picked up the heavy barrel as if it was nothing more than a full tankard of ale. Quickly he placed it against the centaur’s flank, strapping it to the harness and then holding it while Jubal and Tamarwind lifted a second keg and suspended it on the opposite side of Galluper’s pack.
The rest of the casks were filled by then and quickly strapped into place.
“Above!” cried the centaur suddenly. He leaned back and launched an arrow into the sky as several dirty white shapes winged from the darkness. More and more harpies swept downward, blocking out the stars as they wheeled overhead. “The rest’ll dive any second now!” warned Galluper.
“There,” said Jubal, smacking the last keg as Tamarwind lashed it into place.
“Here they come!” cried Rawknuckle, lifting his axe and snarling into the sky. Dozens of harpies, perhaps a hundred or more, plunged downward, shrieking hateful cries, gurgling as they prepared to spit their fiery sputum. Jubal took a shot, watched the dart disappear into the night as a haze of brightness, like a circle of fireflies, suddenly sparkled around them. This was magic at work, but it seemed to inspire the harpies to press home the attack with increased savagery and desperation.
Fire glared and spattered above as the harpies, sensing their prey’s escape, spat their fireballs. But then Jubal felt the magic take hold, the powerful spell seeming to grab him by the guts and catapult him and his companions through space.
And then the harpies were gone, and he was staring up at the silver loom of the Goddess Worldweaver, rising gleaming and proud into the night above Circle at Center.
T HEY called themselves by a bewildering array of names: regiments and legions, divisions and brigades, corps and armies, and impis and battalions. They were organized into columns and lines and companies, commanded by centurions and captains and consuls and colonels. For centuries they had marched to battle on foot or ridden horses and sailing vessels. More recently, on the Seventh Circle, they were borne by trains and trucks, by steamships, and even, occasionally, by frail, sputtering flying machines. They fought with swords, with muskets and carbines and machine guns and cannons. They laughed and cursed and shouted and cried.
But mostly, they died.
Miradel had been watching them die for a long time. For years she had spent much of her time in the temple at the Center of Everything, in this sacred chamber. Here she studied the Tapestry of the Worldweaver, observing the great saga of life and violence in all the worlds of the cosmos. Mostly, her studies had focused on the Seventh Circle, the world called Earth. Long ago, many hundreds of years ago, she had found the man she loved by studying the Tapestry, picking Natac’s thread from the war-torn land that was now called Mexico.
More frequently, however, her research brought only a sense of dismay. She had watched the fate of Natac’s homeland as Cortes and his conquistadores had brought those peoples to their knees. She had borne witness to other great wars, watched Napoleon march upon Moscow, then beheld the horrors of the American Civil War in excruciating detail. At the time she had thought that mankind’s capacity for self-inflicted horror had reached its zenith. But now, in the muddy fields of Flanders and France, she saw an even greater holocaust taking place… and there was no end to the carnage in sight.
“A half a million men killed on the Somme… and the same number slain at Verdun, not a hundred miles away. This is a bloody year, indeed.” The words, the familiar sense of the calm and detached observer, came from behind her.
Miradel sighed and looked up as the goddess herself came into the room. The immortal weaver brought a sense of lightness with her, such that the druid could see her even though the only source of illumination in the dark viewing chamber was a small candle.
“And they all go to the death ships, swelling the fleet of Karlath-Fayd,” Miradel acknowledged. “But how long can it last? Will his numbers just continue to grow until they darken the seas?”
“I fear we shall soon learn the answer.” The goddess frowned, lines of care etched into her cheeks and chin. She looked to be a stout human woman of unusual height, sturdy and square, with graying hair pulled back into a tight bun. She had a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses that she wore occasionally, and now she took these off and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“I have selected more druids, another hundred, from the Seventh Circle. The Ceremony of Arrival will occur at tomorrow’s Darken.”
“All female?” Miradel didn’t know why she asked the question-she knew the answer even before the goddess nodded serenely.
“With the waters that just arrived, we may be able to retrieve another sixty or seventy warriors.”
Miradel was silent, feeling strangely melancholy, and the goddess concluded her thought. “We shall need them all, and very soon.”
“How do you know… and what do you think we will learn?” The druid asked, frightened by the resigned acceptance she detected in this being of such great wisdom and power.
“You have only to look,” replied the Worldweaver, gesturing to the candle, the tiny tufts of wool that were nearby, neatly arrayed on the table.
Hesitantly Miradel took up some of the threads, allowed them to drop into the flame. Her eyes were on the white-washed wall of the room, where now was displayed the image of the Deathlord’s armada, hundreds upon hundreds of dark ships. She took a moment to scan the skies, seeking the familiar image of her lover and his proud, draconic steed, but there was no sign of him. Instead, the fleet drew all of her attention. The steaming and polluted wakes, the marks of tortured water left by each hull as it passed, were hooked now, unusually curved. Instantly the druid realized that the entire fleet was changing course, each ship making a wide, precise turn to port.
She drew back from the image. The goddess was proved right: the fleet, for the first time in sixty years, had made a dramatic change in course. The new bearing was shown as the shoreline came into view, the verdant fields and forests of Nayve.
The fleet of the Deathlord was making toward that shore. At last, after so many years of circling the Worldsea, the legions of the dead were advancing toward war, toward Nayve…
Toward the Center of Everything.
T HE first thing Awfulbark did every morning when he woke up was to reach for his sword. Typically he did this as soon as first consciousness glimmered, before he was fully awake. Since he kept the blade razor sharp, this practice had resulted in numerous stabs and cuts to himself and his wife. On three occasions, in fact, he had cut his right foot off and then spent the next hour cursing as the limb painfully grew back.
But such was his pride in the gleaming steel weapon, a gift from General Natac himself, that the king of the trolls could not bear to have it out of his grasp. It was his most treasured possession.
Of course, it was his only possession as well. Really, it was the only possession among the whole tribe of forest trolls, the thousands of them living under Awfulbark’s wise and beneficent leadership. They were exiled, in a fashion, for their ancestral home lay across Riven Deep. They had fled that home, an extensive forest of ancient oaks, when they had been attacked by harpies and dark dwarves from circles beyond Nayve. Their king had led them across Riven Deep on the bridge that once stood at Sharnhome, where they had joined humans and elves in the defense of the Fourth Circle. When the bridge had fallen, they had been stranded.
Though the humans and the elves maintained their diligence-the dark dwarves and harpies were still present and abundant across the gorge-the trolls had grown bored with the war within a few months after the battle at the bridge. Awfulbark had led them inland, and they had settled in another forest of ancient oaks interspersed with numerous apple and cherry groves. Many of the trolls spoke wistfully of happy times in their ancient capital city, Udderthud, but in truth Awfulbark understood that living in the New Forest was easier, offering better weather and much more abundant food, than existence in Udderthud had ever been.
So it was that the king of the trolls was a little bit fat and was feeling very lazy when he took up his sword and ambled through the tangled paths of his domain. He left his wife, Roodcleaver, snoozing under the widespread branches of the oak they had claimed as the royal abode. Her easy snores comforted him, for they reminded him that she was well fed and thus content.
He stopped to speak with several of his subjects and watched a few youngsters play vigorously at the timeless game called Squash the Raccoon. The object of the game’s attention proved quite vigorous and would have escaped back to the wilds, but for the keen aim of a young troll’s stone.
“Stones good,” the king remarked, drawing a beaming smile to the youngster’s toothy gash of a face. “But sword better. Remember that!” He flashed the blade and instantly-despite the fact that it had been years since he had amputated a child’s limb-all the young trolls disappeared.
