'Whatever you'll do to me, you'd best start now. You'll need most of tonight to make final preparations to oppose the new inhabitants of the Sky City.'
'You surprise me, Tonsho, you really do. I know how you dread the very thought of pain. And for that very reason I have come to personify all you fear most. It was, I grant, a factor in choosing you as Governor of Kara-Est. I judged that your fear would keep you in line. Yet you dared hire assassins a second time, knowing they would fail.' He touched the glass to his lips. 'That took spirit, Tonsho. I always judged you had great moral strength, but I didn't judge it could overcome your physical cowardice.'
'I had to do something.' She almost spat the words. 'You hold my people in bondage.'
'And how, as well,' he said quietly. She shrank back, seeking shelter among the velvet cushions. Her flesh crawled as she considered the way she had just spoken to Rann, whose pleasure was the pain of others, whose face was her most familiar nightmare, whose elegant hand held her fate like a palmful of sand. He had her in a horror as excruciating as any physical torment; and he took no notice.
'As for preparing for the city's defense,' he went on in a soft voice, 'there is to be none.' She stared blankly.
That's what I came to tell you. Get out. There won't be a Sky Citizen inside the walls of Kara-Est by the time the sun rises over Dyla. Kara-Est is doomed. For us to defend your city against Istu is to lose precious men. We can ill afford more losses.'
'But Synalon! She's a mighty sorceress! I've not forgotten how she summoned the greatest air elemental seen to smash our ships and how, against all nature, she brought forth a salamander and forced it to cast itself into the waterspout. Can't she use those magics against the City and the Demon?'
Rann threw back his head and laughed. To one who knew him better than Tonsho – who knew him only as a nightmare figure – it was a strident, rare sound. She merely winced. To her, Rann's laughter was a thing to fear.
'Synalon is a mighty sorceress,' he said when he had recovered himself, 'but her sister defeated her in a duel of magics. And that same day Istu cast Moriana from the City like a man puts out a tomcat at night.'
Her eyes narrowed until only wet yellow gleams of reflected lamplight showed beween the lids. 'Why do you tell me this?'
He leaned forward. Had this been anyone but the devil Rann, Tonsho would have said he had a look of… desperation.
'You are able. You took a crushed, conquered city and made it a functioning seaport again in a matter of weeks. You've a rare gift. In the days to come, humanity will need all such gifts it can muster, if we're to have the slightest chance of survival.' To her amazement, she laughed in his face. 'What do you care for humankind?'
'More than you might think, milady Governor.' His smile thinned. 'More than for the damned Zr'gsz, at any rate.'
'No, no, I can't believe this,' she moaned, grasping her temples with both hands and rocking back and forth. 'It's a trick.' She raised her pallid face, fear and uncertainty etched in the flesh. 'That's it! You trick me into abandoning my post so you'll have an excuse to put me to death.'
'If I wished to put you to death, do you think I'd need an excuse?' He was becoming exasperated. Only rarely did he argue. 'Or if I desired you removed from office, that I'd go to such lengths to manufacture one? Tonsho, all I'd need to do is spread the word that you had been negotiating with the Wildermen of Dyla to deliver your city to them. You'd soon be writhing at the post out in the Plaza, with the sorry collection of marionettes we've set to playing Deputies standing by bobbing their heads and applauding my wisdom and justice.'
He saw that he fought futilely against her adamantine fears. Such sorry stuff as reason would not dispel her image of him any more than Synalon's magic could turn the wrath of Istu away from Kara-Est. He stood, smoothing wrinkles in his midnight blue trousers. 'Good evening, Governor Tonsho,' he said.
'Highness.' He stopped. 'Now that you've failed to work your trickery on me, where do you go?' She all but giggled the words, giddy at her escape from pain and her imagined triumph over the wily prince.
'I've an appointment with Her Majesty to discuss tomorrow's events. I plan to tell her exactly what I told you. Perhaps she'll find it less amusing.' He bowed. 'I do hope your wit serves you equally well with Istu. Goodbye.'
'Do you jest, Rann?' Synalon spun from the window and faced him squarely. 'Evacuate?' She laughed, the sound evilly clinging to the very stone of the walls.
Standing by the door, Rann absently eyed the alabaster curve of her throat. Tonight the princess had arranged her hair in two raven wings standing upward and out from the sides of her head. On a woman with less beauty or presence – or less power held in dubious check – it would have looked ridiculous. On Synalon it stirred both lust and dread. Her slender body was wrapped in a gown of some gauzy stuff, more diaphanous than translucent, that showed the pink points of her nipples and the trim dark thatch between her thighs. Rann's tawny eyes, drifting downward now and again against his will, could almost pick out the fine tracery of blue veins on the flawless, milky skin, of breasts, belly, well-shaped legs. He knew she had dressed in this manner solely for him. Such was the game they played.
The black-haired enchantress stopped laughing and gave him a cool, appraising look.
'Come, Prince. Tell me what you really intend. How shall we face this menace?' He grimaced, as if she had made to strike him.
'I wasn't joking, Your Majesty.' On arriving in Kara-Est after the flight across the Quincunx lands, Synalon had resumed the title of queen, though of what she had failed to specify. From his unique position, Rann generally disdained to give her that title and addressed her as Highness. But now much rode on her good favor. If he could get it by feeding her vanity, he would do so.
'We are prepared for defense,' she said tolerantly. 'We have walls against ground attack, and our eagles fighting beside the Estil gasbags and rooftop engines will make short work of the skyrafts used by the stinking Hissers.' 'Very well. The Vridzish we may defeat. But not Istu.'
'No?' A frown clouded her fine features. 'I have meditated much since we were driven from my City. I have some new tricks, half-man.'
Ignoring the jibe, he shook his head and replied, 'Moriana defeated you, and she couldn't best Istu. Moreover, Istu had just awakened when she faced him. He had yet to come to his full power.' He slapped his gloves across the palm of his left hand. 'No, Your Majesty. If your sister could not defeat Istu, neither can you. We have no chance of defeating the Fallen Ones.' 'But my own powers.. .'
'How much of the powers you've come by of late have been through the dispensation of the Dark Ones? I doubt they will allow you to muster strengths which they have lent you against their sole begotten son.'
She folded her arms. Mad blue sparks danced in her eyes and crackled in the roots of her dark hair.
'Would you have us skulk away in the night then, cousin? Come, I thought you were a man in spirit, if not in flesh.'
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.
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