you?'
'But the princess is so skinny and malproportioned, gentle sir. Why would I do that?'
Moriana cleared her throat. The conversation was clearly out of control.
'Just what is it you want, innkeeper?' she asked, sitting and making no effort to cover herself.
The dwarf glanced at Fost, who was still standing with sword menacingly pointed, then made the effort to calm himself.
'It's the militia. They're searching all over town. You must flee at once.' 'But why? What do they want from us?'
'Because of the news,' the dwarf choked out. 'The Sky City has stopped!'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The ship sang. The lyre sang harmony.
Soprano sang the rigging, squeaking on the blocks, sighing in the warm west wind. Bass sang the hull, moaning and cracking as seams opened and closed to the play of the sea. High sang the lyre, as silver and fleeting and lonely as the cries of seabirds. And low sang the lyre in bell-shaped tones. Standing by the starboard rail with Moriana at his side, Fost thought he'd never heard a sweeter sound or one sadder.
The song dwindled and became one with the past. Fost and Moriana looked up at the ship's captain, who had folded his unlikely body between two crenellations of the stout forecastle looming over the deck. He smiled and inclined his head. 'It was Jirre herself who taught me to play,' he said.
Moriana turned questioningly to Fost. He answered with a silent shrug. That the captain of the ship Wyvern was mad was indisputable. But knowing him as he did, Fost couldn't be wholly convinced he wasn't telling the truth.
Five days ago Fost's brain had reeled in incredulity at the innkeeper's tidings: the Sky City had stopped. Impossible! was his first reaction. The City had not simply kept immutably to following the Great Quincunx for all Fost's relatively short life, it had done so since before even humans had seized the City from its rightful owners eight thousand years ago. It had done so for two thousand years of the Hissers' tenure, since the end of the War of Powers when Felarod had confined the once free-floating City to its pattern above the center of the continent…
Since the War of Powers not even the Hissers had been able to alter the City's course. Since the binding of Istu. But Istu was no longer bound.
The word had come first to the Outer Town courtesy of a Wirixer factor who lived in a sprawling marble pile built during the occupation by the Northern Barbarians. The Wirixers had a sorcerous communications network, as did the Sky Citizens, though the Sky City had had no direct representative in North Keep for several years. The news that the City had come to a halt in the air after passing over Wirix soon spread to the Keep itself. The reaction was immediate.
The grapevine hummed with news that Chairman Samilchut was drafting an offer of alliance to be transmitted to the Zr'gsz, though how it was to be sent was still uncertain. The Wirixer wasn't going to do it, not while his home city was besieged by an army of the Fallen Ones. While it was true, as Fost said, that even with Istu on their side the Hissers would take years to reduce North Keep, Samilchut deemed it wise to try to get on the good side of a power that could stop the ten-thousand-year progress of the City in the Sky. The fact that she would be a long time losing didn't encourage the dictator to seek war.
It took no great deductive powers to realize that the former ruler of the Sky City, onetime ally of the Fallen Ones, might make a nice gift for North Keep's chairman to send the People as a token of her friendship. Fost and Moriana had found themselves shivering in the wet dawn wind on the swaybacked docks of the Outer Town, wondering how they were going to reach the ships anchored out in the harbor.
Teeth chattering, Fost eyed the ships. Apparently no one left small boats moored at the dock overnight and whatever boatmen plied the harbor were still in bed on this bleak morning. He wondered if they could swim out with their dogs to one of the vessels. He and jennas had escaped Tolviroth Acerte in similar fashion a few months ago plowing right into the bay on the backs of their bears. This time, they couldn't be sure of the reception awaiting them once they clambered over a strange ship's gunwales and asked for asylum.
His gaze kept coming back to one ship in particular. It was the largest, anchored next to the Tolvirot warcraft. Fost knew little of ships but could tell there was something peculiar about this one. Its proportions were wrong, as if its designers had set out to make it one thing and midway decided to change it into another. And it had a familiar aura to it as well, a combination of sloppiness and a shipshapeness that reminded him of a man he knew to be dead.
'Down there,' Moriana said, tugging at his sleeve. 'There's a boat.' Bumping its nose against the seawall like an amorous dolphin bobbed a square-prowed dinghy. They walked the hundred yards to the boat. Three men stood on the deck near it. One leaning against a pile of cordage was obviously the crewman who had rowed the boat to shore. Another, a tall storklike man in a flapping black cloak whose sleeves fluttered in the wind as he gestured gave the impression he was trying to become airborne. He had to be a local merchant. And the third…
Fost stared hard. He was well above average height for a dwarf, but there was no mistaking the shortness of limb and the sturdiness of body. His kinky hair was a golden cloud floating around his head – no pure-blooded dwarf had any but straight hair. As the disbelieving courier grew closer, the aristocratic fineness of the man's profile became apparent, another blatantly un-dwarven characteristic.
'What a strange man,' Moriana whispered. 'I've never seen the likes of him before.'
Fost said nothing. His eyes remained on the man. He was certain there couldn't be two such men in the world – and the one Fost knew was dead.
The golden dwarf turned in irritation at the intrusion. Immediately, his face transformed into a mask of sheer joy. Ortil Onsulomulo smiled and bobbed his outsized head. Luck had finally smiled on Fost and had continued during the past five days aboard the Wyvern.
'Yes, a goddess taught me the arts of the lyre. Do you doubt it?' He struck a chord and the listeners felt their eyes fill with tears. He strummed another chord and mirth bubbled up inside. A third and Fost and Moriana felt that some ultimate truth hovered just beyond their fingertips waiting for the tiniest exertion before they could grasp it.
'No, Captain Onsulomulo,' Moriana said, shaking her head. 'I don't doubt it.' 'I'm sure the captain speaks metaphorically,' put in Erimenes.
Onsulomulo shook his head stubbornly. His jaw set and the expression on his cheerful face hardened.
'I speak unvarnished truth, blue ghost who thinks too much about screwing.' He bounced to his feet and tucked the instrument under one arm. 'The Wise Ones love me. Because Fate has cursed me, the goddesses and gods pity me.'
'I can almost believe it,' muttered Fost. He had last seen Onsulomulo peering over the rail of the dwarf's ship Miscreate, which was being drawn up in a waterspout formed by an air elemental Synalon had called to devastate Kara-Est harbor. It was impossible that Ortil Onsulomulo lived. Yet it obviously took more than a howling elemental to stop him.
The courier still had the eerie feeling that the Three and Twenty kept their eye on him, too, just as Jennas maintained. Not only was the half-dwarf captain overjoyed to see him, he insisted on providing Fost, Moriana and the ghosts and dogs immediate transport to High Medurim – free. And more than mere transportation, Onsulomulo also offered the pair the protection of his escort, the TMG dromon Tiger.
'You, my friend,' Onsulomulo had said, hugging Fost to his barrel chest, 'you are the source of all my good fortune!'
It was hard to deny. Instead of smashing him and his ship to splinters, the air sprite had deposited Onsulomulo and the Miscreate in the Central Plaza of Kara-Est with loving care. It had presented the city's conquerors with a knotty problem. No matter what their eventual plans of conquest, the City in the Sky couldn't afford to alienate either the dwarves or the Joreans. The fact that since siring his bizarre bastard Ortil's father Jama Onsulomulo had become Minister of Education for the western Jorean province of Sundown made it difficult to adopt the expedient solution of bashing in Ortil's head and claiming the elemental had killed him in combat. Ortil
