BOOK THREE
Demon of the Dark Ones
For cherry: agent amp; sorceress who made six out of one -
'it's better to burn out
'cause rust never sleeps.' love,
– vwm To all of you whose patience exceeded my own
Sharon
Geo.
Mike
Kathy my parents amp; grandmother; and, of course, always, Kerry -rev
CHAPTER ONE
The man was a sadist, a killer, a eunuch. He was also a genius. But now Prince Rann Etuul gave little indication of those traits. He wore a plain robe that covered him from neck to ankles and made him appear to be little more than a hermit. The only outward signs that this man was different lay in the coldness of his tawny eyes and the network of fine scars glowing on his face where the light from the dying sun touched him.
He leaned forward, hands on a dilapidated table covered with maps, and stared out to the west. His mind worked methodically, savoring the sunset and the coolness and varied scents blowing in from the Gulf of Veluz. The songs of cinnamon birds and the evening lark mingled and vied for his attention over the cries of vendors in the city streets eastward and below his vantage point in the Hills of Cholon. He watched the western sky with little appreciation for the beauty of a vivid sunset. His mind was focused on a demon. The Demon of the Dark Ones.
Rann tensed at the sight of a mote floating among clouds touched with the colors of gods. At first a spark less bright than the evening star, it grew and became cruciform. Growing still more, underwings burning with the reflected glory of the now hidden sun, it took on detail.
Thunder sounded. With a loud scrabbling of claws, the war eagle found a perch on the sill jutting from Rann's window. The window, like the others in the former Ducal Palace of Kara-Est, had been built in such a fashion that the opening was too small to admit the war bird, twice as tall as a man. Even the rider, small and lithe like most Skyborn, had to duck to pass through the opening before dropping to the stone floor. The eagle's rider dismissed the mount, leaving it to find supper and a roost in the aerie the fugitives of the City in the Sky had constructed in a lesser tower of the Palace.
The rider turned to face Rann. Her hair hung lank about a face high of cheekbone and narrow of chin. Under the grime and exhaustion masking her slightly foxlike features, she might have been attractive. Her hair was a lusterless tangled brown giving only hints of its possible beauty when cleaned. She carried a bow and quiver, and circling her left biceps was the gold brassard of the elite Sky Guard.
'Sublieutenant Tanith,' Rann greeted her. His voice rang out like the pealing of a silver bell. When he desired, his tone increased the terror he inspired. He gestured toward a wrought-iron stand holding a large ceramic bottle and a goblet similar to the one he held. 'Drink, if you like.'
'I'm on duty, sir,' the Guardswoman said instinctively, her voice hoarse with dryness. Rann merely looked at her. He was not above tricking the members of the Guard into infractions of discipline. But in a moment of reflection, the sublieutenant realized such behavior belonged elsewhere, in the City in the Sky now lost to the Demon. Too few of the Skyborn had survived in the Demon's onslaught or the reptilian Hissers' vengeance for Rann to further reduce their numbers over petty crimes against corps discipline. 'Thank you, lord,' she said, pouring the wine.
He permitted her to refill his cup. She drained hers at a single swallow, then quickly filled her cup again. Rann watched without comment. The mellow ale was not that heady, and her farings would have given her a great thirst.
'What have you learned?' he asked when she had lubricated her throat sufficiently to speak in a natural voice free of dry croakings. 'The City approaches, milord, even as you said it would.' 'How far is it?'
'It should come into view sometime before dawn of the day after tomorrow. We could launch an eagle strike against it tomorrow.' Her voice rose in hope that Rann would order such an attack. The Sky Guard had been shamed by the loss of their City. Tanith was like the other survivors who wanted nothing more than to redeem themselves and feel as if they were doing something to recoup their intolerable loss.
'And what did you see in the Sky City?' he asked, choosing to overlook her eager recommendation.
'The Hissers are at work, lord. They've completed the destruction they began the day… the day they cast us out. They build now. Defensive works, missile engines, and some construction that seems of no military purpose.'
Gripping his left wrist with his right hand, Rann nodded above the rim of his goblet. He understood, or thought he did. No sooner had they turned on their human ally Moriana and the forces of her sister Synalon that earlier had been their common foe, than the Zr'gsz had set about erasing any hint of the nine-thousand-year occupancy of the humans who had supplanted them, the original builders of the City in the Sky. That done, it was obviously important to set their mark anew upon their recaptured prize to prepare to defend it.
Or to prepare to reassert their dominion over a continent. And eventually an entire world.
'The Demon,' Rann almost hissed, leaning forward, his eyes gleaming in the last glow of twilight. 'Did you see Istu?'
'My lord, I… I do not know.' Tanith averted her eyes and bit her lower lip in consternation. For a heartstopping instant, she thought he would reach across the table and seize her by the throat, shaking her the way a terrier killed a rat.
'What do you mean you don't know?' Rann's voice was calm, level, deadly. Tanith now feared it more than if he had shouted.
'I saw Istu the day he was released, milord, as you did. A black shape towering in the sky like a doorway into darkness, his body like a man's but with horns set on either side of his skull. His eyes were slits of yellow fire.' She shuddered at the memory. Better to face a hundred swordsmen than to even think about the Demon. 'Like the Vicar of Istu, lord.'
'That statue is his likeness. Now, I ask you again, did you see him?'
'Perhaps I did,' she said, and met his polar stare. She managed to suppress another shudder. 'But if so, he did not wear the same shape.' Breaking the bond of their locked gaze, Rann wheeled. 'Explain!' he snapped.
'I saw no such towering dark being as walked through the streets of the City… that day. But the Skywell is filled with a blackness, lord, a rounded blackness that gleams like a giant black lens. I've not seen anything like it before. I thought it might be some manifestation of the Demon.'
'The Black Lens.' A look of stark pain flitted across Rann's ruined features. 'One of the last tricks Istu concocted before Felarod bound him. And we must face it at the outset of this War of Powers.'
He turned to her. Her eyes were wide above dark fatigue hollows. Rumors had flown among the ragged refugees streaming to Kara-Est and Bilsinx from the Sky City and the fury of its returned builders that a second War of Powers lay at hand. She had tended to dismiss such saying as idle gossip.
The scarred lips of Prince Rann confirmed those rumors of truth. 'And skyrafts, Sublieutenant. Did you see any?'
'Few, lord. Ten or a dozen flew around or beside the City, but no more than that. We were observed, I think, but none pursued us.' Her teeth showed bright in the twilight dimness of the room. 'They've learned that lesson, at least!'
Rann waved his hand. The dearth of skyrafts mystified him, but it was only a minor mystery. The reptiles holding the City might have dispatched their fleets elsewhere for some arcane mission. A few sharp skirmishes since the day the City was conquered had demonstrated that, without magical aid, the skystone craft the Hissers rode couldn't survive long in the sky against the eagles of the bird riders. It was a trivial fact. The real enemy was
