Robert Vardeman - Istu awakened

Fost's eagle climbed up into the midst of the beings in time to see a flight of small black birds billow upward like smoke.

The five hundred men and women riding beneath the ludintip had not the slightest expectation of living to feel solid earth beneath their bootsoles again. Their only aim was to sow as much death and devastation as possible in the City itself before they fell. Synalon and Rann might triumph, but nevermore could it be said that the City in the Sky was immune to reprisal from the ground.

Dropping with her squadron of bird riders and Sky Guards, Colonel Dashta Enn was astonished to see the ludintip sprouting from the mist like red-crowned mushrooms and go rushing upward so fast that she and her flyers only had time to loose a futile scattering of arrows. The audacity of the attack took away her breath.

Trained by Rann, she did not hesitate. The colonel was committed to the attack on the Hall of Deputies. The assault might succeed. Then all that remained would be the mopping-up of scattered, disorganized and leaderless forces, if it failed, all Rann's genius and the sorceries of Synalon could not alter the fact that the Estil armies still outnumbered their foes hugely and would crush them like a giant swatting a fly if they regrouped.

The City had to fend for itself. She swooped down to battle. Her eagle's talons raked cotton, then fell on unsuspecting prey.

Synalon sat on the stone pier, head hanging listlessly with her chin on her breastbone. It took all her powers of concentration to keep the sylph and the dying, screeching fire sprite under control. She didn't know if they were still needed. She dominated them now simply to prove her power.

Something brushed her cheek. It whined like an insect. She slapped at her face when she felt the sting.

'Your Majesty, beware!' screamed one of her bodyguards from the skydock behind her. Additional words were lost in a bubbling, gurgling moan.

Her fingers touched wetness. She pulled her fingers away in dismay. It took a few seconds for her inwardly directed eyes to register smeared blood. Her own. Someone had dared to attack her, Queen of the Sky City! And within her own territory!

She flashed to her feet. Her concentration broke. The waterspout leaped upward, dissipating in air with a great shout of joy at the destruction it had accomplished, leaving nothing behind but a rain of muddy water and debris. The salamander hissed relief as oblivion swallowed its agony. The sky was filled with gaseous ludintip.

'Maggots!' Synalon screamed. 'You dare attack my City!' The rage burned her brain as the salamander had seared her flesh.

All that saved her life was the amazement gripping the Estil archers after their first volley when they realized that the wild, scorched, nude figure was Synalon herself. Now came clouds of arrows.

Screeching in fury, she waved her hands before her, covering herself with a shield of fire in which the arrows flared and disappeared without reaching her body. The survivors of her bodyguard shot back, but they were vastly outnumbered. Even as the raging queen blasted a second volley of arrows, a ludintip gondola bumped down on the gray stone. Howling like fiends, armed men and women poured forth. For the first time since the human capture of the City in the Sky, its ramparts felt the tread of an invader's feet.

Even with the allies she had and the death spells she commanded, Synalon could never hope to withstand such a fanatical attack singlehandedly. So savagely drained of energy that she could barely stand, Synalon teetered on the brink of the skywall. Hidden reserves of power were fed by her anger.

'Up, my children, up!' she screamed, her voice wild and fierce and mad. She threw her scorched arms up over her head, then pointed to her intended victims. 'Rend and slay the invaders, the groundling maggots! Slay them!'

Obedient to their mistress's command, the ravens of the Sky City burst forth from their rookeries. A boiling black cloud of death, they swept over the invaders like a firestorm from the guts of Omizantrim. Beaks pecked at the vulnerable membranes of the ludintip, plucked eyes from warriors battling impotently with bows and spears. Their talons slashed at the Estil commandos and each contact of claw with skin meant inevitable death. As Synalon stood and laughed while balancing precariously on her spit of stone, daring gravity to claim her in the moment of her triumph, her ravens slew the intruders to the last man and woman. Though the Estil soldiers killed the black attackers by the hundred, each raven that fell was replaced by a dozen more.

At last the screaming died. Only the sound of the wind could be heard over the ripping of flesh by a thousand black beaks.

Somewhere in the City a war eagle left alone by the ravens who mistook it for part of the City's forces touched down bearing a rider whose senses reeled with horror at the sight he had just witnessed.

The battle was quickly finished. Convinced of his triumph to the end, General Hausan was shot by Colonel Enn while posing for ten artists dashing off sketches to mark the epochal event of Estil history. Pudgy Sky Marshal Suema led a gallant delaying action against the bird riders while Tonsho, her nerve broken by the nearness of physical danger, fled downstairs to her private apartments in the south wing of the Hall. Suema and his men fell quickly. Scimitar in hand, Enn led the pursuit of the real ruler of Kara-Est.

They found her cowering among cushions and fine tapestries pulled from the walls. Her pretty-boys fought bravely but futilely; after a brief exchange of swordcuts Enn called for archers. The Chief Deputy's lover-bodyguards were feathered to fall among the silks. The scent of blood mingled with a dozen rare perfumes. Tonsho cowered in the midst of luxury.

'No, no, don't hurt me,' she moaned, her eyes screwed tightly shut. 'For the love of all gods, don't let Rann have me'.' 'Do you yield the city of Kara-Est?' Enn demanded sternly. 'Y-yes,' sobbed Tonsho. And the thing was done.

With the unfamiliar, harsh syllables of the Zr'gsz tongue hissing in her ears. Moriana lay on her belly and watched. The jagged black stone beneath her stung with heat even though her sturdy tunic. Whether the heat came from the sun hanging low in the western sky or the fires burning far below she couldn't tell. She stiffened as she sensed a presence nearby.

'Anything?' asked Darl Rhadaman r'Harmis, lowering himself beside her on the crest of the undulating line of cooled lava.

Moriana pointed with her chin. The maincampof the Watchers lay below. It was a somber place, reflecting its purpose. Walls of dressed lava rock holed like cheese supported flat basalt roofs. The windows had been hewn from the same green-black stone as the roofing. Moriana knew why. Wood, sod or thatch, anything combustible, couldn't safely be used as building material here on the northeastern slope of Omizantrim where hot sparks or ash might descend from the Throat at any time. A fresh Justing of gray ash overlay the compound, a remnant of Omizantrim's eruption weeks before.

The princess set her mouth. The Watchers' architecture might be practical but it did nothing to alleviate the grimness of the task they performed throughout long generations.

She saw them going about their everyday tasks. Men and women ground wheat together turning the man high millstone in a granite bowl with the strength of their own backs. Some knelt to whet the edges of spears and shortswords. A sweating, straining, curiously silent crew manhandled casks of fresh water gathered at springs below from the bed of a wagon built to survive the brutal broken terrain of the badlands. Over by the long oblong mouth of one of the underground bunkers in which the Watchers weathered Omizantrim's outbursts, a sturdy woman with sunbleached hair drawn back in a bun slit the throat of a squealing deer and began to give a group of children a lesson in butchering and dressing meat.