Istu awakened wop-2

by Robert E. Vardeman

  'Shut up, you querulous old fool,' Ziore's voice snapped. Through the tear glaze covering his eyes, Fost became aware of an unfamiliar outline bending over him. He blinked to clear his vision. He saw an elderly woman clad in a long, flowing robe similar to the one Erimenes 'wore.' Her aged features were smooth, serene, beautiful. Erimenes was blue; this apparition was pink, with long unbound hair so pale as to be almost white. Tiny reddish sparks danced within her substance.

  Fost felt peace and comfort suffuse his body. His face, which had felt as if a heated torture mask had been clamped to it, began to relax from agonized contortion. He still felt agony in his head and aching weariness in every limb, but somehow the sensations no longer troubled him.

  'Moriana woke briefly and let me out. She's sleeping again. I hope she sleeps a long time, the poor girl. She's suffered many hurts. Only a few of them are of the body.'

  Fost moved his head tentatively, gingerly shaking it as if unsure whether or not pieces might break off or fall out. When nothing untoward happened, he straightened and spoke.

  'Water,' he said in a voice sounding like it came from another's throat.

  A look of concern passed over the slender, aged face. 'I cannot help you. But 1 perceive you have your magic water flask with you.'

  In objective terms, it probably would have taken more out of Fost to climb hand over hand from the ground to the Sky City on a rope than to open the satchel in which he carried Erimenes's jug and bring forth the silver-chased black flask. But certainly the chore seemed onerous. With fingers that felt as agile as the City's great sausage-shaped cargo balloons, he unstoppered the flask and held it to his lips.

  The tepid water was as sweet as nectar rolling through his cottony mouth and down his parched throat. When he had found the body of Kest-i-Mond the mage murdered in the sorcerer's own study a few thousand years ago – was it only last fall? – it had seemed at first that his only reward for braving the Sky City soldiers to deliver Erimenes's spirit to the enchanter was to be the flask and a silver-covered bowl of similar make. A paltry reward, the flask produced a perpetual flow of lukewarm water and the bowl gave an inexhaustible supply of tasteless thin grey gruel. However, this wasn't the first time Fost had cause to be thankful for those items. He wiped his lips and tossed back his head, which was a mistake.

  When the sledgehammer pounding in his brain had given way to a tackhammer tapping insistently at his temples and forehead and the bridge of his nose, he dared a look around. The raft was an oblong eight feet wide and twelve long. The gleaming black sphere at the stern controlled the raft's movements – under the guiding hand of a Zr'gsz.

  Around him the day was overcast. A rumpled ceiling of cloud hung above his head. The clouds thinned to admit rays of watery sunlight of a sour lemon shade more unpleasant than plain shadow. Aft he saw a massive purple bulwark he eventually identified as the Thail Mountains dividing the continent. Oriented, Fost scanned all around, swivelling his head slowly to keep it from falling off his neck. North he saw the green of forests, bordered by the broad brown flood plain of the River Marchant. Beyond that the play of light and shadow on fallow lands and those planted in spring wheat turned the Black March into a giant's game.

  Off to starboard lay an irregular metallic splotch with a dark mound in the middle. Its color was that of an Imperial klenor-piece whose silver wash had worn away to reveal base metal. Fost recognized Lake Wir, with Wirix unapproachable at the center. The lake was ringed with an irregular dark line that the courier didn't think was vegetation. After a moment, his eyes moved involuntarily to

  Moriana, who lay huddled at his side, her shoulders rising and falling to the tidal motion of her breathing. She had mentioned leaving a force of Hissers camped on the shores of Lake Wir. Now they had become a besieging army, and a sizable one at that. Fost wondered where they'd come from in such huge numbers.

  'Moriana often pondered that question,' said Ziore, causing him to jump. 'When we visited Thendrun, the place appeared deserted. More of the Vridzish were involved in the attack on the Sky City than the princess thought were exiled.' Her face grew thoughtful. 'I suppose I should call her queen now.'

  'Princess is probably as accurate as any other term,' sneered Erimenes, 'since she has no domain to rule.' He wagged his head censoriously. 'Her ambitions cost her dearly. Though I daresay others will pay far more before this mess is done.'

  'How can you say that!' flared Ziore. Her form became darker and redder, the light flecks within her substance blazing like tiny suns. 'This has been terrible for her! She knows well what she's caused. Indeed, she blames herself far too much since all she did was what she believed to be right.'

  'She couldn't possibly blame herself too much. Should she accept an adequate share of guilt for the evils she's wrought, she'd cast herself over the edge.' Ziore's form turned almost white in rage. 'You dare…'

  'Shut up!' Fost bellowed. Ignoring the aftershocks in his head, he scowled at the two genies and went on in a low, deadly voice. 'I have endured as much of your squabbling as I intend to. Another word of argument from either of you and I'll cast both your jugs over the edge of the raft.'

  Both shades opened their mouths at the same time. Fost's eyes became slits of a gray ice. Both mouths promptly closed.

  'That's better.' He lowered himself back on his elbows and continued his cursory survey. Black clouds obscured the country to the south, belaboring the Highgrass Broad and the Quincunx territory around Bilsinx with lightning and heavy rain. 'Where's the City?' he asked.

  'Due south of us,' said Erimenes after a moment of sulking, his eyebrows lowered and his thin mouth pouted to let Fost know how miffed he was at such cavalier treatment. 'It's hidden by the clouds.'

  Fost nodded, very deliberately, as if he had an egg balanced on his head and didn't want it to roll off.

  'They can't see us. And I can't see them, which makes me just as glad.'

  He put a hand up and gingerly explored his face. The contours weren't altogether familiar. 'How long was I out?'

  'You've slept since yesterday,' Ziore answered. She didn't seem as angry over Fost's outburst as was Erimenes. She was a forgiving soul, save where Erimenes the Ethical was concerned. 'We do seem to be slowly outdistancing it.'

  'Not that it matters now that they can't see us.' Being able to contradict his antagonist brought a pleased smile to Erimenes's lips. 'We floated in plain sight of the City until night came, and they showed no sign of molesting us.'

  Fost lifted the flask for another drink. He still felt no hunger; the thought of food made his stomach surge and roll like a boat in a moderate sea. 'Are we just floating at random, then?' Erimenes shook his head. 'Where are we going?'

  The genie inclined his head. Fost followed his gaze and found himself staring at the smoke-wreathed fang of Mt. Omizantrim. His stomach dropped away beneath him.

  When he awoke, the first thing Fost saw was black Omizantrim looming over them like a hammer poised to fall, its head dense smoke shot through with lightnings. The steady rumble of the angry mountain beat against his ears. Brimstone clutched at his throat and wrinkled his nose. Even his skin gritted unclean with a sheen of ash and volcanic dust.

  The second thing he saw was Moriana, sitting with her knees drawn up and her arms encircling them. Her face was haggard and pale. She turned toward the fury of the volcano as if with longing.

  'Moriana,' he said softly. She neither spoke nor stirred. Cautiously, he raised himself. His head didn't start vibrating like a gong. He reached out and took her arm.

  She turned to face him. Her eyes were like coals and only vaguely the green he remembered so fondly.

  'Erimenes is right.' Her voice fell heavy and black like a burnt ember. 'I should fling myself over the side.'

  After an ugly glance at the philosopher who stood by the port edge looking sadly at the thunderhead piled above them, Fost said, 'Nonsense. You should know better than to listen to him.'

  She pulled away and looked back toward the
mountain.

  'I've brought disaster on the world. I wanted to save my City. Instead, I destroyed it. And I murdered you, the man I loved. Oh, you live, thanks to my error in taking the wrong amulet. But the deed was done, is done, and cannot be revoked.

  She dropped her face into her hands. Her hair hung in lank strings, its normal glorious gold dimmed to mousy brown.

  'Was it power I truly sought all the time I quested and connived and killed to regain my throne? Am I no better than Synalon?' Her body jerked with sobbing, convulsive despair.

  Ziore's pink, smoky body fluttered in a slight breeze crossing the raft. She looked in appeal to Fost.

  'I've tried to gentle her from this dark mood,' the genie said. 'But she will not be consoled. She loves you. Can you do something for her?'

  A quick stab of Fost's eyes spiked the contribution Erimenes was about to make. Dragging himself forward on his arms like a cripple, he took Moriana's shoulders and turned her around.

  A bright spark of rebellion blazed and died in her eyes. Knowing by that sign he was right, Fost spoke roughly and to the point.

  'Whatever your motives, the deed is done,' he said. 'The Fallen Ones are in control of the City again and Istu is loose, and I doubt the Dark Ones will fail to press their first real advantage in ten millennia.' Her face tightened as he spoke. That was good, too. It was more encouraging than the slackness of depression it replaced.

  'You're the most powerful magician in the Sundered Realm, probably in the world,' he went on. 'Back in the City you were potent enough to hold Istu off while some of your people escaped.' Her eyes dropped. A single tear spattered onto the gray stone.

  'Only my fury at the Zr'gsz for their betrayal – and at myself for mine – gave me that power. I doubt it will come again.'

  'I don't say you'll ever have power to stop the Demon of the Dark Ones. But you can do more against him than anyone else alive. We need whatever power you've got if we're to have a chance.' 'We?' He paused.

  'Uh, humanity.' It sounded bald and grandiose. But it was the truth. Realization nerved him to say what must be said.

  'You brought this about, Highness, Majesty, whatever I should call you. By the Five Holy Ones, you should stay alive and try to undo the disaster you've wrought!'

  He released her. She slumped, her slender shoulders hunched and shaking in reaction. 'Die, if you want,' he said harshly. 'That's the coward's way out.'

  Her slap bowled him over onto his back and set loose an avalanche in his head. For an instant, fireflies danced in front of his face. They faded to orange and yellow points and the accompanying pain slowly subsided to a dull aching.

  'No one calls me coward!' she screamed. 'Take it back, you groundling worm!'

  Despite the agony in his skull, Fost grinned when he pulled himself erect. He got his feet under him and braced his arms on either side of his knees, the roughness of the stone assuringly firm.

  'Is that all I must do, Princess dear?' he said. 'Welcome back to the living.' She was in his arms, her tears hot on his cheek. CHAPTER

  FIVE

  'It's apparent these rafts return automatically to their place of origin on being abandoned.' Erimenes was in his best pedantic form, not one whit deterred by the unorthodox setting for his lecture. 'I assume the function is intentional, though it may of course be serendipitous. Further, I reason that abandoned skyrafts follow lines of magnetic force back to Omizantrim, which accounts for our circuitous route from the City to…'

  Thunder drowned him out. Fost ducked reflexively, spilling a spoonful of gruel into his lap.

  'I think the mountain's building up to a major eruption,' Moriana announced.

  She had resumed her previous station in the bow of the raft, gazing at Omizantrim as the volcano grew ever nearer. Fost gulped a last mouthful of the tasteless gray slop, covered the bowl with its silver lid and replaced it in his satchel, then slowly crawled forward to sit beside her. Cautiously, he stationed himself several inches farther back from the rim.

  No one – no human, at least – had ever accused Mt. Omizantrim of being beautiful. It looked threatening and grim from far away, which was the only way Fost had seen it before. Close up, it was a tall cinder cone, dark gray, its flanks slashed with black striations and scarred with fumaroles. The open-wound pits in the mountain exuded thick clouds of dark blue and maroon gas, then lit them from below with a lurid glare. The very crest of the mountain was obscured in a billow of slate-gray smoke spilling away into the northwest. A gaudy necklace of lightnings surrounded the heights, both from the smoke and dust cloud and from the storm clouds above. Sulfur stung eyes, nose and throat; dust clogged them.

  Omizantrim was far from beautiful. But Fost failed to discern the reason why Moriana thought it was going to erupt. As far as Fost could tell, the mountain looked little different than it had when it hiccuped to noisome life on the eve of the Battle of Chanobit Creek.

  Fost couldn't figure it out. He asked her. Moriana shrugged, still studying the mountain with wrinkled brow.

  'The displays seem more violent than at any time when we were camped there. And do you smell the ozone, the prickling in the very air? You should see yourself. It's making the hair stand up at the back of your neck.'

  'It wouldn't take dormant lightning in the air to cause that, let me tell you,' said Fost. 'But couldn't it be due to our height alone?'

  Moriana glanced down. The gray and black landscape writhed below like a tortured animal. Patches of vegetation clungtenaciously to the jagged, blade-sharp lava, deep green in some places, dusty and faded like old dry moss in others. One-horned and domestic deer moved below, not browsing but running in full flight across the broken land away from the great mountain.

  'It's just a feeling,' she confessed. 'See? The animals feel it, too. They're more sensitive to such things than humans. They know the moods of the volcano from long exposure.'

  'Our height isn't great enough to make much difference,' Erimenes cut in. 'We've stayed about a thousand feet up since leaving the City. That puts the mountaintop eight or nine thousand feet above us. Even that noxious looking cloud is easily thousands of feet above our heads.'

  Fost felt the skin on his back try to creep into a bunch at the nape of his neck. An instant later, a brilliant yellow flash burned itself into his retinas. The light was so intense he wasn't even aware of the wall of sound that struck him. But several minutes later as he blinked away the last of the purple afterglow, his hearing had only just returned.

  'Weather magic,' Erimenes said in his usual peevish tone. 'Can't you keep the lightning off us, at least?'

  Ziore stared at the blue shade, her expression remarkably reminiscent of the clouds overhead. Mindful of Fost's injunction against further squabbling, she stayed silent.

  'Perhaps I could,' Moriana said. 'But the battles I fought in the Sky City drained me so.'

  She broke off to look at Fost with peculiar intentness. A wan smile played about her mouth.

  'No, since you told some harsh truths to snap me out of my self-pitying fog, you've lapsed back into being too perfect a gentleman to point out the obvious. Yes, I have to start using my powers again sometime, and the longer I wait the more painful it'll be.'

  She stood and stretched, oblivious to the emptiness yawning an inch in front of her toes. Fost shuddered. It was easy to forget what an insane disregard for heights the Skyborn had.

  'Now's as good a time as any,' she said firmly. 'I've slept for two days and have a stomach full of that delicious provender of yours.' Her sarcasm elicited an uneasy smile from Fost. Though they had both devoured the gruel from the magic bowl so avidly it seemed its supply must be exhausted in spite of the self-replenishment speli, neither was ravenous enough to mistake the stuff for anything but clammy glop.

  Moriana folded her long legs beneath her and closed her eyes in concentration. Fost saw her lips flutter, heard the ghost of an incantation above the grumbling of mountain and clouds.

  'She needed a brazier and sp
ecial herbs to make weather magic at Chanobit,' Ziore said in an awed whisper. 'She's learned so much since then.'

  Erimenes grumbled, but all ignored him. Seeing that Moriana required total concentration, Fost took an oiled rag from his satchel and drew his sword. He examined it, clucking over its condition. Its blade was dimmed, streaked with blood and grime, and dirt had caked in places. Though the blade itself was fine North Keep steel, its edge was nicked and pitted from heavy use. Fost rummaged in his sack and brought out a whetstone, then began to rub the sword down with the rag.

  As he cleaned the weapon, he kept one eye on the mountain. It grew until he scarcely saw where the cone disappeared into the wreath of greasy smoke. The heat of its many mouths washed over him like the uneven breathing of some immense creature. Throat of the Dark Ones, Omizantrim meant. Fost wondered if that was Their sulfurous breath that blew so hot on his face.

  Just when he began to worry that the craft would drive head-on into the mountain, Omizantrim swung across the bow and began to slip by to port.

  'We're circling,' said Erimenes unnecessarily. 'Probably going to the very skystone drift where the raft was mined.'

  Lightning barraged the mountain's stony flanks, but none came near.

  'Your magic's working,' he told her. She replied with a distracted smile. In fact, he didn't have the slightest idea whether it worked or not, but he wanted to encourage her.

  'We're losing altitude.' Reluctantly, Fost glanced down and saw that Erimenes spoke the truth. The crags and folds of the mountain's skirts grew closer as he watched and the landscape took on more detail. Cave-sized openings were soon revealed to be great bubbles that had burst. Drifts of white ash and a gray stone touched with a curious sheen appeared in sharp relief that he guessed was skystone itself. Small animals scurried among the stunted stems of bushes, tails streaming behind as they fled the coming wrath of the mountain.

  They passed a cluster of huts. Blocks of the incredibly durable lava had been hewn laboriously by hand and fitted to form walls capped by big slabs of basalt. The buildings, while grim, were suited to withstanding the mountain's caprice. But not even the stout construction of the Watchers could withstand the cosmic disease of change. The massive roofs had been levered from their places, the walls that held them pulled down into jumbles of black stone. Ash had fallen since the destruction, piling like blown snow against the few walls and doorposts that remained standing, filling in the outlines of the ruined huts so that they resembled a collection of haphazard children's sandboxes. Splintered pieces of wood thrust above the dust in some of the buildings, and Fost saw a few drably colored scraps of cloth waving in the breeze. 'They didn't loot,' he said to himself. 'Only destroyed.' Moriana's face had turned the color of the ash strewn below.