Douglas Niles - Circle at center

Quickly, she backed into the main room of the villa. Next she drew on deeper magic, igniting a tuft of tinder by snapping her fingers. Immediately every candle in the house burst into bright flame, and a crackling fire rose from the logs in the hearth. With another whispered word, she pulled the blazing logs out of the fireplace by the power of her magic. Trailing sparks and embers, they rolled into the Delvers, sent several of the invaders shrieking from the villa. Others flailed and thrashed at the flames running hungrily up their leggings.

Falling back to her kitchen, the druid snatched up a knife and slashed, but somehow the nearest dwarf sensed her intentions and dodged out of the way, the blade deflecting off his steel helmet. Others were drawn to the clatter, hands outstretched, wielding cruel hooks that the dwarves hacked into Miradel’s clothes, her hair, even her skin. With a gasp of pain the druid was pulled off her feet. She grunted, trying to scramble away even as she fell to the floor. For a moment she lay stunned, fearing that a brittle bone had broken, watching as two dwarves advanced with a net of black silk. They raised the lattice of thin cord, ready to throw it over her.

From somewhere she found the strength and speed to rise, leaning to the side as the Delvers cast the net. It swept past Miradel and she lashed out, slicing threads, then driving her blade into the neck of the closest dwarf. With a mortal hiss the creature whipped around, slashing with a curved dagger even as his life sluiced from a ripped artery.

But that dwarven blade, wielded in a dying frenzy, found its way between frail ribs. Miradel gasped as her heart was pierced, as strong arms seized her. She kicked, but there was little speed or strength in her struggles. Before she thought to scream, her blood spilled in a circle across the floor, her mind grew dull, and she died.

N atac turned with a start, his eyes narrowing as he stared across the dark, still swath of lake. The lights of Miradel’s villa were barely visible in the distance, twinkling on the hilltop, flaring with routine brilliance. Yet it seemed to him as though some shadow darkened the fires, masked the vitality of that distant place.

“What is it?” Karkald asked in alarm, joining the army commander at the parapet of the defensive tower.

“She’s sad about something… I can feel it,” he said. I wish I was there with you. He lingered over the private thought, knowing it was a luxury he could not afford.

Shaking his head, he tried to return his attention to the command problem facing them: what to do about the increasingly rambunctious goblins. He knew that the problem was real, that the unruly recruits in their great regiments were running wild in sections of Circle at Center, rendering many neighborhoods uninhabitable by the elves who had once lived there.

“We could break up the regiment into companies,” Owen suggested. The Viking, who had been commanding the goblins for more than twenty years, was as frustrated as Natac himself with his unruly charges. “I can tan the hides of those that still get out of line, and Hiyram can keep tabs on some of the others.”

Natac shook his head. “I want to avoid that if at all possible. We have, what, four thousand or more of them? That makes them our biggest single force, and if we need them in the fight, I’d like to use them together.”

“I would, too,” Owen agreed, relief written across his bearded visage. “So let’s keep ’em in camp, and I’ll still find some hides to tan!”

“Good… for now, anyway.” Natac tried to move on, to think about the next problem facing his large army. But despite his best intentions, the warrior found that he couldn’t concentrate. Over and over his mind wandered across the water, to the white villa on the lakeside hill.

“I tell you-it’s our best chance. You have to let me try!” Darann hissed, her face darkening as she made the effort to keep her voice down. She confronted her husband in the plain barracks room that had been their living quarters for more than two decades.

“Are you mad?” roared Karkald, uncaring of the elves who lived in neighboring rooms and were undoubtedly shocked by his outburst. “You’d be killed-or worse!” His rage was fueled by stark, raw fear, emotions howling through his veins.

“But listen to me! I might be able to distract him-”

“I forbid it! I utterly, absolutely forbid you from acting on this craziness-in fact, you are not even to think about it!” He struggled to regain his breath, to lower his voice. “Why-you’re talking about the most powerful, unpredictable kind of magic there is! And you’d put yourself in terrible danger!” It was all so logical, such an obvious decision. Surely she could see that?

When his wife didn’t answer, Karkald grunted in acknowledgment, sorry that he had shouted so loudly. And he made the mistake of thinking that her silence indicated that she had accepted his mandate.

Everything was a dim, gray haze… a haze punctuated by pain, agony that speared through his skull, stabbed his mind with relentless, fiery force… until again the murk would rise, granting him the only relief from his constant hurting.

Sometime later he smelled blood, and came awake with a start. Once again that pain rushed through every nerve end, but he forced his head up, off the hard stone floor. Drawing a breath, he felt more pain searing through his ribs, but he fought against it, pushed himself through a slow, awkward roll onto his belly. Still he held his head up, though his vision was blurry and his head still pounded.

With an effort, he thumped his tail against the ground once, and again. And then he knew he was whole. Grunting from the agony, he pushed his shoulders up until he was sitting. His head throbbed with an agonizing cadence of pain, and one ear was crusted with dried blood, but stiffly, slowly, he forced himself to stand. Sunlight flooded the garden, the villa, the landscape. The blood he smelled came from very nearby, where Fallon’s corpse lay stiff and drained, with a dried, brownish swath extending in a ghastly spill down the stairs from the elf’s body.

Shaking his head, seeing and smelling better with each passing second, Ulf started into the big house. And then he froze.

Miradel lay on the floor in a pool of her own blood, a smear of darkening crimson across her belly staining her gown. Nearby was the corner of a black silk net, apparently sliced with ragged force from its parent. Whimpering unconsciously, Ulf slowly approached the motionless figure. He lowered his head, sniffed hopefully, knowing that those hopes were futile. The druid was utterly, irrevocably dead.

The stench of Delvers was everywhere, so he had no doubts as to who had killed her. Growling almost inaudibly, he padded back onto the patio and blinked in the bright sunlight. The lake was an azure blanket below, cut by the thin white line of the causeway.

Ulfgang knew that Natac needed to be told about Miradel, and that road was his only route back to Circle at Center. Taking several deep breaths, then lapping up a good drink of water from the druid’s garden pool, the dog ignored the pounding in his head as he started down the hill.

K erriastyn cowered before her master. Zystyl could sense her fear, reveled in it as his rage flexed through his nostrils like an odor, touching the cringing female, stroking her senses like the disingenuous kiss of a hungry vampire. She stood on her feet, but leaned forward abjectly, with her face turned up to him in mute acceptance of whatever justice he would deliver.