moist breath of corruption riding on it. She drew it in like a fine perfume.
'Maybe I will. Moriana was a weakling at heart. She let me live when I lay naked and powerless against her. I am steel at the center, not mush. If Istu would pit his will against my own, it may be the Demon who is surprised.' Her words glowed with hatred. The Demon's progenitors had used her for their devious ends and cast her aside. Her pride still smarted over the injustice. Had a human injured her pride, death would have been painful and long. So fierce was her rage that she would forge from it a weapon fit to wound even the Lords of the Void.
Rann sighed. Like Tonsho, Synalon was a genius in her own way. He had to grant both women that. But he had long ago learned the sad lesson that not all of genius were stable.
'Is that your answer?' he asked, his voice as soft as wind among swamp reeds. 'Yes.' She spoke without turning. 'We fight.'
The corners of his mouth drew up in an expression that wasn't a smile. His left hand dropped to his left boot-top, withdrew the yellow dart which Tonsho thought he'd brought or her. His hand whipped up.
The dart blurred across the room. Wary as a unicorn stag stalking a hunter, Synalon had half spun when the missile thunked home in soft, white flesh between her ribs. Red blossomed like an insane flower against her skin's pallor.
Both Rann and the Thailint poison were quick acting, but neither was fast enough. Rann's face twisted in agony as blue-white lightning lashed from Synalon's fingers and bathed his right side in flame. They fell together.
The doors burst open. Young Cerestan of the Guard stood there, eyes wild and hair awry, curved blade in his hand. He saw the royal cousins sprawled on the floor a few paces apart and gasped. The Guards crowding in at his back stopped and looked in horror.
But both forms refused to remain still. Synalon lay on her back, arms outflung, closed eyes turned to the vaulted ceiling, her entire body spasming. Rann, his jacket and tunic smouldering, painfully hoisted himself from the limestone floor.
'It is done.' The words fell from Rann's lips in jagged fragments. 'Cerestan, see that the evacuation continues. We must be away from here before…' Strength left him. He fell face-down on the cold stone.
CHAPTER TWO
'I know little of practical magic but have read much of the theory in books,' the small, round man said. 'But from what I do know, yes, it could have been an illusion and nothing more.'
Fost Longstrider leaned back in his chair, fingering his chin thoughtfully. The appearance of the goddess Jirre at such an opportune time at the Battle of the Black March troubled him. Moriana Etuul was a great sorceress, yes, but she had been physically and emotionally drained by the Zr'gsz magic and was hardly able to fling a small lightning bolt, much less maintain a greater than life-sized illusion. The battle had been ill-conceived due to the bickering between the various factions comprising the army, and Fost was still more than a little surprised at the victory against the superior army of reptiles. His eyes narrowed. He didn't have to ask Oracle the question. The being – the projected image – read it from his mind.
'It seems to me,' the image of the little man went on, 'that an illusion properly cast, especially by one who'd never performed such a spell – and the Princess Moriana had not – might befuddle the caster as well as its intended objects. So, assuming that the apparition of the goddess Jirre was no more than it seemed, it still might have served to uncover untapped reserves of power within Moriana. Focusing that power might account for the destruction of the Zr'gsz skyrafts when the apparition struck its lyre. The way the Hissers died when she swept through them can be attributed to suggestion. But as you pointed out, it stretches credibility beyond the breaking point to speculate that the rafts themselves possessed some consciousness for the illusion to play upon. I,' said Oracle firmly, 'therefore conjecture Moriana has unsuspected powers that caused the craft to disintegrate.'
Oracle possessed much of the knowledge stored in the great Library of High Medurim and shared it willingly with Fost. The real body of the entity called Oracle lay in the next room. It was nothing more than a gleaming blue-white mound of fungus the size of a peasant's hut. The nutrient vat in which it rested bubbled and reeked like garlic, but this didn't stop the legion of savants whose droning penetrated the wall in a beehive buzz as they read aloud from ancient volumes. The more they read, the more Oracle absorbed into its consciousness, and the more information it could integrate, evaluate and pass along to Fost.
The living, thinking, reasoning fungus was a triumph of genetic magics commissioned by the Emperor Teom.
In spite of Oracle's logic, something nudged at the former Realm-road courier's mind. Oracle had learned much in its short existence. Perhaps too much from Emperor Teom and his sister-wife Temalla when it came to subterfuge and intrigue. Fost felt that Oracle held something back, but the illusion of a pudgy, self-content man sitting cross-legged beside him was unreadable.
'You're being less than candid,' Fost accused. 'That body of yours is no more than an illusion, yet you are able to cast it all the way to the Black March to view the battle. I'd say that shows more than theoretical acquaintance with magic' The pale eyes slid from his gray ones. 'There's magic and magic, my young friend, and -'
'Young?' Fost snorted. 'With all due respect, I'm not as young as you, who were first cultured in the vat a scant three years ago. And as for magic, I'm one who truly knows little of it, but I do know the kinds. There's extrinsic magic, the ability to manipulate powers like elementals and lesser demons, which was passed to the Etuul bloodline by the Hissers back in the days before the reptiles were driven from the Sky City. And there's intrinsic magic – Athalar art – springing from the powers of the magician's own mind. Moriana's hardships on the slopes of Mt. Omizantrim honed her intrinsic powers to the point where she was able to best Synalon's largely extrinsic magic. Befuddling minds so only illusion is perceived is clearly intrinsic magic – and happens to be exactly what you're doing to me, you charlatan.' Oracle spread his hands and smiled.
'No evading the question,' Fost pressed. 'Was the apparition of the goddess Jirre simply illusion – or something more?'
The cheerful mask dropped from Oracle's face. He hesitated, and his eyes seemed to probe Fost's very soul.
'Are you sure you want the answer to that, my friend?' he asked in a soft voice.
'Uh, no, maybe I don't.' Fost licked dry lips. He had thought he needed the answer. Now he wasn't so sure of himself. Moriana had learned much during her stay in the Hisser's city of Thendrun. Some of her own new-found knowledge struck him as truly alien, a thing better suited to the reptilian than the human. And if she had somehow accomplished the impossible feat of actually summoning a goddess to do her bidding, she ranked as the most powerful mage in all of history. 'You fear the gods, don't you?' Oracle asked after a long silence.
'I fear the fact of their existence. No, not even that. I dread living in a world that's a battleground for forces beyond it. If the Dark Ones exist, and the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift, too, fine. That's no concern of mine. But if they choose to settle their differences on this little mudball wrapped in a blanket of air where I live…' He shuddered at the magnitude of it all. Sometimes it was difficult enough dealing with human royalty. This transcended petty, bickering humanity and opened the Universe to unknowable dealings. 'I don't know if I can bear the thought of being no more than a pawn in a cosmic chess game.' Oracle's face mirrored the pain Fost felt.
'You must bear it, my friend,' he said quietly.'Istu is loose again, and a Second War of Powers is already being fought. Whether you like it or not, you are one of the principles.'
In moody silence, Fost sat and remembered. The Battle of the Black March had been swung from defeat to victory for humanity by the startling, unexpected apparition hundreds of feet tall that may or may not have been the goddess Jirre herself. After Fost had talked himself into believing it only an illusion, the image of Zak'zar, the Speaker of the People, had appeared at the victory feast in Emperor Teom's pavilion.
The Zr'gsz leader had destroyed the triumphant mood with twin revelations. Humankind had won a feeble victory; the Sky City carrying the Demon of the Dark Ones easily conquered the great city of Kara-Est. Even more unsettling for Fost was the shattering indictment of his lover, Moriana Etuul. Zak'zar revealed that Moriana had lain with one of the Hissers to seal her alliance with the
People, and that she, and all of the Etuul bloodline, were descended from another human-reptile union nine thousand years earlier.
