Istu awakened

CHAPTER ONE

The man was a sadist, a killer, a eunuch. He was also a genius. But now Prince Rann Etuul gave little indication of those traits. He wore a plain robe that covered him from neck to ankles and made him appear to be little more than a hermit. The only outward signs that this man was different lay in the coldness of his tawny eyes and the network of fine scars glowing on his face where the light from the dying sun touched him.

He leaned forward, hands on a dilapidated table covered with maps, and stared out to the west. His mind worked methodically, savoring the sunset and the coolness and varied scents blowing in from the Gulf of Veluz. The songs of cinnamon birds and the evening lark mingled and vied for his attention over the cries of vendors in the city streets eastward and below his vantage point in the Hills of Cholon. He watched the western sky with little appreciation for the beauty of a vivid sunset. His mind was focused on a demon. The Demon of the Dark Ones.

Rann tensed at the sight of a mote floating among clouds touched with the colors of gods. At first a spark less bright than the evening star, it grew and became cruciform. Growing still more, underwings burning with the reflected glory of the now hidden sun, it took on detail.

Thunder sounded. With a loud scrabbling of claws, the war eagle found a perch on the sill jutting from Rann's window. The window, like the others in the former Ducal Palace of Kara-Est, had been built in such a fashion that the opening was too small to admit the war bird, twice as tall as a man. Even the rider, small and lithe like most Skyborn, had to duck to pass through the opening before dropping to the stone floor. The eagle's rider dismissed the mount, leaving it to find supper and a roost in the aerie the fugitives of the City in the Sky had constructed in a lesser tower of the Palace.

The rider turned to face Rann. Her hair hung lank about a face high of cheekbone and narrow of chin. Under the grime and exhaustion masking her slightly foxlike features, she might have been attractive. Her hair was a lusterless tangled brown giving only hints of its possible beauty when cleaned. She carried a bow and quiver, and circling her left biceps was the gold brassard of the elite Sky Guard.

'Sublieutenant Tanith,' Rann greeted her. His voice rang out like the pealing of a silver bell. When he desired, his tone increased the terror he inspired. He gestured toward a wrought-iron stand holding a large ceramic bottle and a goblet similar to the one he held. 'Drink, if you like.'

'I'm on duty, sir,' the Guardswoman said instinctively, her voice hoarse with dryness. Rann merely looked at her. He was not above tricking the members of the Guard into infractions of discipline. But in a moment of reflection, the sublieutenant realized such behavior belonged elsewhere, in the City in the Sky now lost to the Demon. Too few of the Skyborn had survived in the Demon's onslaught or the reptilian Hissers' vengeance for Rann to further reduce their numbers over petty crimes against corps discipline. 'Thank you, lord,' she said, pouring the wine.

He permitted her to refill his cup. She drained hers at a single swallow, then quickly filled her cup again. Rann watched without comment. The mellow ale was not that heady, and her farings would have given her a great thirst.

'What have you learned?' he asked when she had lubricated her throat sufficiently to speak in a natural voice free of dry croakings. 'The City approaches, milord, even as you said it would.' 'How far is it?'

'It should come into view sometime before dawn of the day after tomorrow. We could launch an eagle strike against it tomorrow.' Her voice rose in hope that Rann would order such an attack. The Sky Guard had been shamed by the loss of their City. Tanith was like the other survivors who wanted nothing more than to redeem themselves and feel as if they were doing something to recoup their intolerable loss.

'And what did you see in the Sky City?' he asked, choosing to overlook her eager recommendation.

'The Hissers are at work, lord. They've completed the destruction they began the day… the day they cast us out. They build now. Defensive works, missile engines, and some construction that seems of no military purpose.'

Gripping his left wrist with his right hand, Rann nodded above the rim of his goblet. He understood, or thought he did. No sooner had they turned on their human ally Moriana and the forces of her sister Synalon that earlier had been their common foe, than the Zr'gsz had set about erasing any hint of the nine-thousand-year occupancy of the humans who had supplanted them, the original builders of the City in the Sky. That done, it was obviously important to set their mark anew upon their recaptured prize to prepare to defend it.

Or to prepare to reassert their dominion over a continent. And eventually an entire world.

'The Demon,' Rann almost hissed, leaning forward, his eyes gleaming in the last glow of twilight. 'Did you see Istu?'

'My lord, I… I do not know.' Tanith averted her eyes and bit her lower lip in consternation. For a heartstopping instant, she thought he would reach across the table and seize her by the throat, shaking her the way a terrier killed a rat.

'What do you mean you don't know?' Rann's voice was calm, level, deadly. Tanith now feared it more than if he had shouted.

'I saw Istu the day he was released, milord, as you did. A black shape towering in the sky like a doorway into darkness, his body like a man's but with horns set on either side of his skull. His eyes were slits of yellow fire.' She shuddered at the memory. Better to face a hundred swordsmen than to even think about the Demon. 'Like the Vicar of Istu, lord.'

'That statue is his likeness. Now, I ask you again, did you see him?'

'Perhaps I did,' she said, and met his polar stare. She managed to suppress another shudder. 'But if so, he did not wear the same shape.' Breaking the bond of their locked gaze, Rann wheeled. 'Explain!' he snapped.

'I saw no such towering dark being as walked through the streets of the City… that day. But the Skywell is filled with a blackness, lord, a rounded blackness that gleams like a giant black lens. I've not seen anything like it before. I thought it might be some manifestation of the Demon.'

'The Black Lens.' A look of stark pain flitted across Rann's ruined features. 'One of the last tricks Istu concocted before Felarod bound him. And we must face it at the outset of this War of Powers.'

He turned to her. Her eyes were wide above dark fatigue hollows. Rumors had flown among the ragged refugees streaming to Kara-Est and Bilsinx from the Sky City and the fury of its returned builders that a second War of Powers lay at hand. She had tended to dismiss such saying as idle gossip.

The scarred lips of Prince Rann confirmed those rumors of truth. 'And skyrafts, Sublieutenant. Did you see any?'

'Few, lord. Ten or a dozen flew around or beside the City, but no more than that. We were observed, I think, but none pursued us.' Her teeth showed bright in the twilight dimness of the room. 'They've learned that lesson, at least!'

Rann waved his hand. The dearth of skyrafts mystified him, but it was only a minor mystery. The reptiles holding the City might have dispatched their fleets elsewhere for some arcane mission. A few sharp skirmishes since the day the City was conquered had demonstrated that, without magical aid, the skystone craft the Hissers rode couldn't survive long in the sky against the eagles of the bird riders. It was a trivial fact. The real enemy was the Demon of the Dark Ones. Against him the might and speed of the war eagles were little more than a sparrow smashing senseless into a stone wall.

Rann chose not to tell the officer of the insignificance of the superiority to which she had alluded with such feral delight. He did not play his torment games with his own soldiers. Not now, not when so few remained. As spurious as it was, he would let her revel in the superiority of eagle over skyraft. All humans needed what comfort they could find now.

He sipped the ale. His cheek muscles contracted to give him a slight squint. 'The others remain to shadow the City?' he asked.

'Yes, lord. Four of us alternate resting on the ground and fol lowing the City. We've had luck in the form of clouds to hide in.' She shrank again from her own cup. 'But still, I think they know they're being watched.'

Rann nodded. That was one of the disadvantages of aerial observation. As a general rule, if you can see your foe, he could also see you. But this, too, meant little. Such was the strength of the reptilian Vridzish that they didn't care if they were spied upon or not. They now held the City – and had freed it from its once-set course over the center of the Sundered Realm. Using this immense aerial rock raft as their base, they could now travel at will and lay siege to even the most heavily defended cities.

'Well done, Sublieutenant Tanith. Go below and get some food and rest. You've earned them.'

She paused beneath the doorway arch and asked, 'Do we strike them tomorrow, lord? Or wait till they come to us?' In the dusk, her eyes shone with their own inner light.

'I shall take your suggestions under advisement, Sublieutenant. I assure you I'll undertake no weighty strategic decision without first consulting you.' Feeling the lash of his irony, the officer turned and fled.

He listened to her heels tack-hammering down the stairs. He had been harsh with her. That struck him as an ill omen. He usually controlled himself with far more precision. His skill in inflicting hurt led naturally to his knowing how not to inflict it, and when not to. This had been one of those occasions.

He shook his head and poured more ale. He was losing his grip in obvious ways. It was a new problem for him, more alien than the ways of the reptilian Zr'gsz. Though he knew how to manipulate that problem to maximize the despair and suffering of others, he didn't know how to cope when it came to haunt him.

Prince Rann knew fear. Great fear, overwhelming fear, for the first time in his life.

Her fear almost as tangible as the perfume of the two burly youths standing behind her, Governor Parel Tonsho fumbled at the door of her apartments, the brass key clicking against the lockplate as her fingers jumped and jittered. To cover fear and clumsiness alike, she cursed the smoky yellow glare of the oil lamps set in alcoves along the hall. If either of the youths realized that her difficulty had any cause but the dimness of the corridor, neither spoke the thought aloud. One did not maintain a much sought after position in the Governor's harem by being quick to find fault.

The key finally slid home with a thin screeching. Tumblers clicked and the door opened. She cast a quick look up and down the hallway before pushing into the darkened chamber beyond. Her pretty-boys were skilled with swords, but if the doom she'd feared so long had decided to overtake her now on the eve of battle, neither these two nor an army like them would help her in the least.

Then she was in the foyer, her heart hammering, as though she'd escaped a stalking, half-seen menace. A lamp flared in the room. With an odd relief she saw the small, neat figure sitting at ease in a fur-draped chair, hand raised to turn up the lamp even more. The long-awaited doom had come and, in coming, removed all fear of the waiting.

The door closed softly behind her. She sensed that neither of her kept youths had entered.

'I suppose,' she said bitterly, 'it would do me little good to call for help.'

Prince Rann smiled the lazy smile of a cat that has awakened to find a mouse creeping across an expanse of open floor. 'Does it surprise you that your playmates are in my employ?'

'No.' Her lumpy body sagged against a cool, plastered wall. Her pitbull eyes closed to weary slits. 'Not really.'

'Come in and sit down, milady Governor. Join me in a glass of this excellent Jorean Chablis. I find it vastly more palatable than that turpentine you Estil squeeze for yourselves.' He gestured at a square bottle cut from blue glass bearing the wax seal of a renowned Jorean vintner.

Knowing the hopelessness of her situation, she saw nothing else to do but comply. The soul of graciousness, Rann poured full the crystal cup he had set out on the stand at his elbow, rose, handed her the glass, then eased back into the chair.

The thick furs strewn across the floor clutched at her feet as she walked to the divan opposite Rann. Cushions sighed protest as she dropped listlessly, spilling drops of white wine down the front of her purple silk tunic.

Reflexively, she took the glass in both hands and gulped the wine, needing the warmth and reassurance of its alcohol more than the sweetish taste.

'You've done well for yourself under the aegis of the City in the Sky, Governor.' Rann's eyes, cat-yellow in the light, appraised her over the sparkling arc of his glass. 'You've already accumulated a Tolvirot banker's ransom worth of new furs and silken cushions to replace those spoiled during the late, uh, unpleasantness. And by the diligent scrubbings of your servants and application of incense, you've almost managed to eliminate the smell of the blood that was spattered so liberally throughout these quarters.'

At his words she twisted at her necklace of tiny seashells so violently that the strong silk thread snapped. The shells clattered to the floor in a pink and yellow rain.

"We have even provided you with a new seraglio to replace the one Colonel Enn found necessary to have shot down in this very room. And you still possess one of the finest cellars in all the Sundered Realm.' He hoisted his glass in salute, drained it, swirled the wine across his palate for a long moment before swallowing. 'No, all in all, the yoke of the City has lain lightly on your shoulders, Governor Tonsho. This you must admit. And in my turn, I admit that none other could have done as splendid a job administering the recovery of your city. You have amply earned both the rewards we your conquerors have lavished on you, and -' He leaned forward, eyes hardening, brightening. '- and the confidence we put in you.'

Knowing the hopelessness of her position, she dashed her glass into fragments on the marble floor at his feet.

'Enough of this fencing. You know what I've done, damn you. Isn't that why you're here?' Her puffy face twisted in a sneer. 'Since we're both admitting so much tonight, let's get it all out into plain sight.' He laughed.

'Ah, my good Governor. Of course I knew who employed those assassins in Bilsinx. Trying to assassinate me before we attacked Kara-Est was a clever move. Had I been in your position, I'd have done much the same myself.' He sipped wine. 'By the way, you'll be pleased to know that the young mage who saved me recovered not only from the trauma he suffered when the magical communications geode to which he was tuned shattered over the killer's head, but that he also escaped the massacre in the City.'

As he spoke, a spark appeared in Tonsho's almost colorless eyes. She ran her hand repeatedly through her frizzy, graying hair. Rann smiled. She was allowing herself to hope.

'Or do you refer to the team of assassins you sent off for to Tolviroth Acerte, when you'd learned I'd be coming to Kara-Est after we were forced from the City? I'm afraid they won't be carrying out their mission. We intercepted them at the dock.' He dropped a hand to his sword belt and toyed with something thrust between leather and tunic. 'You were better advised to go with Medurimin fighting masters, as you did the first time. The Brethren of Assassins are much overrated, I fear.'

Parel Tonsho hadn't risen to Chief of the Chamber of Deputies and de facto ruler of the richest seaport in the Realm by being slow witted. But it still took several seconds for the portent of Rann's statement to penetrate her numbed mind. She uttered a strangled sob and covered her face with chubby hands. He had learned all.

He sat quietly drinking as she wept. Soon, the ragged rhythm of her sobs faltered, broke. She raised a tear-wet face to his, jaw quivering with the effort it took to defy him.

'Did you bring that for me?' she asked, gesturing at the object he toyed with. 'Do you plan to tranquilize me, to make it easier to carry me to your torture chambers? Or does the tip carry some terrible poison that will give me a lingering, painful death?' He raised an eyebrow.

'This?' He took his hand away from the object. Briefly, Tonsho wondered that she hadn't remarked on it before. It was a hand dart used by the savage tribesfolk of the Thail Mountains, a bit over a handspan in length, carved from yellow wood, fletched at one end with yellow bird feathers. The tip was weighted with a ring of stone strapped to the shaft by strips of cured human skin. From the tip jutted a stiff black spine. It was incongruous for Rann to carry such an artifact; one similar had been used on him by the Thailant savages to drug and capture him. Before a band of his bird riders could rescue him, the prince's genitals had been burned away by the tribal leman.

'No,' said Rann softly, shaking his head. 'It's not for you. It's for an experiment.' She forced her upper lip to curl into a sneer.

'Whatever you'll do to me, you'd best start now. You'll need most of tonight to make final preparations to oppose the new inhabitants of the Sky City.'

'You surprise me, Tonsho, you really do. I know how you dread the very thought of pain. And for that very reason I have come to personify all you fear most. It was, I grant, a factor in choosing you as Governor of Kara-Est. I judged that your fear would keep you in line. Yet you dared hire assassins a second time, knowing they would fail.' He touched the glass to his lips. 'That took spirit, Tonsho. I always judged you had great moral strength, but I didn't judge it could overcome your physical cowardice.'

'I had to do something.' She almost spat the words. 'You hold my people in bondage.'

'And how, as well,' he said quietly. She shrank back, seeking shelter among the velvet cushions. Her flesh crawled as she considered the way she had just spoken to Rann, whose pleasure was the pain of others, whose face was her most familiar nightmare, whose elegant hand held her fate like a palmful of sand. He had her in a horror as excruciating as any physical torment; and he took no notice.

'As for preparing for the city's defense,' he went on in a soft voice, 'there is to be none.' She stared blankly.

That's what I came to tell you. Get out. There won't be a Sky Citizen inside the walls of Kara-Est by the time the sun rises over Dyla. Kara-Est is doomed. For us to defend your city against Istu is to lose precious men. We can ill afford more losses.'

'But Synalon! She's a mighty sorceress! I've not forgotten how she summoned the greatest air elemental seen to smash our ships and how, against all nature, she brought forth a salamander and forced it to cast itself into the waterspout. Can't she use those magics against the City and the Demon?'

Rann threw back his head and laughed. To one who knew him better than Tonsho – who knew him only as a nightmare figure – it was a strident, rare sound. She merely winced. To her, Rann's laughter was a thing to fear.

'Synalon is a mighty sorceress,' he said when he had recovered himself, 'but her sister defeated her in a duel of magics. And that same day Istu cast Moriana from the City like a man puts out a tomcat at night.'

Her eyes narrowed until only wet yellow gleams of reflected lamplight showed beween the lids. 'Why do you tell me this?'

He leaned forward. Had this been anyone but the devil Rann, Tonsho would have said he had a look of… desperation.

'You are able. You took a crushed, conquered city and made it a functioning seaport again in a matter of weeks. You've a rare gift. In the days to come, humanity will need all such gifts it can muster, if we're to have the slightest chance of survival.' To her amazement, she laughed in his face. 'What do you care for humankind?'

'More than you might think, milady Governor.' His smile thinned. 'More than for the damned Zr'gsz, at any rate.'

'No, no, I can't believe this,' she moaned, grasping her temples with both hands and rocking back and forth. 'It's a trick.' She raised her pallid face, fear and uncertainty etched in the flesh. 'That's it! You trick me into abandoning my post so you'll have an excuse to put me to death.'

'If I wished to put you to death, do you think I'd need an excuse?' He was becoming exasperated. Only rarely did he argue. 'Or if I desired you removed from office, that I'd go to such lengths to manufacture one? Tonsho, all I'd need to do is spread the word that you had been negotiating with the Wildermen of Dyla to deliver your city to them. You'd soon be writhing at the post out in the Plaza, with the sorry collection of marionettes we've set to playing Deputies standing by bobbing their heads and applauding my wisdom and justice.'

He saw that he fought futilely against her adamantine fears. Such sorry stuff as reason would not dispel her image of him any more than Synalon's magic could turn the wrath of Istu away from Kara-Est. He stood, smoothing wrinkles in his midnight blue trousers. 'Good evening, Governor Tonsho,' he said.

'Highness.' He stopped. 'Now that you've failed to work your trickery on me, where do you go?' She all but giggled the words, giddy at her escape from pain and her imagined triumph over the wily prince.

'I've an appointment with Her Majesty to discuss tomorrow's events. I plan to tell her exactly what I told you. Perhaps she'll find it less amusing.' He bowed. 'I do hope your wit serves you equally well with Istu. Goodbye.'

'Do you jest, Rann?' Synalon spun from the window and faced him squarely. 'Evacuate?' She laughed, the sound evilly clinging to the very stone of the walls.

Standing by the door, Rann absently eyed the alabaster curve of her throat. Tonight the princess had arranged her hair in two raven wings standing upward and out from the sides of her head. On a woman with less beauty or presence – or less power held in dubious check – it would have looked ridiculous. On Synalon it stirred both lust and dread. Her slender body was wrapped in a gown of some gauzy stuff, more diaphanous than translucent, that showed the pink points of her nipples and the trim dark thatch between her thighs. Rann's tawny eyes, drifting downward now and again against his will, could almost pick out the fine tracery of blue veins on the flawless, milky skin, of breasts, belly, well-shaped legs. He knew she had dressed in this manner solely for him. Such was the game they played.

The black-haired enchantress stopped laughing and gave him a cool, appraising look.

'Come, Prince. Tell me what you really intend. How shall we face this menace?' He grimaced, as if she had made to strike him.

'I wasn't joking, Your Majesty.' On arriving in Kara-Est after the flight across the Quincunx lands, Synalon had resumed the title of queen, though of what she had failed to specify. From his unique position, Rann generally disdained to give her that title and addressed her as Highness. But now much rode on her good favor. If he could get it by feeding her vanity, he would do so.

'We are prepared for defense,' she said tolerantly. 'We have walls against ground attack, and our eagles fighting beside the Estil gasbags and rooftop engines will make short work of the skyrafts used by the stinking Hissers.' 'Very well. The Vridzish we may defeat. But not Istu.'

'No?' A frown clouded her fine features. 'I have meditated much since we were driven from my City. I have some new tricks, half-man.'

Ignoring the jibe, he shook his head and replied, 'Moriana defeated you, and she couldn't best Istu. Moreover, Istu had just awakened when she faced him. He had yet to come to his full power.' He slapped his gloves across the palm of his left hand. 'No, Your Majesty. If your sister could not defeat Istu, neither can you. We have no chance of defeating the Fallen Ones.' 'But my own powers.. .'

'How much of the powers you've come by of late have been through the dispensation of the Dark Ones? I doubt they will allow you to muster strengths which they have lent you against their sole begotten son.'

She folded her arms. Mad blue sparks danced in her eyes and crackled in the roots of her dark hair.

'Would you have us skulk away in the night then, cousin? Come, I thought you were a man in spirit, if not in flesh.'

The scars at eyes and mouth turned white with strain. 'We would only throw our lives away.'

'What of it?' she demanded, head held high. Blue flames raced along the wings of her hair. 'If it's our lot to go down to defeat before these inhuman scum, then we shall die fighting, as befits the Skyborn! Let the groundlings flee, if they wish.'

'While we live there's always a chance of finding some way to win,' Rann said doggedly. 'Felarod did, after all.'

'Damn Felarod!' she spat. 'That creature!' As a devotee of the Dark, Synalon had always despised the man who had undone the Lords of Infinite Night before.

'His enemies are now our own, cousin,' Rann pointed out. 'But if you hold him in such contempt, why not seek a way to do him one better?'

She smiled and turned away, the gown swirling like mist around her long, sleek legs. Below her spread the glimmers of the seaport city, red torches, yellow lamps, green lanterns bobbing at the corners of ships out in the harbor. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. The wind had veered to come up from the fens with the thick, moist breath of corruption riding on it. She drew it in like a fine perfume.

'Maybe I will. Moriana was a weakling at heart. She let me live when I lay naked and powerless against her. I am steel at the center, not mush. If Istu would pit his will against my own, it may be the Demon who is surprised.' Her words glowed with hatred. The Demon's progenitors had used her for their devious ends and cast her aside. Her pride still smarted over the injustice. Had a human injured her pride, death would have been painful and long. So fierce was her rage that she would forge from it a weapon fit to wound even the Lords of the Void.

Rann sighed. Like Tonsho, Synalon was a genius in her own way. He had to grant both women that. But he had long ago learned the sad lesson that not all of genius were stable.

'Is that your answer?' he asked, his voice as soft as wind among swamp reeds. 'Yes.' She spoke without turning. 'We fight.'

The corners of his mouth drew up in an expression that wasn't a smile. His left hand dropped to his left boot-top, withdrew the yellow dart which Tonsho thought he'd brought or her. His hand whipped up.

The dart blurred across the room. Wary as a unicorn stag stalking a hunter, Synalon had half spun when the missile thunked home in soft, white flesh between her ribs. Red blossomed like an insane flower against her skin's pallor.

Both Rann and the Thailint poison were quick acting, but neither was fast enough. Rann's face twisted in agony as blue-white lightning lashed from Synalon's fingers and bathed his right side in flame. They fell together.

The doors burst open. Young Cerestan of the Guard stood there, eyes wild and hair awry, curved blade in his hand. He saw the royal cousins sprawled on the floor a few paces apart and gasped. The Guards crowding in at his back stopped and looked in horror.

But both forms refused to remain still. Synalon lay on her back, arms outflung, closed eyes turned to the vaulted ceiling, her entire body spasming. Rann, his jacket and tunic smouldering, painfully hoisted himself from the limestone floor.

'It is done.' The words fell from Rann's lips in jagged fragments. 'Cerestan, see that the evacuation continues. We must be away from here before…' Strength left him. He fell face-down on the cold stone.