section of the hills, and Jubal had the elves mark off the proposed excavation with flags and pickets.
“Dig it deep enough so that the bastards will fall into the ditch,” he ordered, demonstrating at the barrier of the sharp-walled trench. Then he marked out the sample of the wall, the obstacle the enemy would have to attack as soon as they crawled through the ditch. “And make this high enough and steep enough that the bastards will roll right back down into the ditch again!”
The Argentian elves arrived as the work was beginning, and both Tamarwind and Kelland set their warriors to helping. For the most part the elves were mere bystanders, however, as the trolls attacked the ground with relentless chopping pickaxes, then scooped away the loose rubble with a churning of shovels. Jubal watched as, minute by minute, the long ditch grew deeper, the matching wall climbing higher above the rugged slope.
Within another forty-eight hours, the fringe of the rocky rise was scoured by a trench and adjacent breastwork some thirty miles in length. Each hilltop along that winding path had been turned into a palisade in its own right, surrounded by an earthen wall, with a flat platform excavated as a mount for one of Gallupper’s batteries. Unfortunately, the line was so long that not every hilltop could be defended with one of the lethal guns, and even those thus equipped had but one. That weapon would have to be wheeled into position for shooting forward or toward either flank.
Jubal’s troops were deployed thinly along that long line, but he was pleased that so much of the approach could be covered. As he strode along the crest of the wall he was reminded of a great fortification on Earth-he had learned about it, seen pictures in a book, when he had been a child in Virginia. It was a wall thousands of miles long, protecting the entire northern border of China; it was not hard to imagine that, given a little more time, Awfulbark’s trolls would be able to create a barrier of similar extent.
This was a useful realization, for he knew that the hills presented a more than four-hundred-mile circumference around the entire span of Circle at Center and its great lake. If the ghost warriors moved to one side or the other, then the defenders would have to follow the same course. Fortunately, many parts of the range were precipitous and jagged, with lots of sheer cliffs and deep gorges. He knew that those were places no army would try to traverse.
Other places were more vulnerable, however, and if the enemy changed the direction of its advance, he and Natac would simply have to move their army to one side or the other to continue to block the approach to the city. It was a tactic eerily similar to that employed by Robert E. Lee in his defense of Richmond. Jubal tried not to dwell on the fact that, for the Army of Northern Virginia, these maneuvers had eventually, perhaps inevitably, resulted in defeat.
For the first day the scouts reported that the attackers were coming across the plain like a flood, a great dark stain across the ground. The ghost warriors were loosely formed into columns, but each of these was a mile or more across, composed of a seemingly endless number of plodding, purposeful killers. The dust raised by these massive formations formed a self-sustaining cloud in the sky, and by Lighten of the second day this murk was visibly approaching the Ringhills, an ominous storm.
As that day progressed and the trolls and elves and the few surviving gnomes labored to deepen the ditch and raise the dirt wall of their immense palisade, the columns themselves came into view. From his vantage on a high hilltop Jubal thought they looked like snakes, great black predators, reptilian in nature, slithering closer and closer to the Ringhills and the Center of Everything.
Gradually, toward sunset of that day, another force became visible, marching from the direction of Riven Deep. These were the Delvers, the general knew. As they came closer, he could begin to make out the gigantic iron golems striding among their number. If all remained as it was, the dwarves would fall upon the far right flank of his earthwork barrier, while the ghost warriors would come up against the center and the left.
Near the Hour of Darken the Hyaccan elves rode forward in a great raid, harassing one of the columns with a shower of lethal arrows. As dusk closed around the massive formation, the elves turned their nimble ponies and scampered away. None of the riders was wounded, but neither did their attack seem to inflict any perceptible delay upon the great column.
The night’s approaching darkness seemed exceptionally complete. The ghost warriors built no campfires nor fires of any kind, so only the camp of the Delvers was visible from the heights. And even that small portion of the attacking army seemed to kindle a million fires, blazes winking like stars across a great swath of the plain.
Finally Jubal went to the high hill crest near the very center of the line, the elevation he had taken to calling Hill Number One. There was a pool of water there, and-as they did every Darken and Lighten-a trio of druids began to spin the water. This was to allow teleportation from Circle at Center or elsewhere. Idly the Virginian watched the scene, half expecting the twinkling lights to indicate that someone was arriving magically.
When nightfall passed with nothing happening, he stepped to the edge of the parapet and looked out over the plain, trying to hide his concern. But he couldn’t help wondering:
When would Natac return?
“I think this has a very good chance of working!” Donnwell Earnwise said. “Better than fifty percent, for sure.”
“That’s not good enough!” Borand said to the engineer before turning to his sister. “This is crazy; I forbid you to go!”
Aurand, standing beside his brother, simply laughed. “Haven’t you learned anything about our sister?” he asked. “What makes you think you can forbid her to do anything, once she’s made up her mind?”
Darann looked at her brothers with affection, then turned to King Lightbringer, who stood with Konnor almost diffidently, a little way back from the dwarves of clan Houseguard.
“Truly, my dear,” said the monarch of the Seer dwarves, “If you wait a little while, we can run some additional tests, try to increase the chances of success. The Worldlift… well, it is a good idea in theory, and certainly it can be made to work-eventually. But we really don’t know, not yet, anyway.”
“I have faith in Uncle Donnwell,” she said, winking at the engineer. “And I have waited fifty years to find out what happened to my husband. I don’t plan to wait another interval longer, not one!”
“Very well,” said the king. He turned to the engineer. ‘ ’You have my permission.”
“Splendid!” declared Donnwell, scratching his beard, then peering through his thick glasses at the blueprint spread out on the stone table. “Ah, yes-there is a blast radius-the rest of you had best withdraw behind the iron door.”
“Blast?” Borand said. “What about my sister? You’re going to blast her?”
“Yes, that’s precisely the point,” declared the engineer, blinking in confusion.
“Why doesn’t she have to get behind the iron door?”
“Dear me, I thought you understood the point of the Worldlift. You see, the cage is powered by a rocket. When I ignite this fuse, the fuel explodes, coming out the bottom here in a great rush of heat and smoke. It is the inverse of that force, in fact, that propels the rocket, and the passenger, upward. By the time they reach the summit of the First Circle, they will be going so fast that, theoretically, they will penetrate the barrier of blue magic. Within a matter of hours she will find herself in the upper reaches of the Midrock, safely on her way to Nayve.
“You recall, of course, that this chute is a straight route all the way to the Fourth Circle, right to the Center of Everything, in fact. It was bored out two centuries ago and used for trade-cargo hauling up and down-until the barrier of blue magic put a stop to that.”
“Theoretically? Upper reaches of the Midrock?” Borand was still fretful. “I just don’t like the sound of this. I think I should go instead.”
“In the future, good lad, we shall all go, but this prototype, I tried to explain, has but the capacity for a single passenger.”
“And that passenger is me!” Darann said. “Now, will you all stand back and let Uncle Donnwell do his work?”
They did as she requested, her brothers reluctantly and Konnor, too, holding back. He took her hand and spoke seriously. “I… I hope you find him,” he said. “And I hope he knows how much you care, how much he means to you.”
“Thank you, my friend… for everything,” she said.
Next she stepped through a low hatch into a circular metal room with a single chair-a chair with its back on the floor, oriented so that one who sat in it faced the ceiling. Donnwell fussed over an array of straps and buckles, taking care that she was properly fastened in.
“This shield over your head,” he explained, “is solid steel, two inches thick. It should deflect any obstructions
