The severed hand broke into bits of stone upon the ground.
Red filled Corgar’s vision. The red of pain, of rage more dreadful than pain. He fell away from his opponent, clutching his mutilated arm, unwilling to believe what had happened though his whole body cried out with the agony of it. He felt the eyes of his goblin warriors watching from above. Even at this distance he felt the terror of defeat sweep through their ranks. They would never hold Gaheris now.
“You’ve lost, Corgar,” the Smallman said, and even as his body quaked, he raised his arms and pointed the blade at the goblin’s heaving chest. “You’ve lost. Will you die now?”
Although the shame of defeat was as keen as the pulse of pain rushing through his broken limb, Corgar was not yet ready to face the Final Water.
With a scream high and dreadful in his throat, he turned and ran for the gates, barking orders to his goblins. And they, too frightened at the sight of Halisa to spare a thought for the certain wrath of their queen, flooded down from the ramparts, poured out of the castle, climbed over the ruins they had instigated. The mortal slaves shouted insults and wept with the hope of liberation, with fear of false hope. They saw Corgar and his maimed arm pass through the gate; they saw his mouth open in an animal scream. And the next moment they saw the Smallman, the dwarf, the despised one, pursuing their foe with sword upraised. The great goblin fled from him to the shattered remains of the mausoleum.
The goblins dragged back the ruins of the door, opening the black mouth of the descending stairway. And they flooded back through even as the Smallman set upon them with the sword; and though some few turned to fight, those who did never saw the Wood Between or their homeland again. Corgar himself plunged first into the darkness and, for the time, his shame was lost in pain and wrath and vows of unreal vengeance.
In his hatred, he lost all memory of what beauty might have been.
Alistair and Leta approached the remains of the outer gate, and Alistair swore violently when he looked in and saw for the first time the destruction the goblins had wreaked upon his home. Leta saw only the Chronicler, strong in the midst of mighty terrors.
She whispered: “Not in vain the hope once borne.”
The goblins were still screaming, still running, when the Chronicler turned to the chained mortals and cut through the stone links, freeing them. Men and women both shouted and grasped what weapons they could, and though these were useless on goblin hides, they chased their enslavers and beat their backs and shoulders, however ineffectually, as they ran. Then mothers turned to find their children, men to find their wives. Friend sought out friend, and by the time the last of the goblins had fled into the dark, Gaheris, which had been silent, save for the noise of whips and ringing rock, was filled with the sound of tears and laughter and hundreds of upraised voices.
The Chronicler was lost to Leta’s vision. Alistair took her arm and plunged with her into the throng. They tripped on piles of rubble and broken chains, pressing their way through the haggard, laughing crowd. Alistair ran into a woman, and when she turned, he found himself face-to-face with Mintha.
“Mother!” he cried, letting go of Leta, who pressed on into the crowd. “Mother, you’re safe!” Alistair reached out to take her in his arms as he might comfort a child.
But Mintha’s gaze flickered across his features, and her eyes were glassy, as though she did not quite see what was right before her. She shook her head and ducked away, and soon she too was lost in the press. Alistair cried out and tried to follow her. His large frame could barely find a path through the crush of bodies. Suddenly he was quite alone in the crowd.
Leta, however, made her way quickly. She knew where she wished to go, and no one tried to stop her. At last she reached a clear place in the crowd where the gates of the inner courtyard had once stood. Ahead she saw the Chronicler.
He approached the dilapidated shack, the scrubber’s shed, unthought of, unseen, unworthy. The Chronicler stood at its door, which hung loosely upon ill-made hinges.
“Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman!” Leta cried.
The Chronicler, the sword of Etanun still high in his grasp, reached out and opened the door.
The mountains trembled.
The river churning below the stone roared. Its voice was the voice of all the rivers, of the Final Water, rushing across the worlds, across the arch of the heavens. The people of Gaheris turned as one and saw the House of Lights standing where it had always stood, though they had never before seen it. It towered above them, above the greatest heights that remained of the castle, and its doors, east and west, were wide open. Within shone a lantern suspended from massive red beams.