his direction.
'We have grown apart from your world. Even brief visits to it are tiring for us. There is also the fact that we tried our might against the Demon of the Dark Ones before. We failed. And we were stronger then.' Jirre spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. 'There are other reasons, but those are the primary ones.'
'Well, we're grateful for the help you've given us this far,' said Fost, wondering at himself for speaking so familiarly to the Wise Ones. 'Lord Ust,' he said turning to a huge bear sitting a few feet away down the table, 'you especially have my thanks for aiding me.' Ust frowned and rubbed his cheek with a claw.
'You've been a dutiful son,' he rumbled, 'though like all of them you think of me most often when in distress. But I cannot recall intervening on your behalf. You seem well enough equipped to sort out your own problems.'
'But,' Fost sputtered, confused, 'but that time the Ust-alayakits rescued me from Rann and his killers and spared my life because I called on you… and those other times when Jennas told me you had aided me. You didn't?' He felt hot tears of frustration stinging his eyes. He had come to have faith in Jennas and her forecasts. He felt cheated she'd failed him in this way.
'Jennas is my chosen,' the bear god said in his rolling bass. 'Her I do watch over, for she leads my people. But you – if someone's been helping you, it hasn't been me.' He scowled, his eyes turning red. 'An impostor, is it? Just let me find out who -' 'Ust, control yourself,' chided Jirre. 'Your muzzle is growing.' 'I won't sit next to a bear,' declared Majyra. 'They smell!'
Reddish hair retreated from the bear god's face, and his face and brow took on a more human appearance. But he huddled himself down and growled as if hating the shape change.
'Best I return you to your bodies,' said Jirre. 'I am truly sorry. Our hopes and best thoughts go with you, for what they're worth.'
Fost felt the chair dissolving under him. He stood rather than be dropped to the floor. Beside him were Moriana, Erimenes and Ziore. They bowed. There was nothing to say, although Fost's mind churned with unanswered questions. Jirre had dismissed them. When a goddess bids a mere mortal leave, it was best to depart.
As they walked back the way they had come along the auroral hall, the shifting hues of the walls faded from view and were replaced by swirling fog. Gradually the others drew ahead of Fost. Though he picked his own way through the foggy terrain as quickly as he could, they moved inexorably away, hardly seeming aware that they did so. Fost felt panic grip his throat when they vanished into the misty distance.
'Be calm,' a voice said beside him. 'I wanted a word with you in private.'
Fost turned and saw one of the Wise Ones. The goddess seemed tantalizingly familiar, yet he could place no name to her. She had remained silent in the hall while Jirre spoke.
As if reading his mind, she reached out and plucked a tiny rose from behind his ear, saying, 'Now do you know me, Fost? I am Perryn.' A dulcet laugh filled his ears, yet had a peculiarly flat quality to it. 'Perryn Prankster, some call me.'
The goddess of laughter and anarchy handed him the miniature rose.
'I will tell you something, my friend,' Perryn said, laughing at Fost's discomfort. 'It might be that the Wise Ones, aligned together, could defeat the Dark Ones and cast Istu back into spaces between the stars. It just might be,' he said, grinning savagely. 'And it might be that you should thank me for helping prevent it.'
'Thank you?' cried Fost. 'But you've thrown us to the Dark Ones, left us defenseless!' 'Not defenseless. Felarod defeated Istu before without our aid.' 'But the World Spirit…'
'Is a thing apart, closer to you than to us. It is not of Agift but rather of a more basic origin. In many ways, it and Istu are so similar.' She shook her head. 'Because you're ignorant in matters of the gods, I will state the obvious and not think less of you for it. We are us and you are you.' Fost looked blank.
'Our interests are not yours,' said Perryn, eyes boring into Fost's gray ones. 'If we fight for your world and conquer it, it will be ours. No longer yours, except by our sufferance.' 'That is all.. . hard to accept.' Fost licked dry lips.
'It'd be harder for one raised a pious believer. We are good allies but poor masters.'
She clapped Fost on the shoulder and said, 'You'd best get along now. Remember not to count on assistance from us.' Perryn smiled wickedly, adding, 'Well, perhaps a little. I do like you, mortal. You're cute.' The goddess laughed and this time the waves of mirth smashed into Fost's brain like ocean waves against a beach. His head rang as he felt himself spinning away.
He cried out, 'Perryn! Who was it who helped me before, if not my patron Ust?'
Ghostly laughter brought Fost awake. He sat upright, drenched in cold sweat, his heart triphammering wildly in his breast. He took several deep draughts of the fish-smell laden air and calmed down.
'What a dream,' he said to himself, reaching up to brush away the perspiration on his forehead. A single tiny rose was clutched in his right hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
'Wasn't that the most lovely aurora last night?' chirped Zunhilix the chamberlain as he flitted about the apartment. 'I'm sure it was a most auspicious sign for your investiture.' Fost and Moriana looked at each other. 'We didn't see it,' the princess said.
'Oh, but I'm sure you had better things to do than watch the sky, didn't you?' He tittered, hiding his petal- shaped mouth behind a delicate white hand.
Fost felt exasperation and a tightening of the muscles in his belly. It had been some time since he and Moriana had lain together, and the strain he experienced now was as much emotional as physical. But paramount in his mind was the question of what had happened the night before. Aurora? His eyes darted to where one of the servants made up his bed. Nothing but a withered stalk of the miniature rose remained on the bedside table. Yet he had clutched that delicate, living flower in his very own hand the night before. A sense of being little more than a leaf caught in a millrace seized him.
'Most certainly my companions had something better to do than watch the sky,' Erimenes piped up. 'But unfortunately, all they did was sleep. I'm beginning to despair of those two, chamberlain.'
As two plump stewards, painted even more gaudily than their master, laced Fost into a molded gilt breastplate, the courier rolled eyes up in his head in mock horror at the genie's words. It seemed nothing kept Erimenes's libido at bay.
'Now, Erimenes,' chided Ziore. 'I thought I kept you too busy to care what they did.' The nun's spirit produced a throaty and quite unvirginal chuckle.
'Of course you did, my love. I simply find myself grieving that our young mortal friends are so profligate of the little time they have in life as to waste the nocturnal hours on a pastime as unrewarding as sleep. They actually went to bed to sleep! Great Ultimate, what a waste! It is solely concern for their well-being that motivates my interest in this matter, nothing more.'
Ziore made a skeptical noise. She may have been besotted with the lecherous old ghost but she wasn't that besotted.
Ignoring this byplay, Zunhilix busied himself attending to Moriana's coiffure. It was her one concession to Medurimin mores. She would wear a sculpted breastplate and back, a kilt of gold-plated strips of hornbull leather and glittery gold greaves, just like Fost. Zunhilix had pleaded with her to wear one of the stunning selection of ceremonial women's ensembles he had at his disposal, from weblike concoctions of Golden Isle shimmereen that left breasts and pubes bare to a chaste, long-trained robe of green lacebird silk. Sternly she had shaken her head. She was not eager to be invested as a noble of the Empire, no more than Fost, but both had deemed it impolitic to refuse the great honor Teom had offered them. Not only did they need the help of the Empire in battling the Fallen Ones and the lizard folk's Demon ally, the situation in city and Palace was such that they needed his goodwill to continue living. The mobs demanding Moriana's head grew increasingly bold. But if Moriana had to add some insignificant Imperial title to that which was her birthright as lawful heir to the Sky City's Beryl Throne, she was going to do it as a warrior, not as one of the simpering damsels of the north.
To mollify Zunhilix, who had fallen to weeping and tugging at his pointed beard on learning how adamant Moriana was, the princess had agreed to allow the chamberlain and his staff to do as they liked with her hair. The
