Istu awakened

CHAPTER FIVE

The halberds flailed, blades rising to flash white-hot in the sunlight, rising again to the company of screams to gleam the dull red of blood. The mob faltered. It momentarily lacked a leader, someone to urge them forward into the face of death. The faint-hearted in the crowd began to edge away from the soldiers. But the crowd didn't disperse. In the back rallied tight knots of angry citizens. Parties of stout men in dusty aprons finally pushed forward, hauling great chunks of pale-veined white stone. The others in the mob heartened and began to chant cadence as their newfound heroes cast the hundredweight blocks. Unwieldy in their carapaces, a half-dozen Watchmen went down beneath the crushing chunks of marble.

It was enough. The crowd rushed forward again while Sir Tharvus's voice whipped it, crying out for blood. The remaining Watchmen fought, then vanished from sight as if they were sailors drowning in the vast Joreal Ocean. Teom stared, his eyes wide with terror at what befell his troops. Fost gripped the hilt of ceremonial sword and swore. Moriana had her own straight blade, but Fost's broadsword had been judged too unorthordox for the investiture. That left him armed with a weapon hardly fit for swatting flies.

The soldiers assembled down the avenue held ranks, though whether by design or confusion of their officers there was no knowing. Across the hundred yards of cleared space in the Plaza raced the crowd, waving sticks and bats and other makeshift weapons. Above their shrill cries came the shriller chants of Sir Tharvus. Madness had seized him and lent his frail frame power beyond reckoning. And that power transmitted to the crowd and fed their pent-up hostilities. There was carnage.

'You hoped things would get better,' Fost told Erimenes, pulling the satchel flap back from over the jug inside. If he and Moriana were about to be murdered by the mob, Erimenes might as well get an unobstructed view.

'Stop!' The voice rolled like a great bell, drowning even the strident cries of Sir Tharvus.

Quiet descended over the crowd scattered across the marble flagstones of the Plaza. Down from the bleachers strode Foedan, tall and unafraid, holding his arms wide as if smoothing the jagged emotions of the crowd. The crowd faltered, lost impetus. He walked toward the bloodstained leaders. Fost and Moriana clearly heard the padding of his soft suede boots on the marble.

'Cease this display,' he said. The mob stared at him, weapons hanging limp in a hundred hands. 'This woman has saved you from destruction. You should fall on your knees with gratitude, not attack her like so many jackals.'

'But… but she's a witch!' a voice faltered from the middle ranks of the crowd.

'She is a sorceress. Were she not, the Fallen Ones would have arrived in these streets by now, bringing with them flame and thirsty blades. You and all your families would be dead, the death meted out by the damned reptiles!'

'Don't listen to him!' Tharvus shrieked. 'Slay her! She sold out humanity to regain her throne. Slay her!' Stil! the mob remained poised on the knife edge of indecision. 'No,' Foedan said, not loudly but distinctly. 'He'll never hold them,' said Ziore. 'Moriana, do something.' Fost's stomach twisted to a sudden premonition. 'No!' he shouted. But it was too late.

Moriana raised a hand, swept fingers in an intricate gesture. A globe of pure white light appeared over Foedan's head, competing with the sun in intensity. A moan of fear and awe swept through the crowd. The knight gazed at the mob, not seeming to notice the luminous display above his head.

'See? He's sold out, too!' Tharvus cried. His eyes blazed with a mad light as bright as the mystic sphere hanging over Foedan. 'Behold, the witch has set her mark upon him!'

The crowd gave throat to an animal cry of rage. They fell upon the lone, unarmed knight with club and cleaver and bare fists. He stood unmoving until the seething bodies hid him from view.

Teom yelped like a scalded cat and raced to the steps of the Temple crying, 'Sanctuary! Give me sanctuary!'

The platoon of Life Guards that had attended him on the bleachers went clattering by the kiosk and up the wide steps after their master. They ran as much to protect him as to save their own hides. No amount of training prepared their officers to face sure suicide by standing and fighting off this mob. 'What ho!' Erimenes sang out. 'A battle!'

'I'm glad the prospect pleases you.' Fost drew his blade and held it in front of him without conviction.

One of the members of the masons guild who had helped strike down the Watchmen raced at Moriana, swinging a long pry-bar he had used to lever up chunks of the paving marble. She snapped out of her fog of horror at what her attempt at help had won Sir Foedan and backed with a ringing clang of steel on iron. She fought to retain her grip on the sword as the stonemason attacked again and again. A laborer swung a hammer at Fost, and he had no time to worry about Moriana.

Fost's blade crossed the haft of the hammer with an odd sound. The workman reeled back, mewling like a lost soul. 'Shrewdly struck,' congratulated Erimenes.

Fost stared. The man's right hand hung from a rag of skin, yet Fost's parry hadn't come anywhere near it. Then Fost saw that his sword had bent itself into an L shape around the hardwood shaft nearly severing his assailant's hand at the wrist.

'Come on!' he shouted to Moriana. She thrust into the twisted face of an attacker and spun, following him back to the bleachers with the mob hot after them. The flimsy wooden structure thundered and vibrated beneath frantic feet as the assembled notables fled the wrath of the populace. The mob was pouring into the Plaza from both directions now. As hazardous as the bleachers were, they offered the only ground on which to make a stand. As Fost and Moriana went booming up the stands, a hairy-armed man made a grab at Erimenes's wavering form. 'Unhand me, you rogue!' shrilled the genie.

'Oh, my darling, are you hurt?' cried Ziore. Fost moaned. The man snatched again and seized one of the straps flapping wildly on Fost's kilt. His sword useless, Fost swung Erimenes's satchel and caught the man squarely on the side of the head. The man fell backward and went cartwheeling down the tiers of benches. One of the benches at the bottom gave way under the added weight with a loud snapping noise. The man's back was obviously broken.

They made the top of the bleachers and turned, momentarily ahead of the pursuit. Here the angry crowd could only come at them with difficulty, and some of the most vocal members of the mob sheered off short of the steps, wary of the bleachers' penchant for falling. The would-be killers came in ones and twos. Moriana was able to send them reeling down again, gashed and bloody, while Fost propped his sword tip against the bench and tried to kick it straight again.

He slipped, slashing his right calf, cursed, looked accidentally over the edge. The hard marble of the Plaza was a good forty feet below. There was no escape that way.

'Where the hell are the soldiers?' he shouted, swinging his almost-straight sword against a long-haired man hacking at him with a billhook. The blade struck edge-on and didn't bend. Fost put a sandaled foot in the man's belly and sent him staggering into the sweat-streaming faces of a dozen fellows.

'Don't expect help from them,' Moriana panted through a lull in the attacks. She pointed her chin up the street.

'It appears your elevation is resented more than anyone anticipated,' Erimenes said dryly. 'Or perhaps the Twenty-third is paying off some long-standing grudges against the City Watch.'

The lightly armed but more numerous infantrymen had thrown themselves against the massively armored Watch, preventing them from coming to the aid of the Imperial party. In the other direction, Imperial troops fought each other, too. Fost shook his head and spat blood. A blow had caught him in the mouth, and he hadn't noticed it until now.

'Their commanders won't even stand trial for this,' he said bitterly. 'Look. Teom's out of it.'

Moriana glanced across the sea of bobbing heads that flooded the Plaza. Teom and the innumerable clerics had disappeared. The great gilt valves of the Temple were shut and guarded by a line of Life Guards with raised shields and lowered spears. A fresh wave of attackers flowed against Fost and Moriana leaving no time for talk.

An apprentice stonemason dressed in a leather jerkin thrust at Fost with a shortsword taken from a dead Watchman. Fost disengaged and ran the man through. Screaming, the apprentice toppled off the verge of the bleachers, but not before the courier had wrenched the sword from his grasp.

Fost turned back and found a big man almost on top of him, swinging a makeshift club at his head. He caught the thick wrist in his free hand and aimed a disembowelling stroke at the giant belly squashed against his hips.

'Ellu!' he gasped into a face he knew well from the streets of his childhood. He faltered.

He recalled in a flash the foundling kitten they'd found and nursed together with scraps of food purloined to ease the complaining of their own bellies. No such memories stayed Ellu's now-fat hand.

'Traitor!' he snarled through spit and a cloud of reeking breath. He twisted his burly arm free of Fost's grip and cracked him across the face with his cudgel. Fost saw blackness and dancing sparks, fought to keep his balance with heels dangling over emptiness.

Ellu raised the club to finish him off. His arm stopped in midstroke, as if caught and held by an invisible hand. A look of consternation gripped the man's florid features. Then Moriana seized his shoulder, spun him from her lover and struck him down, crying her thanks to Ziore for staying the man's hand with her emotion-confusing powers. Dizzy and nauseated, Fost dropped to his knees.

'It's lost,' he croaked. 'We can't stand them all off. The War of Powers is lost here and now.' A blackness beyond physical oblivion clutched at him.

He felt Moriana's hand on his shoulder, looked up through red mists of agony. He heard barks, snarls, screams, saw the crowd streaming away to the right, eastward toward The Teeming in which he'd been born. No one had reckoned with Captain Mayft and the outland cavalry. Now they came with lances couched and war dogs snapping left and right and made reckoning of their own with the mob.

Slow and lazy the stained wooden deck rocked beneath Fost's bare feet. He smoothed wet hair from his face, drank in the salt air rich with the tar and cordage smells of the big ship and felt more relaxed than he had in days.

He stood near an opening in the rail. A rope ladder had been let down from the gap to hang just above the dancing green surface of the sea. As he watched, a slim hand reached out of the waves, catching the bottom rung. In a few seconds, Moriana was lithely scaling the side of the ship, shimmering with wetness.

Like him, she wore a minimum of clothing. To a simple loincloth like the one knotted around his waist she had added a brief halter bound about her chest.

'I must say the princess makes an impressive sea sprite,' remarked Erimenes. His jug had been lashed to the railing so that he could watch Fost and Moriana swim without fear of being tossed into the sea by the sway of the ship.

'A good thing this is a Tolvirot craft with a mixed crew,' said Fost. 'If Moriana appeared dressed like that on deck of an Imperial vessel with an all male crew…' He shook his head.

For all that, he found himself appreciating the suppleness of her body and her great beauty. He approved, heartily. 'Have fun with the sharks?' he asked as Moriana stepped on deck.

She nodded, doing a brief dance as her feet accustomed themselves to the heated deck. Fost glanced over the side to where lean, silver shapes knifed through the water. A wedge of fin broke water hard beside the ship. A blunt snout thrust above the surface and a dead-gray eye regarded the deck with inhuman detachment. Fost shivered, but Moriana called out to the creature and waved. It slipped soundlessly into green water and vanished, all thirty feet of it.

'You shouldn't have left the water when they arrived, Fost,' chided Moriana, wringing out her long hair. 'They're very friendly. It's fantastic to ride on one. They're so fast, they move so cleanly, with such strength – it's like being on the back of an eagle, almost.' Her voice dropped and her eyes were troubled. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her reassuringly, savoring the feel and smell of her tanned flesh.

'Friendly?' He shook his head, grinning. 'I could swim down the throat of that monster without getting scraped on his teeth along the way. And I'm not even sure he would consider me as more than an appetizer served before the main course. I prefer not to take my chances with a beast like that.'

'Perhaps we need such powerful friends.' Her tone was not wholly joking.

'I wonder if it's true what Oracle said,' asked Ziore, hovering at Erimenes's side with her fingers vaporously mingled in his. 'That in the old days the world belonged to the Zr'gsz and the giant lizards and the great furred beasts, the hornbulls and mammoths, that humanity came here from somewhere else and brought certain animals with them, dogs and pigs and sharks and those darling little animals Teom showed us just before we left, the new ones imported from the Far Archipelago. What did he call them? Horses?' Erimenes sneered.

'That's right,' answered Fost, ignoring him. Teom had taken them into the menagerie he kept outside the north wall of the Palace, on the very bluff overlooking the harbor. The Emperor had chattered volubly as if a second attempt on his life and throne had not been crushed in a bloody street battle only two days before. The new acquisitions to his enormous zoo filled him with delight, for they were rare beasts with intriguing legends surrounding them. Indeed, Fost thought they were rather cute. Tiny elfin things, the largest male no more than eighteen inches high at the shoulder. They were built like hornless deer, but their small hooves were continuous, not cloven. They had long silky brush tails and similar manes of hair growing down their necks. Their dished faces held eyes liquid brown and large.

In their last interview with Oracle a little later, Fost had mentioned the beasts. Oracle's eyes lit up.

'I have heard of such,' he said eagerly. 'Do you know the most intriguing legend of all concerning them?' The four had shaken their heads, Erimenes with a crabbed look. He hated being lectured to by someone more knowledgeable.

'It is written in old, old documents that once these creatures called horses grew larger than the biggest war dog, as large as Nevrym unicorn stags, and that they were tamed as dogs are now, to be ridden in travel, the hunt, war.' 'But they're so tiny,' objected Ziore.

'The ones surviving today are. They were a special breed, nurtured by the scholar-priests of the Far Archipelago as objects of amusement and wonder. What happened to the others?' He shrugged imaginary white shoulders. 'What happened to the cattle of olden days, short-coated like riding dogs, with horns set on either side of their heads? The only beast in the world today who wears his horns like that is Istu himself – oh! Your pardon, Princess,' he said to Moriana, who had suddenly colored and dropped her eyes. The mention of the Demon had triggered a train of memories in her that were anything but pleasant.

'I suppose you think all this supports your ridiculous theory that humanity came to the world from another plane of existence,' said Erimenes, elevating his nose to a contemptuous angle.

'I do, in fact. The legends aren't conclusive, but they point strongly to the possibility that we – or you, I suppose – originated elsewhere.'

'It also points strongly to the certainty that our kind is given to flights of imagination,' Fost pointed out, loath to rank himself with Erimenes in debate with Oracle. 'The Archipelagan Reduction states as a matter of principle that the simplest theory to account for a phenomenon is the most likely to be true.' Erimenes turned his sneer on him.

'I'm ashamed to learn you've been taken in by the naive and simpleminded doctrine of Reductionism. We sages of Athalau had more wisdom than that.'

'Did the Athalar sages ever disprove the Reductionist axiom?' Oracle asked with interest.

'Ah, no, not exactly. But there are contentions too patently absurd to require that wise men waste their precious time deigning to disprove them.'

The discussion had gotten tangled in sticky strands of epistemology. Only Moriana remained aloof, lacking the others' interest in abstract knowledge for its own sake. The question of humanity's origin on this world or elsewhere was never solved, unsurprisingly.

Moriana took her place at the ship's rail by Fost's side, pressing her hip against his. He smiled lopsidedly. He didn't dare turn from the rail now, not without revealing the state of his scanty loincloth and displaying to the entire crew of the ship Endeavor the extent of his interest in the nearly naked woman. She sensed his discomfiture – or maybe read it from the surface of his mind. Since recovering Ziore's jug from the glacier-swallowed city of Athalau, Moriana's mental abilities had been increasing. She began to rub her hip slowly back and forth against his, teasing him until he felt as if he would explode. 'You shouldn't start something you don't mean to finish,' he said.

'Why not finish it? You seem to have a good start. A very good one, from what I can see from this angle.' She leaned forward and peered down meaningfully.

His mind tumbled and roiled like a storm-wracked ocean. For no reason, he remembered the conclusion of the final talk with Oracle. The others had gone ahead after offering their farewells. The projection of the 'man' had requested Fost to stay behind. 'Will you win?' Oracle had asked. 'I'd hoped you could tell me,' Fost answered.

'I have insufficient knowledge.'

'I don't know,' Fost said, sighing deeply. 'Moriana is as powerful a sorceress as lives, perhaps the strongest in centuries. But is she Felarod?' 'Even Felarod needed Athalau and the aid of the World Spirit.'

'Athalau lies buried in a living glacier, an intelligent being named Guardian. He – it – was created by the first War of Powers and is entrusted with… guarding Athalau from intruders.' 'Yet you penetrated it once before.' Fost ran fingers through his hair.

'We've had this out, Moriana and I. I think she knows we'll have to return to Athalau to seek the means to overthrow Istu – if it can be done again. But now she's concerned mainly with getting to the City of Bankers with this draft Teom has given us so she can raise troops and supplies to try to check the Hissers in the Quincunx.' He shook his head. 'I have to admit the menace of Istu and the Dark Ones is great enough that it's easy to forget the purely physical peril the Fallen Ones pose. If their armies defeat us in battle, the relative strengths of the Powers is moot. But I think Moriana fears – or maybe resists – the idea of confronting the Powers with which Felarod trafficked so long ago.' 'But it must be done. I know enough to tell you that.'

They sat in silence for a time, flesh and blood man and a figment of an alien mentality.

'If you win,' Oracle finally said, 'will you come back here? You are my friend. And you look upon me as a friend rather than a challenging project in scientific sorcery or a surrogate offspring of a man who fears both he and his era will be without issue.'

'I'm touched,' Fost said truthfully. 'I'll come back.' He mentally added, If I can, if I live, if there's anything to come back to.

'I can tell you one thing, friend Fost,' Oracle said diffidently. 'Though I don't know if I should.' 'Go ahead.'

'You have been troubled by the profound question of why you continue with the mad adventure. At first you thought it was because you were in love. Erimenes claimed you continued because you feared being alone. Now you have the added motive of wishing to do all possible to preserve humanity and throw back the ultimate orderliness offered by the Dark. There's truth in all these, I think. But I perceive a further, even more fundamental truth.' 'What's that?' He tapped fingers tensely on one thigh.

'Why,' said Oracle, a broad grin splitting his moon face, 'you go along because you want to see what happens next. You have a great curiosity.' The grin widened even more. 'And that's as good a motive as any.'

A seabird's cry passed Fost on its way downwind, breaking his reverie. He let his fingers trail down Moriana's back until he found the wet, warm curve of her rump. She jumped when he pinched her and jammed an elbow into his ribs. Laughing, they came into one another's arms for a long kiss. Breaking apart, they headed below to the portside cabin they shared. Though most of his thoughts were for happy lechery and enjoying Erimenes's pitiful, futile pleas to be brought along to watch, he still had time to tell himself Oracle was right.

His curiosity about what would happen next drove him onward.

Considering the difficulties they'd encountered on their way to North Keep, the twice-longer journey around the northeast shoulder of the Realm passed with almost ridiculous ease. A huge Imperial Navy ship had escorted them to the delta of the River Lo marking the easternmost extent of the Imperial dominion. Teom's parting gestures to them were of a truly Imperial magnitude, as well they should be. Not only did he owe his continued life and throne to them, specifically to Moriana, the king actually felt a certain kinship with her and her companions. Alone of all those surrounding him, these stalwarts were objects of Teom's real affection. Getting them out of the Empire safely was the most gracious thing he could do. Two serious attempts to overthrow him in a matter of weeks, interspersed with a desperate battle with the reptilian invaders, constituted an ominous record even by High Medurim standards. The intervention of mercenary Captain Mayft and her heavy dog riders on the day of the investiture had broken up the mob and foiled the plot hatched by the commanders of several Imperial Army regiments in concert with the mad Sir Tharvus to overthrow Teom and Temalla and murder Fost and Moriana. It had also caused such a violent reaction on the part of the populace that the mercenaries had to be released from their contract and sent trotting home with a huge bonus. Tharvus was still on the loose crying for Teom's downfall and Moriana's death, and it seemed that more Medurimin citizens heeded his call each day. So Teom was only too glad to see the last of his controversial guests and did all in his power to speed them on their way.

One last bit of ill-tidings had arrived before they could quit the Imperial city, however. The day before the Endeavor was to sail there was a great commotion at the gates of the Palace ground. After hurried consultation with Teom's surviving advisors, the gates were opened to admit a ragged, desperate, footsore band of refugees.

Grimpeace, King in Nevrym, and a scarred and battered retinue sought asylum.

'That damned Fairspeaker came back,' Grimpeace told Fost as they had gripped forearms in greeting. 'With fifty skyrafts laden with Hissers. They dropped down on Paramount just as dawn turned its upper branches gold. They drove us – drove me – out of the Palace like ferrets starting rabbits from their hole.'

Fost and Moriana had nodded with grim understanding. Someone, Fairspeaker or the canny Zak'zar of the People, had a shrewd grasp of tactics. Had they attacked the Lord of Trees from the base, as many others had tried and failed at, they would have found themselves battling upward level by level against a foe who couldn't run but must fight and sell themselves as dearly as possible. Attempts had been made to force Paramount before; none had succeeded.

But with skyrafts dropping in from above, the startled defenders would be driven downward, level by level along a path to safety their foes had thoughtfully left open. A quick strike by the Hissers and their turncoat allies and the defenders found themselves in the foyer of their own keep, with the enemy holding the rest against them. A simple plan, and a deadly one.

Moreover, an assault borne on skyrafts avoided the problems of passage among the eldritch trees of Nevrym. Fairspeaker and his ilk were foresters and could never be seduced from the trail by the sleights of the trees. But as intruders had often found in the past, those who walked the ways of Nevrym unbidden met with a multitude of fates, none pleasant. The Hissers had flown above; the trees were impotent to stop them.

'What are you doing here?' Fost asked his friend in puzzlement. Nevrym had seceded from the Empire during the Barbarian Interregnum and had kept its king and sovereignty when the rightful native dynasty was restored. There was little love between High Medurim and the Tree. Lifestyles and modes of government were too different.

Grimpeace's brown eyes had slipped from Fost's, and the courier knew the answer before the man spoke it.

'I've come to make submission to the Emperor and beg his help,' the exile said softly.

Fost's first impulse was to shout, 'You can't!' but he schooled himself against it. Grimpeace bore a heavy burden of responsibility, weightier than Fost could readily imagine. Also, Fost himself had bent his knee to Teom just a few days past with no good result. He pointed that out to Grimpeace.

'Teom can barely cling to the Sapphire Throne with both hands and all his toes,' he said. 'If you must sell the free birthright of the forest, can't you at least get a better deal?'

Grimpeace shook his great head, bone-weary and bitter at all that had happened. 'Where else can I go?'

'Back to the forest. Fight a guerrilla war against the intruders. Make a treaty with the trees and unicorns. They can't desire Hisser masters.' Still the king shook his head.

'Too many of my people chose to go in with Fairspeaker. The Hissers control too much.' 'They can't be everywhere,' pointed out Moriana.

'No, Princess, not everywhere. Not yet. You have stymied them at the Marchant – for now. And the Watchers of Omizantrim have all but closed the skystone mines.'

'See!' cried Fost, eagerness seizing him. 'It can be done. You can do it, too! Go back and fight them on your own ground, where all the advantages are yours.'

'The advantages are those of Fairspeaker and the other traitors,' Grimpeace said bitterly. He sat heavily in a creaking chair. 'Besides, the heart's not in me for such a war. I must face reality. Mayhap all I'll find here is my own death fighting to defend these stinking crowded streets from the Fallen Ones. But better that than to skulk like a thief through Nevrym-wood, my wood, while the monsters at Thendrun sit like kings within the Tree.'

There'd been little more to say. Grimpeace parted from Fost with a few uncomfortable words, bowed courteously to Moriana, and was gone. The encounter had left Fost deep in black depression. It wasn't just the misfortune of his friend that possessed him or the triumph of the evil Fairspeaker. The tradition of almost fifty centuries, the tradition of Nevrymin freedom, lay in ruins at the clawed feet of the Vridzish. Kara-Est was a raw wound in the soil at the head of the Gulf of Veluz; Wirix had not been heard from, even via magical means, for weeks. The Empire was tearing itself apart from within, while the Hissers squatted in their fortifications across the Marchant and watched with chalcedony eyes, waiting until the stone thunder-head of the Sky City darkened the sky above the homeland of their enemies.

He had the awful sense that the People were victorious everywhere, that such pinpricks as the defeat in the Black March and the interruption of the Omizantrim mining operations were sad, silly, futile against the might and cleverness of the lizard folk and their patrons. Istu had scarcely shown his strength and yet the dominion of humanity fractured like rotten stone.

Fost was impotent with Moriana that night. Not even Erimenes found voice to complain. And Moriana hardly seemed to notice, her thoughts distant and her body tense. They clung to each other, unsleeping, unspeaking, needing the reassurance of closeness rather than the release of desire.

Oared galleys had warped Endeavor out of the harbor the next day, accompanied by her escort. No cheering crowds lined the waterfront to see them go. Teom's advisors had insisted on keeping the time and manner of the departure secret. Teom and Temalla took leave of them at the Palace with tears and presents and lingering kisses, but did not go with them to the dock. Only painted Zunhilix, his normal ebullience subdued, and a detachment of Guards had accompanied them to the docks.

They did not leave unnoticed, however. The tugs pulled Endeavor within a hundred yards of Onsulomulo's ship the Wyvern, already riding low in the scummy water with her hold swollen with the goods of refugee patricians. And there was Ortil Onsulomulo clad only in Jorean kilt and dawn light, golden on the rail of his vessel, dancing and playing a mournful hornpipe. He was a strange one, this half-breed, but he had in his way been a friend and they were sad to see the last of him. Somehow, though, Fost couldn't find it in him to worry about Onsulomulo. The half-breed claimed the gods and goddesses watched over him, and the evidence bore this out.

The wind came from the port quarter, fair for passage west to the turning of the land, fairer still for Tolviroth. They made good time to the place where the outflow of the Lo stained green seawater brown. Their escort made a slow turn, dipped flag in salute and began to pull back for High Medurim, a proud and lonely remnant of lost Imperial might and grandeur.

Despite Fost's apprehensions, there was not real trouble. A flotilla of galleys with drab sails set had come out of North Cape Harbor when the Endeavor passed in sight of the Northernmost Peak to try to claim this rich prize for the Dwarves' revolutionary government and its new allies, the Zr'gsz. Big as she was, Endeavor was a smart sailor with a good Tolvirot hull, and she put them easily in her frothy wake.

Down came the sails, out went the oars, and the Dwarven ships began a waterstrider crawl in pursuit. Endeavor's master, a native Tolvirot only a few years Fost's senior, medium built with the broad shoulders and dancing tread of a fencing master, casually ordered an onager unwrapped from its oiled cloth coverings. The Endeavor had been laid for deepwater and open sea storms. She was much more strongly built than any oared war craft, and could carry heavy engines, true shipkillers, whose workings would damage the lighter hull of a war ship. Captain Arindin stood with one hand in the voluminous pocket of the embroidered green coat he was never without, calmly munching a fruit held in the other, while his crew unshipped the onager and set it bucking, hurling great rocks against the pursuing galleys. The fourth shot sent a hundredweight stone smashing through the bottom of the leading vessel, breaking her back and foundering her in the rollers heaving in from the line of squalls hanging far to the north. Abruptly less avid for the chase, her companion ships crowded around to assist in rescue operations. One was so intent on breaking off the chase and aiding the damaged ship that the would-be rescuer rammed another just aft of the bow and holed her. The last sight the Endeavor had before twilight drew a dark curtain over the scene was a confusion of uncontrolled ships and angry heads bobbing in the swells.

'If the wind'd died we might have had hot work,' was Captain Arindin's only comment.

An eeriness, a foreboding, attended the rest of the voyage, or so it seemed to Fost. Dark clouds hung like a line of distant cliffs in an unbroken wall across the northern horizon, sometimes sending down dark mutterings of thunder, flaring by night with maroon lightnings like no other Fost had seen. Sometimes it seemed that huge shapes stalked among the clouds, and sometimes there were splashings and tumults in the sea, too far for Endeavor's lanterns to reach even with their cunning lenses of Tolvirot manufacture. The loudness became all the more unsettling for that. Alarum was cried shortly after midnight and Fost and Moriana came tumbling onto deck, she in a cloak, he naked except for his woebegotten mail vest. No attacker threatened.

A huge wheel of light, eight-spoked and hundreds of feet across, rose from the depths to make the surface bubble and glow a yellow-green a thousand yards ahead of the Endeavor. As the astonished passengers and crew watched, the monstrous colored wheel sank a score of feet, then, still clearly visible, moved toward them, spinning faster and faster as it came. It cleared the keel of Endeavor and passed beneath them without sound or heat, though the heavy ship rocked at its passage. It crawled along under the long wake of the ship and was soon gone from sight. Arindin ordered wine broken out and, fortified with drink, the vessel's folk went back to duty or bed.

Erimenes and Ziore chattered brightly about what the apparition might have been and where it might have come from. The Tolvirot mariners, hardheaded as they were, seemed disconcerted and exchanged muttered speculations of their own as they clambered into the rigging to dress the furled sails. Fost and Moriana said nothing about it between themselves. Privately Fost thought the wheel was a sign, a proof, that the reality he had grown up to accept was unraveling all around him. The Powers intruded more and more into his daily life.

No further disturbance occurred until Endeavor rounded the coast, headed south for the Karhon Channel and Tolviroth. Fost was on deck drinking wine, enjoying the double moons, the stars, the velvet sky, the warm rich smells of the land breeze and the comfortable speculation as to what awaited him when he joined Moriana in their cabin in a few minutes. His reverie was broken by a footfall behind him. He turned to see Moriana, her face strained and pale. At first he thought the cunning light playing down on them from the twin moons caused the effect. Then he knew it was no illusion. Tears glowed brightly in the corners of her eyes. 'Come,' she said urgently, gripping his sleeve.

'What's wrong?'

'Come on!' she hissed at him. He went.

A lantern shed mellow light in their cozy cabin. Fost looked around, saw nothing unusual, said so. 'On the bed,' Moriana said tonelessly.

For the first time, he noticed the flower lying across the pillow they shared.

'A gift from the crew? Is that what's bothering you?' He laughed reassuringly and slipped his arm around her waist. 'It seems more thoughtful to me than anything else. Besides, I thought your emblem was a rose.' 'Look at the color.'

He frowned, took his arm away and went to the bed, bending down to more closely examine the flower.

'Don't touch it,' she said. He shrugged. To humor her, he didn't reach out for the flower.

He went cold all over. The flower was black. Not just the bloom itself, but the stem and long, long thorns, as well. He recoiled, fear clutching at his stomach. 'What…?'

'It means the Dark Ones wish us to know they've not forgotten us,' she said.