Douglas Niles - Circle at center

Ulf, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. He pranced forward, tail wagging as he gazed fawnishly up at the giant.

“Some watchdog,” snorted the elf’s captor.

Ulf suddenly lunged upward, snapping his jaws hard beneath the giant’s shaggy tunic. The fellow left out a pinched scream and doubled over. Somehow Tam’s instincts took over, and he swung the heavy staff. The pole whistled through the air, landing with a resounding crack against the giant’s skull. The shaft of wood shattered but the giant fell on his face with a thud. Groaning once, he kicked, then lay still.

“Come on!” panted Ulf, already starting through the woods.

An impulse penetrated Tam’s fear and he reached down to snatch up the giant’s heavy spear. Then he was off, racing after Ulfgang and Deltan, the wind of his speed drawing tears from his still-horrified eyes.

B elynda lay awake, fidgeting restlessly. The Lighten Hour was still a long time away, but she felt no need to sleep. She didn’t know what subconscious anxiety triggered her unease, but she finally, reluctantly, gave up the attempt at repose. She whispered on the light and found that she didn’t even blink against the soft illumination.

Swinging her feet to the floor, she stood, and then paced across her sleeping chamber for the simple reason that she needed to move. She walked past the reading table without pause. The door to her garden glided open as she murmured the word of command, and then she was under the night sky with its fulgent, gracefully shifting patterns of stars. Sitting on a marble bench, she leaned back to watch the stately wheel of the night overhead. The stars spiraled around the axis of the distant sun-the celestial body that was now no more than the brightest star in the twinkling vista of the sky. Each speck of light seemed to move at its own speed. At times thousands of them formed tendrils of blurry illumination, while shortly thereafter those twisting limbs broke apart, dissolving into their individual, lonely components. And thus they wandered until the pattern brought them again into concentration.

All but hypnotized, Belynda stared into the vastness overhead. As she had done countless times before, she tried to sift some kind of design from the cosmic quilt… but just when she began to perceive a face, a horizon, an animal or leaf, the twinkling display would distort and realign. Inevitably she was left with a sense of randomness that she found troubling, resonant of a vague sense of insecurity.

But tonight even the spectacle of the skies could not distract her from the agitation that ruined her sleep and lifted her from her bed. She still could not identify a precise source of unease. Rather it was as if too many little changes were occurring in the world, niggling things that combined to portend something different, some dire interruption in the stately pace of Nayve.

For, of course, change was bad. In any kind of alteration there was a potential for violence, and perhaps it was this awareness that caused her to think about pain, and killing, and war. Not that she had seen any examples during her lifetime… rather she had learned from tales of the Seventh Circle, stories told by druids who had witnessed the Worldweaver’s Tapestry. In her lifetime there had been many advances in the way humans made war, and she tried to imagine where they could go in the future. Such a frenetic, furious race they were-even, truth be told, the druids, who were supposed to represent the wisest and most serene of the lot.

But in this past year Caranor and Allevia had died violently. She had just learned from Nistel that more giants had come to Thickwhistle, this time rousting a whole clan of gnomes out of a cherished cavern. She missed having Ulfgang to talk to… and even more, she wished Tamarwind was here.

She stood up and stretched, and it was then that she heard the rustling in the shrubbery surrounding her garden. In another moment a canine body, white against the darkness, trotted into view. Ulfgang was followed by Tamarwind Trak, who was breathing hard from exertion, and another, similarly exhausted elf. Both wore clothes that were in tatters, and Belynda gasped at the sight of the scout’s face, haggard and thin, streaked with sweat and dirt.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, rushing to embrace Tam by his shoulders. She stared into eyes that were hooded and dark, and contained the gleam of burning anger.

“No… just tired,” he said. Despite the emotion that seethed almost visibly beneath his skin, his voice was soft and calm.

“We came here without rest,” Ulf explained. “From the Greens, running nearly all the way. Tam even mounted a horse for the last leg of the trip.”

“What’s wrong?” asked the sage-ambassador, shaken by the explanation, by the implication of bad news. “And who… Deltan Columbine!” She recognized the other elf then.

“My lady Sage-Ambassador,” he said with a bow. “I regret that I see you again on an occasion of such dire portent.”

“Tell me!” she said, sitting on the bench and forcing herself to be calm. The two men joined her, apparently soothed somewhat by her example. “What is this dire portent?”

“It is death-murder and war come to Nayve!” Tam blurted.

“In the person of a warrior, a human,” added Deltan. “One who dwells in the Greens, and gathers others to his cause.”

“It is he who has lured the shepherds from their duties,” Ulfgang put in.

Belylnda listened in growing shock as the dog and elves continued to describe the band they had observed, and the burning of the druid who had been called a “witch.”

“Elves, giants… centaurs? And they are all armed?” she echoed in growing fear. “That’s enough for a whole army, right here in the Fourth Circle!”

“And there’s more,” Tam said. He told her about the human warrior with his great staff and his shirt of silver. “He was urging his army into a frenzy. He held aloft a small white talisman on a chain and charged them to come here, to Circle at Center. They intend to tear down the Worldweaver’s Loom!”

Belynda felt as though she had been punched in the stomach. It was hard to draw a breath, or to wrap her mind around the idea of an attack against this sacred place.

“How…” She let the question trail off, not even knowing what to ask. “We can’t let them!”

Tamarwind drew a deep breath. “I know… we need to gather against them-to-to fight!” He looked stunned, even sickened, by his own words.

“I have sent word to Argentian,” Deltan Columbine said. “There are many of my students there who will join us, I’m certain. I asked them to travel here, to Circle at Center. From them we can form a company.”

“A company…” With a jolt Belynda suddenly remembered Miradel, and the warrior the druid had summoned at such cost. “To train the elves for war,” she murmured wonderingly.

“What?” asked the scout.

“It’s… there’s someone who saw the danger before I did,” the sage-ambassador said quietly. “She gave up her future, her whole life, because she perceived this menace and sacrificed herself so that the rest of us might be prepared.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a human warrior called Natac. He lives in a villa in the hills, not far from the end of the causeway. He will take Deltan Columbine’s company of elves and teach them to be warriors. And we will get more elves, from here in the city, and from Barantha, and all the other realms.”