diamond. In a heartbeat it vanished. A rain of rocks and trees spattered the countryside below.
Shocked, Synalon stared in wonder and dread. She spoke new words of Summoning. She pointed to the earth. It heaved, a hill appearing where none had been before. She pointed to the sky. The hill shot upward toward the raft carrying the Instrumentality.
Black rays from the Heart stabbed into the soaring hillock. It exploded in all directions sending out a cascade of dirt and stone lasting for long minutes. Synalon screamed. She waved her arms. Sinkholes appeared among the hills below as boulders buried underground winked out of existence… to rematerialize above the vast fleet of skystone rafts.
Now Synalon's magic took full effect. A dozen rafts were stricken and fell, dooming a hundred of the People and scores of humans. A huge boulder dropped straight down for Khirshagk's raft.
The Heart radiated black energy. The boulder slowed, then stopped in midair, defying gravity above Khirshagk's head. He gestured with the Heart. The boulder soared away toward the City to plow a furrow of ruin from the prow halfway to the Palace.
Synalon tore her robes to free her arms for uninhibited gesturing. The fleet drove inexorably onward. She shrieked and the heavens rained fire. Men died screaming in the embrace of flames, some of them her own bird riders; the queen was beyond caring who died as long as she blasted the monsters who dared assail her City. But the Heart emitted a funnel of total blackness into which the flamedrops were drawn. The smoking diamond absorbed the rain of fire and glowed with even greater energy.
As the queen hurled spell after frantic spell against the Instrumentality, the earthly battle raged with undiminished fury. Khirshagk's raft was the nexus of a cloud of eagles, diving and slashing as their riders swept the decks with arrows. Shield-bearers kept their leaders from harm, though they died with the regularity of the Heart's black pulsation.
Still holding the Heart, Khirshagk tossed down his shield and caught up his mace. A bird dropped at him, claws extended. He swung the heavy mace and crushed the eagle's breastbone with a single stroke. His inhuman laughter rang across the battle-torn skies.
Synalon sent black clouds to confuse the invaders. Beams blacker still stabbed through them. With a hurricane wail the clouds were drawn inward. Fire and steel and plague she sent against the Fallen Ones, and a horde of winged demons from a lesser tenement of Hell. The Heart smote them all. The more power Synalon expended against it, the greater its own force waxed.
Unnoticed by Synalon, Moriana's rafts crossed the boundary of the City itself. Their route had been chosen with cunning. Once in the City, they had roofs to hide them. When they made their run-in along the Skullway the Palace itself hid them from sight. Singlemindedly, Synalon hurled destruction at the Zr'gsz only to see her every enchantment turned back upon itself. Many of the Hissers fell before her might. But the Heart kept Khirshagk inviolate and safe.
Rann stood on the lip of the raft, watching Darl's body turn end over end as it fell. Only when Darl struck ground did the prince swing back onto Terror's back.
Khirshagk saw the prince's mount take flight frpm the deck of his sister ship. He dropped his mace and seized a javelin. Straightening, still holding the Heart in his right claw, the Instrumentality cocked his arm and flung the dart with all his might.
Impact jarred Rann's body. Terror coughed. The scars crisscrossing the prince's face tightened like a net as he stared at the spearshaft jutting from his war bird's chest a handspan away from his right knee. The rhythm of its wingbeats lost, the mighty bird began to sink.
Synalon watched in horror as her cousin's mount spiralled earthward. Channeling her grief and rage and hatred, she called up a storm. Thunderheads gathered, rolled down on the Zr'gsz fleet with avalanche speed. Violet lightnings speared skyrafts from the air.
Energy raved from the Heart and the demon storm was torn apart, wisps of cloud spinning away to disperse in midair.
Synalon clenched her fists until the veins stood out on her forearms. She endured the agony of summoning a salamander of awesome proportions, a fire elemental so powerful that the hangings on the wall burst into flame, then the carpet and the wooden furnishings. The surface of the walls and the Beryl Throne itself began to turn soft and glow from the heat emanating from the sorceress-queen's body before the conjuring was done. Then her Will drove the elemental deep into the earth through crust and mantle in search of live magma. A new Throat of the Dark Ones would speak with an authority the Heart of the People could not refute.
The smouldering door to the throne room opened. 'Greetings, sister,' said Moriana. She stepped inside, frowned. Synalon felt the salamander she had summoned at such cost wink out of being.
'You've fought long and hard to come here,' she snarled at her golden-haired sister. The charred fragments of her robe fell in a black rain at her feet. 'I'll see you enjoy a death commensurate with your achievement.'
Synalon spoke rapid words. Moriana felt a detonation in her brain and reeled against the wall. It seared her shoulder.
Rage gripped her. She knew the spell – Synalon had used it to subdue her when she had tried to kill Synalon with her bare hands on the eve of her sacrifice to Istu. It would not bring her down again.
She willed the pressure in her mind to go, and it was gone.
'You have learned things during your sabbatical,' said Synalon in a voice like milk and honey. 'I should have expected no less. Even you can learn, if given enough time.' She raised a slender hand. 'My demons shall…'
The words died in her throat. She tried to force them out. She failed. It was as if a hand closed on her neck and bottled the words inside her.
'You shall not call your demons, sister dear,' said Moriana. 'Your Guardsmen are surrendering below or being slaughtered like sheep. 1 will not suffer you to call for supernatural aid. There's no one to help you. You must fight me, Synalon, with what power you have within you. If you've any of your own, that is.' Synalon's eyes blazed.
'Don't… count yourself the victor yet,' she gasped out. The real battle for the City in the Sky began.
Fost was breathing hard when he reached the tenth floor of the Palace, and motes of blackness spun in his brain. 'This is the proper level,' Erimenes told him.
'I know,' panted Fost. 'Been here before, remember? When Moriana and I… rescued you,' 'Rescued?' Erimenes said, outraged. 'I wouldn't use that term.'
'Neither should I. As I recall, you were busy collaborating with the enemy.'
'That's the true barbarian spirit,' a familiar voice said. 'Holding a colloquy with a ghost while the fate of worlds is decided around you.'
Warily, Fost watched High Councillor Uriath enter the room. The tall, portly man had a massive volume tucked under his arm. He radiated a fey humor Fost hadn't detected in him before. 'I'm not a barbarian,' said Fost.
Uriath laughed. It was the first genuine laugh the courier had ever heard him utter.
'Ah, but you are. A pathetic groundling barbarian. Also a fool.' He giggled. 'And in another moment – dead,'
'Kill him, Fost!' Erimenes bawled. Fost brought up his sword and lunged.
Uriath had flipped open the book. His lips moved quickly. A unlit oil lamp set in a niche along-one wall burst into incandescence. Fost yelped and fell back as the flaming oil drew a line between him and the demonically grinning High Councillor. A shape cavorted in the center of the inferno, sinuous and vaguely reptilian. Uriath pointed at Fost.
'Kill him,' he commanded.
The salamander sprang. Fost flung himself to one side. Stone exploded, spraying him with glowing hot fragments. The fire sprite backed away, hissing, slavering sparks.
Fost crouched, keeping his sword between his body and the fiery thing, even though this was puny defense against the elemental. 'Erimenes? What do I do?' 'You pray to Ust,' the genie said. 'And I'll try Gormanka.'
The elemental darted forward. Fost danced aside. He screamed as the being grazed his side leaving his chainmail glowing in a yellow-white swath along his body. He could barely breathe from the pain. The monster's next rush would end him. The salamander hovered between him and the gloating Uriath. A wild rush at the High Councillor would buy him nothing except a death quicker by milliseconds. 'Father!' Was it his imagination? 'Father, what are you doing?'
'Removing the next to last obstacle between you and the throne,' Uriath said without turning away from his
