The genie heaved a melodramatic sigh and drew himself up even straighter.
'For all your experience in the wide world, and for all my tutelage over this past year – think of it, Fost. We've spent almost a year in one another's company.' Ignoring Fost's groan, he carried on brightly. 'At any rate, though I've no doubt been a maturing influence on you, I find to my deepest regret that you are still callow, unable to appreciate the subtler motivations of your elders.'
'Your motivations aren't subtle. They come down to only one thing. Hedonism.'
'Fost, you must curb this tendency to stray from the subject.' Erimenes wagged a finger at him. 'Now, about Prince Rann and the exquisite Princess Synalon…?'
Fost considered. Again his eyes made a quick circuit of his surroundings. The little party was strung in a winding line picking its way around clumps of scrub and outcroppings of rock. Moriana rode lead on her dog, heavy Highgrass war bow strung across the rounded pommel of her saddle. Next rode Fost, then Synalon and Rann at the rear on a shaggy red animal, his own, smaller Sky City bow likewise resting across his saddlebow. This was caravan season, and bandit country.
'I don't know,' he confessed. 'I think Synalon's insane, but all the same there's something I can't quite name about her… something magnificent, I think, though evil. And Rann…'He shook his head. 'I've heard enough of his handiwork to keep me well-stocked in nightmares the rest of my life. But it's also said he's a genius. And I believe that, too. I can't forget that day in the City when I rescued Moriana and found myself singlehandedly facing both Istu and the whole damned army. I had no choice in that and ran like hell as soon as Moriana was freed. But down dropped Rann from the safety of his eagle to put himself between the monster and Synalon, though he knew his blade couldn't even scratch the thing. That's the bravest thing I've ever seen.'
'It bothers you to find that your former foes aren't wholly the black villains you'd like to think them?' Irritation darted through Fost. He smiled unevenly.
'You know, Erimenes, it's when you're at your most perceptive that you tend to be the most annoying.' He let the reins lie across the dog's neck while he raised his broad-brimmed felt hat and smoothed lank black hair from his eyes. 'It does gripe me, though, to concede any goodness in a creature like Rann.'
'And Synalon, ah, but I perceive the lady herself comes to join our small soiree.'
Fost looked around too sharply and almost lost his balance. Synalon had indeed nudged her mount into a gallop and drew up on the courier's left side. 'Greetings, milord Duke,' she called gaily.
Fost felt himself blushing. He tried to stop and only caused a deeper reddening of his features.
'Are you unaccustomed to folk employing your proper title?' she asked, her voice as clear and sweet as a mountain spring, and seemingly as guileless.
'I -' The words stuck in his throat. He desperately needed a drink, though he'd last sipped from the canteen bouncing by his knee not ten minutes earlier. He cleared his throat and started over.
'Your Highness, I confess I don't really think of myself as a duke. Nor a knight, if it comes to that.'
'But you had those titles granted you from the hand of the Emperor himself. What more could you want? For one of those tiresome Wise Ones to come down from Agift and personally hand you a ducal coronet?'
'No. In all truth, Highness, I never wished to be a knight, or a duke, either. I wanted only to be a free man, and to lead my life in peace.'
He didn't need her laughter to tell him how silly his words sounded.
'Besides,' he said quickly to cover his embarrassment, 'Imperial titles don't mean much. The Emperor tosses them around the way dancing boys and girls strew sweets at every public function.'
'So the honor was too common for you.' She nodded sagely. 'You are a proud man, Longstrider.'
Damn the woman! She was watching him out of eyes the deep, strange blue of turquoise, laughing and yet not laughing.
'I will make you duke,' she said softly. 'But there is that which you must do.'
He faced ahead in stony silence. Thirty yards in front of him rode Moriana, now looking neither left nor right, and by the set of her shoulders he realized she knew that Synalon spoke with him, and feared both to interfere and not to.
'I will not help you work treachery against Moriana,' he said stiffly. Her laughter bounced off the rock face and echoed downward.
'Ah, Sir Knight, you see fit to jest with me! But I assure you, sir, the ceremony of investiture would be much less traumatic than those of High Medurim you told us of – and considerably more intimate.' Laughing still, she spurred her mount ahead to go alongside her sister.
Fost felt as if the heat in his ears would make his hat burst into flame. Synalon could fling lightning bolts with words as well as magical gestures.
'Are you truly as ponderous of wit as that byplay made you appear?' Erimenes demanded indignantly. 'But she was… she was.. .'
'Of course she was,' said Erimenes. 'And is that such an unpleasant prospect? She is lovely, as lovely as your Moriana. Lovely in the manner of a cataract or a catamount, trickish and even lethal. But lovelier for all that.'
'What would you know about it?' snarled Fost. Erimenes only smiled an offensively superior smile. Fost cursed himself for letting the spirit know just how deep his barb had sunk.
Not altogether willingly, he studied the dark-haired princess as she rode knee-to-knee with Moriana. They were in deep discussion now, seeming as casual as any two sisters out for a late summer ride. It was difficult to believe they had been – still were – the deadliest of enemies and bitterest of rivals. But not even Moriana could long maintain a bowstring tautness of wariness and suspicion indefinitely; with time had come relaxation and a certain fatalism. If Synalon betrayed her, no amount of worrying would stay her. As for Synalon, she had, once past her early tempest of objection, taken the arrangement with a calm that bordered on insouciance. Fost didn't know if this was more madness or confidence.
From behind she looked younger than her sister, though Moriana was younger by minutes. Not having addressed herself to war and physical exertion – of the martial sort – the black-haired sorceress was slimmer, almost girlish, though there was little girlish about the flare of her hips and the roundness of her buttocks so clearly visible through the thin cloth of her trousers.
Erimenes chuckled, and Fost shook his head as if that would clear it of such thoughts. He made himself concentrate on Synalon's garment, pretending that had been his intent all along. It was all of the sheerest silk, a blouse low-cut in front, trousers that fit like a second skin at the top. It was vastly impractical for travelling, but everyone knew better than to make an issue of it. Synalon was proud, strong-minded.
Fost remembered the unfortunate scene with the dogseller back in the coastal village before they started their trek southward toward Athalau. The merchant had suggested to Synalon that she select something other than a stud dog, that if they encountered a bitch in heat he would bring them trouble. Fresh from High Medurim though Fost was, her answer had shocked him both with its content and its explicitness, and he was surprised to see Rann color and look away. It had taken even Erimenes several seconds to fully comprehend the possibilities she'd outlined.
But now Moriana was pointing ahead and Synalon wheeling her mount and riding back to him.
'Get to the ground,' she shouted. 'Find a hole and slip inside!' She flashed him a sunbright smile as she passed and then called her warning to Rann.
As he drew sword, he marveled at the way in which the woman infected even emergency with salacious innuendo. Up ahead he saw that Moriana had now nocked an arrow from the quiver at her back. Ziore was also pointing, her arm misty pink and hardly visible in the sunlight.
At first, he thought he saw a cloud, oblong and dark, floating into view above the hard yellow line of the Rim far off in the north. Then he saw the white, fleecy clouds rolling as if to meet it, and he knew what it was. At a stately, ominous pace, the City in th
e Sky floated east.
Moriana sat erect in the saddle's stirrups, her dog prancing and sidestepping, tasting urgency in the air and the sweat smell of its rider. Her eyes were wild, wide and faraway. Her face had gone stark with a terrible rage and fear and grief and longing and a winter bleakness of soul. He looked behind and saw Synalon, too, rigidly upright and staring, and he knew then that they were truly sisters, twins.
Rann loped by, his bow slung across his shoulders in easy acknowledgement of the futility of battle.
'The Hissers are none too sharp of sight,' he called, as happy as if he were on the hunt and were the hunter rather than the prey. 'But they may be looking with more than earthly eyes. Time we went to ground.'
Sheathing his sword, Fost did just that. He hoped Synalon and Moriana weren't too caught up in the tidal surge of their emotions to heed the prince's warning. He dismounted and got the burly creature to lie down in the lee of a large oilbush, dropped into loose soil beside it and began to burrow – and also to sneeze. The oilbush exuded a slippery, fragrant sap that aggravated Fost's allergies.
A thumping of paws, a scattering of small stones, and Rann was at his side, hauling his own dog down expertly and flopping belly-down at Fost's side. He grinned. To all appearances, he enjoyed this hugely.
Fost wasn't. His stomach tied itself in knots and his heart tried to beat its way to freedom. He felt blackness swim behind his eyes. Even if Istu had stood atop the highest tower of the Sky City, Fost could not have seen him from where he lay itching and sniffling next to a man who, until very recently, had been bending every effort to arrange a painful, messy death for him. But it was as if he could see the Demon of the Dark Ones, horned and great and invulnerable, and he was laughing, laughing…
'Where's it going?' asked Erimenes. Eagerness almost masked the other tremor in his voice. Here was something Fost could find comfort in. Erimenes had at last found something to fear.
'Tolviroth Acerte, I'd judge.' Rann shifted to a more comfortable position, cupped his hands around his eyes to cut the glare. 'Damn! It's too far to make out anything. But still, I think we quit the City of Bankers just in time.'
Fost felt a leaden weight condense in his stomach. He was a Realm-road courier and called no place home – and every place. But Tolviroth Acerte came close. And he had friends there…
A swirling breeze tossed dirt into their faces. Rann blinked and spat, and Fost was glad to see him with even this small a human frailty.
'I don't like the timing,' Rann murmured. 'Unless the City lingered long conquering Wirix.' 'What do you make of it, cousin?' asked Synalon's call. 'Shh!' Erimenes hissed, turning skyblue in dread. Rann laughed at the genie.
'If they can hear us at this distance, we're done for. Rest easy, jugged spirit.' Fost noted that the prince didn't call Erimenes demon. It would have been incongruous with a real demon's presence so ominously close.
'No good,' Rann answered with raised voice. 'I fear High Medurim has seen the shadow of the City.'
High Medurim. Fost saw crowded filthy childhood streets, wharves piled with bundles for distant ports, markets with bright colors and intriguing spices; he saw Oracle and Teom and yes, pale, hungering Temalla. His eyes turned wet and stung. He clutched handfuls of sand in futile anger. They spilled through his fingers and, he thought, so goes the world, so goes all I've known or loved.
He did not feel the time slip by and only noted it had passed when Rann touched him on the shoulder. He came back to himself to find the sun hidden by the cliffs and the City low in the darkening eastern sky, merging with the thunderheads of a distant storm.
CHAPTER NINE
Brev bustled as it had not in years. It was the least of the Quincunx cities. It owed what little prosperity it had to the geographic fact that it lay at one corner of the Quincunx and could serve as a center for trade. Before the binding of the City in the Sky to the Great Quincunx, Brev had been an anonymous spot on the map. Even in the ten millennia since that event, it had failed to distinguish itself. Thailot boasted skill in artificing and glassworking, particularly the grinding of lenses; Wirix had its sorcerers with their genetic manipulations; Kara-Est was Kara-Est, grandest seaport of the Realm and a high city of the world; Bilsinx, central of the five cities, was the strategic and economic center of the Sundered Realm.
Brev was a dispirited huddle of drab stone buildings with the Broken Lands to the west and the Steppe to the south – and occasion-ally the Sky City overhead. That was all.
Now envious Brev could hold her head up, for she was queen of the Quincunx. Kara-Est was destroyed, perhaps Wirix as well; the island city was taken and sacked, at the very least. Thailot huddled behind its hedge of mountains. The onion domes of Bilsinx watched over empty streets, her citizens following the Sky Citizens fleeing south to avoid the wrath of the City's new owners. For now, all roads led to Brev. The merchants rejoiced in the influx of bright gold, and her leaders spoke of the dawn of a new era.
The travellers had desired to keep word of their arrival quiet. It was too much to ask. They were greeted by shouts of acclaim, with speeches by members of the ruling hereditary council, and rum punch and floral wreaths in the Triangle where the paths of the City converged. Fost and Moriana and the rest looked on with tired eyes, even the genies subdued and weary from the desperate pace they'd maintained since sighting the City.
Not even Rann had the heart to tell the crowds that their dawn would prove a false one.
The Palace was an appropriate setting for the grim meeting of the sisters and their loyal, if somewhat confused, subjects. It was drafty, cold and damp and dark, and lacking in adequate fireplaces. The halls had a few cracked windows that admitted breezes but little sunlight. What light there was inside came from lanterns with panes no one had cleaned in recent memory. Dusk rose out of the east when a steward ushered them into the council chamber. Blue and purple shadows lay like curtains across the windows. The rafters were all but invisible above, not so much from height as murk. Fost decided this was a perfect place to discuss the end of the world.
'Your Highnesses,' greeted Colonel Ashentani, lately governor of Bilsinx. 'It gives us all great pleasure to be reunited with you once again.'
'We thank you,' said Moriana, leaving them to wonder whether she meant both sisters or simply employed the royal we. 'But let's have an end to ceremony. We've serious business to discuss.'
The two were seated side-by-side at the head of the table. Rann sat to the left, nearest Synalon. Fost tucked Erimenes's jug under one arm and took his place at the foot of the table, hoping he would have no part in the proceedings so he could find a place to sleep.
Ashentani he recognized. Most of the others he didn't. Moriana did and Ziore picked the information from the surface of the princess's brain and relayed it to Fost. Mostly they were Sky City officers. For their part, Ziore told him, they were frightened by the events of the past few months, afraid of the Demon and the Fallen Ones, scared that they might make a slip that would put them out of favor with one or the other sister.
Toward one, however, Moriana felt cold hostility, which Ziore reported was returned in kind. Destirin Luhacs had succeeded Count Ultur V'Duuyek as commander of a Grassland mercenary regiment at Chanobit Creek. Moriana disliked the woman for the part her troops had played in smashing the army she and Darl Rhadaman had raised. Luhacs, a square-faced woman with eyes like blue ice, blamed Moriana for the death of the count, who had been her lover as well as her commander.
Further down the table sat Cerestan, the young lieutenant of the Sky Guard. He'd aged considerably since the first time Fost saw him. Since escaping the City and Istu's wrath, he had waged a quiet battle against the dangers besetting the refugees – hunger, thirst, exposure – as they fled first to Bilsinx and then to Brev. His eyes were sunk into pits and a hint of gray sprinkled his temples.
A servant came with mugs of steaming broth. Fost drained his in three swallows, almost revelling in the way it scalded his tongue. Though he barely
tasted it, the warmth spread through his body and revitalized him. He felt closer to life than death for the first time in days.
'So that's our story,' finished Synalon. 'What of the Empire? Wirix?' Colonel Ashentani squirmed uncomfortably in her chair.
'Well?' demanded Moriana. 'We must know. Killing messengers bringing bad news is something I've never done.' Moriana darted a quick look at her sister, who sat back in her chair and tented fingers in front of her slightly smiling lips.
'There are few facts,' said Ashentani, 'but they are grim enough. After Bilsinx fell and Brev collapsed, Wirix recalled its citizens from those cities. But there was a small colony of Wirixers in Samadum and it is from them we received news of Wirix's fall. The Fallen Ones launched an attack with small boats on the lake and their skycrafts above. When the City floated overhead, Istu appeared. He cast down lightnings, but the strength of the Institute was arrayed against him and the force of his bolts tempered. The Wirixer mages conjured an air elemental and set a waterspout against their invaders.' Ashentani paused, noting she had the rapt attention of not only Moriana and Synalon but Rann, also. The small man sat with eyes half closed, evaluating her every word. She went on. 'Istu bellowed in rage and disappeared.' 'And then the Black Lens appeared in the Skywell,' put in Rann.
'Yes,' said Colonel Ashentani in a choked voice. 'Istu absorbed the air sprite by drawing it into the blackness. Then the City crossed over Wirix.'
'Tell me exactly what happened,' said Rann, leaning forward now, his arms resting on the table, hands clenched.
'A black vortex descended from the Lens. It drove into the center of the city, digging to bedrock, coring Wirix like an apple. The government buildings were torn from their foundations but the Institute and most of the city proper were intact. The defenders, magicians and soldiers alike, were demoralized by the Demon's power. The purely physical storm that began when the vortex vanished destroyed what the Black Lens hadn't.' 'And High Medurim?' Fost heard himself asking.
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