The gargoyle roared, throwing its head back, bellowing the blast of sound toward the dark sky. Now Miradel looked across the basin, the valley floor. Shandira was gone, and the monster was enraged. It bellowed again, face turned toward the sky, until that bestial visage lowered, the glowing eyes coming to rest upon the lone druid on the mountain shelf.
“It’s not real; there is no Karlath-Fayd!” Miradel gasped out the realization, then cried out in anguish. She understood everything in that instant-and chief among those realizations was the knowledge that she had gained enlightenment too late… too late to help Shandira, to help the people of Nayve… even too late to help herself.
The water spilled from the gash in the stone, pouring across the empty rock, trickling through its channel and spilling off the ledge. The gargoyle took a step forward, strangely silent now, and she was grateful for that, grateful that at least she could hear the deceptively peaceful noise of the stream now, in the last moments of her life.
The monster stared at her for what seemed like a long time, those red eyes flashing wickedly. Wings spread, it crouched, then sprang into the air, taking flight toward the druid on the lonely mountainside, alone at the end of the cosmos.
Darann regained consciousness to a sensation that she was still in the middle of an explosion of uncontrolled violence. Her body was trembling, and noise roared in her ears. She was numb over most of her body, mostly deafened, and had been battered so much that her teeth hurt. In fact, she was rather surprised to find out that she was still alive.
The walls of the great chute were passing in a blur, masked by the reality of impossible speed. She felt strangely weightless, an effect that Donnwell Earnwise had warned her to expect. How long had she sat in this chair? How far had she traveled? It was quite impossible to tell.
Then-miracle! She felt her tremendous speed begin to slow, though the missle still rose through the long tunnel in the Midrock. There was nothing to see-the shield of heavy steel at the head of the rocket masked any forward observation-but she was sure that, by now, she had passed through the blue magic barrier.
Only one question remained: would she reach Nayve alive?
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t think so. But let’s fish him out anyway. From the look of that wing, he’s a big one. Someone will want to know that he got drowned.”
Regillix Avatar felt an annoying tug on his neck, claws digging into his chin and jowls. But he lacked the strength even to utter a growl of displeasure. Instead, he submitted to the indignity of being dragged from the Cloudsea onto the rainbow brightness of the shore.
At least, his head and neck were dragged out of the water. It turned out that his rescuers lacked the strength to pull his whole, massive body out. Even so, he drew a ragged, choking breath, then exhaled a cloud of steam in relief.
“He’s alive, Daristal! Go tell your sire! We found a big dragon!”
“Don’t you recognize him, silly Cantrix? This is Regillix Avatar! He fell into the Hillswallower storm when we were just newts, when he went to look for Plarinal!”
“Well, you’re right, it is! You get your sire, and I will tell the angel Gabriel. Regillix Avatar has returned!”
Awfulbark stood at the crest of a hill, above a precipitous drop to the plains of brown grass. Jagged, irregular clumps of granite obstructed the smooth ground below, in the shadow of the Ringhills, but he could see around those outcrops and far across the landscape beyond. That land was covered, as far as he could see, by the creeping presence of the Deathlord’s horde.
The troll made his observations from the lip at the summit of a cliff, nearly a hundred feet above the great earthwork that his trolls had erected with such alacrity. From here he could see for miles along the wall in both directions. This was the left end of the barrier. For this stand, though-unlike at the Swansleep River-Natac had mixed the elves and trolls together. Instead of protecting one flank, Awfulbark’s warriors were now stationed across the whole length of the line, approximately one troll with every band of twenty or thirty elves. The top of the barrier was lined with these defenders, weapons ready, troops silently watching the approach of their enemy.
Beside the king stood a grizzled dwarf, one of the Seer veterans who had been brought to Nayve with Natac half a century earlier. He was a gunner, manning a shiny steel battery, and Awfulbark looked at the weapon with awe. The troll king had seen the lethal silver spheres fly from the powerful spring, exploding with white-hot fire among the enemy; now, he was glad that it was up here, backing up the defenders of the wall.
“Another half hour and they’ll be in range,” noted the dwarf laconically. “Superlong range, to be sure… might not hit the exact fellas I’m aiming at. But once they get that close, can’t hardly miss, y’ know?”
“I know,” Awfulbark observed solemnly. “I count…” he started to grunt a tally, concentrating, his gaze sweeping across the many ranks of dark warriors marching in a snake like column. “I count lots of ’em, with about a million spears in front.”
“Well, we’ll give ’em a good taste of fire and steel, eh?” The dwarf’s tone grew more somber as, like the troll, he studied the mass of darkness, stretching as far as they could see across the plain. “A taste, for starters anyway.”
“For start, and for finish,” Awfulbark concurred. He suspected-seeing that horde, he knew-that the finish would be an unhappy one. He really, really wanted to go away. But if elves could stand here, and dwarves, and even those few gnomes who had escaped from the beach, it made him feel somehow that the trolls should stay here, too.
And really, he argued to himself, where could they go that these ghost warriors wouldn’t follow?
“Good luck,” said the dwarf.
“Yes. Good luck for you, too,” the king replied, feeling somehow better to have shared the blessing. He turned to the more gentle rear slope of the hill, started to climb down. He would join his warriors on the wall, for, once more, it was time to fight.
The ghost warriors halted their advance and spent an entire day spreading out, forming a vast front more than five miles across, arrayed like a massive battering ram before the right center section of the wall. The huge phalanx of the Delver army and its iron golems were opposite the far right of the wall, but for now they held back, ten miles or more out on the plains.
Other formations of ghost warriors, each a massive army in its own right, broke off from the rear of the horde, maneuvering to the right and the left of the barrier. These warriors were not visible from the ramparts, but their progress was marked by columns of dust rising skyward. Natac estimated that it would be several days before they came into the fray, but he started making plans for that dire contingency. In the meantime, his faerie scouts would keep him apprised of the enemy positions.
For an hour after Lighten the great army stood still. Gradually over that time a sound of wailing arose, a mournful sigh of noise that, at first, was just a rustle in the subconscious. Minute by minute it swelled until it was a cry louder than the wind, penetrating into the very bones of the defenders. Trolls muttered superstitiously, while the elves looked to their companions in dismay.
The sound remained shrill, greater than the keen of a million locusts, as the horde of the Deathlord began to advance. They swept forward like a fog rolling from the distant sea. At first, there was no perception of individual beings in the vast swarm of darkness, but gradually specific leaders-centurians, generals, chieftains, and captains- came into view. Spear tips waved like fields of grass in the wind, and the pace of the advance picked up, a perceptible rush now.
The batteries opened up first, at a range of more than five hundred yards, the silver spheres sparkling in the sunlight as they flew through the air. They landed amid the attacking army with specks of white light that flared like stars, then quickly vanished, leaving smoke to mingle with the churning dust cloud. Next the archers added their missiles to the effort, thousands of arrows in each volley, deadly darts arcing like clouds from the hillside behind the wall, flying over the palisade and then plunging down with lethal force into the blanket of attackers spread out below.
The elves were arrayed along the top of that rampart, a single line of now-veteran warriors, ready to fight with spears and swords. Here and there a gangly troll loomed head and shoulders above the elven helmets. There were gnomes among the defenders, too, the survivors of the defeat on the beach. These Natac had formed into companies of twenty, armed them with crossbows, and deployed them in many places just behind the wall, as defense against another breakthrough.
There were also humans here, druids and warriors from all corners of the Seventh Circle: powerful monks, acrobatic ninja warriors, archers and spellcasters from Asia, tall and muscular Africans, men and woman who came
