Douglas Niles: Goddess Worldweaver

Until there was an explosion, a wave of blue magic that penetrated to his core. And in that instant he was released, became lighter than air, rising away from Nayve, from everywhere… He was by himself, and he was one with everything.

He was free.

“How did you know… about the goddess, and the Tapestry?” Natac asked, surveying the damage wrought by the falling spire. It had taken out much of the temple garden, with the top splashing down in the sacred lagoon. Shards of metal jutted upward like silver eggshells, jarringly delicate and fragile now that the power of the goddess had dissipated.

“When I saw that Karlath-Fayd was nothing at all, no more than a pair of fiery slits in the bedrock of the Fifth Circle, I saw the truth,” Miradel replied. “There was no deity but the Goddess Worldweaver, and so all of this-the wars, the dying, the destruction-these were things she spun on her loom, simply to keep herself amused. As she grew more and more bored, her wars became more and more violent and destructive.”

“She caused the war?” Natac asked in astonishment. “Mustered the ghost warriors, brought the Delvers from the First Circle, created the Worldfall? That was the Worldweaver’s doing?”

“Yes. And with her passing, so go the ghost warriors… and the magic that fueled our power and theirs. I can sense it already. Nayve is mundane now, like the Earth.”

“But why did she do this? Bring such pain and devastation?”

“I think… I think she was simply bored. And I see that we meant nothing to her, nothing at all. All of us-humans, elves, dwarves, trolls-we were simply game pieces that she moved about the Six Circles.”

“And our world… the Seventh?” wondered Natac.

“Perhaps she was inspired by the wars of Earth; I don’t know. I feel certain life will go on there, the normal cycle of birth and death. Our world was never magical, you remember, so it will not heed the passing of magic from Nayve or anywhere else. But outside of the Seventh Circle, the villainy in the cosmos was her own.”

“But cutting the Tapestry… that broke her power? And you knew this?”

“Well,” the druid admitted, “that was a lucky guess.”

Darann and Karkald were nearby, probing through the wreckage of the loom. They hadn’t ceased holding hands since they had emerged from the doomed temple. Stopping only for a long embrace, they ambled serenely on.

“There’s a story,” Natac said with a dry laugh, smiling at the dwarven couple. “I can’t wait to talk to Darann.”

He and Miradel, holding hands themselves, started over to their old friends.

“It’ll take some digging,” Karkald was explaining, “but we’ll get the upper end of the Rockshaft opened again. This Worldlift that Donnwell Earnwise created-it really worked! Rocket power, traveling between worlds! We’ll get the bugs out, and then people can go back and forth between the First and Fourth Circles again!”

“More than that, we can do what we please on these and the other worlds,” Miradel declared. “There will be no more barriers of magic, not blue nor any other color. Nothing beyond the constraints of our own hearts…”

The passing of magic from Nayve and the rest of the Six Circles was lamented by some, unnoticed by most. The most dramatic effect was geographic: the Worldfall ceased its destructive spill, and normalcy was returned to the Fourth Circle in the direction that was neither metal nor wood. The Worldsea remained placid, rich with fish, swept by squalls known more for their exotic beauty than for the danger they presented. Rain nourished the fields, crops flourished, and the trees of the forests continued to grow tall and strong.

In Circle at Center and other cities the loss of arcane power had numerous effects on the populace, causing changes but not disasters. Wind and rain became functions of nature, not druidic will. Transportation became a matter of energy expended, assisted by technology, not teleportation. Druids and the elven sages, no longer spell casters, found other useful pursuits. Sailboats moved under the power of real wind, and artisans mimicked the skills they had learned in centuries past. Progress would continue, but it was progress born of Nayve, not copied from Earth.

Regillix Avatar elected to remain in Nayve, along with many of the dragons who had descended the Worldfall. They lived in the mountains and the Ringhills at first, but eventually most of the dragons settled into caves and niches in the walls of Riven Deep. The dark dwarves and their iron golems remained in the Fourth Circle as well, and they presented a danger. But they fell back from the Ringhills and, in the end, made homes for themselves in the limestone caves near the feet of the Lodespike Range. There, carefully watched by giants and gnomes, they withdrew from the hateful sun.

A delegation of Seer dwarves arrived in the capital city and set to work perfecting the Worldlift; soon travel and trade would again be commonplace between the First and Fourth Circles.

The newest residents of Circle at Center were the royal couple from the New Forest, King Awfulbark and his wife, Queen Roodcleaver. They settled into a great manor house and became legendary for their banquets and feasts, galas they would hold upon the slightest excuse. Natac, Tamarwind, and the other heroes of the wars were regular guests at these fetes, while Awfulbark became well-known for the generosity of his heart and the plentitude of his spirits.

Upon the home world of humans, the goddess passed without notice. Men would continue to destroy each other, with no influence from any god required. But the souls of those who died were, at least, liberated by that death, no longer subject to the whim of a bored and willfull goddess.

The humans who dwelled upon Nayve would stay there. Crazy Horse was delighted to discover that there were great herds of buffalo dwelling in the deeper valleys of the Ringhills. With Janitha at his side, he set about to explore this new world in peace. They hunted and slept and made love where they wanted to, under a sky of eternal summer. Jubal and Juliay settled upon the Metal Coast, where together they collaborated upon a series of histories, endeavoring to record the tales of the Goddess Wars.

If, with the passing of magic, natural death became more commonplace on the Fourth Circle, this new reality was balanced by another: a great increase in the children born to elves, trolls, and all the denizens of Nayve. For the first time on Nayve, the humans who had come here procreated. One of the first of these new lives was a daughter born to Miradel and Natac barely a year after the Loomfall.

Tamarwind and Belynda remained in Circle at Center long enough to hold the baby and to congratulate the two lovers and their child as they settled into their home on the villa above the lake. Then the two elves went away together, supposedly on a journey back home to Argentian-though, nearly ninety years later, they still have not arrived.