'You wish to destroy the City, then, brothers?' Darl called. He fixed a tall, vigorous onlooker with his gaze.
Singled out, the man waved his cap in the air and cried, 'Yes!' The fever of destruction on him, he added, 'Will you lead us, Darl?'
'No.' The word dropped like a stone among them. Exuberance left the throng. They stared at the speaker. Hostility began to replace-adoration.
'You do not wish to destroy the City in the Sky. Who among you does not benefit from their magics? The metalworker whose captive elemental increases his production tenfold and more? The herdsman whose flocks are kept free of pestilence by Sky City wards and potions? No, my friends. To destroy the Sky City would be to destroy yourselves.'
'But, Lord Darl,' said the man he'd singled out as spokesman for the crowd, 'what do you want of us?' He scratched behind prominent ears. 'One minute you issue the call to arms, and now you'd have us swear eternal friendship with the City. How can we do both?'
'Your quarrel is not with the City, brother,' said Darl, 'nor yet with its people. It is with those who rule the City: Synalon, the evil sorceress who calls on the Dark Ones. She and her minions would make you bend your necks to the yoke of slavery.
'You fear the Sky City, and rightfully so. Yet you cannot exist without it. So you ask, what are you to do?'
He looked around, eyes boring into the innermost recesses of each man's mind.
'You can serve yourselves and at the same time serve a higher justice as well. You can right the wrong Synalon did in seizing the Beryl Throne for herself. For you all know that Synalon is not the true and proper ruler of the City. Her sister, who would be friend to all the peoples of the Sundered Realm, desires only peace and prosperity. Her cause is just. Her cause is yours.
'You ask what you can do? I say to you, swear yourselves to Moriana's cause as I have done myself!' And he nodded to Moriana, who stepped forward into the circle of torchlight.
The acclamation washed over her like the ocean's tide. They had gained over five million klenor from Imin Dun Bacir in Tolviroth Acerte, the sum total of his personal fortune. As Moriana told him, his life was a bargain at any price.
Moriana had thought they had all the money they needed. To her chagrin, Darl corrected her. They had nowhere near the requisite amount to mount a campaign - or a single battle - against the Sky City.
Moriana and Darl remained another week in Tolviroth Acerte winnowing the mercenaries who thronged to the island in search of employment. They looked for leaders of proven skill and experience to command, and a few especially battle-hardened warriors to act as cadre for the volunteer armies Darl promised to raise. With the majority of Bacir's money remaining, the pair then started putting together an army.
Even after the news of the fall of Bilsinx reached the North, Moriana got no support from the surviving Quincunx Cities. Each had plans of its own for meeting this new menace, plans in which the pretender to the Beryl Throne didn't fit.
They continued from Wirix northwest to the River Merchant, which bordered that conglomeration of feuding states still called the Empire. Here Darl enjoyed his greatest renown. Here it was that he hoped to garner the bulk of the army to press Moriana's claim to the throne.
The princess still couldn't believe her good fortune in meeting the count-duke. Who else in all the Realm would swear to aid her to victory or follow her to defeat on their first encounter? Mere infatuation was unlikely to motivate anyone of intellect and talent to be of service to her.
But Darl's attraction for her was not the reason he joined her. The reason was simply as he'd stated it: he needed a cause. Without some crusade, some quest, his life lacked meaning. Challenging the City promised the adventure of a lifetime.
Moriana only marveled at the coincidence that brought him and her to Tolviroth Acerte at the same time. It was part and parcel of the bewildering luck she'd been experiencing. One minute she was given great good fortune, the next it was snatched away. It was as if. some mad god toyed with her destiny.
But it was no mad god. It was the Destiny Stone. She still believed she possessed the Amulet of Living Flame. She had marked the fluctuations in color, dark to light, light to dark, in the amulet's great jewel. She had even connected the shifts in hue with her own fortunes. But it never occurred to her that the talisman caused the twists in destiny. She merely thought the amulet had a subsidiary property of measuring a person's good fortune at any given instant. She credited it to the wisdom of the Athalar and thought no more about it.
Again Moriana marveled at her luck in finding Darl. He possessed the means of effectively accomplishing her ends. And he was a magician whose skills rivaled Synalon's.
Sorcery had nothing to do with his talent. His magic was in his tongue and the skill with which he plied it.
His speech was like a torch. It set afire the souls of those who heard it. When she thought about the things Darl had said, it seemed to Moriana there was little remarkable about them. But something in his manner of speaking, his presence, lifted men up and out of themselves. This was the greatest gift he brought to Moriana.
The chorus of approval roared on and on. Moriana faced the crowd, her head held high, trying to look noble and resolute. They would get a hundred volunteers from this gathering, perhaps more, and this was only a small meeting. Success rode on the air like a banner.
And yet she irrationally felt uneasiness dogging her at every turn.
Prince Rann stalked the vaulted corridor that led to the queen's throne chamber. His steel-rimmed boot-heels rapped authoritatively, echoes diminishing behind him like the wakeof a ship. He wore new boots in the fashion of the Highgrass Broad riders. Unlike the light, soft, knee-high moccasins worn by the Sky City flyers, these were of heavy grazer leather and came to mid-thigh when unrolled. Now the tops were folded rakishly below the prince's knees. He had been given them as a gift from Destirin Luhacs, V'Duuyek's second-in-command, in commemoration of Bilsinx. They were too heavy to wear astride a warbird, but it pleased Rann to wear them about the palace.
He contemplated the coming interview with his cousin with great satisfaction. In the flush of conquest, she had forgotten all about the Athalau affair.
From Bilsinx, the Sky City had proceeded southward passing over Brev and then veering toward Thailot. Of all the Quincunx Cities, Brev was the weakest, and the Hereditary Council governing her knew it. As the City approached, they held hurried consultation, then sent word that the Sky City was as welcome as always to trade there. The City did not answer. Yet when its vast oblong filled Brev'ssky, the cargo balloons drifting down held only magic artifacts and other trade goods.
The Sky City had bigger game in mind. The three remaining Quincunx Cities followed Rann's expectations. Thailot couched its submission in terms of caring little what befell those on the other side of the Thails, but submitted nonetheless. Not so with Wirix and Kara-Est. The Jewel of Wir interned all Sky Citizens on the island and sent its defiance to Synalon. Kara-Est contemptuously expelled the Sky-Born and sent no other message to their aerie.
After Bilsinx was secured and Sky City agents had informed Rann by means of communicator crystals that the news had reached the seaport city, he dispatched a squad of Sky Guardsmen to make an aerial reconnaissance of Kara-Est. Intelligence reports indicated that the Estil were devoting their whole attention to shoring up their defenses.
Observers' riding baskets slung from ludintip spotted the patrols' wings far off. No other living gasbags rose to challenge the bird riders. The Sky City commander gloated until the ballistae mounted on revolving platforms on Kara-Est's rooftops engaged his patrol. A steel missile pierced a rider's leg, pinning it to his mount's chest. A frantic midair rescue attempt failed. He plunged to death with his mount on the steep streets below. Another eagle was grazed by a bolt before the patrol winged out of range.
Rann had been furious at the news. But the setback was only temporary. Fate - or perhaps the Dark Ones - had gained the City time to prepare for its duel wit
h Kara-Est. Rann knew how to make use of time. When the Sky City passed over the seaport, the groundlings would be amply repaid for their presumption.
Far more serious had been the tidings that Moriana had formed a liaison with Darl Rhadaman. The possibility existed, as much as Rann hated to admit it, that the slippery bitch and her new consort would be able to scrape together enough second sons, criminals, and others in the degenerate North to harry the City's lines of communication. If that happened, he would have to divert precious manpower to avert the threat.
Amazingly, Synalon had taken even that news with equanimity. Rann had expected that more than antique statuary would-fall victim to her lightning bolts. But his royal cousin had merely nodded distractedly when he gave her the word and had gone back to feeding gobbets of raw meat to one of her loathsome talking ravens.
Now he was on his way to report that the palace mages met with greater success than anticipated in generating new fire elementals. The salamanders had a special role in the upcoming battle.
'Highness?' The familiar nasal voice stopped him in his tracks. He wheeled to face Maguerr the mage.
'What is it?' Rann asked. The network of scars covering his face whitened at the strain of keeping his tones polite.
- Maguerr was a pissant; what affronted the prince most was that Maguerr was an indispensable pissant. No other sorcerer in the City had his skill in the magics of communications crystals. Though Maguerr's manner with Rann was as unctuous as ever, Rann had to be polite - and he hated it. The rumor had even started that Synalon toyed with the idea of inviting Maguerr to her chambers for nocturnal consultations.
'Word comes from our agents in Kara-Est, lord.' Maguerr fingered sandy wisps of beard. The gray and maroon robes of his recently earned mastery had not lent him dignity. He looked like a scrawny waif who had pilfered a Master Mage's wardrobe.
'Well, what is it?' demanded Rann impatiently. Maguerr's head bobbed up and down as though on a string.
'Two strangers of a most peculiar variety, lord. They came from the south out of the Southern Steppes, and they rode giant bears.'
Rann stared at him, eyes suddenly without color. 'One of them,' Maguerr continued through his nose, 'was no less than the hetwoman of a clan of bear-riding savages. The other.. .' and he preeened like a warbird, ' ... the other was a Medurimite courier, Fost Longstrider by name.'
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 thin
g 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.
WoP - 01 - War of Powers Page 49