They rode on through the eerie stillness of dusk. Fost couldn't rid himself of the sensation that the limp bodies strewn so recklessly about would rise up at any instant with a friendly greeting or outstretched hand. He was no stranger to death; he'd dealt it himself on occasion. But he had little experience with such wholesale slaughter. And no stomach for it at all.
He had been horrified at the carnage at the battles of the cliffs, when he'd helped the People of Ust defeat the Badger Clan and their foul shaman. That had been the mildest of diversions compared to this awful carnage. Together in a heap to Fost's right lay more men and women than lived in either Bear or Badger tribe. He shuddered. He wanted to throw up.
Though they kept careful watch they saw no eagles. The bird riders were off chivvying the defeated, butchering stragglers and the wounded. The wind babbled to itself of the sights it had witnessed that day, stirring fallen banners and mocking the dead. The wind even spoiled the clean and optimistic odors of early spring with the gassy rankness of corruption. Fost took hold of the strap slung over his shoulder, held a leather satchel high.
'See, old smoke,' he said to the bag. 'This is the reward for your passionate desire for bloodshed. Don't your non-existent nerves pulse with excitement at the sight?' A sniff came from the satchel.
'What could I possibly find to excite me here?' a voice asked peevishly. 'This is rubbish.'
Furious at the spirit's callousness, Fost swung the satchel up to dash the jug it contained to pieces on the ground. 'No,' said Jennas. 'Let him be.'
Ashamed at his angry outburst, Fost pulled the strap back over his shoulder and let the satchel fall to its riding position. He knew he was only venting his ire at not finding Moriana on the genie in his jug.
– Hollowing the path the routed army and its pursuers had taken, they passed the hill with its crumpled pavilion and heard the murmur of running water.
'I'm thirsty,' said Fost, 'and there were too many corpses in that stream back there for even the bears to touch the water. Let's see if this one is less clogged with dead.'
Jennas nodded. They rode toward the sound, angling toward a stand of trees well beyond the hill. Though none of the bird riders had shown themselves so far, neither felt like taking chances. They were almost to the water when they heard the moan.
Without thinking, Fost booted Grutz's sides. The big bear rolled over the bank and into the water, never breaking stride. The icy water numbed Fost's legs. He barely noticed in the urgency that gripped him.
Another sad knot of bodies lay at the treeline. Dogs and men in the distinctive armor of the City States had been struck down by the equally distinctive arrows of the Sky City. The missiles protruded at angles that told they had come from above.
Fost pulled Grutz to a stop beside a young man who stirred feebly. His fingers raked furrows in the mud. An arrow had penetrated his backplate and jutted horribly from the center of his back, as if that, in all the broad earth, was where it belonged.
The knight had been trying to reach the creek. His first words to Fost confirmed this. 'Water. Need… need water.'
His voice rattled like a handful of pebbles on a tile roof. Fost dismounted and squatted by his side, studying the extensive injuries. A trail of bloody spittle ran from the corner of the young man's mouth. Fost doubted the youth was twenty.
'You're in a bad way,' said Fost, trying to remember the rough but practical healing lore he'd learned in his career as a courier on the highroads of the Sundered Realm – literally a lifetime ago. 'I don't know if you should have water.'
'You don't honestly think it matters, do you, you dolt?' asked Erimenes acidly from his jug.
Fost shrugged. The shade was right, though it surprised Fost that Erimenes had responded in this fashion. Compassion was not a trait he normally associated with the long-dead philosopher whose ghost rode in the jug at his hip.
The youth drank greedily from Fost's water bottle, which had been taken and filled by Jennas and tossed back to the courier without comment. Fost held the blond head cradled in his lap as the dying boy drank. Jennas urged her mount out of the stream and slid off beside them. Her boots went deep into the cold mud. She was as tall as Fost and just as strongly built.
The boy coughed. The fit came so violently that he jerked himself free of Fost's arms. To Fost's horror, he fell backward onto the arrow still in him. His weight drove it deep and snapped it off. He stiffened, coughed up bloodshot phlegm, then sank back with a sigh, as though sliding into a warm and soothing bath.
Fost bit his lip. The boy's chest rose and fell raggedly within his armor.
'The princess,' Fost said, hating himself for troubling the dying man. 'Do you know who I mean? The Princess Moriana.'
'Princess?' The boy nodded, then frowned, his face a bloody mask. 'Failed her. Failed her…' Fost felt a cold black hand clamp his throat.
'She didn't – she's alive, isn't she?' he demanded. To his relief the youth nodded. A grimace twisted the young features as if the slight motion had pained the boy. 'Where did she go?' The knight did not respond. By dint of great effort, Fost kept himself from shaking him. 'Where did she go?' he asked again. 'The… three of them.' Fost frowned up at Jennas. 'Three?'
'Ah – aye. Princess, Lord Darl and… Great Ultimate, is it getting dark so soon? And the spirit… the woman in the jug…' 'Woman in a jug?' asked Jennas, as confused as Fost,
'It must be the other spirit that Guardian told us about,' said Fost, trying to remember more of what the speaking, sorcerously living glacier had said. 'The glacier's name is Guardian,' he told Jennas, seeing her baffled look. 'When we left Athalau, the glacier told us Moriana had a spirit jug with her. He said something about the genie inside, but other matters pressed me then. Guardian had mistaken the other spirit for Erimenes. It put him into a fine rage.' Fost glanced at the blue form wavering by his elbow. He did not remember having uncapped the jar to let him out. Erimenes's face acquired a faraway look.
'A woman,' the spirit said musingly. 'As I live and breathe, a woman! This has interesting aspects 1 had not considered. Imagine, another such as I!'
'By Ust's snout,' muttered Jennas, 'one of you is more than enough. And you do not live and breathe.'
'A woman!' cried the philosopher. 'I can at last vindicate my teachings! What the two of us might do together…'The misty body of the shade glittered with dancing blue motes of light, spark-bright in the darkness.
'Be quiet, you,' snapped Fost. 'This man is dying, and you rant about another genie.'
'Not just any genie, friend Post,' crowed Erimenes. 'A female! I wonder if it might be possible that we…'His face glowed with a lechery so luminous it astonished even Fost, though the courier knew the shade's ways by now. Erimenes had preached stark abstinence throughout his life, and then had thirteen hundred years to think better of it. The long, lonely centuries trapped in his ceramic jug had been devoted to developing a totally hedonistic philosophy; disembodied, Erimenes could only experience his newfound ideals as a voyeur. Until the promise of another – female – genie. Jennas scowled. 'The boy, Fost, the boy is dying.'
Fost swallowed and turned back to the dying knight. Erimenes's crude enthusiasm shamed him. And he was no closer to finding out what had happened to Moriana. He leaned closer to the youth.
'Where did she go?' No response. Fost dribbled water across the parched lips and asked again, slowly, 'Where-did-she-go?'
The young knight tried. In his fading mind he was glad that with his dying breath he could help his princess, the Bright Princess whom he and his friends had let down so badly.
'She went to…' His blurred, fading mind struggled to concentrate. 'Went to…'