Istu Awakened

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  'Which direction?' she asked. The Zr'gsz pointed a black claw south, past the camp. Ziore looked grave. 'The Ullapag lies that way as well.'

  'It's guarding the Heart?' asked Moriana.

  'So it seems.'

  They made their way down the valley to where the others waited. The four Nevrymin waited with the Fallen Ones. Moriana sat on an outcropping of lava and let Darl explain the situation.

  'We can't wait for night?' asked Quickspear, a narrow man whose habitual grin was rendered lopsided by a long knife slash down the left side of his face. He cradled the weapon that gave him his name, fingers nervously dancing along its shaft.

  'My people do not function well in the cold.' TheZr'gsz weren't true reptiles. They fell somewhere between mammalsand lizards - furred yet scaly, nursing their young though oviparous, warm-blooded but inclined to become sluggish when the sun went down.

  'We've only two hours of sunlight left us' said Darl. 'Here's my plan . . .'

  Vapors steamed upward from the molten rock that bubbled in a pit cut like a slash across the mountain's flank. On a broad expanse of rock above the fumarole sat a vast creature, as unmoving as the lava beneath it.

  A tall man could lie comfortably in the space between the bulging half-lidded eyes. Its hide was warty, green dapples on black mimicking the pattern of the Watchers' cloaks. Its immense body lay among four legs that seemed unable to support its bulk. It had the sloped back of a toad instead of the crooked back of a frog. Obsidian eyes stared out, missing nothing.

  Moriana scarcely believed the thing lived. No motion of breathing stirred its bloated sides. But she felt its presence in her mind, alien and imposing.

  She studied the natural amphitheatre scooped in the side of Omizantrim. Fifteen yards across and forty deep, its open side faced the Watchers' camp several hundred yards downslope. The fumarole lay at the inside end of the amphitheatre, with the Ullapag's rock raised like a dais above it. At either side of the opening stood a single Watcher. Two more Watchers stood in the rocks above the monster, armed with bows and spears. Though the pit's stinging fumes blew in their faces, they showed no sign of discomfort.

  The four Nevrym Forest men were sneaking up on the four sentries. Moriana, Darl and Khirshagk, with several of his men, waited hidden on the northern wall. Though the foresters assured her they could capture the sentries without difficulty, she worried. She balked at killing any of the Watchers, and she didn't trust the Zr'gsz to be scrupulous in avoiding the slaying of their ancient antagonists. The bulk of the party of Hissers waited in concealment around the Watchers' encampment to bottle up any attempts at aiding the Ullapag. But that had to be done, mora! niceties or not.

  If the sentries were alerted before the foresters reached them, Khirshagk and his men would have to deal with them willy-nilly. Moriana and Darl had to confront the Ullapag, by means mystic or mundane as required.

  She still had no clear idea what the Ullapag did. It looked too ungainly to run down the fleet Zr'gsz in rough terrain like this. One thing it did attempt was to detect the nearness of the Hissers by a special sense. Ziore hovered beside Moriana, dulling the Ullapag's mental sensitivity to the presence of a hundred of the very beings it was meant to ward against.

  A flicker of movement not far away caught Moriana's eye. It was Brightlaugher, a young blond boy painfully proud of the skimpy golden fuzz on his chin. He moved up on the nearest of the Watchers. He was almost in position lor the quick final rush.

  'Moriana.' The low voice was so distorted by effort she almost didn't recognize Ziore. 'Moriana, you must help. Can't hold by myself any more.'

  'What?' she whispered back. Darl and Khirshagk stared at them.

  'The Ullapag. Help me blanket it.'

  'But ... I can't!'

  'You can!' Ziore snapped. 'Since I've known you your power has increased steadily. Help me, or all is lost!'

  The princess wondered if the nun was right. Then she shut her eyes and concentrated.

  She didn't have to grope to find the Ullapag's mind. It loomed bright, short of sentience, but old, old and very watchful. A bright thread of suspicion shimmered in the creature's mind. Moriana felt Ziore's presence and realized that the genie couldn't soothe the sense of wrongness troubling the Ullapag. She stretched out her own mind, soothing without words.

  The doubt-thread vanished.

  I did it! Moriana thought. The realization exhilarated her. Had her power grown because she'd slept with Khirshagk? He said her ancestor namesake hadn't perceived true magic herself. Had she gained something her forebear hadn't?

  Hidden within her tunic, the Destiny Stone turned black. A rock loosened, twisting away beneath her foot. She stifled a yelp of alarm but couldn't save herself from falling.

  The guard below turned and saw Brightlaugher rising from behind a bush twelve feet away.The Nevrym boy lunged. The spear came down, and the boy gasped as he ran onto its broad point.

  The other guards shouted alarm. One standing above the Ullapag nocked an arrow and drew. Sprawled among the biting edges of the larva, Moriana recovered her grip on her own bow, drew, fired.

  The Watcher stiffened and pitched forward, falling past the Ullapag's perch to disappear into the boiling lava.

  Foresters wrestled with the other two. One of Khirshagk's warriors, overcome by battle-lust, leaped past Moriana and struck down the Watcher as he struggled to free his spear from Brightlaugher's belly. The Ullapag screamed.

  Moriana heard it as a bass thrumming, almost below the level of hearing. The Zr'gsz standing over the sentry jerked as if struck by an arrow. He began to twitch and his head twisted to score his own shoulders with his fangs.

  'Unnghh.' Khirshagk's body was bent backward like a bow. His jaw was locked and his eyes rolled wildly. In spite of the agony gripping him, he ground out words between his teeth.'You must . . . slay it. Or... we .. . die!'

  She stared at the Ullapag. It had grown until the princess realized it had lifted itself upward enough to allow a huge throat sac to expand beneath it.

  'It's producing a vibration,' Ziore shouted. Moriana barely heard her, though the hum of the Ullapag wasn't loud. 'It'll kill the lizard men.'

  As if to prove her right, the Zr'gsz who had dashed into the open fell to the ground beside his victim. His eyes stared upward. His mouth shone darkly with his own blood.

  Moriana drew another arrow from her quiver and shot, aiming for an eye. The broadhead flew true.

  It was four feet from target when a pale tongue leaped from the Ullapag's mouth and snagged it in the air like a fly.

  Darl was up and running, broadsword in hand, shouting, 'Victory! Moriana and victory!'

  The moist eyes swiveied and fixed him with their baleful gaze. The throat sac expanded further, the humming came louder. The monster's vibrations obviously affected humans, but not as they did the Zr'gsz. The uncontrollable contractions of Khirshagk's muscles were breaking him like a thief on a wheel. His men rolled on the ground at his side, hissing in terminal anguish.

  The Ullapag was puzzled. Here was a man running at it with hostile intent. Yet its deathsong to Zr'gsz had no effect. Was it possible a human might attack it?

  The Ullapag pounced.

  Darl escaped being crushed under the monster's bulk by inches. The Count-Duke rolled and came up running. He charged. Swinging his sword doublehanded he hacked at the bloated, warty flank.

  His sword rebounded with the sound of a stick striking a poorly stretched drum. The monster's lipfess mouth opened and the tongue shot out. Instantly sword and swordarm were tangled in loops of wet, pallid flesh.

  Darl tried to pull away. The tongue held him fast. It began reeling him inexorably inward. He twisted, slashed at the tongue with his dagger. Green blood sprayed his chest.

  A mental squeal of agony made Moriana and Ziore wince. The Ullapag raised a foreleg and clumsily clutched Darl, trying to hurry him forward into the pink cavern of its mouth. Darl dug in his heels and locked his knees but lacked the strength to
resist for more than seconds.

  It earned him life. Moriana needed no more than a heartbeat to fit a new arrow, draw and aim, to let fly.

  With the monster's tongue coiled like a serpent around Darl, nothing hindered the arrow's flight. It struck the eye and sank to the fletchings, The Ullapag reared, hauling Dar! off his feet. A second arrow followed the first.

  The tongue uncoiled, spilling Darl onto the hard lava. Even as he fell he struck at the monster's throat sac. The blade cut through the membrane.

  A third arrow sang its shrill song of death. The other eye exploded. Darl rocked to his knees and drove his sword into the moss-green belly.

  The Destiny Stone turned white. The dying Ullapag fell to the right, rolled onto its back away from the kneeling warrior. Its legs kicked spasticaily at the air.

  As though dropped by an invisible hand, Khirshagk fell limp among the rocks. His men lay about him, frozen in attitudes of ghastly death. Moriana knelt by his side.

  His eyes opened, looked into hers, then he said, 'Thank you.'

  She was up and running to Dad's side.

  'How could you do it?' raged Ludo, the Chief Warder of Omizantrim. 'For a hundred centuries we've kept our faith with Felarod for all humanity. How could you betray us?'

  'Don't talk to the princess in that tone, pig,' snarled Darl. He came forward, face dark with menace. Moriana waved him back.

  'No, Darl. He has a right to speak that way.' The words threatened to congeal in her throat. 'Listen carefully, Warder Ludo. I'm not betraying anybody. I must explain.'

  Ludo spat at her.

  'Calm down, old man,' Quickspear said softly, bouncing his spear suggestively in one hand. 'Brightlaugher was my sister's husband's cousin, and well-loved.'

  'He got what he deserved.' The old man's blue eyes were merciless and as fearless as a hawk's. 'He was a traitor to men, embarked on a traitor's errand.'

  Quickspear raised his weapon.

  'Hold!' shouted Moriana. 'Quickspear leave us.' The dark-haired forester scowled at her, weighing rebellion. He was no fool. He left.

  Moriana slumped on her stool. She massaged her face with long, slender fingers. She suddenly snatched them away, screaming. They were drenched in blood.

  But it was only a trick of the candlelight.

  'I am Moriana Etuul,' she said, 'rightful Queen of the City in the Sky.'

  'Pah! You live with the stink of Vridzish magic. What else can we expect of you, witch?'

  At a warning growl, Moriana spoke without turning her head.

  'Please, Darl, let me finish.' He subsided. 'Thank you, Darl.' Leaning forward, she told the entire story to the Chief Warder, of her sister's usurpation of the Throne of Winds, of Synalon's dabbling with the blackest of magics and her desire to make a compact with the Lords of Infinite Night.

  'So it is to fight the Dark Ones that I march against the City,' she told him earnestly. 'The Zr'gsz are no more foes to men. They know their time is past. They aid me to recover ancient treasures they were forced to leave when exiled from the Sky City.' She inhaled deeply. 'When they have those things, they'll return to Thendrun in peace. Khirshagk, Instrumentality of the People, gives me his word on this.'

  Ludo fixed her with an eye as frosty as the Southern Waste.

  'You're either a liar or the most accomplished fool I've ever encountered.' He jerked his head at Darl. 'You can have your bully-boy kill me now.'

  'No one's going to harm you.' She started. Ludo stared past her shoulder, his eyes wide.

  She turned. A Zr'gsz male stood there, a torch gripped in his talons.

  'Khirshagk want you,' he said. 'Come. Now, Pleezzz.' Moriana and Darl looked at one another. Then they followed the messenger into the cool, starry night.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Their guide led Moriana and Darl from the camp up the slope to the fumarole over which the Ullapag had stood guard. A forest of torches around a sprawling building that had served the inhabitants as school, temple and assembly hall showed where the Zr'gsz guarded the captive Watchers.

  Arrows and slung stones had greeted the Watchers when they tried to come to the aid of their fellows and the Ullapag. The Ullapag had given throat then and the Hissers surrounding the camp had collapsed in agony. Before the Watchers could slay more than a handful of the helpless lizard men, the Ullapag's song had been stilled. Shocked by the Hissers' return to activity, the Watchers had emotionally crumbled when Moriana and Darl called on them to surrender. The fact that their immortal co-guardian was dead, and that humans had aided Zr'gsz in slaying it, shattered their morale. They threw down their weapons and obeyed.

  Khirshagk's control over his folk was good. Less than a score of the Watchers were killed or injured. The other encampments would send patrols to investigate when no word came from the main village; Moriana was worried but Darl assured her their small detachment could hold until reinforcements summoned by Khirshagk's sorcery arrived from Thendrun. Moriana was puzzled by this - she had been under the impression that so few Zr'gsz had accompanied them because there were so few alive. The great crystal keep had fairly rattled from emptiness, and she had scarcely seen a soul other than the Instrumentality and a few silent servants until they were ready to march. But Khirshagk told her more men were on the way, and she deemed it impolitic to question her ally too closely.

  A dozen Zr'gsz stood around the fuming lava pit holding torches.

  The sun was down but this didn't keep the People from their chores, whatever they were.

  '1 greet you,' said Khirshagk from the platform that had been the resting place of the monster. 'You have done a great service for my People this day. It is fitting that you witness this, the culmination of years of waiting, of longing.'

  Moriana and Darl looked at one another. Stepping forward as near as they dared to the fumarole, they stopped and waited. Their hands found one another.

  Still in loincloth and mace-belt, Khirshagk no longer looked the rude savage he had appeared by day. In the smoky torchlight and lit below by the hellglow of melted stone, he was weird and magnificent, the king-priest of an ancient people, an ancient faith. Moriana wondered what ritual he enacted here. She tensed in anticipation, feeling forces all around her.

  Khirshagk raised his arms and threw back his head. A wind rush of syllables blew from his lungs. Moriana couldn't understand the words, not fully. But the clicks and hisses and unvoiced vowels struck strangely half-familiar chords within her mind, tantalizing her with hints of understanding. She stole a look at Darl. He watched with curiosity but with no trace of comprehension.

  Moriana forced the name to form in her mind: Ziore?

  I can make nothing of this speech, child, nor can I read the emotions behind it.

  That negative reply caused Moriana's unease to grow. Powers definitely beyond the pale surged in this stony amphitheatre,

  Moriana sensed excitement growing in the Zr'gsz though their expressions remained unreadable behind masks of torchlight and alien musculature. Khirshagk finished his oration in a cry that was almost a sigh, a breath expelled toward the stars, expressing transcendent passion. The Zr'gsz thrust their torches into the face of the night with a wild sibilance.

  Moriana's nose wrinkled from the brimstone fumes drifting out of the fumarole. A crust of partially cooled lava rode the turbulent surface of the pool and cracked in a not quite regular pattern like mud dried on a flat. Yellow-orange glare burned along the fracture lines. Bubbles of gas rose from the depths of the mountain popping loudly to vent noxious vapors and spit glowing hot gobbets in all directions. One struck the ground near her boot. The heat stung her even through the thick leather.

  Khirshagk stood silent, looking from one Zr'gsz to the next. In spite of the undercurrents of emotion about her, Moriana suppressed a yawn. It had been a long day, and her body demanded rest.

  Darl squeezed her hand.

  'I hope they finish soon with whatever they're doing.' She caught his eye and grinned. Perhaps she wouldn't rest so soon.
>
  'My friends.' Almost guiltily they looked at the Instrumentality who had called to them in manspeech across the seething pit. 'You are about to witness an epic moment in the history of the People: the recovery of their Heart, lost to us these ten thousand years.'

  A tall, slimly built Zr'gsz cast away his cloak. He walked to the edge of the pit, looked down a few seconds, turned to face his leader. She couldn't be sure, but the princess believed the look on his face to be the pure rapture of a religious experience.

  Khirshagk pointed with an arm circled in rings of obsidian and jasper. The youth nodded and waded into the lava.

  Darl gasped. Moriana stared. Step by step the young lizard man descended into the fumarole. The tendons on his neck stuck out like columns.

  'Gods, is he immune to heat?' Moriana whispered.

  Darl didn't reply. He only licked dried lips and continued staring at the sight.

  The lizard man raised one leg high to wade over an irregularity in the bottom of the lava pool. The meat hung loose on his bones. The bubbling lava reached his groin, his waist, his sternum. His face never lost its look of transfiguration, not even when the liquid stone reached to his chin, his lips. Steam poured from his nostrils as he cooked inside from the awful heat.

  He went deeper.

  Moriana looked away as the lava reached his eyes. The stench of burned meat clutched at her stomach like a groping hand.

  She forced herself to look back. There was no sign of the youth. No creature could desire to survive after having been cooked alive like that. The other Zr'gsz gazed eagerly at the roiling surface, Khirshagk among them. The princess knew she would never let him touch her again, not in exchange for any or all powers, magical or temporal.

  A plateful of solidified lava slid to one side. A hand thrust from the lava - or the remnant of a hand. Naked bone gleamed in the torchlight but the skeletal hand clutched a jewel, an immense black diamond that smoked from immersion in the molten stone.

  Great Ultimate! Ziore cried in Moriana's mind.