Istu awakened

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The languid young officer leaning back in the uncomfortable chair on Fost's left stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. The President of the Assembly was hammering for order to quell a minor riot taking place on the floor.

Ensign Palein Cheidro said to Fost, 'The Guilds oppose going to war with the Hissers. It'd disturb their precious status quo.' He examined the lace at the cuffs of his blue velvet doublet.

The President recognized a nervous cricket of a man from Jav Nihen. Fost didn't even bother listening to a speech he'd heard a dozen times before, reworded but essentially the same in content.

'Why do the Guilds oppose war? They were quick enough to back the Northern Adventure when I was a boy.'

'That was a war conducted safely on foreign soil,' explained the ensign. He smiled a lazy half-lidded smile. 'Until a suicide commando raid landed and burnt a dozen warehouses, that is. Then the Guilds cried to bring home the troops. If you offered them a really safe war against some foe too primitive to strike back at Medurim, they'd jump at it right enough. Think of the fat government contracts.'

'But that large gentleman denounced expansionists,' Ziore said. 'Do you say the Guilds really want a foreign war in spite of that?'

'My dear lady, do you mean to say you actually believe what politicians say in speechs? Oh, my.'

In Fost's youth, the Imperial Life Guards had been a fighting organization of renown. Ensign Cheidro made him wonder if the Life Guards had been devalued along with the money. Painfully thin, cat-elegant, dressed always in outfits that cost a common trooper a year's pay, Ensign Cheidro didn't fit Fost's image of a member of an elite unit.

Whether by coincidence or otherwise, no more invitations to dine in the Emperor's apartments were forthcoming after Fost's chance meeting of the Zr'gsz. On the morning after, the ensign had appeared stating he was to be their guide. That he was also their keeper was left unsaid.

The debate over Moriana's petition to the Empire to declare war on the Fallen Ones had now dragged into its second day. During the long-winded disputes, Fost had come to a grudging liking for the officer, highborn fop or not. Cheidro had wit and used it utterly without regard for place or prestige of each speaker.

'Why do they go on so?' Fost heard Moriana complain. 'I thought they were discussing whether or not to hear that damned lizard.'

As if on cue, a small man with impressively broad shoulders bounded to his feet and shouted, 'We won't listen to the snake! We border folk have had enough words. It's time our swords spoke for us!' The men around him rushed to their feet, waving their fists in the air and shouting.

'Assemblymen from the Marches,' Cheidro said in bored tones. 'Excitable fellows.' 'Order!' cried the President, using his gavel freely.

'Up yours, Squilla!' the small Marcher shouted back.

The turmoil grew until a figure rose in the center and climbed from the floor toward the spectator's gallery. Silence fell as the commanding figure leaned forward, hands on the railing.

'Foedan speaks rarely, and never without effect,' said Cheidro. 'This could bode ill if he favors hearing Zak'zar.'

'Assemblymen,' began Foedan in a voice like a bass drum striking up a slow march. 'The question is not whether the Speaker or the princess is right or wrong, it is whether we should hear what Lord Zak'zar has to say in answer to Moriana's request that we make war upon his people. There can be but one answer. In fairness, we must hear him before making so grave a decision.'

Squilla pounded down the tumult greeting the words and called for a voice vote. No roll call was needed. Overwhelmingly, the Assembly voted to permit Zak'zar, Speaker of the People, to plead his case.

Moriana sat staring at Foedan as the vote was called, twisting the hem of her tunic as if it were the Kolnith Assemblyman's neck.

Zak'zar walked out on the floor of the Assembly Hall in silence. The usually rowdy delegates seemed hypnotized by the Hisser. He held all their attention in one clawed hand – and he knew how to wield it.

'I will be brief,' he said. He let the small ripples of comment die before continuing. 'You are asked to go to war with my People.

What have we done to you? We menace no Imperial holding. No resident of any City State has suffered at our hand. What wrong have we done that you would raise hand against us?'

'The Princess Moriana Etuul's written petition claims it is your duty as humans to resist Zr'gsz aggression. What aggression? And if it be the duty of your people to fight mine to the death, why did she come of her own accord to Thendrun seeking our aid in reclaiming her throne?'

A babble of voices washed about the podium. He raised his hand, stilling them.

'The Princess Moriana tells you we treacherously seized the City in the Sky from her, our ally. Examine the record. Who first built that fabled City – and who seized it by treachery from its rightful owners? We assisted her in unseating Synalon – but for our own ends. Is this wrong? Who among you would not resort to subterfuge to avenge the murder of your kinfolk and reclaim from thieves the house you built? We only took back what was ours.

'I come before you in the name of my People, bearing the willow-wand of peace. For your own sakes as well as ours, I ask you not to grasp instead the firebrand of war!'

He bent forward, voice dropping to a sonorous whisper that penetrated to the farthest reaches of the room.

'Weigh well your decision, men of the Empire. Much hangs in the balance.' He straightened and strode from the podium amid a barrage of cries.

Moriana vaulted over the rail and scattered Assemblymen in all directions as she moved forward. Head back, eyes ablaze, she walked down the aisle to the podium Zak'zar had just vacated. Squilla faced her, gavel raised as if to repel her attack on orderly procedure. Their eyes met; he fled before her.

She needed no gavel to bring the hall to silence, any more than Zr'gsz had. With hair streaming about her head like liquid fire, she launched into an impassioned speech.

The door to the Assembly Hall crashed open. Moriana paused, one fist raised in emphasis of a point. An old man stalked into the room. He walked ramrod straight in spite of the burden of years. Gray hair hung lank about his haggard face. The lips Moriana remembered so well were now twisted from emotions too great to be expressed. He was clad in scarlet and his eyes shone with fanatical light. 'Sir Tharvus!' she exclaimed.

The only survivor of the three Notable Knights who had ridden her banner at Chanobit Creek stopped and flung out his arm to point at her.

'Do not heed this witch!' he shouted. 'Her wiles lured my brothers and thousands of our countrymen to their deaths. 'On peril of your souls, don't listen to her!'

'So what happens now?' Fost asked. A smile pushed up the ends of Cheidro's moustache.

'Why, what always happens when there's an impasse in a matter close to His Effulgence's heart.' 'What's that?'

'He throws a party.' 'This is more like it!' crowed Erimenes. Fost stirred from his fog. 'What is?'

A tall, lithe girl, nude except for diagonal stripes of blue and gold, walked by on the arm of an officer in a purple plumed helmet. 'This is!'A sweep of Erimenes's vaporous arm indicated everything.

At long last the travellers were face to face with the seamy, steamy decadence of High Medurim. The Golden Dome was every bit the voluptuary's vision of heaven popular repute made it out to be. Niches lined the wall, dark and inviting. Already Fost dimly made out writhing tangles of pale limbs in alcoves across the circular chamber. In the center, a round pit was filled with lustrous furs in careless profusion. Tables bowed under the weight of delicacies. Serving maids circulated everywhere to keep the wine and high spirits flowing. Many wore no more than kohl and inviting smiles.

In the middle of the pit reared a dais. On it lay a throne and on the throne sat the Emperor. He wore a ludicrous tent-like garment patterned in white and black diamonds.

Here and there Fost saw forms or faces he recognized. Magister Banshau sat with his chubby legs dangling over the edge of the pit, his garb standing out even in this profusion of color. He held a wine jug in one hand and the shapely thigh of a young noblewoman in the other. He looked mightily pleased with the world. Over by the far wall stood the dignified Foedan of Kolnith. His doublet was askew, his hair rumpled and he gazed on the crowd with bleary-eyed gravity while a short, plump redhead poured brandy into a snifter the size of his head.

At the center of an eddy of gay costumes rode Zak'zar, laughing like a rakehell at something the two young women he had his arms about said, a striking, chilling figure in a robe of woven midnight.

'Great Ultimate!' Erimenes shouted in Fost's ear. 'Look at that, will you?'

Moving through the crush with lithe grace was a strange and beautiful figure. Her body was that of a voluptuous woman but it was clad in soft, short, creamy fur. A long, sensitive tail swung behind her. Her face combined the best characteristics of human and feline. Her ears were pointed and set high on her head, poking out from the midst of a lustrous cascade of blue-black hair. And at her back was folded a pair of wings. 'I'll be damned,' said Fost with feeling.

'So you like Ch'rri?' A slender blonde woman in a short tunic, her hair cut boyishly short, dropped onto the bench at Fost's side. 'She's quite a sight, isn't she? If you have a taste for the exotic' 'Uh, Ch-chu-chri?' Fost couldn't manage the throaty purr.

'Ch'rri,' the blonde woman repeated, laughing at Fost's doleful look. 'She's the only one of her kind, poor thing. Another Wirixer experiment. Or work of art, perhaps. One of their genetic wizards wanted to see what a winged cat woman looked like, and she was the result.' She frowned. 'She's a terribly lonely thing. But she does know some interesting ways to make up for it.'

'What are you waiting for?' demanded Erimenes. 'Introduce yourself! You're the hero of the hour, Fost. You'll sweep her off her feet'

'I think that sums it up well, spirit,' boomed a voice. Fost turned to look at the group approaching. 'Wild tales of your exploits are flying all over the city. We'd be honored to hear the truth from your own lips.'

The speaker was a rangy man in a flame-colored robe. His head was shaved and a gold earring swung from one earlobe. A tawny-haired woman, taller than Fost and with a patch over one eye, walked to one side. On the other was a shy, towheaded youth.

'I'm Sirsirai. This is Osni, and Jerru.' He nodded to each of his companions in turn. Something in the way they moved clicked in Fost's brain. 'You're fighting masters,' he said, almost accusingly.

The one-eyed woman bobbed her head in agreement.

Erimenes cleared his throat, then said, 'What you've heard about Fost is true. All of it – and none of his marvelous adventures would have happened without me…'

Across the room, Moriana smiled and nodded mechanically and fended off still another smiling face. She was a celebrity. That she had balked at wearing frilly, fleecy finery in favor of her russet and beige tunic and trousers seemed to draw rather than repel the revellers. 'Why don't you relax?' said Ziore. 'Enjoy yourself.'

'You're as bad as Erimenes,' she accused, then softened her tone. 'I'm sorry. That was unfair. But I've no appetite for this sort of thing.'

'That might be a pity,' Ziore said, her voice holding a tone of longing.

On his dais, Teom sat fondling his chin and regarding various gorgeously painted and costumed courtiers, male and female, who had arranged themselves in front of his throne to vie for his attention. Deciding, he flicked his little finger. A slender woman in a feathered skullcap and sky blue tights widened her eyes in happy anticipation and scampered to the dais in response to his summons. His knees spread. She knelt between them, took hold of the tent-like robe and hiked it up about his Imperial waist. Beneath it Teom wore trunks and a codpiece of epic proportions that laced up the front. Licking her lips, the woman undid the laces… And fell back as something sprang at her.

All sound ceased as every head turned to see a giant wooden phallus crowned with a painted jester's head bobbing at the end of the spring which had launched it from Teom's crotch.

It was the signal for the orgy to begin in earnest. Flinging his pink-trimmed orange blouse off, Magister Banshau teetered with his splayed toes gripping the edge of the pit. Then with a happy mating-walrus bellow, he launched himself into the sea of naked bodies below. A crowd stood watching as Zak'zar took advantage of a physiological peculiarity of his race to pleasure simultaneously two naked and ecstasy-flushed young women who lay back to back on a buffet table.

Tapers were touched to cones of incense. Thick musky smoke rolled into the air, scents and sandalwood and amasinj mingled with the tangy sweet aroma of a Golden Barbarian narcotic herb. Ch'rri the cat woman grabbed a passing serving boy, shoved him down on a stool and climbed astride him, folding her wings protectively about them so that no one quite saw what happened. Ortil Onsulomulo, his golden body naked except for a woman's green scarf wrapped around his neck, dancing in a jig while a clutch of noblewomen of middle years giggled and grabbed at a certain portion of his anatomy. Erimenes pointed out to Osni that Onsulomulo either disproved a certain racial canard pertaining to dwarves or proved the one about Joreans.

'And so there I was,' explained Fost, warming to his audience, 'in the dark, and that little bastard Rann came at me with his scimitar.' He broke off when he saw the expressions of his listeners. 'What's wrong?' 'You crossed blades with Rann?' asked Jerru. 'Twice. Once in the foothills of the Ramparts and again in Athalau.' Osni's one eye went round as she asked, 'And you lived?' 'As far as I know.' Fost started feeling defensive. 'It seems the rumors don't do you justice, friend,' declared Sirsirai.

'What do you mean?'

'Prince Rann Etuul,' said Osni, 'is without question one of the top blademasters alive today. To think you faced him twice, and lived

…'

The room started to spin around Fost. He spilled his goblet of wine, then realized he had been steadily draining it, only to have it automatically refilled. He had no idea how much he'd drunk. 'Excuse me,' he said thickly. 'I've got to get some fresh air.'

He put Erimenes's satchel on the bench before stumbling away.

'Never mind him,' said Erimenes. 'He tends to be long-winded, like any hero.' The genie smiled slyly. 'Why don't you take off your clothes and forget all this idle chatter?'

Fost made his way out into the gardens. He breathed deeply and tried to quell the revolt in his stomach.

A finger was laid across his lips. He started, turned, saw it was Empress Temalla. She was nude. She took his hand and led him off through the shrubbery maze.

He followed numbly, fascinated by the way her buttocks moved when she walked. She pulled him into a secluded cubicle and pushed him down into the cool grass. The broad leaves of the shrubbery rustled inches away. Her body shone softly silver in the moonlight as she swung herself astride him and shuffled forward on her knees. The smells of crushed grass and her musk were heady in his nostrils. He took a deep breath and a double handful of her behind and lost himself in the pleasures she offered so freely.

Moriana sat on the floor with her knees drawn up and her back to a wall. Not even Ziore could pierce the armor of her loneliness. She felt drained, defeated. Sir Tharvus's appearance in the Assembly Hall the day before had destroyed her hopes of fielding an Imperial army against the Hissers. The Empire would react only when the lizard men came swarming across the River Marchant. Then it would be too late.

She sensed someone over her and looked up into the liquid brown eyes of Emperor Teom. He extended a hand to her. After a slight hesitation, she took it and let him lift her to her feet and lead her out of the Golden Dome. They passed within arm's length of Ensign Cheidro, engaged passionately with an auburn-haired youth. He never looked up.

As the evening wore on and various participants wore themselves out, some mischance brought Erimenes and Ziore face to face with their jars laying side by side on a table.

'What are you staring at, you vapid bitch?' Erimenes asked with that special tact he reserved for his fellow Athalar.

'The man who blighted my life! Whose obscene philosophy deluded me into denying myself all worldly pleasure in favor of a life of serene meditation.' Her face twisted in anguish. 'Meditation! I'd trade a lifetime of it for one hour of passion!'

'What do you know of passion? Ice water would run in your veins, had you veins!' 'Bastard!' 'Bitch!' 'Asshole!'

Heads began to turn. Grinning a cat's grin, Ch'rri appeared carrying a bronze waterpipe in a ringed stand. Her tail was held upright, its tip twitching mischievously. She set down her burden next to the two jugs. 'What game do you play now, darling Ch'rri?' a male voice asked.

She held up a vial filled with yellow crystals. Delighted gasps rose from the onlookers.

'Tusoweo,' a man breathed. 'Enough to make a statue of Felarod jump off its pedestal and start buggering tom-cats!'

The short-haired blonde who had sat by Fost earlier ran up with a clear glass bottle containing aromatic oils. Ch'rri pulled the cork, emptied the bottle and smiled wickedly.

Ch'rri shook a pinch of the yellow crystalline tusoweo into the waterpipe's bowl. Holding a smouldering incense cone to it, she puffed it alight. A thick yellow cloud welled up. Her slit pupils dilated.

'- your mother!' Erimenes was saying with malicious precision. 'And your father. Wha -?' Ch'rri picked up his jug and popped home the basalt plug. He disappeared with a dismal squawk of rage. She pulled out the plug again and poured the spirit into the oil bottle.

'Now, you just wait a minute,' he protested as he spilled like smoke into the new bottle.' Just because this is an orgy doesn't mean you can take indecent liberties with my person! What are you doing? Great Ultimate, you can't pour that hag in here with me!'

Having plugged and reopened Ziore's jar, the blonde was doing just that. Hissing and spitting like cats, the two genies whirled in a dizzying vortex inside the glass jar, each trying to keep his or her substance discrete from the other's.

Ch'rri drew in a deep lungful of the yellow aphrodisiac smoke. Leaning forward, she puffed it into the bottle and hurriedly corked it.

Coughing sounds emerged. For a moment, the spirits were obscured by the thick vapor. Then it was absorbed, and the pink shade and the blue glowed with a new intensity.

'I say, woman, don't jostle me like that,' said Erimenes. 'I… my word, I felt it. I felt it!' 'And do you feel this?' Ziore asked in an unspeakably lewd slur.

His response was a wordless wail of ineffable lust.

The bottled genies began to spin again. This time they quickly blended into a purple vortex. 'Ohh!' cried one and 'Ahh!' moaned the other.

The mutant cat woman's experiment, combining the most powerful aphrodisiac known to sorcery with two highly telepathic spirits, produced spectacular results. A lust so pure and fierce it was almost tangible pulsed from the jar and expanded like the wavefront of an exploding star. Every being it touched went into immediate sexual frenzy. The occupants of the dome yowled as one and went for each other. Out in the streets of High Medurim, pandemonium reigned. Dogs madly humped cats, cats screwed rats. Married couples who hadn't touched each other in years broke bedsteads all over the city. Lonely night watchmen pounding their beats were seized with unaccountable yearnings to pound something else.

Time passed, to the accompaniment of groans and moans and glad cries.

In darkness, a traitor's hand opened a hidden door. Masked and muffled figures slipped into the Palace. Steel glinted.

The door of Emperor Teom's bedchamber burst open. Three men lunged into the room. Stark naked, sitting astride the Emperor and gasping in the throes of passion, Moriana still reacted to the danger. She threw herself clear of Teom, rolling toward the sword-carrying trio, seizing the furs on the bed as she hit the floor. Continuing her roll, she came to her feet and threw the fur pelt into the assassins' faces. It caught two of them by surprise, and they flailed at it as if it were a living attacker. The third sidestepped and lunged at her.

She grabbed at a tall wrought-iron lampstand and swung. Bones crunched. The man dropped. Oil spilled over him, then the ghastly odor of burning flesh filled the air.

A second assassin struggled free of the fur and ran at her, sword high. She tossed the lampstand in his face, then wrested the sword from his hand. She disembowelled him with his own weapon. The third would-be murderer still struggled on his knees. A single blow split his skull.

Through the handful of seconds of the savage, silent battle, Teom had sat huddled in his bed, watching, quivering, his face waxy. He silently rose and beat out the flames devouring the first assassin while Moriana shouted for help.

Fost lay face to face with Temalla while she sleepily twined fingers in his hair. Through a mellow fog of intoxication, satiation and exhaustion, Fost heard a flurry of cries coming from the north wing of the Palace.

'Istu take it, where're the others?' he heard someone nearby whisper. A soft drumming of feet came and a masked swordsman ran by their little alcove in the shrubs.

Without thinking, Fost launched himself in a flying tackle. Over they went, the assassin's hooded head crashing into a bush. Desperately, Fost tried to pin the man's sword hand while driving a fist repeatedly into his assailant's body. The man grunted and kicked. His knee caught Fost in the groin. It was a light blow but still set off bright explosions of pain.

It also sobered him. He groped at the man's belt, found the dagger, used it. The assassin squealed through his mask, then lay still.

The dead man's sword in his hand. Fost ran to the Golden Dome knowing he couldn't find his way out of this labyrinth in any other direction. He burst through an open archway and sagged against the door frame as a wave of lust hit him like a blow. His flaccid organ stirred and thrust out straight ahead of him like the bow of a ship.

Ch'rri was on hands and knees in front of him, wings poised above her back, purring like a bass fiddle as a man in black took her from behind. The man's head was covered by a hood. Though the initial irresistible psychic impulse the spirits had sent out had long passed, the sexual energy still crackled in the air.

Fost wrenched himself away, unlike the assassins in the Dome who had been intent on murdering the celebrants. As Fost ran for the north wing, a suspicion formed in his mind. He had seen the two jugs laying side by side and apparently empty on the table and beside them a squat glass bottle in which a purple whirlwind spun and motes of light danced intolerably bright.

He reached the north wing. Off to his left he heard shouts and the clash of arms and then the unmistakable booming of Magister Banshau's wrath. 'Oracle!' he cried to himself, then set off at a run.

The corridor widened into an antechamber just before the door that led into the laboratory. A hasty barricade of furniture blocked the hallway, a group of hooded killers and Zr'gsz defending it against a squad of Household Guard. The door into the laboratory had been broken down but the Wirixer mage, totally naked and clumsily wielding a paddle used to stir Oracle's nutrient slop, prevented their entry. A low caste Hisser, back broken by a blow from the paddle, lay kicking at his feet like a dog run down by a carriage.

Even as Fost watched, a Vridzish spearman sank his weapon deep into Banshau's vast belly. The killers swarmed into the laboratory.

A lithe, naked figure vaulted the barricade, steel flashing in both hands. A Hisser swung on Ensign Cheidro with a mace. With a speed scarcely less than a Zr'gsz's, Cheidro whipped his blades into a defensive cross, caught the mace and sent it spinning away with a deft twist. His rapier licked out and killed the Vridzish. Fost hurtled the barricade, joined the effeminate Life Guard, helping him clear the enemies remaining in the antechamber.

'You're well named, Longstrider,' Cheidro said in an unruffled nasal drawl. 'That was quite a leap.'

Fost smiled. Some of the Household Guards, encumbered by heavy armor, had finally struggled over the barrier. They charged into the laboratory.

The unarmed and untrained sages tending Oracle had died under the Zr'gsz onslaught, but none before impeding the headlong rush for a few brief instants. Their deaths allowed Fost, Cheidro and the Household Guards to burst among the intruders like a bomb.

Fost sighted Zak'zar and made for him. A black steel sword in hand, the Speaker of the People had engaged one of the Household Guard when three more rushed him, shortswords poised for the kill. He pursed his lips and blew. Black vapor issued forth. The inky cloud swept over the three. They screamed as the flesh festered and fell from their faces in black gangrenous lumps. They collapsed as their bodies rotted inside their armor. The Guardsman Zak'zar duelled gaped in horror. The Speaker hacked him down.

'Beware the cloud!' cried Fost to the men behind him. Zak'zar turned to Oracle. With a feeling of fatalism, Fost hurled himself at the handsome Vridzish.

Spitting a curse in his own tongue, Zak'zar swung back to meet the attack. 'So you've chosen this way to die, Longstrider?' He grinned. Zak'zar dodged with impressive speed as Cheidro hacked at him. 'Perhaps you'll do the dying, friend,' said the young ensign.

By unspoken consent, Fost and Cheidro separated to attack the Vridzish from two sides. Zak'zar took a cautious step backward. The spur on his left foot found only empty air.

'You gentlemen have the tactical advantage. Make of it what you may!'

Fost and Cheidro attacked. In a prolonged contest, a human had the advantage over a Zr'gsz; the lizard men were quicker but lacked staying power. Zak'zar was obviously exceptional in more than his command of man-speech. Fost felt his reactions slowing, though the fury of the Vridzish's defense did not flag. A sudden slash opened a long gash down the left side of his chest, and Fost knew that the fatigue lag in his reflexes and Cheidro's would hand the Zr'gsz both their lives. The Hisser's grin showed he knew too.

The door to the north side of the room caved inward, riding a yellow fireball. Masked men ran to bar the way, only to fall like grain before a scythe as Foedan of Kolnith hewed his way through using a huge sword.

Zak'zar's blade slowed to visibility as he glanced toward the flash and thunderclap. Cheidro's rapier pinioned his right shoulder. Tearing the blade free in a welter of blood and a horrid sound of snapping sinew, the Zr'gsz wheeled and sheared through the young ensign's face.

Reversing the longsword in his claws, he raised his arms into the unprotected swell of Oracle's flank. The hilt of the sword abruptly turned incandescent. Fost heard the sizzle and smelled the stench of frying flesh. With an explosive hiss, Zak'zar dropped the weapon and jumped back. He blew his black breath. Moriana dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

She made a quick sweep of her fingers and a semicircle of blue flame crackled and roared to the height of a tall man's head. The Zr'gsz was trapped.

'Have you anything to say before you fry, serpent man?' she called.

His hair smouldering from the nearness of flames, his right shoulder a torn and gaping ruin, Zak'zar showed sharp teeth in a smile.

'This round goes to you, Lady. But we shall meet again quite soon, and I believe I can promise a different outcome!'

'Meet again?' Her fine features showed disbelief. 'Not unless they've integrated Hell!'

'I'm not due there for quite a while, yet. It may be that you will precede me, unless your pitiful friends manage to defeat the army of the People that even now prepares to cross the River Marchant!'

The listeners gasped. Fost's face stung with the infernal heat of the flame. He marvelled that Zak'zar endured them so calmly. 'An army! Where would you get the men?' Moriana asked.

'Haven't you divined that? It is an army of the Children of Expectation. Since our exile from the City in the Sky, entire generations have grown to adulthood and then entered hibernation in vast crypts beneath Thendrun, waiting for the day we'd meet you in battle. I number myself among them, Your Highness. I have waited six thousand years for the day of final victory.'

'You won't live to see it!' screamed Moriana. She flung forth her hands. The flames devoured the wall.

Before the hungry blue tongues reached Zak'zar, the Speaker disappeared. There was a sharp crack! as air rushed to the space he had vacated. Then the only sounds were the disappointed clucking of the flames, and the moans of wounded men.