the cosmos.
The targets were clear before him now, and he didn’t hesitate. He had lived in Nayve for forty-five years, and he understood that the stakes of this war were far higher than any battle waged in Flanders, Europe, or anywhere upon the Seventh Circle.
“Faerwind,” he called down from the tower, his voice calm. “Send up the flag for a general attack.”
5
Masters of Axial
Whisper in the dark,
Deadlier than assassin’s
Poison’d blade
Darann awakened from a dream, a dream wherein she was rubbing her nose and her cheeks into the soft bristles of Karkald’s beard. She could hear the hairs rasping around her ears, a scritch… scritch… scritch of pleasant memory-until she found herself alone, again, in her large, cold bed. The apartment that she had shared with Karkald for so long yawned like a tomb around her, lightless and lifeless.
But the scratching sound, she was startled to perceive, was very real. The noise seemed urgent yet strangely gentle at the same time, as if someone wanted to attract the attention of one, and only one, person.
In an instant Darann was out of bed, her bare feet soundless on the cool slate floor. Wrapping a blackfur robe around herself, she made her way through the hallway into the anteroom, listening for a moment at the front door, but all was silent beyond. She waited, and then the sound was repeated, coming from somewhere near her kitchen.
For a moment she considered picking up some kind of weapon-one of Karkald’s hatchets hung near the door-but she immediately discarded the notion. She was unable to imagine this sound as some kind of threat. Quickly passing into the kitchen, she heard the scratching again, louder and closer, and she understood: someone was scratching at the delivery door, the iron hatch that led to the pillar’s central stairwell. The apartments all faced outward, overlooking the city with their high balconies, while the interior of the pillar was hollow, a dark stairwell.
Instantly she crossed to the portal and lifted the latch on the iron barrier. She heard a hiss of indrawn breath as she pulled it open, then recognized the stooped figure crouched in the shadowed alcove beyond.
“Hiyram!” she whispered. “How did you get out of the ghetto? And tell me, what do you want? Here, come in, quickly.”
The goblin scuttled past, ducking into a corner as she pulled the door shut as quietly as possible. “You here alone by yerself?” he asked, his voice rasping urgently.
“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Here, let me get you a cold drink-then tell me what’s the matter.”
Her hands trembled as she pulled the cork from a bottle and filled a mug with creamy ale. She handed the glass to the goblin and then, with sudden fear, took a long drink from the bottle herself. Hiyram noisily drained his mug and then looked at her with his wide, moist eyes shining in the nearly total darkness.
“D’you know dwarfmaid, Greta… she’s a pailslopper, for master of the palace.”
A pailslopper, Darann knew, was a scullery worker of the lowest class. They worked in inns and of course at the palace and for some of the loftier nobles. She couldn’t think of one that she knew by name. “This Greta… she works for the king, then?”
Hiyram shook his head. “Master of palace,” he repeated with a snort. “Not king…”
“Nayfal!” Darann guessed. “She works for Nayfal?”
The goblin shrugged, his ears flopping with the exaggerated gesture. “Hates Nayfal, but sees him lots. She nice person… like Lady Darann.”
The dwarfmaid reflected on the irony: she was flattered to be compared to the pailslopper who hated the esteemed Lord Nayfal. At the same time, her stomach tightened, and she began to fear Hiyram’s news.
“Greta comes to ghetto-told me secret, told to tell you.”
“What is it?” Darann’s voice was a taut hiss.
“Nayfal has plan… a trap… a trap for Lord Houseguard. He must change to Nayfal’s side, or bad thing will happen.”
“My father!” Darann felt a stab of fear. “When is this… this trap, to happen?”
“Must be soon,” the goblin said. “Greta said I had to tell you right away.”
The dwarfmaid felt a rush of gratitude followed by an ache of fear. “Rufus is going to see the king today. I have to stop him!”
“Good lady, do that-please!” urged the goblin.
But Darann barely heard; she was already racing to get dressed, trying to stem the trembling of her hands, and wondering if she would possibly be in time.
Karkald kicked his feet into the sand, tromping up the steep slope of the dune. He resented the wasted effort of his climbing as the loose grains collapsed under his weight. He estimated that, for each foot that he gained uphill, he slipped down three or four inches. Working as hard as he could, he was still frustrated by the amount of time it took him to reach his destination at the top of the sand pile.
Furthermore, he was still disoriented by the teleportation spell that had brought him here from Riven Deep. He avoided that magic whenever possible, but occasionally-such as now-it was required for haste. It always left him grumpy and irritable, with a sensation of prickling that lingered along his belly and chest for the better part of a day. Still, it had snatched him across a hundred miles in a moment of time, bringing him from the great canyon to this verdant coast. He wanted to rest, to sleep, but instead he was to be confronted by yet another vista of war.
When he finally arrived at the battery position, he leaned forward and braced his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. Even so, he was already inspecting the position out of the corner of his eye, and by the time he straightened and walked onward, he was mostly pleased with the disposition of the weapons.
“Karkald’s here, General Galluper!” called one of the elven gunners, and the big centaur turned from the forward lip of the dune to greet the dwarf.
“Ah, my good engineer,” said the horse-man. “I trust you will approve of my placements.”
“You know better than I how to shoot these things,” Karkald said, gesturing to the wheeled weapons, four in number, that had been dug into the soft sand. Each commanded a view and a field of fire over a great swath of the beach below.
That smooth strand was still clean, washed by waves of emerald seawater and trimmed with white foam, but it was impossible to look across that view and not see the menacing presence of the armada, a cloud darkening the sea to the limits of the horizon. Karkald was taken aback. Now that he was this close, the black ships seemed limitless in number and terrifyingly real in proximity. The bows were angled toward the shore, and the first wave- perhaps five miles out, certainly closing fast-advanced in a line that spanned the view from right to left.
He corrected himself: far to the left, in the direction of metal, he saw an array of white sails, triangular sheets of canvas marking the placement of some of Roland Boatwright’s fleet. There were precious few of them by comparison to the ships of the armada, but the dwarf was heartened by the sight of the flames and smoke that marked that end of the enemy line.
“The batteries on the boats are inflicting great damage on the death ships,” Gallupper said, as if reading his mind. “Many hundreds of the enemy have been destroyed this morning alone-and the killing yesterday, they said, amounted to nearly a thousand ships.”
“A thousand ships…” Karkald could hardly conceive of such numbers, especially when it was merely a fraction of the massive fleet that was still deployed before him. He looked along the crest of the dunes, where this battery was but one of a hundred or so, deployed with killing zones along a twenty-mile stretch of the shore. In that
