Goddess Worldweaver

18
Roads to High Circles

The elves of Barantha reached the Ringhills first, but it was the trolls, arriving at that natural barrier a full day later, who made the real difference in preparing the defenses. Jubal spoke to Awfulbark even as the lanky forest dwellers were spreading wearily along the outer slope of the hills, and that worthy king responded with an energy that the Virginian found deeply gratifying.

“We can dig a ditch and pile up a dirt wall, sure,” Awfulbark declared. “Where you want?”

“Up the slope a short distance,” the man explained. “So that the ghost warriors have to start climbing the hill before they get to the ditch. But close enough to the bottom that archers on the wall will be able to shoot arrows into the enemy troops as they gather at the foot of the hill.”

He showed the trolls where to collect picks and shovels, the tools that continued to arrive by the wagonload from King Fedlater’s miners on Dernwood Downs. Immediately Awfulbark’s warriors set out along the line and wasted no time in displaying their great capacity for dirt moving. Natac had selected the forward slope of the first ridge for the position, some hundred feet above the tabletop expanse of dry plains extending Nullward from this section of the hills, and Jubal had the elves mark off the proposed excavation with flags and pickets.

“Dig it deep enough so that the bastards will fall into the ditch,” he ordered, demonstrating at the barrier of the sharp-walled trench. Then he marked out the sample of the wall, the obstacle the enemy would have to attack as soon as they crawled through the ditch. “And make this high enough and steep enough that the bastards will roll right back down into the ditch again!”

The Argentian elves arrived as the work was beginning, and both Tamarwind and Kelland set their warriors to helping. For the most part the elves were mere bystanders, however, as the trolls attacked the ground with relentless chopping pickaxes, then scooped away the loose rubble with a churning of shovels. Jubal watched as, minute by minute, the long ditch grew deeper, the matching wall climbing higher above the rugged slope.

Within another forty-eight hours, the fringe of the rocky rise was scoured by a trench and adjacent breastwork some thirty miles in length. Each hilltop along that winding path had been turned into a palisade in its own right, surrounded by an earthen wall, with a flat platform excavated as a mount for one of Gallupper’s batteries. Unfortunately, the line was so long that not every hilltop could be defended with one of the lethal guns, and even those thus equipped had but one. That weapon would have to be wheeled into position for shooting forward or toward either flank.

Jubal’s troops were deployed thinly along that long line, but he was pleased that so much of the approach could be covered. As he strode along the crest of the wall he was reminded of a great fortification on Earth-he had learned about it, seen pictures in a book, when he had been a child in Virginia. It was a wall thousands of miles long, protecting the entire northern border of China; it was not hard to imagine that, given a little more time, Awfulbark’s trolls would be able to create a barrier of similar extent.

This was a useful realization, for he knew that the hills presented a more than four-hundred-mile circumference around the entire span of Circle at Center and its great lake. If the ghost warriors moved to one side or the other, then the defenders would have to follow the same course. Fortunately, many parts of the range were precipitous and jagged, with lots of sheer cliffs and deep gorges. He knew that those were places no army would try to traverse.

Other places were more vulnerable, however, and if the enemy changed the direction of its advance, he and Natac would simply have to move their army to one side or the other to continue to block the approach to the city. It was a tactic eerily similar to that employed by Robert E. Lee in his defense of Richmond. Jubal tried not to dwell on the fact that, for the Army of Northern Virginia, these maneuvers had eventually, perhaps inevitably, resulted in defeat.

For the first day the scouts reported that the attackers were coming across the plain like a flood, a great dark stain across the ground. The ghost warriors were loosely formed into columns, but each of these was a mile or more across, composed of a seemingly endless number of plodding, purposeful killers. The dust raised by these massive formations formed a self-sustaining cloud in the sky, and by Lighten of the second day this murk was visibly approaching the Ringhills, an ominous storm.

As that day progressed and the trolls and elves and the few surviving gnomes labored to deepen the ditch and raise the dirt wall of their immense palisade, the columns themselves came into view. From his vantage on a high hilltop Jubal thought they looked like snakes, great black predators, reptilian in nature, slithering closer and closer to the Ringhills and the Center of Everything.

Gradually, toward sunset of that day, another force became visible, marching from the direction of Riven Deep. These were the Delvers, the general knew. As they came closer, he could begin to make out the gigantic iron golems striding among their number. If all remained as it was, the dwarves would fall upon the far right flank of his earthwork barrier, while the ghost warriors would come up against the center and the left.

Near the Hour of Darken the Hyaccan elves rode forward in a great raid, harassing one of the columns with a shower of lethal arrows. As dusk closed around the massive formation, the elves turned their nimble ponies and scampered away. None of the riders was wounded, but neither did their attack seem to inflict any perceptible delay upon the great column.

The night’s approaching darkness seemed exceptionally complete. The ghost warriors built no campfires nor fires of any kind, so only the camp of the Delvers was visible from the heights. And even that small portion of the attacking army seemed to kindle a million fires, blazes winking like stars across a great swath of the plain.

Finally Jubal went to the high hill crest near the very center of the line, the elevation he had taken to calling Hill Number One. There was a pool of water there, and-as they did every Darken and Lighten-a trio of druids began to spin the water. This was to allow teleportation from Circle at Center or elsewhere. Idly the Virginian watched the scene, half expecting the twinkling lights to indicate that someone was arriving magically.

When nightfall passed with nothing happening, he stepped to the edge of the parapet and looked out over the plain, trying to hide his concern. But he couldn’t help wondering:

When would Natac return?

“I think this has a very good chance of working!” Donnwell Earnwise said. “Better than fifty percent, for sure.”

“That’s not good enough!” Borand said to the engineer before turning to his sister. “This is crazy; I forbid you to go!”

Aurand, standing beside his brother, simply laughed. “Haven’t you learned anything about our sister?” he asked. “What makes you think you can forbid her to do anything, once she’s made up her mind?”

Darann looked at her brothers with affection, then turned to King Lightbringer, who stood with Konnor almost diffidently, a little way back from the dwarves of clan Houseguard.

“Truly, my dear,” said the monarch of the Seer dwarves, “If you wait a little while, we can run some additional tests, try to increase the chances of success. The Worldlift… well, it is a good idea in theory, and certainly it can be made to work-eventually. But we really don’t know, not yet, anyway.”

“I have faith in Uncle Donnwell,” she said, winking at the engineer. “And I have waited fifty years to find out what happened to my husband. I don’t plan to wait another interval longer, not one!”

“Very well,” said the king. He turned to the engineer. ‘ ’You have my permission.”

“Splendid!” declared Donnwell, scratching his beard, then peering through his thick glasses at the blueprint spread out on the stone table. “Ah, yes-there is a blast radius-the rest of you had best withdraw behind the iron door.”

“Blast?” Borand said. “What about my sister? You’re going to blast her?”

“Yes, that’s precisely the point,” declared the engineer, blinking in confusion.

“Why doesn’t she have to get behind the iron door?”

“Dear me, I thought you understood the point of the Worldlift. You see, the cage is powered by a rocket. When I ignite this fuse, the fuel explodes, coming out the bottom here in a great rush of heat and smoke. It is the inverse of that force, in fact, that propels the rocket, and the passenger, upward. By the time they reach the summit of the First Circle, they will be going so fast that, theoretically, they will penetrate the barrier of blue magic. Within a matter of hours she will find herself in the upper reaches of the Midrock, safely on her way to Nayve.

“You recall, of course, that this chute is a straight route all the way to the Fourth Circle, right to the Center of Everything, in fact. It was bored out two centuries ago and used for trade-cargo hauling up and down-until the barrier of blue magic put a stop to that.”

“Theoretically? Upper reaches of the Midrock?” Borand was still fretful. “I just don’t like the sound of this. I think I should go instead.”

“In the future, good lad, we shall all go, but this prototype, I tried to explain, has but the capacity for a single passenger.”

“And that passenger is me!” Darann said. “Now, will you all stand back and let Uncle Donnwell do his work?”

They did as she requested, her brothers reluctantly and Konnor, too, holding back. He took her hand and spoke seriously. “I… I hope you find him,” he said. “And I hope he knows how much you care, how much he means to you.”

“Thank you, my friend… for everything,” she said.

Next she stepped through a low hatch into a circular metal room with a single chair-a chair with its back on the floor, oriented so that one who sat in it faced the ceiling. Donnwell fussed over an array of straps and buckles, taking care that she was properly fastened in.

“This shield over your head,” he explained, “is solid steel, two inches thick. It should deflect any obstructions that have fallen into the Rockshaft over the last fifty years. And the rocket has enough fuel to carry you all the way to Nayve-so long as you penetrate the blue magic barrier.”

It was as the iron door clanged shut that she became afraid and suddenly felt very, very lonely. She thought of Karkald, wondered if she was doing the right thing. If he was alive, in Nayve, then she was doing the right thing. And if he was dead, it really didn’t matter. Once she reached that understanding, she felt better, more confident.

Until she heard the sputtering of the fuse, and all her misgivings returned tenfold. A few seconds later, there was a powerful rumble, as of something seizing her chair and shaking it violently back and forth. Smoke billowed around her, choking her nostrils, stinging her eyes. It was very hot, as if a furnace had ignited beneath her chair. Explosives roared with a sound like uncontained thunder.

And then, the violence really began.

“Let’s stay close to the wall; we’ll be harder to spot that way,” Miradel whispered. Shandira nodded and shrank against the dark stones where the cliff met the floor of the winding ravine.

They were following a passage that was considerably wider than the one where they had fled from the diving gargoyle. Another day had passed as they made their way deeper into the citadel, and still they had not encountered the vast hall of the Deathlord. But Miradel was confident that this major ravine, gently descending as it did, was taking them in the proper direction.

Their progress was slow because they advanced in short dashes, moving from one place of cover to the next. They hadn’t seen the stony guardian for several hours, but neither of them was inclined to take any chances. Finding shelter in narrow cracks in the cliff wall, against the base of overhanging cliffs, even under flat boulders, they were scraped and sore, dirty and weary.

But they managed to keep moving.

How long they had been following this passage, Miradel couldn’t begin to recall. It seemed like it was becoming a way of life, an eternal journey toward a place that didn’t really exist, a survival of hiding, where life itself depended upon avoiding discovery.

Until they came around a final bend in the widening ravine, and the cliff walls terminated to either side. They were faced with a steep drop, perhaps a hundred feet down a slope of large, tumbled talus, that spill of stone spreading, fanlike, onto the floor of a vast basin. High, black mountains surrounded the depression, which was at least a mile in diameter. The feet of these summits were sheer blocks of stone, descending to the flat floor around the entire periphery, except for the six or eight places, like this ravine, where gaps in the surrounding mountains created passages into this place. The background sky, across the bowl, was an impermeable, lifeless black-the end of all worlds.

“This is the Throne of the Deathlord,” Miradel breathed, staring through the shadows at the cliff on the far side of the basin. “You see the two eyes, glowing so high above.”

“Yes,” Shandira breathed, hushed and awestruck.

The glowing beacons of those fiery orbs burned in the air, suspended a hundred feet above the mountain shelf that served as a seat for that mighty throne. As the druids watched, the fire seemed to swell, an inferno of evil power growing as if in response to their intrusive presence.

It was difficult to discern much detail through the shadows-only as she tried did Miradel realize that night had fallen-but she was utterly certain this was the place. The images she had seen in the Tapestry were perfectly mirrored here, even to the extent of the vast blankness rising above the mountains on the far side of the valley. There, in the direction that was neither metal nor wood, she knew that she was looking at the very terminus of the cosmos.

“Let’s start across now, while it’s dark,” Shandira whispered, her lips close to Miradel’s ear. Soundlessly, the elder druid nodded.

They began to pick their way down the talus slope, feeling big rocks shift and wobble from the impact of their passage. The footing was irregular, with wide gaps to drop between or narrow crests to teeter along. Miradel went first, exerting great care to keep any of the stones from tumbling free. A rockslide that trapped them here might be deadly in its own right; in any event, it was certain to attract the attention of the one who was entrusted with guarding this place.

Without speaking they adopted the safest formation, each of them descending at the same elevation, side by side but some twenty feet apart. If one of them did start a slide, at least she minimized the chances of catching her companion, below, in the path of destruction. Miradel felt as though she was walking down a stairway of slippery bricks. She took care to test each foothold, very gradually, before putting all of her weight on it.

Several times they heard the rumble followed by a clunk of a boulder shifting slightly, rebalancing in the loose pile. Once a small rattle of debris skittered downward, shockingly loud in the still night. Miradel gasped and froze, seeing the outline of a similarly motionless Shandira to her side. For several minutes they remained still, and as the soft echoes swiftly faded, there was no other sound that rose from the night in response.

Finally they continued, even more gingerly. How long it took to complete the descent was far beyond Miradel’s awareness. By the time they reached the bottom, however, her shirt was soaked through with sweat, and in the chilly air this dampness seemed to penetrate right into her bones. They paused to rest for a few minutes and soon her teeth were chattering.

“We’d better get moving,” she said. “I’d hate to get this close and then die of exposure!”

“I admit… I’d hate to die for just about any reason, if I didn’t have to,” Shandira said. “So, let’s go.”

They started across the flat floor of the bowl-shaped valley. In the sky were myriad shifting stars overhead, while the great throne of the Deathlord rose like a miniature mountain itself. The gray shape atop that throne was barely visible, utterly motionless, except for the crimson slits of its eyes.

They were perhaps halfway across when Miradel saw something fly across the vista of the stars. The two druids were far from any shelter, could do nothing but stand in fear and wait as the gargoyle glided to the ground and came to rest before them, sitting squarely astride their approach to the Deathlord’s throne.

“I am ready.”

With these words, the ancient serpent tried to convey a sense of farewell and love, sentiments he felt perhaps more deeply than any mere human could know. He saw that Natac was moved beyond his own ability to reply, the man reaching out to touch a hand to the smooth scales of the long, supple neck.

The night was dark around them, this pair who had come together on the lakeshore for a farewell that might be their last meeting. For fifty years they had flown and fought together, forming a partnership of leadership and power that had mustered one of the great armies in the history of the Seven Circles.

Regillix Avatar had, for all his life, been a solitary, remote, and aloof creature. He had lived for nearly ten thousand years, most of that time in the cloud world of Arcati, the Sixth Circle. Yet he was forced now to acknowledge that this most recent half century had been the most profoundly important part of his life. Now he was strangely reluctant to bid farewell to this place, these people… this man, in particular.

Yet Darken was progressing, nearly halfway along by now, and the serpent knew that he had a long way to fly before dawn. He had talked to Socrates and made the plan that seemed most likely to work, but this required him to be high over the region of Winecker at the Lighten Hour. The scholar had speculated that, in addition to the rising current opposite the Worldfall, the descent of the sun would create a reverse pressure away from the center of Nayve, and Regillix Avatar would try to ride that draft of air all the way through the region of intense heat. Then he would rely on his own strength to lift him to the Overworld.

“It is time to go,” he said. “You will return to the army at Lighten, and I will try to return home.”

“Good luck, old friend,” said Natac.

“And to you, as well.”

With that he was off, springing into the air, then winging low over the smooth lake, using leisurely strokes of his wings to climb as he approached the far shore. He passed over the Ringhills, almost directly opposite the crest where the army of Nayve was preparing to stand, and continued to climb as the ground below faded into a patchwork of broad forests and wide lakes. Mist rose off the water, obscuring much of the landscape, and the dragon was strongly reminded of his own world.

Now he started to climb in earnest. He felt the draft rising around him, and as the Lighten Hour drew near he rested, coasting on widespread wings, and even then he continued to rise. He began to allow himself a measure of hope.

The sun began to brighten, and he knew that it was descending toward Nayve. He spread his great pinions again and began to stroke the air, heading away from the center, the sun’s rays warming his back as he flew. Regillix worked easily to gain altitude, trying to conserve his strength for when he would really need it.

Full Lighten drew near, and the wind against his belly became a rush, air pushing upward with relentless force, bearing him away from Nayve now with a hurricane force. The sun was hot, hotter than he had ever imagined, but still he kept his back to it, wings spread, riding the powerful updraft. Wind blasted and buffeted his belly and underwings, and he fought for control, trying to master the air. He caught the power of the rising drafts, climbing, soaring skyward, leaving Nayve an invisible distance below.

Until the heat began to sear him. He squirmed and twisted, desperate to escape the scalding fire that seemed to rage across his back, as if it would melt his scales and bake his flesh. But he kept his wings spread, and the wind blew, and it seemed that his body was burning away. Yet the mighty dragon could only drift upon the wind between worlds.

The sage-ambassador teleported him at Lighten, and in an instant Natac arrived at the pool on Hill Number One. Jubal and Tamarwind were there, both greeting him with visible relief, supporting him as the disorientation from the magic spell sent him reeling away from the casting pool. “Thanks,” he said after a moment, shaking his arms free, standing steadily again.

It did not surprise him to realize that, here among the troops of his army, he felt more at home than he did anywhere else in the cosmos. He clasped the hands of man and elf, then turned to inspect the scene of the imminent battle.

As Natac surveyed this scene from his hilltop, he found it hard to find any shred of hope. His memory of Miradel came back: the shape in the darkness, running for her life through the labyrinth of the Deathlord. A voice nagged at him: he should ignore this fight, turn his back on these armies, and go to the woman he loved.

To rescue her, or to die with her. It didn’t matter, not really… nothing mattered. Why shouldn’t they be together now, as they faced the end of all worlds?

But he could not do that, for he knew that, if he was gone, this army was doomed. Never before had he felt the weight of command as such an immense burden. Now it was a trap bearing him down, smothering, suffocating. In one way or another it would kill him, he knew.

It was well past midnight when he got the only dash of good news from this long, dark day. Horas of Gallowglen buzzed up to the hilltop and did an aerial bow before the general. The bounce in his flight suggested something other than disastrous tidings, Natac observed with interest.

“You have some more helpers,” the faerie reported. “Roland Boatwright is here with the warriors and druids from his fleet. There are many of them, half a thousand druids and that many warriors, too. And Crazy Horse has come with them.”

Reinforcements! And not just additional bodies; Natac knew that the each of the little boats had been crewed by a powerful, windcasting druid, accompanied by one of the veteran human warriors brought from Earth. These veterans would be immeasurably useful in the defense of the wall.

“Tell them I will be right there,” said General Natac. He followed the direction of the faerie’s flight as he started down the hill, toward the campfires of his own army. He knew that those blazes were warm and friendly, but they seemed paltry and feeble when contrasted to the vast darkness of the encompassing night.