Moriana intended to keep to that course until they could cut northeast to the Mystic Mountains and avoid passing through the lava flows surrounding Mount Omizantrim like a skirt. Those dead lands of tortuous folds and black stone tentacles were well avoided at the best of times. Fell creatures stalked human prey there. Besides, Moriana had no appetite for a meeting with the Watchers, descendants of the loyal few entrusted by Felarod after the War of Powers to guard the flows of skystone. The Fallen Ones had used that gray igneous rock to build their flying rafts of war and commerce, and huge chunks of the skystone formed the base of the City in the Sky itself. The Watchers had passed long ago into legend, keeping vigil over the lonely centuries against a return of the Fallen Ones. How could she look any of them in the eye knowing she went to enlist the aid of their ancient enemies?

Nor was this the best of times to approach Omizantrim. Sometime during the night after the Chanobit Creek debacle the volcano had belched into deadly life again. Lightning and choking poison vapors now ringed the jagged crest of the mountain, and a spume of black smoke grew from it like a bloated, ghastly phallus raping the sky. Such was the power of that single eruption, that from time to time Moriana and Darl passed through areas rendered gray and unreal by falls of ash from the crater two hundred miles to the east. Glancing uneasily at the vast smudge defiling the eastern sky, Moriana wondered what unholy message the mountain had uttered.

She had the gut feeling that it boded her no good.

In another year Moriana might have appreciated the soft beauty of early spring. Leaves burgeoned on the trees, and fields and meadows exploded with a profusion of wildflowers, pink canthas, ovuei as gold as the sunset on placid waters, even the rare royal minsithen mimicking the colors of the Empire of High Medurim.