The scars at eyes and mouth turned white with strain.
'We would only throw our lives away.'
'What of it?' she demanded, head held high. Blue flames raced along the wings of her hair. 'If it's our lot to go down to defeat before these inhuman scum, then we shall die fighting, as befits the Skyborn! Let the groundlings flee, if they wish.'
'While we live there's always a chance of finding some way to win,' Rann said doggedly. 'Felarod did, after all.'
'Damn Felarod!' she spat. 'That creature!' As a devotee of the Dark, Synalon had always despised the man who had undone the Lords of Infinite Night before.
'His enemies are now our own, cousin,' Rann pointed out. 'But if you hold him in such contempt, why not seek a way to do him one better?'
She smiled and turned away, the gown swirling like mist around her long, sleek legs. Below her spread the glimmers of the seaport city, red torches, yellow lamps, green lanterns bobbing at the corners of ships out in the harbor. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. The wind had veered to come up from the fens with the thick, moist breath of corruption riding on it. She drew it in like a fine perfume.
'Maybe I will. Moriana was a weakling at heart. She let me live when I lay naked and powerless against her. I am steel at the center, not mush. If Istu would pit his will against my own, it may be the Demon who is surprised.' Her words glowed with hatred. The Demon's progenitors had used her for their devious ends and cast her aside. Her pride still smarted over the injustice. Had a human injured her pride, death would have been painful and long. So fierce was her rage that she would forge from it a weapon fit to wound even the Lords of the Void.
Rann sighed. Like Tonsho, Synalon was a genius in her own way. He had to grant both women that. But he had long ago learned the sad lesson that not all of genius were stable.
'Is that your answer?' he asked, his voice as soft as wind among swamp reeds.
'Yes.' She spoke without turning. 'We fight.'
The corners of his mouth drew up in an expression that wasn't a smile. His left hand dropped to his left boot-top, withdrew the yellow dart which Tonsho thought he'd brought or her. His hand whipped up.
The dart blurred across the room. Wary as a unicorn stag stalking a hunter, Synalon had half spun when the missile thunked home in soft, white flesh between her ribs. Red blossomed like an insane flower against her skin's pallor.
Both Rann and the Thailint poison were quick acting, but neither was fast enough. Rann's face twisted in agony as blue-white lightning lashed from Synalon's fingers and bathed his right side in flame. They fell together.
The doors burst open. Young Cerestan of the Guard stood there, eyes wild and hair awry, curved blade in his hand. He saw the royal cousins sprawled on the floor a few paces apart and gasped. The Guards crowding in at his back stopped and looked in horror.
But both forms refused to remain still. Synalon lay on her back, arms outflung, closed eyes turned to the vaulted ceiling, her entire body spasming. Rann, his jacket and tunic smouldering, painfully hoisted himself from the limestone floor.
'It is done.' The words fell from Rann's lips in jagged fragments. 'Cerestan, see that the evacuation continues. We must be away from here before . . .'
Strength left him. He fell face-down on the cold stone.
CHAPTER TWO
'I know little of practical magic but have read much of the theory in books,' the small, round man said. 'But from what I do know, yes, it could have been an illusion and nothing more.'
Fost Longstrider leaned back in his chair, fingering his chin thoughtfully. The appearance of the goddess Jirre at such an opportune time at the Battle of the Black March troubled him. Moriana Etuul was a great sorceress, yes, but she had been physically and emotionally drained by the Zr'gsz magic and was hardly able to fling a small lightning bolt, much less maintain a greater than life-sized illusion. The battle had been ill-conceived due to the bickering between the various factions comprising the army, and Fost was still more than a little surprised at the victory against the superior army of reptiles. His eyes narrowed. He didn't have to ask Oracle the question. The being - the projected image - read it from his mind.
'It seems to me,' the image of the little man went on, 'that an illusion properly cast, especially by one who'd never performed such a spell - and the Princess Moriana had not - might befuddle the caster as well as its intended objects. So, assuming that the apparition of the goddess Jirre was no more than it seemed, it still might have served to uncover untapped reserves of power within Moriana. Focusing that power might account for the destruction of the Zr'gsz skyrafts when the apparition struck its lyre. The way the Hissers died when she swept through them can be attributed to suggestion. But as you pointed out, it stretches credibility beyond the breaking point to speculate that the rafts themselves possessed some consciousness for the illusion to play upon. I,' said Oracle firmly, 'therefore conjecture Moriana has unsuspected powers that caused the craft to disintegrate.'
Oracle possessed much of the knowledge stored in the great Library of High Medurim and shared it willingly with Fost. The real body of the entity called Oracle lay in the next room. It was nothing more than a gleaming blue-white mound of fungus the size of a peasant's hut. The nutrient vat in which it rested bubbled and reeked like garlic, but this didn't stop the legion of savants whose droning penetrated the wall in a beehive buzz as they read aloud from ancient volumes. The more they read, the more Oracle absorbed into its consciousness, and the more information it could integrate, evaluate and pass along to Fost.
The living, thinking, reasoning fungus was a triumph of genetic magics commissioned by the Emperor Teom.
In spite of Oracle's logic, something nudged at the former Realm-road courier's mind. Oracle had learned much in its short existence. Perhaps too much from Emperor Teom and his sister-wife Temalla when it came to subterfuge and intrigue. Fost felt that Oracle held something back, but the illusion of a pudgy, self-content man sitting cross-legged beside him was unreadable.
'You're being less than candid,' Fost accused. 'That body of yours is no more than an illusion, yet you are able to cast it all the way to the Black March to view the battle. I'd say that shows more than theoretical acquaintance with magic'
The pale eyes slid from his gray ones.
'There's magic and magic, my young friend, and -'
'Young?' Fost snorted. 'With all due respect, I'm not as young as you, who were first cultured in the vat a scant three years ago. And as for magic, I'm one who truly knows little of it, but I do know the kinds. There's extrinsic magic, the ability to manipulate powers like elementals and lesser demons, which was passed to the Etuul bloodline by the Hissers back in the days before the reptiles were driven from the Sky City. And there's intrinsic magic - Athalar art - springing from the powers of the magician's own mind. Moriana's hardships on the slopes of Mt. Omizantrim honed her intrinsic powers to the point where she was able to best Synalon's largely extrinsic magic. Befuddling minds so only illusion is perceived is clearly intrinsic magic - and happens to be exactly what you're doing to me, you charlatan.'
Oracle spread his hands and smiled.
'No evading the question,' Fost pressed. 'Was the apparition of the goddess Jirre simply illusion - or something more?'
The cheerful mask dropped from Oracle's face. He hesitated, and his eyes seemed to probe Fost's very soul.
'Are you sure you want the answer to that, my friend?' he asked in a soft voice.
'Uh, no, maybe I don't.' Fost licked dry lips. He had thought he needed the answer. Now he wasn't so sure of himself. Moriana had learned much during her stay in the Hisser's city of Thendrun. Some of her own new-found knowledge struck him as truly alien, a thing better suited to the reptilian than the human. And if she had somehow accomplished the impossible feat of actually summoning a goddess to do her bidding, she ranked as the most powerful mage in all of history.
'You fear the gods, don't you?' Oracle asked after a long silence.
'I fear the fact of their existence. No, not even that. I dread living in a world that's a battleground for forces beyond it. If the Dark Ones exist, and the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift, too, fine. That's no concern of mine. But if they choose to settle their differences on this little mudball wrapped in a blanket of air where I live . . .' He shuddered at the magnitude of it all. Sometimes it was difficult enough dealing with human royalty. This transcended petty, bickering humanity and opened the Universe to unknowable dealings. 'I don't know if I can bear the thought of being no more than a pawn in a cosmic chess game.'
Oracle's face mirrored the pain Fost felt.
'You must bear it, my friend,' he said quietly.'Istu is loose again, and a Second War of Powers is already being fought. Whether you like it or not, you are one of the principles.'
In moody silence, Fost sat and remembered. The Battle of the Black March had been swung from defeat to victory for humanity by the startling, unexpected apparition hundreds of feet tall that may or may not have been the goddess Jirre herself. After Fost had talked himself into believing it only an illusion, the image of Zak'zar, the Speaker of the People, had appeared at the victory feast in Emperor Teom's pavilion.
The Zr'gsz leader had destroyed the triumphant mood with twin revelations. Humankind had won a feeble victory; the Sky City carrying the Demon of the Dark Ones easily conquered the great city of Kara-Est. Even more unsettling for Fost was the shattering indictment of his lover, Moriana Etuul. Zak'zar revealed that Moriana had lain with one of the Hissers to seal her alliance with the
People, and that she, and all of the Etuul bloodline, were descended from another human-reptile union nine thousand years earlier.
Fost's walls of self-assurance had slumped into ruin. He had endured so much, and now he was forced to withstand even more. It wasn't enough that Moriana had once killed him, driving her dagger deep into his back. Athalau, the city buried in the glacier beyond the Rampart Mountains, held many objects of magical lore; one of them, the Amulet of Living Flame, had restored his life. And Fost had followed Moriana, not for revenge but for love. Her act had been one of patriotism and idealism directed toward saving her precious Sky City from Synalon's demented rule. Fost could even admire Moriana for her devotion to her subjects, though his hand unconsciously went to the spot where the dagger had been driven into his body. He had endured all that and more until this moment.
Now he hardly knew what to believe.
With a sardonic bow, Zak'zar's image had winked out, leaving Moriana alone in a sea of silence. Fost had wanted to go to her, to comfort her, yet found himself stunned and immobile. She had left the tent and gone into the night. Fost had been sure he would never see her again. But the next day just after dawn, Moriana had returned to the encampment of the Imperial armies, obviously distraught but forcing herself into composure. She bore up well under the hostile gazes and proved herself truly regal by her demeanor.
Seeing her again had washed away some of the misgivings Fost had. He loved her; what matter that she was not altogether human. As Erimenes the Ethical, an Athalau ghost bottled for fourteen hundred years, had pointed out, the Zr'gsz blood was diluted by several hundred generations. The philosopher's spirit, usually acerbic and argumentive, had mellowed considerably since Fost had first come upon him. No longer did Erimenes seek out the vicarious thrill of bloodshed and voyeuristic sex. His contact with another Athalar spirit, the nun Ziore, had caused Erimenes to temper his behavior greatly. For that Fost was thankful. Dealing with the emotion-twisting knowledge of Moriana's heritage was problem enough for him at the moment.
About her liaison with the Hisser to complete their military aid pact, Fost discovered it meant little to him. He knew she had had other lovers when they were apart. He himself had stayed far from celibate while tracking her across the continent; what was one more lover between them? If one of Moriana's lovers wasn't human, he was more nearly so than the hornbulls Moriana's sister had imported for her own wayward pleasures, on the advice of the ever-helpful Erimenes.
'Tell me of the gods, Oracle,' Fost asked abruptly.
The small man smiled.
'You wish a discourse on theology?'
'No, but I think I'd better have one just the same.'
Oracle sat for a moment, rocking back and forth. Outside, the afternoon sun had sent the residents of High Medurim scurrying to shelter to escape the glare of heat. Here in the marble precincts of the Palace it was cool, and a stick of incense smouldered in a corner of the cubicle taking the sting from the smell of Oracle's nutrient pool next door. Fost's eyelids turned heavy in spite of the coolness. He and Moriana had arrived only the day before, a long and dusty ride on the heels of arduous battle. Emperor Teom had reckoned the menace on the frontier serious enough for his personal attention, but with that settled and the Zr'gsz massacred, he had felt the precarious civil unrest in his capital called for a prompt return. This resulted in little time for rest for any of them.
The humming of the savants next door had a soporific effect, too. Fost found himself trying to follow their sing-song reading, their education of Oracle.
'To theology,' said Oracle. 'Best begin with the Dark Ones, since everything does begin with them. No, don't shudder.' He shut his eyes and spoke in a low, rhythmic voice like an incantation. 'In the beginning was the Dark, single and undivided, holy. And the Masters dwelt within darkness and nothingness and all was at peace, for all was One, and this was the blessed rule of Law.
'Then Perfect Dark was disturbed by Light, and the Oneness became Two. And the Masters of the Void set to destroy this defilement. But a mistake occurred, even then indicating Perfection had been lost. The Light was not destroyed; it was dispersed. Bits of Light were scattered across the face of the Dark. And some cooled and became Matter, and some of these specks of filth began to quiver with Life, the ultimate perversion. And so was Chaos born.
'And it came to pass that Gods rose up in opposition to the Dark, Gods favoring Light and Matter. First one, then two, then many; and so the efforts of the Masters to return all things to Unity were thwarted by the accursed, the Lords of Light and Chaos. Many were their numbers, and their names were legion.
'But the Masters of the Void, who do not suffer their names or numbers to be known, gave their only begotten son to the Universe, that it might one day be returned to the rule of Law and Darkness, and the great struggle was commenced.'
Oracle paused, took a deep breath he hardly required, then opened his eyes.
'This was taken from the preamble to Gospels of Darkness. The Library has translations going back to the First Migration. It is one of the most ancient of texts. I take it you've not seen or heard this before?'
Despite the coolness, drops of sweat stood out on Fost's forehead. 'No, I've never come across that.'
'It's peculiar, given your lust for knowledge, that you've shied away from the subject of religion,' said Oracle. 'Also revealing.'
'I suppose. What about the Three and Twenty?'
The little man rubbed his chin. It gave Fost an eerie feeling since it was among many gestures Oracle had copied from him in trying to perfect the humanity of his simulacrum. It was like shaving in a mirror and seeing a hand hold a razor to a stranger's face.
'The first thing to understand,' said Oracle, 'is that the Twenty-three are ladies and lords of Chaos, and few generalities can be made about them. It is written in old, old tomes that once humanity's gods each had a single attribute: war, birth, lust, fire, water. Worship in such a fashion is rare today, although you find traces of it among the Thailint and Dyla savages, and the more debased cultures of the Northern Continent. On the other hand, each of the Three and Twenty represents several principles and has several attributes. With a few exceptions, of course, since these are first and foremost Chaotic deities. This disparity betwen old religion and new tends, I believe, to support a thesis I formulated before you came to High Medurim.' Oracle cocked his head to one side to see if Fost still listen
ed.
He did and asked, 'And what's this theory of yours, Oracle?'
'I do not believe humanity is native to our world.'
Fost's eyebrows rose. Though Oracle smiled indulgently at his attempted interruptions, he held relentlessly to his subject of the confusing and confused array of gods and goddesses.
'I'll discuss my theories of how humankind came to this world with you later. But bear with me for a short while longer.
'Chief of the Three and Twenty is generally held to be Jirre. Jirre's the goddess of both Creation and Destruction, a typically Chaotic contradiction. But this contradiction may be only apparent. Her devotees argue that Creation and Destruction are two sides of the same coin, hence only one goddess is required. Another way of viewing it is the Dualist philosophy, which holds that Twoness, not Oneness, is the natural order of things. That accounts for the creation of Light in the first place. Of course, the doctrine raises unanswered questions of its own since Light and Dark are but two faces of the same coin.
'But I see your eyelids drooping. I fear I bore you like that discursive old fart, Erimenes.' Oracle spoke faster to hold Fost's attention. 'You're already familiar with Ust, the Red Bear; Gormanka of wind and wayfarers, your patron of couriers; Somdag Squid-face. There are others, of course, less commonly known.'
'Wait, wait, wait.' Fost held up both his hands in despair. 'This is going too fast for me. I'm not sure I can work through the contradictions in all you're telling me.'
'I told you that these are lords and ladies of Chaos. In a nutshell, Justice, alone of the attributes of Chaos, is immutable but takes many forms. Law always takes a similar form but its nature changes according to what best serves the ends of the Elder Dark. I admit it doesn't make much sense, even to me. But it is often said that expedience is an attribute of Law and Darkness, and Justice cannot be expedient.'
Fost stretched, yawned.
'You're the one doing the talking, but my throat's as dry as dust,' he said. 'Thanks for the lesson.' Oracle arched a pale eyebrow.
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