Goddess Worldweaver

5
Masters of Axial

Darann awakened from a dream, a dream wherein she was rubbing her nose and her cheeks into the soft bristles of Karkald’s beard. She could hear the hairs rasping around her ears, a scritch… scritch… scritch of pleasant memory-until she found herself alone, again, in her large, cold bed. The apartment that she had shared with Karkald for so long yawned like a tomb around her, lightless and lifeless.

But the scratching sound, she was startled to perceive, was very real. The noise seemed urgent yet strangely gentle at the same time, as if someone wanted to attract the attention of one, and only one, person.

In an instant Darann was out of bed, her bare feet soundless on the cool slate floor. Wrapping a blackfur robe around herself, she made her way through the hallway into the anteroom, listening for a moment at the front door, but all was silent beyond. She waited, and then the sound was repeated, coming from somewhere near her kitchen.

For a moment she considered picking up some kind of weapon-one of Karkald’s hatchets hung near the door-but she immediately discarded the notion. She was unable to imagine this sound as some kind of threat. Quickly passing into the kitchen, she heard the scratching again, louder and closer, and she understood: someone was scratching at the delivery door, the iron hatch that led to the pillar’s central stairwell. The apartments all faced outward, overlooking the city with their high balconies, while the interior of the pillar was hollow, a dark stairwell.

Instantly she crossed to the portal and lifted the latch on the iron barrier. She heard a hiss of indrawn breath as she pulled it open, then recognized the stooped figure crouched in the shadowed alcove beyond.

“Hiyram!” she whispered. “How did you get out of the ghetto? And tell me, what do you want? Here, come in, quickly.”

The goblin scuttled past, ducking into a corner as she pulled the door shut as quietly as possible. “You here alone by yerself?” he asked, his voice rasping urgently.

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Here, let me get you a cold drink-then tell me what’s the matter.”

Her hands trembled as she pulled the cork from a bottle and filled a mug with creamy ale. She handed the glass to the goblin and then, with sudden fear, took a long drink from the bottle herself. Hiyram noisily drained his mug and then looked at her with his wide, moist eyes shining in the nearly total darkness.

“D’you know dwarfmaid, Greta… she’s a pailslopper, for master of the palace.”

A pailslopper, Darann knew, was a scullery worker of the lowest class. They worked in inns and of course at the palace and for some of the loftier nobles. She couldn’t think of one that she knew by name. “This Greta… she works for the king, then?”

Hiyram shook his head. “Master of palace,” he repeated with a snort. “Not king…”

“Nayfal!” Darann guessed. “She works for Nayfal?”

The goblin shrugged, his ears flopping with the exaggerated gesture. “Hates Nayfal, but sees him lots. She nice person… like Lady Darann.”

The dwarfmaid reflected on the irony: she was flattered to be compared to the pailslopper who hated the esteemed Lord Nayfal. At the same time, her stomach tightened, and she began to fear Hiyram’s news.

“Greta comes to ghetto-told me secret, told to tell you.”

“What is it?” Darann’s voice was a taut hiss.

“Nayfal has plan… a trap… a trap for Lord Houseguard. He must change to Nayfal’s side, or bad thing will happen.”

“My father!” Darann felt a stab of fear. “When is this… this trap, to happen?”

“Must be soon,” the goblin said. “Greta said I had to tell you right away.”

The dwarfmaid felt a rush of gratitude followed by an ache of fear. “Rufus is going to see the king today. I have to stop him!”

“Good lady, do that-please!” urged the goblin.

But Darann barely heard; she was already racing to get dressed, trying to stem the trembling of her hands, and wondering if she would possibly be in time.

Karkald kicked his feet into the sand, tromping up the steep slope of the dune. He resented the wasted effort of his climbing as the loose grains collapsed under his weight. He estimated that, for each foot that he gained uphill, he slipped down three or four inches. Working as hard as he could, he was still frustrated by the amount of time it took him to reach his destination at the top of the sand pile.

Furthermore, he was still disoriented by the teleportation spell that had brought him here from Riven Deep. He avoided that magic whenever possible, but occasionally-such as now-it was required for haste. It always left him grumpy and irritable, with a sensation of prickling that lingered along his belly and chest for the better part of a day. Still, it had snatched him across a hundred miles in a moment of time, bringing him from the great canyon to this verdant coast. He wanted to rest, to sleep, but instead he was to be confronted by yet another vista of war.

When he finally arrived at the battery position, he leaned forward and braced his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. Even so, he was already inspecting the position out of the corner of his eye, and by the time he straightened and walked onward, he was mostly pleased with the disposition of the weapons.

“Karkald’s here, General Galluper!” called one of the elven gunners, and the big centaur turned from the forward lip of the dune to greet the dwarf.

“Ah, my good engineer,” said the horse-man. “I trust you will approve of my placements.”

“You know better than I how to shoot these things,” Karkald said, gesturing to the wheeled weapons, four in number, that had been dug into the soft sand. Each commanded a view and a field of fire over a great swath of the beach below.

That smooth strand was still clean, washed by waves of emerald seawater and trimmed with white foam, but it was impossible to look across that view and not see the menacing presence of the armada, a cloud darkening the sea to the limits of the horizon. Karkald was taken aback. Now that he was this close, the black ships seemed limitless in number and terrifyingly real in proximity. The bows were angled toward the shore, and the first wave-perhaps five miles out, certainly closing fast-advanced in a line that spanned the view from right to left.

He corrected himself: far to the left, in the direction of metal, he saw an array of white sails, triangular sheets of canvas marking the placement of some of Roland Boatwright’s fleet. There were precious few of them by comparison to the ships of the armada, but the dwarf was heartened by the sight of the flames and smoke that marked that end of the enemy line.

“The batteries on the boats are inflicting great damage on the death ships,” Gallupper said, as if reading his mind. “Many hundreds of the enemy have been destroyed this morning alone-and the killing yesterday, they said, amounted to nearly a thousand ships.”

“A thousand ships…” Karkald could hardly conceive of such numbers, especially when it was merely a fraction of the massive fleet that was still deployed before him. He looked along the crest of the dunes, where this battery was but one of a hundred or so, deployed with killing zones along a twenty-mile stretch of the shore. In that realization, he knew that the batteries, and the brave elves entrenched below the crests of the dunes, the giants and gnomes deployed in reserve… they would not be enough.

When he looked to the rear, he saw that his concern had been anticipated by Gallupper. The batteries could be pulled out of line quickly, each hauled by a couple of powerful centaurs, and a rough pathway had been cleared, leading down the dunes and into a patch of scrubby pines beyond. Still farther away, two or three miles from the beach, rose a range of rugged, rock-crested hills.

“If we lose the shoreline, we will fall back to the hills,” Gallupper was explaining, following the direction of Karkald’s gaze. “There are narrow ravines leading through them, and we will deploy to block them, to bottle up the Deathlord’s army for as long as we can.”

“Aye,” Karkald said, relieved that the plan had been made, disappointed that it was not just advisable but essential. He looked seaward again and could have sworn that the armada was another mile closer to landing.

“Just beware, old friend,” he said, clapping Gallupper on his equine shoulder. “And do not wait too long to pull out.”

Darann took only the time to don her sandals and a light robe, the soft deerskin a hallmark of an earlier time, when trade between Axial and Nayve had been commonplace and profitable for the merchants of both circles. Now, the warmth of the soft fur gave her just a suggestion of the life and the security she had once taken for granted.

She hurried to the lift station, leaving Hiyram to make his way to the stairway. Coolfyre lights blazed from each of the Six Towers, and she could see below the great city coming to life for another interval. Darkbulls pulled carts toward the marketplace, formations of royal guardsmen marched back and forth for the change of the duty, and the hammers of early rising forge men were already battering their irons.

The lift cage was quiet, however, lacking even the low hiss of steam that indicated pressure. Almost groaning in despair, she reached toward the test pipe, felt the cold metal.

Why now? She wanted to scream. The lift went through a half interval’s maintenance every cycle or so, but how could she have the accursed bad luck to find it shut down now, when she so desperately needed haste?

She wasted no time in turning around and racing back to her apartment, unlocking the door with haste and charging into the anteroom. “Hiyram?” she asked, louder than she intended, hoping to catch the goblin before he departed.

There was no answering sound. She charged through the kitchen and found the delivery door closed and latched. Pulling it open, she ducked through the narrow passage beyond and found herself at the edge of the deep, central pit that ran the full length of the pillar’s center. There was a metal handrail before her, and she seized it, swaying to a sudden onset of vertigo.

It was not just the long drop that made her dizzy. As she drew a breath she nearly gagged from the foul stench, a mixture of garbage and other, unidentifiable odors that clogged the air with a greasy, penetrating miasma. Somewhere near the bottom a coolfyre beacon flickered, and another illuminated the landings near the top of the tower. Darann was near the middle, five hundred feet from each of the feeble lights, perched on a brink of a well of impenetrable shadow.

She was trying to decide if she dared call for the goblin, knowing her voice would echo up and down the vast shaft, when she saw a shadowy figure advancing up the stairway. Recognizing Hiyram just before she gasped out an alarm, she allowed herself to slump back against the wall and waited for her loyal friend to join her.

“Lady? What you here? Take lift-make haste!” he hissed, his mouth close to her ear. Even then, the sounds he made sounded disastrously loud in the close space.

“I can’t,” she whispered back, quickly explaining about the maintenance shutdown. “I have to go down this way, or wait.”

Hiyram looked alarmed, his eyes growing wide, glowing dimly even in the faint light. “No dwarf ladies here!” he insisted. “Goblins, pailsloppers, wretches, and rats… not for you! But no wait, neither… not to give warn to Honored Fatherbeard!”

“I have no choice,” the dwarfmaid replied, oddly taking some comfort in the fact that Hiyram obviously knew this place. He was right: she had never been in here before, had never climbed by foot all the way up or down from her lofty apartment. “Show me the way, won’t you?”

Reluctantly, he agreed, pointing out the steps that seemed shockingly narrow, with a long drop from one to the next. The stairway spiraled around the inside of the great shaft, which was otherwise lined with a web of cables and landings that, she assumed, were used by the freight lift that carried supplies up to the many apartments that lined the outer face of this lofty pillar. There was a metal rail, slick with moisture but, fortunately, pocked with enough rust that it seemed to give a good grip to the hand that she clasped, very tightly, around it. The wall to her right was cold and slick with fungus, while the drop to her left was… she didn’t want to think about what it was.

Urgency overcame her fear, and she descended as quickly as possible behind Hiyram as the goblin padded down the stairway. His broad feet slapped slightly with each step, but otherwise he remained silent, looking around constantly, pausing every minute or so to give Darann time to catch up. The spiral was a dizzying descent, and even going as fast as she could they had only gone a quarter of the way before they had to stop so that she could catch her breath.

She grimaced and despaired, as each inhalation sounded like a bellows to her ears. The goblin, apparently unfatigued, simply waited until she was ready to move, then started onward again. Her hand was cramped from clutching the railing, but she dared not let go; the drop to her left was dizzying and certainly lethal, and in places the steps were crumbled or slicked with oil, water, or some combination of treacherous slipperiness.

Hiyram let out a hiss and suddenly sprang forward, leaving Darann to cling to the rail and try to see and hear. Angry screeches filled the air, claws scratching at the stones as small bodies climbed and jumped away; she realized with revulsion that the goblin had scattered a pack of rats that were clustering on a nearby landing, feasting upon a pile of rotting garbage. Holding her breath, she inched past, then hurried on, ignoring the sounds behind her as the angry rodents returned to reclaim their prize.

The light grew more intense as they neared the bottom of the shaft. They heard a door open down below, a beam of bright coolfyre spilling in as dwarven workers hauled in several crates and stacked them on the platform of one of the freight lifts. Darann and Hiyram froze, crouched against the wall a hundred feet above, and the dwarfmaid felt new despair at this evidence that the city was coming to life around them.

Finally the workers departed, and they all but flew around the last few spirals to the bottom of the shaft, arriving out of breath and weak-kneed from the long descent.

“You go on now, Lady,” Hiyram said, pointing to the door the workmen had closed. “Not be seen with me… I come out later.”

“Thank you, my friend,” she said, giving the goblin a firm embrace.

She stepped toward the portal when she was startled by a stern bark. A dwarf was there, standing hitherto unseen in the shadows beyond the lift. The beacon reflected off his silver helm, marking him as one of the Royal Guard.

“Halt there!” he cried, then raised his voice in a pitch of excitement. “Goblin! Goblin in the tower!” He rushed forward, drawing a short, fat-bladed sword.

Hiyram yelped and bounded back up the stairs as Darann bolted for the door, sensing freedom. She pushed the portal open and rushed forth, only to have her arm seized by another guard, this one apparently posted outside the door.

“Keep that bitch right there!” shouted the first guard over his shoulder as he clattered up the stairs. “She’s a goblin friend, I warrant. Lord Nayfal will want some words with her! I’m after the gob!”

By that time he was out of sight, but two more guards advanced to surround Darann, pressing her against the wall at the base of the pillar. She fought back an urge to sob, seeing that the city was fully awake now, knowing that Hiyram was in terrible trouble, and that her father was going, all unwitting, into Lord Nayfal’s trap.

Borand awakened to a sensation of suffocating pain, as though his ribs were on fire and a giant vise had been clamped around his chest. Dimly he remembered the fall, and the temblor that had shaken the First Circle with such brutal violence. There was a pale light coming from somewhere outside of his line of sight, and hot pain jabbed through his neck when he tried to turn his head. Still, he was able to ascertain that he was in some sort of niche or cave. Beyond the mouth, the ceiling of the Underworld reflected the light barely a hundred feet above, so he knew that he was still high up on the barrier wall.

Moments later the light grew bright, and he saw that Konnor and Aurand joined him. Both dwarves looked pale and shaken, but they brightened as Borand looked at them and tried to contort his face into a smile-though he was sure the expression became more of a grimace than anything else.

“A relief to see you move, brother,” said Aurand, squatting next to the injured climber. “You took a nasty hit, broke some ribs at least. We wondered about your neck, tell the truth.”

“Sprained but not broken,” Borand replied, ignoring the pain enough to wiggle his head back and forth. He looked at Konnor. “Thanks for the belay, my friend.”

“A good save it was,” Aurand noted. “The whole world started coming apart while you were falling. It’s a miracle you didn’t go all the way to the bottom.”

“What, and spare you louts the pleasure of carrying me down?” snorted the elder dwarf, drawing reluctant smiles from his two companions. “That is, if we can still find our way down. How much of the cliff fell away?”

“More than you’ll believe,” Konnor replied. “We were just having a look. Care to sit up and see for yourself?”

With great effort, and assistance from both of his fellows, Borand pulled himself into a sitting position. His back was against the rock face, and he looked out of the niche-it was too shallow to be a cave-and into the great gulf of the First Circle. Vast blackness yawned beyond.

“Funny… I thought we could see the wall from here,” he grunted, ignoring the pain that flared through his ribs. “Or did you move me farther along the cliff?”

“No, this is where you ended up on the rope,” Aurand explained. “And your memory is good. Before you fell, you could see the whole face of the circle from here.”

“What happened-did the quake knock it down?” Borand found it hard to imagine that such a vast section of the world’s edge could have fallen away, leaving the space he now observed.

“It fell in the quake, but it wasn’t solid. The wall we were looking at was only a shell, and when it went, we got a look into the space beyond.”

Something in the way Konnor said “space beyond” gave Borand a chill of discovery and dread. Grunting against the effort, he pushed himself farther outward, expanding his view. His companions obliged by turning their coolfyre beacons out, the light spilling far, not quite vanishing into the distance.

There, at the limits of his sight, he saw a facade of rock, and he quickly realized this was not a face of natural cliff. Instead, he saw lofty balconies, grand parapets, a score of stairways crossing back and forth and up and down, the surface newly revealed. Below, in the nearly lightless depths, he got a sense of broad, shadowy courtyards, and at least one place that looked like a vast, circular coliseum.

“A city?” he whispered, wonder and fear softening his voice. “A huge city?”

Konnor nodded. “It can only be one place.”

“Nightrock?” Now Borand felt the cold clamp of fear. The legendary capital of the Blind Ones had never been observed by Seer eyes. Now that they had come here, their lives were certainly forfeit. But at the same time, there was a sense of stillness and quietude to the place. Surely this was no hive of the Unmirrored!

“Indeed, it must be,” his brother said. “We could see a thousand buildings just in range of our lights, and who knows how many more in the lightless hive within.”

“But the Delvers? Surely they must have smelled us, or heard us… at the very least, one of their arcanes would sense us!”

“That’s the thing,” Konnor explained, maddeningly calm. “We have found the great city of our enemies, the threat that has kept our army bottled up in Axial for these last fifty years-”

“But-” Aurand couldn’t help finishing the explanation. “There are no Delvers there. The whole place has been abandoned!”

“Y OU may go in to see the king now, Lord Rufus,” said the palace attendant, offering the grizzled dwarf only the barest suggestion of a bow. “But he has many appointments today; beware of wasting his time.”

The elder dwarf stood straight and glared at the servant, who was a young fellow wearing armor of oiled leather with a short, double-bladed sword at his waist.

“Time was, a dwarf knew his place, and a king knew how to command his own schedule,” Rufus Houseguard commented in a tone of elaborate calm, making no move to step forward. At the same time, he held his eyes steady, allowing the contempt and frustration to burn forth. The attendant tried to match his look for a moment, then flushed and turned to open the door.

“Ah, Rufus-please, come forward, my old friend!” King Lightbringer was seated on his throne, and he sounded genuinely pleased to see the patriach of clan Houseguard. “Too much business these days, not enough chance for a pleasant chat.”

“I am at your service, sire,” Rufus said, striding forward and offering a deep bow.

At the same time, he noticed more of the changes that had been taking place in the court of the Seer Dwarf king. For one thing, there were no longer courtiers here, nor the ladies that had once made this throne room such a lively and welcoming place. Now there were only guards, wearing the ubiquitous leather shirts and short swords. Marshall Nayfal, the monarch’s senior adviser, stood to one side and made no attempt to conceal his displeasure at Lord Houseguard’s arrival. Only as he stood straight again did Rufus notice that another dwarf had been in audience, a balding, earnest-looking fellow in fine silk robes who was peering through wire-rimmed glasses at a ledger he held in his hands. He cleared his throat, obviously impatient to continue whatever he had been talking about before Rufus’s arrival.

The king, however, seemed to have different ideas. “How is your daughter?” he inquired. “Such a wonderful maid, she is. I would see her again, the next time you come.”

“She is well, sire, and I know she would be honored to accompany me.”

“Good…” King Lightbringer leaned back in his throne and closed his eyes. Rufus was shocked at the pallor of the monarch’s skin, the thin and stringy nature of his hair and beard. It was as if the ancient king, who had ruled Axial for centuries, was withering away before his eyes.

“Go ahead, Commisar Whitbeard,” Marshal Nayfal declared, speaking to the bespectacled visitor. “Please continue.”

That dwarf cleared his throat and cast Rufus a glance of no small annoyance before he again squinted at the page of numbers scrawled in his ledger. “I regret that the goblin demands remain as unreasonable as ever, Majesty,” he said. “No matter the food and fresh water we provide them-without requiring any labor in return, I might add-they keep insisting that our care is insufficient, that hunger is rampant in the goblin quarter.”

As the commissar continued his report, Rufus noticed a familiar face among the guards and nobles on the other side of the hall. Donnwell Earnwise, the royal engineer, gave Rufus a smile and a small wave, which the patriarch of clan Houseguard cheerfully returned. He wondered about subtly going over to say hello to his old friend when he noticed that Whitbeard seemed to have concluded his report.

The king sighed and winced; to Rufus it appeared that the news caused him physical pain. “The situation in our own granaries is still dire?” he said, making the remark a question.

“Indeed, Your Majesty.” It was Nayfal who answered. “The good citizens of Axial are as hungry as the goblins, to be sure. We are merely more stoic and know to avoid the unseemly whining of the lower race.”

“What do you think, Rufus?” said the king, suddenly sitting up, opening his eyes, and fixing the lord with a stern glare.

“I think, sire, that perhaps it may be time to expand our interests beyond this narrow margin around Axial,” replied Rufus Houseguard, speaking impulsively, sensing he had to make his point before Nayfal found a way to divert the monarch’s attention. “I note the presence of our esteemed Engineer Earnwise-and I recall there was some hope of using his device, the Worldlift, to penetrate the barrier that has arisen between our world and Nayve. I urge you to devote as many resources as possible to that task! If we can penetrate the barrier of blue magic, we already have the route to the Fourth Circle; the Rockshaft, as you know, extends from your palace here, through the Midrock, and all the way to Circle at Center.”

“As a matter of fact, I had just heard some rather encouraging reports on that very matter,” said the king, brightening visibly. “Isn’t that right, Donnwell?”

“Absolutely, sire,” proclaimed the famed scientist and inventor. He addressed Rufus. “I have been able to send a rocket projectile through the barrier. The key seems to be incredible velocity-enough to breach the magic shield that had rendered upward travel hitherto impossible. Of course, we are some ways short of sending an actual dwarf-the traveler’s survival, at this juncture, is far from assured. But nevertheless, it is progress.”

“If anyone can solve that problem, it will be you,” Rufus declared sincerely. “And if we can break through to Nayve, our prospects for food, for trade-everything improves!”

Nayfal chuckled, a dry sound devoid of amusement. “You always were a dreamer, Lord Houseguard,” he said. “Fortunately, our monarch realizes that our dangers, and our salvations, lie closer to home. We have a responsibility not just for the present but for the future of our people!”

Rufus pressed on with his argument. “It has been fifty years since the loss at Arkan Pass, and we have discerned no major Delver move toward our city. Admittedly, in the aftermath of the battle, caution demanded that we pull back from our more far-flung outposts, even though we sacrificed much of our food supply.”

“And the Blind Ones are still out there, waiting-” Marshall Nayfal attempted to intercede, but Rufus trampled ahead as if he hadn’t heard.

“There are the great fungus flats of the Metalreach, food enough to feed the city for a year in a single harvest. We could send an expedition, well protected of course, to retrieve many barges full of those mushrooms. It is worth the chance, sire. Consider: perhaps the Delvers suffered a loss as great as ours at Arkan Pass! We need to venture into our world again, explore, reconnoiter…”

“Perhaps seek to open the routes to Nayve, again? Is that what you are getting at?” asked the king with a tolerant smile.

“Your Majesty!” declared Nayfal, his face growing pale. “Remember the disastrous attempts of four decades ago. Hundreds of brave miners buried, seeking a passage that no longer exists.”

Rufus snorted, contempt getting the best of his judgment. “Indeed, sire, we suffered great losses-because the shafts were poorly shored, and we faced the barrier of magic-the force that we were barely beginning to understand. A tragic mistake, but one that can be rectified, especially if the Worldlift can be completed. And why not seek a return to Nayve? The peoples of the Fourth Circle would be happy to trade food for gold, iron, flamestone-resources we have in abundance.”

“And you know where you would look for such a route?” the king asked, still smiling tolerantly. “In case the Worldlift does not prove to be the panacea?”

“I have ideas,” admitted the dwarf lord. “My sons, Borand and Aurand, have explored some routes on their ferr’ells. They have found a promising gap in the direction that is neither metal nor wood. With reinforcements, they might be able to-”

“We have no troops for such expeditions!” snapped Nayfal. “We cannot risk the warriors, the precious few ferr’ells in our corrals, on such a mad quest!”

Rufus bit his tongue and watched the king, who once again seemed very old, very tired. Lightbringer settled into his throne, and his head leaned forward, his beard bristling across his chest almost as if he was falling asleep. Finally, he shook his head. “No, my good Rufus, I cannot sanction such an attempt, not when we still don’t know the status of the Delver armies. They could strike at any time… any time at all…”

“But we can be prepared for an attack, sire. There are many ways! We could man the watch stations again… even enlist the goblins to scout for us.” Rufus heard Nayfal’s gasp but forged ahead with his arguments. He sensed he was making his points too frantically, but he couldn’t hold back. When would he get the king’s ear again?

“Remember, the goblins have fought on our side in a dozen campaigns! Why, we could even venture out and seek the Delver army, take the battle to them, strike by surprise…”

His voice trailed off as he noticed that the king was snoring. Rufus knew the audience was over. He was not surprised when Nayfal came over to him, the marshal solicitous, sympathetic, as he escorted Rufus through the door, toward the steam-powered lift beyond. “I understand your frustration, my lord. But we must be realistic. There are grave threats to the kingdom, and we dare not take the chance to weaken ourselves. Why, the goblins themselves present a real threat!”

“Bah! The goblins would be our allies again if we could but treat them with a modicum of dignity!”

“I know your feelings on this. It should not be a surprise to you that we are aware of your daughter’s activities on their behalf. I admire her generosity, even if there are those who feel that she is rather unwise to be such a sympathizer with those miserable wretches in the ghetto.”

“I am proud of my daughter and her work,” Houseguard said stiffly. “Would that there were more with her courage and her insight in our once-bright city. Perhaps there would be some questions asked-investigations, even?”

“What do you mean?” the royal adviser asked, his eyes narrowing.

“I mean regarding the death of Cubic Mandrill. There are stories abroad, you know?” Rufus regarded the other dwarf carefully, saw the flush creeping up the ruddy cheeks, the cold fury in his eyes. With visible effort, Nayfal drew a deep breath and made a display of shrugging unconcernedly.

“Admirable sentiment,” Nayfal said breezily. “Who knows-it may happen someday, though I suspect we already know the truth. Goblin treachery nearly claimed the life of our beloved king, and since then the goblins have met the fate that they deserved. Still, it does not hurt to ask. You are very influential in this city, perhaps more than you know.”

The two dwarves arrived at the lift, where the metal cage rattled to a stop and the door of metal bars clanked open. “But… are you sure you won’t reconsider your support of continued exploration of the Midrock? Can’t you see the danger?”

“I see the danger in cowardice,” Rufus Houseguard retorted. “In hiding behind our walls and shutting out the rest of our world, of all the worlds!”

“I am truly sorry you feel that way,” replied the king’s closest adviser. Rufus had the odd sensation that the marshal was, for once, speaking with true sincerity. He watched, puzzled, as Nayfal signaled the lift operator, the cage starting down.

And then the floor seemed to drop away. The dwarven lord slammed against the wall as the lift plummeted without any support, any brake on its shrieking, quarter-mile descent. Rufus clung to a railing, stunned by the blow, feeling the strangest sensation… as if he was floating, utterly weightless.

The crash as the cage hit bottom was a monstrous noise, tearing metal and shattering rock exploding into lethal splinters. In the middle of the tangled wreckage, Rufus Houseguard, esteemed lord of Axial, was far beyond any sensation of pain.