Goddess Worldweaver sc-3

by Douglas Niles

  Even though they stopped frequently to rest, Miradel had reached the point of utter exhaustion by the time they had climbed no more than a third of the way up the massive slope. Furthermore, the climb had grown more hazardous as, far away, the distant sun had started to recede upward, away from Nayve and even farther from the Fifth Circle of Loamar.

  “We’ll have to stop soon and get some sleep,” she said, whispering in the midst of the eerily silent world. Again she felt the absence of wind, of birds and bugs and rodents that gave a background of vitality to Nayve and to Earth. “Can you spot a flat place where we might be able to stretch out?”

  “Not too far away,” Shandira said, pointing obliquely up the slope, toward the right. “The road curves back below a steep shoulder of the mountain. We can stop right there and be well out of sight of anything above.”

  They moved away from the road, following the rough ground to remain screened from the gargoyle. A large rock jutted from the slope, and they skirted its base, then crawled upward across a face of cracked stone. A few minutes later, the black woman paused at a steep crossing, a slide of small rocks and gravel no more than ten feet in length. Just beyond was a wide ledge, nestled hard against the wall that bordered the roadway running past two dozen feet overhead. The spot was sheltered from above by an overhang and protected by a steep slope that curled around to cover three sides.

  “Looks like a perfect place to rest. Just be careful here,” said Shandira, leaning against the rock, bracing her hands as she slid her booted feet across the loose, steep surface. She went another step, and a third, making it halfway across.

  And then her traction gave way. With a gasp of surprise, the druid skidded downward, reaching for handholds but failing to find purchase. Miradel saw her slide twenty or thirty feet, balancing on her hip and left hand, then bounce sideways off an outcrop of rock. Shandira fell on her back, her head sharply striking the hard stone of the ground where she came to rest against a boulder, utterly still.

  “Oh, by the goddess-no!” whispered Miradel, stunned and despairing. She froze for an instant, and then shucked out of her pack, dropping it, paying no attention as it tumbled away down the steep slope. Sitting, she slid toward her companion, using her hands to control her speed, ignoring the cuts and scrapes inflicted on her by the rough surface. She stopped by bracing her feet against the same jutting rock that had knocked Shandira to the side. Carefully, Miradel worked her way around the boulder, then slid the last few feet to her companion.

  She found Shandira facedown on the steep slope, braced against another solid boulder, the tangle of black hair shiny with the thick sheen of fresh blood. Gingerly, Miradel probed through the wiry coils to touch the back of the injured woman’s skull. She felt torn skin and sticky wetness but was relieved that the bone seemed to be intact.

  Next she rolled her friend onto her back, using Shandira’s pack to cushion her head. Miradel bowed for a moment of silent prayer, then reached forward to touch her hands to her companion’s temples, to invoke the healing power of her goddess to knit the torn flesh and restore the lost blood.

  “Goddess Worldweaver, I beseech you to grant thy tender touch, to repair this woman’s hurts.” She said the prayer humbly, with all of the faith that she had always felt, anticipating without doubt the imminent tingle of magic, the generous spirit of her goddess flowing through Miradel’s flesh, in order to do good.

  But this time there was no tingle, no healing, no magic. It was as if the Goddess Worldweaver was too far away to hear her plea.

  Miradel felt a new stab of fear. Was the goddess in fact too far away, or was there a more dire explanation? Was the Worldweaver displeased by the impertinence of her druid, and in her displeasure did she choose to turn her back?

  In any event, there was no help to be found there. She remembered her pack now with renewed despair. Though she scanned the slope below, she could not spot it. She guessed that it had tumbled beyond the ground visible for a hundred yards below her. Further view was blocked by a clump of jagged boulders.

  “Shandira? Can you hear me?” There was no response, not even a flicker of eyelids. “I have to get my pack, but I’ll be right back,” Miradel promised.

  She turned to pick the best route down to the pack, then glanced at her companion once more. Shandira simply lay there, still except for the slow rhythm of her breathing. Against that faint backdrop, the vast silence of Loamar seemed to press in even harder, terrifying in its scope, smothering in its omnipotent extent.

  Zystyl had heard the command of his distant master, the immortal will carried to him by virtue of the dakali, the stone that he wore under his tunic, against the skin of his chest over his heart. That was the talisman of the Deathlord, he knew, and it had provided the power that brought his army from the First Circle to the Fourth Circle. Once they were here, it had bestowed upon the formerly blind dwarves the limited ability to see. It was a mighty tool, and it had helped him to do great things.

  When the directions had come to him ten days earlier, they had been in his mind as he awakened, and he had acted immediately. The tens of thousands of Delvers had been arrayed along the edge of Riven Deep in their vast camps-camps that had become virtual cities in the five decades since the army had been here. He ordered them all to deploy, formed in ranks, armed and armored for battle. Their golems stood with them, one metal giant for each dwarf regiment of approximately four thousand warriors.

  They had taken these positions within a couple of hours of receiving the order, and for all the next ten days they had stayed here. Food and water had been circulated through the ranks, and eventually the Delvers had even slept while they stood in place. None, of course, had questioned the commands of their arcane lord-it was well known that to question Zystyl was to die-but surely they had wondered about the purpose of this apparently irrational deployment.

  Actually, Zystyl himself had done his share of wondering. The harpies had been keeping him informed of developments along the coast. He knew that the Deathlord’s invasion had come ashore, that the ghost warriors had seized the beach and won a great battle. Then they had advanced inland as far as the river that emptied into the gorge on the opposite rim, some twenty miles to Zystyl’s right. Ahead of him were the Hyaccan elves, numbering several thousand riders. How often he had fantasized about striking them with his compact, powerful army. Their only hope would be to mount their ponies and flee, since they would never be able to stand up to his offensive.

  For fifty years, of course, the yawning gulf of Riven Deep had prevented that fantasy from even approaching fruition. But now there was a sense, carried through his dakali and also growing within his own mind, that the gulf might, somehow, cease to be an impassable obstacle. So he had stood with his dwarves and waited.

  As the first tremors rumbled through the rock, he heard the panicked cries, sensed the fear of his dwarves. The ground shifted and pitched underfoot. He felt the rumbling in his belly, a terrifying sensation of disturbance. But he clenched his jaw and planted his feet a little bit farther apart, determined not to flinch.

  “The world falls away! We are doomed!” All around him the troops were murmuring or shouting, but then they seemed to draw strength from their leader’s example. As the arcane remained still and aloof, the cries of distress lessened, until the troops were standing firm as well.

  Zystyl remained silent as he felt the ground, solid bedrock, heave with the convulsion of a major quake. Indeed, the effect was quite unsettling, but he was determined to display no fear. He had faith in his god… faith in his dakali. He would stand still and show naught but courage.

  More convulsions rocked the ground, and a slab at the edge of the Deep broke free and tumbled away, carrying twoscore dwarves to their doom. More discouraging, one of the beautiful iron giants was caught at the brink; the golem turned awkwardly, trying to take a step onto solid ground, but it, too, vanished.

  Yet the mass of ground, despite the crumbling base, did not seem inclined to fall.
Great fissures ripped through the ground, scoring more or less between the gathered regiments, though these gaps, too, were imprecise, and hundreds more Delvers plunged, screaming, into these seemingly bottomless crevasses. He could see daylight through the nearest gap, knew for certain that the ground supporting this bedrock was gone. It was as though the stone under his feet was a platform floating freely in the air.

  But still he felt no fear, did not imagine that they would fall. He grinned, then laughed aloud as he felt the slab of stone begin to rise. The effect was gradual-it was easier to see than to feel-but when they moved out from the edge, drifting over the yawning space of the chasm, he knew that his god’s power had been made real and that his enemies were being delivered into his hands.

  “Please, Shandira… wake up! Can you hear me?”

  Miradel was close to utter despair. There was no healing magic in her touch, and nothing but cold fear in her heart. Her companion, this strong, proud woman who had come here at Miradel’s own suggestion, had not regained consciousness since her hard fall nearly an hour before.

  The best Miradel had been able to do was to roll her companion onto a reasonably flat patch of ground, no larger than a small bed, that happened to be right next to where she had landed. She had folded the extra cloak from the other druid’s pack to serve as a pillow, replacing the bulky pack. Then she placed her cloak over the woolen garment Shandira was already wearing in the hopes of keeping the unconscious woman warm.

  But there was no wood with which to build a fire, even if she would have dared to attract such attention; no way to give her hot broth or warm bread, anything but the dried trail rations they had brought with them. She had trickled a little water through Shandira’s lips, but the woman had not swallowed. The only encouraging sign, and it was a small one, was that she continued to draw long, deep breaths.

  Finally Miradel returned her attention to her own pack, which had tumbled quite a ways down the slope when she had dropped it in the moments after Shandira’s fall. Her muscles rebelled at the thought of a long descent and a climb repeated over the steep incline, but there were too many valuables, objects that might mean the difference between life and death, in the heavy sack. So, after one last check of the black woman’s pulse and respiration, the elder druid started down the slope she had so laboriously climbed an hour earlier.

  The descent, naturally, was a lot easier than the climb, and within ten minutes she had dropped so far that she couldn’t even see the place where she had left Shandira. Her legs were still cramping and sore, and she limped with each jolting step. Still, she tried to ignore her discomfort and despair, scanning the slope below her, looking for some indication of where her pack had ended up.

  She spotted it shortly, saw that it had tumbled onto a flat shoulder of the mountainside, halting its tumble a foot short of the precipitous drop on the other side of the small, flat space. Casting aside her caution, she hastened downward, sending a cascade of loose pebbles skidding into the abyss. When she reached the backpack, she quickly saw that it had remained closed and that, in fact, if it had rolled a little farther it would have plummeted another five hundred feet.

  Her first instinct was to thank the goddess for this small bit of good fortune, but when she lowered her head to murmur the small prayer, she found that the words stuck in her throat. Instead, she lifted the heavy satchel, balancing it on her hip as she pushed her arms through the straps.

  It felt like the heaviest thing she had ever carried, and once again her despair seemed to double her burden. It would have been easy to simply collapse, to cry to the point of exhaustion, then to lie here until she died. Only the memory of Shandira and the guilty knowledge that it was Miradel who had brought her here forced her to turn her attention upward again.

  She looked at the sweeping slope, remembered the pain of her initial ascent, and knew it would be doubled in this next stage of her journey. Her vision extended beyond the walled roadway that had been their goal, all the way to the top of the vast citadel, where the gargoyle was now visible on its lofty perch.

  The sight of that beast sent a stab of fear through her, for the stony guardian had changed. It remained in the same place, the same pose as it had been before, but now its eyes were opened, red and glowing like fire, and they seemed to be fixed intently upon the lone druid so far below.

  “Wake up!” shrieked Roodcleaver, delivering a sharp kick to Awfulbark’s belly.

  “What you want?” growled the king of the forest trolls, instinctively squirming away to put the trunk of the oak tree between himself and his wife’s next attack.

  “The world!” she cried, her stark terror penetrating the fog of Awfulbark’s ever-slow awakening.

  “What about the world?” he grumbled, covering his own alarm with a veneer of irritation.

  “It’s breaking!” Roodcleaver declared. “Breaking right around us! Here, under my feet, under you fat butt and thick head! It’s breaking!”

  For the first time, the troll king realized that he was clutching the trunk of the oak tree simply to keep his balance. The ground heaved and pitched underfoot. Trees throughout the grove of oaks, which was just back from the Swansleep River, were whipping back and forth. Several venerable wooden giants cracked apart with lumber-ripping shrieks, massive trunks falling among trolls who were waking up to a world of chaos and panic.

  “Go tell Natac!” Awfulbark blurted the first thought that came into his mind. Surely the general would know what to do!

  Roodcleaver threw a chunk of wood at him, a near miss that bounced from the trunk a few inches from the king’s eye. “You think he knows, maybe?” she screamed. “Do something! Save trolls! Save me!”

  “Okay,” Awfulbark agreed, groping for an idea, a plan. He seized upon the first thing that came to mind. “Everybody run!” he roared. “Get away from here!”

  The river, with the numberless horde of the ghost warriors on the far side, formed a barrier in the direction of metal, but every other route seemed better to the terror-stricken trolls than staying where they were. Most of them instinctively started away from the river, from the enemy, from the war. Lurching and stumbling, Awfulbark let go of the tree, took Roodcleaver’s hand, and tugged her along with the fleeing horde of trolls.

  A huge tree smashed down nearby, trapping a young troll beneath a splintered limb. The king reached down, pulled the howling victim free, and left him on the ground. With luck, the wretch’s shattered legs would knit before another oak came down on top of him. Awfulbark and his wife held each other up as the jolting ground pushed them this way and that. He was aware of other trolls all around-and in fact they frequently careened into him. But they were all moving in the same direction, and though many fell and others were trampled, the army of the forest trolls inevitably made a stumbling exodus from the position they had held for four days.

  13

  Fire in the Ghetto

  Stinking smoke runs in your eyes

  Babbled cursing outward flies

  Deepest quicksand underfoot

  Where the dead must needs take root

  Traditional Goblin Chant

  Borand came around the base of the hill with Aurand, both dwarves straining and sweating as they carried the large bundles formed by their saddles and gear. The brothers hauled the loads to the lakeshore, where Darann and Konnar had just finished pulling the boat onto a flat section of stony beach.

  “What about the ferr’ells?” she asked.

  “We turned them loose,” Borand explained. “We’ll whistle for them if we come back here; with any luck, they’ll be within hearing range.”

  “Good. But we won’t have room in the boat for the saddles,” the dwarfmaid declared. “Can you find a place to hide them here?”

  “Sure, and we probably don’t need all of this food we have left. Dried trail bread and saltshrooms mostly. We can do better than that in the city, I’m thinkin’.”

  “Well, let’s take what we can,” Darann said. She looked across
the water at the brightly lit sprawl that was Axial. The six great towers, outlined in coolfyre, rose to the very summit of the world, proud symbols of Seer might. One-quarter of the city, low against the water and to the far right from where they stood, was conspicuously dark. That was the goblin ghetto, she knew. “If we have extra food, I know there’s one place in the city where it will be appreciated.”

  “Right, of course,” Borand agreed.

  She took her place in the stern, while the other three stowed their bundles in the center of the boat. The three males slid the boat into the shallows, hopping in one by one as the hull began to float. They took seats on the low benches. The brothers Houseguard each carried his weapon at the ready, while Konnor faced backward to man the oars. Darann held the tiller and tried to muster some sense of hopefulness.

  In fact, she felt much better now that she had trusted companions. She allowed herself one moment of wistfulness-if Karkald was here, she would not have had even an iota of doubt-but then turned to the task before them.

  “We can try to enter the city near the low quarter,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Nayfal is having our house watched. He knows I got away and that you will be returning here eventually. And once we get close to shore, we can decide if we want to come ashore in the ghetto or land in the Fishers’ Quarter and come through the gates on foot. Then we have to find Hiyram and hope he can put us in touch with the pailslopper who has the proof about Lord Nayfal.”

  “Right. And in the meantime, I think we should not let anyone else know we’re here,” Aurand agreed.

  For an hour Konnor rowed them in silence. Darann studied the lights of the city, the coolfyre beacons blazing from the six towers, the ring of watch stations glittering close to the shore around Axial’s periphery. She remembered her first watch station, Karkald’s post of some four centuries earlier. It lay far from the city, so far across the water that Axial had been merely a bright spot on the horizon. The station had been a lonely place but very peaceful as well, though at the time she thought she hated it. Now, she would have given anything to be stranded alone somewhere with Karkald again.