his best pedantic form, not one whit deterred by the unorthodox setting for his lecture. 'I assume the function is intentional, though it may of course be serendipitous. Further, I reason that abandoned skyrafts follow lines of magnetic force back to Omizantrim, which accounts for our circuitous route from the City to…'
Thunder drowned him out. Fost ducked reflexively, spilling a spoonful of gruel into his lap.
'I think the mountain's building up to a major eruption,' Moriana announced.
She had resumed her previous station in the bow of the raft, gazing at Omizantrim as the volcano grew ever nearer. Fost gulped a last mouthful of the tasteless gray slop, covered the bowl with its silver lid and replaced it in his satchel, then slowly crawled forward to sit beside her. Cautiously, he stationed himself several inches farther back from the rim.
No one – no human, at least – had ever accused Mt. Omizantrim of being beautiful. It looked threatening and grim from far away, which was the only way Fost had seen it before. Close up, it was a tall cinder cone, dark gray, its flanks slashed with black striations and scarred with fumaroles. The open-wound pits in the mountain exuded thick clouds of dark blue and maroon gas, then lit them from below with a lurid glare. The very crest of the mountain was obscured in a billow of slate-gray smoke spilling away into the northwest. A gaudy necklace of lightnings surrounded the heights, both from the smoke and dust cloud and from the storm clouds above. Sulfur stung eyes, nose and throat; dust clogged them.
Omizantrim was far from beautiful. But Fost failed to discern the reason why Moriana thought it was going to erupt. As far as Fost could tell, the mountain looked little different than it had when it hiccuped to noisome life on the eve of the Battle of Chanobit Creek.
Fost couldn't figure it out. He asked her. Moriana shrugged, still studying the mountain with wrinkled brow.
'The displays seem more violent than at any time when we were camped there. And do you smell the ozone, the prickling in the very air? You should see yourself. It's making the hair stand up at the back of your neck.'
'It wouldn't take dormant lightning in the air to cause that, let me tell you,' said Fost. 'But couldn't it be due to our height alone?'
Moriana glanced down. The gray and black landscape writhed below like a tortured animal. Patches of vegetation clungtenaciously to the jagged, blade-sharp lava, deep green in some places, dusty and faded like old dry moss in others. One-horned and domestic deer moved below, not browsing but running in full flight across the broken land away from the great mountain.
'It's just a feeling,' she confessed. 'See? The animals feel it, too. They're more sensitive to such things than humans. They know the moods of the volcano from long exposure.'
'Our height isn't great enough to make much difference,' Erimenes cut in. 'We've stayed about a thousand feet up since leaving the City. That puts the mountaintop eight or nine thousand feet above us. Even that noxious looking cloud is easily thousands of feet above our heads.'
Fost felt the skin on his back try to creep into a bunch at the nape of his neck. An instant later, a brilliant yellow flash burned itself into his retinas. The light was so intense he wasn't even aware of the wall of sound that struck him. But several minutes later as he blinked away the last of the purple afterglow, his hearing had only just returned.
'Weather magic,' Erimenes said in his usual peevish tone. 'Can't you keep the lightning off us, at least?'
Ziore stared at the blue shade, her expression remarkably reminiscent of the clouds overhead. Mindful of Fost's injunction against further squabbling, she stayed silent.
'Perhaps I could,' Moriana said. 'But the battles I fought in the Sky City drained me so.'
She broke off to look at Fost with peculiar intentness. A wan smile played about her mouth.
'No, since you told some harsh truths to snap me out of my self-pitying fog, you've lapsed back into being too perfect a gentleman to point out the obvious. Yes, I have to start using my powers again sometime, and the longer I wait the more painful it'll be.'
She stood and stretched, oblivious to the emptiness yawning an inch in front of her toes. Fost shuddered. It was easy to forget what an insane disregard for heights the Skyborn had.
'Now's as good a time as any,' she said firmly. 'I've slept for two days and have a stomach full of that delicious provender of yours.' Her sarcasm elicited an uneasy smile from Fost. Though they had both devoured the gruel from the magic bowl so avidly it seemed its supply must be exhausted in spite of the self-replenishment speli, neither was ravenous enough to mistake the stuff for anything but clammy glop.
Moriana folded her long legs beneath her and closed her eyes in concentration. Fost saw her lips flutter, heard the ghost of an incantation above the grumbling of mountain and clouds.
'She needed a brazier and special herbs to make weather magic at Chanobit,' Ziore said in an awed whisper. 'She's learned so much since then.'
Erimenes grumbled, but all ignored him. Seeing that Moriana required total concentration, Fost took an oiled rag from his satchel and drew his sword. He examined it, clucking over its condition. Its blade was dimmed, streaked with blood and grime, and dirt had caked in places. Though the blade itself was fine North Keep steel, its edge was nicked and pitted from heavy use. Fost rummaged in his sack and brought out a whetstone, then began to rub the sword down with the rag.
As he cleaned the weapon, he kept one eye on the mountain. It grew until he scarcely saw where the cone disappeared into the wreath of greasy smoke. The heat of its many mouths washed over him like the uneven breathing of some immense creature. Throat of the Dark Ones, Omizantrim meant. Fost wondered if that was Their sulfurous breath that blew so hot on his face.
Just when he began to worry that the craft would drive head-on into the mountain, Omizantrim swung across the bow and began to slip by to port.
'We're circling,' said Erimenes unnecessarily. 'Probably going to the very skystone drift where the raft was mined.'
Lightning barraged the mountain's stony flanks, but none came near.
'Your magic's working,' he told her. She replied with a distracted smile. In fact, he didn't have the slightest idea whether it worked or not, but he wanted to encourage her.
'We're losing altitude.' Reluctantly, Fost glanced down and saw that Erimenes spoke the truth. The crags and folds of the mountain's skirts grew closer as he watched and the landscape took on more detail. Cave-sized openings were soon revealed to be great bubbles that had burst. Drifts of white ash and a gray stone touched with a curious sheen appeared in sharp relief that he guessed was skystone itself. Small animals scurried among the stunted stems of bushes, tails streaming behind as they fled the coming wrath of the mountain.
They passed a cluster of huts. Blocks of the incredibly durable lava had been hewn laboriously by hand and fitted to form walls capped by big slabs of basalt. The buildings, while grim, were suited to withstanding the mountain's caprice. But not even the stout construction of the Watchers could withstand the cosmic disease of change. The massive roofs had been levered from their places, the walls that held them pulled down into jumbles of black stone. Ash had fallen since the destruction, piling like blown snow against the few walls and doorposts that remained standing, filling in the outlines of the ruined huts so that they resembled a collection of haphazard children's sandboxes. Splintered pieces of wood thrust above the dust in some of the buildings, and Fost saw a few drably colored scraps of cloth waving in the breeze. 'They didn't loot,' he said to himself. 'Only destroyed.' Moriana's face had turned the color of the ash strewn below.
'Wise Ones,' she whispered, 'have they slain the Watchers?' The thought of this new guilt showed on her face like a fresh swordcut.
'This isn't the main camp. It's only an outpost. The Vridzish were gathering the Watchers out of the smaller camps when we were here before. The Watchers are no doubt held captive at their village, as they were before.' Ziore's expression belied her hopeful tone.
'Who do you think works the skystone mines?' came Erimenes's question. Lightning cracked dangerously close. Fost jumped, almost losing his whetstone and small oil flask over the edge of the raft. The conversation took a turn that was not only distressing to Moriana but distracting as well. 'Where are the Hissers, anyway?' he asked. 'Look beyond you,' said Erimenes.
Despite the heat, Fost's throat had become a column of ice leading from the glacier of his stomach. The spirit wasn't lying. A two-man flyer had just rounded a stony buttress behind them, and three more appeared followed by a much larger barge teeming with green-skinned figures. Fost swallowed hard, thinking that the Zr'gsz flew much sloppier formation than Rann's bird riders. Perversely, he wished Rann could be here now to pit his genius against
