'I have my duty to the Sky City before me. After Synalon is defeated and I've regained the throne, then will be the time to consider affairs of the heart. Darl's withdrawal, painful as it is to me, isn't the worst of my problems.'
Though she had not spoken of it again since the evening of the battle, word had filtered through her small party that she intended journeying to Thendrun to ally with its denizens. That word was not well received. Her fellow refugees had begun slipping away, in ones and twos, walking away from sentry duty in the midst of darkness or falling back on the march until turning off unobserved into the woods. Among those who stayed there was talk; Moriana heard – or thought she heard – terms such as 'witch' and 'traitor to her kind' hissed behind cupped hands around the campfires when they halted for the night. 'I don't understand.'
Moriana started at Ziore's words, though they rang softly in the quiet of the woods. When Moriana writhed in the grip of a mood like her present one, the nun's shade would read her thoughts carefully unless Moriana asked her not to. The princess had made no such request. But she had forgotten that her dark musings were shared by another. 'What don't you understand?' she asked stiffly.
'Why the terrific resentment among the others about your going to the Fallen Ones? I doubt more than a handful of humans have so much as seen one in the eighty centuries since Riomar Shai-Gallri seized the Sky City. Why the intensity of feeling?'
Moriana stopped, allowed the forest stillness to settle about her for a dozen heartbeats before answering. 'Have you heard of the Watchers?' she asked.
'Well… yes,' answered Ziore hesitantly. 'My knowledge is second-hand through what I've overheard from others.'
'Then your education contains gaps,' said Moriana, grateful for the chance to speak of things other than her feelings for Darl and Fost. 'When Felarod and his Hundred drew forth the wrath of the World Spirit and broke the might of the Zr'gsz, they imprisoned the demon Istu sent by the Dark Ones to aid the Hissers in the foundations of the Sky City. This was only one of the deeds he did before the World Spirit departed. Some of the lava that has flowed in centuries past from the Throat of the Old Ones – Omizantrim – is a stuff called skystone. Worked properly with spelts known to Zr'gsz adepts, the skystone floats on air like chaff. The City itself is built on a huge raft of it. The much smaller war rafts the Hissers rode into battle were a source of their strength as important as Istu himself. So Felarod summoned up a creature from the belly of the earth called Ullapag, whose cry, though inaudible to humans, is death to the Zr'gsz. And to aid the Ullapag and insure that the Hissers should no longer have access to their skystone, Feiarod set a band of heroes, men and women strong and keen-sighted and skilled with bow and spear, to watch over the skystone flows until the Fallen Ones should be no more. These are the Watchers of legend.
'After ten millennia,' Moriana added, 'the descendants of the original Watchers remain on their lonely vigil at the foot of Omizantrim. Can you imagine the dedication that implies?'
'Yes, it disturbs me greatly. For three hundred generations to circumscribe their lives willingly to keep an ancient faith – it makes my own deprivation trivial, doesn't it?'
Moriana felt Ziore's bitterness at her own life. She could sense the troubling of her friend's thoughts and wondered if some of Ziore's gift had worn off on her. Being a nun in life following Erimenes's self-denying teachings and missing the rich realms of human experience had stunted her in many ways.
'Each person's problems, no matter how trivial, are enough and more for that person,' said Moriana, smiling wanly at being able to quote one of the genie's aphorisms back at her.
'But it's more than just the Watchers,' the princess went on. 'I take it you're not acquainted with children's fairy tales.'
'No,' Ziore replied. 'I was sent to convent at an early age. We had no time for such mundane trivia.' Her words rang as harshly as any Moriana had heard her speak.
'The favorite of them, even now, concerns the bravery and dedication of the Watchers in standing off attempts by the Hissers to regain their precious skystone mine. Whether there's any truth in them, I don't know. And when children cry or balk at eating their greens, what do mothers tell them? "The Vridzish will get you if you don't behave!"'
'So the Hissers are the legendary embodiment of evil to the people of the Realm.'
'And the Watchers the embodiment of heroic dedication,' said Moriana.
'Now I see why your men fear your destination – and why you do, as well.'
Moriana bit her lip. 'And have I reason to fear my course of action?'
'Have you any other?' came the sharp reply. 'I -' The nun's voice cut off, to resume in Moriana's mind: Someone comes.
The princess went into a fighting crouch, hands on hilt of sword and dagger. She heard whistling, a jaunty carefree tune, and the crunching of leaves under boots.
'Well met, Lord Stormcloud,' she said as the tall blond youth strode into view. He smiled, as radiant as the sun shining above.
'You requested that I not sneak up on you again,' he said. 'I saw fit to follow your advice.' Straightening, Mortana took hands from weapons and smiled.
'I… I wanted to tell you, latic, that I am most grateful for the assistance you've given me. It wouldn't have been possible to come this far.' He stood arm's length from her, smiling.
'Then perhaps the time has come for you to tender payment,' he said, lunging as he spoke.
Caught off balance, Moriana fell back against the trunk of a tree. Strong fingers clawed at her belt. She felt the brass catch give, felt her swordbelt torn away bodily and flung into the brush. Her fingers struck at his eyes. Laughing, he easily caught her wrists and threw her down.
Moriana felt a pulse of energy surge from Ziore. The spirit was trying to quell the mercenary's passion, latic's face purpled in fury. He savagely kicked the satchel, parting the strap and sending Ziore's jug spinning after Moriana's swordbelt. Moriana heard the jug strike a tree with crushing force. She screamed.
The air exploded from her lungs as the mercenary flung himself atop her. Moriana wasted no time demanding what he was doing; she felt the hardness of him prodding into her thigh as his fingers tore at the fastening on her breeches. She brought a knee up. He twisted his hips expertly to block and grinned at her. The Amulet, torn free of her bodice, shone like obsidian.
'I've wanted this for so long,' he panted. 'Watching you flash your breasts and thighs in that flimsy gown… ah! You've wanted what I can offer you. There we go! Now, down with your trousers and in – you'll be begging for more, Bright Princess, by the time I'm done!'
He held both wrists pinioned in one powerful hand while the other tore open her breeches. His body had the power of a seasoned warrior. But so did hers, and she was coming out of the numbness of shock she'd first felt at his attack.
'No, no, you've got no right to hold back.' He groaned in her ear like an avid lover, but in words no lover would utter. 'You've made your pact with blackness, you've sold your soul. Now collect some of the wages!'
He thrust. Snarling like a war dog, she tore her hands free. His smile widened sardonically as she grabbed his throat. Then, as her thumbs began inexorably to press his head back, the smile disintegrated and a look of disbelief came into his eyes.
Stormcloud clutched at her wrists with both hands. Sweat poured down his face. Her eyes blazing with insane rage, Moriana gathered her strength and heaved.
When armed men ran up from the camp, led by Darl looking fully his old self with broadsword bared in his hand, they found her huddled half-naked against the slick trunk of a shunnak, cradling Ziore's jug in her lap. The Amulet, now the purest white, hung quiescent between bare breasts. The genie hovered by her side. A few feet away latic Stormcloud lay sprawled, as limp as a child's ragdoll, eyes touched with the lifeless cast of porcelain. His neck was broken.
CHAPTER FIVE
'And what forecasts have you for me?' Duke Morn, ruler of Kara-Est, slumped on his throne, speaking into his beard and no
t looking at the stubby figure who stood before him. 'Are we ready to meet the onslaught of ah, the, ah, Sky City?'
Rising from her knees, Parel Tonsho, Chief Deputy of Kara-Est, wrinkled her nose in distaste. The wind was in from the north, blowing directly across the great fen called the Mire. Not even the Ducal Palace in the Hills of Cholon overlooking the city was exempt from the sour reek of decaying swamp. Heightened by unseasonable heat, the smell overpowered even the pomades carried by the deputy's half-dozen armed and painted retainers. One of the youths caught her expression and tittered, thinking it directed at the duke's vagueness. She shot him a glance that froze him to silence.
'As ready as we shall ever be to trade with them on the battlefield,' she said, 'unless our brave partners in Wirix see fit to send us some of their mages to help ward off the spells of that damned bitch-slut, Synalon.' Bony fingers stroked gray-shot beard.
'Oh, but our, our trading friends the Wirixers, ah, they're cautious,' he murmured as if to himself. 'They wish us to deal with the Sky City, bleed them penniless, that they do, and at the same time they marshal strength in case we fail in the exchange. Clever… clever business, indeed.'
Tonsho moistened thin lips. She gave the boy who had snickered a meaningful glare. Though for the most part Duke Morn was the distracted, feckless dodderer he appeared, sometimes he gave evidence that the shrewd statesman he once had been had not wholly died with his wife and only son two years ago. The boy pouted and stroked a golden bangle depending from one ear. Tonsho made a mental note to get rid of him at the first opportunity. He was obdurately stupid, and she could not abide that, even in her kept pretty-boys.
In the drafty throne room atop the Palace's highest tower they made a curious contrast, the duke and the commoner who actually ruled the dukedom. Morn's once mighty frame had shrunk to a spindly, emaciated shadow of its former self. His leonine head, once long and fierce, was parchment-skinned and hollow at the temples. Despite the sticky noonday heat unrelieved by the rank breeze crawling through open windows, he wore a heavy robe of yellow velvet trimmed with the fur of the rare gazinga of the Dyla Wilderlands. He huddled within its confines as though afflicted with chill. Whether heat or senility caused it, Morn virtually ignored Tonsho and idly rustled fingers among the maps and charts that covered the tables set by the curving stone wall to his side.
She stood before him, as stubby and ugly as a tree trunk but equally unyielding. Her slit-eyed face resembled that of a pit-bred fighting dog, her eyes watery gray and hair an indeterminate color suggestive of mice. Her lumpy body was decked out in an outrageous robe of scarlet and electric blue, and her shoes were yellow, curling upward at the toes. Tonsho was the most senior and powerful member of the Chamber of Deputies which administered the wealthy port of Kara-Est. She had clawed her way to that lofty position from the lowest gutter of the city's slums.
'The artillerists manning our roof engines can hit an osprey on the wing,' she told him. 'And our ludintip can hoist aloft gondolas filled with archers. For the first time in generations we will carry the war to the enemy in his own element. Most of Synalon's ground forces are still straggling back from the north, and her bird riders are diminished by two hard-fought battles in the last several weeks. Only the dog cavalry the City held in reserve in Bilsinx, the greater part of which already has marched on us according to our spies, is reasonably fresh. And they can be discounted.'
The huge, narrow head slowly moved up and down in a nod. Tonsho had no idea whether he comprehended her words or not. His lucid moments were both infrequent and unpredictable.
'On the debit side: their bird riders, particularly the Sky Guard, are consummately skillful and have the morale to absorb huge losses without breaking. We will have to inflict frightful slaughter on them to turn them back. And as they have made all too clear in recent days, they are more than adept at wreaking slaughter themselves. They have Synalon, who has announced to all the world that the Dark Ones have given her Their favor, and traded her increased powers. This may be true. Lastly, they have Rann. I credit him a greater advantage to them than the favor of the Dark Ones, or of the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift into the bargain.' She smiled grimly at the thought of such an unlikely alliance.
'Well…' Duke Morn stuttered at a loss for words. 'Do what you can. Yes. Let this be your watchword: do what you can.'
'We will,' the deputy rasped. A cold knot gathered in her belly at the prospect of battle, but she held her mind rigidly from her fear. 'We may not win, Your Grace. But we will cost the City in the Sky dearly in this armed negotiation. Perhaps enough to render moot their dreams of conquest.' She made abasement and prepared to leave.
'Yes,' the duke said slowly. 'I know what my part must be. You may leave now, Chief Deputy Tonsho. I will consult the weather. Meteorological data will be of vital importance in the coming conflict. Vital.'
She hid her grimace with another inclination of her head. He had been a strong leader, wiser than many and perhaps less destructive of his subjects than most strong rulers. Then a freak storm had blasted up the sheltered Gulf of Veluz overturning the tiny skiff in which his adored wife and son were taking a pleasurable day's sailing. For a week the duke and his navy searched the waters of the Gulf. The bodies of his wife and sole heir were discovered washed against the first lock of the Dyla Canal. The duke had seemed to shrivel on beholding them.
Since that tragedy he had been obsessed with the study of weather. He had his throne room transferred up to his pinnacle, inconveniently far up flights of stairs for Tonsho's short legs, and the charts and brass meteorological instruments, telescopes and barometers and astrolabes cluttering the cramped chamber were the only things in life that held any interest for him. Tonsho had ambiguous feelings about his fixation. It was sad to see a basically able man so reduced, but at the same time his infirmity cleared her way to power in the richest city of the Realm. And when all was said, she knew she was a more capable ruler than any highborn.
'I'm sure your observations will be of great value,' she said, and left. Her boys trooped obediently behind her, trailing a hint of perfume and the tinkling of weapons harness and gilt finery.
Fost laughed at the wind in his face and followed Jennas at a gallop down the long, sloping plain. Evening came down blue and cool all around, and the vast fields of flowers closed petals of white and yellow and crimson against the coming dark. It felt good to be alive, better perhaps than at any time since the courier had died and been reborn in Athalau.
'Come on!' Jennas shouted back at him. 'Grutz will be as sluggish as a fattened boar if he doesn't exercise. Make him work!'
Fost thumped his heels against the bear's furry barrel of a body. Grutz shot him a reproachful look over one churning red shoulder and dutifully lengthened his stride.
Riding the enormous steppes bear was like riding an avalance in full slide. Fost no longer felt the horrible queazy gut-clutching of motion sickness, nor did the constant back-and-forth whipping of his body threaten to part him, head from neck. He had never been much of a rider, but months in the saddle of the unorthodox southern mount had given him far more skill than he would acknowledge to himself. And it had toned him up as well. There hadn't been much exercise in simply riding the runners of his wheeled dog sled, as he had for most of his career as courier on the highroads of the Realm. Wenching and fighting had kept him more trim than most men then. Now he was conscious of a strength in neck, loins and belly he'd never before known.
Jennas had been riding Chubchuk, her own brown war bear, since both were cubs, as she put it. Pound for pound – and she outweighed the courier by a healthy margin – she was stronger than Fost, or any man he'd known. It wasn't plumpness; the feminine layer of subcutaneous fat, helpful insulation against the vicious chill of antarctic winter, merely softened the outlines of her powerful muscles, making her appear sleek and as strong as some great aquatic creature. Her greatest strength resided in her thighs and solid stomach, thanks to a lifetime of riding. The first time
her muscles had clenched in orgasm around him, Fost's eyes had nearly popped out of his head. Since then many were the times when in the heat of passion she'd clamped him so fervently with her legs that he literally cried for mercy.
Tall green grass whipped at his legs. He was a handsome man, another thing he would not admit to himself. His face was more rugged than his years accounted for, showing signs of having been well-buffeted about and occasionally hacked open. His shoulders were broad within a hauberk of mail, his carriage erect, black hair blown back wild and free. When angered Fost looked like death on the prowl, but there were laughter lines prominent about his mouth and ice-gray eyes. He made a splendid barbaric pair with Jennas.
She grinned and waved as Grutz puffed up alongside Chubchuk. Her own chain mail shirt was unlaced down the front displaying a single swatch of canvas tied about her ribcage to keep her large breasts from bouncing uncomfortably.
Fost looked at her and thought how beautiful she was. He had considered her merely handsome before, and wondered now at his former blindness.
But she's not Moriana, came the pursuing thought. Fost knew deep down that no one could ever compare to his Sky City princess. No one, not even Jennas.
The light went out of his eyes and he let Grutz fall behind. He owed his life to the hetwoman of the Bear Clan. Wise and clever, an incomparable companion in bed and battle, she even laughed at his jokes. But Fost loved the golden-haired, green-eyed heiress to the Beryl Throne, she who had killed him to possess the gem both thought at the time to be the Amulet of Living Flame.
However, the gaudy bauble Moriana had taken from Athalau was not the Amulet but the Destiny Stone. This fey device had the power to alter the luck of its wearer, swinging between extremes of good and bad according to its own mysterious whim. The undistinguished pendant Fost had seized in his dying reflex had been the Amulet they both sought.
The Amulet exhausted the last of its power bringing Fost back to life.
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