leave.
'Yes,' the duke said slowly. 'I know what my part must be. You may leave now, Chief Deputy Tonsho. I will consult the weather. Meteorological data will be of vital importance in the coming conflict. Vital.'
She hid her grimace with another inclination of her head. He had been a strong leader, wiser than many and perhaps less destructive of his subjects than most strong rulers. Then a freak storm had blasted up the sheltered Gulf of Veluz overturning the tiny skiff in which his adored wife and son were taking a pleasurable day's sailing. For a week the duke and his navy searched the waters of the Gulf. The bodies of his wife and sole heir were discovered washed against the first lock of the Dyla Canal. The duke had seemed to shrivel on beholding them.
Since that tragedy he had been obsessed with the study of weather. He had his throne room transferred up to his pinnacle, inconveniently far up flights of stairs for Tonsho's short legs, and the charts and brass meteorological instruments, telescopes and barometers and astrolabes cluttering the cramped chamber were the only things in life that held any interest for him. Tonsho had ambiguous feelings about his fixation. It was sad to see a basically able man so reduced, but at the same time his infirmity cleared her way to power in the richest city of the Realm. And when all was said, she knew she was a more capable ruler than any highborn.
'I'm sure your observations will be of great value,' she said, and left. Her boys trooped obediently behind her, trailing a hint of perfume and the tinkling of weapons harness and gilt finery.
Fost laughed at the wind in his face and followed Jennas at a gallop down the long, sloping plain. Evening came down blue and cool all around, and the vast fields of flowers closed petals of white and yellow and crimson against the coming dark. It felt good to be alive, better perhaps than at any time since the courier had died and been reborn in Athalau.
'Come on!' Jennas shouted back at him. 'Grutz will be as sluggish as a fattened boar if he doesn't exercise. Make him work!'
Fost thumped his heels against the bear's furry barrel of a body. Grutz shot him a reproachful look over one churning red shoulder and dutifully lengthened his stride.
Riding the enormous steppes bear was like riding an avalance in full slide. Fost no longer felt the horrible queazy gut-clutching of motion sickness, nor did the constant back-and-forth whipping of his body threaten to part him, head from neck. He had never been much of a rider, but months in the saddle of the unorthodox southern mount had given him far more skill than he would acknowledge to himself. And it had toned him up as well. There hadn't been much exercise in simply riding the runners of his wheeled dog sled, as he had for most of his career as courier on the highroads of the Realm. Wenching and fighting had kept him more trim than most men then. Now he was conscious of a strength in neck, loins and belly he'd never before known.
Jennas had been riding Chubchuk, her own brown war bear, since both were cubs, as she put it. Pound for pound – and she outweighed the courier by a healthy margin – she was stronger than Fost, or any man he'd known. It wasn't plumpness; the feminine layer of subcutaneous fat, helpful insulation against the vicious chill of antarctic winter, merely softened the outlines of her powerful muscles, making her appear sleek and as strong as some great aquatic creature. Her greatest strength resided in her thighs and solid stomach, thanks to a lifetime of riding. The first time her muscles had clenched in orgasm around him, Fost's eyes had nearly popped out of his head. Since then many were the times when in the heat of passion she'd clamped him so fervently with her legs that he literally cried for mercy.
Tall green grass whipped at his legs. He was a handsome man, another thing he would not admit to himself. His face was more rugged than his years accounted for, showing signs of having been well-buffeted about and occasionally hacked open. His shoulders were broad within a hauberk of mail, his carriage erect, black hair blown back wild and free. When angered Fost looked like death on the prowl, but there were laughter lines prominent about his mouth and ice-gray eyes. He made a splendid barbaric pair with Jennas.
She grinned and waved as Grutz puffed up alongside Chubchuk. Her own chain mail shirt was unlaced down the front displaying a single swatch of canvas tied about her ribcage to keep her large breasts from bouncing uncomfortably.
Fost looked at her and thought how beautiful she was. He had considered her merely handsome before, and wondered now at his former blindness.
But she's not Moriana, came the pursuing thought. Fost knew deep down that no one could ever compare to his Sky City princess. No one, not even Jennas.
The light went out of his eyes and he let Grutz fall behind. He owed his life to the hetwoman of the Bear Clan. Wise and clever, an incomparable companion in bed and battle, she even laughed at his jokes. But Fost loved the golden-haired, green-eyed heiress to the Beryl Throne, she who had killed him to possess the gem both thought at the time to be the Amulet of Living Flame.
However, the gaudy bauble Moriana had taken from Athalau was not the Amulet but the Destiny Stone. This fey device had the power to alter the luck of its wearer, swinging between extremes of good and bad according to its own mysterious whim. The undistinguished pendant Fost had seized in his dying reflex had been the Amulet they both sought.
The Amulet exhausted the last of its power bringing Fost back to life.
Fost had to reach Moriana and tell her of her mistake. If she wore the Destiny Stone into battle with Synalon, thinking it made her invincible, she could perish. That thought formed a cold lump in the pit of the courier's belly. No matter what she'd done to him, he loved her.
He and Jennas rode north of the lava flows around Omizantrim, coming down off the Central Massif of the continent through the dark foothills of the Mystic Mountains. Following the Black River which flowed from the Mystics to meet with the Joreal at Port Zorn, they planned to take passage there through the Karhon Channel around the headlands of the Wirin River delta, and through the Dyla Canal to Kara-Est. It would be much quicker than faring overland as long as the army of the Sky City was interposed between them and the seaport.
They stopped on a high bluff overlooking the Black River. It was Jennas's turn to cook the evening meal. Fost, weighed down by his thoughts, went off by himself in search of his earlier lightness of heart.
Though he'd become an experienced rider, Fost still felt the day's jostling most poignantly in the kidneys. He wandered downstream through twilight touched with the scent of wildflowers and dead fish. He whistled as he searched for a likely spot out of sight of the encampment.
'I do so wish you would leave off that noisemaking,' Erimenes said sourly from his pouch. 'You can't carry a tune in a sling.'
Fost laughed. It was true enough. 'Whatever you say, old spirit,' he said, opening his breeches.
'If you did anything I said, you'd be much better for it,' Erimenes said loftily. 'For instance, right now you'd march back to camp and put what you've got in your hand to much more pleasurable use trying out certain variations I've designed especially for you and Jennas.'
Reflexively, Fost thumped the jug with his free hand. He resumed whistling.
'Ouch! You're a townsman, Fost. No country-born lad would ever urinate in a running river.'
That was true, too. Though he'd spent most of his adult life under the stars, he had been born a child of High Medurim's slums, and such he would remain. He shrugged. And almost died.
Erimenes squawked a warning. Fost froze. When first he'd met the genie, Erimenes's inclination was to let Fost discover approaching danger as it jumped out at him. Erimenes declared this was in the interests of a rousing battle. He often derided the courier for his lack of adventurous spirit, his 'cowardice' in the face of overwhelming odds. The change in Erimenes's habits had come slowly after his brief return to Athalau. Fost didn't yet trust the ghost's reformation.
Water parted in a surge. Fost had a glimpse of toothed jaws opening wider than his own weight. He backed, frantically trying to cut off the stream of urine. A four-foot-long beak slammed shut inches from his stubbornly spraying wand.
'Great Ultimate!' he cried, still scrambling for footing. 'What is that?'
'Something you're best away from' advised Erimenes, 'Far away from. It appears most hungry. I certainly don't cherish the idea of my jug ending up in that maw.'
Fost sat down clumsily in his. attempt to escape. A black head reared above him. Eyes like slits of red fire hungrily appraised him. Fost beheld his attacker as a bird like a black cormorant, but gigantic beyond imagining. Its neck reared a dozen feet from a body of unguessable size. Its head and pointed beak protruded eight feet. Fost had a few more brief seconds to see that the dripping monster was dark above and light below, and then it struck.
The beak drove down with lightning speed. Fost rolled desperately. The lancelike beak buried itself three feet
