Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

The sentry gestured with his weapon. “There. Her hut is beside the third fire.”

That elfwoman was eating a meal of beans and rice, using her fingers to scoop the mixture from a leafy plate into her mouth. She looked up as Crazy Horse came to her campfire, finished her last bite, then rose, wiping her hands on her leather pants.

“I would like to join your company. I bring a hundred men from the druid fleet,” he said. “If you will have me.”

“That depends,” she said, looking at him critically. “Do you know how to ride a pony?”

“Don’t move!” Shandira said, standing rigidly still in the middle of the bowl-shaped valley.

Miradel didn’t need any encouragement. In the first instant after the gargoyle landed she had been frozen by terror, transfixed by those hellish, glowing eyes. As soon as she stopped moving, however, the creature’s focus shifted, and it seemed to be looking around as if it had lost sight of her.

The monster shifted position, taking a step forward with a sound like the scrape of stone grinding against stone. Those massive, bestial legs stretched and extended, bent as it crouched, the grotesque belly dangling, swinging loosely. Miradel could barely suppress her gasp of horror as the gargoyle peered around, blinking, uttering deep, bone-shivering growls. The two wings looked to be solid stone, but they spread wide easily, as if they were made of tanned leather. The beast fanned them convulsively, and the blast of cold air struck Miradel like a physical blow. She needed every bit of her strength and courage to keep from staggering backward; somehow, she continued to hold herself statue still.

Standing between the two druids and the lofty throne across the valley, the gargoyle seemed oddly hesitant. Miradel could see their objective, tantalizingly close now, on the mountainside rising before them. The shimmery substance was not a godly robe, she now perceived; it was water, spilling from a crack in the rock, flowing across the face of the mountain, then pouring into a stream that spilled from the front of the ledge forming the seat of the Deathlord’s throne.

Karlath-Fayd’s massive, burning eyes still glowed above, disembodied, floating against the darkness. How often had she looked at them in the Tapestry, seen and feared the power there. Yet now, in the hall of the god himself, it was the servant, the gargoyle, that truly inspired fear.

“We have to get closer!” Shandira said. “I have an idea-but you have to stay still, like a statue, until I say to move.”

At the sound of the druid’s voice, the gargoyle looked in her direction but did not step forward. Miradel, trembling, saw that the black woman stood rigidly still, a monolith of human pride before monstrous evil. Only her eyes moved, roving this way and that, seeking… what?

“When it comes after me, you go!” said the African woman. “You’ll only have one chance. Run as fast as you can!”

At first Miradel did not fully grasp what her companion intended; perhaps her mind balked at the reality. When she did understand, she was numbed by horror and awed by the other druid’s courage. Shandira was saying something quietly, praying, Miradel realized.

“… walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil…”

“Shandira-no!” cried the druid. She thought of a mad impulse herself: she should move, dance, run-anything to draw the monster’s attention! But she remained frozen, only her mind in motion, bringing words to her mouth. “We’ll get out of this together!” she shouted. “Don’t!”

“For Thou art with me.” On the last word, Shandira looked at Miradel and smiled. Her expression was calm, almost beatific. “Thank you for all you have shown me, taught me,” she said. “I think on the world of our birth, you would be called a saint.”

“Shandira!” Now Miradel moved, but it was too late. The tall druid was already sprinting to the side, away from her companion. The gargoyle again uttered that low, ground-shivering growl and pounced after her with catlike speed, landing with a crash of stone on the flat ground where Shandira had been standing.

But now she was running with exceptional speed, evading the savage grasp of those monstrous claws in her first burst of acceleration. She darted to the side as the beast pounced again, nimbly evading the lumbering charge.

“Miradel-go!” screamed the African woman, the word echoing like an immortal command in the vast emptiness of the mountain hall.

Miradel took off in that same breath of sound, racing unnoticed behind the gargoyle as it lunged after her companion. She ran with her eyes on that lofty throne, nothing else even existing in her mind. The sounds of pursuit, the roars of the monster, seemed to be coming from very far away… another place… even another life.

Her feet pounded across the ground, the rhythm of her flight the only sound she knew. Her momentum carried her up as she reached the foot of the slope, until massive rocks like steps for a giant blocked her ascent of the mountainside.

Here she pulled with her arms, kicked, crawled up one after the other. Higher and higher she climbed, hearing no sounds now except the rasping gasp of her own respiration. She didn’t dare to look back. Instead, she only climbed, scrambling over another obstacle, ignoring the torn skin on her knees, the fingernail that ripped away during another frantic upward pull. Always she worked to climb, the great shelf of the throne drawing nearer with each second.

At last she stood on the seat of that lofty throne and stared upward in disbelief. The seat of Karlath-Fayd resembled nothing so much as a natural shelf in a steep mountainside. The spring on the far wall leaked a spray of water down the cliff, draining into a cut that had eroded across the rocky surface over countless centuries.

And those eyes? The immortal orbs of a lethal god, red fire that she had observed for centuries, had studied, and feared?

The two slits, the fiery eyes of the Deathlord, were merely cracks in the rock. The heat of the infernal ground, bubbling lava and spuming fire, glowed through.

The throne of the Deathlord was… simply… empty.

The gargoyle roared, throwing its head back, bellowing the blast of sound toward the dark sky. Now Miradel looked across the basin, the valley floor. Shandira was gone, and the monster was enraged. It bellowed again, face turned toward the sky, until that bestial visage lowered, the glowing eyes coming to rest upon the lone druid on the mountain shelf.

“It’s not real; there is no Karlath-Fayd!” Miradel gasped out the realization, then cried out in anguish. She understood everything in that instant-and chief among those realizations was the knowledge that she had gained enlightenment too late… too late to help Shandira, to help the people of Nayve… even too late to help herself.

The water spilled from the gash in the stone, pouring across the empty rock, trickling through its channel and spilling off the ledge. The gargoyle took a step forward, strangely silent now, and she was grateful for that, grateful that at least she could hear the deceptively peaceful noise of the stream now, in the last moments of her life.

The monster stared at her for what seemed like a long time, those red eyes flashing wickedly. Wings spread, it crouched, then sprang into the air, taking flight toward the druid on the lonely mountainside, alone at the end of the cosmos.

Darann regained consciousness to a sensation that she was still in the middle of an explosion of uncontrolled violence. Her body was trembling, and noise roared in her ears. She was numb over most of her body, mostly deafened, and had been battered so much that her teeth hurt. In fact, she was rather surprised to find out that she was still alive.