Douglas Niles - Circle at center

Squinting upward, he decided that he could see a little bit with his swollen eye, but only if he was looking directly at the sun. It was then that he realized that full daylight blazed around him.

“How long did I lie here?” he wondered, asking the silent shrubbery. “It was getting dark, but just, when…”

And finally his thoughts came hard against the reality of the previous evening. Belynda and he had been attacked, violently, in the Greens of Nayve! He, Nistel, had been nearly killed by a centaur’s club. As to the sage-ambassador, he couldn’t think what had happened to her. He knew that she wouldn’t have run away and left him there-though he remembered with a moan of despair that, in his initial panic, he had certainly been ready to run off and do just that to her. That memory triggered fresh sobs, and raised horrible questions in his mind. Where was Belynda? Was she hurt? The possibile fates of his friend were terrible to contemplate, but they all involved her being taken away by the centaur and those two giants.

“I’ll rescue her,” the little gnome said-or started to say. It seemed that the whole sentence just wouldn’t work its way out of his mouth. Probably because he knew it was a foolish fancy. What could he, a pitiful, half-blinded gnome, do against centaurs and giants and who knew what else?

“Then I’ll have to go get help!” he declared, and this time there was force behind his words. He looked up and down the road. He was pretty sure that he and Belynda had been going that way, so he turned in the opposite direction. Ferngarden with its comfortable inn was a day’s walk away. At least he could tell someone there what had happened.

Nistel started off at a run, but quickly slowed to a bouncing jog. A minute later he was walking, but still following the road back to the village. He remembered that inn… it was a nice one. He would certainly cool off with an ale when he got there. Of course, that didn’t make what happened to Belynda any easier to stomach, but still, the innkeeper had known how to brew a nice barrel…

“Nistelblinker?”

The gnome nearly jumped out of his boots at the whisper coming from the underbrush.

“Ga-Gallupper? Is that you?” he asked, trembling. “Where did you go?” he demanded more sharply when he saw the young centaur between the branches of the shrubbery.

Gallupper came forward. “I’m sorry I ran away,” he said. “It’s just-those Crusaders are so frightening!”

“I know,” Nistel replied. He sniffled at the fresh memories. “And I think they took Belynda! Do you know where they live, where they might have taken her?”

“No,” Gallupper said, shaking his head. “Their lord came and called to my clan… and they went away with him. But they wouldn’t take me, and I don’t know where they went. Are you looking for them?”

Nistel looked down. “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t think I could rescue her by myelf. So instead I’m going for help.”

“I’ll come with you-you can ride on my back, and we’ll travel much faster.”

“That’s a good idea,” the gnome said. “Can you help me up?”

He stepped toward the centaur’s side, but before he could mount, a big shadow moved beside the road. Nistel turned around with a startled yelp, but he was too slow to run. By the time he saw what was happening, a pair of hard-eyed elves had him by the scruff of the neck.

K arkald raced through the darkness, stumbling over unseen rocks, scraping against the pillars that rose throughout the vast cavern. Before him he saw faint light, illumination filtered around several bends of the subterranean passage, but unquestionably emanating from a bright source.

He heard Darann’s shout, then a sound like a rock clattering across the floor. Brandishing his spear, he sprinted faster, turning a corner, squinting in the brightness of his wife’s coolfyre. He saw her throw another rock, striking a target out of his sight.

But there was another beast leaping through the air, striking like a snake toward that face Karkald loved more than any other in all the Seven Circles. This was a wyslet-he saw the bristling whiskers, the narrowed snout and body, the gaping maw with its array of razor-sharp teeth. Darann raised her arm and Karkald, still thirty paces away, could only shout in horror and fury. The proximity of his wife to the target ruled out any casting of his spear, and he could never cross that distance in time to help. Even so, he charged in blind fury and then, in a moment, saw the wyslet thrashing across the floor. Miraculously, his wife was sitting with her back against the rock. Karkald saw no sign of a wound on her face.

“Gotya, rock rat!” The jeering voice came from behind the wyslet, and for the first time Karkald noticed the wiry figure with arms and legs wrapped around the predator’s body. Hiyram’s hands were locked behind the beast’s head, and though the pair thrashed and rolled across the floor, the goblin pressed with impressive strength until the snapping of the wyslet’s spine cracked through the cave.

“Kark!” Darann screamed.

He turned to see a wyslet slinking around the rock, red eyes greedily fixed upon the dwarfwoman. Karkald hurled the spear with every fiber of his strength, and the steel head and stout shaft tore right through the skinny body. The beast thrashed and hissed, pinned to the soft rock by the force of the throw.

Two more wyslets rushed in. Karkald met those with the hammer in his right hand, hatchet-or rather, Darann’s kitchen cleaver-in his left. One collapsed, slain instantly with a crushed skull, and the other disappeared into the darkness, yowling loudly, bleeding from a gash over its eye.

He looked in mute horror at Darann, but saw that she was unscratched. Drawing a few ragged breaths, she reached for him, and he tumbled into her embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, as she was saying the same words. Finally she cried, and pulled him close, and he held her tightly and breathed the scent of her hair, her neck, herself. His own long arms wrapped his dwarfmaid, and he sighed a long exhalation of relief.

“Hiyram-you came back,” he said, after his breathing had steadied enough for him to speak.

“Yup,” chortled the goblin contentedly.

“Why?” asked Darann. “I thought you blamed us for the trap that caught you.”

Hiyram laughed louder. “Lotsa traps… lotsa dwarves. But I’m hungry, so I come here.”

“Hungry… but-” Darann’s voice choked off, and she looked at the bloody, wretched wyslet corpses around them.

“Happy news, that!” smirked Hiyram, swaggering up to the couple and puffing out his scrawny chest. He chucked a thumb at the three slain wyslets. “Good eatin’, if ya don’t mind stink!”

K arkald woke up with a sensation that he was still dreaming. Darann slept, curled against his lap, her back against his chest. They were both naked, covered by the smooth cloth of their blanket. He smelled her hair, let it mingle with his beard as he gently reached for her breast and allowed himself to sigh contentedly.

For the first time in many intervals, his memories were pleasant. Before sleeping, the two dwarves and the goblin had filled their stomachs with fresh meat. Hiyram had stuffed himself until his belly bulged, then announced that he was going to sleep for a year. The dwarves had practiced more moderation, even though the wyslet flesh had proven surprisingly palatable-after they learned not to breathe through their noses. Then the couple found a small grotto some distance away from the snoring goblin, and here they tenderly reaffirmed their love, each soothing away the other’s guilt with kisses, touches, reassuring affection.