the lizards.
Moriana looked up as he touched her arm. 'Forget about the lightning. We've got worse things to worry about.'
She glanced back at the pursuing raft. The craft bucked now in updrafts from malevolently glowing mouths gaping below. She picked up her bow and began replacing the string, which had been ruined by a shower sometime while she and Fost slept.
Repacking his cleaning gear, Fost watched the enemy rafts gain on them. Under control of Zr'gsz pilots, the craft moved much faster than the humans' drifting raft. A three-man flyer edged out in front of the others, and a Hisser stood amidships whirling a sling. He loosed. Nervously, Fost watched the stone arch up and then down, apparently headed straight for the bridge of his nose. He watched in hypnotic fascination that didn't lose its grip until the missile dropped harmlessly in the raft's wake.
An angry bee whined past his right ear. The slinger stiffened as two more arrows sped past Fost, aimed with uncanny precision. The slinger pitched over the side of the small raft when the pilot slumped across the skewered corpse of the third Zr'gsz, an eagle-feathered arrow jutting from his eye.
Upon this attack, the loose formation of the skyrafts broke apart. They climbed rapidly out of range. Moriana shot two more arrows and killed the pilot of a second small raft which skidded sideways, spilling its occupant out over a lake of lava that glowed perceptibly brighter orange when the Vridzish struck.
'Damn them,' Moriana said. 'They're sharp. They've put their rafts between themselves and me.'
'They'll have to show themselves to shoot at us,' observed Fost. As he said the words, a head and shoulders appeared at the side of one raft. A javelin rocketed toward them. The dart went wide; so did Moriana's return shot.
The woman cursed reptilian reflexes and nocked another arrow. She drew the shaft to her ear and waited. Another Hisser leaned out to aim a short bow at the humans. Her arrow took him in the throat. The bow dropped from clawed hands, and the body dangled a moment before its fellows released its ankles. 'Your reflexes match theirs,' Fost said admiringly.
The look she gave him was not what he expected. He felt chilled by the flat, almost hostile expression. He was starting to speak when the mountain blew up.
The Shockwave bowled him over. Moriana's witch sense gave her a split second's warning of the blast, and the same reflexes he'd just complimented saved his life. Bracing herself, Moriana caught hold of Fost's swordbelt just as he pitched over the brink. She dragged him back, aided by his groping fingers tearing on the gray stone of the raft. Erimenes shrilled terror as his satchel momentarily hung above nothingness. 'Thanks,' shouted Fost over the roar of the eruption.
Moriana bobbed acknowledgement to the thanks she read on his lips. She couldn't hear anything. The mountain was roaring in the voice of a million angry hornbulls. Fost stared in wonder that transcended fear as an orange prominence reached heavenward from the crater. The blast had blown the dust free of the mountaintop, and the heat of the geysering lava dispelled the clouds above like an enchantment gone insane. The top of the flame stream wavered, tipped, arced toward the far side of the volcano in a fountain of molten rock.
Something exploded nearby with a sound loud enough to hear even through shockwave-deadened ears. A fragment grazed his cheek. He blinked at ash and cowered inside his mail shirt.
A bomb, he heard Ziore say inside his mind. A partially cooled lava shell surrounding hot gases. It must have struck the mountainside nearby.
Hecursed. Apparently all Athalar waxed pedantic atthe damnedest times. Fost glanced back at their pursuers in time to see something streak down and smash the big raft amidships. The stone platform came apart in midair. Fost saw superheated gases strip the living flesh from the Hissers' bones as the blast scattered them away among the debris of their vessel.
That sort of thing happened a lot when I had the Destiny Stone. Itwas Moriana's voice now inside his head. He guessed Ziore acted as a repeater for the woman, since oral communication was out of the question in the din of eruption.
A spire of black stone flashed by on their left, its pitted face almost near enough to touch. Fost's head snapped back to see where they were heading.
/'// bet things like this did, too, he thought at Ziore. Look where the damned thing's setting us down!
Moriana looked where he pointed. A patrol of Vridzish stood gesticulating at a torrent that flowed through a cut in the same glossy gray stone Fost had seen before. A few hammers and prybars lay scattered about, and a knot of unarmed Zr'gsz huddled near the soldiers, staring at what resembled a cascade of extremely muddy water – or watery mud. Fost knew from the mad dance of superheated air above the stream it had to be lava. Water would hiss instantly to vapor. The Vridzish stood on the side of the lava stream. The raft was making for a point just beyond them – in the midst of a river of melted rock!
The ground raced by beneath. Fost sheathed his sword and clutched the edge of the stone slab, leaning out to judge the distance to the ground. The agonizingly slow progress of the raft had become amad careening – or so it seemed. Fost hoped this was only illusion. If they were moving too fast when they jumped from the raft, they'd tumble end over end across the cooled lava on the slope. It would be like rolling across a field of razorblades.
'We'll have to jump!' he screamed at Moriana. She nodded assent. Ziore's satchel was already slung over her shoulder. The pink genie hovered by her side, looking concerned. Erimenes had disappeared back into his own jar. Fost heard his whimpering even above the god's bellow of the exploding volcano.
A hundred feet short of the patrol and the lava flow, they jumped. Fost landed with a jolt that seemed to drive his ankles up to his knees and went on over to slash his arms and face on the jagged lava rock. Some good fortune spared his much-abused nose. Wiping at the blood pouring into his eyes from a nasty forehead cut, he looked up in time to see Moriana hit, tuck and roll with perfect form. She continued rolling on down the slope and came to her feet with barely a scratch. He cursed her Sky City training. He'd jumped from a few second-story windows in his time, to spare himself unpleasant scenes with unreasonable husbands bearing swords, but he'd never had occasion to jump from a second-story window that moved.
His plaints inaudible in the uproar, he accepted a hand up from Moriana.
'You heedless barbarian, how could you endanger me with such utter recklessness!' Erimenes screeched. 'My jug could have been smashed to flinders!'
The abandoned raft brushed the feathered headdress of a Zr'gsz officer. The Hisser looked up and gaped in astonishment as the raft drove on to plunge into the rushing lava stream. One of the lizard men clutched his face and fell kicking as molten stone splashed him.
The others turned their heads to see pale distorted shapes scrambling across the lava field. No vocal commands were needed. The officer waved his two-handed mace and the patrol raced in pursuit.
'Here they come!' Neither Fost nor Moriana needed Erimenes's warning to know the patrol slowly closed the distance between them. Choking and coughing on the dust clogging the air, the pair ran as fast as they could over the treacherous, broken ground. After what seemed an eternity of struggling in the sulfurous atmosphere, Fost turned to see how near the Zr'gsz were. The Hissers had lost interest – or perhaps their lives, since they were nowhere to be seen.
The mountain shuddered under Fost's feet. And the black stone was fever hot, burning him despite his thick bootsoles. With every third step it seemed a loose rock turned under him, twisting his ankle and adding a gash on unsuspecting calf or thigh.
'You incomparable dolt! Watch where you're going!' screamed Erimenes from the relative safety of his satchel.
Tricky as the ground was underfoot, Fost refused to look down. The spectacle of the volcano in full throat riveted his attention. A column of maroon smoke shot through with sheets of fire blasted upward from the crater. A ceiling of black cloud hung over the mountain. A hellwind raged within. Fost glimpsed the glow of incandescent gases swirling in the guts of the cloud.
It was as if battle raged between sky and earth. The Throat of the Dark Ones vomited lava and smoke and boulders and searingly poisonous vapors. The sky retaliated with incessant whip strokes of blue-white lightning. Rain lashed down all around, but no longer fell on the mountain itself. The monstrous upswelling of heat from the Throat cast it back upward again as steam.
A barbed spear struck a humped rock in Fost's path. Erimenes howled incoherently as a hammerblow landed on Fost's left shoulder.
