As he cleaned the weapon, he kept one eye on the mountain. It grew until he scarcely saw where the cone disappeared into the wreath of greasy smoke. The heat of its many mouths washed over him like the uneven breathing of some immense creature. Throat of the Dark Ones, Omizantrim meant. Fost wondered if that was Their sulfurous breath that blew so hot on his face.
Just when he began to worry that the craft would drive head-on into the mountain, Omizantrim swung across the bow and began to slip by to port.
'We're circling,' said Erimenes unnecessarily. 'Probably going to the very skystone drift where the raft was mined.'
Lightning barraged the mountain's stony flanks, but none came near.
'Your magic's working,' he told her. She replied with a distracted smile. In fact, he didn't have the slightest idea whether it worked or not, but he wanted to encourage her.
'We're losing altitude.' Reluctantly, Fost glanced down and saw that Erimenes spoke the truth. The crags and folds of the mountain's skirts grew closer as he watched and the landscape took on more detail. Cave-sized openings were soon revealed to be great bubbles that had burst. Drifts of white ash and a gray stone touched with a curious sheen appeared in sharp relief that he guessed was skystone itself. Small animals scurried among the stunted stems of bushes, tails streaming behind as they fled the coming wrath of the mountain.
They passed a cluster of huts. Blocks of the incredibly durable lava had been hewn laboriously by hand and fitted to form walls capped by big slabs of basalt. The buildings, while grim, were suited to withstanding the mountain's caprice. But not even the stout construction of the Watchers could withstand the cosmic disease of change. The massive roofs had been levered from their places, the walls that held them pulled down into jumbles of black stone. Ash had fallen since the destruction, piling like blown snow against the few walls and doorposts that remained standing, filling in the outlines of the ruined huts so that they resembled a collection of haphazard children's sandboxes. Splintered pieces of wood thrust above the dust in some of the buildings, and Fost saw a few drably colored scraps of cloth waving in the breeze. 'They didn't loot,' he said to himself. 'Only destroyed.' Moriana's face had turned the color of the ash strewn below.
'Wise Ones,' she whispered, 'have they slain the Watchers?' The thought of this new guilt showed on her face like a fresh swordcut.
'This isn't the main camp. It's only an outpost. The Vridzish were gathering the Watchers out of the smaller camps when we were here before. The Watchers are no doubt held captive at their village, as they were before.' Ziore's expression belied her hopeful tone.
'Who do you think works the skystone mines?' came Erimenes's question. Lightning cracked dangerously close. Fost jumped, almost losing his whetstone and small oil flask over the edge of the raft. The conversation took a turn that was not only distressing to Moriana but distracting as well. 'Where are the Hissers, anyway?' he asked. 'Look beyond you,' said Erimenes.
Despite the heat, Fost's throat had become a column of ice leading from the glacier of his stomach. The spirit wasn't lying. A two-man flyer had just rounded a stony buttress behind them, and three more appeared followed by a much larger barge teeming with green-skinned figures. Fost swallowed hard, thinking that the Zr'gsz flew much sloppier formation than Rann's bird riders. Perversely, he wished Rann could be here now to pit his genius against the lizards.
Moriana looked up as he touched her arm. 'Forget about the lightning. We've got worse things to worry about.'
She glanced back at the pursuing raft. The craft bucked now in updrafts from malevolently glowing mouths gaping below. She picked up her bow and began replacing the string, which had been ruined by a shower sometime while she and Fost slept.
Repacking his cleaning gear, Fost watched the enemy rafts gain on them. Under control of Zr'gsz pilots, the craft moved much faster than the humans' drifting raft. A three-man flyer edged out in front of the others, and a Hisser stood amidships whirling a sling. He loosed. Nervously, Fost watched the stone arch up and then down, apparently headed straight for the bridge of his nose. He watched in hypnotic fascination that didn't lose its grip until the missile dropped harmlessly in the raft's wake.
An angry bee whined past his right ear. The slinger stiffened as two more arrows sped past Fost, aimed with uncanny precision. The slinger pitched over the side of the small raft when the pilot slumped across the skewered corpse of the third Zr'gsz, an eagle-feathered arrow jutting from his eye.
Upon this attack, the loose formation of the skyrafts broke apart. They climbed rapidly out of range. Moriana shot two more arrows and killed the pilot of a second small raft which skidded sideways, spilling its occupant out over a lake of lava that glowed perceptibly brighter orange when the Vridzish struck.
'Damn them,' Moriana said. 'They're sharp. They've put their rafts between themselves and me.'
'They'll have to show themselves to shoot at us,' observed Fost. As he said the words, a head and shoulders appeared at the side of one raft. A javelin rocketed toward them. The dart went wide; so did Moriana's return shot.
The woman cursed reptilian reflexes and nocked another arrow. She drew the shaft to her ear and waited. Another Hisser leaned out to aim a short bow at the humans. Her arrow took him in the throat. The bow dropped from clawed hands, and the body dangled a moment before its fellows released its ankles. 'Your reflexes match theirs,' Fost said admiringly.
The look she gave him was not what he expected. He felt chilled by the flat, almost hostile expression. He was starting to speak when the mountain blew up.
The Shockwave bowled him over. Moriana's witch sense gave her a split second's warning of the blast, and the same reflexes he'd just complimented saved his life. Bracing herself, Moriana caught hold of Fost's swordbelt just as he pitched over the brink. She dragged him back, aided by his groping fingers tearing on the gray stone of the raft. Erimenes shrilled terror as his satchel momentarily hung above nothingness. 'Thanks,' shouted Fost over the roar of the eruption.
Moriana bobbed acknowledgement to the thanks she read on his lips. She couldn't hear anything. The mountain was roaring in the voice of a million angry hornbulls. Fost stared in wonder that transcended fear as an orange prominence reached heavenward from the crater. The blast had blown the dust free of the mountaintop, and the heat of the geysering lava dispelled the clouds above like an enchantment gone insane. The top of the flame stream wavered, tipped, arced toward the far side of the volcano in a fountain of molten rock.
Something exploded nearby with a sound loud enough to hear even through shockwave-deadened ears. A fragment grazed his cheek. He blinked at ash and cowered inside his mail shirt.
A bomb, he heard Ziore say inside his mind. A partially cooled lava shell surrounding hot gases. It must have struck the mountainside nearby.
Hecursed. Apparently all Athalar waxed pedantic atthe damnedest times. Fost glanced back at their pursuers in time to see something streak down and smash the big raft amidships. The stone platform came apart in midair. Fost saw superheated gases strip the living flesh from the Hissers' bones as the blast scattered them away among the debris of their vessel.
That sort of thing happened a lot when I had the Destiny Stone. Itwas Moriana's voice now inside his head. He guessed Ziore acted as a repeater for the woman, since oral communication was out of the question in the din of eruption.