Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

When nightfall passed with nothing happening, he stepped to the edge of the parapet and looked out over the plain, trying to hide his concern. But he couldn’t help wondering:

When would Natac return?

“I think this has a very good chance of working!” Donnwell Earnwise said. “Better than fifty percent, for sure.”

“That’s not good enough!” Borand said to the engineer before turning to his sister. “This is crazy; I forbid you to go!”

Aurand, standing beside his brother, simply laughed. “Haven’t you learned anything about our sister?” he asked. “What makes you think you can forbid her to do anything, once she’s made up her mind?”

Darann looked at her brothers with affection, then turned to King Lightbringer, who stood with Konnor almost diffidently, a little way back from the dwarves of clan Houseguard.

“Truly, my dear,” said the monarch of the Seer dwarves, “If you wait a little while, we can run some additional tests, try to increase the chances of success. The Worldlift… well, it is a good idea in theory, and certainly it can be made to work-eventually. But we really don’t know, not yet, anyway.”

“I have faith in Uncle Donnwell,” she said, winking at the engineer. “And I have waited fifty years to find out what happened to my husband. I don’t plan to wait another interval longer, not one!”

“Very well,” said the king. He turned to the engineer. ‘ ’You have my permission.”

“Splendid!” declared Donnwell, scratching his beard, then peering through his thick glasses at the blueprint spread out on the stone table. “Ah, yes-there is a blast radius-the rest of you had best withdraw behind the iron door.”

“Blast?” Borand said. “What about my sister? You’re going to blast her?”

“Yes, that’s precisely the point,” declared the engineer, blinking in confusion.

“Why doesn’t she have to get behind the iron door?”

“Dear me, I thought you understood the point of the Worldlift. You see, the cage is powered by a rocket. When I ignite this fuse, the fuel explodes, coming out the bottom here in a great rush of heat and smoke. It is the inverse of that force, in fact, that propels the rocket, and the passenger, upward. By the time they reach the summit of the First Circle, they will be going so fast that, theoretically, they will penetrate the barrier of blue magic. Within a matter of hours she will find herself in the upper reaches of the Midrock, safely on her way to Nayve.

“You recall, of course, that this chute is a straight route all the way to the Fourth Circle, right to the Center of Everything, in fact. It was bored out two centuries ago and used for trade-cargo hauling up and down-until the barrier of blue magic put a stop to that.”

“Theoretically? Upper reaches of the Midrock?” Borand was still fretful. “I just don’t like the sound of this. I think I should go instead.”

“In the future, good lad, we shall all go, but this prototype, I tried to explain, has but the capacity for a single passenger.”

“And that passenger is me!” Darann said. “Now, will you all stand back and let Uncle Donnwell do his work?”

They did as she requested, her brothers reluctantly and Konnor, too, holding back. He took her hand and spoke seriously. “I… I hope you find him,” he said. “And I hope he knows how much you care, how much he means to you.”

“Thank you, my friend… for everything,” she said.

Next she stepped through a low hatch into a circular metal room with a single chair-a chair with its back on the floor, oriented so that one who sat in it faced the ceiling. Donnwell fussed over an array of straps and buckles, taking care that she was properly fastened in.

“This shield over your head,” he explained, “is solid steel, two inches thick. It should deflect any obstructions that have fallen into the Rockshaft over the last fifty years. And the rocket has enough fuel to carry you all the way to Nayve-so long as you penetrate the blue magic barrier.”

It was as the iron door clanged shut that she became afraid and suddenly felt very, very lonely. She thought of Karkald, wondered if she was doing the right thing. If he was alive, in Nayve, then she was doing the right thing. And if he was dead, it really didn’t matter. Once she reached that understanding, she felt better, more confident.

Until she heard the sputtering of the fuse, and all her misgivings returned tenfold. A few seconds later, there was a powerful rumble, as of something seizing her chair and shaking it violently back and forth. Smoke billowed around her, choking her nostrils, stinging her eyes. It was very hot, as if a furnace had ignited beneath her chair. Explosives roared with a sound like uncontained thunder.

And then, the violence really began.

“Let’s stay close to the wall; we’ll be harder to spot that way,” Miradel whispered. Shandira nodded and shrank against the dark stones where the cliff met the floor of the winding ravine.

They were following a passage that was considerably wider than the one where they had fled from the diving gargoyle. Another day had passed as they made their way deeper into the citadel, and still they had not encountered the vast hall of the Deathlord. But Miradel was confident that this major ravine, gently descending as it did, was taking them in the proper direction.

Their progress was slow because they advanced in short dashes, moving from one place of cover to the next. They hadn’t seen the stony guardian for several hours, but neither of them was inclined to take any chances. Finding shelter in narrow cracks in the cliff wall, against the base of overhanging cliffs, even under flat boulders, they were scraped and sore, dirty and weary.

But they managed to keep moving.

How long they had been following this passage, Miradel couldn’t begin to recall. It seemed like it was becoming a way of life, an eternal journey toward a place that didn’t really exist, a survival of hiding, where life itself depended upon avoiding discovery.

Until they came around a final bend in the widening ravine, and the cliff walls terminated to either side. They were faced with a steep drop, perhaps a hundred feet down a slope of large, tumbled talus, that spill of stone spreading, fanlike, onto the floor of a vast basin. High, black mountains surrounded the depression, which was at least a mile in diameter. The feet of these summits were sheer blocks of stone, descending to the flat floor around the entire periphery, except for the six or eight places, like this ravine, where gaps in the surrounding mountains created passages into this place. The background sky, across the bowl, was an impermeable, lifeless black-the end of all worlds.

“This is the Throne of the Deathlord,” Miradel breathed, staring through the shadows at the cliff on the far side of the basin. “You see the two eyes, glowing so high above.”

“Yes,” Shandira breathed, hushed and awestruck.

The glowing beacons of those fiery orbs burned in the air, suspended a hundred feet above the mountain shelf that served as a seat for that mighty throne. As the druids watched, the fire seemed to swell, an inferno of evil power growing as if in response to their intrusive presence.

It was difficult to discern much detail through the shadows-only as she tried did Miradel realize that night had fallen-but she was utterly certain this was the place. The images she had seen in the Tapestry were perfectly mirrored here, even to the extent of the vast blankness rising above the mountains on the far side of the valley. There, in the direction that was neither metal nor wood, she knew that she was looking at the very terminus of the cosmos.

“Let’s start across now, while it’s dark,” Shandira whispered, her lips close to Miradel’s ear. Soundlessly, the elder druid nodded.