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 sh
e 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?”
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