The Titan of Twilight

14

Tavis skirted a monolith the size of a castle tower, then clambered up another as large as an entire keep. He and Galgadayle were following Basil through the swarthy depths of Annam’s Hallway, an icy gorge running straight as a lance through the heart of Split Mountain. A thousand feet of jumbled talus boulders, some as enormous as hills, covered the canyon’s floor. Its sheer granite walls soared more than a mile upward, narrowing into a pair of jagged, needle-tipped peaks that could have been mirror-images of each other. According to Basil, Annam the All Father had created the chasm a hundred centuries earlier, when, exasperated with Othea’s faithlessness, he had hurled Sky Cleaver into the mountain.

The runecaster stopped atop a monolith, then slipped his divining rod from his belt and held it before him. The glowing tip bent downward at nearly a right angle.

“We’ve found it!”

“Not so loud!” Tavis urged. Though Orisino and the verbeegs still trailed a hundred paces behind, the high scout did not want his friend’s elated voice to carry to their ears. The last thing he needed was to let Orisino hear about Sky Cleaver. Tavis stopped next to Basil. “Put your rod away.”

On the other side of the monolith, a boulder-lined pit corkscrewed a hundred feet down into the talus stones. The deep-worn channel of an ancient trail spiraled along the shaft’s jagged walls, jumping from one listing monolith to another like some sort of cockeyed fomorian staircase. At the bottom of the hole, the track slipped beneath a stone as large as Keep Hartwick and vanished into the crooked maw of a dark, yawning grotto.

“I thought Sky Cleaver was a lost weapon,” Tavis said. Although he still felt the cold, the scout was well-enough rested that it no longer made him stutter. “How come it has a guardian? Lost weapons don’t have guardians.”

Basil shrugged. “The stone giant histories don’t describe any guardians.”

Tavis gave the runecaster a sidelong glance. “Have you read anywhere that the axe is guarded?” he asked. “Saying yes won’t stop me from trying.”

Basil met his gaze squarely. “I’ve told you all I know.” The runecaster showed no irritation at Tavis’s mistrust. “This is for Avner. I wouldn’t hold back.”

Tavis accepted the reassurance with a nod. Avner had been half grandson, half accomplice to Basil. The runecaster would never lie on the youth’s name.

“Well, someone lives down there,” Tavis said.

“And he must be as old as the mountains,” added Galgadayle. Though it had been two days since the storm giant battle, the seer remained hunched over in pain. Despite the death of his own shaman, he refused to allow Orisino’s healer to mend his cracked ribs. “To wear a trail that deep into solid granite must have taken ten centuries.”

“At least ten centuries, but the path was not made by a single walker,” Tavis said. “The steps are too erratic. Everything from verbeegs to cloud giants has lived down there.”

Galgadayle raised a brow. “Then the axe can’t be here. Someone would have claimed it by now.”

“If they knew how to free it-which isn’t possible,” said Basil. “It took me three years and two new languages to learn the secret, and even I wouldn’t have succeeded without the library at Castle Hartwick.”

“That still doesn’t explain the trail,” Tavis said. “If whoever’s down there can’t retrieve the axe, why do they stay here?”

“Because a mortal doesn’t possess a weapon of the gods,” Galgadayle answered. “It possesses him. This is a bad idea, my friends. By recovering Sky Cleaver, we may do more harm than letting the titan keep the queen and her child.”

“I’m still going after it.” Tavis spoke softly, for he heard Orisino and the verbeegs clattering toward their location. “It’s the only way I can kill Lanaxis.”

“And after the titan is dead? What will you do then?” Galgadayle also spoke more quietly. “If you lack the strength to slay Brianna’s child, you have only unleashed two scourges on the world.”

“Perhaps not,” Basil countered. “The titan’s death will certainly alter Kaedlaw’s future.”

“You cannot change a person’s destiny,” Galgadayle warned. “You can only kill him before he fulfills it.”

“If you’re right, we’ll know soon enough,” Basil said. “Sky Cleaver can cut to the heart of the matter. After that, Tavis will do the right thing.”

“Assuming he can recognize it,” Galgadayle replied. “Sky Cleaver’s power will be a bright and shining thing. Even Tavis’s eyes may be dazzled by the glare.”

“Then you and Basil will help me see.” Tavis glanced over his shoulder at the approaching verbeegs. “And now we will discuss the matter no more.”

The three companions turned to await the exhausted verbeegs, who were laboriously pushing and pulling each other over the massive talus boulders. Only twenty-five of their number had survived the battle with the storm giants, and many of those suffered from wounds their shaman had not yet healed. Still, with the fomorians strewn in ashes over Cuthbert Pass and the firbolgs annihilated, even two dozen warriors were sufficient to give Orisino command of the war party. Tavis had tried to win back control by waiting for the two companies of royal footmen trailing them since the storm giant battle, but the crafty verbeeg chieftain had ordered his followers to keep moving, objecting that humans would only slow the company down.

Leaving his warriors to assemble at the bottom of the monolith, Orisino climbed to Tavis’s side. “What’s… this?” he panted, peering into the pit. “The Twilight Vale?”

“Does that hole look titan-sized to you?” Basil scoffed. “But it might be a shortcut through the talus field. Tavis will see, then come back for us.”

Orisino’s eyes flashed with suspicion. “Why don’t we all go together?”

Basil gestured at the pit. “Look at those steps. If the passage happens to be full of giants, or it’s a den instead of a shortcut, we’ll save a lot of trouble by letting Tavis scout ahead.”

Orisino considered the explanation, then said, “It sounds reasonable, but I want Tavis to say it.”

“I don’t have anything to add,” the high scout replied.

“All the more reason to hear it from your mouth,” Orisino insisted. At the base of the boulder, his huffing warriors were straining to hear the conversation. “Tell me this is a shortcut.”

“I don’t know that it is,” Tavis replied. “But if it’s full of giants, we all have a better chance of reaching the gorge’s far end if I’m alone.”

Orisino narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know who you hope to fool, but it won’t be me! You’re not going alone.”

“Fine,” said Basil. “You go with him. The rest of us will wait here until you two return.”

Tavis shot the runecaster an angry glance. “He’ll be in the way!”

“Perhaps, but Orisino’s suspicion is understandable,” said Galgadayle. “Take him along. It’s the only way to assure him you aren’t trying to desert us.”

“The two of you will make less noise than the entire war party.” Basil glanced at the exhausted verbeegs gathered below. “And I’m ready to collapse as it is. The last thing I want is to follow you into some cavern, then find we’ve wasted our effort and retrace our steps.”

This brought a hearty murmur of agreement from the verbeegs, and even Orisino looked as though he were having second thoughts.

Tavis turned to Orisino. “You’d better keep those flat feet of yours quiet,” he growled. “And I won’t wait for you.”

“You won’t have to,” Orisino sneered. “You’re not so strong anymore-or have you forgotten the price you paid for Munairoe’s healing?”

“I’ve strength enough to take care of myself,” Tavis replied. “It’s you I can’t defend.”

“I never thought you’d bother,” replied Orisino. “I certainly wouldn’t for you.”

Orisino went off to gather a few things to eat and a torch to light his way. Tavis simply asked Basil to paint a rune of light on the blade his dagger. While he waited for his friend to finish, the high scout peered into the shaft, studying the spiraling trail and its awkward steps. It did not take him long to decide that it would be safer, and faster, not to trust the cockeyed staircase. He removed a short length of white rope from his satchel and dangled it over the shaft.

“suordnowsilisaB.”

A silver spider climbed from the cord’s end and dropped into the pit, trailing a single filament of white silk. The strand began to sparkle and grow steadily larger in diameter, becoming as thick and sturdy as any rope. Tavis waited until he could see several feet of line lying loose on the shaft floor, then looped his end of the cord around a small boulder and tied it off with a secure anchoring knot.

Without waiting for Orisino to return, the high scout straddled the rope. He wrapped it around one hip and over the opposite shoulder, running the line parallel to his bow. He sat over the edge of the pit and rappelled down with slow, easy strides. As he touched bottom, the sweet, stale odor of old age wafted from the cavern mouth behind him. He kept a careful watch over his shoulder, but the grotto itself remained as silent and still as a crypt.

Tavis untangled himself, then took a few minutes to examine the area. The floor was covered with six inches of glassy ice, so clear that he could see a pair of yard-long bootprints frozen in the mud underneath. The tracks had been old and weatherworn even before freezing. They revealed little now, save that the giant who had left them was not very large and seldom left the grotto. There was no sign that anyone else lived in the cave, and that troubled the high scout. Only ettins were solitary by nature, and the two-headed giants seldom viewed visitors as anything but a convenient meal.

A loud rattle sounded from the rim of the pit, then Galgadayle cried out, “Watch yourself!”

Tavis looked up, expecting to find a stone plummeting toward him. Instead, he saw several stones. Close behind came Orisino’s gangly figure, bouncing down the wall in great, barely controlled arcs. The verbeeg was clearly an inexperienced mountaineer. In addition to wrapping himself into the rappelling line backward, he was trying to slow himself by squeezing the rope with his guide hand, while his braking hand clutched at the cliff in a frantic effort to keep himself upright.

Tavis retreated into the cavern, then grimaced as first the stones, then the verbeeg crashed to the bottom of the icy pit.

“So much for being quiet!”

“Karontor take this rope!” Orisino sat up and hurled the tangled line at the wall. “It did nothing to stop me from falling!”

“It did too much,” Tavis retorted. “If it hadn’t slowed you down, I wouldn’t need to worry about all the witless things you’re bound to do inside the cavern.”

Without waiting to see if Orisino could hoist his battered frame off the ice, Tavis drew his glowing dagger and started into the cave.

The place was a confusing web of dark, jagged voids that shot off in all directions, with the sharp corners and broken edges of huge talus boulders jutting into the passages from every angle. In the distance, curtains of wayward sunbeams hung across the skewed corridors, like gray tapestries concealing the private halls of some madman’s castle. If not for the deep grooves of the ancient giant trail, the high scout would have been as lost as a child in a fen. Within the area lit by his glowing dagger alone, he saw at least fifty corridors, and off each of those there would be fifty more.

Unlike true caverns, whose depths were kept above freezing by the mountain’s warm heart, this jumbled maze of angles and corners was as frigid as a glacial crevasse. The cold air seeped down from above like drizzle down a chimney, riming the granite with hoarfrost and leaving the listing, sloping path as slick and treacherous as a ribbon of frozen stream. Tavis moved slowly and carefully, leaving his sword sheathed and Mountain Crusher on his shoulder, never taking a step without first finding a secure hold for his free hand. In this tangle of monoliths, any fall could be a fatal one, shooting the victim down the jagged mouth of an impossibly deep pit, or lodging him forever between a pair of granite boulders.

Orisino came up behind the high scout, clattering and groaning as he struggled to maintain his footing on the icy trail. The verbeeg had not bothered to light his torch, which left him both hands to maintain his balance. This was just as well. If the verbeeg happened to fall and injure himself, Tavis would feel compelled to offer help. Until the chieftain actually violated their agreement, the law demanded that he be treated as an ally, and allies did not leave wounded comrades to die in cold caverns.

“Be quiet, fool,” Tavis growled. “The giant will hear you coming a thousand paces away.”

“It hardly-ahhhh!” Orisino clutched Tavis’s arm, nearly falling and sending them both off the edge of a monolith. The verbeeg regained his balance, then said, “We can’t use this shortcut. We’d lose half our warriors on this ice.”

Tavis disengaged himself from the chieftain’s grasp. “You go back if you want. The trail may dry out up ahead.”

“Dry out? This whole place is one… big…” Orisino let his sentence trail off, then his voice grew sly. “What are you looking for? It’s no shortcut.”

The high scout did not reply. He continued forward, finally stopping at the head of a steep chute where one boulder stood against another. The corner between their two faces formed a long, angular ravine that descended into inky darkness beyond Tavis’s light. Some ancient giant had cut a series of huge, zigzagging stairs down the trough, but the frost-rimed treads were spaced at eight-foot intervals. Anyone as small as Tavis or Orisino would have to jump from one icy platform to the next. The only alternative was to climb down the center, using the seam between the monoliths for fingerholds. If either of the ’kin slipped, there was no telling how far they would fall.

“We’d better get our rope,” Orisino suggested.

Tavis did not bother to remind the chieftain of the line’s true ownership. Verbeegs considered private property an uncivilized and archaic concept, claiming instead that all things belonged to all people.

“If you want my rope, you fetch it,” Tavis said.

“And I suppose you’ll wait here until I return?” the verbeeg scoffed. “You go down first. I’ll watch how you do it.”

The wily chieftain was proving more difficult to scare off than Tavis had expected. The high scout sighed in exasperation. “If I don’t want you falling on me, I’d better teach you how to do this.”

Tavis passed his glowing dagger to the verbeeg, then removed his gloves and demonstrated how a person could support himself by jamming his fist into a narrow crack, such as that between the two boulders. Though the concept was simple, the art itself was full of nuances. Depending upon the width of the seam and the climber’s position, the fingers had to be folded into all manner of different configurations to lock the hand securely in place. Orisino paid careful attention, and was quickly able to run through the standard positions.

“You can twist your boots against the sides of the seam to wedge them in place, but don’t trust any footholds on the walls themselves,” Tavis cautioned. “The stone is too slick. Stay in the crack and you won’t have trouble.”

The high scout retrieved his glowing dagger and slipped the handle between his teeth, then lay on his belly and swung his legs over the chute. He wedged a foot into the crack and climbed down a short distance to wait for Orisino. The verbeeg reluctantly dangled his toes over the edge, kicking blindly at the crevice and grunting in frustration. For a time, Tavis thought his unwelcome companion would turn back, but the chieftain finally locked a boot into the crack and started to creep downward. After that, it did not take long for the verbeeg to gain his confidence, and soon the two ’kin were moving at a steady pace.

The stones grew colder as they descended. After a few minutes, Tavis’s bare hands felt so numb that he had difficulty feeling his handholds. It was impossible to tell how far they had come, or how far they still had to go. There was nothing but darkness below, with shadowy boulders and jagged, murk-filled passages advancing on them from all sides. In the bewildering array of gray corners and gloomy hollows, only the faithful tug of gravity prevented Tavis from losing his bearings and becoming completely disoriented.

A startled shriek broke from Orisino’s mouth and skipped through the crooked labyrinth in all directions, nearly concealing the clatter of the chieftain’s boots slipping free of their holds. Tavis pulled himself tight against the rock and twisted his hands and feet into the crack, locking himself in place. He gritted his teeth against the coming impact and silently cursed his companion’s clumsiness. Despite the frosty walls, the chute was no more difficult to descend than a ladder; as long as a climber kept a hand and foot lodged in the crevice at all times, falling was next to impossible.

Orisino did not land on him.

“Tavis, did you feel that?” The verbeeg’s voice was shrill with panic.

Tavis looked up and saw his companion dangling by a single arm, the soles of his hobnailed boots scant inches away. The chieftain was looking over his shoulder into a lopsided triangle of empty air.

The high scout freed one hand to take the dagger from his mouth. “The only thing I felt was you-almost knocking us both to our deaths. What’s wrong?”

Orisino gestured at the dark triangle. “Something pushed me! I felt a gust of warm air-a giant’s breath, maybe-then something big reached out of there and tried to push me off!”

Tavis raised his glowing dagger, illuminating the mouth of the dark passage Orisino had indicated. The high scout could not see far, but it was readily apparent that while a giant’s arm might squeeze through the hole, not even a verbeeg could actually crawl into it.

“I don’t see anything now,” the high scout said. “Maybe it was a bat.”

“It pushed me, like a hand!” Orisino insisted. “I’m not imagining this.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Tavis replied. “But we can’t do much about it now.”

The high scout returned his dagger handle to his mouth and continued downward. Orisino kicked his feet back into the crevice, then drew his own knife and followed. Their descent slowed significantly. Not only did the verbeeg insist upon keeping one hand free to hold his weapon, he spent more time peering into dark crannies than he did searching for handholds. Even then, he continued to cry out at random intervals, claiming that he smelled a foul odor or felt a gust of hot breath. Tavis never shared any of these sensations, nor did he hear the slightest clatter or flutter to suggest something was stalking them.

The high scout had finally decided his companion was imagining things when a sharp crack sounded above. A loud, clattering rumble reverberated down the chute, and the walls shuddered beneath the power of a tumbling boulder. Tavis pulled the dagger from his mouth and held it out over the trough, illuminating a pair of frost-rimed steps on the walls below.

“Jump!”

Knowing Orisino would leap for the closest step, the high scout jumped toward the one on the opposite wall. With the rumble reverberating ever louder in his ears, he dropped through eight feet of darkness and hit above the stair he wanted to reach. He turned his face toward the stone, scratching at the cold granite with his dagger and numb fingers.

A crack sounded from the center of the chute. The gray blur of a boulder bounced past his shoulder, with Orisino’s shrieking figure sliding down the trough close behind.

The stone vanished beneath the high scout’s face and chest, then he slammed onto the front half of the stair he had tried to reach. He flailed at the icy shelf with both hands.

A tremendous crash reverberated in the bottom of the chute.

Tavis’s glowing dagger caught in a crack and brought his fall to an abrupt halt. He glimpsed the blade bending under the sudden strain, then a sharp ping echoed through the cavern. Basil’s light rune abruptly faded, and the scout slipped.

Tavis released the hilt and grabbed for the broken blade. He felt a strange, painless sensation as the edge sliced into his numb palm, but he stopped sliding. He slipped the fingers of his free hand into the same crack where the blade had caught, then pulled himself onto the step.

A booming voice, deep but wavering with age, echoed down the chute. “You ’live, stupid thieves?”

Tavis did not respond, nor did Orisino-whether due to wisdom or injury, the high scout did not know.

“Answer Snad, stupid thieves!” quavered the giant. “You dead, or what?”

The dull-witted questions and low, booming voice left little doubt that Snad was a hill giant-but he was hardly an ordinary one. Though hill giants were clumsy and no more able to see in the dark than firbolgs, there had not been so much as a rustle or a glimmer of torchlight as this one slipped into place for his ambush.

“ ‘Kay, stupid thieves! Snad comin’ down,” the giant warned. “Better be dead when he gets there!”

Tavis cupped a hand to his ear and craned his neck to look up the chute. There was not the slightest rustle, nor the faintest gleam of light. For all the high scout could tell, Snad was a mere voice in the dark-a resentful voice.

Tavis crawled to the edge of his step, then lay on his belly and stretched his bleeding hand along the face of the dark granite. He barely managed to reach the center of the chute and slip three cold fingertips into the narrow crevice. The high scout pulled himself toward the opposite wall, at once swinging his legs off the stair and reaching for the fissure with his good hand.

The soles of his boots landed on the far side of the trough, slipped on the hoarfrost, and shot out from beneath him. Tavis started down the chute, then caught the crevice with his second hand and jammed a fist inside. The craggy stone scraped away long ribbons of skin, driving the numbness from his flesh, but the hand held. He brought himself to a halt.

Tavis resumed his descent, moving as quickly as he dared in the darkness. He had no idea whether Snad was descending the chute above or coming via another passage, but he suspected it would not be long before the hill giant arrived. Before then, the high scout wanted to have Orisino’s torch lit and be well down the trail.

A dozen steps later, the sole of Tavis’s boot came down on the jagged corner of a small boulder. He lowered himself onto the rock, then slipped down its side to something that felt like a jumbled platform of firewood. With a series of brittle cracks, his weight settled onto the sticks.

The sharp point of a sword poked Tavis in the short ribs. The scout leaned away from the tip and thrust a leg out, aiming a rear stomping kick just below the weapon. His boot sank into something soft. The breath left his attacker’s lungs with a muffled whumpf, then a ’kin-sized body slammed into a monolith and slumped to the floor. A series of receding clangs echoed through the cavern as the ambusher’s weapon skittered down an unseen slope.

Orisino simultaneously groaned and wheezed for breath. “Tavis… why’d… you do that?”

“Why did you stick a sword in my back?”

“I didn’t mean… any harm.” Aside from his lack of wind, Orisino sounded healthy enough. “I thought you were the giant.”

“He’ll be here soon enough,” Tavis replied. “Give me your torch.”

When Tavis reached down, the verbeeg grabbed the proffered hand and used it to pull himself up. “I don’t think a torch is smart. It’ll lead the giant straight to us.”

“He’ll find us anyway.” Tavis reached around the verbeeg and pulled the torch from his belt. “Until he does, we need to see where we’re going.”

Tavis removed his tinderbox from his satchel and knelt on the floor, spreading a mound of tinder before him. He found his flint and steel and fumbled with them until his numb fingers struck a fire. As the flames flickered to life, the high scout was surprised to see that the floor was covered not by sticks, but by a yellow tangle of bones.

“It appears we’re not Snad’s first victims,” Orisino said.

“We’re not victims yet.”

Tavis touched the torch to the tinder, which was already burning out, and blew gently on the flames until the oil-soaked head caught fire. The brand’s broader circle of light revealed thousands of bones. A few were fresh enough to have bits of withered hide clinging to their surfaces, but most were naked and almost petrified with age. A few were so gray and soft that they would powder at the slightest touch. They came in all sizes and shapes, from tibias no thicker than arrows to ribs as long as the floor planks of Keep Hartwick. Giants and ’kin were represented in equal proportions among the skulls scattered through the tangle, as were humans, elves, and other small races.

Tavis led them away from the bones, following the well-worn trail along a contorted route of corners and doglegs that took them ever downward. They heard no more of Snad until his splintered voice echoed through the stones above their heads.

“Snad the One! Not you, stupid thieves!” The giant’s voice sounded more imploring than angry. “Come back now, or Snad-”

The rest was too garbled to make out.

“The giant’s moving!” Orisino whispered.

“True, but at least he seems to be behind us.” Tavis passed the torch to Orisino, then pulled Mountain Crusher off his shoulder. “Assuming you’ll lead for a while, I’ll be ready when he catches up.”

Orisino looked dubious, but turned down the path. Tavis kept pace easily, even with his bow in hand, and stopped often to study the murky passages around them. Once a warm draft wafted out of a side passage. The high scout fired an arrow into the breeze on the off chance Snad had caused it; the shaft clattered against an unseen rock. Their pursuer remained a mere voice in the dark.

They continued to descend, slipping and sliding over the frosty stones, until at last they traversed the face of a long monolith and came to a fork in the trail. One route turned sharply to the right, while the other zigzagged down a small shaft. The ruts descending the shaft looked about twice as deep as those in the horizontal passage.

Orisino passed the torch to Tavis and sat on the edge of the pit. “I’m going to need both hands for this climb.” He glanced at the scout, then added, “That is, unless you’re so mad that you really are looking for a shortcut.”

When Tavis did not reply, a crafty smile crossed Orisino’s lips. “I thought as much.”

The chieftain climbed down to the limit of the torchlight, where he sat upon a huge, well-worn step to wait for Tavis. The high scout dropped the brand to the verbeeg, then slipped his bow over his shoulder and climbed down to the same place. They had to repeat the process only twice more before Orisino reached the bottom of the shaft.

“I think we’re almost there.” The verbeeg turned to peer down a dark, diamond-shaped passage. “The floor in there is solid bedrock, and I can see-”

A large stone flew out of the side passage and struck a glancing blow off Orisino’s brow. The chieftain’s head snapped back, flinging blood across the walls, and he collapsed in a crumpled heap. His eyes remained open and vacant, focused somewhere in the darkness high above Tavis’s head.

“Snad warn stupid thief!” rumbled the giant’s quavering voice. “Snad the One!”

Tavis dropped the torch into the pit, then descended to a ledge above the diamond-shaped passage. He pulled Mountain Crusher from his shoulder and started to nock his last runearrow, then thought better and selected a normal one. He had killed plenty of hill giants with regular arrows, and it would be wiser to save his magic for a more desperate situation.

“Go back, stupid firbolg thief!” cried Snad. “Snad keeper of Great Axe, not Tavis Burdun!”

“How do you know my name?” Tavis slipped out of his cloak.

“Snad know,” Snad replied. “Axe have Snad.”

Tavis raised his brow at the choice of words, then nocked his arrow. He tossed his dark cloak into the pit.

A large rock sailed out of the passage. The stone caught the cape in midair and carried it across the shaft, where it bounced off the wall and came down on Orisino’s arm. The verbeeg’s fingers flinched, but Tavis had no time to consider what that meant. He dropped onto the pit floor with his bowstring drawn and his arrow pointed into the diamond-shaped tunnel.

Tavis could not quite grasp what he saw. At the end of the corridor, the darkness changed from soot-black to a silvery hue that was neither glow nor gloom. Standing before this strange ether was the shadowy skeleton of a hill giant. It was as though Tavis and Orisino had descended through the talus boulders into the realm of the dead.

“Stupid tricks not fool Snad!”

The dark skeleton twisted toward the wall, stretching his arms out to grab another stone. Tavis drew Mountain Crusher and aimed at Snad’s midsection. Normally, he would have tried for the heart, but he doubted that strategy would kill a skeleton. His only chance of a swift victory was to shatter the spine.

Snad pulled his boulder from the wall. Tavis forced himself to wait, struggling to keep his arms from trembling. Once, he could hold a true aim and a taut bow for minutes, but now he was too weak for that. As Munairoe had warned, his strength was failing.

The skeleton turned, exposing the dark line of his spine. Tavis let the arrow fly, but he could feel by his trembling hands that his aim was not true. He stepped away from the passage mouth, already reaching for his last runearrow-then Snad bellowed. A muffled bang echoed down the corridor as the giant dropped his boulder.

Tavis peered around the corner, half-expecting to be knocked as senseless as Orisino. Instead, he saw his foe turning away, hunched over and holding the bones of one hand to his midsection. The arrow hung in the emptiness where Snad’s stomach should have been, a foot short of the spine.

Tavis’s jaw fell. He was looking not at a living skeleton, but at the skeleton inside a living giant.

He traded his runearrow for a normal one, then nocked and fired again. The shaft caught its target between the shoulder blades. Snad roared and tumbled into the room beyond. If his body crashed to the ground, there were no shuddering stones or thunderous booms to betray that fact. The giant simply dropped into the eerie gray murk and vanished.

A pair of flat feet slapped the shaft floor behind Tavis. He spun and saw Orisino already upon him. The verbeeg’s eyes were mad with battle lust, and he held the torch in his upraised hand. Tavis brought his bow up to block, at the same time reaching for his sword.

Orisino brushed past without attacking. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted, racing down the corridor. “Hurry up, or we’ll be on the wrong end of our axe!”

The scout started down the passage, feeling rather foolish. From the verbeeg’s perspective, there was no reason to argue over the axe. After they recovered it, the weapon would belong to him as much as it did to Tavis.

A loud wail broke from the far end of the passage, then a fierce gale tore through the narrow corridor, extinguishing Orisino’s torch and hurling him back into Tavis. Both ’kin lost their footing and went tumbling down the corridor, bouncing from one jagged wall to the other.

Tavis covered his head with his free hand and used the other to keep a firm grasp on his bow. He lost contact with Orisino, then his arm was nearly jerked from its socket as Mountain Crusher caught on something. He held fast and dragged himself out of the scouring wind into a small cranny alongside the passage.

“Tavis?” Orisino’s voice was barely audible over the wind, but it came from someplace ahead. “What’s happening?”

Tavis cupped his hands to his mouth. “The axe’s magic!” Basil had said the weapon could control weather. “Are you hurt?”

“Can’t understand you,” came the reply. “Come forward.”

Though Tavis had long ago learned the wisdom of pushing his arrows into a cork pad fastened in his quiver, he took the precaution of checking his supply. He had lost half-a-dozen shafts, but the runearrow remained in place. The high scout pushed it deeper into the cork, then squirmed into the passage and crawled. He stayed flat on his belly and kept his eyes pinched shut against the blowing ice and sand. Every now and then he risked raising his head to peer forward, and eventually he found himself a mere arm’s length from the strange pearly hue at the end of the passage.

Though Tavis could see only the top half of the chamber, it looked as vast as a castle bailey. The ceiling was formed by the haphazard vaulting of a dozen huge monoliths, which had fallen together like the steepled fingers of two gnarled hands. Ribbons of snow and ice were whistling around the room and whirling down upon him with bone-battering force.

“Orisino?” Tavis could not tell whether the verbeeg was waiting at the tunnel mouth, for the interior of the passage remained black as soot to the very edge of the vast chamber. “Are you here?”

The wind was roaring so loudly that Tavis barely heard his own voice. He repeated the question, then finally crawled to the brink of the gray room.

Ahead lay a craggy funnel littered with the petrified bones and abandoned possessions of hundreds-if not thousands-of dead giants and ’kin. Upon every ledge lay heaps of frost-rimed armor and curving spines; from every rock spur dangled rotting haversacks and yellowing pelvises; against every crag leaned tarnished shields and smirking skulls. At the heart of this gruesome mess, in a small space kept meticulously clear of clutter, stood Snad’s skeletal form.

In the light of the chamber, it became apparent that the giant’s flesh had not fallen away. Rather, it had grown almost transparent. Tavis could see the heads of his two arrows lodged deep inside his foe’s torso, yet he could also make out the ghostlike contours of an ancient and withered face. Snad looked to be at least four hundred years old.

The giant was touching the heft of an enormous hand axe whose blade was buried deep in a granite cleft. The eight-foot handle angled up from the floor at a steep incline, so that the pommel hung within easy reach of Snad’s long arms. The entire shaft was made of ivory, and wondrously carved with scenes of godly might. The huge head, fashioned from obsidian as black as a mountain’s heart, was bound to the handle with golden twine.

A lump of awe formed in Tavis’s throat. Without realizing it, he slipped from his hiding place and started down the slope. Even without Basil’s description, the scout would have recognized the glorious weapon below as Sky Cleaver, the lost hand axe of Mighty Annam, and he had to have it.

Tavis soon realized he was not the only one who coveted the axe. Orisino huddled in the bones at the edge of Sky Cleaver’s small clearing, and his eyes were fixed on the prize. The verbeeg grabbed a spear from the rubble and began slowly pacing back and forth beyond the hill giant’s reach. As the scout approached, he heard the two talking.

“You’re being selfish and stingy, Snad,” Orisino said. “All I want to do is touch it.”

“No! Snad the One, not stupid verbeeg.” The hill giant’s voice was quavering more than it had been a few moments earlier. Snad shot a scowl up at Tavis, then added, “And not stupid Tavis Burdun, either!”

Orisino cast a jealous glance at Tavis, then slipped away from the safety of his bone pile. “You can’t even pull it out of the ground, Snad! Let me try!”

“Snad the One!”

“You’re not!” the verbeeg yelled. “You’ve had centuries to pull it free!”

“Liar!” Snad slipped around to place himself between the axe and Orisino. “Snad only find axe last winter-after he kill old Kwasid.”

The name brought Tavis to a halt. Not many years before, he had known a fire giant by that name. But Kwasid had been an athletic young fire dancer-hardly someone that even a dull-witted hill giant would call old.

“And how old are you Snad?” Tavis yelled down.

“Still plenty young to be the One.” Snad kept his eye fixed on Orisino. “Fifty summers.”

Tavis gasped. At fifty, a hill giant was barely an adult. The high scout began to consider the wisdom of turning back while he still had the strength-then Orisino leapt for the axe’s ivory handle.

Tavis’s reservations vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. He found his runearrow in his hand, nocked and ready to fire, and in his heart there burned a fierce desire such as he had not known since his wedding night.

Tavis aimed at Orisino’s heart.

Snad’s ancient foot lashed out and caught the verbeeg in the chest. The chieftain crashed back into the bones from which he had crawled, and Tavis switched targets without thinking. The runearrow caught Snad squarely in the ribs.

“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis yelled.

Nothing happened, except that Snad reached up and snapped the shaft off at the head.

“Stupid firbolg magic can’t hurt the One!” Snad chortled. He cast a suspicious glance at Orisino’s motionless form, then stepped away from the axe to finish what he had started. “Kill verbeeg dead this time-then kill Tavis Burdun.”

“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis repeated.

A resounding crack shook the cavern, then a brilliant blue light flared inside Snad’s translucent body and scattered his dark bones in every direction.

The rumble had not even faded before Orisino was on his feet and charging the axe. The ivory hilt was nearly as long as the verbeeg was tall, but that did not stop him from wrapping both arms around the shaft. He braced his feet on the floor and tried to pull it free.

“Come to me!” Orisino cast a nervous glance in Tavis’s direction, then stooped beneath the motionless handle and pushed against it with his shoulders. “By Karontor, I shall have you!”

“Wrong god.”

Tavis dropped Mountain Crusher and stretched both hands toward the axe. Then, speaking the ancient syllables that Basil had made him repeat a thousand times in the last two days, the high scout called Sky Cleaver to him:

“In the name of Skoraeus Stonebones, Your Maker, O Sky Cleaver, do I summon you into the service of my hand.”

With a groan as ancient as Toril itself, the mighty axe pulled its dark blade from the cleft and rose into the air. Orisino leapt up and snatched the ivory handle with both arms. The axe shook him off as a dragon shakes off a mountain lion, then floated into the scout’s waiting arms. The weapon stood as tall as its new owner, with a head as big as his chest. It was so heavy that the mere act of swinging it would drain the last ounce of Tavis’s strength, but he did not care.

Sky Cleaver belonged to him.