Fortunately the stairway to the nearest beacon remained intact, and only a few steps were obstructed by rubble that had fallen from above. He took care to step only upon solid rock so as not to make a sound as he led his wife upward, climbing toward the lantern that still blazed through the darkness.
Finally they reached a perch nearly a hundred feet above the portico. Here the two of them huddled on a narrow ledge beside the beacon of coolfyre, still too numbed and horrified to speak. Below them several Delvers were visible, crawling from the collapse within the den or gathering on the portico from other parts of the island. More and more emerged from various niches and ledges, until a hundred or more had gathered before the ruins of the Seers’ den.
The two Seers pressed back against the cliff, silent and afraid. Karkald knew they could not be seen by the Blind Ones, but even so he was reluctant to expose himself any more than necessary. Beside him, Darann was watching the lights of Axial, a bright swath across the sea. They could even make out some of the great pillars, outlined by coolfyre, that rose from the city to merge with the stone sky of the Underworld.
Neither of them was prepared for the next pulse of the earthquake, a jolt that rocked the pillar of the watch station harder than any of the previous shocks. They shouted in alarm and clung to each other, pitching perilously close to the precipice. Karkald snatched out his pick and curled the hook over the bar of the beacon’s frame. Once more the bedrock shivered, and they tumbled and twisted over the hundred-foot drop. Only his grip on the tool, and the half-circle of metal curled over the rod, kept them from a fatal plummet.
Below, the Delvers were shrieking in terror, and Karkald hoped the sounds of their panic had drowned out the sharp cries he and his wife had made. He had good reason to believe this, for it seemed as though the whole of the First Circle reverberated with sound. Waves crashed on stony shores, or pitched against each other in chaotic surges. Massive pieces of the ceiling plunged downward, and great chunks of the watch station broke away to tumble into the sea.
“Look!” moaned Darann, rising to her knees and pointing through the vast dark of the First Circle. He looked to where she pointed and saw the lights of Axial pitching and lurching in the distance. A great swath of the city abruptly disappeared, as if ten thousand lights had been extinguished at once. The rest of Axial flared with a supernatural brightness, until another part was blinked out in the space of a few seconds. Still more of the city vanished next, blotted out in an instant.
More convulsions followed, and Karkald held his woman with all his strength, waiting for the boulder that at any instant would crush them or sweep them to their deaths. But instead, they somehow survived. Gradually this quake settled, and the rock beneath them ceased to move. Waves still pitched across the lake, and they could see many new islands, masses of rubble that jutted upward from the waves. The base of their own watch station had expanded because of falling debris, in places becoming a wide fan of loose rock that extended far out across the water.
Already there were Delvers making their way down this slope. It seemed to Karkald, in the light of the one beacon remaining, that quite a few of the Blind Ones had survived the quake. He heard words of harsh command, and recognized Zystyl’s voice.
Darann uttered a strangled sob and at first Karkald thought she was reacting to that horrific dwarf’s survival. But when he raised his eyes, he followed the direction of her horrified stare.
“No!” he whispered, as his wife clung to his arm and stared wordlessly through the darkness.
Across the sea, along the great swath where Axial had once brightened the First Circle, they saw only darkness.
Z ystyl’s nostrils were clogged by dust, his flesh bruised by the rocks that had dropped from overhead. Still, he was alive, and finally these unnatural quakes seemed to be over. Furthermore, he could tell by the clicks and shouts made by his warriors that many of them had survived, and were now fanning out to discern the layout of the new shoreline. He absorbed their senses as they moved, drawing a map in his mind as he heard the echoes return from Delver cries, sensed the presence of water and dust in the midst of new formations of ground.
He, meanwhile, stood on the slope high above the water, which had now settled to lap placidly against the multiple shores. Already he had discerned, by sound and echo, that there were many more obstacles on the water than there had been before. Rock jutted here and there, large islands pushed violently up from the sea. Furthermore, he had deduced that this was not necessarily a bad thing. After all, most if not all of his boats had undoubtedly been destroyed or sunk by falling debris, and it would be very useful to find a way that his warriors could get off this island by foot.
Or, even more tempting, what if they could get all the way to Axial by foot? Like all Delver arcanes, he knew that the Seer city had survived through the years for two reasons: One, the light of coolfyre gave the Seers a significant advantage over the Blind Ones, and second, their homeland was an island, reachable to the Unmirrored only by boat. As a result, the two great invasions his people had launched during Zystyl’s lifetime had both been defeated in furious battle as soon as the Delvers tried to come ashore.
This last time, it should have been different. He, himself, had planned the attack, and it was to begin with the destruction of each of these watch stations posted on Axial’s approaches. The greatest army ever assembled had departed Nightrock in more than a thousand boats, with the advance elements quickly, silently, landing on the isolated watch stations. That part of the operation, in fact, had been proceeding appropriately, until the utterly unprecedented rocking of their world had changed everything.
The Delver didn’t know whether or not the Seer watchman and his woman had escaped the earthquake. He would have liked to take time to search for them-something about the woman, in particular, had touched him on a deep and visceral level. Not just her scent and her sound, but that taste of her cheek he had stolen, the tartness of sweat and fear, now tingled in his memory like a living thing.
“I seek you, lord.” The words came from a dozen paces away, and he recognized the voice of his chief lieutenant.
“Porutt-what have you found?”
The other Delver made his way over the rough ground to Zystyl, where he could speak in a pale whisper, and only his listener could discern the sound.
“We have identified a ridge of rock extending a long way from the island, negotiable by foot. My dwarves advanced more than a mile, and echoed another similar distance.”
“Very well. How many of our regiment survived?”
“More than two hundred here. There has been no word from any of the other regiments.”
“Of course not-but we shall not assume they have perished. Use the horns, and we will commence the march.”
“Yes, lord!”
“And Porutt, one more thing.”
“Lord?”
“Let the men know I’m in the mood to toy with a captive… female, preferably. There will be a reward for anyone who can provide me with a little entertainment.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Zystyl heard the sly smile in Porutt’s reply, and knew that his lieutenant would claim a portion of that reward. No matter… a good commander knew how to see to the morale of all his troops.
He started after Porutt, anxious to explore the dry route that would lead them away from here, and perhaps bring them closer to a successful attack against the Seers. At the same time, a part of his memory lingered above, remembering the taste and the terror of a victim who had escaped.
K arkald watched the Delvers march away, a long file snaking into the darkness of the Underworld. They followed the crest of a newly formed ridge that rose like a serpent’s spine from the swirling water. The Seer had pivoted the lone surviving beacon, and now used the illumination to observe the column moving in the general direction of Axial.
Except that, to all appearances, that city no longer existed.
Numerous cuts and bruises wrapped his body in a cocoon of pain, but Karkald forced himself to move. He climbed down from the lens of the beacon to find Darann still staring into the distance, as if she willed some glimmer of light to sparkle on the dark horizon. But, as it had been since they observed the city’s destruction, there was not a single glint of illumination, or hope.
The watchman turned away, fearing that the heaviness of his heart would reflect in his eyes. Some instinct told him that he had to be very strong now, that he and Darann would need all of his abilities, every ounce of his
