Circle at center sc-1

by Douglas Niles

  “Are you a human, too… from Earth?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “From which part?”

  She moved the picture back across the great ocean, but instead of the mountainous country of Mexico and Tlaxcala, she turned the picture south, toward a region of dense forests and flat, endless ground.

  “The lands of the Maya,” Natac grasped. “I have heard of that place, those people… your people?”

  She nodded, her violet eyes alight with remembrance-of pain or pleasure, Natac could not discern.

  “How did you come here?”

  Miradel drew a breath, those slender shoulders rising. “I, too, was given to false gods… Still a virgin, I was thrown into a well and drowned, in an effort to keep the water from draining away.” She laughed sharply, bitterly. “I failed.”

  “But I know of the magic you used to bring me here. How did…?”

  Now she smiled. “I came as all druids came, brought before the Worldweaver in the Center of Everything. I was birthed before her whole and adult, and granted a life on Nayve in return for… things that had happened, that I had done, on Earth.”

  “What could you have done in such a short life?” he asked, not accusingly, but very curious.

  “It was not just one life. Humans live a multitude of times, and each time they are given the chance to be proved worthy of the Goddess’s gift. Those she rewards she brings to Nayve as druids.”

  And some druids bring warriors here, he remembered, completing the cycle in his own thoughts. Yet that still left the gnawing question: Why had she made such a sacrifice, thrown away eternal life, to bring him here?

  The candle abruptly sputtered and began to fade. Miradel put the crystal down and once again Natac was looking at a plain white wall, a surface marred by shifting shadow as the wick fizzled away. When the druid pushed the door open, he was startled by the strength of the light, and was forced to squint as he followed her through the kitchen and out onto the terrace. All the while he was thinking, analyzing what he had seen.

  “The men riding the horses… it’s not just the speed of movement that give them a great advantage, but the combined weight of the animal and man in the charge. It must be terrifying to stand in the path of such an attack-and if you did stand, you’d probably die.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about the weapons that spew smoke. They must hurl solid objects as well, do they not?”

  “You are very perceptive,” Miradel said, with a smile of self-satisfaction. “Yes. The large ones are called cannons, and the small ones are arquebuses. Each hurls a projectile, the cannon shooting a large stone or ball of metal that can crush wood and sink ships. The arquebus shoots a small stone, or a pellet made of metal-and that missile is enough to pierce flesh, break bones, and puncture hearts.”

  “Can cannons be moved without a ship?”

  “It is difficult,” Miradel allowed, “though-and this is the way of humans-the weapons are getting smaller and more powerful as time goes on. Sometimes a cannon will be loaded with a whole bucketful of small pebbles and bits of metal. When it is fired into a mass of people it can wreak horrible destruction.”

  “And our warriors, Tlaxcalan, Aztec, all of us, fight in tight ranks.” Natac felt a growing sense of shock. “Truly, Tlaxcala is doomed-You are right, even the Aztecs are doomed.” He looked at her in despair, self-pity tearing at him. He choked out the words, biting back the strength of his own anguish. “It will be the end of my people-and I am condemned to watch it!”

  The druid merely shrugged. “It may not be the end of the people in your world-but without a doubt the gods of the Aztecs will be thrown down, and perhaps that is not such a bad thing. The priests who will come with the Europeans have their own foibles, and they, too, will wage war justified by the commands of their god. But they will not rip the hearts out of their captives just to ensure that the sun comes up.”

  “But those priests, too, worship false gods?”

  “All gods are false… they are creations of people, stories and beliefs invented because of some human need to claim understanding.”

  “You yourself talk about a Goddess-the Worldweaver!” Natac challenged. “You said that it was her tapestry we saw! And now you claim that all gods are false!”

  Miradel shook her head, undaunted by his accusation. “I meant all gods of Earth. The Worldweaver dwells at the Center of Everything, and she alone is real.”

  Natac would have argued longer but they were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming through the villa. “Miradel?” The word was called out in a woman’s voice.

  “Belynda?” The druid turned away from Natac.

  The newcomer, Natac saw, was a woman with hair so blond it was almost white. Her eyes widened at the sight of Miradel, but the rest of her expression remained bland. If she was shocked by the aged appearance of the druid, she did a good job of covering it up.

  “I… I was going to send you word, after a little more time passed,” Miradel said softly.

  “Cillia announced the news in the Senate forum,” Belynda said bluntly. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  Natac was conscious of the other woman’s eyes on him, cool and appraising. He flushed with shame, sensing that this was a friend of Miradel’s-surely she must be blaming him for the doom that had fallen upon the druid. Yet he could discern little emotion in those wide, almond-shaped eyes. Despite his embarrassment, he stared back, realizing that there were other things that were unusual about this woman.

  Her ears were pointed in the lobe, he saw, like Fallon’s. That cascading array of white-gold hair was bound by a circlet of silver wire, and her face seemed unusually narrow-though she was unquestionably beautiful to behold. Yet, despite the fact that he had now seen humans with faces of fur, and with skin of darkest black or pale white, there was something different about this person.

  He wondered if it was her lack of emotion, and decided that was it. Miradel’s breath had caught in her throat at the sight of Belynda, and Natac saw the trembling of her shoulders, knew the druid was fighting to suppress an expression of her feeling. Belynda was making no such effort-in the frank examination of Miradel’s lined face, or her cool appraisal of the warrior whose summoning had thus aged her, she looked as though she might have been examining something of utterly no import.

  “Warrior Natac,” Miradel said, stepping back to look at him. He saw the emotion in her eyes, was startled to recognize it as pride. She was proud of him! Again he felt that staggering weight of guilt, unworthiness-why?

  “This is my friend Belynda of Argentian… She is a sage-ambassador of the elves.”

  “I greet you, Belynda of Argentian,” Natac said with a bow, even as his mind digested the news. So she wasn’t human after all-she was an elf! And Fallon was too, of course. The word had some intrinsic meaning to him, merely because of his familiarity with his new language, but he resolved to ask Miradel many more questions when he had a chance.

  “And you, Warrior Natac,” Belynda replied, still in that cool, distant tone. “I can only hope my friend has chosen wisely.”

  “I hope the same thing, lady,” he replied sincerely.

  “Natac has encountered Fionn and Owen,” Miradel said. “In fact, he got them to stop brawling long enough to have a conversation.”

  “A brief conversation,” Natac amended.

  “I think this warrior may be different from the others,” the druid said, again with that sense of pride that made him squirm.

  “I see.” Belynda looked into Miradel’s eyes. “Why did you do it, my friend? When you knew the costs, and the risks… and you know the spell has been forbidden by your own council?” It was as if Natac weren’t there as she sought for an answer. Yet he listened intently, at least as anxious for the answer as was the elfwoman who asked the question.

  “I will tell you,” the druid said. “Tell you both… but before I do, there is something that I would like to discuss with you.”

  �
�What is it?”

  “We all felt the world shake a few days ago. I am convinced that was just a symptom of much greater disturbances. And so I ask you, my friend: What have you heard of unusual trouble in the Fourth Circle?”

  It seemed to Natac as if Belynda’s pale skin got a touch whiter. “The sage-enchantress Caranor… she died by fire in her home. And then an interval later the sage-enchantress Allevia was killed the same way!”

  Miradel gasped. “Allevia dwelled in the Lodespikes, did she not?”

  “On the fringe of the mountains, yes… in a high valley overlooking the Greens.”

  “The Greens,” the druid repeated seriously. “It is there I feel the danger lies.”

  “There are a lot of people there,” Belynda countered, though she didn’t speak with a great deal of conviction. “Surely we would have heard something in Circle at Center about trouble? Or you druids… Can’t you look there with your viewing glass?”

  “That’s part of the problem,” Miradel said. “For a long time, now, the Greens have been masked to our magic. Druids have gone there, talked to centaurs and giants and faeries… and though they haven’t learned anything suspicious, it is not uncommon for them to encounter unusual secrecy. And that was before Debyra’s visit, just last year.”

  “What did she learn?” Belynda asked.

  “Nobody knows… she was never heard from again.”

  “That is bad enough-but can you be certain?”

  “Not yet… not about everything. But Cillia has been watching, and she has told me what she’s learned.” Miradel looked at Belynda curiously. “Did you know that there are now many elves living in the Greens?”

  “No!” The sage-ambassador blinked, for her a dramatic expression of surprise. “I always knew of a few renegades, restless souls who never seemed to fit in. But there are no realms there!”

  The druid shrugged. “There are more than a few, and perhaps it is right to call them renegades. They seem to be content to live in the wilderness, away from the sanctity of borders and councils.”

  “Perhaps that’s where they’re going,” Belynda mused softly.

  “Who?” probed Miradel.

  “It’s just… for some years now, an unusual number of elves have been leaving Argentian. And no one seems to know where they go. Just this morning I learned that the same thing is happening in Barantha and Kel’sos.”

  “All realms within a hundred miles of the Greens,” the druid observed.

  “And such migration is unquestionably a change… an unusual one, in the annals of Nayve. But even so… what harm is done? Where is the trouble?”

  “I believe that there is something dangerous there,” Miradel informed her friend, and took in Natac’s eyes with a brief glance.

  “Dangerous elves?”

  “Elves… and others. Centaurs and giants, I’m certain. But there is something holding them together, driving them… and it is a force that resists even detection by druid magic.”

  “But stay-I admit that you are making me think,” declared the elfwoman, her hand trembling slightly as she raised it before Miradel’s aged face. “Now explain something: You were going to tell me why you brought this warrior here.”

  The druid took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I did it for your people,” she said to Belynda.

  “For the elves? Why in the name of the Goddess would you do that?”

  “Because,” Miradel said, and now her dark eyes turned to Natac, “you are needed to train the elves in the ways of battle… to teach them how to fight a war.”

  F lames rose high around him and he saw Satan writhing against a desperate onslaught. The demon twisted and shrieked, helplessly suffering the torture of his righteous punishment. Slowly, inexorably, the valiant knight pressed forward with sword and staff… victory was there! And then that triumph slipped away from him in a gust of wind and a waft of smoke. The fiend had made his escape, and the knight was left alone, facing the enemy horde…

  The dream had its own form, and it followed the pattern each time it tormented his sleep. Constructed from the events of Sir Christopher’s past, centuries distant, it wove a tale of temptation and failure, and it left alive the hope of redemption and triumph.

  It always began with the same disaster: The Saracens attacked from ambush, striking from both ridges above a parched, arid valley. They caught twelve Knights Templar by surprise, slaughtering many of Sir Christopher’s companions with their short, lethal arrows. Only three of the twelve reached the great portals, the gates to sacred Jerusalem herself.

  But the Saracens cut them off before they could enter the safety of the great fortress-city. Finally Sir Christopher stood alone, hacking to right and left, slaughtering his enemies for the glory of God. He prayed aloud, calling the names of his slain comrades, praising the bravery of his loyal, perished horse. Thirst was a claw at his swollen tongue, talons of fire ripping at his parched throat. His shield, emblazoned with the red cross of the Templars, was torn and broken under the onslaught of a hundred weapons.

  His red blade was knocked from his hands. A Syrian lance pierced his flesh, slicing into his heart and lungs. In that instant he knew he was dying, and he commended his soul and his being to Heavenly Paradise. His life flowed away, spattered in crimson blood across the rocks of the Holy Land. In the last glimmer of awareness, he reached upward, sought and anticipated the welcoming embrace of God.

  Instead, he found himself in the arms of Hell’s Harlot, a beautiful temptress who touched him shamelessly, bringing arousal from his traitorous flesh. At first he fought against her obscene advances, twisting and kicking fruitlessly in an attempt to escape her tender fingers, her soft lips. But his blows passed through her without effect, while her own gentle touch produced a pronounced reaction in the knight. His soul weakened, his flesh yielded, and the witch used him for her obscene pleasure.

  And he, in that foggy weakness, he enjoyed the same carnal gratification. He ravished her as if she were the whore of Babylon, and he relished each salacious convulsion of his loins. Only when at last he lay exhausted, and she fell sound asleep, did he realize that he had been tested by God.

  It was a test he had failed.

  In his surging grief he strangled the harlot, but he knew that his vengeance was too late to cleanse his soul of sin. He staggered from her lair and found himself in a world of blasphemy… a world in which he had struggled and labored for more than three centuries.

  And once again he awakened, and God’s work lay before him.

  But now he had a tool, a talisman that would make that work so much more effective. As he did every morning, he reached to his breast, found the stone there, still suspended on its golden chain. He looked at the pearl, at its crimson cross, and understood again that he had been chosen for an important task. The red sigil on the stone was not a perfect cross, since all four of the lines were the same length. Even so, his discovery of the talisman in the possession of the heretical witch Caranor had convinced him anew that his work was here.

  And so he emerged from his tent, ignored the stirring of his small army, and raised the stone toward the already bright sun.

  “Come to me, Children of God,” he whispered, his fingers clenched around the pearl. “Come to me, and join my new crusade.”

  7

  The Road to Argentian

  Coast of metal,

  Silver crest,

  Sweetwater stream and glade eternal.

  Towers tall gardens blessed-

  Argentian!

  A home, a source a nest.

  From the Tapestry of the Worldweaver, Atlas of Elvenkind

  Despite the planned early departure, the homebound Argentian delegates needed most of the afternoon to cross the long causeway from Circle at Center to the lakeshore. Tamarwind wasn’t surprised that the homesick elves of his pastoral realm were ultimately reluctant to take leave of the city’s splendors. Indeed, the scout surprised himself with his own regrets, wistful thoughts centered on the
woman with the delicate frame and the strong face. He had known her for centuries, had given her the seed that had created offspring, and yet during the last tenday she had made him feel like a giddy youth. The emotions were strong and unusual, but he liked them.

  After the long causeway ended at the shore of the lake, the Avenue of Metal became the Metal Highway. Here Wiytstar, the chief delegate, suggested that the party find rooms in the splendid lakeshore inn. Though a long time remained until the Hour of Darken, the other Argentians quickly agreed. Ulfang, similarly being in no particular hurry, was content to swim in the pond among the birds that had given the hostelry its name.

  The Blue Swan Inn rose above its own harbor. The place was a sprawling building of rough-hewn wood, with many lofty towers and beautiful gardens of blossoms and sculpted trees. Though of course it was run by elves, it was popular with druids, many of whom maintained boats in the anchorage. Just before the Hour of Darken Tamarwind enjoyed the sight of a dozen of these craft, each propelled by magical wind gusts, racing toward the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor.

  The next day they had a leisurely breakfast and started out by midmorning. The road quickly entered a large, straight tunnel, and the lake-with its island of green trees, marble buildings, and the Worldweaver’s Loom-slowly vanished into a small circle of daylight behind them.

  Not that the tunnel was dark, of course. Globes of white light, enchanted balls created by sage-enchantresses a thousand years ago, floated just below the peak of the tunnel’s arched roof. These balls were spaced about once every hundred paces, but a full dozen of them seemed to attach themselves to the elven party and float overhead as they walked along.

  “This tunnel was carved by goblins, two millennia ago or longer,” Tam explained to Ulf, who had commented on the generally smooth walls and straight pathway.

  “Goblins?” Wiytstar overheard. “Aren’t they terribly dangerous when you get a large group of them together?”

  “Not really,” Tamarwind replied. “They’re clannish, of course, but they can be very hard workers. Give them enough to eat and drink, and goblins have done some of the best building in all of Nayve.”