low enough to shout down that the way into Athalau lay open, Fost assumed that Guardian had opened a narrow passage as he had done previously. Or Moriana had found an ice worm tunnel and convinced the glacier to let the humans use it. Instead, a great arched tunnel yawned ahead. Synalon's dog trotted around the bend and stopped beside the bear Fost rode. 'My sister's done well.'
Fost only grunted. He could still scarcely bear to speak to Synalon. Though last night, only a night after Jennas's murder, when she had come to him – that had required no talking.
Wings cracking like sails in a stiff wind, a flight of bird riders passed low overhead and disappeared through the entrance. Fost heard the scraping of a cane, and Selamyl came into view. He stopped. His face lit with awe and wonder, and then he dragged himself on.
Vancha Broad-Ax appeared at the head of the file of Ethereals. Seeing the entry opened in the living ice, she stopped and stared for a long moment. She turned then to Fost, looked through him, wheeled her huge mount and went back the way she had come. Shouts echoing down the canyon told Fost the bear riders were going home. Jennas's last command had been fulfilled.
Another shout brought Fost's head around. His heart jumped in spite of grief and bone-deep weariness, and he kicked the bear into a lumbering run toward the tunnel and the woman and the blue figure stepping from it.
In all his fevered adolescent fantasies, Fost had never even remotely imagined that he might pass a night in fabled Athalau, lying abed on silken sheets with a beautiful princess. Of course, if he had dreamed of the horrors and travails that went along with the fulfillment of the never-entertained fantasy, he probably would have slit his wrists.
The six of them had exchanged terse greetings over dinner in a dormitory in the center of Athalau, next to the Palace of Esoteric Wisdom. On convincing Guardian to open the pathway, Rann had sent back a message via Moriana for a squadron of bird riders to come ahead and provide defensive strength. Their meat that evening was an antelope the flyers had shot in the foothills, quartered and flown in.
After dinner, Fost and Moriana bid good night to Synalon and Rann. Fost had dreaded this moment but Synalon did not explode with temper, did nothing but smile and nod in a specially meaningful way before going off with her eunuch cousin. Moriana watched them go. 'They're up to something,' she said quietly. 'I mistrust them.'
They ensconced Ziore and Erimenes in a room on the bottom floor of the dormitory where the sounds of their reunion wouldn't keep the others awake all night. Then Fost and Moriana climbed the stairs to their chamber on the second floor for a more intimate welcoming of their own.
Half-drowsing afterward, Fost lay on his side, running his fingers through Moriana's hair. It was fine and soft – like Synalon's. He shook himself. He didn't want to take that pathway. 'What's the matter?' Moriana asked sleepily.
'I was just wondering about this room. The bed smells fresh and these sheets certainly don't seem two hundred years old.'
'We had Rann's bird riders fly in the bedding this afternoon,' she said. 'As for the sheets, they're of Athalar make and meant to last.' 'It's just as well,' he said, glancing down at the rumpled bedding. She smiled lazily. 'Let's test them again,' she said, reaching for him.
Finishing, they drowsed for a time, woke, made love again. Privately Fost marvelled at his own response. Synalon had been wringing him dry every night since the first time in the Ethereals' village. But he wanted to lose himself in the taste and scent and feel of Moriana, the textures and tempos of her body, and it was as if he hadn't been with a woman in weeks.
When they were done, he rose and poured them both wine from a crystal decanter.
'It's hard to believe this hasn't gone to vinegar,' he said, carrying the cups to the bed.
'The Athalar magics were versatile.' She sipped the wine. 'I hope their knowledge can be recovered.'
They had made a good start that day, and a vital one. As they had walked the long road leading from the Gate of the Mountains down into the softly glowing city, Fost had remarked that he hoped they would be able to find the Nexus in time. It'd be brutal irony to make it all the way here and then not find that which they sought.
'I don't know where it lies,' Erimenes said. 'But I think it will be no problem. The Ethereals have Athalau in their blood. Being present in the city works on me, makes my powers grow. They will know where they are to go, mark my words.'
And it was true. Selamyl had no sooner set foot on the rim of the depression in which the city lay than he stopped and went as rigid as a hunting dog catching a scent. Fost thought it simple wonder at first. There was reason enough for that. One didn't have to be of Athalar descent to marvel at the beauty of the place, its soaring spires and well-ordered colonnades, a symphony of form and shape and color. A smooth, seamless substance paved the road that sloped gently before them into the heart of the city. Over all shone the sourceless, shifting, polychromatic and restful light of Athalau.
Here and there blocks of stalactites of ice had fallen and damaged buildings. Fost, Moriana and Rann, who had all been there before, kept hands on sword hilts and a watchful eye for ice worms. These creatures, some big enough to swallow a man whole, infested the glacier to Guardian's annoyance, and had over the years filtered down to lair in the city.
But neither the unconscious vandalism of falling ice nor the invasion of the deadly worms detracted from Athalau's beauty. Yet it was not the beauty that gripped Selamyl or the others as they came up behind him to stand transfixed.
'I… I remember,' Selamyl said in a distant voice. 'This was meant to be.' As the quiet syllables echoed through the vast dome of ice, he set off at a vigorous walk down the road, neglecting now to use his cane.
No one had seen an Ethereal hurry before, let alone a crippled one, but one by one the rest came out of their trance and followed, some trotting to catch up. As if he had walked these boulevards every day of his life, Selamyl led them to a wide plaza at the center of the city, which was dominated by the most striking building in Athalau, a tower carved from a single giant ruby whose top was lost in the ice above. He turned down the street flanking the plaza and walked quickly to a building whose front was mostly blocked by a great chunk of ice fallen from above, crushing the marble portico.
He looked in dismay at the obstruction, and then down at the sinister rusty stains on the pavement under his feet. 'What has happened here? We must get in.'
Rann stepped forward, a curious half-smile on his hips. He scuffed at one stain with the toe of his boot. 'Blood,' he explained. 'Mine.'
Fost and Moriana looked at each other. They knew this place, and what had happened to it. It was the Palace of Esoteric Wisdom, once holding the Amulet of Living Flame and the treacherous Destiny Stone. The ice had not fallen by random chance. Erimenes had called it down to crush Rann and his bird riders, who had tracked Fost and others here to seize the Amulet for Synalon.
But the way into the Palace was not entirely blocked. Fost scrambled up with Rann close behind. Together they helped Selamyl over the rubble. He led them through the nave without a glance at the altar which had held the two talismans. To a stairway, down; deep below, beyond a door Erimenes swore had not been opened since before his time, to where the Nexus lay.
It didn't look like much. It was only a pattern traced on the floor in some dull metal, a square mandala with various nodes, widening in the metallic track in a distribution that said chance but whispered some hidden design. It stretched thirty feet on a side with ten feet of floor surrounding it, a domed ceiling rising twenty feet overhead. Fost looked at Moriana, who shrugged. He could tell by the disappointment in her eyes that she felt nothing of power here.
But Selamyl walked in with eyes aglow to the center of the Nexus and fell to his knees in rapture. And one by one, the Ethereals followed him in, trancelike in their movements, and each moved to a spot on the design and dropped in turn to a kneeling posture, as if by prearrangement. Now Fost sat on the edge of the bed gazing down at the princess.
'Tell me what happened after you left Brev,' she asked, and he did so. She caught her breath when he mentioned waking in the middle of the night to see Synalon in conversation with the black Dwarf, though he admitted it might have been some trick of the light. Moriana said nothing to this, but her expression was eloquently skeptical.
She squeezed his hand during the account of the battle with the skyrafts. When he came to what happened
