WoP - 01 - War of Powers

by Robert E. Vardeman

  'A plotter?' hissed Chalowin. Uriath nodded. 'Perhaps one privy to the nefarious scheme that allowed the criminal Moriana to escape her due punishment.' 'Where?'

  Uriath whispered briefly. Chalowin's head jerked back. His eye was almost shut. His left nostril pulsated in time with the tic. He shook himself and stalked off toward the Palace with no further word to Uriath.

  'What was that about?' a voice called out. Uriath suppressed a panicky start. He turned, his heart as spastic as the muscle in Chalowin's cheek.

  'Nothing, my dear Tromym,' he said. He accepted the vessel of golden wine his friend offered him. He squinted at the pewter mug cynically, then raised it. 'A toast, good Tromym.'

  'What to, Uriath?'The high councillor only smiled. 'Great Ultimate!' shrieked the girl with the short blonde hair. 'They've found us!'

  Three men looked up from their game of draughts just as the door crashed inward in a cloud of splinters. A man stepped into the cavernous warehouse, his movements as sharp and sporadic as a lizard's. He wore tunic and trousers of purple and black.

  'Him,' he said, pointing with the naked blade in his hand. 'Take him alive. The rest don't matter.'

  The girl lunged at him with a heavy knife. His scimitar turned it with contemptuous ease. Steel whispered. The girl looked down in surprise and disbelief at the stream of blood hosing from her throat.

  'Shishol!' shrieked one of the youths as she sank lifeless to the sawdust-powdered floor. He charged, hands outstretched like claws, to impale himself on the javelins of the men who stepped in behind the swordsman.

  The other conspirators bolted. They dodged for the rear of the warehouse, scrambling in and out among elephantine bales of cloth. The plumper one staggered and fell against a bale. He yipped with fear as a flung javelin grazed his calf. Then he recovered and dashed after his black-haired friend.

  The emaciated black-haired youth burst out into an alleyway. To his left rose the four-foot guardwall marking the boundary of the City. Twenty yards in the other direction lay a street swarming with black-and-purple-clad soldiers.

  He raced away from them, intent on reaching the short wall. His companion hesitated, uncertain of his friend's intent. A broadheaded arrow nailed him to the door. He died with the shadow of wings across his face.

  Chiresko heard the hollow boom of wings stop as the Sky Guardsman dropped into the narrow space between warehouses. The confines of the alley left no room for the bird to flap its wings. With a leap Chiresko gained the top of the guardwall. Tottering on the brink of emptiness, he slumped against the corner of Elura's building.

  The eagle shot by him like a living missile, claws stretched to clutch his torso. The bird missed by scant inches and plunged over the wall, its angry cries filling the narrow alley with hideous echoes.

  Shouts sounded up the street. Time moved like molasses for him. He saw his pursuers spill into the alley. He saw his friend's dead body sagging against the door, head slumped to the side. He saw his own death approach.

  Wings pounded air. The war eagle had recovered from its dive and returned intent on vengeance. As it neared Chiresko, its rider banked in toward the City's wall and grabbed at the black-haired rebel.

  To his astonishment the boy leaped gladly to meet him. The bird-rider shouted hoarsely as Chiresko wrapped mad-strong arms about his neck.

  A riderless eagle spun skyward, crying like an orphaned child. When the other Guardsmen reached the wall, all that remained was the wisp of Chiresko's laugh, stretching thin into the distance below.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A small fire crackled fitfully inside the circle of rocks. The sere, scrubby grasses that grew in the shadow of the Ramparts burned smokelessly, so Fost pronounced it safe to build a fire. Fost took great care in making sure no stray spark would set ablaze the surrounding dry vegetation.

  A haunch of meat sizzled over the flames. Having spent much of his life on the treeless steppe, Fost carried in his knapsack an iron spit and forked uprights for roasting game. After weeks of tasteless gruel and the stewed weeds of the Ethereals, the smell of cooking antelope produced a hunger in Moriana and Fost that was almost agony. The beast had broken from between two boulders in front of the travelers, a tiny yellow-and-cream buck with a flat, saw-edged horn growing from its snout. Useless for lack of arrows, Moriana's bow had long since been abandoned. But the antelope had popped up close enough for a well-aimed cast of the long knife Fost had given Moriana.

  The pair had emerged from the Crater the previous afternoon to discover a landscape totally innocent of snow. The same capaciousness of climate that had brought an early blizzard howling through the Ramparts to threaten them a week ago had sent warm winds from the North to sweep away the snow. A chill still edged the air but it was bearable.

  Fost lay full length on the ground, fingers interlaced behind his neck. Half-lidded eyes watched round clouds tumble by idly, but he didn't neglect to scan the horizon now and again for the sweep of great wings.

  'If we didn't have Rann breathing down our necks,' he said, 'I'd find this the sheerest pleasure.'

  'I'm glad your bucolic tastes are so amply gratified,' said Erimenes sourly.

  Moriana looked at the courier with curiosity. 'You like the cold and wind and harshness? Strange. I'd thought you city-bred.'

  'City-bred and -born,' Fost said, laughing. 'I first saw the day in the Teeming of High Medurim. A soot-faced, starving urchin of the streets, never resting, trusting no one, never sleeping twice in the same spot.'

  'You don't make it sound attractive. I'd always heard great things of the Imperial capital.'

  'Oh, Medurim's a city of wonder where every fantasy can be fulfilled - if you've the money. I never did. Born poor, die poor-that's the law the city lives by.' He rolled to one side and prodded the roasting meat with the tip of his dagger to turn it. 'Still, I miss it - in a way. For all its corruption it has a certain decayed grandeur like a noted courtesan grown old. It's still a melting pot for the Sundered Realm, and the port attracts merchantmen from all over the world. Caravels from the Isles of the Sun, barkentines from the Northern Continent, vessels from the Antipodes and the lands beyond the Golden Seas, all come to Medurim. I used to go down and sit by the docks and watch them come in. When I grew older I'd get work unloading them. Sometimes they'd pay me, other times they'd beat me and chase me off.' He laughed. 'Those who treated me shoddily came to regret it. I'd sneak back in the night and steal the choicest item from their cargoes. Ah, Medurim, a lovely, pox-ridden, treacherous bitch of a city. How I longed to be free of her!'

  'You were a slave?' 'Only to my belly.' He poked at the fire. 'I was an apprentice for a time. An apprentice thief. Old Fimster was my master and he treated me well enough, beating me only when I deserved it. He raised me from an orphan pup; my parents were killed in a dole riot.'

  Moriana sat with her legs drawn up, arms clasped about her knees, chewing ruminatively on her lower lip. A flock of large shapes winged across the sky. Fost tensed only briefly. It seemed that forever wings in the sky had been a sign of mortal peril. He was as yet unaccustomed to the notion that sometimes they were signs of safety. No lone eagle would chance upon them while the thulyakhashawin hunted.

  'The life history of a guttersnipe,' the princess said, her words gently scoffing. 'Surely there's more to it than that. You've come by

  education somehow. How'd you do it?' 'I stole it.'

  Moriana stared at him. 'Truly,' Fost said. 'I don't joke about such things. The library of Medurim is as big as a palace. It was once as glorious, but by my time had fallen into disrepair, with soot streaking the marble facades and many arcades collapsed with no attempt at restoration. The place always fascinated me. My friends derided the notion, but I was convinced that some fabulous treasure lay behind that vast columned portal.'

  He drew himself into a sitting position, eyes fixed on the leaping, sallow flames. 'I slipped in one afternoon, intending to find that treasure and steal it. But I didn't find any treasure. Just bo
oks, shelves and shelves of books, so high a man needed a tall ladder to reach the topmost.' He shook his head. 'I stayed. I still don't know why. I wandered through the dusty shelves, pulling out books at random, opening them and scanning pages without comprehension. It frustrated me not understanding what those volumes contained. It seemed unfair. I tried by dint of effort to pry meaning from the pages. It didn't work.

  'The hours passed. I fell asleep unnoticed in some dim recess of the library. In the morning I was shaken awake by a rheumy-eyed oldster wearing the indigo gown of a pedant. It scared me at first. He could have turned me in, you know, and I'd have been enslaved for vagrancy. He asked what I was doing there. Rather foolishly I told him. "I thought there was treasure inside this great building, sire," I said. "I came to steal it." '

  Erimenes was making ostentatious sounds of yawning. Fost, knowing full well that the spirit had no need to yawn and only did so to make plain his boredom with the tale, continued without interruption.

  'He laughed at this, the old man did. "Well, treasure lies herein," he said, "but not anyone may partake of it." And he took me on as his pupil, taught me to read and reckon and think thoughts beyond the gutter and my next meal.'

  'But how did you steal your education?' asked Moriana. 'Ceratith made his living as a tutor, though a meagre living it was, for interest in learning had declined among the monied classes of Medurim. I couldn't pay, of course. Ceratith forever joked that I was robbing him.' Fost's expression darkened. 'It wasn't true. I always

  meant to pay him, if ever I could get together the money.' 'Why didn't you?'

  'I never had the chance. One night, as he wended his way home from the library, a pair of alley-bashers knocked in his skull. All he had on him was a devalued Old Empire klenor and three sipans.' Fost rubbed his jaw. 'A poor bargain for the thieves because I found them and killed them. Not long after that, Fimster died of an ague. I signed on with a collier bearing coal to North Keep to feed the hunchbacks' forges. I was fourteen at the time. That palled eventually, and when I turned seventeen I was working as a courier out of Tolviroth Acerte, the City of Bankers.' He turned and slapped the satchel. 'And that concludes the story of my life, friend Erimenes, so you can cease your show of tedium.'

  'No show,' Erimenes said. 'My ennui is perfectly genuine. But why stop now, just as you reach the most interesting parts: the fleshpots of Tolviroth.'

  'What do you know of fleshpots, Erimenes?' the courier asked. 'Not as much as I'd like to,' admitted Erimenes. 'That bothersome slug Gabric had no sense of adventure. He stuck me on a shelf and left me to rot until you arrived to take me to Kest-i-Mond.'

  'Gabric is a slug,' Fost said. He chuckled. 'He'll flay me alive for failing to report back, if ever I return to Tolviroth Acerte. I doubt I shall. The less time I spend in cities, the happier I am.'

  'Faugh’ Erimenes said. 'You're little better than Gabric. To show what a dolt your friend Fost's employer is, Moriana, my morsel, on one occasion a wench lissome and most comely pleaded with him not to foreclose on her. She had breasts like suva melons, but that obese capon ignored the obvious and repossessed her house. I ask you! He had no use for one more insect-ridden hovel and infinite use for a nice, rollicking tumble. But no, he allowed his greed to overwhelm his lust. The pinhead. He probably doesn't even like boys.'

  'We couriers have it that he frottages himself with his moneybags,' Fost said. He cocked his head at his companion. 'Why the troubled look, Moriana?'

  'This talk of cities,' she said. 'It makes me wonder how my own fares.' She rose and knelt by Fost's pack. 'Do you mind if I borrow the water cask?'

  'You didn't ask the first time you took it.' He raised his head as she colored. 'No, I'm sorry. Go ahead, do with it what you will.'

  She took the ebony chalice from the satchel and removed its lid. Instantly the vessel filled with water. She set it on the ground, hunkered down and closed her eyes.

  Her lips fluttered. An eerie wail came from her that made hairs rise at the nape of Fost's neck.

  'Interesting, isn't it, knowing a sorceress?' Erimenes said conversationally. 'She could turn you into a newt any time she wished.'

  'You always look on the bright side of things, don't you?' Fost looked on with a combination of apprehension and interest as Moriana extended her fingers over the chalice. The water turned opaque white. It began to swirl round and round, as though stirred by a spoon.

  She opened her eyes. The liquid cleared. But it was plain water no longer. Instead it was like a window overlooking a scene two hundred miles distant.

  'Look upon the City in the Sky,' she said. Crowds thronged the Circle of the Skywell. But this was no mere mob of citizens as had gathered to watch Moriana's sacrifice; these stood in orderly ranks, armored in leather enameled with bright designs, bearing shield, spear and short, curved sword. Others marched before them, clad in plate and chain. Fost recognized the sallets of the Monitors. Squadrons of war eagles wheeled across the sky.

  Muttering to herself, Moriana gestured. The picture changed. It showed lines of captives being herded to dungeons and heavily armed Monitors moving from house to house, smashing in doors and dragging unfortunates out to join the miserable procession. Next the docks came into view. Balloons, gigantic bloated sausages many times the size of the round gasbag Fost had ridden to the City, rubbed their flanks against the ramparts like amorous whales as files of slaves unloaded their gondolas.

  Moriana shook her head sadly. The image disappeared, leaving behind only a tiny ripple.

  'Insurrection?' Fost asked, though the pictures hadn't much looked like it.

  'No. Synalon arms the City for war, training fresh troops, crushing all opposition, storing up provisions.' She smoothed her hair back from her face. Sweat stood on her forehead despite the cool air. 'She's confident, damn her. She no longer bothers to block my scrying spell.'

  'Who could threaten the City in the Sky?' Erimenes asked. 'None. Only the Fallen People might dare but they are few and lack the material.' Fost raised his eyebrows at this, and made a note to ask her more about the descendants of the City's builders. Luranni's tales had piqued his curiosity. 'No, my sister prepares for a war of conquest.' She clenched her hands into knots of anger. 'She will destroy all the Etuul have built. I must return. I must stop her!'

  Fost did not answer. After a moment Moriana glanced at him and looked away. She'd trodden forbidden ground. The issue of who should have the Amulet of Living Flame and what should be done with it once they reached Athalau lay between them like a curtain of ice. By common consent they had avoided it until now.

  Mercifully Erimenes broke the silence. 'I'm forced to observe that this is an extravagant waste of a lovely afternoon. And pleasure, once wasted, can never be regained, and who knows better than I? Why don't you engage in a little copulation before the cold returns?'

  Fost laughed too loudly. 'Not a bad idea, if there were more time. I've another idea.' He grasped the ceramic handle of the skewer and raised the antelope leg. It was done to perfection. 'Why don't we eat and restore our strength? We start into the mountains tomorrow.'

  'If you're wrong, rider, you know what to expect.' Though softly spoken, the words carried clearly across the rush of wind and the rhythmic thunder of wings. The soldier so addressed urged his mount to greater speed.

  Prince Rann was in a foul mood. His scouts had caught the fleeing princess and her accomplice within hours of their escape, only to have the fugitives best them in combat and vanish into the tangle of ravines north and west of Brev. The survivors admitted being afraid to press pursuit; they claimed their quarry had enchanted them. Nonsense, of course. Synalon's ward-spells protected them from adverse magics. But the damage was done, and the worst of all was that those responsible couldn't be punished for their cowardice and ineptitude. He had too few men to spend them in that fashion.

  From the outset Rann assumed the fugitives would head southeast by the straightest route for the Gate of the Mountains. He'd acknowledged to himself
the possibility they could have gone due south instead, to attempt passage through the Valley of Crushed Bones he'd seen marked on the map Synalon had found in the satchel with the spirit jar. Yet he'd had men sufficient only to scout one route and had opted for the one he thought more likely to be right. As a result he and his bird-riders spent two and a half weeks combing empty grassland without result. When they drew near the Ramparts, they ran the risk of encountering the winged foxes. Rann had lost four men to the beasts.