The Titan of Twilight

9

On the head of the spear danced a silver flame, a flame fueled not by burning oil or blazing pitch, but by the queen’s ardent devotion. When she felt the cold floor shudder beneath her knees, that flame sputtered and dwindled to a cinereal flicker. Through the shuttered window came the muffled and distant voices of shouting men. The floor trembled again. The spear shaft rattled in its sconce, and the pearly faith flame winked out altogether. The queen’s thoughts reeled inside her mind. She found herself plummeting through a vast, abyssal void. She continued to fall, her head spinning ever faster, until Kaedlaw growled in the darkness.

The rumble caught Brianna like a rope. Her thoughts stopped swirling, and she was suddenly, completely there, kneeling in the small cold temple, listening to her son grumble on the altar before her. The queen reached out, blindly feeling her way along the stone platform until she located her fur-swaddled child. She pulled him out of his wrappings and tucked him beneath her cloak, then called for Avner.

A squeal rang off the stone walls as the door’s iron hinges grated open. The young scout stepped into the doorway, filling the small chamber with the shimmering yellow glow of his candle.

“Yes, Brianna?” He reached her side with a single step. “What did you learn?”

“Nothing. I was interrupted.” The queen held her hand out to him. Even kneeling, her arm was at the height of Avner’s chest. “But it doesn’t matter. I know who fathered my child. Tavis is the one who can’t see straight.”

A troubled look flashed across Avner’s face. “Milady, I should…” He hesitated, then slipped an arm beneath her elbow. “Well, you should know Tavis isn’t the only one.”

Brianna did not rise. “What do you mean by that? Surely, you haven’t betrayed me as well?”

“Of course not, Majesty!” The young scout’s jaw dropped in a show of indignation. “I was speaking of Raeyadfourne. He didn’t find the prince handsome, either.”

Brianna studied Avner’s face. The young scout’s difficult childhood had made a master liar of him, and she found it more difficult to read his hidden feelings than those of her most devious earls. Had he really been thinking of the chieftain, or had he also seen the strange face she had glimpsed in the mines?

“I fail to see what Raeyadfourne’s reaction has to do with my husband’s.” Through the closed window came the muffled trumpet of an alarm horn. The ’kin were attacking sooner than expected, but Brianna was far from concerned. Reinforcements would arrive long before her enemies could breach Wynn Castle’s thick walls. “Raeyadfourne is my enemy. Tavis is the father of my child-whether he admits to it or not.”

“I know-but you shouldn’t be so hard on the lord scout,” Avner said. “Firbolgs see Kaedlaw differently than humans.”

“My point exactly.” Brianna rose to her feet, relieved that the young scout was only trying to defend Tavis. She had already ascribed the incident in the mine to a delusion and had no wish to second-guess herself now. “People see what they expect. If Tavis sees a monster in his child’s face, it is because he trusts the firbolg seer more than he trusts me. I have not decided whether that is treason to his queen, but it is certainly betrayal to his wife.”

Through the temple door echoed the tramp of boots, stomping up the curving stairwell that connected the tiny chamber to the rest of the keep. From outside the small window came the snap of firing crossbows and the sound of shouting voices.

Avner frowned. “That sounds like it’s coming from the inner curtain.” He set his candle on the altar, then stepped to the shuttered window. “I’d better see what’s happening.”

“It can’t be the firbolgs,” Brianna said. “We would’ve heard the siege-”

“Don’t open the shutter!” The soldier’s voice came from the stairwell. “He’ll grab the queen!”

Brianna spun around to find a fully armored garrison guard clambering into view. In his hands, he held a cocked and loaded crossbow, which he was pointing across the temple at the small window.

“Who will grab me?” Brianna lifted her spell satchel off the altar. “We’re thirty feet off the ground! Even storm giants aren’t that tall.”

“The fiend is!” The guard climbed into the doorway. Behind him followed a long line of his fellow warriors. “The giants must’ve called him. He’s walking ’round the keep, looking in-”

A sharp crack sounded from the window, followed by a blast of icy wind. Avner cried out, and Brianna looked over her shoulder. The shutter was gone. Avner was staring gape-mouthed through the casement, his eyes fixed on a buckler hovering outside. The shield had a peculiar design, with a black, platter-sized disk set in a damson circle.

“Stand aside!”

The garrison guard rushed into the temple, raising his crossbow to his shoulder. Avner backed away from the window, and the weapon clacked, sending a bolt of black iron through the casement. In the same instant, a purple lid slid down to cover the buckler outside.

An eye!

The quarrel passed through the lid without tearing the skin or drawing blood; it simply disappeared as though it had entered a bank of fog.

“Hiatea help us!” Brianna clutched Kaedlaw more tightly to her breast. “No giant is that big!”

The lid rose, once again revealing the huge eye. The pupil was as black and deep as Memnor’s cold heart. A low, rumbling thunder reverberated through the temple walls. So sonorous was the sound that it took Brianna a moment to recognize it as a voice.

“… the child,” it growled. “Come to the window.”

Another clack sounded from the door, sending a second quarrel past Brianna’s shoulder. This time, the eye didn’t blink. The bolt simply sailed into the black pupil and vanished.

Avner grabbed Brianna’s arm and pulled her toward the stairwell. The narrow passage was crammed with soldiers, each holding a loaded crossbow and struggling to see past the warrior ahead.

“Stand aside, you men!” Avner yelled. “Let the queen pass!”

The young scout forced his way into the stairwell, shoving two men aside so Brianna could squeeze in after him. Though the soldiers were pressed flat against the wall, the corridor was so tiny she could barely force her way past their armored bulk. From behind her came the sound of clanging steel; the men who had already entered the temple were attacking with their swords.

A tremendous crash shook the chamber. A gray cloud of dust billowed into the stairwell, filling Brianna’s mouth with the caustic bite of powdered rock and mortar. A pair of screams sounded from the temple. The guards at the top of the stairs fired their crossbows, then pulled their hand axes and rushed into the room. The next sound was the shrill grate of crumpling armor. One of the soldiers fell instantly silent. The other began to wail. It was not the cry of someone who would die quickly, but the spastic gurgle of a man drowning in his own blood.

The queen and Avner had barely pushed past the next guard before this man also fired and charged. His scream was mercifully short, then a deafening clatter sounded from the top of the stairs. Brianna glanced over her shoulder and saw a purple hand tearing away the curved wall behind her. The appendage was the size of a double door, with knuckles as large as boulders and fingers the length of battle-axes.

The fist withdrew to discard the rubble in its grasp. A pair of guards hefted hand axes and shoved past the queen. The appendage returned to the cramped corridor, and the two men began hacking at the wrist. Their blades sank through the purple flesh as though it were mist The hand pushed past them and reached for Brianna.

“Go, Avner!”

The youth flung himself headlong down the passage, shoving the guards over backward. Brianna sprang after the young scout-then felt something cold and ethereal slipping around her waist. She tried to break free but managed only to crush her tender abdomen against her captor’s hand. Searing pain boiled up through her stomach, filling her with such agony that she screamed and nearly dropped Kaedlaw. She was entwined from the waist down by four dark fingers, each as large as a firbolg’s arm.

Avner gathered his feet and spun around, drawing his sword. Brianna pulled Kaedlaw from inside her cloak.

Avner’s face went pale. “No, Majesty!”

“Take him!”

Brianna thrust the infant into Avner’s free arm, then lost sight of the pair as she was dragged up the devastated stairwell. She tried to twist free, but her captor’s grip was secure. She clutched at the wall and succeeded only in bloodying her fingertips.

The fiend pulled her into the rubble-strewn temple, where the odor of blood hung so thick the air smelled like liquid copper. Heaps of mangled armor lay everywhere, often with the groaning remnant of a shattered body still twitching inside. One man lay upon the broken altar, the crimson head of the queen’s faith spear protruding from his punctured breastplate.

Brianna stretched her fingertips toward the spear. “My goddess, help me!”

“The gods won’t answer, child. It is by their will that I have come for you,” rumbled her captor. “Now you must be quiet and save your strength. You have suffered much, and it is a long journey to my Vale.”

“Twilight!” Brianna gasped. “No!”

A wave of cold air rolled down the queen’s back as the Twilight Spirit pulled her through the shattered window casement. The keep walls spun out of sight, and Brianna found herself staring into a purple face as large and murky as the darkening sky. Seen from a distance of a mile or two, the titan’s square features and even proportions might have been handsome, but from so close, the visage was hideous in its very hugeness. His shadowy brow overhung his eyes like a parapet hoarding, his nose jutted out like a cliff buttress, and from his cavernous mouth wafted a breeze as cold and stale as a tomb’s breath.

“Where is your child?” The titan’s angry voice shook Brianna to the core, setting her ears to ringing and her stomach to quivering. “What have you done with my nephew?”

Another tremendous crash sounded inside the ward, shaking the gateway so violently Tavis nearly lost his footing. He took the clamor to be a good sign. If the titan already had what he wanted, he would not be tearing Wynn Keep apart handful by handful. The high scout reached the end of the vaulted passage, and, with Basil close behind, followed their escorts through the wicket door at the base of the iron-clad gates.

When Tavis entered the ward, his heart sank into his stomach. The keep roof lay scattered across the cobblestones, crumpled into twisted heaps of lead and rafter. Inside the fortress itself, several fires were burning out of control, casting streaks of dancing orange light through the slender arrow loops and pouring huge plumes of black smoke into the sky.

The titan stood at the front of Wynn Keep, a looming figure cloaked in purple gloom, barely distinguishable from the fading dusk light. He was straddling the dry moat that guarded the approach to the entry gate, ripping the upper story off the temple tower with one hand and holding Brianna in the other. A semicircle of garrison soldiers stood at his feet, firing a constant stream of crossbow quarrels into his body. The bolts simply passed through the colossus and bounced off the walls behind him, drawing no attention whatsoever from their target. Perhaps a dozen men lay wounded at the feet of the colossus, their open mouths voicing screams that could not be heard above the din of demolition.

The sergeant who had been guarding Tavis pulled a hand axe, then turned to his small company of men. “Ready yourselves!” he yelled. “We’ll save the queen!”

“How?” Tavis asked. “What makes you think your axes will have more effect than those crossbows?”

The sergeant spun on the high scout, frowning at his presence in the inner ward. “Milord, the queen barred you-” The objection came to an abrupt end as the titan dropped another handful of rubble to the ground. A sheepish look fell over the sergeant’s face, and he glanced back toward the keep. “Never mind-but we’ve got to do something!”

The titan lowered his head to peer into one corner of the tower. He plunged his free hand deep into the building and began to feel around, like a man trying to pull a weasel from its hole. Since he already had Brianna, the colossus could only be searching for Kaedlaw.

Tavis pointed to one of his escorts. “You, fetch my bow and quiver from my chamber.” As the man left to obey, the high scout turned to Basil. “We need your help.”

The verbeeg was already holding his runebrush. “Show me your blades, all of you,” he ordered. “And keep them steady!”

The high scout drew his sword and braced it over his arm. Basil touched his brush to the weapon and painted, tracing a moon-shaped pattern of turquoise light upon the metal. A rich blue stain crept outward from the glowing sigil, turning the entire blade the color of sapphire. The steel began to shimmer like starlight, then became dusk-purple and vanished from sight, save for the rune itself and a gleaming line of cobalt along the weapon’s edge.

Basil nodded his approval, then moved to the sergeant’s hand axe. “These runes will help your steel find purchase in Lanaxis’s armor,” he said, using the titan’s ancient name. “But don’t swing your weapons about unnecessarily.”

“Why?” The sergeant scowled at the glimmering stain spreading across his axe blade.

“My runes haven’t had time to dry.” Basil was already working on the next soldier’s weapon, and he did not even look up as he spoke. “The night air will rub them off.”

Across the ward, Lanaxis had moved to the back end of the keep and was peering into the red tower. He reached inside, came up empty-handed, then grunted in anger and slapped his palm against the spire. The third story came loose and crashed to the ground with a deafening boom.

Tavis shouted an order, but realized his ears were ringing so hard that even he couldn’t hear his own voice. He motioned for the sergeant to join him, then started across the ward at his best sprint. The others would have sense enough to follow when their weapons were ready.

By the time Tavis dodged past the rubble heaps and reached the temple tower, his hearing had returned to normal. He found a dozen stunned crossbowmen waiting for him, their faces shocked and hopeless.

“It’s no use, milord,” said the leader. “He’s a phantom. Nothing will touch him!”

“These will!” Tavis raised his sword and, without slowing his pace, pointed to the glowing rune. “Come along, and when someone falls, arm yourselves with his weapon.”

Fifty paces away, at the other end of the keep, the titan pulled a struggling body from the red tower. Tavis’s stomach turned queasy with fear that it might Avner, who was the most likely person to whom Brianna would have entrusted Kaedlaw. A steel gleam flashed between Lanaxis’s dark fingers, and the high scout breathed easier. His young friend never wore armor.

The titan opened his hand and let the steel-clad figure drop. The man screamed briefly, then crashed to the ground twenty paces ahead of Tavis. Lanaxis stooped over and pushed his arm back into the red tower, allowing the high scout a brief glimpse of Brianna. Her eyes were fixed on the interior of the building, her mouth hanging open in a terrified expression that left no doubt who Lanaxis would pull from the tower next.

From inside came the rumble of collapsing walls, followed by the muffled screams of dying men and the clack of firing crossbows. A flurry of black quarrels streaked from the keep’s arrow loops and sailed harmlessly through the titan’s body.

Then Tavis was upon his foe.

The high scout found himself at eye-level with a murky shin so large he could not have stretched his arms around it. There was no time to slip behind the leg to attack the heel tendon. Tavis drew his weapon back and chopped at the front of the ankle, hurling his full weight into the blow.

It was like trying fell a mature spruce with a single axe-strike. The impact numbed Tavis’s arms to the shoulders, and his stinging hands lost their grasp on the hilt. A deafening roar boomed down from the sky, then he found himself stumbling across the cobblestones. The high scout braced his feet and managed to regain his balance. The ground heaved beneath his feet as the titan shifted his immense weight, jerking his injured foot into the air. The fetid smell of stale blood filled Tavis’s nostrils, and a cascade of warm brown fluid rained down on his head.

The high scout did not look up. He simply dived away and hit the cobblestones rolling.

Lanaxis’s heel came down behind him, cratering the ground and bouncing him into the air. Tavis slammed down on his back, tumbled onto his feet, hopped twice as he regained his balance, then spun toward his attacker. His sword was still lodged in his foe’s ankle, the blade buried at least ten inches into the joint, but that did not stop Lanaxis from drawing his leg back to kick.

Tavis bent his knees, gathering himself to leap away. Lanaxis’s foot reached the zenith of its arc, nearly ten yards away, and started back down.

Three soldiers charged past to meet Lanaxis’s gloom-booted foot. They hit with a mighty crash and flew off in three separate directions, leaving their rune-scribed axes buried in the titan’s instep. The foot continued to sweep forward.

The high scout leapt aside and grabbed for his weapon, deftly jerking it free. Lanaxis’s leg reversed direction and came swinging back like a pendulum. The foot was upon Tavis so fast that he barely had time to bring his sword around. The heel impaled itself on the tip, then drove straight down the rune-scribed blade and slammed into his shoulder.

Tavis felt the bone snap beneath his biceps, then his feet left the ground. He flew through the air for what felt like a dozen seconds. Finally, he crashed onto the cobblestones and started rolling, each somersault more painful than the last. He did not stop until he slammed into the jagged stones of the inner curtain.

Tavis slumped in a battered heap to the ground, a venomous haze of pain poisoning his mind with thoughts of surrender. Every fiber of his pain-racked body demanded that he relinquish himself to the numbing mists of oblivion. But something outside him kept urging him not to give up, to keep his eyes open and hold on. It was a voice, a woman’s voice, and she was screaming his name.

Tavis looked toward the center of the ward and glimpsed his wife, still gripped in Lanaxis’s hand and staring in his direction. He tried to wave to her, but his broken arm would not rise. The titan turned to face a small company of guards assailing him with Basil’s rune-scribed axes, and the high scout lost sight of Brianna’s terrified face.

A whoosh sounded through the ward, and Lanaxis’s shoulders rose. He tipped his head forward to look at the men clustered about his shins. A keening wail filled the air, then a blustering cloud of purple murk spewed from the titan’s mouth and gushed over his attackers. Voices screamed and armor clanged, and the men went tumbling across the cobblestones to slam into the stone walls of the inner curtain.

Lanaxis continued to exhale for minutes. Soon, his purple breath was rolling into every corner of the ward, carrying with it such biting cold that Tavis’s flesh went numb. The scout gathered his strength and pushed himself to a seated position. When the pain filled his head with turbid swirls of oblivion, he took several deep breaths and fought to stay alert.

The wail of Lanaxis’s storming breath finally died away, leaving the ward immersed beneath a frigid blanket of murk. The high scout gritted his teeth and slowly, painfully, pushed himself to his feet. He suffered several moments of blurred vision, then found himself staring across the top of a purple fog. The titan had already returned to his search and was burrowing into the red tower like a badger after chipmunks.

On the far side of the ward, Basil stood in the gate and held Tavis’s bow and quiver in hand. The runecaster started across the ward, giving wide berth to the keep. The high scout staggered forward to meet his friend, watching the titan tear into the foundation of the red tower. Lanaxis would not find his prey there, at least if Avner still had the baby. Any border scout knew better than to let himself be trapped in a dead-end hole.

By the time the two giant-kin reached each other, Lanaxis was on his knees, pulling the last stones from the tower dungeon. Dusk had given way to a moonlit night. The titan’s murky breath had settled into the cobblestones, leaving a host of frozen human corpses scattered across the ward. From the outer curtain came the distant booming of Raeyadfourne’s battering ram. The ’kin army was the least of Tavis’s worries. Even if they broke down the gates of the outer curtain, they would still have to smash through the gates protecting the inner ward. By the time they succeeded, Lanaxis would have Kaedlaw and be long gone.

Basil took one look at Tavis’s broken arm. “I can see you won’t be needing your bow.” The verbeeg slipped the weapon over his own shoulder. “And I suppose you still think it’s wrong to use Sky Cleaver?”

Tavis glared up at the runecaster. “What I think doesn’t matter-unless you already have the weapon?”

Basil shook his head. “I was only asking.”

A mighty clatter echoed across the ward as the frustrated titan hurled a handful of rubble against the inner curtain. He peered one last time into the foundation of the red tower, then rose to his feet and lurched toward the flag tower.

“At least he’s limping,” Tavis muttered. The pounding at the front gates increased in tempo, but the scout heard nothing to suggest the beams were ready to give way. “And we did buy Avner some time.”

“True, but even our adept young friend can’t hide forever,” Basil said. “And you’re in no condition to help him-or Brianna. What are we going to do?”

Tavis thought for a moment, then looked toward the front of the castle. “There’s only thing we can do: let Galgadayle and his bunch at the titan,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be the ones who survive to pick up the pieces.”

From the front of the keep rang the clamorous din of chains rattling off their spools, a sure sign that someone had knocked out the gate’s winch stops. A loud, shrill squeal echoed through the inner ward as the drawbridge, slowed by the friction of the immense chains, began its fall. The titan, who was kneeling over the long gallery that ran from the demolished red tower to the flag tower, stood and turned toward the sound.

Brianna cursed, for she had finally reached the tiny glass rod with which she hoped to escape. It had been a difficult process, and not only because her captor’s grip was like steel. It had required both patience and tenacity not to alarm him as she worked her hand over to the strap of her spell satchel, then pulled the sack around to where she could reach inside. Now, when she finally had the component in her grasp, Lanaxis was once again holding her three stories off the ground. There was a time when she would have taken the plunge gladly to escape him, but no longer. The titan wanted Kaedlaw, and she would not save her son by dying.

No sooner had the keep’s drawbridge boomed into place than a rumbling clatter erupted inside the entry-way. The titan limped over to the flag tower, and Brianna saw a small, mule-drawn cart racing across the ward. An armored guard sat in the driver’s seat, madly lashing the terrified beast in the harness. In the bed of the small wagon sat Avner, so tightly wrapped inside his heavy scout’s cloak that Brianna could see little more than his sandy beard. In his arms, he held her squirming son, snugly bundled inside a cocoon of furs. Kaedlaw clearly did not appreciate the rough ride, for he was struggling so hard that the young scout could barely hold him.

Ahead of the cart, the path was unobstructed clear into the outer bailey. Tavis and Basil had departed just a few minutes earlier, pausing at the inner curtain to open the ironclad gates. At the time, the act had puzzled Brianna as much as the withdrawal itself, but now she suspected her husband had been trying to create an escape route for Avner. Border scouts were trained to anticipate each other’s needs, and no pair had ever worked together better than Tavis and Avner.

Lanaxis limped around the flag tower, closing a quarter of the distance to the cart in two lurching strides. The queen silently beseeched her goddess’s blessing, at the same time pulling the glass rod from her spell satchel. Avner and her child were less than thirty paces from the gate. Lanaxis took another step and began to stoop over; in another stride he would have them. Brianna pushed her arms over the titan’s index finger. She pointed both hands at his face and uttered the mystic syllables of her spell.

The glass rod evaporated in a flash of silver light. A crackling thunderbolt shot from Brianna’s fingertips and struck the side of Lanaxis’s face. The air filled with musty blue smoke. The titan dropped to a knee, raising his hands to cover his eyes.

Brianna slipped from his grasp and plummeted a dozen feet to his lap. She heard herself grunt as the breath left her lungs, then a dull ache filled her chest. She slid down an enormous thigh and dropped onto the ward’s icy cobblestones.

“Foolish girl!” Lanaxis’s hissing voice was as loud as a blustering wind. “There’s no need to fear me!”

The titan pulled his hands from his face. A milky blue haze now covered one eye. The lightning had burned the purple murk from one side of his head, exposing a pale layer of raw, wrinkled skin. Even his robe had been affected by the brilliant flash, for it was now streaked by long stripes of gray and tattered linen. “The gods have such plans for your son!”

“They should’ve… told me.” The queen could barely choke the words out, but she was leaping to her feet as she said them. “I have plans… of my own.”

Brianna ran for the gate. The mule cart was less than twenty paces ahead, just entering the vaulted passage beneath the gatehouse.

The heft of a huge axe suddenly fell across the far end, blocking the tunnel’s exit. The mule smashed headlong into the handle and came to an instant halt, braying loudly as its legs buckled beneath its body. The cart rocked forward on its harness rods. One of the shafts snapped and the small wagon toppled onto its side, spilling the passengers out. Kaedlaw flew from Avner’s arms.

The child shed his swaddling rags in midair, revealing a long wrinkled snout at one end and a tiny curled tail at the other. He hit the ground on all four hooves and ran, squealing wildly. The young scout came down a few paces behind the piglet, his armor clanging like an alarm bell, and Brianna realized Avner had not been in the cart at all.

In the next instant, a line of screaming firbolgs erupted from the tunnel. The warriors, or at least those in the lead, carried rune-scribed blades with gleaming edges of cobalt. Brianna suddenly knew where Basil and her husband had gone after leaving the ward, and why they had paused to open the gate.

“Traitors!”

The queen spun and ran toward the keep, her gaze fixed on the citadel’s rear corner. There, the queen’s tower stood more or less intact, missing only its roof and small portions of the third-story walls. Brianna could not see the back side of the spire, but she suspected Avner and her child would be there, climbing down a ladder from a hidden sally port on the second floor. The secret door had been designed for just such urgent departures, and, aside from the drawbridge, it was the keep’s only exit.

Lanaxis stepped over Brianna, covering half the distance to the keep in a single stride. Her heart sank. It would take Avner more than fifty paces to carry her child across the inner ward; the titan would be upon him in five. The queen could only pray that Avner would hear his pursuer’s booming footfalls in time to return to the tower.

A loud grunt sounded behind Brianna. A rune-scribed axe tumbled over her head and arced down into Lanaxis’s calf. The titan stopped at the front corner of the keep and braced himself on the battered temple tower, then glared at the long column of firbolgs charging toward him. He uttered a syllable in some arcane language, then stepped forward and smashed his purple boot onto the ground.

A resounding bang shook the entire castle, then a fan of dark rifts sprang from under the titan’s heel. A fissure shot beneath Brianna’s feet, and she barely leapt over before it widened into a chasm thirty feet across. She crashed down on the far side and rolled several times, then came up on her knees, looking back toward the inner curtain. A web of abyssal crevices separated her from the main body of the firbolg troop, but she could see three huge warriors clinging to the rims of a nearby chasm.

Brianna rose to her feet and resumed her sprint toward the keep gate. Lanaxis was already upon the queen’s tower. He did not step past to pluck Avner off the open ward, nor did he start tearing the spire apart as he had the others. Instead, he squatted down and wrapped his arms around the entire tower.

The queen reached the drawbridge. The keep’s battered walls obscured her view of Lanaxis, but she could feel the entire building shaking. She rushed into the foyer, where she found a dozen frightened soldiers blocking the corridor. They immediately swarmed toward Brianna, hurling questions at her like ballista arrows. Firbolg boots began to boom across the drawbridge behind her, and a loud crack sounded from the queen’s tower.

“Out of my way!” Brianna grabbed two men and shoved them toward the drawbridge. “Stop those firbolgs!”

The rest of the guards leapt aside to let her pass, then rushed forward to meet the firbolgs. Brianna turned down a smoke-filled gallery that led to the queen’s tower. A tremendous clamor echoed through the passage behind her, followed by the agonized screams of both men and firbolgs.

The queen raced blindly through the corridor, coughing and choking on the acrid smoke that seemed to flow from every opening. A sharp crack reverberated through the keep, and the gallery floor bucked beneath her feet. She reached the stair turret of the queen’s tower and threw open the oaken door.

It was dark inside, and she heard no echoes to suggest Avner was descending the cramped stairwell. She could not be sure he was trapped inside the tower, but she suspected Lanaxis would not be uprooting the spire if there was any chance the young scout had escaped with her son.

A deep-throated cough rumbled down the gallery. The queen looked back and saw a firbolg’s hulking silhouette in the smoky corridor. She stepped into the stair turret, then slammed the door, dropped the crossbar, and rushed up the spiraling stairs. Like all well-fortified towers, this one could not be accessed from the first floor. Brianna would have to reach the second story landing before she could enter the building.

A tremendous rumble sounded from the tower foundations. The stair turret shuddered so violently that she lost her footing and fell. A crash sounded from the barred door below, then the wooden stairs groaned beneath her pursuer’s weight. The smell of firbolg sweat filled the passage.

Brianna turned onto her back and drew her knee to her chest. When she heard the firbolg’s heavy breath coming around the bend, she thrust her foot down into the darkness. Her heel caught the warrior square in the brow. His head snapped back, slamming the back of his skull into the wall, and the warrior slumped onto the stairs without crying out.

The stone walls shuddered, then the stairwell began to shake in steady rhythm. Brianna scrambled up the stairs and came to the second story, where the turret ended five feet short of the dark entrance to the queen’s tower. The ironclad door hung open, swinging on its hinges as the entire spire rocked back and forth. To her right, the queen saw one of the titan’s huge hands grasping the side of the building.

“Avner?” Brianna called. “Answer me!”

Lanaxis gave a mighty grunt. There was a loud bang in the foundations, and a billowing cloud of dust rolled up from void below. The tower tipped away from the stair turret. Brianna swung her arms back and sprang across the broadening chasm, then tumbled into the second-story foyer of the queen’s tower.