Douglas Niles - Circle at center

“What brings you here? Why have you abandoned the fields, left your responsibilities to chase deer?” demanded the white dog, clearly in command now.

The dogs started barking, all of them contributing to the din, and Ulfgang shouted for silence. Even so, the baying, howling, and yipping continued, until Tam was getting a headache from the noise. Finally the pack settled down, and the white dog turned to the big male. “You tell me, alone.”

The shepherd, voice already hoarse from the hunt, barked roughly for several minutes. When he concluded, panting, Ulfgang nodded his head grimly and turned to his elven companions.

“I couldn’t understand much,” he admitted. “But they claim there is something that drew them here to the Greens… that they were pulled to the chase by a force strange and compelling.”

“What thing is that?” Tam demanded, still trembling with the excitement of the confrontation.

“Magic, I fear,” Ulf replied. “Of what type, I don’t know. But more significantly, that big one-Red Eye-says that he can show us where we can find this power in the flesh.”

T wo days later Ulfgang, Deltan, and Tamarwind crouched on the lip of a ravine overlooking a small valley, a gorge twisting through the trackless depths of the Greens. The travelers lay in a fringe of brush, silent and unmoving. Their position commanded a clear view of the ground below. In a clearing on the valley floor hundreds of people-mostly elves, but with a few giants, goblins, and centaurs among them-had gathered.

The shepherd called Red Eye had led them close to this place, though an hour earlier the big dog had slunk away without explanation. Nor had Ulf asked for one-he told Tam that he, too, could sense the wrongness in this place, an invisible corruption that marred the trees, the ground, the very air itself.

Tamarwind still carried his staff, and he was disturbed to realize that he was very much afraid. Deltan Columbine was silent, clutching his bow and looking wide-eyed at the mob below them. Ulfgang seemed purposeful and grim. As he searched for this place, the white dog had trotted along with head and nose low, sniffing constantly, seeking some improper spoor, some signal of the magic that had so disrupted life in unchanging Argentian. The warning of the pack had stricken the white dog with visible force, and the change in Ulf’s mood had provided a sobering warning to Tam and Deltan.

And now they had come upon this bizarre gathering. Significantly, many of those gathered in the little clearing bore weapons-spears and staffs, a few with the bows and arrows such as an elven hunter might carry. In the center of the gathering a tall, bare stake jutted upward from a pile of kindling. Nearby was a canvas tent, and before that shelter dangled a white banner emblazoned with a red cross. The crowd was mostly silent and attentive, though they were joined by more and more people coming from the trails leading up and down the valley. Abruptly an audible gasp sounded from the assemblage, and all eyes went to the canvas shelter.

A human came out of the tent. His chest was covered by a stiff, silvery shirt. He was bearded, with long brown hair, and he carried a stout staff that was capped with the head of a hooded snake. When he raised his arms and the final murmurings in the assemblage stilled, it seemed to Tamarwind that even the birds and monkeys grew quiet, waiting, tense, afraid.

A scream echoed, startling and eerie. Tam saw a woman, a human druid to judge from her long black hair, dragged forward by two giants. She screamed again, and one of the brutes cuffed her across the face. The crowd murmured and shifted like a hungry being, awakened and thrilled by the prisoner’s suffering.

Stunned by the violence, Tamarwind watched in horror as the druid was tied to the post. She struggled in vain, moaning and sobbing as ropes were pulled tight against her flesh. A pair of goblins, cackling excitedly, carried torches forward and thrust the flaming brands into the kindling around the stake. Quickly the fire took hold, snapping hungrily through the wood, spewing upward in yellow and orange tongues. The druidess shrieked loudly as her gown caught fire, as black smoke swirled around her and the blaze grew fierce.

Appalled, Tam, Deltan, and Ulfgang watched the flames spark. The scout tried to imagine the pain the woman must be suffering, but his mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Fire consumed her garment and blackened her skin. Her shouts and cries climbed beyond the scale of anguish, a dolorous wail of pure agony as her flesh was consumed by the blaze. The unforgettable stench, like charred meat and offal, reached even to the nostrils of the three watchers above the valley. Tamarwind clenched his teeth, fighting against a surging wave of nausea.

And then the woman was no longer screaming. Her cries were muted moans, swiftly overwhelmed by the crackling fury of the conflagration.

The crowd remained rapt, eyes alight. The fire roared eagerly around the writhing body. Her limbs thrashed, and it took a long time before her cries faded into croaks. At last the only sounds came from the flames, crackling, hungry and exultant.

When the druid had been reduced to a blackened shell amid a mound of glowing coals the bearded man spoke.

“Again we have claimed a witch, my valiant Crusaders… and again God is pleased with our efforts!” Cheers and whoops rang out from the crowd, a response that chilled Tam nearly as much as had the gruesome death. “See!” The speaker, his voice sharp, raised a hand in a violent, triumphant gesture. A gold chain dangled from his wrist, and the elf caught a glimpse of a small white stone held in the man’s fingers. He swung his hand back and forth, and the eyes and heads of the crowd followed the talisman in rapt attention.

Something flared redly in that stone, an X-shaped vibration of crimson light that sent a jolt of pleasure through Tamarwind. Stunned, he looked to the side, saw that Deltan had dropped his bow, that he gazed longingly toward the object in the man’s hand. When the hand came down, the stone disappeared from view, and the people in the valley-and the two elves watching from above-sighed in unison.

“But it is time that we did more, labored harder in the name of our Holy Savior. And so I tell you: There is a temple of evil in this wretched swath of purgatory. The place is a monument to heresy. It rises upon an island, forms a minaret of metal that is an abomination, an affront to God. And so I will lead you there, my crusaders… and we will see this temple, and we will tear it down!”

“The Loom of the Worldweaver!” Tamarwind gasped. Deltan Columbine simply shook his head, pulling back from his vantage to sit, stunned, on the forest floor.

The frightening message was still ringing in the clearing when Ulf leapt up on all fours with a startled snort. The dog and the elves spun in unison, Tam leaping to his feet and then freezing in shock.

A giant with a bristling black beard held a stone-tipped spear leveled straight at Tam’s chest. The fellow loomed high overhead, and his body seemed as broad as a wall. Thick cords of muscle knotted his thighs and calves, and each of his arms was as big around as a human man’s leg.

“Come, witch… you can talk to Sir Christopher.” The giant’s voice was a growl like thunder. Tam felt the rumble in the pit of his stomach. “There’s enough kindling left for a double burning.”

Tamarwind’s blood ran cold. The staff was still on his shoulder, but seemed like an impotent twig in the face of that deadly spearhead. He tried to think of something, anything, to say.

Turning his head, he saw that Deltan hadn’t even picked up his bow. Instead, the poet looked back at Tam, a desperate appeal for help written in his terrified expression, his wildly staring eyes. The scout clenched his hand around the staff, but when the giant lifted his spear toward his throat he took a short step backward, unable to make himself attack.