Istu awakened

FIVE

'It's apparent these rafts return automatically to their place of origin on being abandoned.' Erimenes was in his best pedantic form, not one whit deterred by the unorthodox setting for his lecture. 'I assume the function is intentional, though it may of course be serendipitous. Further, I reason that abandoned skyrafts follow lines of magnetic force back to Omizantrim, which accounts for our circuitous route from the City to…'

Thunder drowned him out. Fost ducked reflexively, spilling a spoonful of gruel into his lap.

'I think the mountain's building up to a major eruption,' Moriana announced.

She had resumed her previous station in the bow of the raft, gazing at Omizantrim as the volcano grew ever nearer. Fost gulped a last mouthful of the tasteless gray slop, covered the bowl with its silver lid and replaced it in his satchel, then slowly crawled forward to sit beside her. Cautiously, he stationed himself several inches farther back from the rim.

No one – no human, at least – had ever accused Mt. Omizantrim of being beautiful. It looked threatening and grim from far away, which was the only way Fost had seen it before. Close up, it was a tall cinder cone, dark gray, its flanks slashed with black striations and scarred with fumaroles. The open-wound pits in the mountain exuded thick clouds of dark blue and maroon gas, then lit them from below with a lurid glare. The very crest of the mountain was obscured in a billow of slate-gray smoke spilling away into the northwest. A gaudy necklace of lightnings surrounded the heights, both from the smoke and dust cloud and from the storm clouds above. Sulfur stung eyes, nose and throat; dust clogged them.

Omizantrim was far from beautiful. But Fost failed to discern the reason why Moriana thought it was going to erupt. As far as Fost could tell, the mountain looked little different than it had when it hiccuped to noisome life on the eve of the Battle of Chanobit Creek.

Fost couldn't figure it out. He asked her. Moriana shrugged, still studying the mountain with wrinkled brow.

'The displays seem more violent than at any time when we were camped there. And do you smell the ozone, the prickling in the very air? You should see yourself. It's making the hair stand up at the back of your neck.'

'It wouldn't take dormant lightning in the air to cause that, let me tell you,' said Fost. 'But couldn't it be due to our height alone?'

Moriana glanced down. The gray and black landscape writhed below like a tortured animal. Patches of vegetation clungtenaciously to the jagged, blade-sharp lava, deep green in some places, dusty and faded like old dry moss in others. One-horned and domestic deer moved below, not browsing but running in full flight across the broken land away from the great mountain.

'It's just a feeling,' she confessed. 'See? The animals feel it, too. They're more sensitive to such things than humans. They know the moods of the volcano from long exposure.'

'Our height isn't great enough to make much difference,' Erimenes cut in. 'We've stayed about a thousand feet up since leaving the City. That puts the mountaintop eight or nine thousand feet above us. Even that noxious looking cloud is easily thousands of feet above our heads.'

Fost felt the skin on his back try to creep into a bunch at the nape of his neck. An instant later, a brilliant yellow flash burned itself into his retinas. The light was so intense he wasn't even aware of the wall of sound that struck him. But several minutes later as he blinked away the last of the purple afterglow, his hearing had only just returned.

'Weather magic,' Erimenes said in his usual peevish tone. 'Can't you keep the lightning off us, at least?'

Ziore stared at the blue shade, her expression remarkably reminiscent of the clouds overhead. Mindful of Fost's injunction against further squabbling, she stayed silent.

'Perhaps I could,' Moriana said. 'But the battles I fought in the Sky City drained me so.'

She broke off to look at Fost with peculiar intentness. A wan smile played about her mouth.

'No, since you told some harsh truths to snap me out of my self-pitying fog, you've lapsed back into being too perfect a gentleman to point out the obvious. Yes, I have to start using my powers again sometime, and the longer I wait the more painful it'll be.'

She stood and stretched, oblivious to the emptiness yawning an inch in front of her toes. Fost shuddered. It was easy to forget what an insane disregard for heights the Skyborn had.

'Now's as good a time as any,' she said firmly. 'I've slept for two days and have a stomach full of that delicious provender of yours.' Her sarcasm elicited an uneasy smile from Fost. Though they had both devoured the gruel from the magic bowl so avidly it seemed its supply must be exhausted in spite of the self-replenishment speli, neither was ravenous enough to mistake the stuff for anything but clammy glop.

Moriana folded her long legs beneath her and closed her eyes in concentration. Fost saw her lips flutter, heard the ghost of an incantation above the grumbling of mountain and clouds.

'She needed a brazier and special herbs to make weather magic at Chanobit,' Ziore said in an awed whisper. 'She's learned so much since then.'

Erimenes grumbled, but all ignored him. Seeing that Moriana required total concentration, Fost took an oiled rag from his satchel and drew his sword. He examined it, clucking over its condition. Its blade was dimmed, streaked with blood and grime, and dirt had caked in places. Though the blade itself was fine North Keep steel, its edge was nicked and pitted from heavy use. Fost rummaged in his sack and brought out a whetstone, then began to rub the sword down with the rag.

As he cleaned the weapon, he kept one eye on the mountain. It grew until he scarcely saw where the cone disappeared into the wreath of greasy smoke. The heat of its many mouths washed over him like the uneven breathing of some immense creature. Throat of the Dark Ones, Omizantrim meant. Fost wondered if that was Their sulfurous breath that blew so hot on his face.

Just when he began to worry that the craft would drive head-on into the mountain, Omizantrim swung across the bow and began to slip by to port.

'We're circling,' said Erimenes unnecessarily. 'Probably going to the very skystone drift where the raft was mined.'

Lightning barraged the mountain's stony flanks, but none came near.

'Your magic's working,' he told her. She replied with a distracted smile. In fact, he didn't have the slightest idea whether it worked or not, but he wanted to encourage her.

'We're losing altitude.' Reluctantly, Fost glanced down and saw that Erimenes spoke the truth. The crags and folds of the mountain's skirts grew closer as he watched and the landscape took on more detail. Cave-sized openings were soon revealed to be great bubbles that had burst. Drifts of white ash and a gray stone touched with a curious sheen appeared in sharp relief that he guessed was skystone itself. Small animals scurried among the stunted stems of bushes, tails streaming behind as they fled the coming wrath of the mountain.

They passed a cluster of huts. Blocks of the incredibly durable lava had been hewn laboriously by hand and fitted to form walls capped by big slabs of basalt. The buildings, while grim, were suited to withstanding the mountain's caprice. But not even the stout construction of the Watchers could withstand the cosmic disease of change. The massive roofs had been levered from their places, the walls that held them pulled down into jumbles of black stone. Ash had fallen since the destruction, piling like blown snow against the few walls and doorposts that remained standing, filling in the outlines of the ruined huts so that they resembled a collection of haphazard children's sandboxes. Splintered pieces of wood thrust above the dust in some of the buildings, and Fost saw a few drably colored scraps of cloth waving in the breeze. 'They didn't loot,' he said to himself. 'Only destroyed.' Moriana's face had turned the color of the ash strewn below.

'Wise Ones,' she whispered, 'have they slain the Watchers?' The thought of this new guilt showed on her face like a fresh swordcut.

'This isn't the main camp. It's only an outpost. The Vridzish were gathering the Watchers out of the smaller camps when we were here before. The Watchers are no doubt held captive at their village, as they were before.' Ziore's expression belied her hopeful tone.

'Who do you think works the skystone mines?' came Erimenes's question. Lightning cracked dangerously close. Fost jumped, almost losing his whetstone and small oil flask over the edge of the raft. The conversation took a turn that was not only distressing to Moriana but distracting as well. 'Where are the Hissers, anyway?' he asked. 'Look beyond you,' said Erimenes.

Despite the heat, Fost's throat had become a column of ice leading from the glacier of his stomach. The spirit wasn't lying. A two-man flyer had just rounded a stony buttress behind them, and three more appeared followed by a much larger barge teeming with green-skinned figures. Fost swallowed hard, thinking that the Zr'gsz flew much sloppier formation than Rann's bird riders. Perversely, he wished Rann could be here now to pit his genius against the lizards.

Moriana looked up as he touched her arm. 'Forget about the lightning. We've got worse things to worry about.'

She glanced back at the pursuing raft. The craft bucked now in updrafts from malevolently glowing mouths gaping below. She picked up her bow and began replacing the string, which had been ruined by a shower sometime while she and Fost slept.

Repacking his cleaning gear, Fost watched the enemy rafts gain on them. Under control of Zr'gsz pilots, the craft moved much faster than the humans' drifting raft. A three-man flyer edged out in front of the others, and a Hisser stood amidships whirling a sling. He loosed. Nervously, Fost watched the stone arch up and then down, apparently headed straight for the bridge of his nose. He watched in hypnotic fascination that didn't lose its grip until the missile dropped harmlessly in the raft's wake.

An angry bee whined past his right ear. The slinger stiffened as two more arrows sped past Fost, aimed with uncanny precision. The slinger pitched over the side of the small raft when the pilot slumped across the skewered corpse of the third Zr'gsz, an eagle-feathered arrow jutting from his eye.

Upon this attack, the loose formation of the skyrafts broke apart. They climbed rapidly out of range. Moriana shot two more arrows and killed the pilot of a second small raft which skidded sideways, spilling its occupant out over a lake of lava that glowed perceptibly brighter orange when the Vridzish struck.

'Damn them,' Moriana said. 'They're sharp. They've put their rafts between themselves and me.'

'They'll have to show themselves to shoot at us,' observed Fost. As he said the words, a head and shoulders appeared at the side of one raft. A javelin rocketed toward them. The dart went wide; so did Moriana's return shot.

The woman cursed reptilian reflexes and nocked another arrow. She drew the shaft to her ear and waited. Another Hisser leaned out to aim a short bow at the humans. Her arrow took him in the throat. The bow dropped from clawed hands, and the body dangled a moment before its fellows released its ankles. 'Your reflexes match theirs,' Fost said admiringly.

The look she gave him was not what he expected. He felt chilled by the flat, almost hostile expression. He was starting to speak when the mountain blew up.

The Shockwave bowled him over. Moriana's witch sense gave her a split second's warning of the blast, and the same reflexes he'd just complimented saved his life. Bracing herself, Moriana caught hold of Fost's swordbelt just as he pitched over the brink. She dragged him back, aided by his groping fingers tearing on the gray stone of the raft. Erimenes shrilled terror as his satchel momentarily hung above nothingness. 'Thanks,' shouted Fost over the roar of the eruption.

Moriana bobbed acknowledgement to the thanks she read on his lips. She couldn't hear anything. The mountain was roaring in the voice of a million angry hornbulls. Fost stared in wonder that transcended fear as an orange prominence reached heavenward from the crater. The blast had blown the dust free of the mountaintop, and the heat of the geysering lava dispelled the clouds above like an enchantment gone insane. The top of the flame stream wavered, tipped, arced toward the far side of the volcano in a fountain of molten rock.

Something exploded nearby with a sound loud enough to hear even through shockwave-deadened ears. A fragment grazed his cheek. He blinked at ash and cowered inside his mail shirt.

A bomb, he heard Ziore say inside his mind. A partially cooled lava shell surrounding hot gases. It must have struck the mountainside nearby.

Hecursed. Apparently all Athalar waxed pedantic atthe damnedest times. Fost glanced back at their pursuers in time to see something streak down and smash the big raft amidships. The stone platform came apart in midair. Fost saw superheated gases strip the living flesh from the Hissers' bones as the blast scattered them away among the debris of their vessel.

That sort of thing happened a lot when I had the Destiny Stone. Itwas Moriana's voice now inside his head. He guessed Ziore acted as a repeater for the woman, since oral communication was out of the question in the din of eruption.

A spire of black stone flashed by on their left, its pitted face almost near enough to touch. Fost's head snapped back to see where they were heading.

/'// bet things like this did, too, he thought at Ziore. Look where the damned thing's setting us down!

Moriana looked where he pointed. A patrol of Vridzish stood gesticulating at a torrent that flowed through a cut in the same glossy gray stone Fost had seen before. A few hammers and prybars lay scattered about, and a knot of unarmed Zr'gsz huddled near the soldiers, staring at what resembled a cascade of extremely muddy water – or watery mud. Fost knew from the mad dance of superheated air above the stream it had to be lava. Water would hiss instantly to vapor. The Vridzish stood on the side of the lava stream. The raft was making for a point just beyond them – in the midst of a river of melted rock!

The ground raced by beneath. Fost sheathed his sword and clutched the edge of the stone slab, leaning out to judge the distance to the ground. The agonizingly slow progress of the raft had become amad careening – or so it seemed. Fost hoped this was only illusion. If they were moving too fast when they jumped from the raft, they'd tumble end over end across the cooled lava on the slope. It would be like rolling across a field of razorblades.

'We'll have to jump!' he screamed at Moriana. She nodded assent. Ziore's satchel was already slung over her shoulder. The pink genie hovered by her side, looking concerned. Erimenes had disappeared back into his own jar. Fost heard his whimpering even above the god's bellow of the exploding volcano.

A hundred feet short of the patrol and the lava flow, they jumped. Fost landed with a jolt that seemed to drive his ankles up to his knees and went on over to slash his arms and face on the jagged lava rock. Some good fortune spared his much-abused nose. Wiping at the blood pouring into his eyes from a nasty forehead cut, he looked up in time to see Moriana hit, tuck and roll with perfect form. She continued rolling on down the slope and came to her feet with barely a scratch. He cursed her Sky City training. He'd jumped from a few second-story windows in his time, to spare himself unpleasant scenes with unreasonable husbands bearing swords, but he'd never had occasion to jump from a second-story window that moved.

His plaints inaudible in the uproar, he accepted a hand up from Moriana.

'You heedless barbarian, how could you endanger me with such utter recklessness!' Erimenes screeched. 'My jug could have been smashed to flinders!'

The abandoned raft brushed the feathered headdress of a Zr'gsz officer. The Hisser looked up and gaped in astonishment as the raft drove on to plunge into the rushing lava stream. One of the lizard men clutched his face and fell kicking as molten stone splashed him.

The others turned their heads to see pale distorted shapes scrambling across the lava field. No vocal commands were needed. The officer waved his two-handed mace and the patrol raced in pursuit.

'Here they come!' Neither Fost nor Moriana needed Erimenes's warning to know the patrol slowly closed the distance between them. Choking and coughing on the dust clogging the air, the pair ran as fast as they could over the treacherous, broken ground. After what seemed an eternity of struggling in the sulfurous atmosphere, Fost turned to see how near the Zr'gsz were. The Hissers had lost interest – or perhaps their lives, since they were nowhere to be seen.

The mountain shuddered under Fost's feet. And the black stone was fever hot, burning him despite his thick bootsoles. With every third step it seemed a loose rock turned under him, twisting his ankle and adding a gash on unsuspecting calf or thigh.

'You incomparable dolt! Watch where you're going!' screamed Erimenes from the relative safety of his satchel.

Tricky as the ground was underfoot, Fost refused to look down. The spectacle of the volcano in full throat riveted his attention. A column of maroon smoke shot through with sheets of fire blasted upward from the crater. A ceiling of black cloud hung over the mountain. A hellwind raged within. Fost glimpsed the glow of incandescent gases swirling in the guts of the cloud.

It was as if battle raged between sky and earth. The Throat of the Dark Ones vomited lava and smoke and boulders and searingly poisonous vapors. The sky retaliated with incessant whip strokes of blue-white lightning. Rain lashed down all around, but no longer fell on the mountain itself. The monstrous upswelling of heat from the Throat cast it back upward again as steam.

A barbed spear struck a humped rock in Fost's path. Erimenes howled incoherently as a hammerblow landed on Fost's left shoulder.

The man bent and spun with the force of the blow. Instinct made him draw steel as he turned, and the training he'd bought from renegade fighting masters in High Medurim made him turn the draw into a savage backhanded cut at the black shape looming on the fringes of his vision. A black-clawed hand released its grip on a mace to make a frantic, futile effort to stuff back in the greasy, green ropes of guts spilling from the lizard man's opened stomach. The intestines tangled the Hisser's feet as it fell.

Fost kept spinning until he faced the way he had before the attack. He lit out running after Moriana. With his left arm numbed by the slung stone, he was at a worse disadvantage than usual against the inhuman reflexes of the Vridzish. 'Stand and fight!' Erimenes yelled at him. 'You're crazy,' he howled back. 'That's what you always say!' 'No, you idiot! They're almost on top of you!'

Fost flung himself to one side without even looking. A vicious spear thrust missed him by scant inches. He tumbled onto his rump among the jagged rocks. A screaming Hisser lunged at him. He brought up both feet and kicked the creature in the belly. It fell away. He scrambled to his feet, hacked as he rose. The blade bit flesh. He didn't wait to see where. He just ran.

Perhaps the furor of the eruption was subsiding or perhaps it was his imagination that he heard the lizard men on his heels hissing triumph and baying like a pack of hunting hounds closing for the kill. There was no doubting they were almost on him. Over a long run his superior endurance would have told, but in this short, desperate sprint over jagged ground they were fleeter than he.

Fost dashed up a long slope of relatively smooth lava and found himself flying across a crack that yawned abruptly under his feet. On the far side of the crevice, he turned and lashed with his sword taking a Hisser in the torso as it leaped after him. The lizard man fell back into the six-foot gap.

The crack ran up and down the slope as far as he could see in both directions. It was a natural place to make his stand.

'Run!' he shouted at Moriana as he set his feet and took his sword in both hands to prepare for battle.

Moriana's voice rang in his brain: No! Don't be a fool. You haven't a chance!

He took this mental communication as an indication that Ziore still relayed their messages.

'It's the only chance,' he shouted, not sure how to form the thoughts for Ziore to translate. He immediately regretted even opening his mouth. His throat was raw from breathing dust. 'You're the one who matters. Now run.' He saw Moriana start to protest. He shouted her down. 'Do you think I like being a hero?'

He had no chance then to see if she obeyed. A second Zr'gsz scrambled up the lava ramp and launched itself at him, only to meet the same fate as its comrade. The tall, feathered helmet of the officer appeared, bobbing purposefully toward Fost.

Movement made him glance upslope. A stream of thin, fast moving lava slopped over a lip of rock and splashed down onto a ledge a hundred yards above. Fost swallowed, though it felt as if a metallic rasp worked on his throat.

The lava rushed straight for him.

'Moriana, don't go! Save me from this lunkhead's folly!' For the first time in Fost's recollection, Erimenes pleaded to be taken from a promising fight. He obviously didn't like the notion of spending the rest of eternity entombed in a lava flow. The courier had little time to savor the spirit's abject fear because the big, dark-scaled officer was closing fast.

Had he been smart, the Vridzish would have waited for his men to come up and had them finish Fost with darts and slung stones. But either he lusted for personal revenge or was simply headstrong. He gripped his mace in both hands and swung at Fost.

Fost knew how fortunate he was that the officer had immediately attacked, but his heart dropped just the same. He recalled his last duel with a mace-wielding Vridzish noble.

Even the mace's long haft had a hard time reaching across the crack. Fost avoided the first swing simply by leaning back. He couldn't retreat from the brink, however, without allowing the lizard man to jump across. With the Vridzish's advantage in reach, Fost doubted his own ability to win should the lizard man succeed in crossing the gap.

The Zr'gsz swung again, leaning dangerously far out. Fost staggered as the volcanic glass head of the mace brushed across his belly. He cut recklessly at the Vridzish. The lizard man jerked away. The rest of the patrol had come up to join their leader. Only a half dozen could stand with the officer on the narrow lava ramp. The others milled behind, one of the javelin men hopping impatiently from foot to foot hoping for a clear cast.

Savagely, man and Zr'gsz duelled over the abyss. Fost held out longer than he thought possible and even managed to chop a feather from his opponent's green metal helmet. But the lizard man was quicker and stronger and could commit himself further due to taloned feet gripping the rock. They traded blows, wood cracking on steel with impacts that jarred Fost's arm. Then the inevitable happened. Fost extended his blade too far; the Vridzish swung with awful force and knocked the broadsword to the side, almost tearing it from Fost's grip.

Time flowed like the molten rock as the heavy mace swung back at Fost's unprotected body. He didn't have time to even duck. He took a breath and braced himself for the impact, the stabbing of shattered ribs through lungs and heart, oblivion.

A lava tide washed over the officer and swept him and his death-giving mace away like a twig in a mill race. Fost heard awful croaking cries as the molten stone engulfed the other Vridzish. He stumbled back, tears welling in his eyes from the awful heat. He saw Moriana rise from the shelter of a boulder. She smiled. 'Did you bring down the lava?' he asked.

'No. The mountain did that.' The smile widened. 'But I diverted it where I wanted it to go.'

She took his hand and led him off across the badlands. The lava river gurgled at their backs.