War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  He looked down at himself. The white robe he wore had crooked seams and a hem soiled with human excrement.

  'Pig?' Erimenes said tentatively. 'Must I go on? I learned some truly fascinating sexual insults back in the Sky City. Would you like to hear them, or have you come to your senses?'

  Fost set the jug down. 'I'd like to hear them some day, Erimenes, but right now tell me what's going on. Did they drug us?'

  'That was part of it. And despite their avowed distaste for magic, they've used some mental compulsions against you as well; Moriana might have noticed but she was brought here weakened and unconscious, and when she awoke she was already meshed in the snares of the Ethereals. But mainly the appeal of a life of indolence proved too much for you. You're basically lazy, Fost, as I noted right from the start. You run when you should fight. You stray from the most enticing women. You -'

  'Enough of that, you bottle of flatulence! How long have we been here?'

  'A week,' said Erimenes, 'during which time you and Moriana were the most stultifying company imaginable, save for our hosts themselves. Do you think I rescued you from the storm just so I could rusticate till the end of time among these pious humbugs? I wouldn't have guided you to the Crater if there had been any other choice.'

  Fost didn't hear him. He was on his feet, pulling his knapsack onto his back, then stooping to gather up the satchel and stuff Erimenes back inside.

  'A week!' he shouted. 'Ust and Gormanka, Rann will be here at any moment.'

  He strode from the hut. Heads turned to regard him with amazement. He walked purposefully to the tumbledown shack where Moriana worked at sewing alongside other dream-sodden Ethereals.

  'On your feet, woman,' he ordered. 'We must get to Athalau.' The Ethereals recoiled at the name. 'Athalau?' Moriana said. 'But it is so far, so full of sorcery and evil. Sit beside me and think beautiful thoughts. Forget Athalau.'

  He slapped her. Fire flared in her eyes, but only for a moment. The listless mantle of uncaring dropped back and she smiled at him, a mother's smile for a wayward child. 'We are wanted, Fost. We belong here.'

  'Don't you miss Synalon? Don't you wish you had her to play abed with you? And Rann — how is it with a eunuch, bitch?'

  'What are you saying?' Her voice had a definite edge to it. 'Erimenes told me you were a pig who slept with her own sister. I denied it but I think I owe him an apology. He was right. You are a pig. In bed you're worse.'

  'I'm better than Luranni,' she hissed. 'Don't bet money on it. She knows tricks you're far too stupid ever to learn. Stick to eunuchs from now on.'

  'Bastard!' The back of her hand slammed into his cheekbone. He fell backward over a worktable. Ethereals drew back, staring at him with round, uncomprehending eyes.

  'Bastard I may be, but that's better than a whore.' She came for him. No longer the mild, vague acolyte of the Ethereals, she burned with fury and the urge to kill. It already felt as if his jaw were dislocated. The lethal purpose of her movements reminded him just what kind of exquisitely trained killer the princess was. He caught her wrist just before she delivered a chopping blow to his neck.

  'I'll rip your worthless lungs out,' she snarled, driving a fist into his short ribs. 'I'll roast your shriveled penis over a pit and fling it to the dogs. I'll . . .'

  Abruptly she went still, her free hand frozen in the midst of a two-fingered strike at his eyes. 'Fost?' she said, her voice small and unsure.

  The Ethereals. They're trying to change us.' 'Why?' 'The proselytizing urge,' Erimenes said. 'I can't fathom it now, though once I myself, I shamefully admit, fell prey to it.'

  A shudder wrenched through Moriana's body, as if she were throwing off the last gossamer rope that bound her to the Ethereals and their fantasy.

  'We must leave,' she said. 'Now.' They left the Ethereals cowering in the hut. The sound of Erimenes's voice coming from the satchel had thrown them into a panic. The presence of magic was something they'd always been taught to dread.

  If only they knew who was in the sack, Fost thought. The idea made him throw back his head and laugh. It occurred to him he'd almost forgotten how. It felt good. Everything felt good again.

  Their swords had been cast on the village refuse heap. They quickly reclaimed them. As Fost buckled on his sword belt and Moriana tied a sash around her waist to hold her own blade, a voice hailed them from the village.

  'Why do you leave?' Selamyl asked. 'This is paradise.' 'This is a shabby, reeking collection of hovels. A paradise only to those who dream,' Fost said. 'We'll take reality, thank you.'

  'But you mustn't go! Don't let yourselves be caught in the webs of illusion you call reality.'

  Fost felt the gentle tugging at the corners of his mind. 'It's you who weave webs of illusion, Selamyl, you and the rest of the Ethereals. You've snared yourselves in them.' Ignoring the wordless plea within their minds, he and Moriana turned and marched toward the rim of the Crater.

  Behind them an Ethereal wept for the first time in generations.

  Light blazed far into the night from a thousand arched windows in the Palace of the Winds. Borne by puffing groundling servitors, ornate sedan chairs made their way along the public paths flanking the Way of Skulls. Inside the conveyances rode desperately frightened men and women. They'd been ordered to an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Advisors of the City in the Sky by Princess Synalon. It was none too certain that any of them would leave the Palace alive.

  By ancient tradition the councillors met to advise the ruler of the City in the Council Chamber, tributary to the immense audience hall that filled most of the Palace's ground floor. To the councillors' chagrin the stewards who greeted them at the Palace's main door ushered them directly to Synalon's own room, in which she had installed the Beryl Throne. The stewards were, as always, self-effacing to the point of invisibility. The clanking Monitors in their leather and blackened steel armor, faceless within low-swept sallet helmets, marched several steps behind and were highly visible.

  The princess sprawled insouciantly at ease on her ancient jeweled throne. Cosmetics had done much to cover the bruises and scratches left by her brush with death the day before. She wore a gown cut loose, the skirt consisting of ebony strips joined at waist and hem. The way she had arranged herself in the blue-green crystal chair of state revealed strips of gleaming, pale flesh. To appear before the High Council so scandalously attired was as calculated an affront as Synalon's choice of meeting place.

  Even before they saw the princess, the councillors recoiled from the harsh glare, the heat and the insistent rushing noise filling the chamber. Ten feet to either side of the throne stood a tall bell jar. The sinuous, semi-reptilian shape of a fire elemental writhed within each. Seeing them, the councillors exchanged fearful glances and moistened their lips with their tongues. Even more than the score of Monitors ranged behind the Beryl Throne, the salamanders represented the fearsome power by which Synalon ruled the City.

  A tall man, portly and red-faced, his smooth dome of a skull fringed by a ring of snowy hair, moved deliberately to the front of the knot of councillors. The others gave way to let him pass. As high councillor it was his place to protest the cavalier treatment accorded them by the princess. Synalon watched him, a smile playing on her lips.

  'Well, High Councillor Uriath, have you something to say to me?' she asked.

  Eyes turned to the high councillor, some expectantly, some with an expression akin to fear. His eyes met the princess's for a moment. Then they fell away.

  'We are honored to obey Your Highness's summons,' he said, stroking his white beard.

  'So,' she said, her smile growing. 'Anacil, have chairs brought tor our esteemed advisors.' Her chamberlain gestured to the stewards, who began bringing-chairs into the throne room. The score of advisors took their seats before the princess like schoolchildren at the feet of their instructor. Councillor Uriath sat in the direct stream of Synalon's gaze and blessed the years of experience at bartering and intrigue that kept his face from re
vealing the turmoil that raged within him.

  Synalon had reacted to the debacle of her sister's sacrifice in the Rite of Dark Assumption with a response as amazing for its alacrity as for its savagery. Within hours after a fire elemental, launched by members of an underground hostile to Synalon, had attacked the Vicar of Istu and driven it to berserk fury, halberd-armed Monitors were kicking down doors all over the City. Overhead the eagles of Rann's elite Sky Guard still patrolled the streets to quell any sign of resistance. Three score had been slain, twice that many herded to captivity in the Palace dungeons. Synalon's ostensible reason for the mass arrests was a hunt for the traitors who had engineered the attack that had resulted in the escape of her sister, the loss of Erimenes and the estrangement of the Demon of the Dark Ones. Yet with the cunning she had exhibited even as a child, Synalon was quick to use the fiasco as an excuse to round up known enemies who were otherwise too powerful to attack. She still had no clue as to the identities of those behind the assault that freed Moriana. Uriath knew that for a fact.

  The high councillor wondered if Synalon might be playing a cat-and-mouse game with him, if she had learned of his involvement and only tortured him now. His stomach turned over at the idea.

  Synalon looked from face to face. Her advisors squirmed like worms impaled on a thorn. She found it very hard not to laugh out loud. Guilty ones sat among these twenty, of that she was sure. Sooner or later she would sniff them out and deal with them in a suitably instructive way.

  But not this night. She had on her mind a matter more pressing even than ferreting out dissidents among the Council.

  'I have called you here to ask that you vote me recognition as queen of the City in the Sky,' she said abruptly.

  The councillors sat back as if struck. Uriath blinked rapidly, trying to assess the situation. At his back the others whispered to one another in agitation. Each was trying to avoid asking the question that must be asked. At length a middle-aged woman with grey-shot blonde hair stood at the rear of the assembly. 'Your sister the Princess Moriana still lives, Your Highness,' she said, stressing the honorific applied to a princess. 'As the younger twin, she and she alone is lawful heir to the throne. With respect, how can we confirm you against all law and custom?'

  Synalon paled. 'Moriana!' she spat. 'Moriana! How dare you mention the name of that slut, that traitor, that offal! She who slew our mother in order to hasten her inheritance. She whose escape from just retribution cost the lives of a dozen of my Guardsmen. A bloody-handed murderess many times over!

  'The gods alone know what means may efface the stain left on the City's honor by the crimes of regicide, matricide and treason visited by my sister. Would you deepen the taint by placing her on the Beryl Throne?' She stared at the woman and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. 'Do you endorse these crimes, Elura? Would you then see such sins rewarded with mastery over the foremost city of the Realm?'

  For a moment the woman stood erect against the force of the princess's baleful gaze. The only sound was the hissing of the salamanders, rising and falling with inhuman cadences. In the shadows behind the throne the salamander light picked out eerie highlights on the breastplates of the Monitors.

  Elura's face crumpled into a mask of despair. She knew her death warrant was signed already, no matter what she did or said. But her will broke before Synalon's fury like a dry twig in a storm. She lacked the strength for a final defiance, which would cost her nothing not already forfeited.

  'I beg your pardon,' she said unevenly. 'You are correct, Your Majesty.' And Councillor Elura sat down under the triumphant eyes of the woman she had just acknowledged queen.

  'I've no wish to rush you into such a momentous decision,' Synalon said, winding a lock of hair carelessly about one finger. 'Feel free to debate this matter among yourselves. Pretend I'm not here.' She smiled again, her face as ingenuous as a child's.

  'Uh, I feel that will not be necessary,' said Uriath. He swept his scarlet-sleeved arm in a gesture encompassing his fellow councillors. 'The justice of your argument is undeniable. I am sure none of my distinguished colleagues has any further objection to granting your wishes. Is it agreed?'

  No one spoke. Hesitantly a woman on Uriath's left nodded. The others quickly joined, bobbing their heads up and down in unison like a collection of marionettes.

  'Very well,' he said, rising to his feet. 'It is unanimously agreed by the Council of Advisors of the most favored City that Princess Synalon shall forthwith be proclaimed Synalon I Etuul, Mistress of the Clouds, Queen of the City in the Sky.' He knelt on the unyielding stone of the chamber floor. 'All hail Her Majesty.'

  'All hail Her Majesty,' echoed the other councillors. 'Dark Ones, but the witch is cunning,' the high councillor said above the brim of his goblet. 'We had no alternative to proclaiming her queen. None at all.'

  He looked around for confirmation from the others gathered in the sitting room of his manor. Outside the high window the land slid by, dark and silent.

  Several of his visitors nodded, more readily than they had nodded acceptance of Synalon's request. Another, one who had not been present at the Council meeting, stood by one wall, staring reproachfully at Uriath out of large golden eyes.

  The man saw the look and shook his head. 'Luranni, dearest child, you don't understand,' he said, his voice heavy with paternal concern.

  'I understand that you pledged to resist Synalon to the last drop of your life's blood,' she said, scowling furiously at her father. 'Now you've proclaimed her queen and you look remarkably pleased to me.'

  Uriath's three fellow councillors began to study intently the carved wood screens hung around the walls. Uriath frowned, then smoothed his face into conciliatory lines.

  'Luranni,' he said, 'you are intelligent and perceptive for one so young. Otherwise you would not occupy a position of such responsibility in our family business. But still, there is much to be said for the wisdom only experience and age can bring.'

  Luranni folded her arms beneath her breasts. 'She held the whip hand, so to speak, and she made sure we knew it. A roomful of Monitors and a pair of captive salamanders no less! Our beloved sovereign was telling us in no uncertain terms that if we didn't accede immediately to her wishes, none of us would ever see the outside of the Paiace again.' He sighed, then drained his cup and held it up over his shoulder. A servant glided forth from a niche in the wall and refilled it.

  'It was unsubtle, of course,' Uriath continued, sipping wine. 'Terribly unsubtle. Rann would have handled it differently, mark you. But the princess's - excuse me, the queen's - castrated pet is busy preparing-the pursuit of Moriana and her courier.'

  'Our rightful queen!' flared Luranni. Uriath licked his lips. 'Of course. Our rightful queen.' He waved a carefully manicured hand. 'But if Synalon lacked her deadly pet, she had his shadow at her side. Colonel Chalowin of the Sky Guard. He hovered by her elbow like a nervous familiar spirit the whole time. Another manifestation, you see, of the power Synalon wields against us. Now do you understand, my child?'

  Luranni turned her face away. Lamplight glinted in her hair like a cascade of honey. It was a peculiar, heatless light, emanating from a crystal filled with clear liquid set on the table around which Uriath and the others sat. It was filled with luminous beings, invisibly tiny, which when agitated gave forth the yellow glow. It was a less satisfying illumination than torchlight. But the mages of Rann's security network controlled captive fire elementals, using them to peer into any nook or cranny of the City illuminated by firelight. No flame produced this light, though, and so it was safe.

  'We must be circumspect, my child,' said Uriath, allowing a precise measure of exasperation into his voice. 'One misstep and Synalon will destroy us all.'

  'One misstep?' H isdaughter spun to face him. To his surprise he saw the bright trails of tears down her cheeks. 'What about the way your men failed to help Fost Longstrider rescue Princess Moriana? He was almost killed. Wasn't that a misstep?'

  Uriath started to reply, colle
cted himself visibly. 'Why, ahh, yes, I suppose it was.' He kneaded the doughy flesh of his cheeks. 'Yes, it definitely was a mistake. But accidents can happen, my dear, keep that in mind. Al! the more reason for caution now.'

  Without a word the girl turned and stalked from the room. Later Uriath sat in the sitting room, his only company a fresh bottle of wine. A soft chime roused him from his contemplation. 'Come in.'

  His chief steward opened the door, announcing, 'A visitor.' He seemed unruffled by the lateness of the hour. Uriath turned to look out the window. A white turmoil danced outside: snow. He gestured for his servant to admit his visitor. A moment later he heard a footfall on the carpet behind him and the quiet closing of the door.

  'Chiresko,' he said. 'I am disappointed in you.''I am sorry, lord. I make no excuses. Failure cannot be excused.' Uriath sighed. Fanatics were such a dreary lot. 'I appreciate your honesty. You've no idea how tiring it is listening to people whine about how it isn't their fault they didn't do what they were supposed to. But I'm still deeply interested in discovering what went wrong.'