what the spirit felt. The words ran through her mind: his loyalty is to you. She shook her head.
Darl's loyalty was unquestioned. And he reaffirmed over and over that he followed Moriana's flag, turning the suspicion of the earth-bound toward her into a kind of reverence. Yet that very reverence passed through Darl, just as (according to pagan priests of the Far Archipelago) divine essence passed through them to the faithful.
'I'm a figurehead,' Moriana said quietly. 'A symbol, a living emblem. Not a shaper, not a leader of all the forces gathered in my name.'
That's unworthy of you, Ziore mentally rebuked her. Moriana's hands clenched the amulet as if to crush it. Yes, the thought was unworthy. She knew it and despised it. She loathed herself for the ingratitude that made her resent her greatest benefactor.
But deep inside her mind festered a suspicion that more lay behind her concern than childish petulance, that the channel along which she felt her crusade being diverted might dash everything to ruin. The thought tingled and stung like a pulled muscle. She suppressed it. It was rationalization, no
thing more.
Within her hands, darkness slipped across the face of the Destiny Stone.
CHAPTER TEN
Tapers burned low, flickering in figured sconces. Gargoyle faces graven into the stone of the chamber by some long-dead, inhuman hand winked at Prince Rann from shadowed walls. He pored over his plans to meet the threat of Moriana's ragtag army.
A knock on the chamber door broke his concentration. 'Her Majesty would speak with you, Highness,' a voice came tentatively. 'She awaits your pleasure in her chambers.'
'I come,' said Rann, draining his goblet. He rose, paused to take a fur-trimmed cloak from the outstretched talon of a fiend on which it hung, and draped it around his shoulders. Synalon's latest fancy was to keep the windows of her throne room wide, day and night. Spring was still weeks distant.
He followed the servant down the corridor to a steeply pitched flight of stairs. Two palace guards stood erect in their sculptured breastplates and greaves. They thumped their weapons' butts ceremoniously on the floor as Rann walked between them without acknowledging their presence.
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