War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  She blanched. He laughed, wiggling from the disgusting cocoon of the worm's belly, and stood.

  'You can owe it to me,' he said. 'They're after us,' Fost said, ear pressed to the wail of the tunnel.

  'I could have told you that,' Erimenes informed him loftily.Fost shook his head. 'I'm none too sure how far to trust you.' 'That again!' Erimenes's voice quavered with outrage. 'I warned you of the worms before, did I not?'

  'For reasons of your own,' Moriana said. 'I wonder if they are ours. You sold me to Synalon readily enough. What do you call that, if not treachery?'

  'Expedience. It's all in the point of view.' As they talked, Fost and Moriana jogged along the sinuous tunnel. The spirit informed them they were drawing steadily to the limits of Athalau. They didn't know how much stock to put in his words.

  'I've helped you both again and again,' Erimenes said. 'I've saved your lives - both of them - on many occasions the last few weeks. Admit it!'

  Moriana exchanged a glance with Fost. 'You have,' she said grudgingly. 'But somehow your solicitousness troubles me more than your earlier eagerness to involve everybody around you in wholesale slaughter.'

  Erimenes sniffed. The fleeing pai r passed another tunnel entryway. Many passages crossed the one they followed. Erimenes had counseled them to ignore these. The tunnel they were in would bring them to where they wished to be.

  'Fost?' Erimenes asked. 'Pipe down, you noisome old bottle of wind.' The courier had had enough of the spirit's weasel-words for now.

  Then he and Moriana rounded a new bend. The worms were waiting. The huge slimy creatures shrank away from the light.

  'How did they get in front of us?' Moriana asked. 'You said this was the straightest route!'

  'So I did, child. But you aren't thinking clearly. These are not at all the same worms you encountered before. It's an entirely new . .. pack? Flock? Dear me, what is the proper collective for ice-worms?'

  'Why didn't you warn us?' demanded Fost, drawing his sword. '1 tried to. 1 was told to pipe down,' the spirit said. 'Ahem. A wiggle of worms? No, no, that's still not right. Incidentally you'd best make short work of these worms. The others are just a few minutes behind.'

  Fost looked uneasily over his shoulder. This group of worms seemed to number more than a half-dozen, though with the worms twining together and swaying in the uncertain light it was hard to tell. None was as large as the patriarch Fost had slain, so perhaps he and Moriana had a chance. But if the other worms came upon them from behind while they were engaged, their quest for eternal life would end here, fruitlessly.

  The worms had recovered from the shock of meeting light and advanced with their strange bulging-squeezing movement. Their cilia glided like skates along the ice. Moriana moved to meet them, scimitar in hand. Fost followed.

  'Hold,' Erimenes said. 'Let me out first. How can I truly enjoy the shedding of blood-even rank, yellow blood-all cooped up in this wretched flower pot? Release me.'

  Fost did. Time sped away, inevitable death hunched nearer with each second and fear and battle lust filled Fost with manic energy that could find release only in combat. Yet he paused to draw Erimenes's jug from his knapsack, unstop the vessel and stuff it back into the bag as the blue vapor swirled forth.

  Erimenes materialized at Fost's elbow as the courier came to stand beside Moriana. Materialize was the word, too, Fost thought. When he'd first seen the philosopher's shade out on the lonely steppe-road south of Samadum, Erimenes was only a pallid wraith, virtually invisible at times. Now he seemed more substantial, almost solid. Had he not known better, Fost would have believed the man beside him as corporeal as he or Moriana, albeit blue.

  'Why'd you let him out? I dislike having him leering over my shoulder as I fight. It makes me feel unclean.' Moriana scowled past Fost at the spirit.

  Fost shrugged. The worms came at them, and there was no time for words.

  One lunged for Moriana's throat. Her long knife caught it beneath the clacking jaws, the Sky City blade chopped down and the ugly head split open. Fost caught a glimpse of blue-shot yellow ganglia exposed by the wound. A worm attacked him then, and he had to concentrate on staying alive.

  Side by side they fought, exiled princess and slum-bred courier. Each swing of their swords sent droplets of gore spattering over the walls, the worms, their own fronts and faces. Fost's wounds, hastily bandaged, began to bleed anew. Both he and Moriana bore fresh raw marks where the worms' jaws had found them by the time the last monster was struck down.

  But struck down they all were. Fost leaned against a wall, sword hanging limply, feeling sick and exhausted to the depths of his soul. He glanced at Moriana. Her lovely face was haggard and drawn beneath a viscous film of worm blood.

  Erimenes crowed like a rutting cock at the sight of so much blood. Fost regarded him from sunken eyes. The inhuman gloating on the philosopher's ascetic face nauseated him as thoroughly as the reeking corpses of the worms.

  From behind came a scrabbling noise, echoing starkly in the ice tunnel. The pair spun to see the first pursuing worm's head poke around the bend, shrink away from the light and then come on purposefully. Fost tapped Moriana's arm.

  'Away,' he said, hoarse with the reaction of blood-letting. 'With any luck they'll stay awhile devouring their luckless comrades.'

  The hisses of the worms cut across the slapping of their bootsoles on ice. Then came the now-familiar tearing sound, and Fost turned his head back briefly to see the worms feeding with cannibalistic fervor. As he watched, two heads reared up and thrust at one another. The beasts were fighting over the choicer remains of their kindred.

  'That ought to hold them for a while,' Fost said before a curve took them out of sight.

  'A pity it won't delay them long enough,' Erimenes sighed. 'Long enough for what?' demanded Moriana. Without breaking stride, she had pulled a rag from her knapsack and was vigorously scouring the filth from her face.

  'I sense that battle has brought your sexual appetites to unparalleled keenness. What a pity you haven't time to shed your clothes and sate the hunger within your loins. What a striving that would be!'

  Moriana snarled something at the spirit, who floated effortlessly alongside them. But her green eyes brushed Fost's grey ones, and she knew that for both of them the sage's words hit uncomfortably close to the truth.

  They flew inward through the glacier. Erimenes glowed with a light to rival that of the torches, and the gold sparks that danced within him blazed like newborn suns. Moriana had passed Fost her pine splinter at the onset of the fight, and yellow flames streaked out behind him like a banner.

  Abruptly the torch flared high. At the same instant Fost felt a breath of coolness wash over his face, not cool with the chill of the glacier's bowels but fresh and crisp, invigorating.

  The tunnel bent and brought them face to face with beauty. It was a beauty so tangible that they stopped and blinked with wonder. Fost and Moriana gripped each other but didn't share a look. They couldn't take their eyes from the spectacle before them. Their lips worked, but it was Erimenes who gave name to the vision.

  'Athalau,' he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Prince Rann's mount shrilled raucous response to the scouting bird in the sky ahead. His gaze scarcely less keen than the eagle's, Rann strained to see through the dying polar night. There, there it was. At the very foot of the ice sheet" was the black smudge of a dead campfire.

  The fugitives had made no attempt to cover their tracks after leaving the shelter of the mountains. Conceivably they thought no one pursued them any longer. Rann laughed at the thought.

  To all intents and purposes the fugitives had simply marched up to the foot of the glacier and disappeared. Their tracks led to the looming ice cliff, blending into a muddle as though the two had spent hours pacing before the glacier. No tracks led away.

  Rann circled his bird into a landing. Around him threescore bird-riders brought their mounts to frozen earth. The promised reinforcements had arrived promptly. T
he treacherous air currents had dashed two of the newcomers to bloody jam against the peaks and a sudden onslaught of thulyakhashawin had accounted for three more Sky Guardsmen. Rann suspected he'd feel their loss keenly during these next few hours.

  A party of scouts clustered at the foot of the sheer, shiny cliff, weapons ready. They peered at the fire's remains, at the rocks the pair had sat upon, at the snow trampled by their feet, at the hundred-foot face of the glacier. Their worried looks told Rann they were as baffled as he.

  He seated himself on a rock while more Guardsmen came to search. His tawny eyes stared out blankly across the Waste. The sun fell toward the waiting arms of the Ramparts to the west, spilling its blood on the ice. Rann smiled a little within. Bloodstained beauty he could appreciate.

  'Milord.' A lieutenant crunched through snow to bend the knee before him. Bandy-legged Captain Tays had fallen at the fight in the mountains, his face crunched in the jaws of a huge black bear. Newly arrived Lieutenant Odon was now the prince's second-in-command.

  'What have you to report?' Rann asked without looking at the man. 'Nothing, lord.' The pale eyes fixed him like spears. 'Nothing I could make sense of. Just that fissure.'

  'What about it?' Rann rose. 'I'll show you, lord.' Odon led him to the glacier. Rann felt the chill emanating from it and felt thankful for the fur-trimmed cloaks the reinforcements had brought from the Sky City. He examined the crack indicated by the officer.

  A rock was trapped at the base of the fissure. It didn't seem to have been overrun by the glacier's stately advance. The ice was splintered to either side of the rock as though the crack had opened briefly and slammed shut on it.

  'Interesting.' Rann nodded, fingering his chin. 'Somehow the glacier opened to them, and they passed within, accidentally kicking this rock into the opening. I've wondered how Moriana hoped to reach the ice-locked city. Obviously she has some sorcery we know nothing of that enabled her to open this way.'

  Gloved fists beat his thighs. 'Synalon has grown too complacent. She underestimates her sibling. Moriana has gained much power.'

  'Have we no spells to follow them, lord?' 'None.' He spat the word out as if it tasted bitter. 'We must dig our way inside, Lieutenant. Burrow after them like moles.' He shook his head. 'It will take too long. Too long.'

  'But, lord,' the officer protested, 'all we have to dig with are our weapons. Working the ice will blunt their edges.'

  Rann turned toward him. In his eyes dwelled a chill deeper than the ice. 'Then you will dig until they break. Then you will burrow with your fingernails until they break too, and then with your fingers till they wear to bloody nubs. After that you can chew the ice with yourteeth. But dig you will, until we reach Athalau. Do I make myself clear?'

  'Y-yes, lord.' Rann nodded curtly and turned away as the troopers attacked the ice with sword and spear. Steel bit with brittle sound, sending splinters and flakes flying like bits of diamond.

  'Who pecks at me?' a voice drawled. The digging stopped. The men backed from the glacier, weapons dropping from fear-numbed hands. Startled, Rann looked at the glacier. Unquestionably the words had issued from the very ice. He'd heard tales of inanimate things, rock and ice, given life in the confrontation between the Earth-Spirit and the demon. Always he had attributed the stories to too-strong ale rather than the War of Powers. He had been wrong. He had little trouble adjusting to the fact; he wasn't a man to let preconceptions hold sway over solid evidence.

  'You, glacier,' he said. 'You guard the city of Athalau?' 'I am Guardian.'

  'I beg your leave to enter with my men.' The waiting seconds pulled Rann's nerves ever tauter. He envisioned Moriana and her leman nearing their goal. If they gained it, it would bring disaster upon Synalon's plans - and what befell her befell him. He wanted to scream at the glacier to hurry. He knew it would do no good.

  'A millennium passes without human feet ever venturing this way,' the glacier said at length. 'Now in a single blink of the sun's eye I encounter many. Why?'

  'I seek my cousin. Her tracks lead here and stop. Did you admit her and her companion?'

  'I admitted her with companions.'The booming voice emphasized the plural. 'She had a dark-haired man with the air of Northern heat and haste about him and the shade of one who dwelled here within the city long ago. I felt it unkind to deny entry to an Athalar, and the lady was of that kindred, also.' It paused endlessly. 'You say you are her cousin. The blood of Athalau blesses your veins too, does it not?'

  'Why, yes, yes indeed. I seek to aid her in her quest.' 'I wondered why your party was so large.' The glacier mused another thirteen minutes. 'Hmmm. Such a force could slay many ice-worms.'

  'What?' 'Ice worms. The vermin infest me. They itch most abominably. I allowed your cousin and her friends inside on condition they slay as many of the pests as possible. But there were only two who could fight, the third being incorporeal, and the worms are strong and wily beasts. I doubt they can account for many.'

  'We will account for scores of ice-worms, my men and I!' 'And you will wreak no harm in sacred Athalau?'

  Rann laughed. 'I will do nothing Moriana herself would not.'

  'Very well,' the glacier said. Again it opened with an earthshattering noise. Rann called Maguerr to him. Loath though he was to rely on the pimpled journeyman, he needed to maintain a link with the outside world. Quickly he instructed the youth to stay behind with five men to tend the war birds, and, every hour, look in on the prince by means of the seeing stone. At this short range the fledgling mage could communicate via the geode without Rann requiring one of his own. That done, the prince drew blade and led his men into the yawning crack.

  The bird-riders looked uneasily at the sides of the crevice. It was as if immense jaws swallowed them, jaws that could snap shut at any instant. As if to emphasize the fact, the walls shook, dropping jagged ice fragments from above on the hurrying file of men.

  'Ahead of you lies an ice-worm tunnel,' came the glacier's voice from all around the Sky City men. 'That way went your friends. You must reach it soon. I cannot hold the passageway open much longer.'

  Rann shouted his troops into a run. The trembling of the walls was becoming more pronounced, and the last of the bird-riders had only just entered the glacier. He set the pace and quickly found he must take short, mincing steps to avoid going down on his back due to the slippery surface. Shouts and curses from behind told him others were making the same discovery.

  The walls slid inward. Men screamed. But the looming faces of the crevice did not slam together. Sweating, Rann gained the ice-worm tunnel and dashed into it. Behind him came the Guardsmen in a mad scramble.

  A grating sound crunched from the walls. Ice shook beneath Rann's feet. The crack closed with such force that the bird-riders were thrown to the tunnel floor. Shrieks rose, suddenly wild, to be cut off by the doomsday slam of the walls coming together.

  Rann hauled himself up. Sweat froze on his face. 'Count off!' he bawled. At his side, Lieutenant Odon echoed his cry.

  Struggling to their feet, the men obeyed. Rann listened stonily in the darkness that had descended as the numbers rolled back in the now-sealed mouth of the tunnel. The counting went to twenty-nine.

  And stopped. Rann ground his teeth together. He had lost half of his men at a single stroke.

  'Glacier,' he called, may we light torches?'At the reluctant affirmative, lights flared in the passageway. Rann glanced at the bluish ice that had shut off the entrance of the worm path. A red ooze trickled to the floor of the tunnel. 'Move out,' he grated. Grumbles rose at his back. 'He spends our lives like sipans!' a trooper muttered.

  Rann turned back, his grin a death's-head. 'Aye, and what of it? What will your lives - and mine - be worth if Moriana escapes with the amulet?' The looks on the bird-riders' faces told him he'd made his point. They knew nothing of what the amulet did, for that wasn't knowledge to be entrusted to a common soldier. But they knew their queen desired it, and they knew how Synalon served those whose failure thwarted her de
sires. Shaken and pale, they readied their weapons and followed their leader.

  The eunuch-prince strode as rapidly as he dared. He felt the men's gazes burning into his back. Their hatred for him crackled in the air like lightning about to strike. It'didn't worry him. Men might claim to love a commander who treated them well and never spent their lives when he could avoid it but they never truly respected him. Rann didn't care for their love but he commanded their fear. Nor did their welfare concern him; he was troubled by the loss of over thirty men but only because he feared he might need their numbers soon. The survivors loathed him for his callousness, but they followed him closely. They had marched into the depths of a cold, living hell. Only a resolute, utterly ruthless man like Rann stood any chance of leading them out again.

  Odon walked a pace behind his leader. Rann felt him hovering and looked back with eyebrow raised.

  'The ice-worms, lord,' Odon said. His voice shook, and his skin shone faintly green in the light of the torches. Apparently the thought of a score and a half of his comrades being squashed to paste bothered him.