The crust began bending inward beneath Fost's feet despite the weight-distributing lava rock. In seconds he would be ankle deep in the fiery river, in minutes only his charred skeleton would remain. He forced himself not to panic. That meant instant death. 'Moriana!' he shouted. 'Use some magic to get me out of here!'
'I can't, Fost. I… I'm too drained.' Even as she spoke, she worked at weaving new cords. Fost watched uncertainly. He didn't think much of tying new lashings to his chunks of rock; the balancing act that would require seemed beyond his ability. He settled by perceptible degrees into the lava. He could only trust her.
Instead of bringing the new cords out to him, though, she sat down and tied them to her own feet, reinforcing the charred lashings that had already carried her across the flow. Then she trudged out to him.
'Climb on,' she ordered, bending down and bracing herself on the balancing poles. 'You're joking.'
'No, she's not,' screeched Erimenes. 'Believe her. Fost, damn you, do as she says! Don't let us die out here!'
'Hurry, Fost,' said Moriana. 'For once, Erimenes is right. Unless you like it out here, climb on!'
Despite the dryness of his throat, Fost swallowed. Casting aside his own poles, he gingerly climbed onto the woman's back. She sank alarmingly beneath him, then rose again, seeming to support his weight with ease. Though her own stone shoes made deep impressions in the elastic crust, they didn't break through. After a few heartpounding minutes, they gained solid ground. 'She's quite a woman,' Erimenes said now in a natural tone. Fost agreed.
Crows crossed the disk of the setting sun, black cruciform motes on an angry eye, an eye whose upper lid was a layer of dark, heavy cloud and whose lower was the tortured lunar landscape of the lava drifts south of Omizantrim. A bloodshot, angry eye.
Had Fost believed in portents he would have been catatonic with fright.
It had been a night and a day since the hazardous landing on the slopes of the exploding mountain. After Moriana's sorcery had changed the course of the lava stream to kill the Zr'gsz patrol, they had headed south away from the erupting cone and had laid up for the night in a wild land of knife-edged ridges and razor-cut draws. Their only company was the mournful howling of the hot wind down the slope of Omizantrim and the stunted vegetation that somehow thrived. The gnarled ofilos possessed a beauty of sorts. Early summer was their blooming season and the trees exploded with yellow-rimmed fragrant white blossoms that defied the gray dust all around. Such delicate beauty against the backdrop of stark desolation reaffirmed their faith in life itself.
After running, Fost decided it was time to be more aggressive. They had picked up spoor from the reptilian Hissers all day and had avoided it. Now he crawled on belly over what felt like broken glass, but the discomfort proved worthwhile. Fifty feet away he spied a Zr'gsz sentry. He waited, watched. The lizard man's partner approached and the two exchanged words, then resumed walking their posts.
Fost cursed the ofilos and its beguiling blossoms. He was violently allergic to the frail five-petalled flowers. His nose streamed the way Omizantrim had leaked lava the day before; his eyes watered and his nose felt as if it had been broken again. Worst of all, he didn't know how long he could contain the sneeze caused by the pollen. If a sneeze escaped…
'It is only a histamine reaction,' came Erimenes's soft explanation. 'The body attempts to reject the formation of…'
Fost stiffened. Why in the name of hell had he brought Erimenes along with him on this furtive mission? The same spirit who, when Sky City troops pursued Fost, had repeatedly called out to attract their attention to Fost's hiding spot and provoke a rousing fight?
'Ust,' he moaned. He stifled a powerful sneeze and felt the pressure almost explode his eardrums.
'Bless you,' Erimenes said softly. 'And you need have no fear that I'll betray you, friend Fost.' The shade was bottled up in his jar, but Fost felt the weary, wounded head-shake. 'To think you put so little trust in me.'
He huddled, trying to make himself appear part of a dogthorn bush. Its two-inch spikes stung like fire ants as they pierced his flesh. The only consolation for the man was in the bush's cycle; it didn't bloom until fall.
Cautiously, he raised his head. The Vridzish sentries went on down the arroyo and disappeared around the southwest corner of a compound wall. He cursed to himself. The wall was impressive, built to more than man-height with blocks of dressed lava looted from demolished buildings and topped with dried branches of dogthorn in much the same way a rich man of High Medurim might top his wall with broken glass. But there was a difference. The wealthy Medurimite did it to keep out intruders; this barrier kept the occupants inside. As Fost spied, he came to the conclusion this was the prison for the Watchers.
Moriana had been astonished and horrified to see what had sprung up on the former site of the Watchers' village. What had cut deepest of all was the realization that in spite of her orders that the captives be well treated, her erstwhile allies had enslaved the Watchers the instant she left. The Zr'gsz must have worked dozens to death to build this compound so quickly.
The discovery had almost thrown her into another spell of depression. Ziore had said or done something to pull her out of it. Fost didn't know what since their communication hadn't been oral. Even lying on his belly being perforated by thorns, he felt jealousy at the intimacy Moriana and Ziore shared, an intimacy no amount of love would ever make it possible for him to share.
The guards came around again and this time Fost successfully timed their patrol, counting monotonous seconds with a childhood chant: one fat courtesan… two fat courtesans… three fat courtesans.. .
When he reached three hundred and four the pair passed by his hiding place again. Five minutes.
He mentally directed the information at Erimenes and hoped the spirit passed it on. It had taken an hour's arguing, cajoling and threatening to get the two genies to form a communications link between Fost and Moriana. They weren't far apart – Moriana lay a hundred yards downslope hidden in a cave – but the mental noise from the captive Watchers inside the black thorn-topped wall made it impossible for Ziore to make out Fost's thoughts at that distance. Fost guessed that they passed most of the long, hot afternoon in psychic squabbling, which was fine with him. He couldn't hear it.
Erimenes beamed Moriana's acknowledgement. The sun had sunk so that only a dazzling silver remained in view. As Fost watched, it sank beneath the skirts of Omizantrim.
From the south came shouts and the tramp-tramp-tramp of trudging feet. Craning his neck and getting his left ear pierced by a thorn, Fost saw some of what was happening. A file of people, men, women and children, in drab clothing rendered drabber still by sun and dust and toil, dragged themselves up to the wooden gates of the compound. The Vridzish guards hurried them along with strokes of lizard hide whips and switches made from thornbush, chivvying them in wheezy pidgin manspeech. The lizard men were eager to get their captives penned up before the cool evening rendered them torpid. The Vridzish could function after dark, but their reflexes slowed.
When the last straggling child was whipped through the gates, they thumped closed and Fost heard a bar rumbling into place across the outside. New guards replaced the old; a mental signal from Moriana confirmed that the setup was the same as before, two on the gate, two patrolling the perimeter.
Night settled in to stay. Crickets tuned up off in the scrub, their chirping joined by the warbling of night lizards distending purple throat sacs to sing plaintively. The ofilos closed their lovely, treacherous blooms and some night blooming succulents released sticky sweet perfumes. Though Fost found their odor cloying, he wasn't allergic to them.