thousand senses and each one cried out that something was deathly wrong. A pathogen had invaded its system, a black presence, both alien and destructive. It knew that something must be done but it didn't know what or how.
A feeling tickled the edge of its tiny being, tiny but insistent. Slowly the feeling penetrated it. Slowly it responded.
It sensed other presences, miniscule, separate from and at the same time part of it. It flowed toward them. Somehow it knew that here was the means to channel its anger, to bring its mighty wrath to bear on the wrongness.
It touched the lesser entities and became one with them. It stopped. There was nothing, no direction, no guidance, nothing to purge the irritant.
Then a new presence touched it. Will burned within, a hot, white light. Like a plant questing toward the sun, the World Spirit moved to merge itself with this thing of Will.
At the core of Moriana's being burned anger.
Her City was held captive by an enemy who had betrayed her to possess it. She felt it hanging almost overhead now, and her being ached with the longing for it. But more even than Zr'gsz, she hated their Demon ally. He had defiled her, laid surrogate hands of stone on her and ravished her body while his hell-glowing eyes raped her soul. For that her rage would tear the skies asunder, to visit vengeance upon Istu. Your enemy is near! she thought. Now reach!
The mountain called the Throat of the Dark Ones exploded.
It blasted itself skyward, a mountain launched as a missile into the dawn, riding a column of incandescent gas and ash and the dust of pulverized rock. The Zr'gsz skystone mines disappeared, and those who worked them and those who fought to slow the work. So violent was the blast that huge hunks of the shattered mountain entered orbit around the world to spiral down slowly until the tenuous arms of the atmosphere tangled them and drew them to flaming end.
Such was Moriana's wrath united with the wrath of the World.
Though the wavefront of the blast and the titan sound that rode upon it would not reach the Ramparts for over an hour, Istu felt Mount Omizantrim die. He clawed at the heavens and bellowed his rage. His ancient enemy was come. The fight would be to the death this time.
He turned and strode to the center of the City. His bowed legs straddled the Well of Winds. He spread forth the blackness of his arms. He reached outward, began to flow downward, his form subsiding and swelling to fill the Well. The Black Lens appeared where he had been, glistening, pregnant with power.
A thirty-foot wall of water washed over the island of Wirix and scoured it clean, driven by the blast that slew Omizantrim. But the Wrath had only begun.
With the senses she now shared with another, Moriana knew that her first stroke had missed. She struck again -
– and a range of mountains thrust themselves above the sea on the far side of the world, dark and humped and water-glistening like the back of an aquatic monster. And again -
– and storm clouds gathered above the Ramparts, a thousand times faster than the normal gathering of clouds. They piled higher, black on black, shot through with lightning. In the streets of the Sky City the Fallen Ones cried out in fear and wonder. And again -
– and part of the Northern Continent split off and sank into the sea with a crack and a roar and a rushing of water.
Fury raged in silence upon the wall of the Nexus chamber. Fost's back was to the wall and his eyes were wide. He had control of his limbs again, but the power still surged like a drug in his veins. 'Moriana! What's happening?' cried Ziore.
'I… I cannot control it.' Her voice penetrated the bones of those in the chamber, transmuted as Selamyl's had been.
The room shook then. Synalon lurched into Rann; Fost fell, cracking his knee painfully on the stone. Imaged on the wall, the western Ramparts tumbled like eightpins to the throes of an earthquake. The Ethereals and Moriana sat statue-still, unmoved by the spasm beneath the earth.
The gathering clouds had grown to a black anvil thunderhead, a mountain above mountains. The watchers saw a sheet of lightning flash from the thunderhead and shear off a slice of the City's starboard rim in a coruscating spray of molten stone. Synalon shrieked as if it were her own flesh being sundered.
Maddened, the Demon retaliated. A black funnel grew from the underside of the Lens and stabbed down. It bit into the ice over Athalau and began tearing chunks from the glacier's body. A moan rolled through Athalau, pitched almost below hearing, so that it rang deep in the bones of the humans within.
'The Demon's killing Guardian,' shouted Fost. 'Can't you do something?'
'Yes,' said Moriana. That much she could do. She folded power around herself, around Guardian, strapping the glacier in a cocoon of forces that held him steady against the pull of the vortex.
Istu squealed with rage as his funnel ceased to bite. He lashed downward repeatedly. But he could no longer gouge the ice that armored Athalau.
'What now?' asked Zak'zar from the edge of the Skywell. 'Wait,' said Istu, 'and you shall see.'
Moriana kept trying to wield the power of the World Spirit, to smite Istu with all the force at her command. The watchers in the chamber beneath the Palace saw earthquake and waterspout and eruption devastate the land. The World Spirit flailed about like a blind beast only landing near its foe by accident.
'Moriana, you've got to stop,' screamed Ziore as they watched Paramount, Lord of Trees, hurled down to smash a hundred lesser trees beneath it. 'You'll destroy the Realm without harming Istu!'
'What can I do? I cannot aim the power. If only I had some way to focus on the City, on Istu!'
Synalon shook back her long black hair and turned from the Nexus.
'I knew I'd find a part to play in this farce,' she said. 'Rann, summon me a bird tender. I wish my eagle made ready at once.' He gaped at her. 'Because I will be the focus my sister needs.'
'Highness! Why?'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
'Madness,' declared Rann.
'Not so, cousin. Moriana and I are twins. There is a link between us, though we've spent our lives denying it.' She looked back at her sister, who sat like some green idol in the center of the Nexus. 'And my hatred is great. Give me your power, sister. I shall wield it with a fine rage.'
Moriana did not move. Perhaps she could not; perhaps she was frozen forever in that position with her legs folded under her, her hands resting on her thighs. So complete was her lack of response that Fost feared she had died or utterly lost her identity in the immensity of the World Spirit. Then, 'Yes,' filled the chamber. Rann raised a hand to halt Synalon as she went to the door.
'You'll need an escort, cousin. Someone to make sure you have time to achieve rapport with Moriana.' 'You propose I take an army? Where do we get the time for that?'
'A small escort will have a chance to approach the City unseen.' He hitched up his sword belt. 'With your permission, Highness.' 'I'm coming, too,' blurted Fost. A shadow crossed Synalon's face.
'No!' said Moriana firmly, though her expression didn't change. 'Let me congratulate you on your courage, Fost!' cried Erimenes. 'This is the ultimate adventure of a lifetime.' He whirled to face the genie.
'It's not courage. I'm doing this because I'm afraid, dammit. I've thought I'd carried on with this mad venture for love or loneliness or from sheer curiosity. But there's another reason. I'm afraid to live in a world that gods and devils use as their playground. We're just pawns to them, all of us. I can't take that, do you understand?'
'Go then,' said Moriana with resignation. Still she remained immobile, apparently lifeless.
Rann clasped forearms with Fost and left the chamber at a run. Fost paused, then picked up Ziore's jug and carried it into the Nexus, jumping across the burning lines and avoiding the nodes. His head swam to tidal surges of power, but he made it, depositing the jug at Moriana's side. He stooped and kissed her forehead; it was icy. Then he turned and ran for the door, slowing only to scoop up Erimenes's jar. 'Farewell, my love!' sang Erimenes. 'I'm off
