Circle at center sc-1

by Douglas Niles

  The dogs started barking, all of them contributing to the din, and Ulfgang shouted for silence. Even so, the baying, howling, and yipping continued, until Tam was getting a headache from the noise. Finally the pack settled down, and the white dog turned to the big male. “You tell me, alone.”

  The shepherd, voice already hoarse from the hunt, barked roughly for several minutes. When he concluded, panting, Ulfgang nodded his head grimly and turned to his elven companions.

  “I couldn’t understand much,” he admitted. “But they claim there is something that drew them here to the Greens… that they were pulled to the chase by a force strange and compelling.”

  “What thing is that?” Tam demanded, still trembling with the excitement of the confrontation.

  “Magic, I fear,” Ulf replied. “Of what type, I don’t know. But more significantly, that big one-Red Eye-says that he can show us where we can find this power in the flesh.”

  T wo days later Ulfgang, Deltan, and Tamarwind crouched on the lip of a ravine overlooking a small valley, a gorge twisting through the trackless depths of the Greens. The travelers lay in a fringe of brush, silent and unmoving. Their position commanded a clear view of the ground below. In a clearing on the valley floor hundreds of people-mostly elves, but with a few giants, goblins, and centaurs among them-had gathered.

  The shepherd called Red Eye had led them close to this place, though an hour earlier the big dog had slunk away without explanation. Nor had Ulf asked for one-he told Tam that he, too, could sense the wrongness in this place, an invisible corruption that marred the trees, the ground, the very air itself.

  Tamarwind still carried his staff, and he was disturbed to realize that he was very much afraid. Deltan Columbine was silent, clutching his bow and looking wide-eyed at the mob below them. Ulfgang seemed purposeful and grim. As he searched for this place, the white dog had trotted along with head and nose low, sniffing constantly, seeking some improper spoor, some signal of the magic that had so disrupted life in unchanging Argentian. The warning of the pack had stricken the white dog with visible force, and the change in Ulf’s mood had provided a sobering warning to Tam and Deltan.

  And now they had come upon this bizarre gathering. Significantly, many of those gathered in the little clearing bore weapons-spears and staffs, a few with the bows and arrows such as an elven hunter might carry. In the center of the gathering a tall, bare stake jutted upward from a pile of kindling. Nearby was a canvas tent, and before that shelter dangled a white banner emblazoned with a red cross. The crowd was mostly silent and attentive, though they were joined by more and more people coming from the trails leading up and down the valley. Abruptly an audible gasp sounded from the assemblage, and all eyes went to the canvas shelter.

  A human came out of the tent. His chest was covered by a stiff, silvery shirt. He was bearded, with long brown hair, and he carried a stout staff that was capped with the head of a hooded snake. When he raised his arms and the final murmurings in the assemblage stilled, it seemed to Tamarwind that even the birds and monkeys grew quiet, waiting, tense, afraid.

  A scream echoed, startling and eerie. Tam saw a woman, a human druid to judge from her long black hair, dragged forward by two giants. She screamed again, and one of the brutes cuffed her across the face. The crowd murmured and shifted like a hungry being, awakened and thrilled by the prisoner’s suffering.

  Stunned by the violence, Tamarwind watched in horror as the druid was tied to the post. She struggled in vain, moaning and sobbing as ropes were pulled tight against her flesh. A pair of goblins, cackling excitedly, carried torches forward and thrust the flaming brands into the kindling around the stake. Quickly the fire took hold, snapping hungrily through the wood, spewing upward in yellow and orange tongues. The druidess shrieked loudly as her gown caught fire, as black smoke swirled around her and the blaze grew fierce.

  Appalled, Tam, Deltan, and Ulfgang watched the flames spark. The scout tried to imagine the pain the woman must be suffering, but his mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Fire consumed her garment and blackened her skin. Her shouts and cries climbed beyond the scale of anguish, a dolorous wail of pure agony as her flesh was consumed by the blaze. The unforgettable stench, like charred meat and offal, reached even to the nostrils of the three watchers above the valley. Tamarwind clenched his teeth, fighting against a surging wave of nausea.

  And then the woman was no longer screaming. Her cries were muted moans, swiftly overwhelmed by the crackling fury of the conflagration.

  The crowd remained rapt, eyes alight. The fire roared eagerly around the writhing body. Her limbs thrashed, and it took a long time before her cries faded into croaks. At last the only sounds came from the flames, crackling, hungry and exultant.

  When the druid had been reduced to a blackened shell amid a mound of glowing coals the bearded man spoke.

  “Again we have claimed a witch, my valiant Crusaders… and again God is pleased with our efforts!” Cheers and whoops rang out from the crowd, a response that chilled Tam nearly as much as had the gruesome death. “See!” The speaker, his voice sharp, raised a hand in a violent, triumphant gesture. A gold chain dangled from his wrist, and the elf caught a glimpse of a small white stone held in the man’s fingers. He swung his hand back and forth, and the eyes and heads of the crowd followed the talisman in rapt attention.

  Something flared redly in that stone, an X-shaped vibration of crimson light that sent a jolt of pleasure through Tamarwind. Stunned, he looked to the side, saw that Deltan had dropped his bow, that he gazed longingly toward the object in the man’s hand. When the hand came down, the stone disappeared from view, and the people in the valley-and the two elves watching from above-sighed in unison.

  “But it is time that we did more, labored harder in the name of our Holy Savior. And so I tell you: There is a temple of evil in this wretched swath of purgatory. The place is a monument to heresy. It rises upon an island, forms a minaret of metal that is an abomination, an affront to God. And so I will lead you there, my crusaders… and we will see this temple, and we will tear it down!”

  “The Loom of the Worldweaver!” Tamarwind gasped. Deltan Columbine simply shook his head, pulling back from his vantage to sit, stunned, on the forest floor.

  The frightening message was still ringing in the clearing when Ulf leapt up on all fours with a startled snort. The dog and the elves spun in unison, Tam leaping to his feet and then freezing in shock.

  A giant with a bristling black beard held a stone-tipped spear leveled straight at Tam’s chest. The fellow loomed high overhead, and his body seemed as broad as a wall. Thick cords of muscle knotted his thighs and calves, and each of his arms was as big around as a human man’s leg.

  “Come, witch… you can talk to Sir Christopher.” The giant’s voice was a growl like thunder. Tam felt the rumble in the pit of his stomach. “There’s enough kindling left for a double burning.”

  Tamarwind’s blood ran cold. The staff was still on his shoulder, but seemed like an impotent twig in the face of that deadly spearhead. He tried to think of something, anything, to say.

  Turning his head, he saw that Deltan hadn’t even picked up his bow. Instead, the poet looked back at Tam, a desperate appeal for help written in his terrified expression, his wildly staring eyes. The scout clenched his hand around the staff, but when the giant lifted his spear toward his throat he took a short step backward, unable to make himself attack.

  Ulf, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. He pranced forward, tail wagging as he gazed fawnishly up at the giant.

  “Some watchdog,” snorted the elf’s captor.

  Ulf suddenly lunged upward, snapping his jaws hard beneath the giant’s shaggy tunic. The fellow left out a pinched scream and doubled over. Somehow Tam’s instincts took over, and he swung the heavy staff. The pole whistled through the air, landing with a resounding crack against the giant’s skull. The shaft of wood shattered but the giant fell on his face with a thud. Groaning once, he kicked, t
hen lay still.

  “Come on!” panted Ulf, already starting through the woods.

  An impulse penetrated Tam’s fear and he reached down to snatch up the giant’s heavy spear. Then he was off, racing after Ulfgang and Deltan, the wind of his speed drawing tears from his still-horrified eyes.

  10

  A Girding of Elves

  Poem, painting, sculpture; song and prose and play.

  Girders of serenity, frame of night and day

  Violent shadows shiver, pain and bloodshed wax warfare, plunder, murder are the artwork of the axe.

  From The Ballad of the First Warrior, Deltan Columbine

  B elynda lay awake, fidgeting restlessly. The Lighten Hour was still a long time away, but she felt no need to sleep. She didn’t know what subconscious anxiety triggered her unease, but she finally, reluctantly, gave up the attempt at repose. She whispered on the light and found that she didn’t even blink against the soft illumination.

  Swinging her feet to the floor, she stood, and then paced across her sleeping chamber for the simple reason that she needed to move. She walked past the reading table without pause. The door to her garden glided open as she murmured the word of command, and then she was under the night sky with its fulgent, gracefully shifting patterns of stars. Sitting on a marble bench, she leaned back to watch the stately wheel of the night overhead. The stars spiraled around the axis of the distant sun-the celestial body that was now no more than the brightest star in the twinkling vista of the sky. Each speck of light seemed to move at its own speed. At times thousands of them formed tendrils of blurry illumination, while shortly thereafter those twisting limbs broke apart, dissolving into their individual, lonely components. And thus they wandered until the pattern brought them again into concentration.

  All but hypnotized, Belynda stared into the vastness overhead. As she had done countless times before, she tried to sift some kind of design from the cosmic quilt… but just when she began to perceive a face, a horizon, an animal or leaf, the twinkling display would distort and realign. Inevitably she was left with a sense of randomness that she found troubling, resonant of a vague sense of insecurity.

  But tonight even the spectacle of the skies could not distract her from the agitation that ruined her sleep and lifted her from her bed. She still could not identify a precise source of unease. Rather it was as if too many little changes were occurring in the world, niggling things that combined to portend something different, some dire interruption in the stately pace of Nayve.

  For, of course, change was bad. In any kind of alteration there was a potential for violence, and perhaps it was this awareness that caused her to think about pain, and killing, and war. Not that she had seen any examples during her lifetime… rather she had learned from tales of the Seventh Circle, stories told by druids who had witnessed the Worldweaver’s Tapestry. In her lifetime there had been many advances in the way humans made war, and she tried to imagine where they could go in the future. Such a frenetic, furious race they were-even, truth be told, the druids, who were supposed to represent the wisest and most serene of the lot.

  But in this past year Caranor and Allevia had died violently. She had just learned from Nistel that more giants had come to Thickwhistle, this time rousting a whole clan of gnomes out of a cherished cavern. She missed having Ulfgang to talk to… and even more, she wished Tamarwind was here.

  She stood up and stretched, and it was then that she heard the rustling in the shrubbery surrounding her garden. In another moment a canine body, white against the darkness, trotted into view. Ulfgang was followed by Tamarwind Trak, who was breathing hard from exertion, and another, similarly exhausted elf. Both wore clothes that were in tatters, and Belynda gasped at the sight of the scout’s face, haggard and thin, streaked with sweat and dirt.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, rushing to embrace Tam by his shoulders. She stared into eyes that were hooded and dark, and contained the gleam of burning anger.

  “No… just tired,” he said. Despite the emotion that seethed almost visibly beneath his skin, his voice was soft and calm.

  “We came here without rest,” Ulf explained. “From the Greens, running nearly all the way. Tam even mounted a horse for the last leg of the trip.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked the sage-ambassador, shaken by the explanation, by the implication of bad news. “And who… Deltan Columbine!” She recognized the other elf then.

  “My lady Sage-Ambassador,” he said with a bow. “I regret that I see you again on an occasion of such dire portent.”

  “Tell me!” she said, sitting on the bench and forcing herself to be calm. The two men joined her, apparently soothed somewhat by her example. “What is this dire portent?”

  “It is death-murder and war come to Nayve!” Tam blurted.

  “In the person of a warrior, a human,” added Deltan. “One who dwells in the Greens, and gathers others to his cause.”

  “It is he who has lured the shepherds from their duties,” Ulfgang put in.

  Belylnda listened in growing shock as the dog and elves continued to describe the band they had observed, and the burning of the druid who had been called a “witch.”

  “Elves, giants… centaurs? And they are all armed?” she echoed in growing fear. “That’s enough for a whole army, right here in the Fourth Circle!”

  “And there’s more,” Tam said. He told her about the human warrior with his great staff and his shirt of silver. “He was urging his army into a frenzy. He held aloft a small white talisman on a chain and charged them to come here, to Circle at Center. They intend to tear down the Worldweaver’s Loom!”

  Belynda felt as though she had been punched in the stomach. It was hard to draw a breath, or to wrap her mind around the idea of an attack against this sacred place.

  “How…” She let the question trail off, not even knowing what to ask. “We can’t let them!”

  Tamarwind drew a deep breath. “I know… we need to gather against them-to-to fight!” He looked stunned, even sickened, by his own words.

  “I have sent word to Argentian,” Deltan Columbine said. “There are many of my students there who will join us, I’m certain. I asked them to travel here, to Circle at Center. From them we can form a company.”

  “A company…” With a jolt Belynda suddenly remembered Miradel, and the warrior the druid had summoned at such cost. “To train the elves for war,” she murmured wonderingly.

  “What?” asked the scout.

  “It’s… there’s someone who saw the danger before I did,” the sage-ambassador said quietly. “She gave up her future, her whole life, because she perceived this menace and sacrificed herself so that the rest of us might be prepared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is a human warrior called Natac. He lives in a villa in the hills, not far from the end of the causeway. He will take Deltan Columbine’s company of elves and teach them to be warriors. And we will get more elves, from here in the city, and from Barantha, and all the other realms.”

  Now Belynda felt a focus, a direction for the energy and agitation that had disrupted her sleep and brought her, awake and alert, into the garden. She looked fondly at Tam, gently caressed Ulf’s head and ears. She smiled at Deltan Columbine, saw that he stood taller, looked sturdier, than she remembered him. “You are very brave… all three of you. You must have been in terrible danger.”

  “Actually, we did face down a giant,” Tam admitted, huffing slightly in embarrassment. With a shy grin he reached behind a bush to bring forth a stout spear, the weapon a good deal longer than Belynda’s height. “Ulf bit him, and I bopped him over the head-and then I took this away from him.”

  The sage-ambassador was appalled at the tale, and she squeezed her hand tightly around Tamarwind’s arm. “Please-you must try to be careful!” she declared.

  “I will. In any event, there won’t be any giants around this warrior’s villa.”

  “Actually, it’s my friend’s house. Mira
del is her name, and she will know where your company can make camp.”

  “Can you show us the way to Miradel’s?” Tam asked, again smiling bashfully.

  Belynda was strangely touched. “I will take you there in two days-there’s something I have to do, first.”

  Natac and Miradel sat on the veranda, watching the lake turn purple as the sun receded overhead. They had eaten a splendid meal of cowsteak and beans, which Miradel had cooked together in a mixture of spices that still tickled about the warrior’s palate. With a few whispered words of magic, Fallon had cleaned up after the meal and retired to his own apartment. Now the elf strummed his lute there, and the gentle chords swirled and soothed through the growing night.

  The druid and Natac had just spent long hours in the dark room, where she had displayed for him many pictures of humans using swords-for contests and combat alike. As he had been doing for many days, Natac practiced the moves he had seen, whipping his own blade around with speed and grace. Their session had closed with an hour spent watching the unarmed warrior who had unknowingly taught Natac so much. This man of the Orient was adept at the use of his hands and feet, and by now the Tlaxcalan had learned to exactly mimic his remote teacher’s movements.

  Tired from the exercise, with his full belly seeming like an anchor as he sat in a comfortable wicker chair, Natac felt his eyelids start to droop. He sighed, and leaned back, watching as more and more stars came into view.

  “The time is coming, very soon,” Miradel said suddenly.

  His tiredness vanished in that instant, for he knew exactly what she meant.

  “I will be ready,” he promised. He looked across the starlit vista, the sparkling lights of the city across the lake, the placid evening lying still and comforting about them. The promise welled up, and he thought of a yellow hummingbird. Unbidden, the vow came again to his lips.

  “I will be ready.”