come.'
Selamyl strode forward and took his position in the middle of the line and faced the far wall. Soundlessly the others glided forward and knelt, each upon one of the nodes that seemed strewn at random throughout the mandala. With a sinking feeling, Fost saw how few there truly were. Many of the nodes were unoccupied and the silvery patch in the center looked like a gap left by a missing tooth. He didn't see how they could ever succeed.
'What would Felarod do, were he here now?' Moriana asked aloud.
'You must find your own way,' said Selamyl. His eyes were closed, his voice seemed to come from all around. 'Flow with the universe. The World Spirit will guide you.' 'Can you – can you reach the Spirit?' she asked. 'Yes.' 'Then do so.'
Silence. Fost felt it gnawing inside him like an animal demanding release, felt the tension begin to build and set his limbs trembling. He wanted to scream at the inactivity.
Moriana shifted to stand beside him, and her hand sought his. He willed his hand not to quaver and knew he failed. He looked around. Synalon stood nearby with lifted chin, feigning disinterest. Rann stood with folded arms, his head thrust forward, his yellow eyes wide beneath thin brows.
A greenish glow bathed Rann's face. Fost stared at him for a second, then turned back to the center of the room.
The metallic tracery on the floor had come to life. The green glow flowed from it suffusing the room. The kneeling Ethereals had become translucent. Each slender body shone like a lamp but without heat.
He became aware of a faint pulsation of the light. Shouts rebounded down the stairway from above, and it seemed there was an outcry in the streets.
'Behold the Nexus,' came Selamyl's voice. 'It is Athalau itself. This is the center.' 'And the World Spirit?' Moriana could barely force out the words. 'It comes.'
A chill wind tore at Zak'zar's face and felt as if it would strip away the skin. His cloak cracked behind him like a whip. It was agony to be abroad in this cold night with the icy breath of the Waste upon him. The others of the People lay abed wrapped against the chill. But his place was upon the rampart of the floating City.
Istu stood beside him, set apart from the night only by the absolute blackness of his being unmarred by stars. His yellow eyes watched the rugged terrain below unfold. The City followed his will, its course matching the winding of the black slash that wandered through the mountains.
He stiffened, raised his head as if testing the wind for some scent, some sound.
'What is it?' Zak'zar asked, shouting to be heard above the keening wind.
Istu raised a taloned hand to still him. Then he crumpled his hands into fists and shook them in the face of the south. 'My curse upon you! I lay my curse on Athalau and all within!' 'What's happening?'
Istu's eyes swept down. Zak'zar thought the Demon would slay him in his unreasoning fury. But the mad glare subsided. Istu spoke.
'In Athalau. I feel it, I hear it, it wounds my ears! The Pale Ones have summoned the World Spirit.' Zak'zar felt strength ebbing. 'Have we lost, then?'
'No!' Great shards of rock detached themselves from the walls below and slid into the Gate of the Mountains as the Demon's voice beat down upon them. 'Never! They lack Felarod, and knowledge, and I am strong! Never again shall I be bound. Never!'
Zak'zar gripped the stone guardwall and stared ahead. In the distance he saw a pool of paleness lying against the blackness of the mountains. A glacier. Within it lay his fate. The wind tore at his eyes.
Hours passed like days, like years.
'Vast is the World Spirit,' Selamyl said when Moriana asked him if the summoning was done, if the Spirit had risen to smite its starborn foe. 'It is slow to anger but its wrath is great.'
Fost sat with his back against the wall of the Nexus chamber. He drifted in and out of sleep. When his body realized that no amount of adrenaline was going to make things happen any quicker, it surrendered to the exertions of the day before. But still an urgency nagged at him causing him to half-rise from sleep and dream images.
At some point a servant brought the spirit jars. Fost roused to listen briefly to Erimenes describing how the whole city now pulsed with the same green light that came from the Nexus. Fost thought the pattern's glow brighter than before, but thinking took too great an effort and he slept again.
He came awake abruptly, sensing something vital was about to happen.
The first thing he saw was the City in the Sky. He shook his head, shut his eyes and opened them again. Still it hung in the midst of his vision, above sharp peaks turned molten gold by the rising sun.
'Disconcerting, isn't it?' Erimenes chuckled dryly at his elbow. 'My humble contribution.'
'You caused that?' Somehow, a vision of what was happening miles away had been conjured forth, inside the room.
'Well… no. But it was I who remembered the old stories and told the princess how to call it up.'
Moriana stood where she had before, staring at the picture which occupied one whole wall of the chamber. 'And the Spirit?' he asked. 'Has it come yet?'
'No,' said Ziore from his other side. Her face was stark with worry. 'And soon it will be too late. Poor Moriana.' 'It is come.'
The chamber reverberated to the words. The voice was Selamyl's and yet was not. It was deeper, transformed, as vital and surging as the boom of surf on sand.
Moriana raised her eyes to the scene of the Sky City. It jumped forward. Fost gasped. Then he realized that it was the picture that moved with such speed, not the City itself. He saw the black, horned shape on the parapet and felt a cold greater than that of the Waste seize his bones.
'I call upon the World Spirit to destroy the Demon Istu!' Her words rang out like trumpets. Fost caught his breath. Nothing happened.
'World Spirit! Strike! Raise up your power against the dark destroyer as you did ten thousand years ago!'
Fost felt it now. The energy folded him, restoring strength to his limbs, clearing his weary, scratchy eyes. Each breath was wine. But still nothing happened, no energies leapt forward to oppose the black Demon. 'World Spirit!' screamed Moriana. 'What's wrong?'
'Will,' said that voice which had once belonged to Selamyl. 'It needs a will to guide it.' 'But what of you, you Ethereals?'
A pause. Fost thought of the awesome deliberation of Guardian. The world was much bigger than the glacier. Would the Spirit be commensurately slower?
'We…' For the first time that transcendent voice faltered. 'We lack the will. We have forgotten how to strike out in anger and lack the time to learn.' Synalon rose, stretched catlike and sensuous. 'One thing I've plenty of is will. Sister, shall I?'
Moriana stared into the green fire of the Nexus. This was what she'd feared, that she must enter rapport with the World Spirit and risk the dissolution of that small spark that was her soul, her inner being, her self. The time had come for her to match the dedication already shown by the Ethereals. 'No,' Moriana said and stepped forward.
Fost leaped to his feet, lunged forward and caught her wrist, crying, 'You can't!' 'I must.' Her voice was calm.
'You'll die!'
'And what of that?' She reached out and stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers. They rasped on stubble. 'I must do this. Only then can I expiate the wrong I created when I helped the Fallen Ones capture the City.' She dropped her hand.
'I love you,' she said. 'Live long and take what happiness you find.' And she stepped into the middle of the Nexus.
Green fire enveloped her. Fost cried out again and started to follow. A steel claw caught his arm. He struggled, then turned back in fury. Ziore held his wrist. There was nothing wispy or insubstantial about her now.
'Do you think she wants you to throw your life away?' the genie asked. 'But…'
'You cannot help her now. You can only distract her.' He stepped back. And the power came up through the floor and shook him and his mind reeled toward blackness.
At the molten core of the planet burned anger.
But it was rage without form, without direction. That vast organism which was the World possessed a
