The Delver didn’t know whether or not the Seer watchman and his woman had escaped the earthquake. He would have liked to take time to search for them-something about the woman, in particular, had touched him on a deep and visceral level. Not just her scent and her sound, but that taste of her cheek he had stolen, the tartness of sweat and fear, now tingled in his memory like a living thing.
“I seek you, lord.” The words came from a dozen paces away, and he recognized the voice of his chief lieutenant.
“Porutt-what have you found?”
The other Delver made his way over the rough ground to Zystyl, where he could speak in a pale whisper, and only his listener could discern the sound.
“We have identified a ridge of rock extending a long way from the island, negotiable by foot. My dwarves advanced more than a mile, and echoed another similar distance.”
“Very well. How many of our regiment survived?”
“More than two hundred here. There has been no word from any of the other regiments.”
“Of course not-but we shall not assume they have perished. Use the horns, and we will commence the march.”
“Yes, lord!”
“And Porutt, one more thing.”
“Lord?”
“Let the men know I’m in the mood to toy with a captive… female, preferably. There will be a reward for anyone who can provide me with a little entertainment.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Zystyl heard the sly smile in Porutt’s reply, and knew that his lieutenant would claim a portion of that reward. No matter… a good commander knew how to see to the morale of all his troops.
He started after Porutt, anxious to explore the dry route that would lead them away from here, and perhaps bring them closer to a successful attack against the Seers. At the same time, a part of his memory lingered above, remembering the taste and the terror of a victim who had escaped.
K arkald watched the Delvers march away, a long file snaking into the darkness of the Underworld. They followed the crest of a newly formed ridge that rose like a serpent’s spine from the swirling water. The Seer had pivoted the lone surviving beacon, and now used the illumination to observe the column moving in the general direction of Axial.
Except that, to all appearances, that city no longer existed.
Numerous cuts and bruises wrapped his body in a cocoon of pain, but Karkald forced himself to move. He climbed down from the lens of the beacon to find Darann still staring into the distance, as if she willed some glimmer of light to sparkle on the dark horizon. But, as it had been since they observed the city’s destruction, there was not a single glint of illumination, or hope.
The watchman turned away, fearing that the heaviness of his heart would reflect in his eyes. Some instinct told him that he had to be very strong now, that he and Darann would need all of his abilities, every ounce of his confidence, in order to have any chance at survival. Despite the agony that ripped his back, that burned in his legs, he could not yield to his weakness.
Even with the departure of so many invaders, Zystyl had left several dozen of his warriors on the island of the watch station, including many waiting on the portico or hiding in the nooks and crannies nearby. Clearly, whatever part of the den hadn’t been destroyed remained unattainable to the two Seers.
Again Karkald found himself looking at the departing Delvers, amazed that so many of them had survived such rampant destruction. Several of the Blind Ones bore long, golden trumpets, and periodically raised them to broadcast a blast of sound through the First Circle. This time, a few seconds after they brayed another call, an answering blast rang through from the distant darkness. Moments later still another sounded, making it clear that the Delvers were all around them.
“Is there something strange about the water?” Darann asked softly. She had turned her attention to the Darksea below them. “Should it be so far away?”
Karkald was about to answer that the island’s shoreline had expanded, but when he looked again he saw that she was right-the water level was very low. It seemed that a patch of the surface farther out spiraled like a whirlpool. He limped up to realign the beacon, and there was the proof, clear in the light of coolfyre.
“The Darksea,” he whispered, awe and caution combining to mute his voice. “It’s draining away!”
Over the next half hour more and more of the sea bottom came into view. He passed the beam back and forth, and though the light reflected from many pools and lakes, it was obvious that most of what had once been the Darksea was now dry land. Even more alarming, his beacon had picked up numerous companies of Delvers, all using the trumpets to coordinate a gathering on a low rise a few miles away.
“It’s an army,” he breathed softly. “This was the start of a full-scale invasion!”
“What are we going to do?” Darann asked. The dwarfwoman’s voice was calm, but he supposed that she was still numb from the shock. At least she remembered to speak in a whisper, since many Delvers remained only a hundred feet below them.
“We can’t go down there.” Karkald stated the obvious.
“Then we go up, right?” she replied.
He nodded. It was, of course, the only option, but at the same time it made for a daunting prospect.
“We’ll have to climb for a mile or more,” he warned. “But with luck, we’ll find some caves overhead, some means of getting”-he realized with a stab of grief that he didn’t even know where they were going-“away from here,” he concluded, knowing from the pain in her eyes that Darann had experienced the same realization.
“How far?” she asked, her voice even more hushed than her usual whisper.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, panicked at this failure of knowledge. He tried to think quickly. “The beacons have a range of a few miles, and when they’re tilted upward they can illuminate the ceiling… That puts it two miles away, perhaps.”
“Can you climb that high?”
“It’s been done before,” Karkald replied, knowing that he was avoiding her question.
“And then what?” Darann asked, her bright eyes shining in the nearly pitch darkness.
He felt rising exasperation and worked hard to stay calm. “There are lots of caves up there, cracks in the ceiling leading up, into the midrock. There’ll be fungus there, and bats… maybe even pools of fish!” Karkald’s mind veered away from the dangers, the savage wyslets that prowled in the darkness and preyed on isolated dwarves, the vast stretches of bare rock with no food or water. Or the most horrible prospect of alclass="underline" that they would be blocked by a thousand feet of bare, seamless rock. Such a barrier would end their hopes as certainly as any Delver blade or wyslet fang.
“The midrock.” Darann blinked, whispering slowly. “How thick is it?”
Karkald almost snorted his irritation. “How should I know?”
By the sight of her eyes he knew she was shaking her head. “You don’t understand… to Nayve. How far is it to the Fourth Circle?”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever measured it,” he replied, amazed at the audacity implied by her question. “Dwarves have made it that far in the past-though not, perhaps, since we got the coolfyre.”
“Well, maybe it’s time some dwarves tried to go there again!”
“All the way to Nayve? What makes you think we could do it?”
“What choice do we have?” Darann spat back at him. “Stay here, and starve? Go down there, and get killed by Delvers?”
“We-we won’t starve, at least not right away,” Karkald said, even as his mind, unwillingly, started to grapple with her suggestion. He gestured along a narrow ledge leading away from their perch, a path toward a barely visible crack in the rocky face. “I stored some supplies in there a half dozen intervals ago, in case I got involved in a project up on the cliff and had to spend a few cycles up here.”