Istu awakened

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Messenger of the Dark Ones rose. He smiled, his teeth startlingly white against the midnight of his face.

'I see our discussion is at an end, daughter,' he said to Synalon. 'To you others, farewell. I regret not having the chance to speak with you before since I shall not see you again – alive.' He faded and vanished, leaving only his taunting laughter hanging in the air. Moriana's eyes blazed. 'You -'

'No,' Fost shouted, moving as fast as he ever had. He thrust past Moriana and stood, arms outspread, between the furious princess and her sister. 'Hear her out.' 'Get out of my way.'

Fost saw Rann standing just behind Moriana in the door. The scars on his face glowed whitely. Fost knew with certainty that this was betrayal and that the prince was about to drive his curved blade into Moriana's oblivious back.

Then Rann pushed past, taking his place at Fost's side, raising a hand to Synalon who rose from her bed with death in her eye.

'This is fair, I think. Neither of you casts a deathbolt without slaying the both of us. Now, Highness, will you talk?'

Fost felt his neck hairs rise. The air crackled with potent magics barely held in restraint. He waited to die and wondered what the Hell Call would be like.

It didn't happen. Moriana was first to drop her threatening hand, but Synalon followed reluctantly. 'I see nothing to talk about.' She gazed past Fost without warmth.

"What were you doing, Synalon? Do you deny that creature is a sending of the Dark Ones?'

'I do not.' Haughtily, she tossed back her head. 'It was the Messenger of the Lords of Elder Dark himself. I have spoken with him before.'

'What did you discuss?' Rann asked in a casual tone, as if mentioning how nice the weather had been that day.

'We discussed my sabotaging your plans to raise the World Spirit against Istu.' Moriana's hand shot forth. Fost grabbed it.

'Wait, dammit!' He swiveled his head and said in desperation, 'Explain and explain quickly or we're all dead.' Synalon started to bristle. 'I'd be pleased to hear an explanation, as well,' Rann drawled.

She shook back her hair and straightened her shoulders, as if preparing herself for a wearisome task.

'Very well. Shortly after we left Brev the Messenger appeared to me, after Fost had gone to sleep. He proposed that I rejoin the Dark Ones. He said I had proven wanting before but that if I acted rapidly and well I could earn back my lost grace – and more.' Moriana dropped her arm. She shook her head in dejection. 'How could you? How could even you?'

'I could not!' Synalon laughed. 'What kind of fool do you take me for, sister mine? Think me a traitor if you will. But I would be a stupid groundling if I trusted anything the Dark Ones said to me.' 'Then why did you tell him you'd go along?' Fost demanded.

'I thought better of you, Longstrider. Is it not obvious? The Dark Ones fear what we do here. They are not certain Istu can prevail so they sought to ensure their success from within. It takes great energy for the Lords to intervene on this plane, even through the agency of their Messenger. So I let them think I was mooncalf enough to heed them, and they wasted their efforts on me. I may have saved us, sister. Small thanks I'll get.' 'I don't believe it,' Moriana stated flatly.

'But what of you?' Synalon flung at her. 'Can we trust you? You've treated with the servitors of the Dark before – daughter of Thendrun!'

Moriana sagged. She caught the doorframe to support herself. Fost longed to go to her and hold her but sensed it wasn't safe to move.

'He told you,' Moriana said in a weak voice. 'Yes.' Synalon raised her head triumphantly. 'Is it so strange that we are drawn to Darkness, dear sister, with the heritage we share?'

'I… I couldn't bring myself to tell you,' whispered Moriana. She turned away. 'Best we die here and let others carry on the fight. We are tainted, touched by the Void and the Night. We do not deserve to return to the City in the Sky.'

'Are you so weak?' Synalon screamed at her. 'Go then. Open your veins and spill your blood upon the floor, if you despise it so! I care not what I do or do not deserve, nor whether I am sprung from Zr'gsz or even if one was my father! I will wreak my revenge upon those who betrayed and used me, and all who stand with them.' She strode forward, pushing Fost and Rann aside as easily as if they were children and seized Moriana's shoulders, spinning her roughly around. 'Perhaps you do not deserve to stand in the streets of our City again, sister. Then don't! But I shall! The City is all I've ever loved. I shall possess it again – and only death can stop me!'

In the stunned silence following her outburst they all heard the frantic footsteps in the corridor beyond. Synalon shoved her sister from her as a small boy in the tabard of a Bilsinxt drummer looked nervously around the door.

'Your Highnesses.' he said in a shrill voice. 'Th-they sent me from below to fetch you. The Sky City has just entered the Gate of the Mountains!'

Their footsteps rang loudly in Fost's ears as he and the others crowded into the chamber where the Nexus lay. Light appeared from everywhere; no torches were needed in Athalau. The Ethereals had been stirring on their pallets in the nave of the Palace of Esoteric Wisdom when Moriana and the rest raced by. Now they filed into the chamber as they had on that first day.

This time they did not take up kneeling positions on the dull steel pattern. Instead they lined themselves along the walls. 'The time is come, mistress?' Selamyl asked Moriana. She hesitated, then said, 'The time is come.'

Selamyl strode forward and took his position in the middle of the line and faced the far wall. Soundlessly the others glided forward and knelt, each upon one of the nodes that seemed strewn at random throughout the mandala. With a sinking feeling, Fost saw how few there truly were. Many of the nodes were unoccupied and the silvery patch in the center looked like a gap left by a missing tooth. He didn't see how they could ever succeed.

'What would Felarod do, were he here now?' Moriana asked aloud.

'You must find your own way,' said Selamyl. His eyes were closed, his voice seemed to come from all around. 'Flow with the universe. The World Spirit will guide you.' 'Can you – can you reach the Spirit?' she asked. 'Yes.' 'Then do so.'

Silence. Fost felt it gnawing inside him like an animal demanding release, felt the tension begin to build and set his limbs trembling. He wanted to scream at the inactivity.

Moriana shifted to stand beside him, and her hand sought his. He willed his hand not to quaver and knew he failed. He looked around. Synalon stood nearby with lifted chin, feigning disinterest. Rann stood with folded arms, his head thrust forward, his yellow eyes wide beneath thin brows.

A greenish glow bathed Rann's face. Fost stared at him for a second, then turned back to the center of the room.

The metallic tracery on the floor had come to life. The green glow flowed from it suffusing the room. The kneeling Ethereals had become translucent. Each slender body shone like a lamp but without heat.

He became aware of a faint pulsation of the light. Shouts rebounded down the stairway from above, and it seemed there was an outcry in the streets.

'Behold the Nexus,' came Selamyl's voice. 'It is Athalau itself. This is the center.' 'And the World Spirit?' Moriana could barely force out the words. 'It comes.'

A chill wind tore at Zak'zar's face and felt as if it would strip away the skin. His cloak cracked behind him like a whip. It was agony to be abroad in this cold night with the icy breath of the Waste upon him. The others of the People lay abed wrapped against the chill. But his place was upon the rampart of the floating City.

Istu stood beside him, set apart from the night only by the absolute blackness of his being unmarred by stars. His yellow eyes watched the rugged terrain below unfold. The City followed his will, its course matching the winding of the black slash that wandered through the mountains.

He stiffened, raised his head as if testing the wind for some scent, some sound.

'What is it?' Zak'zar asked, shouting to be heard above the keening wind.

Istu raised a taloned hand to still him. Then he crumpled his hands into fists and shook them in the face of the south. 'My curse upon you! I lay my curse on Athalau and all within!' "What's happening?'

Istu's eyes swept down. Zak'zar thought the Demon would slay him in his unreasoning fury. But the mad glare subsided. Istu spoke.

'In Athalau. I feel it, I hear it, it wounds my ears! The Pale Ones have summoned the World Spirit.' Zak'zar felt strength ebbing. 'Have we lost, then?'

'No!' Great shards of rock detached themselves from the walls below and slid into the Gate of the Mountains as the Demon's voice beat down upon them. 'Never! They lack Felarod, and knowledge, and I am strong! Never again shall I be bound. Never!'

Zak'zar gripped the stone guardwall and stared ahead. In the distance he saw a pool of paleness lying against the blackness of the mountains. A glacier. Within it lay his fate. The wind tore at his eyes.

Hours passed like days, like years.

'Vast is the World Spirit,' Selamyl said when Moriana asked him if the summoning was done, if the Spirit had risen to smite its starborn foe. 'It is slow to anger but its wrath is great.'

Fost sat with his back against the wall of the Nexus chamber. He drifted in and out of sleep. When his body realized that no amount of adrenaline was going to make things happen any quicker, it surrendered to the exertions of the day before. But still an urgency nagged at him causing him to half-rise from sleep and dream images.

At some point a servant brought the spirit jars. Fost roused to listen briefly to Erimenes describing how the whole city now pulsed with the same green light that came from the Nexus. Fost thought the pattern's glow brighter than before, but thinking took too great an effort and he slept again.

He came awake abruptly, sensing something vital was about to happen.

The first thing he saw was the City in the Sky. He shook his head, shut his eyes and opened them again. Still it hung in the midst of his vision, above sharp peaks turned molten gold by the rising sun.

'Disconcerting, isn't it?' Erimenes chuckled dryly at his elbow. 'My humble contribution.'

'You caused that?' Somehow, a vision of what was happening miles away had been conjured forth, inside the room.

'Well… no. But it was I who remembered the old stories and told the princess how to call it up.'

Moriana stood where she had before, staring at the picture which occupied one whole wall of the chamber. 'And the Spirit?' he asked. 'Has it come yet?'

'No,' said Ziore from his other side. Her face was stark with worry. 'And soon it will be too late. Poor Moriana.' 'It is come.'

The chamber reverberated to the words. The voice was Selamyl's and yet was not. It was deeper, transformed, as vital and surging as the boom of surf on sand.

Moriana raised her eyes to the scene of the Sky City. It jumped forward. Fost gasped. Then he realized that it was the picture that moved with such speed, not the City itself. He saw the black, horned shape on the parapet and felt a cold greater than that of the Waste seize his bones.

'I call upon the World Spirit to destroy the Demon Istu!' Her words rang out like trumpets. Fost caught his breath. Nothing happened.

'World Spirit! Strike! Raise up your power against the dark destroyer as you did ten thousand years ago!'

Fost felt it now. The energy folded him, restoring strength to his limbs, clearing his weary, scratchy eyes. Each breath was wine. But still nothing happened, no energies leapt forward to oppose the black Demon. 'World Spirit!' screamed Moriana. 'What's wrong?'

'Will,' said that voice which had once belonged to Selamyl. 'It needs a will to guide it.' 'But what of you, you Ethereals?'

A pause. Fost thought of the awesome deliberation of Guardian. The world was much bigger than the glacier. Would the Spirit be commensurately slower?

'We…' For the first time that transcendent voice faltered. 'We lack the will. We have forgotten how to strike out in anger and lack the time to learn.' Synalon rose, stretched catlike and sensuous. 'One thing I've plenty of is will. Sister, shall I?'

Moriana stared into the green fire of the Nexus. This was what she'd feared, that she must enter rapport with the World Spirit and risk the dissolution of that small spark that was her soul, her inner being, her self. The time had come for her to match the dedication already shown by the Ethereals. 'No,' Moriana said and stepped forward.

Fost leaped to his feet, lunged forward and caught her wrist, crying, 'You can't!' 'I must.' Her voice was calm.

'You'll die!'

'And what of that?' She reached out and stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers. They rasped on stubble. 'I must do this. Only then can I expiate the wrong I created when I helped the Fallen Ones capture the City.' She dropped her hand.

'I love you,' she said. 'Live long and take what happiness you find.' And she stepped into the middle of the Nexus.

Green fire enveloped her. Fost cried out again and started to follow. A steel claw caught his arm. He struggled, then turned back in fury. Ziore held his wrist. There was nothing wispy or insubstantial about her now.

'Do you think she wants you to throw your life away?' the genie asked. 'But…'

'You cannot help her now. You can only distract her.' He stepped back. And the power came up through the floor and shook him and his mind reeled toward blackness.

At the molten core of the planet burned anger.

But it was rage without form, without direction. That vast organism which was the World possessed a thousand senses and each one cried out that something was deathly wrong. A pathogen had invaded its system, a black presence, both alien and destructive. It knew that something must be done but it didn't know what or how.

A feeling tickled the edge of its tiny being, tiny but insistent. Slowly the feeling penetrated it. Slowly it responded.

It sensed other presences, miniscule, separate from and at the same time part of it. It flowed toward them. Somehow it knew that here was the means to channel its anger, to bring its mighty wrath to bear on the wrongness.

It touched the lesser entities and became one with them. It stopped. There was nothing, no direction, no guidance, nothing to purge the irritant.

Then a new presence touched it. Will burned within, a hot, white light. Like a plant questing toward the sun, the World Spirit moved to merge itself with this thing of Will.

At the core of Moriana's being burned anger.

Her City was held captive by an enemy who had betrayed her to possess it. She felt it hanging almost overhead now, and her being ached with the longing for it. But more even than Zr'gsz, she hated their Demon ally. He had defiled her, laid surrogate hands of stone on her and ravished her body while his hell-glowing eyes raped her soul. For that her rage would tear the skies asunder, to visit vengeance upon Istu. Your enemy is near! she thought. Now reach!

The mountain called the Throat of the Dark Ones exploded.

It blasted itself skyward, a mountain launched as a missile into the dawn, riding a column of incandescent gas and ash and the dust of pulverized rock. The Zr'gsz skystone mines disappeared, and those who worked them and those who fought to slow the work. So violent was the blast that huge hunks of the shattered mountain entered orbit around the world to spiral down slowly until the tenuous arms of the atmosphere tangled them and drew them to flaming end.

Such was Moriana's wrath united with the wrath of the World.

Though the wavefront of the blast and the titan sound that rode upon it would not reach the Ramparts for over an hour, Istu felt Mount Omizantrim die. He clawed at the heavens and bellowed his rage. His ancient enemy was come. The fight would be to the death this time.

He turned and strode to the center of the City. His bowed legs straddled the Well of Winds. He spread forth the blackness of his arms. He reached outward, began to flow downward, his form subsiding and swelling to fill the Well. The Black Lens appeared where he had been, glistening, pregnant with power.

A thirty-foot wall of water washed over the island of Wirix and scoured it clean, driven by the blast that slew Omizantrim. But the Wrath had only begun.

With the senses she now shared with another, Moriana knew that her first stroke had missed. She struck again -

– and a range of mountains thrust themselves above the sea on the far side of the world, dark and humped and water-glistening like the back of an aquatic monster. And again -

– and storm clouds gathered above the Ramparts, a thousand times faster than the normal gathering of clouds. They piled higher, black on black, shot through with lightning. In the streets of the Sky City the Fallen Ones cried out in fear and wonder. And again -

– and part of the Northern Continent split off and sank into the sea with a crack and a roar and a rushing of water.

Fury raged in silence upon the wall of the Nexus chamber. Fost's back was to the wall and his eyes were wide. He had control of his limbs again, but the power still surged like a drug in his veins. 'Moriana! What's happening?' cried Ziore.

'I… I cannot control it.' Her voice penetrated the bones of those in the chamber, transmuted as Selamyl's had been.

The room shook then. Synalon lurched into Rann; Fost fell, cracking his knee painfully on the stone. Imaged on the wall, the western Ramparts tumbled like eightpins to the throes of an earthquake. The Ethereals and Moriana sat statue-still, unmoved by the spasm beneath the earth.

The gathering clouds had grown to a black anvil thunderhead, a mountain above mountains. The watchers saw a sheet of lightning flash from the thunderhead and shear off a slice of the City's starboard rim in a coruscating spray of molten stone. Synalon shrieked as if it were her own flesh being sundered.

Maddened, the Demon retaliated. A black funnel grew from the underside of the Lens and stabbed down. It bit into the ice over Athalau and began tearing chunks from the glacier's body. A moan rolled through Athalau, pitched almost below hearing, so that it rang deep in the bones of the humans within.

'The Demon's killing Guardian,' shouted Fost. 'Can't you do something?'

'Yes,' said Moriana. That much she could do. She folded power around herself, around Guardian, strapping the glacier in a cocoon of forces that held him steady against the pull of the vortex.

Istu squealed with rage as his funnel ceased to bite. He lashed downward repeatedly. But he could no longer gouge the ice that armored Athalau.

'What now?' asked Zak'zar from the edge of the Skywell. 'Wait,' said Istu, 'and you shall see.'

Moriana kept trying to wield the power of the World Spirit, to smite Istu with all the force at her command. The watchers in the chamber beneath the Palace saw earthquake and waterspout and eruption devastate the land. The World Spirit flailed about like a blind beast only landing near its foe by accident.

'Moriana, you've got to stop,' screamed Ziore as they watched Paramount, Lord of Trees, hurled down to smash a hundred lesser trees beneath it. 'You'll destroy the Realm without harming Istu!'

'What can I do? I cannot aim the power. If only I had some way to focus on the City, on Istu!'

Synalon shook back her long black hair and turned from the Nexus.

'I knew I'd find a part to play in this farce,' she said. 'Rann, summon me a bird tender. I wish my eagle made ready at once.' He gaped at her. 'Because I will be the focus my sister needs.'

'Highness! Why?'