apparently human. But they were not human; they were Zr'gsz or the products of Zr'gsz imagination. The City turned alien and cold around him.
The two of them continued their curving course and spilled into an intersection. Fost yelped as a streak of yellow lightning crackled past his elbow and blasted the cornice of a building. Glowing gobs of stone spattered in ail directions, drawing sharp yips of pain when they struck flesh. 'Fost!' cried Moriana. 'I'm sorry. 1 didn't know it was you.'
'Think nothing of it,' he said sarcastically. Her deathbolt hadn't singed him, nor had the molten masonry hit him. But he now had a fused patch in the mail beneath his left arm to match the one a salamander had given him that morning. 'I didn't know you could do that.' She showed her teeth in a grin of wolfish satisfaction.
'Neither did Synalon/ she said. 'I've learned a few things since we parted, my love.'
A shout turned her attention back to the street, where more Zr'gsz had massed. Fost jumped to avoid the javelins and slung stones that glanced off the walls and clattered on the paving.
Several of their followers died from the missiles. The rest dodged back into doorways or around corners to avoid fire. Moriana stood her ground. She held a Highgrass bow in her left hand, but made no effort to pull an arrow from the few remaining in the quiver slung across her back.
She raised her right hand. A short arrow whirred by and dug a furrow in her cheek.
'Damn you, treacherous serpents!' she screamed. 'Die for your faithlessness!' The hand came down. Blinding white exploded from her fingers.
Fost saw bright orange and blue after-images dancing before his eyes, but from the corners he glimpsed Zr'gsz bodies fiung in all directions by the blast.
'A most impressive display, Queen,' remarked Erimenes. 'However, I wonder if your prowess will suffice against the forces I perceive are about to be -'
'Silence, rogue!' squalled Ziore from her jug. 'Moriana is the most powerful mage in all the world.'
Weaving like a reed in a breeze from the energy spent on the deathbolt, Moriana turned a stunned look toward the leather bag carrying Ziore. Her expression showed she was unused to this facet of the genie's personality.
Moriana staggered. Fost caught her arm and supported her. Her fingers gripped his forearm and squeezed down weakly.
'You've grown more powerful,' he said, 'to be able to toss lightning around like that so soon after your duel with Synalon.'
'I have.' She swept hair from her forehead with a quick thumb movement. 'And my anger gives a greater store of power than I'd have otherwise.' 'You should rest and marshal your power.'
'No! If I stop now I'll collapse.' She shook her head tiredly. 'Even without my magics, we're winning. The human warriors of my army and Synalon's are too many for them.'
She gestured up the street. As far as a distant curve, it was strewn with arrow-skewered Zr'gsz corpses. Near at hand several Underground fighters fished a limp green-scaled body from the sunken stone pond of a aeroaquifer. The magic fountain continued to produce water and music alike from thin air. The calm beauty of the sound drove back the warlike clamor from the surrounding streets.
'Now, where's that foul pact-breaking Khirshagk?' demanded Moriana. 'I'll scatter his ashes over the Keep of the Fallen, and the Heart of the People be damned!'
The warriors raised a cheer. Fost started to ask what the Heart of the People was, but a giant hand slammed into his ribs and dumped him on his rump in the street. An instant later, a tidal wave of sound crashed into him and sent him sprawling.
He rolled, recovered, found himself tangled with Moriana. A strange, dead silence descended. Moriana's lips moved but no sound emerged. Fost wondered what had happened to her voice. to the sounds of battle and the soothing song of the aeroaquifer. Then he saw a Sky Guardsman sitting a few yards away. A trickle of blood ran from one ear.
Fost felt his own ears. His fingertips detected no wetness and a quick inspection of Moriana showed her ears weren't bleeding either. The concussion had deafened them but hadn't burst their eardrums.
The Guardsman had gone as rigid as a marble statue. His arm was extended, pointing along the street they'd just cleared of the Hissers. Fost and Moriana exchanged looks and turned their heads that way.
A rolling black cloud rose above the dizzying spires and rooftops of the Sky City, burning a hole in the sky as it climbed. Blackness shone from it like light from the sun. They had to look away, the bright afterimages dancing in their eyes.
Moriana's cry pierced the armor of Fost's numbed ears. He looked back to see the great shape hovering just above the steep roof of the armory directly below the rapidly receding cloud. It was manlike in shape, though many times larger than the largest of men. And the horns that grew from either side of its blunt head were anything but manlike. It was the very image of the Vicar of Istu. No, you idiot, Erimenes's voice rang in his head. It's the original. The Demon of the Dark Ones shot upward and was gone. CHAPTER THREE
The spells were sung, the aspects properly aligned.
The mystical forces Felarod had forged to contain Istu had been hammered thin like gold beaten on an anvil. Yet still they held the ancient and mighty Demon caged in his stone prison. It would still take unearthly power to break the barrier.
'And now that which we have awaited so long,' cried Khirshagk, 'shall come to passV For a long minute, he held the blackly blazing Heart high above his head. The others turned up their faces in rapture. His own twin hearts close to bursting, the Instrumentality brought his arm down and flung the diamond aganst Felarod's magic.
The giant gem exploded. The ancient door was volatized by a ball of jet flame, as was the living stone for yards in all directions. Khirshagk and his twelve followers had only a split second to scream out their ecstasy before being engulfed and destroyed. Khirshagk and the others had known what fate awaited them and embraced death with the fanaticism of true martyrs. Not just their own lives but ten thousand years of their People's history had built toward this instant.
Khirshagk fulfilled his role as Instrumentality. His hand released the Demon Istu and began the Second War of Powers.
Free!
The Demon's being crackled with unfamiliar energy. Its first reaction had been the reaction of its id: sheer terror. But its awesome mind awakened to the knowledge that centuries-old chains were no more. Free!
With the fullness of that knowledge, awful and magnificent, Istu soared upward following the path the dark fireball had slashed through the foundation of the Sky City. Nothing dimmed his exaltation. Not even the sunlight, the contact with that hated aberration Light. He shouted defiance at the sun and soared upward to once again touch the Void, the disruption of order that was Dark. Free.'
In a single beat of the massed hearts of the tiny paleskinned ones who infested the City of his children, Istu surged above the atmosphere, filling this being with the essence of the Void and Dark. The sun ball blazed at him, furious and impotent, and the stars looked down with malice. His laugh rang among them, echoing to eternity. In Dark and Void had the Universe begun, and to them it would return. Once again would the Dark Ones rule over placid oblivion, and their child and servant Istu would become One with them, One with Nothingness. Free.'
Great joy surged at being liberated from the walls of stone and magic that had pinioned His mind and body for so long. Greater still would be the joy of revenge. Free! The Demon of the Dark Ones turned his attention downward.
Stunned, Fost, Moriana and the rest scarcely had time to pick themselves up from the flagstones before Istu descended again like a flaming black meteor. With a strange, high keening the Demon flashed over their heads to touch down out of sight among the towers of the portside quarter of the Sky City.
'Moriana?' asked Ziore from her jug. 'What happened? I feel the most peculiar presence…'
'Don't!' screamed the woman. 'Keep your mind away from it. Don't try to read its thoughts or emotions. Don't even tryV
'But… oh.' Ziore read the knowledge of what had just occurred from Moriana's mind. She knew better than to disregard such advice. If Moriana told her to keep her perceptions clear of the Demon, she must obey. The sorceress-queen had more intimate experience of Istu than did any living entity. Ziore read exactly how intimate that knowledge was and sent ripples of mental horror radiating outward.
