toward the stake, gathering in a thick, churning ring of eagerness.
“This is a witch and a harlot!” he proclaimed, to murmurs of agreement that rumbled from all sides. “She will die in the cleansing power of flame-Pray to God Almighty that her evil is expurgated in that passing!”
Hoarse cheers rang from the lot as they formed a corridor leading from the tent to the stake. The big centaur was there, and plucked her from the knight’s grasp. Belynda recoiled from the sight of goblins leering at her, burly giants howling for blood. Other centaurs raced about in a frenzy, and the noise swelled thunderously.
Belynda drew a deep breath, ready to fight again, but now she was pinned in Gawain’s muscular grip. Her lungs strained for air, and a tinge of madness rose in her mind… she had to fight, to kill! Her purpose was only vengeance and the only fear she felt was the terror that she would die without exacting that retribution.
She knew she was hallucinating then, for she thought she saw Tamarwind Trak among the elves of the company. And there was Deltan Columbine, just on the other side… surely a sign that she was losing her mind. Still, she found it curiously comforting that she imagined her friends here, elves she had known for so long who could now be the witnesses to her death.
Her delusions ran deeper than she suspected, for she also caught a glimpse of dusky brown skin and a handsome, unsmiling face. Wasn’t that the warrior, Natac, summoned to Nayve by Miradel? Belynda had met him only once… Why would she now remember him? Perhaps this was another effect of the madness that presaged death. She hurt for a moment when she remembered Tamarwind, and the serenity that had marked their days together. Now serenity was gone, from her life and from her world.
Suddenly Gawain groaned and tripped forward. Tamarwind-it was Tamarwind!-grabbed Belynda’s arm before the centaur crushed her. A dozen other elves suddenly whirled on the nearby men of Christopher’s army. Heavy clubs knocked aside enemy elves and goblins, and two big men she recognized as humans swung heavy staves, bashing the faces of a pair of giants. Both of these tumbled to the ground.
The centaur, Gawain, was kicking, entangled in a noose that had snared three of his hooves. Natac, wielding a long, slender sword, stabbed quickly at an elf who tried to intervene. The weapon left only a pinhole in the victim’s chest, but the elf tumbled backward to kick weakly in a growing pool of blood. The warrior froze, looking in shock from his weapon to the bleeding corpse. By the time Natac shook his head and moved again, Belynda and Tamarwind had stumbled away. Tam used his heavy, stone-tipped spear to drive back several attacking elves.
“Come on!” he hissed. “We have to get to the forest!”
In the swirl of battle Belynda saw that Natac stood before Sir Christopher, who was unarmed. The knight slowly backed away.
“Kill him!” The sage-ambassador’s voice was a shriek, a sound she had never imagined, let alone heard, coming from her own throat. She shouted at Natac again, her face taut with hatred. “Kill him right now!”
The knight suddenly backed away, turning to run into his tent, while a pair of enemy elves charged the Tlaxcalan with spears. Natac stabbed, cut one elf down and bluffed the other into a hasty retreat.
“Go after him! Kill him!” cried Belynda.
“That is not the way to make war,” Natac declared, shaking his head. Still he looked stunned, unsure.
Belynda suddenly broke away from Tamarwind Trak and made a dash for the knight’s tent. Natac managed to seize her wrist as she ran past. With surprising gentleness he pulled her back, until Deltan and Tamarwind had her again.
“We don’t have time for that!” the warrior whispered, following her. “We’ve got to move!”
And then they were running, the three humans and a dozen elves fleeing the camp of many hundreds. A roar quickly rose behind them, and Belynda knew that the battle was far from over.
K arkald looked at Darann, the expression in his eyes urging her to remain utterly silent. She nodded, then looked past him, again staring into the ravine where the rocks themselves seemed to be alive, crawling steadily along the floor.
But those numberless marchers were not rocks, Karkald knew. They were Delvers, an army of the Blind Ones that trailed into a column more than a mile long through winding cavern and trackless vault.
“See-there, they goin’ up!”
To Karkald, Hiyram’s voice was a blaring trumpet, though actually the goblin spoke in a breathy whisper. In any event, the Delver horde continued its inexorable march, working its way up the steep ravine toward another cave, still higher in the darkness.
Karkald knew it was time to back away from here. His hands outlined in gentle coolglow, he signed that Darann and the goblin should follow him. Only after they had wormed through a hundred feet of passage, leaving the large cavern far behind, did they begin to relax.
And so it had been for a full interval, now. Here, as they had done every few cycles, they had found a vantage from which to spy upon the marching Delvers. Always the Blind Ones had been moving upward, climbing through the complex network of caverns that honeycombed the world over the First Circle.
“See,” Hiyram repeated through a drooling, triumphant grin. “Like I tole ya, they always goin’ up.”
Karkald nodded. “How far away is it now, to Nayve?” he asked Hiyram.
The goblin scratched his bald, wart-covered head. “Let’s say climbin’ for ten, twenty more cycles. Maybe some more and maybe some less. Maybe then we see.”
The dwarf nodded. This was more or less the same response that the goblin had been giving since the couple had made his acquaintance an interval ago. Even so, the goblin’s vague predictions had more basis than Karkald’s own wonderings, for Hiyram, at least, had seen the world called Nayve and its brilliant sun.
“We have to get there first,” Darann said firmly. “The Fourth Circle is a world that has known nothing but peace… the elves and their neighbors will have no preparation for a horde like the Delvers.”
“We will,” Karkald said, his own conviction strong in his voice. For a long time he had wavered in his own mind, but now he knew they had no choice.
Another truth lurked beneath the surface of his awareness: He felt a profound curiosity about this new world, the Fourth Circle. The whole notion of the “sun” was a compelling idea in its own right. Coupled with a plenitude of food and a great mixture of thriving races, the image in his mind became a goal that pulled him steadily onward. Axial was gone, in his mind if not in Darann’s, and Nayve promised the hope of peace and a future, a place they could perhaps even make a permanent home.
After a too-brief rest, they started out again, following paths that diverged from the main cavern followed by the Delver army. Hiyram was a good climber, and seemed content enough to stay with the two dwarves.
Some uncounted number of cycles later they paused for a bite of dried fungus and water. The coolglow had faded so that each of the three companions was a bare ghost in the darkness. And then it was that Karkald noticed the phenomenon before them, a glow of powerful brightness originating beyond a few more twists and turns of the cave. He stood, and Hiyram drew a long, snuffling breath and nodded.
“A breeze,” Darann said in wonder. She, too, sniffed the air. “And so many scents.”
But Karkald’s attention was all on the brightness. He was aware of the others trailing behind, but he made his way as quickly as he could, scrambling over rocks and through a shallow streambed. Rich moss coated the boulders, and he squinted against the steadily growing illumination.
He came around another bend and he saw it, finally. He was looking out of a cave mouth, into the shade of a forest. But everywhere there was dazzling brightness, flowers aglow as if burning, shafts of sunlight sparkling through the thick limbs overhead.
He had found it. He had reached the land of the sun.
Belynda ran beside Tamarwind, but looked over her shoulder as they neared the woods. Her eyes blurred with tears, anger and frustration combining to fill her with anguish. By the Goddess, she wanted him dead! And Natac had refused to kill him!
Vaguely she saw speeding shapes coming closer, realized that the centaurs were galloping toward them from all parts of Sir Christopher’s camp. Something flashed across her vision-arrows! Abruptly the galloping centaurs halted, one of them tumbling to the ground and others cursing or grunting in pain.
Then Belynda and her rescuers reached the trees. She saw other elves around them, elves with bows and arrows. These archers fired another volley, and the stinging missiles drove the rest of the centaurs into a hasty retreat, a pair of them dragging their wounded comrade by his human arms.
But more of Sir Christopher’s cohorts closed in, sweeping around the centaurs to form a line in the clearing. They brandished clubs wildly, and many waved crude, stone-tipped spears. The Knight Templar, now carrying his
