of the man's eyes on her all the while.
CHAPTER THREE
Preoccupied, Prince Rann Etuul walked along a back street of Bilsinx, his stride eating up a surprising length of ground for one so short. Bulbous towers loomed on either side of the cobblestoned street, and in the distance in front of him rose tall minarets. Pale, drawn faces peered out at him through glass rippled with age and purpled by the sun. He gave them no more attention than he gave his surroundings. All his thoughts centered on the great gray oval of the City in the Sky floating a thousand feet above his head, drifting to the east like an immense stone cloud.
He similarly paid little attention to his companions, the three armed men in black and purple swaggering in a loose wedge before him and the thin and pimply adolescent mage who trotted behind. Hard-pressed to keep up with his prince despite longer legs, the young wizard Maguerr half stumbled and half ran while managing to stroke a wisp of ginger-colored beard and cradle a geode the size of a human head against his hollow chest.
Rann hummed a wordless tune as he walked and thought. The events of the past few days amounted to nothing more than history for him now. Past glory faded with the promise of future triumphs. His destiny, the destiny of Queen Synalon, the destiny of the City in the Sky lay to the east.
East. The City in the Sky, by some process forgotten even before men wrested control of it from the reptilian Hissers who had built it, could have picked one of three directions to move after it floated into Bilsinx from the west. From the central city of the Great Quincunx, the pattern it had followed immutably over the center of the Realm since Felarod had confined it after the War of the Powers, the Sky City could have gone north to Wirix, south to Brev, or east to Kara-Est. Brev was the smallest of the Quincunx cities and had already made proper obeisance to Synalon. Wirix raged defiant and strong in the midst of Lake Wir, almost as remote from the land as the City itself. There would be little profit in conquering Wirix immediately.
The city that Synalon must subdue next was Kara-Est, richest seaport of the Realm, most powerful of all the five Quincunx cities. And it was toward Kara-Est that the City now headed.
On its last transit of Bilsinx, the Sky City had dropped a deadly rain of stones on the ground city's defenders, as bird riders wheeled down unleashing a steel-shod storm of arrows. An attack by the Highgrass Broad mercenaries had completed the defeat of Bilsinx, along with a commando attack on the Mayor's Palace by Sky Guardsmen under Rann's command. The city had fallen quickly under his brilliantly waged campaign and fighting prowess.
And more important than the fighting, the prince's honeyed words had soothed the anxieties and resentments of the subject Bilsinxt. They had even sent a body of their light cavalry to fight Moriana's army beside the very bird riders and heavy dog-mounted lancers and bowmen who had stormed their city. His diplomatic ways had turned a defeated enemy into a wary ally.
Now giant shapes grew in the large central plaza of Bilsinx like arcane fungi, turning into vast bloated sausages and rising upward toward the City silently floating overhead. Eagles harnessed to long, stout tethers guided the cargo balloons with a precision otherwise impossible. Time weighed heavily. Preparations for further battle occupied all of Rann's waking thoughts and even haunted his dreams.
He nodded in silent pride. Below the elongated shapes swung gondolas fairly straining with their cargoes of arrows, foodstuffs and a hundred other necessities in preparation for the coming battle of Kara-Est. Alone of all the Quincunx cities, to say nothing of the cities of the Sundered Realm, Kara-Est had substantial defenses against attack from the air. As it was the greatest prize of the Quincunx, so it would be the dearest won.
Everything proceeded well ahead of schedule. He had been inspecting warehouses of goods assembled since the occupation began, among them bundles of rare and expensive herbs sent over the Thails from Thailot, westernmost Quincunx city. Rann smiled wickedly as he thought of the aromatic bundles. Perhaps the smug engineers gazing through the complex ring sights of the rooftop-mounted ballistae of Kara-Est would have a few surprises as they strove to bring down their swift-winging Sky City foe. And the men of the seaport's aerial defense force, riding in light platforms beneath the living gasbags called ludintip – Rann had plans for them as well.
A high wash of shirred white clouds drifted between the City and the sun. Rann's sensitive nose sensed the promise of rain sometime that afternoon. He must expedite the loading. The Sky City eagles hated to fly in the rain, and it was injurious to their health to do so. The specially bred, intelligent birds were mighty engines of destruction, but they had definite vulnerabilities. For the birds' lungs, strained from hard flying, to breathe in cold damp air could lay them low as readily as iron darts from Estil catapults.
Rann needed his eagles if the assault of Kara-Est were to succeed. And he would have them.
'Maguerr,' he barked, not bothering to look back at the weedy journeyman mage who trotted at his heels. He scarce could stand to look at Maguerr, with his lank hair that seemed stranger to comb and soap alike, his inadequate beard, his beaklike nose with nostrils that seemed to exert an unbreakable fascination for his fingertips, his watery eyes and spiderleg fingers and pimples without number. But the boy was a genius in that special branch of magic that enabled the Sky City's forces to communicate verbally over great distances, and hence, indispensable. There were times when he annoyed Rann so much that the prince began to itch uncontrollably with the need to tie the horrid youth to some handy fixture and flay the skin from his wretched and unsightly face. Yet because of Maguerr's undeniable ability, and in a perverse way as partial penance for his own failure to make an end of Moriana and her clever groundling, Rann had attached the wizardling to himself as his personal amanuensis.
Maguerr's slippers scuffled along the cobblestones. 'Yes, Your Highness,' he whined. A tic twitched beneath Rann's left eye.
'Pick up your feet when you walk,' he rapped, 'and for Istu's sake try to learn not to talk through that damned proboscis of yours.'
'Yes, milord.' Maguerr's tone was obsequious and unruffled by his master's brusqueness.
Rann bit back a curse. He saw the slight head motions of the three escorts who walked before him. The prince seldom had need to raise his voice, yet here he was on the verge of screaming at his own secretary. Rann knew quite well that his Guards made sport of him, and he promised silently they would pay for it. At the same time, he toted up yet another debit owing to Maguerr, a debt he planned to collect with the most usurious interest once the mage was no longer necessary to his plans. It had been long since his taste for torture had been sated.
'Take a memorandum,' Rann said. 'To Her Excellency Gomi Ashentani, Governor of Bilsinx by grace of Synalon i Etuul, Mistress of the Clouds, First among the Skyborn, of the Dark Ones Most Favored, and all the other usual honorifics.' He chopped the air with one hand.
Behind him Maguerr murmured to himself, impressing the words on his spongelike mind. Among his other unbearable attributes was numbered an eidetic memory. Rann gritted his teeth and continued.
'Milady Governor: You are hereby instructed to dispatch the ground forces left at your disposal, holding back a suitable reserve, to Kara-Est by no later than nightfall -'
Although Bilsinx was not just a conquered city but a thoroughly subjugated one, the hands of Rann's three Guards rested on sword pommels, and their eyes were never still. Bowstring-taut alertness was the rule of the Sky Guard elite, and even though they expected no trouble they scanned the street and storefronts with eagle-sharp eyes. They made no idle chatter; Rann would not permit it. They allowed themselves a measure of relief that the prince, impatient with crowds clogging the main thoroughfares, had chosen this side-street where no assassin could sidle to dagger range of Rann in the anonymity of a mob. But they allowed themselves no laxity.
Yet it was the prince's sharp eyes that caught the telltale gleam of sunlight on steel in a doorway ahead and to the left.
'Down!' he shouted, hurling himself to one side, tucking in his shoulder and rolling to the stoop of a shuttered bakery, closed by the Governor's Ashentani's rationing decrees. When Rann came to rest, his scimitar glistened in a wicked arc from his left fist.
The Guardsmen's honed reflexes snapped at Rann's command. But not quickly enough. Arrows whined, went home with deceptively soft sounds. Sword in hand, a Sky Guardsman sank to his knees, eyes fixed on the red fletched shaft sprouting between them. Beside him a comrade choked on the steel point embedded in his throat. 'Get the bastards!' a harsh voice cried.
