engine.
Eagles screamed and circled. Arrows hammered the walls and roof. Moriana cast aside an emptied quiver and stooped to pick up another as a sweating forester drew his dagger across the throat of the howling man with the ballista-bolt in his guts. She said nothing. She understood battlefield mercy all too well.
Quiet and outwardly untroubled by the carnage around him, the Zr'gsz steersman guided the raft between the airy spaces of the City, making for the Circle of the Skywell in the center of town. Moriana peeked through the slit to check on the craft following hers.
She saw only three. Something had happened to the other; its pilot slain perhaps or it might have been knocked down by the catapults. As she watched, the next raft behind hers careened abruptly to the right. She caught a glimpse of its steersman slumping from behind his globe, arrows sprouting from his back.
The raft brushed a thin tower and brought it crashing into the street. The impact caused the raft to straighten.
'Please, survive,' the princess called quietly. She had little hope they would.
It ran headlong into the forward wall of the Lyceum and disintegrated, flinging Nevrymin about like dolls. And then there were only two rafts remaining.
She felt the deck tip beneath her. Her heart missed a beat but a quick glance aft showed her steersman intact and in control. She looked out again.
The Circle wheeled lazily below. The Skywell opened onto a pastoral landscape a thousand feet below. The pilot banked to follow the Skullway to the very portals of the Palace. To the left she saw armed men and women racing for the Palace. Ahead a squad of Monitors fled toward the same destination, heedless that their feet were defiling the skulls of the City's past rulers.
Some sense made her turn and look back toward the battle she'd left behind. With terrible certainty she knew what she'd see.
A thousand yards ahead of the City's prow two figures fought back and forth across the deck of a raft crewed by corpses. Moriana knew the splendid black bird who stood to one side watching the humans; she knew the tall figure in shining armor who swung his broadsword with skill apparent even across the distance; and all too well she knew the smaller black and purple figure darting in and out while his scimitar parlayed with the huge straight blade.
As the princess watched, Rann tripped and fell back toward the bulwark of the raft. Darl rushed. Rann ducked under the blow and swung with his scimitar. Darl's plate was sturdy but Rann's strength belied his size. The curved blade sank into Darl's side.
The Count-Duke spun, snapping the sword from Rann's grip. Rann danced away. Darl's heels came against the bulwark. He raised his broadsword to salute his foe. Then he turned, looked at Moriana and saluted again. And fell.
'He knew,' came Ziore's anguished words. Moriana returned his salute with her own broadsword. Her eyes stung but she wouldn't cry. Tears would cloud her vision. And then they were down.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lungs burning, Fost pounded across the pavement towards the Palace. Fifty rebels raced at his side, while a score hung back among the buildings on the perimeter of the grounds to cover the attack with bow and arrow. As he ran Fost kept staring at the spectacle before him. One after another, three large slabs of gray stone flew over the Skywell and turned up the Skullway to approach the Palace.
The leading raft bumped to a halt. The walls fell away as foresters hacked at lashings with sword and axe. Green and brown clad men tumbled out – and one in achingly familiar russet and orange. Even in helmet and hauberk, Fost knew Moriana.
Shouting incoherently, he angled to meet her as she led the foresters up the Skullway. Her last trip along that avenue had been as a captive, jeered by multitudes as a traitoress, regicide, matricide. Now spectators had even better reason to name her traitor – but the only watchers on hand were the rebels swarming across the paved Palace grounds, and a platoon of Palace Guardsmen on the steps.
'Moriana!' shouted Fost. She cried his name in return and they flung themselves violently into each other's arms. Rebels and Nevrymin clasped forearms and pounded backs, instant comrades. The exuberance of the rebels was partly due to the humanness of their new allies. They'd expected green scaly skins.
Fost and Moriana wasted precious seconds in a kiss. They reluctantly broke apart, laughing, weeping, dabbing at the blood streaming from their nostrils. The Destiny Stone swung free outside Moriana's armor. It shone benevolent white. Fost pointed at it.
'Moriana, that's not…'
'Eureka!' screeched Erimenes. 'May this day be blessed forever! I've found a woman of my own kind!'
'Don't 'my kind' me, you perverted mountebank!' Ziore screamed back.
Dead silence. Moriana goggled at the satchel by her side. The foresters gaped, too, having come to recognize the princess's familiar as sweet and shy.
The sweet, shy presence proceeded to deride Erimenes with the profane bravura of an Estil fishwife.
When Ziore paused to think up even more insults, Moriana spun quickly to face the Palace Guards, who stood clumped at the portal to the Palace wondering what was going on.
'Surrender at once!' she ordered. 'I, Moriana Etuul, your rightful queen, command it!'
For long seconds nothing happened. Then a Guard pivoted on his heel and split the chest of the man next to him with a stroke of his halberd. The Guardsmen quickly paired off and slew one another. Fost grinned. A little subversion was a wonderful thing.
Moriana raced for the portal. Fost followed, shouting for her to listen, that she didn't have the Amulet, that she carried another talisman instead, that her life depended on getting rid of the Destiny Stone. But Monitors poured into the far side of the Circle and men shouted and moaned and butchered each other on the steps of the Palace, and the mysterious shade Moriana carried still berated Erimenes the Ethical at the top of her nonexistent lungs.
A fleet-footed rebel darted past Moriana as she mounted the steps and heartily kicked open the centermost pair of doors. A flight of arrows buzzed out like angry hornets. Most of them struck the impetuous youth, lifted him from his feet and tossed him lifeless down the narrow steps.
The foresters' bows sang in reply. Screams echoed in the Palace's vestibule. Moriana plunged in, sword in hand. Fost followed. He prudently sidestepped as he passed through the door to prevent being silhouetted. When his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, he saw a groined chamber radiating out in three directions. From the one ahead came the sound of running boots. Moriana.
As he followed, from the hallway to the right poured a stream of Palace Guards. One lashed at him with a halberd. Fost took the blow on his shield, grunting as the blade split hide and metal and bit into his arm. He swung the arm violently, letting go of the shield's handgrip. The halberd flew wide as the shield's mass carried it along. Fost lunged and slashed the Guard across the face.
Rebels and foresters were crowding through the doors. Two Guards attacked Fost from opposite directions. Prudyn shot one, then cast his bow aside as another Guard rushed him. Prudyn stayed alive by seizing the haft of the Guard's weapon and battling him up against a wall.
The other Guard intent on Fost lunged, the spiked head of the polearm spearing for Fost's midriff. Fost whipped Erimenes's satchel off his left shoulder and swung it. Erimenes screamed.
The heavy satchel knocked the halberd aside. Fost thrust. The Guardsman sank. Fost ripped his blade from the foeman's chest and ran for the corridor Moriana had taken.
Above the fighting, Synalon waged a battle of her own from the throne room. Even as Moriana's flotilla surged ahead of the other rafts, the air began to dance as the immense air elemental took form.
A tornado howled toward the armada sucking boulders and uprooted trees high into the air. Khirshagk brandished the Heart of the People. A beam of blackness exploded from the center of the jewel and struck to the core of the approaching whirlwind.
A frightened, gusty wail split the sky. The elemental diminished, drawn down the black tube into the
