'The Princess Moriana Etuul's written petition claims it is your duty as humans to resist Zr'gsz aggression. What aggression? And if it be the duty of your people to fight mine to the death, why did she come of her own accord to Thendrun seeking our aid in reclaiming her throne?'
A babble of voices washed about the podium. He raised his hand, stilling them.
'The Princess Moriana tells you we treacherously seized the City in the Sky from her, our ally. Examine the record. Who first built that fabled City – and who seized it by treachery from its rightful owners? We assisted her in unseating Synalon – but for our own ends. Is this wrong? Who among you would not resort to subterfuge to avenge the murder of your kinfolk and reclaim from thieves the house you built? We only took back what was ours.
'I come before you in the name of my People, bearing the willow-wand of peace. For your own sakes as well as ours, I ask you not to grasp instead the firebrand of war!'
He bent forward, voice dropping to a sonorous whisper that penetrated to the farthest reaches of the room.
'Weigh well your decision, men of the Empire. Much hangs in the balance.' He straightened and strode from the podium amid a barrage of cries.
Moriana vaulted over the rail and scattered Assemblymen in all directions as she moved forward. Head back, eyes ablaze, she walked down the aisle to the podium Zak'zar had just vacated. Squilla faced her, gavel raised as if to repel her attack on orderly procedure. Their eyes met; he fled before her.
She needed no gavel to bring the hall to silence, any more than Zr'gsz had. With hair streaming about her head like liquid fire, she launched into an impassioned speech.
The door to the Assembly Hall crashed open. Moriana paused, one fist raised in emphasis of a point. An old man stalked into the room. He walked ramrod straight in spite of the burden of years. Gray hair hung lank about his haggard face. The lips Moriana remembered so well were now twisted from emotions too great to be expressed. He was clad in scarlet and his eyes shone with fanatical light. 'Sir Tharvus!' she exclaimed.
The only survivor of the three Notable Knights who had ridden her banner at Chanobit Creek stopped and flung out his arm to point at her.
'Do not heed this witch!' he shouted. 'Her wiles lured my brothers and thousands of our countrymen to their deaths. 'On peril of your souls, don't listen to her!'
'So what happens now?' Fost asked. A smile pushed up the ends of Cheidro's moustache.
'Why, what always happens when there's an impasse in a matter close to His Effulgence's heart.' 'What's that?'
'He throws a party.' 'This is more like it!' crowed Erimenes. Fost stirred from his fog. 'What is?'
A tall, lithe girl, nude except for diagonal stripes of blue and gold, walked by on the arm of an officer in a purple plumed helmet. 'This is!'A sweep of Erimenes's vaporous arm indicated everything.
At long last the travellers were face to face with the seamy, steamy decadence of High Medurim. The Golden Dome was every bit the voluptuary's vision of heaven popular repute made it out to be. Niches lined the wall, dark and inviting. Already Fost dimly made out writhing tangles of pale limbs in alcoves across the circular chamber. In the center, a round pit was filled with lustrous furs in careless profusion. Tables bowed under the weight of delicacies. Serving maids circulated everywhere to keep the wine and high spirits flowing. Many wore no more than kohl and inviting smiles.
In the middle of the pit reared a dais. On it lay a throne and on the throne sat the Emperor. He wore a ludicrous tent-like garment patterned in white and black diamonds.
Here and there Fost saw forms or faces he recognized. Magister Banshau sat with his chubby legs dangling over the edge of the pit, his garb standing out even in this profusion of color. He held a wine jug in one hand and the shapely thigh of a young noblewoman in the other. He looked mightily pleased with the world. Over by the far wall stood the dignified Foedan of Kolnith. His doublet was askew, his hair rumpled and he gazed on the crowd with bleary-eyed gravity while a short, plump redhead poured brandy into a snifter the size of his head.
At the center of an eddy of gay costumes rode Zak'zar, laughing like a rakehell at something the two young women he had his arms about said, a striking, chilling figure in a robe of woven midnight.
'Great Ultimate!' Erimenes shouted in Fost's ear. 'Look at that, will you?'
Moving through the crush with lithe grace was a strange and beautiful figure. Her body was that of a voluptuous woman but it was clad in soft, short, creamy fur. A long, sensitive tail swung behind her. Her face combined the best characteristics of human and feline. Her ears were pointed and set high on her head, poking out from the midst of a lustrous cascade of blue-black hair. And at her back was folded a pair of wings. 'I'll be damned,' said Fost with feeling.
'So you like Ch'rri?' A slender blonde woman in a short tunic, her hair cut boyishly short, dropped onto the bench at Fost's side. 'She's quite a sight, isn't she? If you have a taste for the exotic' 'Uh, Ch-chu-chri?' Fost couldn't manage the throaty purr.
'Ch'rri,' the blonde woman repeated, laughing at Fost's doleful look. 'She's the only one of her kind, poor thing. Another Wirixer experiment. Or work of art, perhaps. One of their genetic wizards wanted to see what a winged cat woman looked like, and she was the result.' She frowned. 'She's a terribly lonely thing. But she does know some interesting ways to make up for it.'
'What are you waiting for?' demanded Erimenes. 'Introduce yourself! You're the hero of the hour, Fost. You'll sweep her off her feet'
'I think that sums it up well, spirit,' boomed a voice. Fost turned to look at the group approaching. 'Wild tales of your exploits are flying all over the city. We'd be honored to hear the truth from your own lips.'
The speaker was a rangy man in a flame-colored robe. His head was shaved and a gold earring swung from one earlobe. A tawny-haired woman, taller than Fost and with a patch over one eye, walked to one side. On the other was a shy, towheaded youth.
'I'm Sirsirai. This is Osni, and Jerru.' He nodded to each of his companions in turn. Something in the way they moved clicked in Fost's brain. 'You're fighting masters,' he said, almost accusingly.
The one-eyed woman bobbed her head in agreement.
Erimenes cleared his throat, then said, 'What you've heard about Fost is true. All of it – and none of his marvelous adventures would have happened without me…'
Across the room, Moriana smiled and nodded mechanically and fended off still another smiling face. She was a celebrity. That she had balked at wearing frilly, fleecy finery in favor of her russet and beige tunic and trousers seemed to draw rather than repel the revellers. 'Why don't you relax?' said Ziore. 'Enjoy yourself.'
'You're as bad as Erimenes,' she accused, then softened her tone. 'I'm sorry. That was unfair. But I've no appetite for this sort of thing.'
'That might be a pity,' Ziore said, her voice holding a tone of longing.
On his dais, Teom sat fondling his chin and regarding various gorgeously painted and costumed courtiers, male and female, who had arranged themselves in front of his throne to vie for his attention. Deciding, he flicked his little finger. A slender woman in a feathered skullcap and sky blue tights widened her eyes in happy anticipation and scampered to the dais in response to his summons. His knees spread. She knelt between them, took hold of the tent-like robe and hiked it up about his Imperial waist. Beneath it Teom wore trunks and a codpiece of epic proportions that laced up the front. Licking her lips, the woman undid the laces… And fell back as something sprang at her.
All sound ceased as every head turned to see a giant wooden phallus crowned with a painted jester's head bobbing at the end of the spring which had launched it from Teom's crotch.
It was the signal for the orgy to begin in earnest. Flinging his pink-trimmed orange blouse off, Magister Banshau teetered with his splayed toes gripping the edge of the pit. Then with a happy mating-walrus bellow, he launched himself into the sea of naked bodies below. A crowd stood watching as Zak'zar took advantage of a physiological peculiarity of his race to pleasure simultaneously two naked and ecstasy-flushed young women who lay back to back on a buffet table.