Squatting, he lowered her to the stone. Strength drained from him like water from a tub with its plug pulled. His legs refused to lift him upright. Instead of trying to stand, he sat beside her, staring back at the City as it slowly receded.
His first thought was of pursuit. Hundreds of rafts nosed against the forward edge of the City as the one they now rode had been, bobbing gently on passing air currents. Had the Zr'gsz wanted to, they could have sent flyers to run down the fugitives in a matter of minutes like hawks bringing down a fleeing dove. Somewhere in the dizzy whirl of that day, Moriana had mentioned to Fost that she didn't know how to operate the Hissers' skyraft. He certainly didn't have the foggiest idea how to maneuver it or to speed it up. If the Zr'gsz wanted them, they were easy pickings.
But the Vridzish obviously didn't care about the fugitives. The pale green faces of lower caste Hissers watched the raft blankly from the ramparts of the City. Here and there the darker features of a noble turned their way to scrutinize them briefly, only to turn away again. Fost sensed that they knew well that the potent human sorceress whose friendship they'd betrayed, whose vengeful might had actually given the mighty, eons-old Demon of the Dark Ones pause, escaped them on the tiny raft. And they did not care. Their indifference chilled him more than pursuit.
Nowhere did the Zr'gsz show any sign of pursuing the humans as they fled from the City in the Sky. Fost saw shrieking women and children hounded like beasts through the streets, saw the shapes of the Vridzish hunch over the bodies of fallen human warriors, some of which still writhed with life, tearing at the bloody feast with their sharp, inhuman teeth. Only those humans they brought down did they bother with; their main purpose seemed to be to rid the City of the pale, soft-skinned creatures who had stolen that realm from them so long ago. Like men hunting vermin. Fost's flesh crawled at the thought.
And the vermin were fleeing the City. The sky above the lofty spires and buttressed wall of the Sky City seethed with eagles winging away in search of refuge, burdened with human cargo. Balloons broke from the confines of the City and floated downwind, humans dropping from their gondolas like ill-shaped raindrops. Too numb to feel horror, Fost wondered distractedly how much of the City's populace had escaped. There had been so little time, though Cerestan and the rest seemed to have wrought miracles in saving those they could. A large number of the sausage kites and round passenger balloons drifted in the City's wake.
But there were too few balloons, too few eagles to hope that any significant number had been rescued. As Fost watched, scores of giant warbirds beat back to the City gathering frantic humans onto their backs or into their strong claws to make a second, or third or fourth trip to the ground. The sheer number of refugees mocked their efforts. Those not fleet enough to outrace the hissing, croaking Vridzish died horribly. Those who outdistanced their pursuers, only to reach the rimwall with no means of transport to the ground, cast a single look over their shoulders at the horror being wrought on their City – and jumped. In the middle of the Sky City Istu made sport.
He was kicking the haughty Palace of Winds to pieces and flinging giant building blocks for miles in all directions. Great pillars of smoke rose from a dozen locations within the City. A minaret of some noble merchant's mansion collapsed in the street, undermined by unseen claws. Streams of trotting low caste Zr'gsz made their way to the rimwall and back into the tangled streets bearing varied bundles: rolls of cloth from warehouses, tables and chairs, cabinets and crates. Some bundles had human shape and some of these still kicked with frantic life. All to no avail – over the edge they went, along with oddments and artifacts of human existence in the Sky City.
'See what they do, my young friend,' intoned Erimenes. During the battle he had retreated into his jug, leery of getting caught in the nimbus of some stray battle-magic. Now he appeared in the air at Fost's side once again. 'They seek to expunge all trace of the hated interlopers from the City in the Sky. I suspect that even those structures they originally built themselves, but which have been extensively modified by men, shall be razed.' He shook his head. 'It is an awful hate that can bide for eight millennia.'
Fost had no ready retort. His head felt like a ball of lead and his eyelids like leaden shutters. His own exertions overwhelmed him. He had fought two desperate battles, faced dangers mortal and mystic a dozen times, and seen the realization of the fear that had been nurturing since Jennas of the Ust-alayakits had begun hinting to him months ago that a new War of Powers could be in the offing. It was enough action, danger and horror to last a hundred lifetimes. He had no idea how Moriana felt after her ordeal. He was only glad she was unable to see the singleminded ferocity with which her former allies cleansed the City, even to the point of casting her people over the side like so much rubbish.
He heard a vast, many-throated squawk and a cracking of wings like sails snapping to a stiff breeze. His last sight before unconsciousness was of Synalon's ravens billowing upward from the rookeries like a huge evil black cloud.
'Good morning, friend Fost,' a cheery voice said. The words were muffled by layers of fog and pain. 'You know, you actually look quite dashing with your nose mashed down like that. It makes you seem positively rugged. And since it has never lain altogether true, it's no detraction from your personal beauty, such as it is. An improvement on the whole, I'd say.'
'Shut up!' bellowed Fost, heaving himself to a sitting position. His roar set his head ringing like a bell. He groaned and fell back, clutching at his temples.
'Tut, tut, my dear boy.' He heard the philosopher's infuriating tones as if they came from far away. 'You really do need to curb that impetuous nature of yours.'
'Shut up, you querulous old fool,' Ziore's voice snapped. Through the tear glaze covering his eyes, Fost became aware of an unfamiliar outline bending over him. He blinked to clear his vision. He saw an elderly woman clad in a long, flowing robe similar to the one Erimenes 'wore.' Her aged features were smooth, serene, beautiful. Erimenes was blue; this apparition was pink, with long unbound hair so pale as to be almost white. Tiny reddish sparks danced within her substance.
Fost felt peace and comfort suffuse his body. His face, which had felt as if a heated torture mask had been clamped to it, began to relax from agonized contortion. He still felt agony in his head and aching weariness in every limb, but somehow the sensations no longer troubled him.
'Moriana woke briefly and let me out. She's sleeping again. I hope she sleeps a long time, the poor girl. She's suffered many hurts. Only a few of them are of the body.'
Fost moved his head tentatively, gingerly shaking it as if unsure whether or not pieces might break off or fall out. When nothing untoward happened, he straightened and spoke.
'Water,' he said in a voice sounding like it came from another's throat.
A look of concern passed over the slender, aged face. 'I cannot help you. But 1 perceive you have your magic water flask with you.'
In objective terms, it probably would have taken more out of Fost to climb hand over hand from the ground to the Sky City on a rope than to open the satchel in which he carried Erimenes's jug and bring forth the silver-chased black flask. But certainly the chore seemed onerous. With fingers that felt as agile as the City's great sausage- shaped cargo balloons, he unstoppered the flask and held it to his lips.
The tepid water was as sweet as nectar rolling through his cottony mouth and down his parched throat. When he had found the body of Kest-i-Mond the mage murdered in the sorcerer's own study a few thousand years ago – was it only last fall? – it had seemed at first that his only reward for braving the Sky City soldiers to deliver Erimenes's spirit to the enchanter was to be the flask and a silver-covered bowl of similar make. A paltry reward, the flask produced a perpetual flow of lukewarm water and the bowl gave an inexhaustible supply of tasteless thin grey gruel. However, this wasn't the first time Fost had cause to be thankful for those items. He wiped his lips and tossed back his head, which was a mistake.
When the sledgehammer pounding in his brain had given way to a tackhammer tapping insistently at his temples and forehead and the bridge of his nose, he dared a look around. The raft was an oblong eight feet wide and twelve long. The gleaming black sphere at the stern controlled the raft's movements – under the guiding hand of a Zr'gsz.
Around him the day was overcast. A rumpled ceiling of cloud hung above his head. The clouds thinned to admit rays of watery sunlight of a sour lemon shade more unpleasant than plain shadow. Aft he saw a massive purple bulwark he eventually identified as the Thail Mountains dividing the continent. Oriented, Fost scanned all around, swivelling his head slowly to keep it from falling off his neck. North he saw the green of forests, bordered by the broad brown flood plain of the River Marchant. Beyond that the play of light and shadow on fallow lands and those planted in spring wheat turned the Black March into a giant's game.
Off to starboard lay an irregular metallic splotch with a dark mound in the middle. Its color was that of an
