'I've tried to gentle her from this dark mood,' the genie said. 'But she will not be consoled. She loves you. Can you do something for her?'
A quick stab of Fost's eyes spiked the contribution Erimenes was about to make. Dragging himself forward on his arms like a cripple, he took Moriana's shoulders and turned her around.
A bright spark of rebellion blazed and died in her eyes. Knowing by that sign he was right, Fost spoke roughly and to the point.
'Whatever your motives, the deed is done,' he said. 'The Fallen Ones are in control of the City again and Istu is loose, and I doubt the Dark Ones will fail to press their first real advantage in ten millennia.' Her face tightened as he spoke. That was good, too. It was more encouraging than the slackness of depression it replaced.
'You're the most powerful magician in the Sundered Realm, probably in the world,' he went on. 'Back in the City you were potent enough to hold Istu off while some of your people escaped.' Her eyes dropped. A single tear spattered onto the gray stone.
'Only my fury at the Zr'gsz for their betrayal – and at myself for mine – gave me that power. I doubt it will come again.'
'I don't say you'll ever have power to stop the Demon of the Dark Ones. But you can do more against him than anyone else alive. We need whatever power you've got if we're to have a chance.' 'We?' He paused.
'Uh, humanity.' It sounded bald and grandiose. But it was the truth. Realization nerved him to say what must be said.
'You brought this about, Highness, Majesty, whatever I should call you. By the Five Holy Ones, you should stay alive and try to undo the disaster you've wrought!'
He released her. She slumped, her slender shoulders hunched and shaking in reaction. 'Die, if you want,' he said harshly. 'That's the coward's way out.'
Her slap bowled him over onto his back and set loose an avalanche in his head. For an instant, fireflies danced in front of his face. They faded to orange and yellow points and the accompanying pain slowly subsided to a dull aching.
'No one calls me coward!' she screamed. 'Take it back, you groundling worm!'
Despite the agony in his skull, Fost grinned when he pulled himself erect. He got his feet under him and braced his arms on either side of his knees, the roughness of the stone assuringly firm.
'Is that all I must do, Princess dear?' he said. 'Welcome back to the living.' She was in his arms, her tears hot on his cheek. CHAPTER
FIVE
'It's apparent these rafts return automatically to their place of origin on being abandoned.' Erimenes was in his best pedantic form, not one whit deterred by the unorthodox setting for his lecture. 'I assume the function is intentional, though it may of course be serendipitous. Further, I reason that abandoned skyrafts follow lines of magnetic force back to Omizantrim, which accounts for our circuitous route from the City to…'
Thunder drowned him out. Fost ducked reflexively, spilling a spoonful of gruel into his lap.
'I think the mountain's building up to a major eruption,' Moriana announced.
She had resumed her previous station in the bow of the raft, gazing at Omizantrim as the volcano grew ever nearer. Fost gulped a last mouthful of the tasteless gray slop, covered the bowl with its silver lid and replaced it in his satchel, then slowly crawled forward to sit beside her. Cautiously, he stationed himself several inches farther back from the rim.
No one – no human, at least – had ever accused Mt. Omizantrim of being beautiful. It looked threatening and grim from far away, which was the only way Fost had seen it before. Close up, it was a tall cinder cone, dark gray, its flanks slashed with black striations and scarred with fumaroles. The open-wound pits in the mountain exuded thick clouds of dark blue and maroon gas, then lit them from below with a lurid glare. The very crest of the mountain was obscured in a billow of slate-gray smoke spilling away into the northwest. A gaudy necklace of lightnings surrounded the heights, both from the smoke and dust cloud and from the storm clouds above. Sulfur stung eyes, nose and throat; dust clogged them.
Omizantrim was far from beautiful. But Fost failed to discern the reason why Moriana thought it was going to erupt. As far as Fost could tell, the mountain looked little different than it had when it hiccuped to noisome life on the eve of the Battle of Chanobit Creek.
Fost couldn't figure it out. He asked her. Moriana shrugged, still studying the mountain with wrinkled brow.
'The displays seem more violent than at any time when we were camped there. And do you smell the ozone, the prickling in the very air? You should see yourself. It's making the hair stand up at the back of your neck.'
'It wouldn't take dormant lightning in the air to cause that, let me tell you,' said Fost. 'But couldn't it be due to our height alone?'
Moriana glanced down. The gray and black landscape writhed below like a tortured animal. Patches of vegetation clungtenaciously to the jagged, blade-sharp lava, deep green in some places, dusty and faded like old dry moss in others. One-horned and domestic deer moved below, not browsing but running in full flight across the broken land away from the great mountain.
'It's just a feeling,' she confessed. 'See? The animals feel it, too. They're more sensitive to such things than humans. They know the moods of the volcano from long exposure.'
'Our height isn't great enough to make much difference,' Erimenes cut in. 'We've stayed about a thousand feet up since leaving the City. That puts the mountaintop eight or nine thousand feet above us. Even that noxious looking cloud is easily thousands of feet above our heads.'
Fost felt the skin on his back try to creep into a bunch at the nape of his neck. An instant later, a brilliant yellow flash burned itself into his retinas. The light was so intense he wasn't even aware of the wall of sound that struck him. But several minutes later as he blinked away the last of the purple afterglow, his hearing had only just returned.
'Weather magic,' Erimenes said in his usual peevish tone. 'Can't you keep the lightning off us, at least?'
Ziore stared at the blue shade, her expression remarkably reminiscent of the clouds overhead. Mindful of Fost's injunction against further squabbling, she stayed silent.
'Perhaps I could,' Moriana said. 'But the battles I fought in the Sky City drained me so.'
She broke off to look at Fost with peculiar intentness. A wan smile played about her mouth.
'No, since you told some harsh truths to snap me out of my self-pitying fog, you've lapsed back into being too perfect a gentleman to point out the obvious. Yes, I have to start using my powers again sometime, and the longer I wait the more painful it'll be.'
She stood and stretched, oblivious to the emptiness yawning an inch in front of her toes. Fost shuddered. It was easy to forget what an insane disregard for heights the Skyborn had.
'Now's as good a time as any,' she said firmly. 'I've slept for two days and have a stomach full of that delicious provender of yours.' Her sarcasm elicited an uneasy smile from Fost. Though they had both devoured the gruel from the magic bowl so avidly it seemed its supply must be exhausted in spite of the self-replenishment speli, neither was ravenous enough to mistake the stuff for anything but clammy glop.
Moriana folded her long legs beneath her and closed her eyes in concentration. Fost saw her lips flutter, heard the ghost of an incantation above the grumbling of mountain and clouds.
'She needed a brazier and special herbs to make weather magic at Chanobit,' Ziore said in an awed whisper. 'She's learned so much since then.'
Erimenes grumbled, but all ignored him. Seeing that Moriana required total concentration, Fost took an oiled rag from his satchel and drew his sword. He examined it, clucking over its condition. Its blade was dimmed, streaked with blood and grime, and dirt had caked in places. Though the blade itself was fine North Keep steel, its edge was nicked and pitted from heavy use. Fost rummaged in his sack and brought out a whetstone, then began to rub the sword down with the rag.