They dined as they generally had since coming to High Medurim, alone in their apartments except for the two genies. After they had finished, the chamberlain arrived all a twitter to go over the protocols they would be called on to observe on the morrow when Teom invested them both as nobles of the Empire. When the man left at last, pale hands fluttering like a mother bird drawing attention away from her nest, they both felt as tired as if they'd been forced to run around the entire city of Medurim – twice. A sultry, sticky sea breeze blew in through the windows, laden with the smell of dead fish.
Moriana had a stack of scrolls and books piled in the corner, grimoires that a servant had brought over from the Library. But she claimed to be too tired to make sense of them. For his part, Fost toyed with the notion of paying a visit to Oracle.
He just as quickly discarded the idea. Since the night of the orgy celebrating their initial arrival to the city, Empress Temalla had taken to popping out at him as he walked the corridors, particularly at night. He knew all too well what would happen if he angered her, and he was running out of tactful refusals to her sexual overtures. The last time had been the most embarrassing. He had admitted – lied – that he had contracted an uncomfortable fungus infection from riding so long in a wet saddle. At that, the Empress had laughed uproariously and told him she was too old to believe in a child's fable and that he must have gotten the blight by becoming more familiar with his war dog than was conventional, even by High Medurim's permissive standards. He had been blushing quite authentically when they parted.
Fost and Moriana finally retired for the night, to separate pallets. Though she had not rejected his company since the battle, she hadn't encouraged intimacy, either. He had considered asking for separate quarters, yet hoped that their nearness would again spark the feelings for one another they'd lost. He undressed quickly and lay down, turning his face to the wall and trying to ignore the rustlings and shirtings Moriana made as she disrobed.
The two Athalar spirits had been cooing and making calf-eyes at one another constantly while the humans ate. Before going to her own bed, Moriana poured them together in a bronze vessel Teom had provided for just that purpose. There were many times Fost wished Erimenes and Ziore had remained as hostile to one another as when they'd first met. He had thought their incessant squabbling wearisome, but itwas nothing compared to this. Thanks to Ch'rri, the Wirix-magic spawned cat woman and a healthy dose of aphrodisiac vapors, the two genies had discovered the art of incorporeal love-making. They may not have had bodies but they carried on like pigs in rut. In spite of the squeals, moans and titters, sleep soon found Fost.
Walls of light, flowing curtains of blue and scarlet and white shifting relentlessly, colors blending seamlessly one into another circled Fost. He reached out an arm turned curiously insubstantial. Warmth met his fingertips. He pushed into the colored fog and the wall vanished, revealing a long corridor.
Unafraid, Fost walked forward. His feet met only softness, as if he marched on the very stuff of which clouds were made. The parti-colored walls remained just beyond his reach as he walked and walked and walked, for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly, he realized he had acquired a companion. 'Erimenes!' he cried out in surprise. 'You have feet!'
'Of course I do, dear boy. Did you suspect tentacles – or perhaps another head?' The spirit appeared as tenuous as ever, but now Fost joined him in this ghostly state.
Ziore reached out and caressed Fost's cheek. Surprised, yet curiously calm at all happening to him, he caught up her wrist. His fingers momentarily felt substance, then his fingers flowed through her forearm. He couldn't tell if it were she or himself lacking a real dimension. 'Ahead,' came Moriana's voice. 'How lovely it is!'
Fost felt ineffable calm. His friends had joined him in this dream world, this dream. He looked in the direction Moriana pointed. Unbidden, the name 'Agift' came to mind. This was the home of the gods and goddesses. His mind flitted around the idea this was more than simple dream, then hastily moved from such conjecture. He was too caught up in the swirling nothingness at the end of the corridor. Even as Fost watched, the mists solidified into a subtly hued chamber filled with light that cast no shadow.
He blinked, then noticed a table at the far end of the room, the figures grouped around it strangely familiar to him.
Radiant in her gown of green and gold, Jirre rose as the four approached. 'Daughter,' the goddess said to Moriana. 'It is good to see you again. I had not planned on it. You may thank Majyra for this meeting.' She nodded to a young woman at the head of the table, stately in a lavender gown that left milk-white shoulders bare. Deep red hair was piled atop her head. Her eyes shone out as black as night.
'Sit and be welcome. You can stay only a short while.' As she spoke, her gown's color changed to icy blue.
Fost hadn't noticed the four chairs before. He and the others took seats and faced the Three and Twenty Wise Ones, their gods and goddesses.
'We are not all here,' said the older woman to Majyra's left. 'Tothyr and Avalys won't come because they find Majyra too frivolous, and several of the others are missing for whatever reason. Who can say with us?' She drew deeply on a leaf-rolled cigarette, then blew the smoke out. The smoke danced and formed fleeting caricatures of those missing from the table. Fost blushed when he recognized the acts being performed by those smoky figures.
'I thank you for your hospitality, Lady Majyra,' said Moriana, gathering her wits more rapidly than Fost. Of them all she took this with the most aplomb. Even Erimenes remained uncharacteristically silent in the presence of the deities.
'And to you, Jirre,' continued Moriana, 'I offer my thanks and eternal devotion for the aid rendered at the Black March.'
'You are welcome,' said Jirre, a smile curling her lips. 'I truly wish I could do more. But as I told you, I cannot.'
'What of the others? My world is your domain. The Dark Ones threaten it. Can't you take an active part in defending it?'
Several of the deities stirred impatiently. Fost felt the shape of the chamber altering, as if the emotions rising somehow changed the very physical dimensions of the room. He sensed that few of the Three and Twenty assembled were favorably disposed toward him – or Moriana.
'Let me explain,' Jirre said, looking down the table and silencing the grumbles. 'We summoned you here to tell you that we cannot aid you. Or if aid might be possible, then it must be given indirectly.' 'But why?' asked Ziore.
'The ways of gods are not the ways of men,' pontificated Erimenes. The spirit fell silent when Jirre scowled in his direction.
'We have grown apart from your world. Even brief visits to it are tiring for us. There is also the fact that we tried our might against the Demon of the Dark Ones before. We failed. And we were stronger then.' Jirre spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. 'There are other reasons, but those are the primary ones.'
'Well, we're grateful for the help you've given us this far,' said Fost, wondering at himself for speaking so familiarly to the Wise Ones. 'Lord Ust,' he said turning to a huge bear sitting a few feet away down the table, 'you especially have my thanks for aiding me.' Ust frowned and rubbed his cheek with a claw.
'You've been a dutiful son,' he rumbled, 'though like all of them you think of me most often when in distress. But I cannot recall intervening on your behalf. You seem well enough equipped to sort out your own problems.'
'But,' Fost sputtered, confused, 'but that time the Ust-alayakits rescued me from Rann and his killers and spared my life because I called on you… and those other times when Jennas told me you had aided me. You didn't?' He felt hot tears of frustration stinging his eyes. He had come to have faith in Jennas and her forecasts. He felt cheated she'd failed him in this way.
'Jennas is my chosen,' the bear god said in his rolling bass. 'Her I do watch over, for she leads my people. But you – if someone's been helping you, it hasn't been me.' He scowled, his eyes turning red. 'An impostor, is it? Just let me find out who -' 'Ust, control yourself,' chided Jirre. '
Your muzzle is growing.' 'I won't sit next to a bear,' declared Majyra. 'They smell!'
Reddish hair retreated from the bear god's face, and his face and brow took on a more human appearance. But he huddled himself down and growled as if hating the shape change.
'Best I return you to your bodies,' said Jirre. 'I am truly sorry. Our hopes and best thoughts go with you, for what they're worth.'
Fost felt the chair dissolving under him. He stood rather than be dropped to the floor. Beside him were Moriana, Erimenes and Ziore. They bowed. There was nothing to say, although Fost's mind churned with unanswered questions. Jirre had dismissed them. When a goddess bids a mere mortal leave, it was best to depart.
As they walked back the way they had come along the auroral hall, the shifting hues of the walls faded from view and were replaced by swirling fog. Gradually the others drew ahead of Fost. Though he picked his own way through the foggy terrain as quickly as he could, they moved inexorably away, hardly seeming aware that they did so. Fost felt panic grip his throat when they vanished into the misty distance.
'Be calm,' a voice said beside him. 'I wanted a word with you in private.'
Fost turned and saw one of the Wise Ones. The goddess seemed tantalizingly familiar, yet he could place no name to her. She had remained silent in the hall while Jirre spoke.
As if reading his mind, she reached out and plucked a tiny rose from behind his ear, saying, 'Now do you know me, Fost? I am Perryn.' A dulcet laugh filled his ears, yet had a peculiarly flat quality to it. 'Perryn Prankster, some call me.'
The goddess of laughter and anarchy handed him the miniature rose.
'I will tell you something, my friend,' Perryn said, laughing at Fost's discomfort. 'It might be that the Wise Ones, aligned together, could defeat the Dark Ones and cast Istu back into spaces between the stars. It just might be,' he said, grinning savagely. 'And it might be that you should thank me for helping prevent it.'
'Thank you?' cried Fost. 'But you've thrown us to the Dark Ones, left us defenseless!' 'Not defenseless. Felarod defeated Istu before without our aid.' 'But the World Spirit…'
'Is a thing apart, closer to you than to us. It is not of Agift but rather of a more basic origin. In many ways, it and Istu are so similar.' She shook her head. 'Because you're ignorant in matters of the gods, I will state the obvious and not think less of you for it. We are us and you are you.' Fost looked blank.
'Our interests are not yours,' said Perryn, eyes boring into Fost's gray ones. 'If we fight for your world and conquer it, it will be ours. No longer yours, except by our sufferance.' 'That is all.. . hard to accept.' Fost licked dry lips.
'It'd be harder for one raised a pious believer. We are good allies but poor masters.'
She clapped Fost on the shoulder and said, 'You'd best get along now. Remember not to count on assistance from us.' Perryn smiled wickedly, adding, 'Well, perhaps a little. I do like you, mortal. You're cute.' The goddess laughed and this time the waves of mirth smashed into Fost's brain like ocean waves against a beach. His head rang as he felt himself spinning away.
He cried out, 'Perryn! Who was it who helped me before, if not my patron Ust?'
Ghostly laughter brought Fost awake. He sat upright, drenched in cold sweat, his heart triphammering wildly in his breast. He took several deep draughts of the fish-smell laden air and calmed down.
'What a dream,' he said to himself, reaching up to brush away the perspiration on his forehead. A single tiny rose was clutched in his right hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
'Wasn't that the most lovely aurora last night?' chirped Zunhilix the chamberlain as he flitted about the apartment. 'I'm sure it was a most auspicious sign for your investiture.' Fost and Moriana looked at each other. 'We didn't see it,' the princess said.
'Oh, but I'm sure you had better things to do than watch the sky, didn't you?' He tittered, hiding his petal-shaped mouth behind a delicate white hand.
Fost felt exasperation and a tightening of the muscles in his belly. It had been some time since he and Moriana had lain together, and the strain he experienced now was as much emotional as physical. But paramount in his mind was the question of what had happened the night before. Aurora? His eyes darted to where one of the servants made up his bed. Nothing but a withered stalk of the miniature rose remained on the bedside table. Yet he had clutched that delicate, living flower in his very own hand the night before. A sense of being little more than a leaf caught in a millrace seized him.
'Most certainly my companions had something better to do than watch the sky,' Erimenes piped up. 'But unfortunately, all they did was sleep. I'm beginning to despair of those two, chamberlain.'
As two plump stewards, painted even more gaudily than their master, laced Fost into a molded gilt breastplate, the courier rolled eyes up in his head in mock horror at the genie's words. It seemed nothing kept Erimenes's libido at bay.
'Now, Erimenes,' chided Ziore. 'I thought I kept you too busy to care what they did.' The nun's spirit produced a throaty and quite unvirginal chuckle.
'Of course you did, my love. I simply find myself grieving that our young mortal friends are so profligate of the little time they have in life as to waste the nocturnal hours on a pastime as unrewarding as sleep. They actually went to bed to sleep! Great Ultimate, what a waste! It is solely concern for their well-being that motivates my interest in this matter, nothing more.'
Ziore made a skeptical noise. She may have been besotted with the lecherous old ghost but she wasn't that besotted.
Ignoring this byplay, Zunhilix busied himself attending to Moriana's coiffure. It was her one concession to Medurimin mores. She would wear a sculpted breastplate and back, a kilt of gold-plated strips of hornbull leather and glittery gold greaves, just like Fost. Zunhilix had pleaded with her to wear one of the stunning selection of ceremonial women's ensembles he had at his disposal, from weblike concoctions of Golden Isle shimmereen that left breasts and pubes bare to a chaste, long-trained robe of green lacebird silk. Sternly she had shaken her head. She was not eager to be invested as a noble of the Empire, no more than Fost, but both had deemed it impolitic to refuse the great honor Teom had offered them. Not only did they need the help of the Empire in battling the Fallen Ones and the lizard folk's Demon ally, the situation in city and Palace was such that they needed his goodwill to continue living. The mobs demanding Moriana's head grew increasingly bold. But if Moriana had to add some insignificant Imperial title to that which was her birthright as lawful heir to the Sky City's Beryl Throne, she was going to do it as a warrior, not as one of the simpering damsels of the north.
To mollify Zunhilix, who had fallen to weeping and tugging at his pointed beard on learning how adamant Moriana was, the princess had agreed to allow the chamberlain and his staff to do as they liked with her hair. The warrior's investiture garb included a helmet of dubious value in real battle due to its impractical design. To their mutual relief the helmets needed only to be carried beneath one arm during the ceremony. This gave Zunhilix free rein with her hair.
Eyeing her sidelong now as the stewards laced up her cuirass at the sides, Fost had to admit the chamberlain and his elfin crew had performed admirably. Moriana's hair had been washed in aromatic herbs, then brushed by giggling stewards until it shone like spun gold. Then it was swirled atop her head and held in place with golden pins, then hung about with fine gold chains bedecked with glittering emeralds that set off her seagreen eyes.
In her gleaming breastplate, with long, slim legs carelessly sprawled beside the stool on which she sat, her finely-coiffed head held high with great hoops of gold wire dangling from either ear, the princess made a fantastic spectacle, splendid and exotic and enticing. Fost felt himself hardening futilely against the steel cup of his codpiece. He squirmed on his own seat, eliciting further laughter from his own attendants who immediately noticed his predicament.
A cool breeze gusted through their suite, tinted with subtle fragrances of the Imperial garden and tainted
with tar and rotting fish from the harbor. The Imperial Palace, unlike the Temple of All Gods, was no product of barbarians obsessed with mass and size. Justly famous Imperial architects at the height of their craft had wrought their superb best in the design. Everywhere were cool white marble and clean lines. And meticulous care had been paid to the circulation of air so that even the northern wing of the Palace where guests resided remained comfortable throughout the sultry summer days. Fost rose and examined himself in a full-length mirror.
'Not bad,' he said, more to himself than to the others. He was a tall, powerfully built man, raven-haired, with startling pale gray eyes looking forth from a tanned and considerably battered face. The Medurimin ceremonial armor was silly, but the frivolity of the outfit somehow made the man within seem more rugged. Secretly, Fost was delighted. He had been uncomfortable being dressed by others. However, he had to concede that the half hour perched on the stool trying not to fidget or growl when a steward squeezed him under the pretext of sizing him had proven worthwhile.
'Magnificent,' applauded Erimenes. 'I have never before truly appreciated how well-matched a couple you are. Tall, lithe. Moriana as radiant as the sun, Fost dark and brooding. In that gear even your habitual expression of surliness is not unbecoming, friend Fost.' Fost winced.
'Oh, Erimenes,' said Ziore. 'I think they both look marvelous.'
'Yes, yes.' Zunhilix bobbed his head, basking in the reflected glory of his creations.
Cradling his sharp chin in one palm, Erimenes studied first Fost and then Moriana, and nodded judiciously. 'The design of those kilts is quite propitious,' he said, 'in that merely by elevating a few of those strips fore and aft the two of you can easily clear for action. The good ship Fost can ram Moriana in the stern, or perhaps seat himself on a chair and ready his pike to accept boarders!' He smirked with delight at his own risque metaphors.
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