His back ached, doubtless because the ax slung across his shoulders had been hammering against it.

  The ax!

  He whirled about so that now he was on his chest, scraping along the rocks and dirt that hurtled beneath him. Though his entire body rattled with the mountain’s furious shaking, he reached behind his back and firmly gripped the handle of the ax. With the greatest effort he had ever made, he pulled the ax from its harness. Then, with an even greater effort, he swung the ax forward.

  The ax bounced away from the mountainside and almost flew out of Kwasin’s hand. He gripped it tighter and, crying out for Kho to give him strength, again thrust the ax at the mountain’s rocky face. Twice more he repeated the motion, each time thinking that the ax would tear loose from his grasp. But he did not let it go. If he did, he knew he would be dead.

  Then, just as he looked down and saw nothing but empty air yawning below him, he struck the ax at the black rock with such force that the weapon’s iron head shattered. A large shard pierced his shoulder, while other glittering splinters of iron shot out past him into the air. And yet Kwasin no longer fell. Part of the ax must not have broken. Whatever remained of its iron head had impaled itself in the rock.

  He was dangling above a precipice that dropped five hundred feet to the sea. Hanging on to the leather thong attached to the handle of the ax, he twirled about in the air as mud and water rained down upon him. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the flood ceased, and as he swung about he saw a sight that almost made him lose his hold.

  Like some mighty leviathan of the ocean, the island of Khokarsa was rising up out of the waters of the Kemu. But the island was now two. It had split down the center, and its two halves, east and west, were toppling to either side, sinking into the sea. All about the island the sea churned violently, whirling in a counterclockwise direction as if a Brobdingnagian sinkhole had opened up deep beneath the waters. Then the island was gone, swallowed by the raging sea.

  Kwasin bellowed with terror. Kho was at last fulfilling her promise and destroying the land! What hope did he have, a mere mortal, against such inconceivable power? Had his entire life been but a dream in the mind of the Goddess?

  Now his terror turned to rage. Rage that his destiny, and that of all the land, had come to this. That Kho would smite down the whole world in Her righteous anger.

  As Kwasin hung there, looking out over the edge of the broken mountainside at the end of his world, a golden-crowned fish-eagle glided directly in front of him. He watched it soar to his right—the good luck side—drawing his attention to something he had not noticed while engrossed in the horrifying events transpiring upon the sea. Fifteen feet above him to his right, jutting out over the broad, five-hundred-foot drop to the boulder-strewn shoreline below, was a narrow, triangular-shaped wedge of rock. Beyond the overhang, he could see a broad and apparently stable tableland.

  The mountain continued its violent quavering as Kwasin dangled from his precarious position. He knew that at any moment the head of the ax might shake loose from the rock and plummet him to his death.

  He looked up at the narrow shelf of rock to his right. To make it to the ledge, he would have to swing twenty feet across the chasm from where he hung. But he would also have to hurl himself fifteen feet upward. It was an impossible feat, one which even a hero of the Great Games would never dare to attempt. But then Kwasin had never been one to compare himself to others. And he could not go on clinging to the ax forever. Not when the mountain thundered its rage all about him.

  Kwasin began rocking back and forth above the yawning chasm, his entire being screaming out with the will to live. If he died, then all his life would be meaningless. And that was a concession he was not willing to yield even to Kho Herself. Somehow, somehow he would achieve the impossible.

  Roaring, Kwasin swung out into the abyss.

  Epilogue

  Seasons passed. The great stone walls, gilt domes, and stately minarets of the outpost city lay cracked and tumbled in the midst of the encroaching jungle. The people waited, pulling together their shattered lives as best they could. Still, many thousands died from the pestilence and famine which followed the unparalleled devastation that was Kho’s wrath. Some said that if things kept going the way they were, Sisisken would soon have to close her towering gates. The grim ruler of the underworld would not have enough room in her dark house to board all the dead.

  But though the citizens waited, not a single ship sailed into port. No sail had been sighted upon the sea since the foundations of the world rattled with the fury of the Goddess.

  And so it was that on the first moon day of the Year of the Fish-Eagle, the oracle of the city stood high upon the steps of the Temple of Kho and called forth for the greatest hero of the land to begin construction of a great galley in which to seek out the fate of the motherland. The oracle did not name the hero who would lead the expedition, but there could be no doubt whom she meant.

  Two months later King Hadon stood upon the docks at the port of Nangukar, kissing the fair-skinned, violet-eyed Lalila goodbye, and also Abeth and little La. He looked about for his son, but did not see him. Kohr was no doubt still angry at him because he would not be coming on the expedition. Hadon had told the boy he wanted to bring him along, but these were dangerous times. Only a short time ago, Gamori and his priests had attempted to imitate Minruth’s blasphemy. Someone had to look after Kohr’s mother and two sisters in the king’s absence. But the boy had not wanted to hear it and had stalked off in anger.

  Hadon hoped the youth would not run off and do anything rash. But he did not think he would. Like his father, Kohr was too even-tempered and duty-bound. The anger would blow off in time.

  Hadon boarded the galley, which he had christened the Taro in memory of his now long-dead friend, and watched from the deck as the priestess poured libations over the bow. He surveyed the two dozen or so spectators standing below upon the stone wharves. Among them no bullroarers or trumpeters commemorated the vessel’s departure, nor did any of the onlookers clang together brass cymbals or shout out words of encouragement to their king. Since the great calamity, there had been no celebrations. Too many had died to be joyful about anything.

  As the vessel pulled away to the sound of the beaters and the splashings of the rowers, Hadon returned his gaze landward. Kohr was now standing on the wharves, one arm around his mother and the other about his two sisters. Hadon stood tall upon the deck, fighting back his welling tears, until the tiny figures on the wharves dwindled out of sight. It might be a year before he saw his family again. Or it might be never.

  The Taro followed the coastline due north while Hadon and his crew marveled at the devastation which seemed to go on with no end. Everywhere great, thick-rooted trees knotted the sandy beaches and the jungles beyond. Here, as along the wharves of Nangukar, the sea had receded several yards from shore. There could be only one explanation for the low level of the water. The banks surrounding the far-western arm of the southern sea, known as the Bay of Dythphida, must have collapsed during the earthquake, thereby allowing the sea water to drain into the Aquthly River, and from there out into the world-ringing sea. If Hadon’s theory was correct, the two great landlocked seas could very well drain to the bottom of their basins.

  “Captain Rewenkwo says we should have reached Sakawuru by now.”

  Hadon broke his trancelike staring at the ruined coastline and regarded the barrel-chested manling. Though powerfully muscled, the squat fellow beside him stood no taller than an eight-year-old child. But Hadon would never make the mistake of misjudging the maturity of his friend’s keen mind. Paga was as wise as the hills.

  “Are you saying the whole city is gone? That all its citizens are dead?” Hadon shook his head. Although he had witnessed with his own eyes how Great Kho had thrown down many of his own city’s impressive structures, he could not fathom a whole population obliterated.

  “Indeed, the red-granite city is no more,” Paga replied gruffly. “It has been swallowed by its black cliffs.” And then he pointed to the coastline that trailed behind them.

  Hadon looked out over the waters at a dark clumping of rocks along the distant shoreline. Could those really be the towering cliffs of Sakawuru, hurtled into the sea by Kho’s quaking fury? He could not believe it. But then, as the days wore on with no sign of the city or its people, neither could he deny it.

  The galley continued up the coast to Wentisuh. Here they found survivors of the earthquake, but Hadon and his crew were not able to stop and talk with them. Almost as soon as the Taro drew anchor, Wentisuh’s starved and wretched inhabitants leaped into the water and began swimming for the galley. At first Hadon allowed the swimmers to board, thinking they were simply eager to get news from beyond their native port. But then, as more and more of the rawboned, wild-eyed survivors swarmed up the sides of the galley, Hadon realized their true intention. The hunger-crazed men meant to take the Taro and all its spoils. Hadon shouted to the coxswain to get his rowers moving and, with swords drawn, advanced with his men to clear the deck of the invaders.

  After they had beat back the last of those trying to climb up the galley’s sides, Hadon withdrew to his small cabin. Several hours later, unable to sleep, he got up and returned to the deck. There he remained, staring off into the waters, until Kho’s blue bowl grew black with night and the heavens glittered with brilliant starlight. He felt great remorse at not being able to help the famine-stricken inhabitants of Wentisuh, but there was nothing he could have done for them. The survival of his own people lay in question in the aftermath of Kho’s wrath. He knew he would face many more hard decisions in the years to come. The fact that life went on at all was itself a blessing from the Goddess.

  The latter thought returned to Hadon as the galley proceeded onward and entered the Strait of Keth. Everyone but the rowers came out on deck to marvel at the awesome sight. The sheer walls and choppy waters of the once gloomy chasm were no more. Now a serene, mile-wide channel ran between the southern and northern seas, punctuated upon occasion by rocky outcroppings protruding from the calm waters. The small islands were; all that remained of the strait’s formerly towering cliffs, which Kho had also smote down in Her great anger.

  “Now that the strait has been widened,” Paga remarked to Hadon, “the Kemu will drain even quicker into the southern sea. Within a single generation, both seas will be gone.”

  Hadon did not argue with his friend’s breathtaking pronouncement. The destruction of the cliffs above the strait was all the evidence he needed to convince himself that their world was dramatically changing.

  Leaving the broad seaway behind, Captain Rewenkwo now headed the galley north-by-northwest. Whereas the southern sea had been a beautiful blue-green, the waters of the Kemu quickly turned a muddy brown. Paga claimed this indicated that the earthquake had in reality been a seaquake. The fact that the waters had not yet cleared of the churned-up sediment, he said, was proof that great forces were still at work beneath the seabed.

  Several times each day Captain Rewenkwo consulted his lodestone compass, and at night compared his notations to the patterns of the stars. Soon it became clear that the man was agitated about something. Hadon asked him what was wrong.

  The old seaman shook his compass as if it were broken. Then he swore and said, "I took my first voyage to the capital when I was only eight years old. Since then I’ve made the circuit across the Kemus every year of my life, even during the war when I commanded a smuggling ship for the Temple of Kho. Next week I’ll be fifty-two. Every bone in my body tells me the island should be looming off the fore. But what do I see?” He waved an arm at the brown waters stretching from horizon to horizon. Again, the gray-haired sailor swore.

  Hadon told the captain to keep his voice down. There was no need to alarm the crew until they could prove, one way or another, what had or had not happened to the island.

  But Hadon’s concern had been needless. By the time the tall ridges of the Saasares rose upon the horizon, it became evident to everyone onboard that they had either overshot the island or that it had altogether disappeared beneath the Kemu’s murky depths. Hadon ordered the captain to follow the coast eastward. Two days later the ruins of Miklemres appeared off the port bow.

  Unlike the survivors of Wentisuh, the inhabitants of the northern mainland posed no danger to the crew of the Taro. Too few of them remained to be a threat. Eager to exchange gossip, Hadon brought aboard the half-dozen dirty and emaciated men and women who had waved from shore. Their story was as shocking as it was grim.

  The entire island, they said, was gone. One of the men claimed he had seen Piqabes herself, Kho’s green-eyed daughter, reach forth her great hand from the waters and pull the island down to her cold bosom. A woman, the man’s wife, disagreed, saying that it was Resu who had destroyed the island. She knew this because she had witnessed his fiery breath split the island in two. The couple argued at great length over what they had seen while Hadon and his stupefied crew looked on in astonishment.

  The survivors from Miklemres also told Hadon that many of their fellow citizens had survived the catastrophe, although many had also died, both during the great tremor and afterward from disease and starvation. And then, shortly after the earthquake, a wave of previously unknown foreigners stormed into the valley from the west. These were a fierce people, small in stature, but numerous and deadly, wielding forbidden bows and poison-tipped arrows. The king of Miklemres, who had survived the earth’s upheaval, fell back before the attacking tribes and led those citizens who would follow him higher into the mountains. The four men and two women sitting on the deck before Hadon were all that remained of those who had stayed behind to face the fierce hordes. Hadon asked why his crew had spotted none of the encroaching warriors along the coast, but his new guests replied that the invaders, with no one remaining in the area to fight, had moved on.

  “What of Queen Awineth?” Hadon asked. The last news his people had received from the island was that the College of Priestesses had annulled Awineth’s authority and placed her cousin upon the throne. And Kwasin! Hadon’s spies said he had been named king of kings!

  Suddenly Hadon’s guests looked uncomfortable.

  “They are aware you are the winner of the Great Games, O King,” a slim, white-robed man standing next to Hadon whispered.

  Hadon looked questioningly into the large, russet-brown eyes of his bard Kebiwabes.

  “They know you were planning to invade the island,” the bard said, “and they are unclear whose allegiance they should follow. Even now, with the land destroyed, they do not wish to betray the man who defeated the tyrant Minruth.”

  Finally understanding, Hadon assured his guests that he no longer had any interest in the crown of Khokarsa. Kho had shattered his ambition along with the world. And besides, Hadon said, he had not formed the coalition of southern cities in order to attack Kwasin, but rather to stand in defense against him.

  The distrustful looks softened and eventually Hadon weaned from the survivors of Miklemres the information he desired. It seemed the oracular priestess had sent Kwasin off on a quest to find Awineth and her followers in the eastern Saasares. For all his guests knew, the two had both survived the destruction of the island.

  The news did not exactly please Hadon. Kwasin and Awineth had each given him more than a fair share of trouble. Still, he could not shrug off his sense of obligation to them. If it remained possible they still lived, then he must search for them—to satisfy his own curiosity if nothing else. He ignored Paga’s advice that it would be better to leave them in the wilds, although he agreed that, if found, the two would only complicate his already difficult life.

  For weeks Hadon’s expedition searched the coastline along the eastern Saasares without success. Then, on the very day Hadon decided it was time to turn the galley about and head home, a search party led by Paga reported in with the news of an exciting discovery. When Hadon asked what this was, Paga replied, “You had better come see for yourself.”

  His curiosity mounting, Hadon accompanied Paga and his men back to shore and up the treacherous face of a broken mountain. Having climbed to an altitude of five hundred feet, they mounted a broad plateau overlooking the sea. Here Paga pointed across a twenty-foot-wide chasm to the face of an adjoining mountain. At first Hadon saw nothing but rubble and debris. But then he gasped.

  Across the chasm, a huge shelf of the mountain had collapsed into the sea below, leaving a narrow ledge of rock and dirt jutting out over empty air. An object, embedded into the face of the overhanging rim, glittered brightly in the sunlight.

  “Your eyes are not mistaken,” Paga said in response to Hadon’s incredulous look. “But how did the ax of Wi come to be here, thrust into the face of a shattered mountainside?”

  Hadon edged closer to the brink, trying to get a better look. Truly it seemed as if the ax had been purposefully driven into the rock. Could Kwasin have been caught on the mountain when the great catastrophe struck? Had he tried to stop his fall by impaling the ax into the mountain’s stony face?

  “I can tell by your expression that you are thinking the same thing as I,” Paga said. “But it would be foolish to believe that even someone as strong as your cousin could have held onto the handle of the ax during the earthquake that knocked down half this mountain. And even if he had, not even a nukaar, one of the long-armed hairy halfmen of the trees, could have swung the twenty feet up and across the chasm.”

  Hadon scanned the distance from where the ax lay embedded in the rocky overhang to the ledge where he, Paga, Kebiwabes, and the other members of their party stood. Not only would Kwasin have had to jump across the twenty-foot gulf, but he also would have had to swing himself fifteen feet upward to the ledge. Paga was right. No man could make such a leap, not even a Great Gamester. But then again, if anyone could have done it, it would have been Kwasin.