Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

“You have some more helpers,” the faerie reported. “Roland Boatwright is here with the warriors and druids from his fleet. There are many of them, half a thousand druids and that many warriors, too. And Crazy Horse has come with them.”

Reinforcements! And not just additional bodies; Natac knew that the each of the little boats had been crewed by a powerful, windcasting druid, accompanied by one of the veteran human warriors brought from Earth. These veterans would be immeasurably useful in the defense of the wall.

“Tell them I will be right there,” said General Natac. He followed the direction of the faerie’s flight as he started down the hill, toward the campfires of his own army. He knew that those blazes were warm and friendly, but they seemed paltry and feeble when contrasted to the vast darkness of the encompassing night.

Regillix Avatar was past the sun now, barely conscious as he drifted upward on the blast of the hot, dry wind. His wings smoldered, seared by the intense heat. He closed the protective inner lids over his eyes, reducing his visibility to a cloudy murk, and even that wasn’t enough to insulate him from the massive, fiery orb.

He lapsed into a kind of torpid agony, his body numbed to all sensation, reducing the awful pain to something he could at least tolerate. Water… he thirsted for the life-giving kiss of water, but there was none to be had, not even a cloud in these parched skies. There was just that air, as hot and dry and crushing as if it emerged from a blast furnace. It pushed him from below, rushing past in an explosion of wind, seemed to dry out every drop of moisture in his flesh.

Even in the depths of his groggy pain, however, the mighty dragon realized that it was the very force of this air that gave him a chance of surviving. He still rode his massive wings, extending those vast membranes to either side. No longer did he have the strength to stroke, to pull his way upward through the labor of his muscles. But still he continued to rise, because the air was bearing him upward with such force. The cosmic draft between the worlds was flowing fast, a strong current of air-Socrates had been right-countering the Worldfall, aided by the surge of Nayve’s Lighten, it lifted him, bore him toward home.

Gradually a new awareness penetrated his mind; he knew that time was passing, that the day of Nayve would be approaching its end. At the Hour of Darken the sun would begin to rise, and the corresponding rush of air into the vacuum created by its departure would start to flow downward. If he had not reached his destination by then, he never would.

So once again he worked, driving his wings through the dry air, lifting, pulling, straining now as the image of the Overworld came into his mind. How far above? He couldn’t know. When he looked upward, he saw that the sky was light around the edges, darkening to black in the middle, as if he looked into a hole stretching impossibly far into the distance. But the sun was far below now, and the air was not so lethally burning. That patch of darkness became his objective, and he strove mightily, thought of nothing else… Reach that place, and his burning flesh would be cooled.

Still he labored, and at last he began to move beyond the lethal fire, until finally the crushing heat was but a memory. Soothing coolness surrounded him, masking the rays of the now-distant sun. For a long time this was blessed relief, moisture caressing his burning scales, filling his nostrils with invigorating mist. The burned scales, the seared membranes of his wings were balmed by the moisture.

It was when that mist began to thicken that he began to understand where he was. He had to work to move, to fight through increasing resistance. More and more water surrounded him, dense and choking, until he was swimming, struggling upward through actual liquid. No longer could he breathe, for he was in the depths of the Cloudsea, had reached Arcati only to pass into his home world through the bottom of the ocean.

How ironic, he thought, as darkness closed in from the edges of his vision… how ironic that he would fly through the air, through lethal heat, to go home…

Only to drown in the depths of the Overworld’s largest sea.

Natac told Crazy Horse where he would find the elves of Hyac. Together with about a hundred survivors from the fleet of druid boats-all of them human warriors with cavalry experience-the Sioux chief made his way along the base of the vast earthwork, marveling at the extent of the wall that had been raised in just a couple of days.

The barrier finally terminated at the base of one of the largest of the Ringhills, a craggy bluff that served to anchor the rampart, which abutted the base of the precipice in a very strong position. Walking around that elevation, the warrior found a shallow stream flowing out of the hills and followed it into the valley where he had been told the Hyac were encamped.

Crazy Horse found the elven warriors in their bivouac, which was nestled very much like a Sioux camp in the lightly wooded valley between a couple of rocky outcrops. The elven huts were rounded domes, not cone-shape tepees, but they were still formed of animal skins draped over wooden frames, close enough to the abodes he had known all of his earlier life to give him a pleasant sense of memory.

And these beautiful hills! It did not take a lot of imagination to be reminded of his beloved Black Hills. Even the pine trees scattered along the upper slopes and the crests would have been right at home in the lands of the Dakota. He looked along the rounded lower elevations, half expecting to see the hummocked, shaggy brown shapes of grazing buffalo.

“You men wait here,” he suggested as they reached a flowered meadow beside the stream. “I will seek this Janitha, daughter of the khan.”

The smell of the horse herd was a fine perfume in the still air, and he paused to admire the steeds grazing just a short distance downstream from the elven camp. There were thousands of them, sturdy and muscular, fattening up on the valley grass. Several of the animals were exceptional prizes, spotted pintos, golden mares, and a sleek, black stallion. “You are the chief’s horse, are you not?” he murmured to this one.

He smiled, remembering countless thieving expeditions, when he set out with his friends to take ponies from the Shoshone, the Crow, or the Pawnee. Even as he enjoyed the memory he could not avoid a taint of regret in that smile, for he also recalled how much of his energy he had expended against those other tribes, and they against the Sioux. Since he had come to Nayve he had begun to imagine the power they would have had together, if they had united. Instead, they had allowed petty wars to drain their strength and their focus, all the while allowing the real enemy to encroach farther and farther onto their lands.

Idly, he picked out another fine stallion, a pinto, admiring the way the horse watched him alertly, even moved to interpose himself between the human and the mares when the warrior approached. A touch on the nostrils calmed the animal, and Crazy Horse whispered a greeting. “You are a warrior yourself, aren’t you? I’ll bet you fairly fly into the fight!”

Energized, he breathed the Ringhills air with new awareness, tasted the lush pines in every pore. This was a place worth fighting for, he knew. He had a sense, for the first time upon Nayve, that he might have found a home.

A few minutes later he came to the first picket, an elven archer who studied him carefully with an arrow nocked in his bow. “Natac sent me,” the American warrior explained. “I am to seek Janitha Khandaughter.”