Enchanter's End Game

remaining leagues to the installations at the base of the escarpment. As they topped a rise, Ce'Nedra reined Noble in sharply and gaped in openmouthed astonishment as she saw the eastern escarpment for the first time. It was impossible! Nothing could be so vast! The great black cliff reared itself above them like an enormous wave of rock, frozen and forever marking the boundary between east and west, and seemingly blocking any possibility of ever passing in either direction. It immediately stood as a kind of stark symbol of the division between the two parts of the world - a division that could no more be resolved than that enormous cliff could be leveled.
    As they rode closer, Ce'Nedra noted a great deal of bustling activity both at the foot of the escarpment and along its upper rim. Great hawsers stretched down from overhead, and Ce'Nedra saw elaborately intertwined pulleys along the foot of the huge cliffs.
    "Why are the pulleys at the bottom?" King Anheg demanded suspiciously.
    King Rhodar shrugged. "How should I know? I'm not an engineer."
    "All right, if you're going to be that way about it, I'm not going to let your people touch a single one of my ships until somebody tells me why the pulleys are down here instead of up there."
    King Rhodar sighed and beckoned to an engineer who was meticulously greasing a huge pulley block. "Have you got a sketch of the rigging handy?" the portly monarch asked the grease-spattered workman.
    The engineer nodded, pulled a rolled sheet of grimy parchment out from under his tunic, and handed it to his king. Rhodar glanced at it and handed it to Anheg.
    Anheg stared at the complex drawing, struggling to trace out which line went where, and more importantly why it went there. "I can't read this," he complained.
    "Neither can I," Rhodar told him pleasantly, "but you wanted to know why the pulleys are down here instead of up there. The drawing tells you why."
    "But I can't read it."
    "That's not my fault."
    Not far away a cheer went up as a boulder half the size of a house and entwined in a nest of ropes rose majestically up the face of the cliff to the accompaniment of a vast creaking of hawsers.
    "You'll have to admit that that's impressive, Anheg," Rhodar said. "Particularly when you note that the entire rock is being lifted by those eight horses over there - with the help of that counterweight, of course." He pointed at another block of stone which was just as majestically coming down from the top of the escarpment.
    Anheg squinted at the two rocks. "Durnik," he said over his shoulder, "do you understand how all those work?"
    "Yes, King Anheg," the smith replied. "You see, the counterweight off balances the-"
    "Don't explain it to me, please," Anheg said. "As long as somebody I know and trust understands, that's all that's really important."
    Later that same day, the first Cherek ship was lifted to the top of the escarpment. King Anheg watched the procedure for a moment or two, then winced and turned his back. "It's unnatural," he muttered to Barak.
    "You've taken to using that expression a great deal lately," Barak noted.
    Anheg scowled at his cousin.
    "I just mentioned it, that's all," Barak said innocently.
    "I don't like changes, Barak. They make me nervous."
    "The world moves on, Anheg. Things change every day."
    "That doesn't necessarily mean that I have to like it," the King of Cherek growled. "I think I'll go to my tent for a drink or two."
    "Want some company?" Barak offered.
    "I thought you wanted to stand around and watch the world change."
    "It can do that without my supervision."
    "And probably will," Anheg added moodily. "All right, let's go. I don't want to watch this anymore." And the two of them went off in search of something to drink.

Chapter Eleven
    MAYASERANA, QUEEN OF Arendia, was in a pensive mood. She sat at her embroidery in the large, sunny nursery high in the palace at Vo Mimbre. Her infant son, the crown prince of Arendia, cooed and gurgled in his cradle as he played with the string of brightly colored beads that had been the ostensible gift of the crown prince of Drasnia. Mayaserana had never met Queen Porenn, but the shared experience of motherhood made her feel very close to the reputedly exquisite little blonde on her far northern throne.
    Seated in a chair not far from the queen sat Nerina, Baroness of Vo Ebor. Each lady wore velvet, the queen in deep purple, and the Baroness in pale blue, and each wore the high, conical white head-dress so