quenching it.
Biner heard Khysmet trumpet from the aft section of the ship. The great stallion was housed in a temporary stable, waiting for his master's return. The excitement of the battle, plus his concern for Safar's absence, had worked the horse up into a fury and he was kicking at the wooden partition that held him.
To his relief, he saw Arlain running to the stable to calm the animal. Khysmet was much enamored of the dragon woman and would be sure to respond to her gentle ministrations.
He turned back to the task at hand. 'Bombardiers, are you ready?' he shouted to his attack crew.
The signal came back that the sacks of magical explosives were set in their bays. The formula for the explosives had been worked out by Safar during their final flight from Esmir. Palimak had later added a trick or two of his own, guaranteed to devastate the most hardened enemy.
These explosives had been the key to the Kyranian occupation of their little piece of Syrapis. During Safar's long exile in the otherworld of Hadinland, it had been up to Palimak to lead the way against all those hostile forces.
Biner had been shocked when he'd realized that hatred seemed to be the natural state of things in Syrapis. This was an emotional environment he'd never understood. In his mind and experience, people-and even demons- were all the same. An audience was merely an audience. Most were sweet, but some were sour. And turning sour to sweet was his life's work.
He was a gentle giant in a dwarf's body. Short of stature, massive in girth and especially in heart, he believed down to his very bones there was no audience he'd ever met whose spirit couldn't be transformed-if only for two hours-into goodness.
And so the vicious, hateful attitude of the natives of Syrapis completely mystified him. Although he'd performed before thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people in his career, the Syrapians were like no others he'd ever met.
Arlain and the other circus performers felt the same and so although they were fighting for their own survival in Syrapis-as well as for that of the Kyranians-they despised this new, anti-human role they were forced to play.
Now they were being called upon to play that role once again. The
Biner could only guess why Rhodes had followed the Timuras to this far-off place. He supposed the king's purpose was to block Safar's mission to Hadinland. Why Rhodes should want to do this, however, was a complete puzzlement.
The only thing Biner knew for certain was that he had to stop Rhodes. At the moment the only way he could see to accomplish this was to bombard the longboats carrying the enemy troops. To bombard the
However, the huge fire arrows being launched by the three enemy ships were doing a damned good job of keeping him from that objective.
His maneuvers were designed to carry him above their reach, yet still be close enough to assume some accuracy. To maintain his calm, he imagined the action as raising a diving platform to its maximum height, while still giving the acrobat a good chance of hitting his watery target.
He was studying a group of longboats clustered near the
'Over there, Biner!' she cried, gesturing wildly toward the shore. 'It'th a thignal from Thafar!'
Biner swiveled his glass in the direction she was pointing. And there, rising from the beach, he saw a green flare. Fearing some new trick to draw his attention away from the battle, he backtracked the flare's path until he came to a small group of people standing near the water's edge.
One of them was clearly Safar.
'Hard about!' he shouted to the crew. 'Set a course for the beach!'
Leaving his friends to tend to the battle, Safar spent just enough time with Khysmet to let him know his master was back for good.
Then he hurried to Methydia's old stateroom, where Jooli guarded their bound captive, King Felino.
While waiting to be picked up by the airship she'd hastily briefed Safar about her magical observations in the arena.
'They seemed obsessed with the number six,' she'd said.
That was good enough for Safar to make some quick deductions. Suddenly, he was quite certain of the identity of the mysterious Queen X.
In the cabin he gave Jooli a stick of magical charcoal and directed her to draw a six-pointed star on the deck, with Felino at the center. Each star point, he also told her, should bear the likeness of one of the animal warriors they'd faced. A lion to start with, followed by a jackal, an ape, and so on.
Jooli quickly caught on to what he intended and got to work.
Meanwhile, Safar flipped through the pages of the Book of Asper for clues to the proper spell.
He started with the Lady Felakia, the patron goddess of his people. In the most ancient Kyranian myths it was said that the beautiful goddess of purity and health was once wooed by the god Rybian, the maker of people and demons.
Legend had it that the Lady Felakia spurned Rybian's attentions and during the long loversa€™ siege he became bored and pinched out all the races of humankind and demonkind from the pure clay of Kyrania.
The same clay that had made the Timura potters a modern legend; their work through generations was highly valued all over Esmir.
To Safar, however, the key was Asper's claim that humans and demons were born of 'a common womb.' In other words, never mind the myth of what Rybian had wrought, but pay close attention to the mother.
The demon master wizard had a theory regarding the subject. It was outlined in a poem that began:
A wicked sister of the pure and just
In Asper's scenario, the Goddess Lottyr-who was the Hellsish shadow sister of the Lady Felakia-crept into Rybian's bed one night when he was drunk and through guile got him to impregnate her with his heavenly seed. In the morning, when he'd realized what he had done, the god ripped the seed from Lottyr's womb. Then implored the Lady Felakia to accept it into her own. Otherwise, he said, the creatures he had created would all be condemned to eternal lives of torment in the Hells.
In a night of godly passion, Asper said, Rybian wooed Felakia and she finally relented and accepted his embrace and his seed. From these two unions were born all the creatures of the world, including humans and demons.
Safar had never paid much attention to this portion of Asper's text. In both poetic form and mythical content it was quite out of character for the cynical old demon, who consistently warned that the gods were asleep and that the fate of both humans and demons was of little concern to them.
But when Jooli mentioned her own theory of numbers his mind plunged back to his student days in Walaria. He'd discovered Asper's book in the forbidden private library of the high priest, Umurhan.
There were many other volumes in that library to which his curiosity had also been drawn. One of them was a text on Hellsish magic, whose cover bore the drawing of a strange, six-headed, six-armed goddess of the dark worlds. He'd later learned it was the portrait of the evil Lady Lottyr. Shadow sister of the Goddess Felakia.
Although Safar was adamantly opposed to the practice of black magic, as a scholar he was quite familiar with all of its aspects. He was not only schooled in the spells involved in that terrible art, but was skilled in casting their counter-spells to protect himself.
This was how he had defeated Iraj Protarus and his minions when they had tried to destroy him and his people with the shapechanging Spell of Four. Safar doubted he had the power to similarly defeat the unholy deity that was the Lady Lottyr. But maybe, just maybe, he could slow her down a bit.
Finally, he found Asper's poem on the subject. It was one of his strangest verses. Written as if he, himself,
