Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

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.