Moments later the light grew bright, and he saw that Konnor and Aurand joined him. Both dwarves looked pale and shaken, but they brightened as Borand looked at them and tried to contort his face into a smile-though he was sure the expression became more of a grimace than anything else.
“A relief to see you move, brother,” said Aurand, squatting next to the injured climber. “You took a nasty hit, broke some ribs at least. We wondered about your neck, tell the truth.”
“Sprained but not broken,” Borand replied, ignoring the pain enough to wiggle his head back and forth. He looked at Konnor. “Thanks for the belay, my friend.”
“A good save it was,” Aurand noted. “The whole world started coming apart while you were falling. It’s a miracle you didn’t go all the way to the bottom.”
“What, and spare you louts the pleasure of carrying me down?” snorted the elder dwarf, drawing reluctant smiles from his two companions. “That is, if we can still find our way down. How much of the cliff fell away?”
“More than you’ll believe,” Konnor replied. “We were just having a look. Care to sit up and see for yourself?”
With great effort, and assistance from both of his fellows, Borand pulled himself into a sitting position. His back was against the rock face, and he looked out of the niche-it was too shallow to be a cave-and into the great gulf of the First Circle. Vast blackness yawned beyond.
“Funny… I thought we could see the wall from here,” he grunted, ignoring the pain that flared through his ribs. “Or did you move me farther along the cliff?”
“No, this is where you ended up on the rope,” Aurand explained. “And your memory is good. Before you fell, you could see the whole face of the circle from here.”
“What happened-did the quake knock it down?” Borand found it hard to imagine that such a vast section of the world’s edge could have fallen away, leaving the space he now observed.
“It fell in the quake, but it wasn’t solid. The wall we were looking at was only a shell, and when it went, we got a look into the space beyond.”
Something in the way Konnor said “space beyond” gave Borand a chill of discovery and dread. Grunting against the effort, he pushed himself farther outward, expanding his view. His companions obliged by turning their coolfyre beacons out, the light spilling far, not quite vanishing into the distance.
There, at the limits of his sight, he saw a facade of rock, and he quickly realized this was not a face of natural cliff. Instead, he saw lofty balconies, grand parapets, a score of stairways crossing back and forth and up and down, the surface newly revealed. Below, in the nearly lightless depths, he got a sense of broad, shadowy courtyards, and at least one place that looked like a vast, circular coliseum.
“A city?” he whispered, wonder and fear softening his voice. “A huge city?”
Konnor nodded. “It can only be one place.”
“Nightrock?” Now Borand felt the cold clamp of fear. The legendary capital of the Blind Ones had never been observed by Seer eyes. Now that they had come here, their lives were certainly forfeit. But at the same time, there was a sense of stillness and quietude to the place. Surely this was no hive of the Unmirrored!
“Indeed, it must be,” his brother said. “We could see a thousand buildings just in range of our lights, and who knows how many more in the lightless hive within.”
“But the Delvers? Surely they must have smelled us, or heard us… at the very least, one of their arcanes would sense us!”
“That’s the thing,” Konnor explained, maddeningly calm. “We have found the great city of our enemies, the threat that has kept our army bottled up in Axial for these last fifty years-”
“But-” Aurand couldn’t help finishing the explanation. “There are no Delvers there. The whole place has been abandoned!”
“Y OU may go in to see the king now, Lord Rufus,” said the palace attendant, offering the grizzled dwarf only the barest suggestion of a bow. “But he has many appointments today; beware of wasting his time.”
The elder dwarf stood straight and glared at the servant, who was a young fellow wearing armor of oiled leather with a short, double-bladed sword at his waist.
“Time was, a dwarf knew his place, and a king knew how to command his own schedule,” Rufus Houseguard commented in a tone of elaborate calm, making no move to step forward. At the same time, he held his eyes steady, allowing the contempt and frustration to burn forth. The attendant tried to match his look for a moment, then flushed and turned to open the door.
“Ah, Rufus-please, come forward, my old friend!” King Lightbringer was seated on his throne, and he sounded genuinely pleased to see the patriach of clan Houseguard. “Too much business these days, not enough chance for a pleasant chat.”
“I am at your service, sire,” Rufus said, striding forward and offering a deep bow.
At the same time, he noticed more of the changes that had been taking place in the court of the Seer Dwarf king. For one thing, there were no longer courtiers here, nor the ladies that had once made this throne room such a lively and welcoming place. Now there were only guards, wearing the ubiquitous leather shirts and short swords. Marshall Nayfal, the monarch’s senior adviser, stood to one side and made no attempt to conceal his displeasure at Lord Houseguard’s arrival. Only as he stood straight again did Rufus notice that another dwarf had been in audience, a balding, earnest-looking fellow in fine silk robes who was peering through wire-rimmed glasses at a ledger he held in his hands. He cleared his throat, obviously impatient to continue whatever he had been talking about before Rufus’s arrival.
The king, however, seemed to have different ideas. “How is your daughter?” he inquired. “Such a wonderful maid, she is. I would see her again, the next time you come.”
“She is well, sire, and I know she would be honored to accompany me.”
“Good…” King Lightbringer leaned back in his throne and closed his eyes. Rufus was shocked at the pallor of the monarch’s skin, the thin and stringy nature of his hair and beard. It was as if the ancient king, who had ruled Axial for centuries, was withering away before his eyes.
“Go ahead, Commisar Whitbeard,” Marshal Nayfal declared, speaking to the bespectacled visitor. “Please continue.”
That dwarf cleared his throat and cast Rufus a glance of no small annoyance before he again squinted at the page of numbers scrawled in his ledger. “I regret that the goblin demands remain as unreasonable as ever, Majesty,” he said. “No matter the food and fresh water we provide them-without requiring any labor in return, I might add-they keep insisting that our care is insufficient, that hunger is rampant in the goblin quarter.”
As the commissar continued his report, Rufus noticed a familiar face among the guards and nobles on the other side of the hall. Donnwell Earnwise, the royal engineer, gave Rufus a smile and a small wave, which the patriarch of clan Houseguard cheerfully returned. He wondered about subtly going over to say hello to his old friend when he noticed that Whitbeard seemed to have concluded his report.
The king sighed and winced; to Rufus it appeared that the news caused him physical pain. “The situation in our own granaries is still dire?” he said, making the remark a question.
“Indeed, Your Majesty.” It was Nayfal who answered. “The good citizens of Axial are as hungry as the goblins, to be sure. We are merely more stoic and know to avoid the unseemly whining of the lower race.”
“What do you think, Rufus?” said the king, suddenly sitting up, opening his eyes, and fixing the lord with a stern glare.
“I think, sire, that perhaps it may be time to expand our interests beyond this narrow margin around Axial,” replied Rufus Houseguard, speaking impulsively, sensing he had to make his point before Nayfal found a way to divert the monarch’s attention. “I note the presence of our esteemed Engineer Earnwise-and I recall there was some hope of using his device, the Worldlift, to penetrate the barrier that has arisen between our world and Nayve. I urge you to devote as many resources as possible to that task! If we can penetrate the barrier of blue magic, we already have the route to the Fourth Circle; the Rockshaft, as you know, extends from your palace here, through the Midrock, and all the way to Circle at Center.”
“As a matter of fact, I had just heard some rather encouraging reports on that very matter,” said the king, brightening visibly. “Isn’t that right, Donnwell?”
“Absolutely, sire,” proclaimed the famed scientist and inventor. He addressed Rufus. “I have been able to send a rocket projectile through the barrier. The key seems to be incredible velocity-enough to breach the magic shield that had rendered upward travel hitherto impossible. Of course, we are some ways short of sending an actual dwarf-the traveler’s survival, at this juncture, is far from assured. But nevertheless, it is progress.”
