Goddess Worldweaver sc-3

by Douglas Niles

  At the same time, he was overwhelmingly sad, thinking about these elves who could have looked forward to hundreds more years of pastoral life. All that was put at risk, for many would be lost, because of the necessity to fight.

  Lastly, as the ships towered above the beach, still surging forward with teeming decks, Tamarwind allowed himself to think of Belynda. There were so many things he wished he had told her: for centuries he had planned to speak to her, to convince her of his love, and yet the time had never been right. He had waited, always hoping for a better opportunity, and now it occurred to him that his opportunities might have run out. That thought frightened him more than death or injury, violence or flame, and in that awareness he wanted very much to get away from here alive.

  The death ships had spilled their cargo with appalling haste. Tam had watched in astonishment as each bow had folded into a ramp, dropping forward into shallow water to disgorge a tight rank of shadowy warriors. Already the first of these were scrambling out of the surf onto dry land. Water dripped from their tunics and legs just as it would drip from real flesh, and for the first time the elven veteran accepted the fact that these were real foes capable of inflicting genuine and lethal wounds.

  He was heartened to see a few silver spheres fly through the air as Gallupper’s guns, atop the nearby dune, opened up. The metallic shot skipped across the sand, rolling into the tightly packed ranks before exploding in a blaze of white heat. Again and again the batteries spoke, dozens of shots scattering into the files of ghost warriors, tearing great rips in those lines. There were more of them shooting from the dune to his left, and as the enemy masses tried to form ranks, they found themselves under resolute and fiery assault.

  But still more of them were coming ashore, the numberless tide of death ships looming tall and black just beyond. Those already on land, meanwhile, ignored the lethal barrage, re-formed the ranks where they had been torn by the explosions, and started to march toward the elves. Either the batteries slowed their fire or, more likely, the numbers of the enemy simply dwarfed that responding barrage. In any event, it seemed to Tam that they came on without so much as awareness of the explosions flashing among them.

  “Steady-raise those pikes. Hold your ranks, elves!” Tamarwind shouted, taking some comfort from the sound of his own voice. The front of the elven line bristled like a hedgehog as the steel-headed pikes were tilted forward. At the junctures where one company met the next, giants stood ready, fighting in trios armed with massive, long-handled axes.

  “Giants-take up your halberds and move into position!” Tam called, as the ghost ranks advanced, approaching the markers that had earlier been placed. When the leading rank was a hundred yards away, the elf turned to the rear, signaled the company of longbowmen who had been waiting for his sign. “Fire away-volleys, one after the other!”

  The deadly missiles arced overhead, flying in eerie silence, slashing through the sky and then plunging down into the dark rank of attackers. Many arrows plunged into the sand, but numerous others tore into flesh, puncturing heads and shoulders and chests among the grim legion. A hundred attackers fell in that first volley, and already the second barrage of arrows was rising into the sky, passing high over the elves to once more pepper the lethal horde.

  Now that eerie wail was repeated, an ululating cry from a hundred thousand bloodless throats. Sand churned, and the air itself seemed to tremble as the Deathlord’s legion advanced into a trot, then a ragged run. The tight discipline wavered as the faster runners broke ahead of the slower. A hundred tall, black spearmen, carrying leather shields and garbed as Zulu veterans, rushed toward the center of the elven line. They halted, casting their spears into the midst of Tam’s troops, then came on in another rush. A few fell to well-aimed arrows, and the rest met a bloody end on the pikes that danced and bobbed before the defenders’ faces.

  But now the rest of the horde was close, and there was a great clattering of wood and steel as the pike butts were planted and the blades chimed together, then quivered under the impact of undead but very corporeal flesh.

  Tamarwind drew his sword, the slender, double-edged blade forged a hundred years ago by a druid master. He stood with the First Company to his right, and a trio of halberd-armed giants at his left. In another instant the ground before him was swarming with dark, hateful faces. A spear thrust toward him, and he hacked the weapon in half with a single slash. Two muskets tipped with lethal bayonets jabbed, and he was forced to take a half step backward. But he lunged forward again, two quick stabs dropping the ghost warriors that might have been summoned here from Shiloh or Gettysburg.

  A giant roared, and the mighty axe blade swept past, cleaving a centurion in two before plunging deep into the sand. The halberdier tried to wrest his weapon free as three swordsmen rushed in; Tam dropped one with a throat-cutting slash, then held the other two at bay until the giant raised the halberd and brought both attackers down with a single, haymaking swing.

  Feeling the rhythm of his comrade, Tamarwind rushed forward in the wake of the halberd’s swing, stabbing a charging Turk in the throat. The man, who might have fought in Saladin’s army or even in the legions of Mohammed himself, fell to the sand and thrashed, choking and gasping as new death slowly claimed him. Tam had already found his next target and moved on from there.

  His blade stayed eerily shiny, even as it ran through guts and lopped off limbs. The attackers pressed forward with that keening wail, a sound unlike anything raised from human voice, yet in its very strangeness it seemed a potent and demoralizing battle cry. He realized another strange thing as the battle wore on: the attackers he slew fell to the ground as corpses, yet as more and more of them died, the piles of corpses did not swell to the heights he would have expected. It was as if the flesh of these warriors gradually dissolved, even as additional ranks of ghost warriors kept rushing forward to replace the gaps left by the slain. As fresh bodies collapsed on top of the pile, those at the bottom slowly vanished into the dirt.

  Tamarwind took a glimpse along the length of his line, heartened to see that most of the pikes were still in position. A few elves had fallen, but the attackers that pressed between the long shafts were quickly felled by swordsmen. All told, the line was holding well.

  Indeed, so effective were the pikes that the attackers seemed to be focusing on the junctures where the giants-and Tamarwind-fought. One of the tall defenders groaned aloud and staggered backward, clutching his belly where it had been ripped open by a Viking’s battle-axe. The other giants were bleeding from scores of cuts on their legs and hips, and the elf wondered how much longer they would be able to hold.

  But for now, the attackers could make no progress, and at the cost of blood and pain and sweat, Tamarwind and his warriors battled on.

  He marched up the beach in a file of ten thousand warriors, his Enfield heavy and lethal in his hands. A flash of light and heat erupted to his right, sending fiery bits of metal through the column. Warriors to both sides of him fell, keening their death wails, while a tongue of fire reached around to singe his arm. But he ignored the flash of pain, stepping over the bodies of the slain without a second thought. In a few minutes his ghost flesh had healed, leaving not so much as a sign of his wound.

  The beach was littered with bodies, and more of the silvery fireballs were erupting to all sides. The warrior looked at the top of one of the high sand dunes just as another barrage came forth from that place. He watched as the spheres scattered through the air, falling along the file of warriors advancing to his left. It was a good shot: the entire line erupted into flame and death over a hundred feet of its length, warriors blazing, stumbling, and falling as the incendiary explosive seared undead flesh.

  But there, too, the loss was ignored by the survivors, more and more warriors kicking through the smoldering sand, tightening up the column, marching inexorably inland.

  The warrior wanted to charge up the dune, to strike with his bayonet against the purveyors of those fiery assaults, but that was no
t the direction he was ordered to go. Instead, he heard the words of his captain, the croaky and rasping sound that seemed to come from within his skull, urging him to tighten up the rank, to speed up into a trot.

  The same command must have been delivered to the whole file, because now the column was moving at a lumbering run, feet in sandals and boots churning through the sand, bearing the attackers closer to the sounds of battle. He pushed along behind the warrior in front of him, a fellow Tommy from the fields of Flanders. Behind him came a pair of fierce-looking warriors in face paint and feathers, each bearing a stone-headed tomahawk.

  The enemy came into view, a long front of short, bearded warriors protected by steel breastplates, helmets, and shields. They were squat and powerful looking, with feet spread wide, and short-bladed weapons-swords, daggers, axes-wielded opposite the round shields. All along the front the ghost warriors were attacking, and these creatures-gnomes, the warrior called up from some recess of knowledge-were holding their ground with courage and skill.

  He opened his mouth and found himself making a strange noise, a boiling gurgle of sound that seemed to propel him forward with great fury. The Tommy before him went down, thigh hacked by a gnomish sword, and then he was into the line, thrusting the Enfield forward with a practiced stab, bypassing the small shield, penetrating the bristling beard to jab the bayonet into the gnome’s throat, above his protective plate. Immediately the white whiskers were stained red, and the little fellow tumbled backward, dropping his blade from nerveless fingers.

  And the warrior charged ahead, pushing through the gap in the gnomish line. Another diminutive warrior charged, then fell back, gagging through the blood of the awful thrust into his mouth. The two Iroquois came behind, one falling dead, the other bringing the stone tomahawk hard against a gnomish helm. The blow knocked the defender to the side, and the painted warrior snatched up a metal axe, pushing onward as the captain urged more of his troops through the breach.

  Slogging ahead, his rifle light in his hands, the warrior looked in astonishment at the green, grassy field beyond the line. Never in his fighting in France had he beheld such a glorious sight; there, even a successful attack had only yielded another field of mud, another trench and fencing of barbed wire.

  But here, the enemy line was broken! Ghost warriors poured through the breach, a hundred strong in the first minute, a thousand more coming as the gnomes to either side were butchered and driven away.

  Natac and Regillix Avatar had flown back and forth above the front throughout the long day of fighting. Twice they had landed, once to patch a breach in the elven lines, and again to repel a sudden rush, warriors charging up a dune to try to take one of Gallupper’s battery positions. Each time the dragon had breathed a fiery cloud of death, disrupting the attacks enough so that additional troops could rush to the danger spot and hold the tide.

  The Tlaxcalan was proud to the point of awe as he witnessed the doughty defense. There were four possible routes off of the beach, each leading toward a wide valley in the range of hills just beyond the coast. Each of these routes was defended by an army of nearly ten thousand Navyian fighters. To the right were two elven forces, the troops of Barantha on the far right, with the forces of Argentian, commanded by Tamarwind Trak, just to the left of that formation.

  Third from the right was the rank of gnomes, a number of forces mustered from Circle at Center, the Ringhills, and the Lodespikes. These warriors were small but well armored and tightly packed; for hours they had stood up to the press of attackers without any sign of wavering. Finally, on the left, the trolls of King Awfulbark of Udderthud were waging deadly combat, tearing at the ghost warriors with their great claws, lifting and rending with brutal force. The trolls suffered grievous wounds, but the injured simply fell back from the line until, a few minutes later, their hurts were healed.

  Between each of these armies, as well as posted on the heights to the left and right of the entire force, emplacements of batteries showered fiery barrages onto the beaches. The attackers pushed right through the flaming onslaughts, but that didn’t keep them from exacting a terrible toll.

  Now, as the dragon took to the air once more, Natac strained to see into the distance, wanting to insure that the positions remained intact. He was disturbed to see a lot of activity behind the gnome position, and as Regillix flew him closer, his worst fears were realized.

  “They have breached the line,” he observed, the dragon nodding grimly in agreement.

  “Shall we land and try to block that up?” asked the serpent skeptically.

  “No, there are too many of them,” Natac admitted, cursing the luck that had kept them away from this spot. A few minutes earlier they might have made a difference; now, the attackers had spilled through the line in a flood. The two wings of the shattered gnomish army were falling back, away from the breach, and the press of attackers surged inland unabated. Already thousands of them were turning right, to come at the flank of the trolls, or left, to push against the vulnerable end of the elven position.

  Regillix dipped a wing, curling into an arc around the shattered position. Natac was tempted to go down and help the gnomes-they could insure escape for at least some of the nearly surrounded fighters-but he acknowledged a more important role for the sake of the whole army.

  “Let’s land behind Tamarwind and give him warning. With luck, the elves can pull away before they’re surrounded, and we can be on our way to warn Awfulbark and his trolls.”

  “Aye,” grunted the dragon unhappily. “A bitter choice, that, but the only one we can make.”

  Already he was veering downward, gliding to a patch of open ground behind the rank of Tamarwind Trak’s elves. Natac took one glance back, saw a hundred gnomes vanish under the onslaught of the unholy attack. He thought of Nistel, of King Dimwoodie, and the other great gnomes he had known, and tears rose to his eyes.

  “You will be avenged, my loyal warriors,” he muttered, before turning to the task of saving the rest of his army to fight another day.

  M IRADEL walked through the beech trees on the fringe of the Grove. A long reflecting pool stretched toward the College, the pillared ramparts and marble towers mirrored perfectly in utterly still water. The sun was climbing, the Hour of Darken well advanced, and the purple twilight seemed to add an ethereal luminescence to the view, brightening the alabaster stone beyond that of the midday sun.

  Other druids wandered past, heads down, silently treading across the grassy floor, the smooth walkways leading between the trunks of the great oaks.

  Miradel found Shandira at the edge of the pool. She looked like a statue, regal and tall and, even amid the gentle folds of her white robe, sleek and strong. Staring in the direction of the Center of Everything, the black woman was a miniature, vital version of the Worldweaver’s Spire, rising high into the darkening sky at the same time as it pierced the infinite depths of the reflecting pool.

  “I will speak to the goddess,” Miradel said. “There can be no other answer.”

  9

  Centerflight

  Tangled threads

  Tattered cloak

  Fabric charred

  Colors marred;

  A tapestry ravaged

  Lays waste

  To infinite souls

  From the Tapestry of the Worldweaver, Bloom of Entropy

  Miradel entered the temple in the middle of Darken. A few candles brightened the alcoves along the entryway, though shadows carpeted the floor of the main hall. The druid walked soundlessly down the center of this lightless aisle, passing the bolted iron door where the Rockshaft, long ago, had connected this temple to the city of Axial on the First Circle, so far below. Once that had been a route for trade and travel, but since the barrier of blue magic had descended, the shaft had been impassable. Some time ago, the upper terminus had been permanently sealed behind these locked iron doors.

  The druid moved on, unconsciously stealthy as she approached the chamber of the Tapestry, the heart of the Worldweave
r’s Loom. She thought of Shandira, the other woman waiting for these last moments on the plaza outside. Miradel had counseled her to watch the dancing stars, the reflections sparkling in the placid lake, and not to worry if she had to wait there for most of the night. Indeed, Miradel herself had no idea what would happen, how long or how short the discussion would be. She had questions, did the druid, but she was not certain that the answers she sought even existed, much less that they would be revealed to her.

  The ivory doors to the inner sanctum, parted slightly to reveal a pale wash of light beyond, soon loomed, and Miradel drew a deep, slow breath. Then she reached forward, pushing the portals softly aside as she entered the large, circular chamber.

  The goddess was at her loom, her long fingers supple on the threads, colors interweaving faster than the druid’s eye could follow. The tapestry, a blur of colors and images-the blue of water and sky, green of forest, and teeming collage of lives-rose from the wheel to cover the wall. For ten thousand years it had been growing, encircling the vast chamber, rising on the walls that towered high overhead. The pedals of the great loom hummed and whirred under the Worldweaver’s steady pressure, and the fabric, as shimmery as silk, continued to form and to rise from the machine.

  “Ah, my faithful daughter, come in,” she said. “What do you seek in the midst of this night?”

  “I have been wondering about Karlath-Fayd,” Miradel began-then halted in surprise as the goddess abruptly halted her weaving to regard the druid with narrowed, penetrating eyes.

  “I would think you have more immediate concerns,” the goddess said sarcastically.

  Never had the Worldweaver looked quite so severe, Miradel thought: her eyes glittered coldly, like diamonds, and a frown of displeasure creased her high forehead with more than a usual complement of wrinkles. She presented a rather frightening visage, an aspect the druid had never seen before. She fought an impulse to quietly acquiesce, to lower her eyes and murmur a deferential apology before she fled. Instead, she met that sharp glare with her own expression of honest curiosity.