are,' she said in a quavering voice, 'you bear too close a resemblance to someone I once knew.' Fost grinned.
'I don't know whether you'd call it resemblance so much as identity,' he said.
'Ah, Princess Moriana, we meet again,' said a voice from Fost's hip. I've never seen you lovelier. Treachery and murder agree with you, it appears.' 'Erimenes?' She gasped. 'Then it's – oh, Gods, Fost!'
'Guilty.' The word cracked across and the flippancy left his face. He opened his mouth only to shut it again. 'Are you well?' he finally asked, and instantly castigated himself. He'd had months to form a proper greeting and had done no better than a lovesick adolescent. The princess visibly strained to hold back her tears.
'I didn't think I'd ever be grateful that I didn't strike true,' she stammered, 'but now, oh, Fost, I'm so glad you're alive!'
'Don't chide yourself about your aim, Moriana. There's something I need to tell you. You don't have…' His voice stopped. His lips moved but no sound emerged.
'Fost? There's something wrong with the enchantment. I can't hear you.'
'You don't have anything to worry about, my dear,' he heard his own voice say. 'I'm working with the Underground to pave the way for your glorious return.' She frowned at his peculiar choice of words.
'I'm pleased to hear it. I'm laying plans with Uriath now so that we may strike coordinated blows to bring Synalon down.' She seemed about to say more, then glanced out of Fost's field vision. 'I… I have to go now.' The breaking of the connection hid a choked sob.
'Erimenes,' hissed Fost, picking his way from shadow to shadow through the streets. 'Why in Ust's name did you take over my voice? And how did you do it? This far from Athalau?'
'Necessity,' the philosopher said haughtily, 'is an excellent aid to my already significant ability. And it was urgently necessary that I prevent you from blurting that Moriana had the Destiny Stone instead of the Amulet of Living Flame.' 'But why? By the Emperor's rouged ass, she has to know!'
'Do you really want Uriath to know?' The courier fell abruptly silent. 'That's better. Someone might hear you – hsst!'
A footfall came to Fost's sensitive ears. He melted back into a doorway and concentrated on imitating shadow. A moment later a pair of Monitors swung around the corner and came right at him.
'And then I said to her, 'If you'll just be reasonable, it might not be necessary to take you in, my sweet.''
His companion laughed loudly, an ugly, distorted sound through his mask. 'So wha'd she say? Huh?'
They passed by. The first Monitor elbowed his taller companion in the ribs. Fost's fingers tightened on his swordhilt. 'What do you think, Nalgo? 'Oh, you Monitors have always been my ideal, so strong and brave! I'll do simply anything for the service of my Cit -''
They rounded the next corner, going in the opposite direction from the candle shop Fost had just left by a back door. He let himself breathe again and set off down the street.
'I don't trust Uriath farther than I can throw him,' Erimenes said as if nothing had happened.
'A vaporous entity would be hard pressed to throw a man that portly.'
'My point exactly. I think he suspects Moriana ventured lo Athalau in search of a talisman of some sort. Whether or not he knows she was after the Amulet is irrelevant. If he thinks she got something powerful, he might just decide to lay hands on it himself.' Fost chewed his lips, rolling the problem around in his mind. 'I wouldn't put it past him,' he conceded.
'And if he finds she's got the Destiny Stone – and if he has any idea of its properties – he may just decide to have nothing to do with her. At all.' 'You mean the thing's that potent?'
'Potent beyond imagining.' Was it imagining or did Fost sense trepidation in the genie's voice? 'It's vastly stronger than the Amulet ever was. But it was always valued less because its powers were uncontrollable. In my time some theorized it possessed a sentience of its own.' For once Fost wasn't yawning at one of Erimenes's lectures. 'But we've got to tell her.'
'Agreed,' said the spirit. 'But can you suggest how we might go about it without sharing the information with the great and noble Uriath?' 'I'll think of a way.' 'You hope.'
'Ziore?' Yes, child. 'I… I feel strange.' She felt rather than heard gentle laughter.
You killed the only man you've ever loved, only to behold him healthy a half year later. Did you not feel strange, that would be the strangest thing of all. 'Did I do right, Ziore?'
'Do you think what you did was right?' came the genie's soft voice, both to ears and mind.
'I did then. But now, I don't know.' She sat up in bed. A moon balanced on the edge of the Thails, laying a golden trail across Lake Wir. In the distance a nightbird sang to it. 'But somehow the decision to ally myself with the Fallen Ones came easier because… because I killed him.' 'Because you felt you'd already soiled yourself.'
'Yes.' Moriana hooked a thumb around the silver chain she wore always around her neck and fished the Amulet into the moonlight. As usual its surface balanced white against black, revealing nothing. 'Now I hate myself more. Fost's being alive almost makes things harder.'
'I know.' The words came soft, caressing, soothing., Moriana kneaded her face with one hand. 'I do love him,' she said softly. 'How can I find myself resenting that he's alive?' 'You're human.'
'It's so easy for you to be so glib, you who've never known human passion!' She stopped, horrified at what she'd said. 'Gods, Ziore, I'm sorry. I didn't mean…'
'You did,' Ziore said with a trace of sternness. 'If nothing else, I've learned too much to heed words spoken in anger.' A moment's silence, then, 'But speaking of anger, I confess I was angry when I heard you address Fost's unseen companion as Erimenes. If you hadn't had things of more import to say, I would have told that vile charlatan a thing or two!'
Moriana grinned wryly at Ziore's vehemence, so unusual to the placid spirit. In an oblique way the nun was chastising her. It was the fault of Erimenes's philosophy that Ziore hadn't known human passion.
'I'm glad Darl's away,' said Moriana. '1… 1 couldn't face telling him yet.' 'I understand.'
'Thank you.' The princess let the Amulet fall and lay back down. The pillow was cool and sweet-smelling beneath her head. 'To think I'll see him again!' she whispered. 'Oh, Ziore, I'm not a murderer!' But a voice in the back of her skull asked: am I a traitor?
CHAPTER TWELVE
In increasing desperation, Fost attempted to tell Moriana that the talisman she carried was not the Amulet of Living Flame but the mercurial Destiny Stone. The opportunity eluded him. As the City moved toward Wirix and the waiting army, the press of preparation drove each of them ever faster. Not infrequently Fost was on hand when Uriath and Moriana were in communication. They exchanged a few hurried words, looks which Fost hoped meant certain things but couldn't be sure.
But Uriath was always there, somedays bland, sometimes avuncular, always giving the impression of something hooded coiled beside him. Even with Erimenes there to hold his tongue for him, Fost found himself unwilling to speak of the Amulet and the Stone with Uriath near.
As the City crossed the Thail Mountains and began to descend from the height to which it had climbed to clear the peaks, Moriana's army broke camp and moved southwest from Lake Wir to meet it. The Wirixers didn't want the battle fought over their heads and were unwilling to take active part in the action. They had given Moriana's forces the right to stay for a time and had provided her with supplies. More than that they wouldn't do. It mattered little. The battle for the City would be fought in the City's own element: sky.
It was the last day before the two sisters met, doomsday for unspecified numbers on both sides. Fost had gone without sleep for three days trying to accomplish a million things at once, laying out tactics for the joint invasion and insurrection, trying to keep the morale of his untried revolutionaries from disintegrating totally at the prospect of battle, dodging the last-minute push by the Monitors that wiped out a quarter of the Underground's cells overnight. He stumbled like a zombie when he entered Uriath's current catacomb to confer with the resistance chief.
A silent youth guided him down a slippery flight of stairs. Rank and humid smells clogged his nostrils. Why did Uriath pick a mushroom farm for his new command post?
A door streaked with a rainbow array of fungus was pushed open. Fost caught a glimpse of Uriath slamming
