War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” Fost said with finality. He stood and flexed his powerful limbs. As the blood flowed back into them, he felt the full burden of his weakness. It’d be days before he regained his former strength. Still, with six foes worm wood at his feet, he felt the headiness of victory. The castle of Kest-i-Mond lay but half a day from here. With luck and a bit of caution, he should make it with no further interference. Once at the keep he’d be free of Erimenes and his endless carping. And perhaps then the men of the SkyCity would leave him alone.

  He dozed intermittently as his dogs paced out the miles. Occasionally he would stir himself to look for signs of pursuit. None showed in sky or steppe.

  The sun had dipped past the zenith when Kest-i-Mond’s huge stone and wood pile came into view on the horizon. Fost felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

  “Erimenes, old spirit,” he said, feeling almost comradely toward the long-dead philosopher, “yonder is your new home. Imposing, isn’t it?”

  “Utilitarian in the extreme, much as I might have advocated in years past. I should much prefer something more appropriate to my new outlook. A brothel, perhaps.”

  “I understand Kest-i-Mond lives simply, relishing his privacy. A powerful mage such as he might be able to conjure up something to amuse you.”

  “In exchange for the secrets I can divulge, he ought to,” the spirit said sourly.

  “I don’t want to hear about your secrets,” Fost said. “Only trouble comes to those who learn a sorcerer's dark knowledge.”

  “Rubbish! There is no dark knowledge, merely the layout of a city. It lies in the polar regions. My home,” sighed the spirit, “lost these many centuries. Eaten by a glacier.”

  “Come, Erimenes, a city eaten by a glacier? You make sport of me. A glacier is nothing but a mountainous sheet of ice. I’ve seen many with my own eyes.”

  “This is a special glacier,” Erimenes said in conspiratorial tones. “Within it lies Athalau, once a mighty city but now dead. A great queen entombed in ice.”

  “Very poetic.” Fost sniffed the air. “Faugh. Something reeks. Don’t enchanters lime their cesspools?”

  “That’s sulfur, from the great volcanic activity in this area. The keep was raised in my time by a wizard who kept frequent commerce with the spirits of the inner earth. Perhaps he built it over a fumarole.”

  “How does Kest-i-Mond stomach the stench?”

  “Perhaps he’s grown accustomed to it. Now, in Athalau…”

  Fost shut him out. Let the sage reminisce over his lost city. All Fost wanted was to be rid of him and this treacherous assignment. In the future he would accept only simple tasks. Let the daring venture forth to deal with assassins and eye-plucking ravens.

  As for him, he’d take Kest-i-Mond’s money and idle away the rest of Count Marll’s religious retreat with Eliska. His thoughts turned to the hot-blooded countess. He smiled. And the sage droned on.

  The walls of the castle loomed so high they seemed about to topple and crush man and sled alike. In height the keep resembled the buildings of High Medurim, where Fost had been born, but it was all angular and ungainly, with none of the baroque ornamentation popular in the old imperial capital. The odor of brimstone hung in the air, and that, too, brought back Fost’s childhood. The sewers ran uncovered in the poorer parts of Medurim.

  “End of the line for you, old spirit,” he said cheerfully. “I cannot say it’s been pleasant knowing you.”

  “Nonsense. Without me your honor would have been besmirched beyond redemption.”

  “Never in all my days have I known such a tiresome—hey! What’s this?” He jerked the sled to a halt.

  “What disturbs you now?” the sage enquired peevishly.

  “The doors are ajar.” Fost bent and picked up Erimenes’ jug. “Strange. I heard Kest-i-Mond was more cautious.”

  He walked to the bronze doors and peered inside. Nothing stirred. He rapped his knuckles on the doors. They rang hollowly.

  “Fost Longstrider, courier, to see the master of the castle.”

  There was no answer. Fost pushed through the doorway, and the foyer beyond echoed his footsteps. He stood and listened. His heartbeat was the only sound he heard.

  He was angry with himself. The philosopher’s constant goading had unsettled him. He was growing too wary, almost timid, for fear the bloody-minded shade would precipitate him into another catastrophe. It was only reasonable to feel leery of invading a magician’s castle. Still, Fost had legitimate business within the walls of Kest-i-Mond’s keep. And an enchanter was just a man, after all, his spells no more than peculiarly potent weapons.

  “This vestibule is of no interest to me,” Erimenes said. The sound of his dry voice booming in the hallway caused Fost to jump. “Why don’t you move on, there’s a good lad.”

  “Shut up! You scared me half out of my wits.”

  “Little enough to do.”

  The corridor veered right. Fost followed it, trying to stifle a growing sense of unease. At least he detected no trace of the unpleasant sulfur stink in here. The mage must have spells to freshen his air.

  Fost halted. His hand dropped to his sword hilt.

  “You sense danger!” Erimenes cried. “What is it? Why do you fondle your weapon?”

  “Hold your tongue, if you have one.” Fost pointed at the floor in front of them. A dark green marble pedestal lay tumbled on its side, the white bust of a human head in fragments around it. “That’s what troubles me.”

  “Debris. What does it signify?”

  “Kest-i-Mond has a fetish for order. It’s legendary. In Kara-Est a courtier rearranged the mage’s personal effects when he was there on a visit, as a jest. Kest-i-Mond was not amused; he turned the man into a pig. Those who’d enjoyed sexual congress with him were likewise transformed. Fifteen ladies and three squires ended their days in the duke’s swineyards.”

  “A touching story, I’m sure,” Erimenes said, “but how does this relate to our dawdling in this dreary hallway?”

  “The door open, a statue shattered on the floor—these indicate the presence of uninvited guests, do they not?” He drew his sword.

  He scanned the passageway. A dark stain on the stone floor caught his eye. He bent over and sniffed it.

  “Blood. And not human blood, if I’m any judge. The color’s wrong, as well as the smell.”

  The purplish pool trailed off into an alcove. Fost stepped cautiously to the archway. His gorge rose.

  Had the thing in the alcove been alive Fost would have cried out in fear. But it was very, very dead. It had been a monster with the head and upper torso of a muscular man, slimming to the hips to become the thick, powerful tail of a giant serpent. Its throat was disfigured by huge blue weals like the marks of misshapen fingers. Its head had been pounded to a pulp.

  “Intruder? Or guardian of the way?” Sweat beaded on Fost’s forehead, though the corridor was cool. “Either way, someone’s been here before us. Finding Kest-i-Mond takes on greater urgency.”

  “Why trouble Kest-i-Mond?” Erimenes asked. “He’s obviously lost interest in me, or he would have been at the door to take delivery. Let’s return to Kara-Est. It’s a seaport; you can guide me through the fleshpots. They should prove quite diverting.”

  “Are you never quiet? I accepted the commission to deliver you to Kest-i-Mond. I cannot forsake my duty as a courier, nor am I about to risk an enchanter’s wrath merely to satisfy your unnatural tastes. I’ve been damned near cut in two trying to deliver you, and deliver you I will!”

  “I hardly expected to find you so humorless.”

  “If I don’t find Kest-i-Mond, I don’t get paid. I want some recompense for getting cut up and having to listen to you. I…” He stopped. His ears had sensed a slight rustling, as if a mouse hastened to its hole. He knew no mage would permit mice to run freely in his keep; a simple spell banished vermin. A flicker of movement in another archway snared his gaze.

  A reverberating roar filled the
corridor. A great, shaggy, reeking form rushed from the arch and blundered into a wall. Bellowing with rage, it turned toward the courier.

  Fost backpedaled, keeping his sword at garde. Facing him was an immense apelike creature with long fur striped brown and black. The upper half of its face was blackened ruin, as though blasted by a bolt of lightning. Below its blinded eyes and flat, wide-nostriled nose was a loose-lipped mouth filled with vicious yellow fangs.

  Blind as it was, Fost knew better than to underestimate it. The monster flexed long-fingered hands and uttered a shrill cry like a cross between a child weeping and a man dying in agony. The stench of the thing put to shame a charnel pit.

  “What manner of being is this?” Erimenes asked brightly.

  “Blind, you idiot!” hissed Fost. “Don’t let it hear you.”

  “Don’t be absurd. You can defeat an injured creature. Go on, attack!”

  The ape-thing’s lips curled into a ghastly semblance of a human smile. Its expression sickened Fost more than its smell or its devastated face. Something in that half-human visage mocked his very existence.

  He ducked and dodged as a hairy arm groped for him. The creature grinned and slobbered down its chinless face. It struck out again, and Fost saw gobbets of flesh adhering to its filthy nails.

  “Really, Fost, this is ridiculous. At least let me out so I may have a decent view. You jostle me around so!”

  Fost refused to be goaded into answering. The spirit wanted him to speak and draw the monster’s attention. Instead he laid the jar on the floor and slid it away from him. The creature’s head turned to track the sound of the pot skittering across the floor and hitting the wall. It let out a gloating growl and leaped.

  Fost side-stepped and jammed his sword into its side. Bone deflected his blade, but the sword bit deep. He twisted it and yanked it free. The creature spun on him with an angry snarl.

  He slashed at the arms that reached out to draw him into a crushing embrace. The cuts bled fiercely, but seemed to trouble the monster no more than the huge, flowing wound in its side. Fost found himself driven to the wall.

  “Enough of this,” he mumbled. He took a quick step and lunged. His blade sank into the hairy beast.

  The beast wrenched the sword from his grasp by turning, the blade half embedded in its chest.

  “By the Dark Ones, will nothing stop you?” Fost threw himself to the side. The hallway resounded as the monster slammed into the wall. Had Fost not moved, the bulk would have smashed him.

  He whipped dagger from sheath, more out of habit than because he thought it would do any good. The impact of the ape-creature against the wall had driven Fost’s sword to the hilt in its chest, yet the monster seemed stronger than ever.

  “The being, you will be pleased to know, lacks something of substance in this dimension,” Erimenes said from his jar.

  “What are you talking about? ‘Lacks substance’? It nearly pulverized me!”

  “It appears to hail from a reality paralleling our own. The fabric of space has been altered to draw it hence, and the transition is only partially complete.”

  Fost shook his head. His outburst had drawn the apparition’s attention to him again. It approached slowly, grinning hideously.

  He felt no surprise that the beast was not of this world; an earthly being would have died a dozen times from the wounds it had received.

  Fost shouted, then dove past the monster and beneath the sweep of its talon-tipped arms. His dagger bit the back of the monster’s knee in passing. It staggered.

  By the time it recovered, Fost had rolled to his feet and was pounding down the corridor.

  “Coward!” Erimenes’ voice rang at his heels. “Stand and fight like a man!”

  Up the hall a door yawned. Fost dashed through, shutting it behind him. A massive key jutted from the lock, and he turned it with a sigh of relief. The door was stout oak and surely enough to withstand even the monster in the corridor.

  “Fool!” Erimenes’ scornful voice echoed faintly through the wood. “That won’t do you any good. Fight, fight I say!” Fost closed his eyes and leaned wearily against the door.

  And almost died. The monster’s arm came through the wood and dealt him a vicious blow to the side of the head. He sprawled headlong. Stunned, he turned over to see the ape-thing emerging slowly from the heavy door.

  “Great Ultimate!” Fost scrambled to his feet. His head reeled from the blow but he had no time to waste. He forced himself into a brain-jarring run even as the monster came fully into the room.

  He jerked open another door and fled through it. Blundering and crashing, the monster followed. He led it a nightmare chase through a maze of rooms and corridors. Slammed doors held it up for scant seconds and, though blinded, it trailed the courier with the grim facility of a tracking dog.

  The air grew hot. At first Fost thought it was due to his own exertion, but when he leaned against a wall to catch his breath the stone was hot to the touch.

  Perhaps I’m near the scullery, he thought. There may be a way out of this hellhole.

  He came to another door. It refused to open. From behind sounded a clatter as the monster overturned a table in its haste to reach him.

  “Let me in!” Fost shouted, hammering frantically on the wood. “Gods below, open up!” The door stayed shut.

  He heard toenails scraping stone. The door shuddered as he threw his weight into it. Long disused, the door had warped until it jammed the frame.

  Fost heard the gurgling breath of the monster. He expected at any instant to feel those foul hands close around his neck. He yelled in desperation and lunged full force against the door.

  It burst inward in a shower of splinters. Fost lurched into the room beyond. A nose-searing reek of sulfur hit him in the face, and he pulled up short.

  It was well that he did so. He looked down. A hand’s-breadth beyond the toes of his boots was…

  nothing. A vast black pit gaped before him. Sulfurous fumes issued from it in thin yellow wisps.

  He flattened himself against the warm, sulfur-encrusted wall beside the door.

  “Come on,” he called. “Come and take me, you bastard spawn of hell!”

  With a roar of triumph, the monster charged the open door. Straight over the brink it ran. For a moment it hung in air, clawing at nothingness. Then it dropped from view.

  Fost pushed off from the wall and peered down the hole. The fumes made his eyes water. The ape-thing had been swallowed by unfathomable darkness. The courier heard it bellow once, faintly; then all was silence.

  He backed from the room, bent double, gripping his knees and gasping for breath. Gradually his strength returned as the aftermath of fear subsided. When he felt more fully himself he went in search of Erimenes. After his experience with the monster, even the company of the verbose spirit was preferable to being alone.

  “I’m bored with searching,” the philosopher said. “Let’s go and find some winsome lass. Perhaps two. Yes, a fine idea, as fine as ever I’ve had.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Fost said dourly.

  “Really, Fost, your unimaginative adherence to what you conceive to be your duty astonishes me. If Kest-i-Mond cared whether he got me or not, he wouldn’t have left us to wander about this drafty castle all afternoon.”

  “Dark Ones! I must find the enchanter, if only to learn why I am beset by brigands, dog riders and devils,” Fost said. “Besides, how do you know it’s drafty? You’re in a jar.”

  “True. But it looks drafty.”

  They came to a stairway. Fost peered up. “I think I’ve found something,” he said.

  A corpse, charred to a grotesque doll, sprawled on the steps before them.

  “This changes things!” Erimenes’ voice rang with delight. “Press on, press on. Battle may await us.”

  “Grand.” Despite his own misgivings, Fost mounted the stair. He kicked the burned body from his path. An arm broke off and tumbled down the stairs. He shuddered and started to cli
mb.

  A sword lay on the steps. It was short, curved, keen of blade—Sky City workmanship. Fost sighed. He picked up the weapon, tried unsuccessfully to fit it into his straight scabbard, and finally thrust it under his belt. His own sword had gone into the pit with the monster, still embedded in its breast.

  He climbed higher up the spiraling stairs. They came upon another body, burned into two pieces. Further up was a corpse with its head and shoulders cindered beyond recognition. The bodies wore the all-too-familiar purple and black of the City in the Sky.

  In all, Fost passed seven corpses on the long, tiring climb. Whatever magic Kest-i-Mond had employed had proven effective. He recalled the way the ape-creature’s face had been blasted and burned.

  But not effective enough, he thought.

  Erimenes seemed to read his thoughts. “Fortunate for you that you came across the fumarole. If Kest-i-Mond’s death-bolts did not slay the monster, you would have fared poorly. Still,” he sighed, “what a fight it would have been.”

  A brass-bound door barred their way. Fost kicked it open, his sword held ready. The light of the setting sun streamed in a narrow window to fill the cramped room like melted butter.

  “Your purchaser has indeed lost interest in you,” Fost said. “He has heard the Hell Call.” At his feet lay the body of a frail, ancient man. His head had been turned around on his neck so that his dead face studied the uncaring stone floor of the chamber.

  The room had been ransacked. There seemed to have been no purpose to the destruction. Benches were overturned, phials of powder and noxious-looking fluids smashed, a case of scrolls cast down, all at random. Fost surmised that the monster, blinded by the sorcerer's spell, had broken Kest-i-Mond’s neck and vented its rage by tearing the room apart.

  “Now can we repair to some house of ill repute?” Erimenes asked. “I desperately need some diversion after the dreary miles we’ve walked today.”

  “I walked,” Fost corrected. “You rode.” He examined the relics scattered about the floor. Against one wall lay a tiny ebony bowl chased with silver and covered with a tight-fitting lid. He set the jug down and picked up the bowl.