Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

The wyslet was long and slender, covered with sparse fur and armed with long, sharp fangs and hooked claws. It was a large specimen, outweighing the dwarf by a factor of two or three, but it moved with a lightning quickness that shocked Borand. He tried to duck away, slashing with his blade, but the creature smashed him in the shoulder. He grunted as claws raked his side, and the wyslet shrieked as the blade ripped through its flank.

But it did not seem to be seriously wounded, not when it pounced off the floor, twisted around on the wall, and came springing at the dwarf again with that shocking speed. Borand tumbled to the side, ducking behind one of the food crates as the monster again darted past. This time it coiled right behind him, low growls rumbling in its belly, a black tongue snaking along the sharp teeth. The drawf crouched, blade extended, hoping only to stab the beast to death as it leapt upon him.

Instead, the wyslet suddenly spun sideways, snapping loudly at its own flank. Belatedly, Borand heard the sound of a twanging crossbow, then another as a second shot flew from the now-open doorway. The wyselt flipped onto its back, kicking wildly, and Borand lunged forward to slice it through the throat. Air escaped with a gurgle of rushing blood, and with a final thrash the beast shuddered and lay still.

Shaking, Borand looked up to see Aurand and Konnor coming through the door, each slinging his crossbow onto his belt.

“Are you wounded?” his brother asked. “It tore your shirt… and the skin, too?”

He checked the skin, which was scraped but barely oozing blood. “Just a scratch,” Borand said weakly.

“Good,” Aurand said. “Doubly good, then, to find this thing here.”

“Good?” groaned the elder brother, shaking his head. “How is that?”

“Once more we found no sign of Delvers-but we’ll never be able to check this whole place. So what better proof can there be that the city is abandoned than to know the wyslets have moved in?”

The pulse of the ground was like a living thing. He could feel it through his boots, thrumming up his legs, into the pit of his belly.

Not very far away, the vast chasm of Riven Deep opened in the fundament of the Fourth Circle, like a wound in the world.

Zystyl smiled. Like a wound in flesh, this one was a weakness, a gap that would allow entrance, a conduit for chaos and evil.

Soon, it would be time.

He turned his back to that chasm then and allowed his senses to wash over the glorious spectacle of his army, arrayed for his inspection. The front rank, a score of metallic giants, black-stained shells pocked and streaked with reddish rust now, after all this time under the frequently rainy skies of the Fourth Circle. But they were still powerful, capable of crushing any warrior-or company of warriors-daring to fight for Nayve.

Beyond the golems were arrayed more than fifty thousand Delvers, the Unmirrored dwarves standing in their crisp lines, helmets and breastplates polished to a reflective sheen. Fifty years ago, before they came to Nayve, the idea of reflection was unknown to this blind race of dwarves, but with the transport to the Fourth Circle had come the blessing of sight, a gift from the Deathlord himself.

Now Zystyl shuddered at the very notion of life without that gift. In his case, the supersensory nostrils of the Delver arcane gave sweet enhancement to all sensations… and the most delicious of all was the power of vision. The gleaming metal, marked by lines stretching more than a mile in length, gave him a physical thrill of pleasure as he looked upon them, a sense as intense as any pleasure given him by female or slave.

The impression was less sublime but still pleasing, as he looked beyond the Delvers to the harpies gathered in loose clumps upon the surrounding hilltops. Some of them wheeled through the air with typical undisciplined insolence, but most had come to land in response to Zystyl’s command. The flyers formed a dirty arc around the rest of the army, fitting for their role as scouts and skirmishers.

How long would it be until he received the order, the command to attack. More than the command, in fact, but the means to attack. As to the intent, he was willing, had been more than willing but eager to launch an offensive for fifty years! But there remained the physical obstacle, this great canyon, yawning in his path.

Zystyl had no doubt but that his master, the Deathlord, would find a way to pass that obstacle. He was curious and eager, but he knew the time would come. And when it came, he and his army would be ready.

As always, when he pondered the future, Zystyl found his thoughts returning to the past… to a moment in time when his army had embarked on a great campaign. More than three centuries old now, was that campaign, but he remembered the smell and the touch as if it was yesterday.

He had held her in his hands, fingers clenched like iron brackets around her struggling arms. But it was the hair, trailing across his nostrils, fragrant and musty at the same time, an allure that tingled throughout his body. There was no instance, nothing with of the women he had taken before and after that day, of comparable ecstasy in all his experience.

Was she lost to him? Certainly she remained in the First Circle while he was trapped here, with the Delver army, in the Fourth. The power of the Deathlord, Karlath-Fayd, had summoned sixty thousand of the Unmirrored to this place, and Zystyl knew they wouldn’t be going home again-unless such a journey somehow pleased the will of the Carrion-Eater.

So the Delver arcane instead turned his attention to the world beneath his feet, Nayve, the Fourth Circle. This chasm had blocked him, halted the advance of his inexorable army, for fifty years. Still it yawned there, beheld in the darkest corners of his mind, a perfect barrier…

Perfect, perhaps, but not necessarily permanent.

Nayne! Why did they obsess about that accursed, sun-scoured world so much? Lord Nayfal could not understand it: for all of creation dwarves had been creatures of the First Circle, and this was where they belonged! It should have been obvious to the most obtuse Seer, especially in this literally enlightened modern era, when the miracle of coolfyre guaranteed that his people would be the supreme masters of their circle.

Wasn’t that enough?

The questions churned in the lord’s mind often, but never more so than times like now, when he lay in his luxurious bed and sought the blessed release of sleep. Instead, he was cursed with memories.

Vividly he recalled the last moments outside of Arkan Pass, when the dwarf Karkald had taken his small company of dwarves, all those who had survived the battle, and followed the mighty army of Delvers onto the Underworld plain. Nayfal watched, spellbound and horrified, as a storm of magic, great sheets of blue, flickering light, had surrounded the Delvers, their iron golems, and the Seer survivors. The entire group, tens of thousands of them, rose from the First Circle and passed right into the Midrock overhead, vanishing from Nayfal’s view.

He had returned to Axial and, not wanting to appear mad, simply reported that the army had been annihilated. Within a few cycles dwarven merchants had discovered the barrier, the same field of blue magic Nayfal had seen, and all commerce between the First and Fourth Circles had been abruptly terminated.

Nayfal could not know for certain what had occurred above that barrier, but he had a strong belief: Karkald was up there in Nayve… trapped up there for now, so long as the barrier of blue magic held. And if Karkald returned to the First Circle, then the truth about Arkan Pass would be revealed.

And Lord Nayfal would be finished.

It seemed that Darann had never fully appreciated exactly how huge was the manor that was her family’s ancestral home. There had always been life to be found in the big stone building. If nothing was happening nearby, she had known that she could walk down a hall or up a spiraling stairway, wander through some lofty corridor, and eventually come to a place where her mother was painting, or her father reading, or her brothers engaged in some trivial but fiercely contested argument.