warrior was pushed farther back. Karkald made a rush for the loom, but a gale of air curled into a fist and smashed him all the way to the door of the chamber. Natac stumbled to his knees, then rose up again, lunging to take Miradel’s arm as she nearly tumbled into a widening crack in the floor.
All of them were shoved inexorably toward the door, Belynda flying like a rag doll after Karkald, while Natac clutched Miradel’s hand as they staggered along like tumbleweeds in a whirlwind. In another instant they, too, were bashed against the door, which flew open and sent them sprawling on the floor in the anteroom.
The acolytes had fled, but the goddess was not going to give those who had offended her that luxury. She stalked through the door after them, stood like an avenging beast over their sprawled bodies. She seemed to have grown-or else the humans were shrinking. Natac sensed that she had withheld her true power in the sanctum, undoubtedly because she did not want to risk her treasured fabric. Now she was outside of that room, with the iron doors of the Rockshaft forming a dark barrier behind her as she raised her hands for a final, lethal blast.
The explosion came in a cloud of dust and smoke. Natac choked, surprised that he was still alive-and astonished to see that the goddess had been smashed forward to lie on her face. The heavy iron door of the Rockshaft had been blasted from its hinges, falling forward to stun and trap her. She groaned, pushed upward, and a ton of metal wobbled on her back and shoulders.
“She’s down-go-cut the threads!” cried Miradel, slapping Natac on the shoulder. “It’s our only chance.”
In that instant Natac sprinted forward, through the door into the inner sanctum, racing forward and chopping in the same motion. He brought his keen blade through the colorful fabric as it spun off the loom. The Tapestry sliced away with no more resistance than he might have gotten from a spiderweb.
“No!” screamed the goddess, pushing mightily, rising upward to shuck away the heavy iron slab. “You have doomed this perfect place!”
She groped her way back to the loom. The Worldweaver sobbed as she clutched at the trailing threads, which already seemed to be evaporating. Natac stood behind her with his sword raised, but he held his blow, not yet ready to strike her with the weapon. No longer did she terrorize or awe him. Instead, he felt numb and strangely regretful.
But the damage had already been done. They felt the rumbling through the soles of their feet, saw it in the cracks that appeared in the marble floor, gaps that twisted and snaked up the walls. The goddess collapsed, sobbing, taking the broken strands in her fingers as if she would tie them all together again. The Tapestry whirled off the wall, torn like it had been blown apart by a cyclone, trailing threads lashing through the air with whipcrack force.
Karkald pushed through the wreckage of the mouth of the Rockshaft, where smoke billowed out the gaping doorway. Something was there, a blunt object emitting sulfurous smoke. It was that object, Natac realized, that had blasted off the long-sealed doors over the shaft.
A crack appeared in the shell of the mysterious missile, a door opening to reveal a small compartment. A figure moved there, a stout dwarfwoman struggling out of restraining straps. Coughing and limping, she lifted herself free and stumbled into the anteroom.
“Darann? Is that you?” Karkald stammered in disbelief.
“Karkald!” It was the dwarfmaid, shaken and covered with soot, rushing toward her husband. With a sob he collected his wife in his arms. “I knew I would find you here! I knew it!” she cried.
“Run!” urged Miradel, standing over the loom and the Worldweaver, gesturing toward the door.
“Come with me!” Natac demanded. The druid looked at the Worldweaver, anguish etched upon her face, and then she turned and raced beside the warrior toward the lofty door leading to the exterior garden. They ran into sunlight and clean air, kept running until they had to pause and gasp for breath.
“Look,” Miradel said, her voice hushed.
The Worldweaver’s Loom glowed like a magical light. Sparks rained downward from the tall shape, and electrical bolts of power blasted into the sky like lightning generated from this massive metal pole. Thunder crackled, nearly crushing their eardrums, and the scent of ozone was acrid in the air. The ground heaved and buckled underfoot, while the waters in the lake and the lagoon churned and frothed. The air was strangely still in the midst of this chaos, as if the world of Nayve held its breath.
“It’s going to fall,” whispered Natac.
And then, slowly, the silver spire of the Goddess Worldweaver began to sway. All of them ran again, as fast as they could, panic lending wings until they were far away across the parkland. Here they turned to watch in horror and awe. The lofty tower toppled slowly at first, leaning, then plunging, breaking apart in the air to slam downward, splintering into an explosion of light, casting sparks toward the sky in an explosion of blue magic.
H E had fought from Flanders to the Metal Coast, battled across the Swansleep River and marched over the dusty plains of Nayve. He had assaulted the palisade at the Ringhills, wounded again, but he had prevailed as, once more, the attack carried the enemy away before him. He even survived the aerial onslaught of the dragons, like his fellows feeling no fear as the monstrous serpents soared overhead, spewing fire and rending with their mighty claws.
He was grievously tired yet compelled to advance. He knew that there was another battle before him, another war after that… He had to go on. For this was his existence, his life, his being.
Until there was an explosion, a wave of blue magic that penetrated to his core. And in that instant he was released, became lighter than air, rising away from Nayve, from everywhere… He was by himself, and he was one with everything.
He was free.
“How did you know… about the goddess, and the Tapestry?” Natac asked, surveying the damage wrought by the falling spire. It had taken out much of the temple garden, with the top splashing down in the sacred lagoon. Shards of metal jutted upward like silver eggshells, jarringly delicate and fragile now that the power of the goddess had dissipated.
“When I saw that Karlath-Fayd was nothing at all, no more than a pair of fiery slits in the bedrock of the Fifth Circle, I saw the truth,” Miradel replied. “There was no deity but the Goddess Worldweaver, and so all of this-the wars, the dying, the destruction-these were things she spun on her loom, simply to keep herself amused. As she grew more and more bored, her wars became more and more violent and destructive.”
“She caused the war?” Natac asked in astonishment. “Mustered the ghost warriors, brought the Delvers from the First Circle, created the Worldfall? That was the Worldweaver’s doing?”
“Yes. And with her passing, so go the ghost warriors… and the magic that fueled our power and theirs. I can sense it already. Nayve is mundane now, like the Earth.”
“But why did she do this? Bring such pain and devastation?”
“I think… I think she was simply bored. And I see that we meant nothing to her, nothing at all. All of us- humans, elves, dwarves, trolls-we were simply game pieces that she moved about the Six Circles.”
“And our world… the Seventh?” wondered Natac.
“Perhaps she was inspired by the wars of Earth; I don’t know. I feel certain life will go on there, the normal cycle of birth and death. Our world was never magical, you remember, so it will not heed the passing of magic from Nayve or anywhere else. But outside of the Seventh Circle, the villainy in the cosmos was her own.”
“But cutting the Tapestry… that broke her power? And you knew this?”
“Well,” the druid admitted, “that was a lucky guess.”
Darann and Karkald were nearby, probing through the wreckage of the loom. They hadn’t ceased holding hands since they had emerged from the doomed temple. Stopping only for a long embrace, they ambled serenely on.
“There’s a story,” Natac said with a dry laugh, smiling at the dwarven couple. “I can’t wait to talk to Darann.”
He and Miradel, holding hands themselves, started over to their old friends.
“It’ll take some digging,” Karkald was explaining, “but we’ll get the upper end of the Rockshaft opened again. This Worldlift that Donnwell Earnwise created-it really worked! Rocket power, traveling between worlds! We’ll get the bugs out, and then people can go back and forth between the First and Fourth Circles again!”
“More than that, we can do what we please on these and the other worlds,” Miradel declared. “There will be no more barriers of magic, not blue nor any other color. Nothing beyond the constraints of our own hearts…”
