War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  Cursing, he flung the beheaded javelin after the eagle that had clawed him. The spinning shaft struck its tail and knocked free a handful of its stabilizing feathers. The bird pitched forward, righted itself with a wild plunging of its wings, and went fluttering away, fighting to stay airborne as its rider clung helplessly to its back.

  Fost heard screaming. Ayoka had plucked the other Guard from his saddle and now held him in his claws while his beak ripped and tore flesh. A few savage strokes caused the man to hang limp and blood-soaked. Contemptuously, Ayoka let the body drop.

  “A splendid battle. There was nearly enough blood spilled to satisfy me,” Erimenes said. “Still, there’s the matter of one surviving bird rider. Hadn’t we best pursue him and finish him off?”

  Miles across the sky, Fost saw the outline of the disabled bird still struggling to stay aloft. “Break off,”

  he said wearily. “We’d best not go looking for trouble; I’m sure we’ll find ample quantities of it before we come to Athalau.” He listened a moment to Ayoka’s breathing. “Nor can this bird carry us forever.”

  Erimenes said something sulky. Moriana leaned forward, conversing with the bird in its warbling pidgin.

  “He says he sees my riding dog. I ordered the beast to keep pace with the city as best he could. It’s no great trick. The city moves slowly enough to leave him time to sleep and search for food.” A puzzled frown creased her forehead. “He also sees several other dogs that seem to be pulling something. He can’t be more specific. He doesn’t have the concepts.”

  Fost laughed delightedly. “Never mind. That’s my own team and sled. I told them to follow your beast, thinking you might have him pace the Sky City. They’re good dogs. They know how to forage in harness.” He smiled at her continued look of bewilderment. “They led me to you.”

  “But how? I covered my scent with minor spells.”

  “But not the scent of the gruel from Kest-i-Mond’s ever-filled bowl.” He explained to her the trick he’d used for tracking and found himself telling the whole story of his flight to the city and his adventure there—suitably edited.

  “But one thing still bothers me,” he finished. “Why do they call that ugly statue the Vicar of Istu? I thought a vicar was some old dodderer who kept the stocks of incense and sacramental wine in order.”

  “The word means substitute or representative,” Moriana told him.

  “Oh.”

  The ground flew by below. They came within the weaker human sight of the dogs. Moriana’s long-legged mount loped along, with Fost’s team dragging his sled on a parallel course some distance away.

  With Ayoka gratefully winging his way to a landing, Moriana turned once more to look at Fost. The light in her eyes woke his blood. He put a hand on the nape of her neck and drew her face to his for a lingering kiss.

  She screamed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Fost jerked back. For a moment he wondered if he’d done something to draw such an outcry. She pointed past him into the sky.

  Like smoke, a small black cloud swirled around the fringe of the great dark stone that was the city. As Fost and Moriana looked on, the blackness detached itself and began moving downwards. With a shock, Fost realized the cloud was heading for them.

  “My sister dares not disperse the Guardsmen, lest rebellion break out while they hunt us,” said Moriana. “Doubtless a company or two is being readied for the chase. In the meantime, she sets the ravens on our trail.”

  Fost frowned at the cloud. Ravens? The image leaped into his mind. The balloon that had brought him to the city, shorn of its gondola, had been slashed and ripped by a savage attack of the black ravens.

  Luranni’s voice echoed through his mind: their talons are poisoned.

  He quickly took stock of their situation. He found little to lift the chill that had settled on his soul. A scant five arrows remained in Moriana’s quiver. The bird they rode was exhausted. The dogs could never outrun the swift-winged black killers, and the prairie’s grassy swells offered no concealment from the air.

  “We may fail,” Moriana said, seeing the bleakness in his eyes, “but for my part I’d rather die with venom in my blood than spend eternity writhing in Istu’s grip. You’ve won me a decent death, warrior. My thanks for that.”

  Fost told himself that this was small recompense for the loss of immortality. Her words warmed him anyway.

  Taloned feet touched ground. Ayoka took a few running steps on powerful legs as his wings fought the forward momentum. He came to a halt and sank to the grass. Moriana leaped from his back and ran toward her dog, who turned to meet her with a happy bark. Fost’s dogs halted, their pointed ears pricking as they sensed their master’s presence once again.

  Moriana dug furiously in the pack she retrieved from her dog. “We’ll make a fire. Perhaps we can stand them off with torches.”

  “For how long?” Fost asked. When he didn’t get an answer, he bent to help her gather clumps of grass. The long strands were beginning to go dry and brittle with the onset of winter. At least starting a fire wouldn’t be hard.

  The ravens’ shrill, evil cries reached them. Fost waited for Moriana to produce flint and steel. He jumped back when a word and a gesture brought the pile of grass into a blaze. It was easy to forget that the woman was a sorceress as well as a princess, thief, and warrior.

  He took a handful of burning straw and stood. Already the swarm circled overhead, cackling gleefully among themselves, savoring the fear and consternation of their victims. Moriana stood by his side. She gripped his hand briefly. He returned the pressure without looking at her. His eyes were riveted on the great living cloud roiling above their heads.

  A great ringing cry of anger rose from Ayoka’s throat. He followed it. Like an immense projectile, he rose straight into the wheeling flock of ravens.

  Black birds broke in all directions. Feathers flew and dark shapes fell lifeless to the prairie. Ayoka had risen to his final battle, and his foes had felt his wrath.

  “Ayoka!” screamed Moriana. If he heard his mistress, the war-bird gave no sign. His huge form was almost totally obscured by shrieking ravens, but now and again Fost caught the glint of a giant beak slashing.

  Dead ravens fell like diseased rain. A straggler, or one remembering his duty, dived on Fost and Moriana. Fost swung his sword. The blade sheared through a wing, causing the bird to drop flopping to the ground. Moriana lopped off its head.

  Fost looked into the sky. The late afternoon sun dropped towards the Thails, casting a mellow golden light over a scene of utter horror. Striking beaks had burst Ayoka’s eyes. Blood stained the white feathers of his head and ran from a score of lesser wounds. But even the poisons of the Sky City took time to kill a creature as large as Ayoka. He was making each second count.

  His beak snapped and struck, shredding ravens like old cloth. His talons clutched, closed on struggling shapes until all movement stopped, and then dropped the carcass to seize another. Even the eagle’s wings served him as weapons, buffeting the close-packed ravens and dashing them to the ground, where Fost and Moriana made short work of them.

  With a shrilling of outrage and alarm, the ravens broke away from the eagle. He traced a tight circle, a wingtip smashing an incautious foe.

  “Enchanted!” a raven croaked.

  The survivors took up the panicked call: “He is enchanted! We cannot harm him!”

  Like a single frightened organism, the ravens spun away and fled back up the sky toward home. Ayoka floated serenely, turning his blinded eyes as if watching the rout of his attackers. His crimsoned beak opened and a harsh cry rang across the prairie, defiant and triumphant. Then his wings flowed upward like quicksilver and his body dropped behind a low ridge.

  Moriana started to run to him. Fost stopped her. “He’s dead. He gave his life to buy us time. Let’s not waste it.” She fought him briefly, then slumped sobbing against his chest.

  He gave her a moment with her grief. Before he moved to rouse her, she br
oke the embrace. “Let’s go,” she said, and her eyes were dry.

  Her saddle and pack with her spare clothing and gear lay miles behind. Fost introduced the princess to his dogs, who took to her readily after giving their master a noisy, face-licking greeting. The courier rummaged in his own sparse baggage, and in a short while Moriana was decked out in rough breeches and a tunic of homespun drab.

  “I’ll miss my sword,” she said, ruefully eyeing the few arrows remaining in her quivers.

  After a few more seconds of searching, Fost found a long, heavy-bladed knife, which Moriana thrust through the length of rope she’d knotted around her waist. Fost mounted the runners of his sled. Moriana strode to her mount and swung astride it. The animal whimpered and sidestepped nervously. She leaned low and patted its neck, speaking softly to soothe it.

  Not even Erimenes found much to say as they began their long journey south.

  “I freely acknowledge my failure, O Mistress of the Clouds.” Prince Rann sat before the beryl throne in Synalon’s disordered chamber, his head bowed. “I implore you for the opportunity to redress my errors.”

  The mages hadn’t needed to fetch the prince from his sickbed. They had met him in the hallway, already clad in the purple and black of a bird rider. Despite the pain of cracked ribs hastily bound with linen bandages, the small man had walked erect to meet his royal cousin.

  Now Synalon presented every appearance of a stern but just queen attempting to find the proper course to take with a trusted subordinate who’d proven derelict in his duties. It was all a sham, as Rann knew well. Synalon had already decided his fate. He knew that, too. He was still alive and free. Had the verdict gone against him, he would even now be straining his muscles against the inexorable pressure of his own rack. Or lying on the floor cindered and dead like the unfortunate Colonel Gulaj, whose body still sprawled near the door.

  “I have decided,” she said with a slow, regal nod. “In view of your past loyalty and service, you shall have the boon you crave. I charge you now to overtake and return to justice the traitor Moriana, her lowborn accomplice and, ah, whatever rightful property of the Crown the miscreants have stolen.” She paused in thought while Rann hid a smile. “You may take a company of Guardsmen, no more. The city lies in grave danger of insurrection, thanks to the evil influences of my sister.”

  “I shall need no more, Your Majesty.” His scars became a white net overlaying his features, as he thought of his own debts to settle with the fugitives. The coin was pain and humiliation. He would take payment in kind, a thousand-fold.

  Synalon sat back in her throne. Dismissing the kneeling prince, she turned to the new palace chamberlain, who hovered anxiously at her elbow wringing fish-white hands.

  “Tell me, Anacil,” she said, “how long would it take to procure a hornbull?”

  Southward and eastward fled the fugitives, on a line that would take them near the walls of Brev. Like all the cities of that Great Quincunx, Brev teemed with the paid agents of the Sky City. Fost and Moriana would forgo the pleasures of civilized accommodations for a night beneath the stars. They wouldn’t thirst or hunger, though. Synalon had left the self-replenishing bowl and goblet Fost had taken from Kest-i-Mond’s castle in the satchel with Erimenes’ jug. The courier had given in to the spirit’s whining pleas and taken out the resin pellets that jammed the bowl’s lid open, so that Erimenes no longer had to ride sloshing about in gruel. Not at all to Fost’s surprise, the philosopher displayed no gratitude.

  Beyond the line of the Quincunx that connected Brev and Thailot, the prairie broke apart in a network of narrow ravines. Whether natural action of erosion had formed them, or as legend said, the very earth had cracked under the stresses of the War of Powers, couldn’t be told. Some of the ravines ran with swift torrents of water birthed amid the snows and springs of the Thails. Others lay dry, with no sign of ever having carried streams. So much Fost learned from Moriana’s descriptions. By now the sun poised fat and swollen, ready to burst itself on the jagged fangs of the mountains and spill daylight from the sky. Shadows masked the bottoms of the gorges, though from some issued the impatient murmur of running water. As they entered the cracked lands, the autumn-dried grasses of the prairie gave way to a short, coarse heather whose dark green and purple leaves masked prodigious thorns. They tinged the air with a faint, astringent odor. They also slowed down the pair considerably. The daggerlike thorns penetrated even the thick fur of Fost’s dogs, forcing him and Moriana to pick their way around the densest growths.

  Fost’s mood began to lighten. He had faced overwhelming odds and won. He was on his way to adventure, with a woman at his side who possessed both beauty and skill in combat, and at the quest’s end lay immortality. The fact that Moriana had ideas of her own about what should be done with the Amulet of Living Flame didn’t trouble him now. The time to settle that issue was when it arose.

  Now he rode beneath the open sky, and his nostrils gratefully drank in the freshness of the air. The medicinal aroma of the heather came as a relief after the intermingled scents of the Sky City. Thirty thousand years of habitation had imbued the city with a smell that was more an aura, never truly noticed after the first encounter, yet never absent and coloring every perception. It wasn’t a bad odor, but Fost was glad to be free of it.

  He looked back at the way they’d come and saw bands of glorious color staining the sky. With winter coming, the sun’s arc had swung far to the north. Directly to the east, the Thail Mountains pulled tighter the cloaks of cold shadows, dotted only occasionally with towering, gold-tipped treetops. At the other end of the sky rose the green moon.

  Fost studied the dark shapes moving slowly against the striations of orange and violet and indigo. Then, a dryness in his throat, he called out to Moriana to look. Her first glance confirmed his fears.

  “War-birds,” she said.

  “At least ten bird riders against the two of you,” said Erimenes thoughtfully, “and this time you’re groundlings, and in the open. This promises to be interesting.”

  “Interesting it may well be,” Moriana said, “but we won’t meet them in the open. That would be suicide—and how much fun would that be to watch?”

  For once, Erimenes lacked a reply. Signaling Fost to follow, Moriana rode toward the head of a cut that fell steeply to join the maze of canyons. Sword in hand, Fost steered his team in her wake. They hurtled through the heather, ignoring the thorns that raked them constantly.

  Moriana braked to a sudden halt; Fost’s sled slid to a stop behind her. She leaped from her mount and slapped the dog. With a yelp, it kept on running. She had her sword out and was hacking at his dogs’ harnesses.

  “What are you doing?” Fost demanded.

  “This ravine’s only a few feet wide… room only for us. Besides, the dogs might throw them off the scent. And we’ll need a roof of some kind over our heads to keep us safe from aerial attacks.”

  Fost joined her in chopping down the squat, dry brush. “Why can’t you use sorcery against the Guardsmen?”

  “The same reason I didn’t use magic to free myself back in the city. Synalon’s ward-spells protect her from enchantment, and her Guardsmen almost as well. I can’t even use a compulsion on them as I did with the guards at the balloon dock.” She swept a lock of hair from her eyes. “There are limitations.”

  Five minutes work allowed them to bridge the narrow cut with the dense brush over a six-foot length. It was slim cover, but enough to keep off the birds and spoil their riders’ aim, and, with the sun setting, the light would be gone in minutes.

  Huddled beneath the thorny covert, they heard angry squawks from thwarted eagles. “Land, men,” came a voice. “We’ll take them afoot.”

  Wings booming, five birds touched down in the sandy bottom of the cut. “Remember the reward if we take them back alive,” rasped the officer. He led, walking bent-legged and wary, twitching his sword before him like a feeler as if testing the air.

  Mindful that four Guardsmen were
still aloft, Fost didn’t advance to meet him. Weapons ready, he and Moriana waited in the makeshift shelter.

  The Guardsmen walked noisily through the brush. They walked around the ravine, swords swinging—and kept on walking. Fost stared at the soldiers’ backs and looked at Moriana. She shrugged in surprise.

  “There she goes!” a Guardsman yelled. He pointed his sword into the distance and his comrades lunged forward into the darkness that now shrouded the cut. Fost heard a clash of blades, then cursing. “She’s gone again, dammit.”

  “Listen!” another voice shouted. “Over there! I hear them over there!”

  A crashing through the underbrush told them the soldiers were blindly in pursuit of something that wasn’t there. Now that skyriders could no longer see them, Moriana grabbed Post’s hand, and they ran in the opposite direction.

  “I thought you said your enchantments wouldn’t work against them,” Fost said reproachfully as he gained the top of the rise.

  “I did,” said Moriana, “and they won’t.” Taking Fost’s hand, she struck out across the fractured lands.

  Later they lay side by side, huddled in blankets. With their pursuers afraid to venture after them, Fost had returned to his sled to gather what supplies he could. The dogs were all dead, killed by Guardsmen’s arrows. Wigma had still been breathing, though barely. He had raised his head at the humans’ approach. The reproach in his eyes was all for himself: I tried, Master, but I could not fight them all. He licked Fost’s hand as the courier threw himself down at his side. His tongue left a bloody track.

  The big dog laid his head in Fost’s lap and died. The courier groped for words of farewell, but there was a catch in his throat and he wasn’t able to speak.

  Moriana had led the way through the broken country until she judged they were far enough away from their pursuers. She had hunted these lands as a girl, running down dire-weasels and fleet-footed antelope on Ayoka’s sturdy back. She had found a place where the earth of a ravine’s bank had fallen away, leaving a flat slab of shale to roof a shallow cave. They made their cold camp here, sharing gruel and lukewarm water.