Istu awakened

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lungs burning, Fost pounded across the pavement towards the Palace. Fifty rebels raced at his side, while a score hung back among the buildings on the perimeter of the grounds to cover the attack with bow and arrow. As he ran Fost kept staring at the spectacle before him. One after another, three large slabs of gray stone flew over the Skywell and turned up the Skullway to approach the Palace.

The leading raft bumped to a halt. The walls fell away as foresters hacked at lashings with sword and axe. Green and brown clad men tumbled out – and one in achingly familiar russet and orange. Even in helmet and hauberk, Fost knew Moriana.

Shouting incoherently, he angled to meet her as she led the foresters up the Skullway. Her last trip along that avenue had been as a captive, jeered by multitudes as a traitoress, regicide, matricide. Now spectators had even better reason to name her traitor – but the only watchers on hand were the rebels swarming across the paved Palace grounds, and a platoon of Palace Guardsmen on the steps.

'Moriana!' shouted Fost. She cried his name in return and they flung themselves violently into each other's arms. Rebels and Nevrymin clasped forearms and pounded backs, instant comrades. The exuberance of the rebels was partly due to the humanness of their new allies. They'd expected green scaly skins.

Fost and Moriana wasted precious seconds in a kiss. They reluctantly broke apart, laughing, weeping, dabbing at the blood streaming from their nostrils. The Destiny Stone swung free outside Moriana's armor. It shone benevolent white. Fost pointed at it.

'Moriana, that's not…'

'Eureka!' screeched Erimenes. 'May this day be blessed forever! I've found a woman of my own kind!'

'Don't "my kind" me, you perverted mountebank!' Ziore screamed back.

Dead silence. Moriana goggled at the satchel by her side. The foresters gaped, too, having come to recognize the princess's familiar as sweet and shy.

The sweet, shy presence proceeded to deride Erimenes with the profane bravura of an Estil fishwife.

When Ziore paused to think up even more insults, Moriana spun quickly to face the Palace Guards, who stood clumped at the portal to the Palace wondering what was going on.

'Surrender at once!' she ordered. 'I, Moriana Etuul, your rightful queen, command it!'

For long seconds nothing happened. Then a Guard pivoted on his heel and split the chest of the man next to him with a stroke of his halberd. The Guardsmen quickly paired off and slew one another. Fost grinned. A little subversion was a wonderful thing.

Moriana raced for the portal. Fost followed, shouting for her to listen, that she didn't have the Amulet, that she carried another talisman instead, that her life depended on getting rid of the Destiny Stone. But Monitors poured into the far side of the Circle and men shouted and moaned and butchered each other on the steps of the Palace, and the mysterious shade Moriana carried still berated Erimenes the Ethical at the top of her nonexistent lungs.

A fleet-footed rebel darted past Moriana as she mounted the steps and heartily kicked open the centermost pair of doors. A flight of arrows buzzed out like angry hornets. Most of them struck the impetuous youth, lifted him from his feet and tossed him lifeless down the narrow steps.

The foresters' bows sang in reply. Screams echoed in the Palace's vestibule. Moriana plunged in, sword in hand. Fost followed. He prudently sidestepped as he passed through the door to prevent being silhouetted. When his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, he saw a groined chamber radiating out in three directions. From the one ahead came the sound of running boots. Moriana.

As he followed, from the hallway to the right poured a stream of Palace Guards. One lashed at him with a halberd. Fost took the blow on his shield, grunting as the blade split hide and metal and bit into his arm. He swung the arm violently, letting go of the shield's handgrip. The halberd flew wide as the shield's mass carried it along. Fost lunged and slashed the Guard across the face.

Rebels and foresters were crowding through the doors. Two Guards attacked Fost from opposite directions. Prudyn shot one, then cast his bow aside as another Guard rushed him. Prudyn stayed alive by seizing the haft of the Guard's weapon and battling him up against a wall.

The other Guard intent on Fost lunged, the spiked head of the polearm spearing for Fost's midriff. Fost whipped Erimenes's satchel off his left shoulder and swung it. Erimenes screamed.

The heavy satchel knocked the halberd aside. Fost thrust. The Guardsman sank. Fost ripped his blade from the foeman's chest and ran for the corridor Moriana had taken.

Above the fighting, Synalon waged a battle of her own from the throne room. Even as Moriana's flotilla surged ahead of the other rafts, the air began to dance as the immense air elemental took form.

A tornado howled toward the armada sucking boulders and uprooted trees high into the air. Khirshagk brandished the Heart of the People. A beam of blackness exploded from the center of the jewel and struck to the core of the approaching whirlwind.

A frightened, gusty wail split the sky. The elemental diminished, drawn down the black tube into the diamond. In a heartbeat it vanished. A rain of rocks and trees spattered the countryside below.

Shocked, Synalon stared in wonder and dread. She spoke new words of Summoning. She pointed to the earth. It heaved, a hill appearing where none had been before. She pointed to the sky. The hill shot upward toward the raft carrying the Instrumentality.

Black rays from the Heart stabbed into the soaring hillock. It exploded in all directions sending out a cascade of dirt and stone lasting for long minutes. Synalon screamed. She waved her arms. Sinkholes appeared among the hills below as boulders buried underground winked out of existence… to rematerialize above the vast fleet of skystone rafts.

Now Synalon's magic took full effect. A dozen rafts were stricken and fell, dooming a hundred of the People and scores of humans. A huge boulder dropped straight down for Khirshagk's raft.

The Heart radiated black energy. The boulder slowed, then stopped in midair, defying gravity above Khirshagk's head. He gestured with the Heart. The boulder soared away toward the City to plow a furrow of ruin from the prow halfway to the Palace.

Synalon tore her robes to free her arms for uninhibited gesturing. The fleet drove inexorably onward. She shrieked and the heavens rained fire. Men died screaming in the embrace of flames, some of them her own bird riders; the queen was beyond caring who died as long as she blasted the monsters who dared assail her City. But the Heart emitted a funnel of total blackness into which the flamedrops were drawn. The smoking diamond absorbed the rain of fire and glowed with even greater energy.

As the queen hurled spell after frantic spell against the Instrumentality, the earthly battle raged with undiminished fury. Khirshagk's raft was the nexus of a cloud of eagles, diving and slashing as their riders swept the decks with arrows. Shield-bearers kept their leaders from harm, though they died with the regularity of the Heart's black pulsation.

Still holding the Heart, Khirshagk tossed down his shield and caught up his mace. A bird dropped at him, claws extended. He swung the heavy mace and crushed the eagle's breastbone with a single stroke. His inhuman laughter rang across the battle-torn skies.

Synalon sent black clouds to confuse the invaders. Beams blacker still stabbed through them. With a hurricane wail the clouds were drawn inward. Fire and steel and plague she sent against the Fallen Ones, and a horde of winged demons from a lesser tenement of Hell. The Heart smote them all. The more power Synalon expended against it, the greater its own force waxed.

Unnoticed by Synalon, Moriana's rafts crossed the boundary of the City itself. Their route had been chosen with cunning. Once in the City, they had roofs to hide them. When they made their run-in along the Skullway the Palace itself hid them from sight. Singlemindedly, Synalon hurled destruction at the Zr'gsz only to see her every enchantment turned back upon itself. Many of the Hissers fell before her might. But the Heart kept Khirshagk inviolate and safe.

Rann stood on the lip of the raft, watching Darl's body turn end over end as it fell. Only when Darl struck ground did the prince swing back onto Terror's back.

Khirshagk saw the prince's mount take flight frpm the deck of his sister ship. He dropped his mace and seized a javelin. Straightening, still holding the Heart in his right claw, the Instrumentality cocked his arm and flung the dart with all his might.

Impact jarred Rann's body. Terror coughed. The scars crisscrossing the prince's face tightened like a net as he stared at the spearshaft jutting from his war bird's chest a handspan away from his right knee. The rhythm of its wingbeats lost, the mighty bird began to sink.

Synalon watched in horror as her cousin's mount spiralled earthward. Channeling her grief and rage and hatred, she called up a storm. Thunderheads gathered, rolled down on the Zr'gsz fleet with avalanche speed. Violet lightnings speared skyrafts from the air.

Energy raved from the Heart and the demon storm was torn apart, wisps of cloud spinning away to disperse in midair.

Synalon clenched her fists until the veins stood out on her forearms. She endured the agony of summoning a salamander of awesome proportions, a fire elemental so powerful that the hangings on the wall burst into flame, then the carpet and the wooden furnishings. The surface of the walls and the Beryl Throne itself began to turn soft and glow from the heat emanating from the sorceress-queen's body before the conjuring was done. Then her Will drove the elemental deep into the earth through crust and mantle in search of live magma. A new Throat of the Dark Ones would speak with an authority the Heart of the People could not refute.

The smouldering door to the throne room opened. 'Greetings, sister,' said Moriana. She stepped inside, frowned. Synalon felt the salamander she had summoned at such cost wink out of being.

'You've fought long and hard to come here,' she snarled at her golden-haired sister. The charred fragments of her robe fell in a black rain at her feet. 'I'll see you enjoy a death commensurate with your achievement.'

Synalon spoke rapid words. Moriana felt a detonation in her brain and reeled against the wall. It seared her shoulder.

Rage gripped her. She knew the spell – Synalon had used it to subdue her when she had tried to kill Synalon with her bare hands on the eve of her sacrifice to Istu. It would not bring her down again.

She willed the pressure in her mind to go, and it was gone.

'You have learned things during your sabbatical,' said Synalon in a voice like milk and honey. 'I should have expected no less. Even you can learn, if given enough time.' She raised a slender hand. 'My demons shall…'

The words died in her throat. She tried to force them out. She failed. It was as if a hand closed on her neck and bottled the words inside her.

'You shall not call your demons, sister dear,' said Moriana. 'Your Guardsmen are surrendering below or being slaughtered like sheep. 1 will not suffer you to call for supernatural aid. There's no one to help you. You must fight me, Synalon, with what power you have within you. If you've any of your own, that is.' Synalon's eyes blazed.

'Don't… count yourself the victor yet,' she gasped out. The real battle for the City in the Sky began.

Fost was breathing hard when he reached the tenth floor of the Palace, and motes of blackness spun in his brain. 'This is the proper level,' Erimenes told him.

'I know,' panted Fost. 'Been here before, remember? When Moriana and I… rescued you,' 'Rescued?' Erimenes said, outraged. 'I wouldn't use that term.'

'Neither should I. As I recall, you were busy collaborating with the enemy.'

'That's the true barbarian spirit,' a familiar voice said. 'Holding a colloquy with a ghost while the fate of worlds is decided around you.'

Warily, Fost watched High Councillor Uriath enter the room. The tall, portly man had a massive volume tucked under his arm. He radiated a fey humor Fost hadn't detected in him before. 'I'm not a barbarian,' said Fost.

Uriath laughed. It was the first genuine laugh the courier had ever heard him utter.

'Ah, but you are. A pathetic groundling barbarian. Also a fool.' He giggled. 'And in another moment – dead,'

'Kill him, Fost!' Erimenes bawled. Fost brought up his sword and lunged.

Uriath had flipped open the book. His lips moved quickly. A unlit oil lamp set in a niche along-one wall burst into incandescence. Fost yelped and fell back as the flaming oil drew a line between him and the demonically grinning High Councillor. A shape cavorted in the center of the inferno, sinuous and vaguely reptilian. Uriath pointed at Fost.

'Kill him,' he commanded.

The salamander sprang. Fost flung himself to one side. Stone exploded, spraying him with glowing hot fragments. The fire sprite backed away, hissing, slavering sparks.

Fost crouched, keeping his sword between his body and the fiery thing, even though this was puny defense against the elemental. 'Erimenes? What do I do?' 'You pray to Ust,' the genie said. 'And I'll try Gormanka.'

The elemental darted forward. Fost danced aside. He screamed as the being grazed his side leaving his chainmail glowing in a yellow-white swath along his body. He could barely breathe from the pain. The monster's next rush would end him. The salamander hovered between him and the gloating Uriath. A wild rush at the High Councillor would buy him nothing except a death quicker by milliseconds. 'Father!' Was it his imagination? 'Father, what are you doing?'

'Removing the next to last obstacle between you and the throne,' Uriath said without turning away from his victim.

Past the intolerable glare of the hovering elemental, Fost saw that Luranni stood behind her father, her face a portrait in horror. Her eyes were ringed with dark smudges, and she still wore the same bright smock she had the day before when she'd interrupted Fost and Moriana in their conversation.

'So it's true, Father. You've intended to betray Moriana from the start.' Her voice was firm, flat, low. It didn't sound like the romantic, vaguely mystical Luranni he had come to know. Uriath laughed.

'Of course! The Etuul have grown decadent. Haven't they wasted the City's substance, threatening its existence – no, the very order of the world! – fighting among themselves?'

'And when Fost went to rescue Moriana from the Vicar of Istu, you ordered your people to hold back.' The words spilled from her in a torrent of accusation. 'And Chiresko and the others – you turned them in!' Sweat streamed down Uriath's florid features.

'Chiresko had outlived his usefulness,' he explained. 'Just like that fool Tromym. Now stand back, child, and stop bothering me. This beast's fearfully tricky to control.' 'I won't let you murder the man I love, Father.' 'Love?' Uriath turned. 'Him?' His laughter rang out mad.

'I mean it.'

'Too much is at stake for me to indulge your youthful folly. Salamander…' he began.

'No!' As her father spoke his words of command Luranni shrieked and drove past him through the dwindling wall of flame. She flung her arms around Fost, kissed him hard. The scent of cinnamon welled around him.

The world exploded in flame and pain and the smell of burned flesh.

The battle of powers was over. The vanquished sprawled senseless on the floor and the victor staggered, trying to keep her feet, trying to control the shaking of her hands and change double vision back to clear focus. A tall figure appeared in the doorway.

'My heart rejoices to see you, Your Majesty,' said Uriath. Though tears had left shiny trails down his cheeks, he smiled hugely. 'This day's horrors have cost me my daughter, who meant more to me than life itself. But all of it is worthwhile if I can only receive the boon of being the first to hail the rightful Queen of the City in the Sky in her moment of triumph.'

He came forward with a drunkard's step and fell to his knees before the City's monarch by right of mystic combat. Moriana gazed down at him, not quite understanding what he said. Why, she wondered in a daze, did he have a huge, ancient book tucked under his arm? And why was the stone on her breast glowing black?

Uriath's hand shot out. Silver links snapped as he snatched the Destiny Stone from her neck.

'I have it!' he crowed, leaping up and away from her with an agility amazing in one of his bulk. 'The Amulet of Living Flame! I've won! I'm immortal!'

Moriana sank to her knees beside Synalon's prostrate form. Defeat tasted of ashes on her tongue. So much and all for naught.

She had never even had to use the Amulet. She had overpowered her sister, Synalon the invincible, whose powers of sorcery had always before outmatched her. She had won her birthright. And lost it.

The book lay open in Uriath's palm. He did a little jig as he began to read. Moriana smelled the magic gathering about the tower. The room grew warm. A strange cackling, wailing sound drew

Moriana's attention to the window. Salamanders danced outside, whirling round and round the tower so rapidly she only saw them as lines of light, red and green and white, weaving a garland of fire about the spire.

She tried to dismiss them. A tiny electric blue spark danced from her fingertips. That was all the magic she could Summon. She lacked the strength.

'Foolish slut!' cried Uriath. 'This is the book of the deepest secrets of Kyrun Etuul! For generations it's mouldered, neglected on the shelves of your Palace library. And now it has passed to my hands – where it belongs!' He stopped his capering and beamed down upon the sisters. Beside Moriana Synalon began to stir.

'Your time is through, Etuul witches. Perhaps the reign of women is done, too. Yes, I think so. It's an abomination that women should rule men.' 'The people will never accept you.'

'No?' He hugged the book to his chest and tittered. 'They accepted Synalon, didn't they? And you believed they'd accepted you, too, you who loosed the Fallen Ones upon the world again.'

She sank back. Synalon rolled onto her side, moaning. Moriana took her hand. It felt cold and lifeless, more like marble than living flesh. 'Enough words,' the High Councillor said. 'Prepare to burn.'

A scuffling sounded from the corridor. Uriath looked up sharply from his tome. An apparition stood in the doorway, manlike in form but as black as Istu save for the bared white teeth. A naked steel blade gleamed in a blackened hand.

'You can't be here. You're dead! Burned up! The salamander took you when it took my poor Luranni.' He began to weep once more.

'You haven't finished me, friend Uriath,' said Fost Longstrider, advancing on the High Councillor. 'I'm still blood and bone under this char. And I'm about to spit you and serve you piece by piece to your own salamanders, you murdering fat bastard!'

'No!' It was the squeal of a child in terror. Uriath's chubby fingers flew as they flipped through the pages of the book. He kept glancing frantically from the pages to the courier advancing on him step by merciless step. 'Ah, here, here!' he cried, and screeched an incantation.

A dome of flame surrounded him. Fost flinched from the killing heat. A moment more and a dancing veil of fire sprang up in the doorway.

'You've come a long way to die, Longstrider,' said Synalon in a cracked voice. 'Still, there are worse companions with whom to receive the Hell Call.' Fost gazed around the room. Outside raged the firestorm.

'Isn't there anything you can do?' Wearily Synalon shook her head.

'Isn't it humorous? My sister and I spent all our energies contesting with each other. And for what? So this treacherous blubbergut can roast us to death and claim the Beryl Throne for himself.' It was getting hotter.

'Erimenes?' The answer was a formless wail. Fost thought he heard a new note to it, a note of real anguish.

Moriana pointed at Uriath, dimly visible through the orange and blue shimmer of his fire shield.

'He's building his control of the salamanders outside. When he has perfected his grip on them, they'll come for us.' She shook her head. The tears flowed freely now. 'Oh Fost, my love, my only love. I'm sorry I brought you to this.' But the courier's attention fixed on Uriath. He coughed.

'Perhaps it's premature to apologize,' he said in a parched voice. The heat rose around them like a clinging, choking blanket. 'What do you mean?' asked Moriana.

Her eyes followed his. The Destiny Stone was a black so complete it seemed to burn a hole through the fires surrounding the High Councillor. Synalon looked on, curious about all matters mystical even in the face of death.

The heating of the air inside and outside the chamber caused a miniature whirlwind. Burning shreds of cloth swirled up around them. Fost cursed and slapped at one that stung his cheek like an insect.

Uriath's voice rose above the rush of wind and fire, chanting in a long-forgotten tongue. A flake of ash was swept up over his bald domed head. It settled downward bursting into sudden fierce flame as it fell through his fire shield. It landed in the middle of the page from which he read. The page flared. Uriath's eyes bulged.

'No,' he cried. 'No, no! This can't be. This is the last page. It's almost there, it isn't fair. I…'

Fire roared. Lines of flame converged from the window on the magical dome, merged with it. Uriath dropped the book and stared at fingers burning like candles. Cackling, freed of human control, the salamanders turned on him with all the capriciousness of their kind. The screaming went on and on.

And from the midst of the conflagration while the fire sprites played and Uriath danced his insensate dance of death, the Destiny Stone cast a beacon of intense, pure white light that outshone even the werefire of the elementals.

Fost collapsed at Moriana's side. They clung to each other, watching mute as the fires burned down. Uriath melted like tallow. With his passing the salamanders dwindled. When they winked out, only a blackened spot on the floor remained of High Councillor, elementals or the pendant.

'But he had the Amulet of Living Flame!' exclaimed Moriana, shrill with the nearness of hysteria. 'Why didn't it save him?' Fost drew her closer. 'He never had the Amulet,' he said. 'No more than you.'