Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

Finally the great serpent emerged into view, wings striving for lift, a dozen harpies straining to catch the dragon from below. But those massive pinions were strong, and Miradel slowly drew in a breath of air as serpent and rider at last rose free. It was a little victory that meant all the world to her in that instant, yet what could it mean against the complete scope of the disaster?

The druids in the chamber, a hundred or more of them, were stunned into silence by the awful scene.

“It can’t be real!” gasped one woman, a novice brought to Nayve by the goddess barely two years ago.

But it was real. Nayve was facing a threat beyond anything in her historical memory, and it seemed that every effort of resistance must be as futile as the last. If the thousand beautiful boats of the Metalfleet could be brushed aside by these ships, what hopes could they place in the army on land?

All the peoples of Circle at Center had been following the news of the invasion with growing terror, and none of them knew the answer to that question. Indeed, from beneath the Loom of the Goddess Worldweaver, it seemed as though the whole Fourth Circle, the nexus of the cosmos and the Center of Everything, could only tremble in dread. A multitude of earthquakes rippled across the land, crumbling mountains, clawing fissures through verdant plains, draining lakes and streams through cracks in the ground, leaving wastelands of mud, silt, and sand. In Argentian, tall towers of crystal and wood crashed to the ground, killing hundreds. In the Lodespikes, a prosperous gnomish town was buried under the rubble of a crushing landslide.

All these scenes were played on the wall of the Viewing Chamber, the elder druids taking turns sifting the wool through the flame. Of course, many of the order were gone from the Center now, playing an important role in the army and navy of the world. Not only were druids windcasters for Roland Boatwright’s fleet, but they served as healers in the ranks of the foot soldiers. Too, the mightiest among them could wield goddess magic with devastating effects.

But others were needed here, in the temple and the city, and Miradel felt a flush of shame as she thought about her fear, relieved in a small measure that she was not in the front of the fight.

As to the actual scene, five hundred death ships simultaneously grounded themselves in the shallows at the edge of the Blue Coral Sea, and it was as though the strands of threads refused to draw close to complete the picture, to give a specific view. Instead, the druids saw a storm of darkness, like a cloud of black smoke lying low and heavy over the sea, drawing close to land. Here and there sparks blossomed as fires burst into sight, but mostly it was more like a single vast blanket than any individual collection of ships and warriors.

Yet when those first keels touched ground, the hundred druids in the chamber uttered a collective groan. They felt the pain in their feet, in their guts, in their souls. Several ran sobbing from the room, and Miradel caught a young woman next to her, who fell into a complete swoon. She noticed that Shandira was kneeling, helping several others who had fallen.

The black woman looked at her, and Miradel was shaken to see this tall, lithe woman trembling like a frightened deer.

“What happened?” Shandira asked, her voice a harsh whisper.

“You are one with Nayve, now,” the elder druid replied. “And so you are suffering the pain of the world.”

“Why, again? Tell me why this scourge strikes such a peaceful world.”

Miradel went to the candle, still burning near the flat, white wall; Most of the other druids had left, but there were several tufts of thread remaining near the single flame. She lifted them, stretched them gently with her fingers, fed them one at a time into the yellow tongue of fire.

“View the Fifth Circle… to the far distance in the direction that is neither metal nor wood,” she intoned.

The world of Loamar was there, portrayed on the wall as it might have been viewed by a bird flying at impossible height with impeccable clarity of vision. The dark shore of the Worldsea fringed the circle, the coast separated by narrow channels, bays, and harbors. The terrain rose into the distance, each inland plateau of Loamar higher than the last, until the dark fortress of Karlath-Fayd himself rose like a mountain range at the far end of the world… the far end of all existence.

“I have heard tales of Hell,” Shandira said in awe. “And they make it seem to be such a place. Only this is so cold, so dark… it is lifeless.”

“Yes,” Miradel said. “Lifeless, now that the armada has sailed forth. But look, see the gargoyle atop his highest precipice?” She gestured at the grotesque statue, a visage of fang and horn, leathered wings folded back as if poised for flight. “It will fly forth in rage to defend its lair, should any intruder approach.”

“As horrible as any demon of fire,” acknowledged Shandira. “But this prince of death… he dwells within?”

Miradel fed more threads into the flame, guiding the image through the deep canyons that formed the halls of the fortress. Finally the route emerged into a wide bowl. On the far side of the cavernous space was a throne carved from the very mountain itself. “It is hard to see very well, but look-there is his cloak, shimmering in the distance. And of course you can see his eyes.”

Indeed, the monstrous presence was discernable in the gauzy screen, and the two fiery eyes-like the flames of infernal hell-glowed and flared from on high. “Does he never move?”

“Not in the half century since the death ships sailed,” explained the elder druid. “It is as though he is a statue. But the goddess told me that his eyes can flash mighty destruction, and that any who beholds that gaze is immediately burned to ash. There is great power lurking within that stony shell!”

“Power enough to send an army against a world,” Shandira murmured, as the picture of Loamar faded, and once again the green shore of Nayve trembled on the wall as the toxic cloud swept toward land.

He had forgotten the Somme, forgotten the mud and the machine guns and the talk of the Lord. He didn’t know how long he had been aboard the death ship, only that he had come here more recently than the pikemen who wore tattered uniforms reminiscent of Alpine heights, much more recently than the legionnaires who still wore the toga and kilt of Caesar’s guard. But they were all brothers in arms now, a company of men ready to wage war. They knew and hated their captain, the black-bearded brute who ruthlessly ruled their ship and their lives. For a long time they had had only some vague notion of their enemy, unseen but also hated.

His existence was not so much a life as a vague passing of time, just as time had been passed by the ghost warriors in Loamar for the past several dozen centuries, and for those same warriors, embarked upon the death ships, over the course of the last fifty years.

But now that enemy had a face, had white sails and silver missiles that brought fire and death. He had seen many black ships burn, and he did not want to face the fate of those crews who had plunged, burning and suffering, into the water. When the dragon had flown overhead, breathing fire that incinerated ships to both sides of his own, he had felt an upswell of fury. He had no weapon to strike at a flying creature, but he opened his mouth and wailed an inarticulate groan of fury. His weapon, the familiar, heavy Enfield rifle, was in his hands, and he longed to plunge the bayonet into the guts of a living foe.

When the sturdy keel struck the shallows, and the vessel was grounded on the shores of Nayve, he moved to action as if he had trained all his life for this moment. In his hands he bore that thing shaped like his rifle, with a lethal bayonet affixed to the terminus. In some dim recess he knew that it was not a rifle, for he had no bullets, no way to shoot. It was the blade that was lethal, and he knew that on this green and verdant shore there were enemies to be slain with that keen point and sharp, serrated edge.