River, and lost not only his Apolloman dignity but his temper as well
Leyr Lord Coercer forfeited an arm, half a leg, and the left lobe of his liver He had to spend eight months recuperating in Skin, during which time his subaltern, the human Sebi Gomnol, consolidated his own position and resolved to challenge his fading superior in the next year's Manifestation of Powers
The invading operants made their way to the Atlantic Coast. There they linked their modular ATVs to form boats, whistled up a fair psychokinetic wind, and vanished into the sunset
After a two-month hiatus, the lime-gate resumed normal operations
Heeding the Battlemaster's counsel, Thagdal, High King of ihe Many-Colored Land, decreed that the entire alien invasion debacle had never happened
And for the next twenty-seven years, the Tanu kingdom in exile prospered until the Gibraltar Gale was opened and the Empty Sea filled
THE GREAT RAVEN OVERFLEW THE DESOLATION OF MURIAH.
She had to travel far from her mountain these days in her searches, since the near coasts of Spain and shrinking Aven were nearly picked clean of booty, the bodies buried ever more deeply in silt beneath the rising Mediterranean. She had scavenged the easily accessible golden torcs months ago, and found the great treasure. The pickings were now all the more precious for their rarity Muriah, below her, had its ruin softened by a spreading verdurous shroud. After nearly four months of the rainy season, the former Tanu capital of the Many-Colored Land seemed to have surrendered to rampant Pliocene vegetation. Tendrils and runners and shoots from ornamental shrubs, unrestrained now that most of the little rama gardeners had perished, smothered the courtyards, the grand stairways, and the filigreed walls of white marble. Fresh growth even probed open doors and windows and clambered onto the roofs, thrusting the red and blue tiles awry. Trees sent out erratic withes from their splintered trunks. Spores and seeds, washed or blown into the crevices of pavement and masonry, sprouted in ghoulish abandon.
The sweeping esplanades, the sporting arena, the Square of Commerce, the mansions, and all the proud structures built by the Tanu and their clever human slaves were being inexorably pushed and pried apart. Fungi, mosses, and vulgar flowering weeds loosened the once gleaming courses of alabaster and the dulled mosaics- The colonnade of King Thagdal's palace had its heavy pillars unseated by the irresistible growth of little brown mushrooms. Unlit silver torcheres along the deserted boulevards were tarnished black by sea mist. The facades of the five metapsycnic guild-halls had their heraldic colors defaced by dark splotches of mildew. Even the lofty glass spires, their faerie lights dark forever, were encrusted with dried salt and scabby lichen.
Circling, the raven concentrated her search along the northern perimeter of the ruined city. The entire docks area was now submerged. Sullen waves lapped halfway up the escarpment below the Coercer Guild Headquarters. Skylights in one section of the huge structure had been smashed and the torc factory inside held no treasure now. The raven had seen to it.
Her farsensing eye bored deep, seeing through water and rock into me submarine caves that once had been high and dry above saline Hals rimming the Catalan Gulf. Months ago when Muriah city was alive, she had hidden in one of those caves with her doomed friends. There the trickster had come, robbing her! (But she had seen to that matter as well.)
And sooner or later she would see to the other unfinished business, for she was a creature methodical in her unsanity, this bird that glided in a gray March sky over a gray new sea, endlessly searching.
She scanned cavern after cavern where flotsam lay piled, cast up by the Flood's first cataclysmic surge and later entombed as the waters rose. Some of the caves still had air in their upper chambers. It was in one of these that she at last perceived the
Leyr Lord Coercer forfeited an arm, half a leg, and the left lobe of his liver He had to spend eight months recuperating in Skin, during which time his subaltern, the human Sebi Gomnol, consolidated his own position and resolved to challenge his fading superior in the next year's Manifestation of Powers
The invading operants made their way to the Atlantic Coast. There they linked their modular ATVs to form boats, whistled up a fair psychokinetic wind, and vanished into the sunset
After a two-month hiatus, the lime-gate resumed normal operations
Heeding the Battlemaster's counsel, Thagdal, High King of ihe Many-Colored Land, decreed that the entire alien invasion debacle had never happened
And for the next twenty-seven years, the Tanu kingdom in exile prospered until the Gibraltar Gale was opened and the Empty Sea filled
THE GREAT RAVEN OVERFLEW THE DESOLATION OF MURIAH.
She had to travel far from her mountain these days in her searches, since the near coasts of Spain and shrinking Aven were nearly picked clean of booty, the bodies buried ever more deeply in silt beneath the rising Mediterranean. She had scavenged the easily accessible golden torcs months ago, and found the great treasure. The pickings were now all the more precious for their rarity Muriah, below her, had its ruin softened by a spreading verdurous shroud. After nearly four months of the rainy season, the former Tanu capital of the Many-Colored Land seemed to have surrendered to rampant Pliocene vegetation. Tendrils and runners and shoots from ornamental shrubs, unrestrained now that most of the little rama gardeners had perished, smothered the courtyards, the grand stairways, and the filigreed walls of white marble. Fresh growth even probed open doors and windows and clambered onto the roofs, thrusting the red and blue tiles awry. Trees sent out erratic withes from their splintered trunks. Spores and seeds, washed or blown into the crevices of pavement and masonry, sprouted in ghoulish abandon.
The sweeping esplanades, the sporting arena, the Square of Commerce, the mansions, and all the proud structures built by the Tanu and their clever human slaves were being inexorably pushed and pried apart. Fungi, mosses, and vulgar flowering weeds loosened the once gleaming courses of alabaster and the dulled mosaics- The colonnade of King Thagdal's palace had its heavy pillars unseated by the irresistible growth of little brown mushrooms. Unlit silver torcheres along the deserted boulevards were tarnished black by sea mist. The facades of the five metapsycnic guild-halls had their heraldic colors defaced by dark splotches of mildew. Even the lofty glass spires, their faerie lights dark forever, were encrusted with dried salt and scabby lichen.
Circling, the raven concentrated her search along the northern perimeter of the ruined city. The entire docks area was now submerged. Sullen waves lapped halfway up the escarpment below the Coercer Guild Headquarters. Skylights in one section of the huge structure had been smashed and the torc factory inside held no treasure now. The raven had seen to it.
Her farsensing eye bored deep, seeing through water and rock into me submarine caves that once had been high and dry above saline Hals rimming the Catalan Gulf. Months ago when Muriah city was alive, she had hidden in one of those caves with her doomed friends. There the trickster had come, robbing her! (But she had seen to that matter as well.)
And sooner or later she would see to the other unfinished business, for she was a creature methodical in her unsanity, this bird that glided in a gray March sky over a gray new sea, endlessly searching.
She scanned cavern after cavern where flotsam lay piled, cast up by the Flood's first cataclysmic surge and later entombed as the waters rose. Some of the caves still had air in their upper chambers. It was in one of these that she at last perceived the
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