Istu awakened

CHAPTER SIX

Morning found the volcano quiet, at least in comparison to the prior day's cacophony. But its tip still smoked like a North Keep forge. The greasy smoke trailed off toward Lake Lolu in the north, but it was unadorned black smoke without lightning or glowing clouds or hurtling bombs. A constant peevish grumbling rolled from the depths of the mountain, as if it suffered indigestion. Erimenes, who claimed knowledge of volcanoes, said that the rumblings would subside over the next few days until the mountain lay quiet again. Unless, of course, it decided to once again erupt. Neither Fost nor Moriana found the tidings particularly cheering.

They had reconnoitered cautiously, Moriana alert with her bow, Fost ready to snatch out his sword at the first hint of danger. As expected, Erimenes derided him for not going forth with naked blade in hand like a proper hero. Fost decided it would be unheroic for a rock to turn under his foot and cause him to fall on his sword, as was likely to happen in such treacherous landscape.

They had worked their way well south of the smouldering mountain, both in the hopes that any fresh lava flows wouldn't extend so far and to come on the Watchers' village from above rather than from below. Otherwise, they'd have had to pass near the ledge where the Ullapag had kept watch over the skystone mines and the steaming fumarole into which Felarod had cast the Heart of the People. Moriana had a total horror of the place. Since yesterday they had exchanged snippets of their respective stories when they stopped to rest or eat, and Fost had learned enough of what had happened at that spot to understand why Moriana dreaded it so.

The sun had barely struggled above the humped flows to the east when they came upon the first new stream of lava. They guessed it to be the one which had swallowed the Hissers the day before. The surface had already hardened into a crust that showed rusty black in places through its coating over the ubiquitous gray ash. It looked solid enough.

Fost and Moriana exchanged looks, then Fost said, 'There's only one way to make sure it's really hard enough to support us.' He took a deep breath, then boldly stepped out, only to find the thin crust cracking beneath him at the same instant the stench of burning leather rose. He jackrabbited back to solid ground, scalding his feet thoroughly in the process.

'Look at him dance. Have you ever seen such a fine tarantella, even in the courts of High Medurim?' Erimenes howled in laughter which infuriated Fost even more.

'Fost,' said Moriana over the genie's ridicule, 'we must get across. The Zr'gsz will be after us. And I… I am uneasy in this place.'

He agreed with her. He sat beside the solidified but still hot river of rock and thought. Eventually, he hit on the plan of lashing bits of loose lava to their feet and walking across using them as insulation.

'Yes,' she cried, 'it'll work. It has to! If the pieces of lava we use are wide enough, it will be like snowshoeing. The larger the stone, the better our weight will be distributed.'

'And we won't break the crust,' Fost finished. 'Do you think the insulation from the rock will be enough?'

'Certainly,' said Erimenes in his best professorial tones. 'The thermal gradient in such a portion of the stone will be sufficient to prevent a repetition of your hotfoot.' The genie began snickering again.

With her archer's skills, Moriana deftly wove strong cord from the tough bunchgrass that grew among the dogthorn bushes. Then the two tied the chunks to their boots using projections to anchor the cords so they wouldn't come in contact with the hot crust more than necessary. Before they set off, Moriana insisted that each cut two stout staves of ofilos wood to use for balance. Reluctantly, Fost agreed. They spent an hour hunting for relatively straight limbs. Fost's allergy to the ofilos caused his hands to break out in a rash but this discomfort was offset by his enhanced ability to balance. With the ofilos poles to prop him, he made it to the other side with a minimum of flailing, cursing and heartstopping attempts to go facefirst onto the hot stone crust.

In less than an hour they came to another flow, the one into which their raft had dived. Fost was amazed at the distance between the two flows. Either they had diverged considerably in their course down the mountainside or the fleeing pair had made record time crossing the saw-toothed terrain.

'The same trick should work,' stated Fost, gently prodding the tip of his ofilos pole into the semi-solid rock beneath the hardened surface. He pulled out the shaft when it began smoking. He beat out a tiny blaze, then began tying new lava rock to his boots.

Halfway across, the lashings on Fost's right foot burned through. He stood with one leg upraised like a nesting stork. His mind raced, trying to decide what to do next. Fate decided the issue for him. The other set of cords burned through, leaving him stranded twenty yards from cool, safe gound.

'Fost!' yelled Moriana. She had safely reached the far side of the frozen stream.

'Dark Ones take Fost,' shrieked Erimenes. 'Save me! I'll be marooned in this rock for all eternity. And gods, it is hot!'

'Of course it's hot,' cried Fost. 'It's molten stone. I thought you knew all about vulcanism.'

'Don't drop my jug,' pleaded the genie. 'I don't want to roast for a thousand years!'

The crust began bending inward beneath Fost's feet despite the weight-distributing lava rock. In seconds he would be ankle deep in the fiery river, in minutes only his charred skeleton would remain. He forced himself not to panic. That meant instant death. 'Moriana!' he shouted. 'Use some magic to get me out of here!'

'I can't, Fost. I… I'm too drained.' Even as she spoke, she worked at weaving new cords. Fost watched uncertainly. He didn't think much of tying new lashings to his chunks of rock; the balancing act that would require seemed beyond his ability. He settled by perceptible degrees into the lava. He could only trust her.

Instead of bringing the new cords out to him, though, she sat down and tied them to her own feet, reinforcing the charred lashings that had already carried her across the flow. Then she trudged out to him.

'Climb on,' she ordered, bending down and bracing herself on the balancing poles. 'You're joking.'

'No, she's not,' screeched Erimenes. 'Believe her. Fost, damn you, do as she says! Don't let us die out here!'

'Hurry, Fost,' said Moriana. 'For once, Erimenes is right. Unless you like it out here, climb on!'

Despite the dryness of his throat, Fost swallowed. Casting aside his own poles, he gingerly climbed onto the woman's back. She sank alarmingly beneath him, then rose again, seeming to support his weight with ease. Though her own stone shoes made deep impressions in the elastic crust, they didn't break through. After a few heartpounding minutes, they gained solid ground. 'She's quite a woman,' Erimenes said now in a natural tone. Fost agreed.

Crows crossed the disk of the setting sun, black cruciform motes on an angry eye, an eye whose upper lid was a layer of dark, heavy cloud and whose lower was the tortured lunar landscape of the lava drifts south of Omizantrim. A bloodshot, angry eye.

Had Fost believed in portents he would have been catatonic with fright.

It had been a night and a day since the hazardous landing on the slopes of the exploding mountain. After Moriana's sorcery had changed the course of the lava stream to kill the Zr'gsz patrol, they had headed south away from the erupting cone and had laid up for the night in a wild land of knife-edged ridges and razor-cut draws. Their only company was the mournful howling of the hot wind down the slope of Omizantrim and the stunted vegetation that somehow thrived. The gnarled ofilos possessed a beauty of sorts. Early summer was their blooming season and the trees exploded with yellow-rimmed fragrant white blossoms that defied the gray dust all around. Such delicate beauty against the backdrop of stark desolation reaffirmed their faith in life itself.

After running, Fost decided it was time to be more aggressive. They had picked up spoor from the reptilian Hissers all day and had avoided it. Now he crawled on belly over what felt like broken glass, but the discomfort proved worthwhile. Fifty feet away he spied a Zr'gsz sentry. He waited, watched. The lizard man's partner approached and the two exchanged words, then resumed walking their posts.

Fost cursed the ofilos and its beguiling blossoms. He was violently allergic to the frail five-petalled flowers. His nose streamed the way Omizantrim had leaked lava the day before; his eyes watered and his nose felt as if it had been broken again. Worst of all, he didn't know how long he could contain the sneeze caused by the pollen. If a sneeze escaped…

'It is only a histamine reaction,' came Erimenes's soft explanation. 'The body attempts to reject the formation of…'

Fost stiffened. Why in the name of hell had he brought Erimenes along with him on this furtive mission? The same spirit who, when Sky City troops pursued Fost, had repeatedly called out to attract their attention to Fost's hiding spot and provoke a rousing fight?

'Ust,' he moaned. He stifled a powerful sneeze and felt the pressure almost explode his eardrums.

'Bless you,' Erimenes said softly. 'And you need have no fear that I'll betray you, friend Fost.' The shade was bottled up in his jar, but Fost felt the weary, wounded head-shake. 'To think you put so little trust in me.'

He huddled, trying to make himself appear part of a dogthorn bush. Its two-inch spikes stung like fire ants as they pierced his flesh. The only consolation for the man was in the bush's cycle; it didn't bloom until fall.

Cautiously, he raised his head. The Vridzish sentries went on down the arroyo and disappeared around the southwest corner of a compound wall. He cursed to himself. The wall was impressive, built to more than man-height with blocks of dressed lava looted from demolished buildings and topped with dried branches of dogthorn in much the same way a rich man of High Medurim might top his wall with broken glass. But there was a difference. The wealthy Medurimite did it to keep out intruders; this barrier kept the occupants inside. As Fost spied, he came to the conclusion this was the prison for the Watchers.

Moriana had been astonished and horrified to see what had sprung up on the former site of the Watchers' village. What had cut deepest of all was the realization that in spite of her orders that the captives be well treated, her erstwhile allies had enslaved the Watchers the instant she left. The Zr'gsz must have worked dozens to death to build this compound so quickly.

The discovery had almost thrown her into another spell of depression. Ziore had said or done something to pull her out of it. Fost didn't know what since their communication hadn't been oral. Even lying on his belly being perforated by thorns, he felt jealousy at the intimacy Moriana and Ziore shared, an intimacy no amount of love would ever make it possible for him to share.

The guards came around again and this time Fost successfully timed their patrol, counting monotonous seconds with a childhood chant: one fat courtesan… two fat courtesans… three fat courtesans.. .

When he reached three hundred and four the pair passed by his hiding place again. Five minutes.

He mentally directed the information at Erimenes and hoped the spirit passed it on. It had taken an hour's arguing, cajoling and threatening to get the two genies to form a communications link between Fost and Moriana. They weren't far apart – Moriana lay a hundred yards downslope hidden in a cave – but the mental noise from the captive Watchers inside the black thorn-topped wall made it impossible for Ziore to make out Fost's thoughts at that distance. Fost guessed that they passed most of the long, hot afternoon in psychic squabbling, which was fine with him. He couldn't hear it.

Erimenes beamed Moriana's acknowledgement. The sun had sunk so that only a dazzling silver remained in view. As Fost watched, it sank beneath the skirts of Omizantrim.

From the south came shouts and the tramp-tramp-tramp of trudging feet. Craning his neck and getting his left ear pierced by a thorn, Fost saw some of what was happening. A file of people, men, women and children, in drab clothing rendered drabber still by sun and dust and toil, dragged themselves up to the wooden gates of the compound. The Vridzish guards hurried them along with strokes of lizard hide whips and switches made from thornbush, chivvying them in wheezy pidgin manspeech. The lizard men were eager to get their captives penned up before the cool evening rendered them torpid. The Vridzish could function after dark, but their reflexes slowed.

When the last straggling child was whipped through the gates, they thumped closed and Fost heard a bar rumbling into place across the outside. New guards replaced the old; a mental signal from Moriana confirmed that the setup was the same as before, two on the gate, two patrolling the perimeter.

Night settled in to stay. Crickets tuned up off in the scrub, their chirping joined by the warbling of night lizards distending purple throat sacs to sing plaintively. The ofilos closed their lovely, treacherous blooms and some night blooming succulents released sticky sweet perfumes. Though Fost found their odor cloying, he wasn't allergic to them.

Some of the buildings in the Watchers' main camp had been left standing by the new occupiers, and Moriana reported that most of the soldiers who had escorted the prisoners went into them for the night. There were fewer of the lizard men than she'd expected. From the patrol activity of the day before – and today, as well, when they had dodged skyrafts floating around the mountain – Moriana reckoned there must be several times as many camped around Omizantrim as were bivouacked in the Watchers' village. Probably the rest were posted around the flows to keep out intruders, and concentrated around the mines themselves.

Fost was glad of that. It'd be no easy task to sneak even a few of the Watcher captives out from under the noses of two hundred sleeping Hissers.

Knowing something of Zr'gsz military routine, Moriana waited until midway through the new watch, giving the evening cool sufficient time to weigh down the limbs of the patrolling Hissers and render them drowsy. Then she beamed her readiness to Fost.

He listened until the lizard men's sandalled feet crunched through the dust and gravel of the arroyo running along the western wall of the compound. When they passed, he started counting again. He counted two-twenty-five. The Hissers would be midway along the northern wall unless something had disrupted their routine. He'd heard no disturbance and Moriana informed him that the lizard men needed to relieve themselves less frequently than humans. Now! he thought.

From her bubble cave, Moriana put a compulsion on the two armed guards at the gate. When she'd outlined that part of her plan, Fost expressed his surprise. He thought the mental compulsion worked only on her fellow Sky Citizens, who were steeped in the magics of their City and thus susceptible to them.

'The magics of the City,' she'd replied, 'are closely allied to those of the Zr'gsz.' The peculiar light in her green eyes had discouraged further questioning, not that he cared. Fost knew as little of magic as he did of hydraulic engineering. Now he hoped fervently she was right.

He wished she could have compelled the lizard folk on the gate to slay their fellow guards. But she lacked the ability to impose so drastic an act as the murder of a comrade. She could turn them into living statues for as long as it took Fost to eliminate the patrolling pair and get to the gate, but that was all.

His heart thumped in his throat as the two appeared around the corner, two lumps of black against fainter darkness. He heard the crisp sounds of their steps, fancied he heard their breathing over the animal sounds of the prisoners on the far side of the wall. On the count of one-fifty he eased his sword from its scabbard. He shifted his hand to make certain of his grip on the wire-wound handle. Fear danced in his veins and pounded in his temples. He knew all too well the horrible speed with which the Zr'gsz reacted. He had to pit his merely human reflexes against two of them.

Part of him expected Erimenes to sing out a challenge at any moment. But the genie stayed silent as the footfalls drew nearer. Gleams of reflected starlight danced by in time to the footsteps. Fost sucked in a huge breath and sprang.

He landed with feet widespread and sword swinging, held two-handed in a madman's grip. He struck left and right with hysterical speed and power, crazed with fear that the lizard men's preternatural reflexes would cut him down before he could act. But even Zr'gsz reflexes take time to react; these Hissers were slowed by the soporific caresses of the chill night. When the pale creature materialized between them with his star-gleaming blade blazing a deadly trail through the darkness, they had no time to react.

The sword thunked home in the neck of the second sentry by the time Fost's nerves recorded the impact with the first. The leading Hisser fell, his head lolling from the half-severed neck that spewed dark blood onto the volcanic sand. The second's head simply sprang from its shoulders, launched by a powerful jet of blood.

Fost was so astonished that he just stood there staring for several heartbeats, his sword seeming to pulse like a living thing in his hands. Stinking black blood dried quickly on clothes and hair and skin. 'I'm alive,' he whispered. 'I'm alive!'

'Shrewdly struck,' observed Erimenes. It was true. Fost had read about mighty warriors, generally great-thewed barbarians from the equatorial forests of the Northern Continent, who decapitated foes with a single swordstroke. Once he'd started learning swordcraft he'd dismissed the tales as mythic. A horizontal headcut was too chancy to be useful – a shoulder or upraised arm was too likely to get in the way. And it was hard to cut through a human neck, even with a well-honed steel blade.

In his panic, Fost had been unable to do anything but lash out horizontally and hope the sentries kept their arms by their sides. They had, and he'd chopped one of their damned heads off. Maybe he was a hero.

'Don't get carried away.' Erimenes advised him sourly, picking up the thought from his brain.

Grinning, Fost jogged down the arroyo. He felt a laugh rising in his throat and pushed it back down sternly. He hadn't honestly expected to survive the ambush. Reaction to finding them dead while he still lived made him giddy.

He reached the end of the wall where the arroyo wall was only a few feet high, scrambled up and peered around cautiously. The buildings beyond were black and silent like so many crypts; the garrison had finished its meal and gone to bed, wrapped in heavy cloaks against the cold. Two more sentries stood as rigid as statues exactly where Moriana had predicted.

But the Zr'gsz could stand motionless far longer than a human. Were these under Moriana's compulsion or just standing their usual watch? Fost knew only one way to be certain.

He dropped from the wall and slowly walked around the corner. Nothing. The sentries might have been carved from basalt. He repressed a lunatic urge to whistle as he glanced around. Far away a pink glow stained the eastern horizon. The lesser moon was poised to fling itself into the nighttime sky. Fost picked up his pace.

Affecting a boldness he didn't feel, he walked directly between the sentries to the gate. Neither Hisser stirred. He reached for the wooden beam securing the gate. 'Kill them, idiot,' hissed Erimenes.

Fost paused to consider. Neither sentry showed any more life than the blocks of lava in the wall, but there wasn't any guarantee Moriana could hold them much longer. Fost had considerable cause to fear and loathe the lizard men, but he didn't like killing helpless beings.

But he saw no alternative – and time passed. He made two swift jabs with his dagger and turned back to moving the massive wooden bar.

The creak it made coming free of the brackets could be heard all the way to Port Zorn. But as soon as Fost had freed Moriana of her need to hold the sentries under compulsion, she'd shifted her attention to the buildings where the Hissers slept. She relayed via Ziore and Erimenes that no movement occurred at his slip. With a grunt of satisfaction, Fost heaved the bar away and opened the gate.

If the Zr'gsz hadn't heard him removing the bar, the captives had. A knot of men and women in ragged smocks clustered about the gate. Their reaction surprised him. A gasp of fear raced through the small group. Then it passed and he saw furtive expressions of hope dawn on their haggard faces.

Their gauntness appalled him. Obviously, the Zr'gsz fed their slaves only enough to enable them to drag their bodies down to the skystone mines every morning and toil the day away. That their slaves' numbers diminished every sundown made no difference to the reptiles.

A man pushed his way through the crowd. Not a tall man, he walked erect despite the air of deprivation, exhaustion and despair that swirled about him like a cloak. He'd once been a stocky man, Fost judged from the folds of loose skin on the scarecrow frame. But his eyes blazed clean, firm.

'I am Ludo, Chief Warden of the Watchers of Omizantrim. Who are you and what is the meaning of this?'

I'm Fost. This means you and your folks are escaping. But they have to move.' 'The Hissers -'

'Are taken care of. We can have a nice chat later. But get your people moving and do it now unless you love such lush accommodations.' He waved his hand at the rude makeshift huts, little more than slumping piles of rock or tens made from tattered clothing. Ludo took a deep breath and came to his decision.

The Watchers moved silently and efficiently, even the children. While Fost hovered by the gate watching the barracks nervously for sign of movement, they filed out through the gates and dispersed into the night. Leery of the apparent ease of their rescue, Fost advised them to scatter so that pursuers would have the hardest time possible rounding them up. In a few minutes all but a few lean men and women Fost took for the leaders had slipped out of the gates and blended into the darkness. 'I can't believe it's gone this easily,' Fost said.

'It won't be,' came Ludo's calm voice. 'They'll have their hounds on us as soon as they realize something's amiss. I only hope enough of us get free to wage effective war against the evil ones.'

Moriana hadn't mentioned hounds, but she couldn't know everything about the Zr'gsz.

'My partner's hiding that way in a bubble cave,' Fost said, pointing toward Moriana's command post. 'We know of it,' said Ludo.

'I'll meet you there.' The Watchers made for Moriana's cave. Fost admired their skill. They didn't beeline for the cave and risk being spotted on the open ground. Instead they bent over and scuttled to the jumble of rocks and bushes on the far bank of the arroyo and worked their way down from there, all but invisible in the light of the pink moon.

Before he followed them, Fost had work to do. Hurrying, he shut the gate and dropped the bar back into place. Then he picked up the guards one by one and propped them back in place, their spears serving to support their slack bodies. One he couldn't get into more than a slumping squat, but he thought it would fool anyone casually glancing down from the buildings. A close inspection would give the whole game away. But the deception might buy precious minutes, and time was more precious than gold.

Grabbing his scabbard so it wouldn't flap against his legs, Fost followed the Watchers into darkness.

'You!' Ludo's face turned to a mask of blood-dark fury in the light from twin moons. 'You witch! Traitor to all mankind! What are you doing here?'

Moriana faced his anger squarely, hands on hips and head held high as she replied, 'I'm setting you free.'

'And who caused our imprisonment?' the Chief Warden hissed. Fost respected the man's self-control. Despite the consuming rage, he kept his voice low. Fost and Moriana and the band of fugitives had travelled a good ways from the prison compound across terrain that gripped at them with knife-edged fingers before stopping and revealing to the Watchers the identity of their second benefactor.

'You speak only the truth, Ludo,' said Moriana. 'But I didn't know the Hissers would do this to you. Indeed, I had instructed that you only be detained so that you didn't impede the… the Vridzish mining operations. Ludo spat into the sand between her feet.

Her lips pulled back in a snarl, then relaxed. She was better able to accept impertinence from this lowborn groundling than any other of her kindred, but it was by no means easy. Still, she had to empathize with the man.

'I was wrong.' A note of desperation pushed its way into her voice. 'I thought allying myself with the Fallen Ones was the only way to prevent my sister from seizing control of the Realm for the Dark Ones.' Her eyes dropped from his. 'Now it seems I and not my sister was the tool of the Lords of Endless Night. But I did not know!'

Fost's gaze made a nervous circuit of their surroundings. He saw nothing but the blank black walls of the draw and the hunchbacked shapes of trees along the banks. The pink moon had ridden past the zenith and the blue one just began its mount of the eastern sky. This took too long. And Moriana revealed too much before the hostile Watchers.

'It doesn't matter.' No scion of the Sky City could have bettered Ludo's haughty disdain. 'You served the interests of mankind's enemies. You are a traitor; your life is forfeit. Were it not for the dilemma posed by the fact that we now owe you our freedom, we'd take your life.'

Fost cleared his throat and loosened his sword in its scabbard. Moriana laid a hand on his forearm.

'Yes, kill the witch!' a woman's voice hissed from the darkness, sounding almost like one of the Hissers.

'Idiots.' Glowing softly, Erimenes hung in the air by Fost's right shoulder. 'The past is gone. You must deal with what pertains now – and the simple fact is that only Moriana's sorcery gives humanity any chance of defeating the Fallen Ones.' Ludo looked at the spirit, his face still bleak with anger.

'The princess knows she did wrong,' continued the genie. 'She said as much, and if you don't know the effort that took, you know little of the Skyborn. Now she's set you free. The Vridzish are militarily naive. The ease with which we released you proves that. Instead of wasting the night with recriminations you should be laying out a guerrilla campaign to deny the Hissers access to their skystone.'

The Watchers murmured among themselves. Finally a man whose chin was fringed with a silvery beard spoke.

This is true, Ludo. Killing the princess won't bring back the Ullapag or pen the damned lizards in Thendrun once more. If she'll help us we can't say no. Or so it seems to me.'

Scowling with fierce brows that were still as black as the surrounding lava, Ludo turned on his followers.

'The witch has brought ruin on us all, on all of humanity,' he exclaimed. 'Justice must be done!'

'We failed in our charge,' a woman's voice cried. 'That's what's rankling you, isn't it, Warden? Moriana helped the Hissers overcome us – but we were charged to guard the mines and we failed. Don't we share the guilt?'

Ludo's broad shoulders slumped. He turned back to Fost and Moriana, as if his limbs had transmuted to lead. Fost almost hated to hear the acquiescence of this proud, strong man.

'Charuu is right,' he said slowly. 'So be it. On behalf of the Watchers of Omizantrim I hereby…'

He broke off to stare past Fost's shoulder. Fost felt a soft breeze tug at his sleeve, heard a quick, soft moan. Ludo jerked. He raised his hands to his chest, spread them against the dark stain spreading across his smock from the arrow embedded in his chest. Fost spun, sword ready. Brilliant light blinded him.

'Don't do anything foolish, my friend,' came the command. A soft chuckle accentuated the order. And it was a voice as human as his own.