a sense of honor and duty.
Nevertheless, the reality lingered in his mind as he mounted the dragon, and Regillix Avatar’s broad wings carried them both into the air: honor and duty, bravery and dedication, these were great things.
But they would not be enough.
Janitha reined in her pony at the brink of Riven Deep and looked across the wide canyon. She was just metalward of Sharnhome, where once the great bridge had stood. This was one of the narrowest places in the chasm that stretched for most of the way across Nayve, and she could just barely make out the monolithic shapes of the golems, the giants of iron that accompanied the Delver invasion of her homeland. Countless thousands of the eyeless dwarves were over there, too, she knew, even though they were too small to see at this distance.
The rest of her riders, the fierce cavalry of the Hyaccan elves, were nearby but remained out of sight behind a low rise just back from the rim of the canyon. She knew several were lying on the ground atop the elevation, worriedly watching their leader as she stood in mute challenge at the edge of Riven Deep. All of the elves were armed, and many would be mounted.
A dozen or so of the Hyac busied themselves making final adjustments to the intricate device that was the reason for Janitha’s bold posing. That mechanism had been prepared by Karkald, Seer dwarf and master engineer; if all went well, it would be put to its first test, here today. Janitha knew that Karkald, exiled from his native First Circle for the last fifty years, was a renowned weapon smith. Even so, she would not have termed his most recent invention a weapon. More of a trap, she mused… one that would allow the elves to wield their existing weapons with greater lethality than ever before.
At least, that was the idea. Growing impatient, she prodded her pony into a prancing trot along the precipitous rim of Riven Deep. The vast gulf of space was purpled by mist and shadow, fading into a featureless murk that, as always, gave no indication of a bottom. On the other side of the canyon, her enemy waited and watched. She raised her feathered lance high, waving it back and forth in a rhythmic taunt, a gesture that would be visible for miles.
At last she was rewarded by the keening shrieks, outrage building among the keen-eyed harpies who spotted her impertinent promenade. Some of the winged creatures were circling over the deep, but she soon discerned a great cloud of them rising like angry smoke above the opposite edge of the canyon. Like the mist in the chasm, they were visible as a background shade-in this case murky gray. But she knew the cloud was made up of thousands of individual and savage creatures.
“Good,” she murmured, her hand tightening around the smooth horn she wore at her side. “Come to me… and die!”
She tugged the reins, and her pony halted, alert and quivering, anticipating the next command. After half a century of battling harpies, however, Janitha had come to know their ways, particularly the reckless impatience that propelled them when their quarry was in sight and apparently helpless. She watched and waited as they swarmed closer, and gradually the cloud of darkness resolved itself into individual, dark-winged flyers. The outraged cawing grew to a cacophony, like a field full of insanely chattering cicadas, and she brandished her lance and cried her own challenge, a shout that somehow carried into the mass of noise.
The harpies dived close, black and gray feathered wings shiny in the full sunlight. Janitha waited until she could discern the grotesque expression upon the skeletal, leering face of the leader. Talons reached toward the elfwoman, while a few of the flyers-impatient in the extreme-spat their fiery bile, only to have the smoldering gobbets tumble into the deep, trailing plumes of black smoke.
Only then did Janitha move, nudging her pony with her knees. The animal spun about and immediately burst into a full gallop toward the notched boulders atop the ridge that she had earlier marked as her destination. The elfwoman ducked low on her mount’s neck, lance leveled beside her. She did not look back: she had planned her escape well, or she had waited too long; in either case, a glimpse of her approaching enemy was not going to affect her success one way or the other.
The ridge sloped upward, and the pony lowered his head, surging with steady acceleration up the hill, then bursting through the narrow gap between the two rocks. Janitha smelled the stench of bile and smoke as the ringing of harpy cries seemed to compress her ears, and she silently urged the steed into a last burst of speed, the shouts of her warriors a welcome embrace. Arrows sliced through the air as a score of archers shot down the closest of her pursuers. She saw the flare of torches, then the brighter flash of light as Karkald’s invention came into play.
Four rockets, their launchers evenly spaced along a line three hundred feet long, exploded upward, trailing plumes of fire and smoke, tugging the slender lines of a vast net behind. Arching high, crackling overhead with explosive speed as they dragged their webbed cargo across the sky, they tilted toward Riven Deep in unison. The net leaped upward and curled like some filmy, cosmic embrace. Finally the four fiery engines flamed out and the still-smoking rockets tumbled through the flock of harpies as they bore the end of the net downward.
Hundreds of the shrieking flyers thrashed and twisted as their momentum bore them into the mesh of silk. As the weight of the dead rockets plunged into Riven Deep, the net pulled countless harpies out of the air. The whole mass crashed to the ground in a flailing mass of wings, talons, and spitting, hateful faces. Some of the great flock of harpies were too high or too slow to get caught in the trap. Spooked by the sudden attack, many of them scattered. Others dived lower to attack and fell to the arrows of alert Hyaccan archers. Those caught in the net were already incinerating each other, so blind was their fury. They kicked and raised a furious cacophony, but they couldn’t get free nor could they raise their heads enough to direct their fiery sputum at the grimly advancing elves.
Janitha dismounted and advanced, sword in her hand, beside the closing ring of Hyac. Five minutes later, the last of the harpies had ceased its screaming.
“You want me to do that which I have never done-in the service of a goddess who profanes everything my life has meant? Surely you see that this is blasphemy, a desecration of my church and my Savior!”
Shandira glared at Miradel. The newly reborn druid was clad in a gown of white, now, and stood in the shade of the great Grove. She was tall, even statuesque, possessed of a dignity and pride that struck the elder druid as almost superhuman.
Miradel drew a breath and shook her head. “No one will make you do anything you do not wish to do. But you must understand that so much of what you learned during your life in the Seventh Circle is untrue. Mankind does not understand the reality of the cosmos or even guess at the existence of the first six Circles. You have been brought here as a reward for your labors and suffering upon Earth. You are a very special person; the goddess recognized that and bade me to bring you here. Think of Nayve as a place not so very different as the Christian heaven of which you were taught.”
“How dare you make such a comparison! You bring me here so that I can seduce a warrior from that world and bring him here as well? Why did you not just bring the warrior, then, and allow me to go on to a mortal death? Perhaps you are wrong. How do you know that I wouldn’t have gone to heaven, to a blessed rest with my immortal God?”
“Do you remember what I told you?” Miradel said, allowing her own tone to grow sharp. “I was born seven times on the Seventh Circle, each time to grow old and perish-sometimes violently, often suffering from hunger or great pain. There was neither heaven nor hell awaiting me, merely another birth, another chapter of life so that I could watch the extermination of my people. All that ended when the goddess brought me back to Nayve, in the year that much of your Earth numbers as 1864. This is real-this is your destiny, Shandira!”
“I, too, know about the extermination of people,” retorted the black woman. “I have watched the Arabs and the English, the Portuguese and Belgians and Germans and French overrun Africa and divide it into their private fiefdoms. My grandfather was carried into slavery when my mother was but an infant. She had to sell herself to gain enough money to feed her children. She sent me to the convent on Zanzibar before my thirteenth birthday so that I would not share her fate. The priests were kind to me, and the church gave me a home and a promise that became my life. And I was devoted to that life.”
“That devotion is part of your power! Think of your life as the good, the virtuous tale that it is!” Miradel pressed. “And know that not all acts done in the name of your god have been so benign. I have seen damage done by your church-I will tell you what was done to the Mayan people of Mexico, sometime, in the name of your pope and your god-but I also know that your faith is capable of goodness. It gave you a home and a purpose, and you did good works.” Her tone grew soft again. “I watched you, in the Tapestry, as you tended to the inhabitants of your city, when the plague swept through every street and alley. You eased the suffering of countless people, even saved lives against unthinkable dangers. Now you are called upon to do new works-but believe me, they are works of good
