Istu awakened

CHAPTER ONE

'Your Highness, Your Highness,' called the dishevelled youth. The knight was young, his cheeks hardly touched with downy beard. Tears rolled unnoticed down his dirty face. It was not merely the unendurable anguish of defeat that made him weep. Only an hour or so ago he had seen the loveliest face he had ever known – snarling at him over the hilt of a Highgrass dog rider's saber. The tradition of chivalry dinned into him over a lifetime of training had almost stayed his hand, but loyalty to his princess and the ages-old urge to save his own life had acted with a will of their own. He had heard his own voice cry out in terror as his bright, straight blade hacked the woman's face into a ruin of blood, brains and gleaming bone.

He had passed the test he, like so many other warriors young and unblooded, dreaded above all: he had faced mortal danger and had not flinched. But he wondered if he had not failed another test in the same moment.

'We've brought you failure and disgrace,' the youth almost sobbed. 'How can we restore to you what our worthlessness has lost?'

Moriana Etuul brushed a strand of red-gold hair from her eyes and sadly shook her head. She gazed past the young knight at the man lying exhausted and in dubious safety beside the broad race of Chanobit Creek. The day had dawned as if especially tailored by this man. The sky had been filled with low clouds lying in a cool white blanket on the land to keep the bird riders grounded and out of the fray. Without their most deadly weapon, the Sky City soldiers would prove easy prey. Believing this, Darl Rhadaman, Count-Duke of Harmis, had taken the forefront with his sword held high, the eerily diffuse milky early light glinting from his sword's keen edge and the mirror-bright steel of his breastplate. Then, his face had been alive and almost boyish with the certainty that he fought for right and would triumph in its cause. Now his sword was nicked and blunted, his armor so hacked that the deep metallic cuts already scabbed red with rust in the damp air. Dull eyes stared out of a face as listless as a slab of meat on the butcher's block.

His brown eyes met her green ones, but no contact was made. Pity welled in her heart for him. It had meant far more than his life to him to bring victory for his Bright Princess, as he called her. Now, defeated, he faced her beneath budding branches ripe with the promise of spring and renewed life. The contrast tore at Moriana's emotions. If the battle had not been lost, Moriana would now be Queen of the Sky City, instead of her sister.

If only he had listened to me, we might have won. Unbidden, the words rang in her mind. Angry at herself, she tried to soften her thoughts. The lusterless brown eyes turned from hers, and she knew he had heard the reproach as clearly as if she'd shouted it. This knowledge added another fresh cut on her soul.

Shaking herself, Moriana returned to the reality of the moment. The young knight who had led the dazed Darl Rhadaman from the field still looked at her beseechingly. She recalled what he had asked. 'You cannot,' she said without thinking.

He recoiled as if she had slapped him. Once more she reproached herself. He was a child and had just discovered that war was no glorious game. She had to give him something to cling to, or destroy yet another life in her fruitless quest. 'The best way you can serve me now is to live,' she said. He brightened.

'You will permit us to fight for you again some day?' A half-dozen eager young voices echoed the question.

'If you wish, perhaps you shall. Some day.' She held back her tears with effort. 'But that's not what I mean. I want you to survive. Live out this day and many more so that I'll not have your death on my conscience, too.'

Bewildered, the youth blinked. Moriana turned to Darl. He regarded her through strange, old eyes. 'I'm… sorry,' he whispered.

Emotion blocked her throat. She reached to take his hand and pressed it against her cheek. 'You tried.' 'What will you do now?' Darl spoke listlessly.

'I can do two things. I can quit – which I shall never do as long as I draw breath. Or I can go elsewhere for assistance.'

'Where will you go?' he asked distantly. 'I have used up my stock with the folk of the North. Where will you find the men for a second army?' Her lips drew back in grimace. 'I will not use men. Or at least, not humans.'

'I don't understand.'

'The builders of the City – Zr'gsz, as they call themselves. They live at Thendrun in the Mystic Mountains.' A gasp burst from her listeners.

Still possessed by the awful calm of shock, Darl asked, 'What can you offer the Fallen Ones? You can't offer them the City.'

'By the Five Holy Ones, no! It's a matter of personal interest to the rulers of the City in the Sky to know how things go with them. There are artifacts, sacred relics, which the Fallen Ones would be overjoyed to recover. Without human aid, they have no chance of regaining them. And I think those trinkets a small price to pay for my City.'

'But what of your soul?' asked another underaged knight with a bloody-bandaged arm. 'They are evil. They are the soul of evil! How can you bargain with them?'

'The Zr'gsz are not the soul of evil, friend. You know little of the Dark Ones if you think any earthly evil can surpass theirs.' The intensity of the feeling with which Moriana spoke caused her to shudder. 'I hate the Dark Ones and fear them far more than you know. More than you can know. But I would sell myself to them…' Her listeners gasped again and drew back. 'Yes, I would do that if it would free my City from my demented sister Synalon. She seeks to return the City in the Sky to the Dark Ones, then give them the entire world. Do you think my soul too great a price to save your wives and friends and children from that?'

The young knight looked away in confusion and dismay at what he'd just heard. Moriana swayed, suddenly weary to the point of collapse. Almost by instinct, a hand went to clutch the Amulet within her bodice.

She felt a fierce impulse to tear the Amulet off and throw it into the clear, cold waters of the creek. Its mystically changing mixture of dark and light in the central stone had brought nothing but doom and death. Then she recalled the impossibly high price she had paid for the talisman bestowing eternal life. She took her hand away.

'We must go,' she said, casting an uneasy look at the sky. Leaden and sullen in the dusk, the clouds hung close overhead. But not close enough to keep the Sky City bird riders from quartering the countryside around the battlefield looking for survivors.

A knight gave her a spare riding dog he'd caught fleeing across the ridge. He had already fastened in place small bags containing provisions and the earthenware jug which housed the spirit of her long-dead companion Ziore. Moriana mounted the huge animal, hiking up the skirt of her gown. To please Darl, she had worn this finery rather than the tunic and breeches and boots that were her accustomed garb. Now the delicate lacebird silk was ruined, stained with mud and blood and sweat, and she had hacked it off at the knees so that it wouldn't bind her legs. The Northern knights blushed and looked away as she settled unchastely astride the black and white dog.

They didn't understand she was a Princess of the City in the Sky, a warrior of great skill, not like the pampered hothouse flowers that were the Northern ladies. Moriana had no time for their affronted mores. Defeat knew no dignity; nor did death.

The party had just set out following the creek as it curved gently northward toward its eventual rendezvous with the River Marchant when the bird rider squad swept over them like a glowing cloud from the guts of Omizantrim. The boy knight who had guided Darl to safety fell with an arrow in his back. Others cried in surprise and pain as feathered messengers of death winged downward from above. Only Darl and Moriana survived, saved by thickening twilight and the almost naked branches overhead that screened them from the eagle riders.

Moriana looked back. The Sky City troopers hadn't realized any escaped their new slaughters. They passed once more above the bodies of their victims looking for signs of life. One figure stirred, trying to raise himself from the mud of the riverbank. A sheaf of arrows drove him down facefirst. Moriana clenched a fist and ground it against her forehead.

Oh, my daughter, my poor daughter, a voice sobbed in her mind. But the princess took no solace even from the comforting presence that rode in the jug at her hip.

Turning their backs to the slaughter, Moriana and Darl Rhadaman rode north. North to the Mystic Mountains and the last stronghold of the ancient enemies of mankind.

'We're too late.' Fost Longstrider slumped in the high pommelled saddle atop his riding bear. The beast grunted sympathy with his master's despair. 'The battle is already lost.'

His companion made a bitter sound. She was a tall woman, with a brush of cropped red hair, high cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes of brown. Her mail hauberk clanked as she raised one arm.

'No, 'tis won,' she said, pointing. 'For them.' Her outstretched finger indicated carrion crows gathering like mourners around the bodies. Larger birds stalked among them, naked heads bowed and aggressively pecking for a larger share of the fine meal. Fost smiled in grim appreciation of the rolling wheel of death and life. One side, the other side, human, dog, eagle – it was all the same to vultures. Whatever misfortune befell others, they fed. And prospered.

Fost and Jennas rested their tired bears in a copse beyond what had been the right flank of the Sky City army. The field lay deserted now, save for the dead – and the feeding vultures.

It had been a long, desperate journey from the south where his lovely and beloved Moriana had left him dead in a city swallowed by a glacier. It seemed half a hundred years since his sorcerous resurrection by the Amulet of Living Flame, since he and Jennas, hetwoman of the nomadic Ust'alaykits, had arrived in Tolviroth Acerte, the City of Bankers, to find that the Princess Moriana had departed days, hours even, before they appeared. Now they had missed her again.

Fost considered Moriana's possible fate. Fled? Killed? Captured? The thought of the latter possibility turned him cold. Capture meant return to the Sky City to face the vengeance of her sister Synalon – and of her cousin Rann, warrior, genius, sadist. Death would be better by far.

They rode on through the eerie stillness of dusk. Fost couldn't rid himself of the sensation that the limp bodies strewn so recklessly about would rise up at any instant with a friendly greeting or outstretched hand. He was no stranger to death; he'd dealt it himself on occasion. But he had little experience with such wholesale slaughter. And no stomach for it at all.

He had been horrified at the carnage at the battles of the cliffs, when he'd helped the People of Ust defeat the Badger Clan and their foul shaman. That had been the mildest of diversions compared to this awful carnage. Together in a heap to Fost's right lay more men and women than lived in either Bear or Badger tribe. He shuddered. He wanted to throw up.

Though they kept careful watch they saw no eagles. The bird riders were off chivvying the defeated, butchering stragglers and the wounded. The wind babbled to itself of the sights it had witnessed that day, stirring fallen banners and mocking the dead. The wind even spoiled the clean and optimistic odors of early spring with the gassy rankness of corruption. Fost took hold of the strap slung over his shoulder, held a leather satchel high.

'See, old smoke,' he said to the bag. 'This is the reward for your passionate desire for bloodshed. Don't your non-existent nerves pulse with excitement at the sight?' A sniff came from the satchel.

'What could I possibly find to excite me here?' a voice asked peevishly. 'This is rubbish.'

Furious at the spirit's callousness, Fost swung the satchel up to dash the jug it contained to pieces on the ground. 'No,' said Jennas. 'Let him be.'

Ashamed at his angry outburst, Fost pulled the strap back over his shoulder and let the satchel fall to its riding position. He knew he was only venting his ire at not finding Moriana on the genie in his jug.

– Hollowing the path the routed army and its pursuers had taken, they passed the hill with its crumpled pavilion and heard the murmur of running water.

'I'm thirsty,' said Fost, 'and there were too many corpses in that stream back there for even the bears to touch the water. Let's see if this one is less clogged with dead.'

Jennas nodded. They rode toward the sound, angling toward a stand of trees well beyond the hill. Though none of the bird riders had shown themselves so far, neither felt like taking chances. They were almost to the water when they heard the moan.

Without thinking, Fost booted Grutz's sides. The big bear rolled over the bank and into the water, never breaking stride. The icy water numbed Fost's legs. He barely noticed in the urgency that gripped him.

Another sad knot of bodies lay at the treeline. Dogs and men in the distinctive armor of the City States had been struck down by the equally distinctive arrows of the Sky City. The missiles protruded at angles that told they had come from above.

Fost pulled Grutz to a stop beside a young man who stirred feebly. His fingers raked furrows in the mud. An arrow had penetrated his backplate and jutted horribly from the center of his back, as if that, in all the broad earth, was where it belonged.

The knight had been trying to reach the creek. His first words to Fost confirmed this. 'Water. Need… need water.'

His voice rattled like a handful of pebbles on a tile roof. Fost dismounted and squatted by his side, studying the extensive injuries. A trail of bloody spittle ran from the corner of the young man's mouth. Fost doubted the youth was twenty.

'You're in a bad way,' said Fost, trying to remember the rough but practical healing lore he'd learned in his career as a courier on the highroads of the Sundered Realm – literally a lifetime ago. 'I don't know if you should have water.'

'You don't honestly think it matters, do you, you dolt?' asked Erimenes acidly from his jug.

Fost shrugged. The shade was right, though it surprised Fost that Erimenes had responded in this fashion. Compassion was not a trait he normally associated with the long-dead philosopher whose ghost rode in the jug at his hip.

The youth drank greedily from Fost's water bottle, which had been taken and filled by Jennas and tossed back to the courier without comment. Fost held the blond head cradled in his lap as the dying boy drank. Jennas urged her mount out of the stream and slid off beside them. Her boots went deep into the cold mud. She was as tall as Fost and just as strongly built.

The boy coughed. The fit came so violently that he jerked himself free of Fost's arms. To Fost's horror, he fell backward onto the arrow still in him. His weight drove it deep and snapped it off. He stiffened, coughed up bloodshot phlegm, then sank back with a sigh, as though sliding into a warm and soothing bath.

Fost bit his lip. The boy's chest rose and fell raggedly within his armor.

'The princess,' Fost said, hating himself for troubling the dying man. 'Do you know who I mean? The Princess Moriana.'

'Princess?' The boy nodded, then frowned, his face a bloody mask. 'Failed her. Failed her…' Fost felt a cold black hand clamp his throat.

'She didn't – she's alive, isn't she?' he demanded. To his relief the youth nodded. A grimace twisted the young features as if the slight motion had pained the boy. 'Where did she go?' The knight did not respond. By dint of great effort, Fost kept himself from shaking him. 'Where did she go?' he asked again. 'The… three of them.' Fost frowned up at Jennas. 'Three?'

'Ah – aye. Princess, Lord Darl and… Great Ultimate, is it getting dark so soon? And the spirit… the woman in the jug…' 'Woman in a jug?' asked Jennas, as confused as Fost,

'It must be the other spirit that Guardian told us about,' said Fost, trying to remember more of what the speaking, sorcerously living glacier had said. 'The glacier's name is Guardian,' he told Jennas, seeing her baffled look. 'When we left Athalau, the glacier told us Moriana had a spirit jug with her. He said something about the genie inside, but other matters pressed me then. Guardian had mistaken the other spirit for Erimenes. It put him into a fine rage.' Fost glanced at the blue form wavering by his elbow. He did not remember having uncapped the jar to let him out. Erimenes's face acquired a faraway look.

'A woman,' the spirit said musingly. 'As I live and breathe, a woman! This has interesting aspects 1 had not considered. Imagine, another such as I!'

'By Ust's snout,' muttered Jennas, 'one of you is more than enough. And you do not live and breathe.'

'A woman!' cried the philosopher. 'I can at last vindicate my teachings! What the two of us might do together…'The misty body of the shade glittered with dancing blue motes of light, spark-bright in the darkness.

'Be quiet, you,' snapped Fost. 'This man is dying, and you rant about another genie.'

'Not just any genie, friend Post,' crowed Erimenes. 'A female! I wonder if it might be possible that we…'His face glowed with a lechery so luminous it astonished even Fost, though the courier knew the shade's ways by now. Erimenes had preached stark abstinence throughout his life, and then had thirteen hundred years to think better of it. The long, lonely centuries trapped in his ceramic jug had been devoted to developing a totally hedonistic philosophy; disembodied, Erimenes could only experience his newfound ideals as a voyeur. Until the promise of another – female – genie. Jennas scowled. 'The boy, Fost, the boy is dying.'

Fost swallowed and turned back to the dying knight. Erimenes's crude enthusiasm shamed him. And he was no closer to finding out what had happened to Moriana. He leaned closer to the youth.

'Where did she go?' No response. Fost dribbled water across the parched lips and asked again, slowly, 'Where-did-she-go?'

The young knight tried. In his fading mind he was glad that with his dying breath he could help his princess, the Bright Princess whom he and his friends had let down so badly.

'She went to…' His blurred, fading mind struggled to concentrate. 'Went to…'

Another coughing spell wracked him. He sprayed bloody foam all over the front of Fost's tunic. Fost gripped the boy's shoulders, trying to steady him.

The boy tried to say, 'To see the ones who built the City in the Sky,' but the coughing hit him again.

'To… City… Sky,' was all Fost Longstrider heard in the instant before the boy's head lolled back on lifeless muscles. Gently he lowered the boy. He rose and looked at Jennas. 'The fool,' he groaned. 'She went back to the damned City.' 'And you will follow her.' 'And I'll follow,' Fost said. 'I'll follow.'