From the platform above the beacon he also looked out to sea, seeking any sign of movement on the still waters that lay within the broad cone of illumination. Not surprisingly, he saw nothing but darkness. Yet he never forgot that, far beyond the reach of his light, the Underworld teemed with savage Delvers, blind and utterly wicked killers who sought to capture, torture, and slay their seeing cousins.
The Blind Ones were the reason for this watch station, the threat that made life for the Seer Dwarves an ever-perilous undertaking in the First Circle. Cruel and ingenious, always eager to take prisoners for their vicious rites, the Delvers had waged merciless warfare against Seer Dwarves for thousands of cycles. It was only a dozen generations ago, after the Seers were trapped in a small corner of the First Circle and threatened with utter annihilation, that a Seer alchemist had made the discovery that changed the Underworld. He had mixed flamestone, water, and gold to make a fuel that burned for a long time, cast a pure white light, and didn’t generate the searing heat that was the liability of most brilliant fires. With the development of coolfyre, Karkald’s ancestors had been able to hold the Delvers at bay and, eventually, to prosper.
Even so, the threat remained, requiring constant vigilance on the part of the Seers. Karkald remembered a dwarven corpse that had floated up the dock three or four intervals ago. Half the hapless Seer’s skin had been flayed away, and both eyes had been gouged out by Delver torture. Yet when Karkald pulled the body onto the shore, water ran out of the lungs. Even after all that punishment, the victim had lived long enough to suffer death by drowning!
For a moment he felt a wistful sadness, a melancholy awareness of the violent dangers that formed a threat to his world. He knew that far above them, through miles of solid bedrock-the foundation of worlds-was a land reputed to be a place of beauty and eternal peace. Elves and other peoples lived there, in the Fourth Circle called Nayve. Supposedly, they frolicked like happy children, unaware of danger, ignorant of violence. Dwarven explorers had visited that place, generations and generations ago. They had reported that Nayve was illuminated by a great “sun,” and that all the peoples of that world had a plenitude of food and bountiful lands, free of deadly threats, on which to make their homes. The elves themselves had been described as capricious and trite people, with little grasp of the serious realities of life.
He wondered if that kind of place might not be a terrible land in which to live. Of course, in the Underworld there was never enough food. And even beyond Delvers, there were terrible beasts-fish and serpents in the Undersea, fierce and carnivorous wyslets that stalked the remote caves and even crawled about on the ceiling of the world. But the First Circle was a world that made its people strong, and strength was the attribute Karkald valued above all others.
Sauntering along the narrow trail, with the steep plunge to the sea on his right side, Karkald tried to banish memory of the gruesome corpse. He said the words again as his hands went to the tools fixed to different parts of his person.
“Hammer, chisel, hatchet, file. Knife, pick, rope, spear. Hammer chisel hatchet file. Knife pick rope spear.” He matched the cadence of his words to the beat of his footsteps. As always, the litany brought a sense of comfort, reminded him that he was prepared to face any eventuality. With those eight tools, any one of which could be in his hand a fraction of a heartbeat after he wanted it, he knew there was no task, no challenge, that could possibly daunt him.
The high trail followed the curve around the steep cliffs of the precipitous outpost, the stone pillar that rose into the great, natural buttress so far overhead and eventually swept outward to merge into the cavern roof. The path was rugged, broken by many stretches of stairs and ladders, but Karkald didn’t mind the steepness. And because of the beacons posted at six equal intervals around the pillar’s circumference the whole route was well- lighted.
On the side of the pillar opposite the den he stopped for a very long time, looking out to sea, listening for some sound from that infinite darkness. He tried to picture the threat of Delver attack, which he had heard described but never seen. Their boats were fast and silent, he had been told, and they could be out there anywhere. He pictured the foe, imagined the terrifying thrill of imminent attack, and strained to observe any sign of danger. Only after he was certain that there was nothing to see did he move on.
Three-quarters of the way around the island Karkald reached his favorite vantage. From here he could again clearly see Axial glowing across the inky waters. Also, this was the battery platform, and he never ceased to admire the great weapon, to cherish this part of his inspection and maintenance chores.
A little sense of guilt tugged at him, for he was acutely conscious of the fact that his enthusiasm for the weapon was the one aspect of his life he didn’t share with Darann. Discussion or even sight of the battery never failed to make her uneasy, and after several startlingly angry responses he had learned not to mention the thing. Of course, there had been a number of arguments over other matters in the last few intervals-sometimes it seemed as though Darann was fiercely resisting his best efforts to make her happy. Yet none of those spats had been as intense as the ones relating to his admiration for this great weapon.
Now he enthusiastically turned his attention toward the mass of gray stone and black metal. In time of war the battery would be manned by a full crew of dwarves, sixty sturdy gunners filling the breech and cranking back the mighty spring. The arc of fire crossed the approach to the distant city, and from here a lethal spray of shot could be cast over this part of the sea. Now, of course, the crew was absent, but the weapon was loaded and Karkald knew that should the Delvers appear, he would have the honor of taking the first shot.
The battery rested on a wide, flat platform, a shoulder of rock jutting from the side of the stone pillar from which the weapon had traverse over nearly half of the island’s circumference. Squatting above the highest beacon of the watch station, the gun consisted of a vast chute of metal extending from a powerful granite frame. The spring that powered the weapon was bolted to that block of stone, and overhead stretched a framework of piping and storage bins that, under the guidance of many skilled hands, could be manipulated to reload the weapon. There was even a governor of Karkald’s own design, a control to ensure that the lethal shot wasn’t overly shaken during the loading process.
First he checked to see that the massive spring, a single leaf nearly thirty feet long, was fully distended, poised to swiftly release its force following one precise hammer blow to the trigger. A small chock of stone held the powerful strip of metal in check, and the gunner had to strike that chip just perfectly to knock it instantaneously free. If he failed, the weapon would misfire, dumping the expensive shot onto the shore of the island-and the stuttering spring might catch his hammer, or even his hand, with crushing force.
As Karkald looked out to sea, he suddenly stiffened with excitement, knowing that the cycles of waiting and watching had finally yielded results: A silver-hulled longboat sliced through the water near the periphery of the beacons’ ring of brightness. Twenty oars propelled the low hull with impressive speed, and while the Delver crew was invisible at this range, Karkald knew that several dozen of the Unmirrored Dwarves no doubt crouched in the hull, probably hoping to raid Axial or attack one of the lumbering Seer barges that traversed the sea. Glimmering in the beacon’s light was a white wake frothing behind the swiftly gliding boat.
It took a moment for his mind to process the truth: The Delvers were here! A tremor of nervousness shivered in Karkald’s fingers, but he forced himself to breathe deeply and, in a moment, was calm.
“How many boats?”
He asked the question aloud, then sprinted to the edge of the battery platform. His eyes probed the darkness, sweeping the sea around the Delver craft, but he saw no indication of another metal hull or white, foaming wake.
Returning to the battery, he peered through the sight and followed the path of the longboat, which at its current speed and course would shortly be out of range. With quick, sure movements he turned the crank that raised the elevation of the long steel barrel. Next, he pushed hard on a stout capstan, slowly grinding the battery through a gradual traverse. He dashed back to the sight, made a minute adjustment to elevation-taking into consideration the Delver vessel’s movement-and then took up his hammer.
Instantly he tapped a sharp blow that sent the chockstone pinging across the platform. With a shuddering whine the spring whipped free, hurling the breech and its cargo of shot up the slightly inclined barrel. The breech slammed into the stop bar, but the shiny casings flew far out over the black water, reflecting and sparkling for a moment as they danced eerily in the light of the beacon. With stately majesty the spheres finally tumbled downward, falling away from the light to scatter with a series of splashes into the sea-though Karkald was satisfied to hear a loud clang as at least one of the metallic globes found the target.
He rushed to the edge of the battery platform, anxious to see what would happen next. He knew that within each ball a glass vial had shattered, mingling caustic acid with a powder of phosphorus. Several of the metal
