slate-gray and blue and orange. His mind wandered. First, he thought about Moriana's account of her trip to Thendrun. There was something missing from her story. He didn't perceive the lack as he would, say, the hollow left by a missing tooth. Rather, it was like detecting wine watered by a dishonest innkeeper. Moriana had diluted the truth.
Why?'
He'd never find out. In a short time it would no longer matter. But it hurt him to think she'd keep anything from him.
His thoughts drifted to Erimenes. He had travelled so long in the company of the garrulous and horny spirit that he'd come to like him. Certainly there were scores – hundreds! – of times when he had felt like abandoning the sage. Yet he had come to regard Erimenes as something of a comrade in arms despite the genie's superciliousness and insatiable appetite for vicarious stimulation.
And Erimenes had repaid that loyalty with treachery. Fost had no one to blame but himself for his credulity. Erimenes had shown his true essence before, when as a messenger, Fost had been charged with delivering the genie in the jug to its original owner. It had seemed to Fost that the genie was gradually changing over the many months, though, was actively trying to aid Fost rather than goad him into impossible and potentially entertaining situations.
Aye, seemed.
The Watchers finished eating and drinking and, still wordless, returned the utensils to Fost. He sat unspeaking with his arms around Moriana while the light went out of the world. Then they lay down side by side and slept.
They awoke to light.
Instinctively, Fost groped for his sword. He found a handful of soft flesh. Moriana automatically brushed his hand from her breast and sat up beside him.
They blinked into the yellow eye of a hooded lantern. Fost's blood chilled. Had the Zr'gsz inquisitor arrived ahead of schedule? The light winked out. Fost's eyes adjusted to the darkness again, and he made out a stocky form in a narrow gap between the gates. 'Sir Longstrider? Princess Moriana?' 'What do you want?' Moriana asked cautiously.
'Save the hackneyed dialog for later,' a familiar, testy voice snapped. 'Right now, time is of the essence.'
'Go play your vicious tricks elsewhere, you treacherous bottled fart,' said Fost hotly. 'Yes! You're a disgrace to noble Athalau!' exclaimed Ziore.
'Gentles…' the husky young man said, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
'The just must suffer,' Erimenes said. 'May the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift witness what dullards I am saddled with as friends!' 'You've small right to call upon the Wise,' hissed Moriana. 'Gentles, now…'
'Must I bear such abuse heaped upon my noble head? After all I've done? Oh, it is a bitter lot dealing with such as you.'
'Silence!' The command snapped like a whip. Fost peered most closely at the youth. Whoever he was, he had the habit of command. 'Gentles, you may not know me, for you only saw me briefly. I am Snowbuck, Sternbow's son. I've come to rescue you.'
'Then why are you signing your death warrant by carrying that jar around with you?' Fost got to his feet. Erimenes called upon the gods to witness his sorry fate.
'But gentles,' Snowbuck said, 'It was the good Erimenes who talked these men into helping free you. I couldn't convince them by myself.' A tall shadow appeared at his side.
'It may do us little credit but it's no light thing to cross that devil Fairspeaker.' Fost recognized the voice of the bowman who had told his naming story to Moriana the night before. 'But when Erimenes told us what had happened in the Sky City, we could no longer doubt that the People are enemies of all our kind.'
'As if it wasn't before all our faces long ago!' Snovvbuck said passionately.
'Ah, Snowbuck, you've won now. Don't chop a tree that's fallen.' The rebuff was offered in a friendly tone and Snowbuck took it gracefully.
'You have the right, Firesbane.' He gestured and men spilled into the compound. 'Help these others out.' He didn't have to tell them to be quick and quiet; they were Nevrym foresters.
As the Nevrymin began to usher out the Watchers into the night for the second time in two days, Snowbuck pulled Erimenes's fat clay jar from its pouch and handed it almost reverently to Fost. Fost accepted it with both hands. For a second, he considered drop-kicking it over the wall, then thought better of it. That would have been too noisy. He stuffed it back into the satchel.
'At least, you're not totally lost to feelings of gratitude,' Erimenes said waspishly.
'Erimenes, what are you up to?' Fost demanded. He stood in front of the gate so that the escaping Watchers had to part and pass to both sides of him like a stream around a jutting rock.
'A scheme worthy of my high intelligence' the spirit replied smugly. 'It was almost a pity to waste such ingenuity on so paltry a project as saving you from certain death. But it offends my sense of esthetics to contemplate a beauty such as Moriana's passing from this world.'
'I'm flattered,' the princess said, 'but what was all that bizarre claptrap about our plotting to field our own fleet of skyrafts?'
'I had to tell that rogue Fairspeaker something that would convince him I was truly on their side – and, incidentally, would keep him from bowing to the insistence of the Zr'gsz commandant and allowing you to be killed.' ''Allowing' us – what power has he?' Fost demanded.
'The Hissers realize it is Fairspeaker who keeps their Nevrymin allies allied. And he does have the favor of the Dark Ones. He wasn't lying about that.'
In the starlight it seemed that patches of color had come to Snowbuck's broad cheeks.
'You owe Erimenes a debt, Sir Longstrider, and you, too, Princess,' he said. 'And… and I, as well. For he's made it possible for me to save my father's honor!'
His voice almost cracked the armor of his whispering. He collected himself and clapped the two on the arms. 'We must hurry.' 'Lead the way,' said Fost.
CHAPTER NINE
Sure-footed in the dark, Snowbuck led Fost and Moriana up the arroyo that ran along the western wall of the prison compound. He then threaded his way eastward over the brushy slope of Omizantrim between the fumarole where the Ullapag had kept its vigil and the village itself. The mountain was moody tonight. Its mutterings crescendoed from time to time to a roaring like blood in the ears. Purple lightning played around the summit. Explosions crashed in the crater playing lurid light on the underside of the wide cloud that issued from the mountain's guts.
Fost sensed movement on both sides. He didn't waste energy casting about to see who or what was nearby. He trusted Snowbuck's sense better than his own. It would have been foolish to fall down a hole simply to keep track of unseen friends.
Like Moriana, he ran with sword in hand. Nevrymin had returned their weapons as they emerged from the compound. As dark as the night was, the princess had decided not to string her bow and wore it slung over her back next to a fresh quiver of arrows.
They passed through narrow draws, struggled up slopes where the lava threatened to crumble underfoot at any instant and fling them facedown on the sharp rock, and once hopped across a recent flow that burned the soles of their feet. Luckily, the crust didn't give way beneath them the way the half-hardened lava had when they first made their way to the Watchers' village.
At one point, Fost almost went headlong into the yawning pit of a skystone quarry. He drew a sharp rebuke from Erimenes for his clumsiness. The major drifts and mines lay downslope, which meant the Zr'gsz garrisons and patrols of Nevrymin still loyal to the lizard folk would be concentrated in that direction.
As he scrambled from the pit something flew into his face. He struck at it, thinking it a bat or nocturnal insect. To his amazement it flashed by and continued soundlessly upward, losing itself in blackness. He heard
