The Titan of Twilight

6

Night had fallen; though the boreal lights bathed the canyon’s ice-draped rim in a rainbow curtain of dancing reflections, their ghostly rays could not pierce the abyssal gloom deeper in the gorge. The landslide at the bottom was cloaked in a mantle of dark, swarthy purple, and Tavis could hardly see the rocks beneath his feet. He had to climb by feel, testing each step carefully before trusting his weight to the slick stones, and even then he often braced himself on his bow to keep from falling.

Everything hurt. His shoulder ached so much he could hardly move it; each breath filled his chest with a swell of dull pain. His frozen feet burned with the dubious blessing of renewed circulation. The constant throbbing in his head felt no worse than having a battle drum pressed to his ear, and he could not string two thoughts together without a conscious act of will. In his belly, he felt the warmth of Simon’s healing elixir working its magic-but that was little comfort now. Tavis found his fist inside his cloak, grasping his second healing potion. He forced himself to withdraw his hand empty. It would be foolish to use the second vial before the first had finished its work.

As Tavis climbed the landslide, he remained alert for clues as to where his foes had taken Brianna. The fallen fire giants above were mere silhouettes, barely distinguishable from the huge boulders heaped along the crest of the slide. Beside some of the bodies flickered the orange glow of guttering fire swords, suggesting that the battle had ended less than an hour ago. The high scout saw no human corpses at all.

Tavis’s heart began to hammer. If the fire giants had left their dead in the canyon, perhaps Brianna had escaped after all.

About halfway to the crest, Tavis heard rocks clattering nearby, then an anguished cry too deep and resonant to be human. He dropped into a crouch, then crept toward the sound. A short distance ahead, a bushy-maned profile rose above a big rock. Though the head was little larger than the high scout’s, it had the wild mane of hair and beard typical of firbolgs. The figure groaned again, then pushed an arm over the boulder and clutched at the cold stone. It turned a pair of milky white eyes toward Tavis.

“Over… here.” Strained as it was, the deep voice sounded chillingly familiar. “Help me!”

Tavis neither showed himself, nor drew his weapon. “Galgadayle?”

The seer looked toward Tavis’s voice, then groaned in disappointment. “You?” He slipped lower behind his boulder. “Tavis… Burdun?”

“What are you doing here?”

“They didn’t… find… after battle,” the seer croaked. “Couldn’t yell… too much… pain.”

Suddenly, Tavis understood why the fire giants had left their dead behind. They had lost the battle. “The Meadowhome Clan is here?” he asked. “You killed the fire giants?”

“We… had to come,” the seer replied. “Must protect the tribe. The law… demands it.”

Galgadayle lost his grip on the boulder and slipped out of sight. Tavis crept up the slide, confident he was not being lured into a trap. The pain in the seer’s voice had been genuine, but more importantly, firbolgs were incapable of such treachery. They might wait in ambush or sneak up on a foe, but the same instinct that made it impossible for them to lie also prevented them from enticing an enemy to his death.

Tavis slipped around the boulder to find Galgadayle sitting in a hollow between several stones. The air was heavy with the reek of urine and fresh blood. The seer held one arm twisted behind him, pressing his hand against the small of his back. He was only about two-thirds as large as when he had visited Castle Hartwick.

The size change did not surprise Tavis as much as it might have. His mentor, Runolf Saemon, had once known an entire tribe of firbolgs to grow two feet in a single day. For a time, Tavis had pleaded with every firbolg he met to show him the trick, but they had all refused. The scout had finally given up, concluding that their law forbade sharing the secret with an outcast.

Tavis knelt at Galgadayle’s side and reached out to move the seer’s hand. “You’re smaller than I remember.”

“I’ve lost blood.” Galgadayle pushed Tavis’s arm away. “Finish me quickly… nothing to gain with torture.”

Tavis half-smiled at the attempt to change the subject. The seer was more afraid of breaking the law than of dying.

“I won’t torture you-or kill you.” The high scout did not blame Galgadayle for trying to capture Brianna. The seer was acting on his conscience. As wrong as he might be, that did not make him evil, and Tavis was not in the habit of killing people for their mistakes. “I’d rather help you, if you’ll allow me.”

Galgadayle glared at him with one white eye. “I have brought harm to your… family,” he said. “Why show me mercy?”

“Because you’re no longer a threat,” Tavis replied. “Killing you would make me a murderer.”

“Perhaps,” Galgadayle groaned. “But the law does not require… nowhere is it decreed you must help an enemy.”

Tavis shrugged. “I have learned a different kind of law with the humans,” he said. “It comes more from inside than out, and it can be as nebulous and shifting as a cloud, but I must obey it nonetheless.”

Galgadayle considered this, then took his hand away, revealing a large, mangle-edged hole in his cloak. Though it was too dark to see more, Tavis smelled fresh blood. It was heavy with the scent of urine, a sure sign the seer would die without help.

“You’ll have to lie down so I can reach the wound.” Tavis gently guided Galgadayle onto his stomach.

“This changes nothing.” Despite Galgadayle’s words, there was a note of gratitude in his strained voice. “When the child is born… Raeyadfourne must still-aarghh!”

Tavis began to probe the wound, bringing Galgadayle’s sentence to a harsh end.

“What happened to my wife?” Tavis continued to work. His fingers came across the stub of sword blade that had been broken off just below Galgadayle’s kidney. “Who has her?”

The seer shook his head. “That I will… not tell you,” he groaned. “Leave me, if you wish. I’ll probably die anyway.”

“No, you won’t,” Tavis said. “I have a healing elixir.”

Galgadayle craned his neck to glance up at Tavis, his eyes flashing with a brief hope that quickly vanished behind dark clouds of despair. The seer gave Tavis a wry smile, then shook his head. “Keep your potion,” he said. “The cost is too dear.”

“I’m not trying to buy your knowledge.” Tavis had watched Brianna deal with her earls often enough to know there were more effective ways than bribery to learn a person’s secrets. “The potion is yours, but it won’t do any good unless I pull that broken blade out of your back. To do that I’ll need light”

“All-all I have is a sparking steel.” Galgadayle sounded forlorn. During the time it took to start a fire and make a torch, the seer could well bleed to death.

“I have a magical light,” Tavis said. “But I don’t want to attract fire giants.”

Galgadayle sighed in relief, and when he spoke, he sounded like a dead man to whom the gods had given a second life. “You won’t,” he said. “There’s no need to worry about that.”

“How do you know?” Now that the seer’s thoughts were on saving his own life, Tavis could try to draw out the information he needed. “If a straggler attacks while I’m pulling out the steel, there won’t be much I can do.”

“There… aren’t any… stragglers.” Galgadayle sounded as though the frustration of trying to reassure Tavis would kill him long before he bled to death. “Our warriors… killed them… all of them.”

The high scout’s stomach felt queasy and heavy. If the fire giants were dead, Brianna was with the firbolgs. “In that case, maybe I should fetch your shaman,” Tavis suggested. “It would be safer if he removed the blade.”

“No!” Galgadayle objected. “I won’t live… long enough.”

“They couldn’t have gone far.”

The seer started to reply, then thought better of it and glared at Tavis. “You’re as devious… as a human,” he said. “Can you lie, too?”

“I would if I could,” Tavis said truthfully. “I’ve sworn to protect the queen, and I’d do anything to keep that vow.”

With that, the scout took Mountain Crusher in both hands and whispered, “tnaillirbsilisaB.” A rune flared with sapphire light, then the entire bow radiated a pale blue glow. Tavis leaned the weapon where it would illuminate the injury. He pulled his dagger and cut Galgadayle’s fur cloak away from the wound. The scout had little trouble finding the end of the steel shard, for it protruded from a short crescent of severed sinew and sliced meat. Whoever had planted the blade had deliberately tried to work it back and forth, a vicious killing technique more commonly employed by assassins and thieves than by honorable soldiers. Tavis knew instantly who had done this to the seer.

“You’re lucky, Galgadayle.” Tavis pulled a wad of soft, clean cloth from his satchel and laid it on a stone beside the seer. “Avner usually strikes truer than this.”

“Who?”

“The one who stabbed you in the back.” Tavis pinched the stub of the broken sword between his fingers and jostled it, lightly, to see how securely the blade was lodged. “I hope you didn’t kill him.”

Galgadayle shook his head. “The coward got away,” he hissed. “But if I-”

“Got away?” Tavis interrupted. If Avner had escaped, so had Brianna. The youth’s ethics were certainly questionable, but not his loyalty. “Your warriors didn’t capture him?”

Galgadayle’s head pivoted toward the mountainside, then he realized his mistake and looked away. “I’m feeling weak.”

Tavis glanced up the gloom-shrouded slope. He saw only a purple, inky darkness as deep as the Abyss itself, but he was smiling when he looked back to his patient. “Avner has taken my wife into the mines, hasn’t he?”

Galgadayle’s eyes widened. “I don’t… I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Before his distracted patient realized what was happening, Tavis pulled the shard from Galgadayle’s back. The steel slipped out of the wound like a dagger from its sheath, and it was removed before the seer could open his mouth to scream. The fragment was about two feet long and covered with a dark coating of slime and blood.

“You… tricked me!” Galgadayle seemed more surprised than angered.

“You have nothing to complain about.” Tavis tossed the bloody shard aside. “The blade came out in one piece, didn’t it?”

He used the cloth he had set aside earlier to stanch the heavy flow of blood, then guided Galgadayle’s hand to the wound. Once he knew his patient was strong enough to hold the dressing in place, he helped the seer sit up. Tavis took his healing potion from his cloak and uncorked the purple flask.

“Drink this.” He placed the elixir in Galgadayle’s free hand. “And when you feel well enough to move, find someplace warm to spend the night.”

The seer did not lift the flask to his lips. “You will not… you cannot save the child,” he said. “There are many… many miles of tunnel up there.”

“I’ll find my way.” Tavis stood and grabbed his rune-etched bow. “Now drink up. I’d hate to see you spill the last of Simon’s elixir.”

The seer lifted the potion to his lips and downed it in a single gulp. When he finished, he raised the empty flask to Tavis.

“I thank you for my life.” He still sounded weak, but the anxious edge had slipped from his voice. “And I would repay your favor with… with a warning.”

“I’m listening,” Tavis said. “But if this is about the child-”

Galgadayle shook his head. “Watch out for the… verbeegs… and the fomorians,” he said. “And pray… pray that Raeyadfourne finds your wife… before they do.”

Brianna’s litter-bearers were exhausted. Their efficient double-time trot had degenerated into a disorderly jog occasionally punctuated by the thud of tripping feet. The sound of their labored breathing echoed through the tunnel like the wheezing of a punctured forge bellows.

The party was passing through a labyrinth of winding passages that the tunnel wizards called “the drifts,” where the narrow corridors crossed and recrossed each other as they followed the meandering “drift” of the silver veins. The queen did not dare call a rest. Even suspended on her cloak, she felt the stone floor rumbling beneath the heavy boots of her pursuers, and she heard their distant voices echoing louder at each fork in the tunnel.

Brianna did not know what had become of Avner, but it seemed apparent the young scout’s plan had failed. She had heard the crack of his runebullet and, for a short time thereafter, the sounds of pursuit had fallen silent. The queen and her bearers had slowed their pace so he could catch up, but he had never arrived. Then a distant rumble had begun to build behind them and resolved too soon into the tramping boots of a firbolg troop. The front riders had been running hard since, and Brianna had knotted her stomach into a snarl worrying about her young friend.

Kaedlaw stopped suckling, then fixed his handsome blue eyes on Brianna and opened his mouth wide to cry. The noise that came out sounded nothing like a sob; it was more of a long, gurgling growl. Several of the queen’s exhausted bearers cast nervous looks over their shoulders, peering not at the infant, but down the dark passage behind them.

“Carry on,” Brianna said. “It’s only Kaedlaw-commanding to be burped, I imagine.”

“Strangest sound I ever heard a baby make, Majesty,” huffed the torch holder. “Sounds more like a-”

“Marwick, you’d do well to save your wind.” Brianna started to ask the young front rider if he expected a half-firbolg prince to sound the same as his own peasant runt, but she caught herself and said instead, “If you have that much breath left, you can change places with Thatcher.”

A crimson flush crept over Marwick’s face. His green eyes flashed briefly to Kaedlaw, then he fell back and traded his torch for Thatcher’s place at her cloak.

The queen was still using one hand to keep her incision closed, so she balanced her son on her chest and used her free hand to gently pat his back. Kaedlaw’s growl only became louder. She covered him with her shift, thinking he might be cold, but that also failed to silence him.

“Don’t worry, Majesty,” wheezed Gryffitt. “He’s just tired. It’s a rough way to come into the world.” “Yes, it is,” Brianna agreed.

The queen felt as exhausted as Kaedlaw, and that worried her. She had already lost so much blood that she was cold, sleepy, and dizzy, and blood continued to seep from the incision. A dark curtain had begun to descend inside her mind. When it fell completely, her son would be left an orphan, with nothing more than half-a-dozen exhausted guards to defend him from the firbolgs.

The front riders carried Brianna deeper into the drifts. Always, they strived to follow the largest passage, on the theory that it was the least likely to come to a sudden end. Kaedlaw’s growls gradually abated to mere murmurs, and the clamor of their pursuers grew steadily louder. It was not long before the queen could make out some of what the firbolgs were shouting:

“… clear here.”

“This… empty.”

“Not in here.”

The cries kindled a glimmer of hope in Brianna’s breast. She propped herself on her elbow, then watched the gray walls and mineral-crusted timbers slip past. At the next fork, she ordered her litter-bearers to carry her down the smaller of the two passages.

Thirty paces later, the queen almost missed what she had been looking for. A small drift branched off the main corridor; its entrance was so narrow and ragged that it looked like a shadow. The passage itself was barely as wide as a man’s shoulders, with the walls lying at a cockeyed angle and the floor sloping down toward the heart of the mountain.

“Wait!” Brianna ordered. “Stop here!”

The front riders stumbled to a halt, then Gryffitt cast a nervous glance back toward the fork. “Milady, the firbolgs are closing,” he panted. “We may not have time to backtrack.”

“We’re not backtracking, we’re hiding-in there.” Brianna pointed at the narrow drift, then added, “And I need a volunteer to lure the firbolgs away. Someone fast.”

All eyes turned to Marwick.

“Take the torch back to the fork and go a little way up the passage,” Brianna ordered. “Stay ahead of the firbolgs, but let them catch a glimpse of the light now and then, and don’t go too fast. We don’t want to make it obvious you’re alone.”

“As you wish, milady.” Marwick reluctantly reached for the torch.

Thatcher did not yield the brand. “Majesty, perhaps I should go instead,” he suggested. “Marwick has a family.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Gryffitt growled. “Those aren’t fomorians back there. All Marwick has to do is surrender when he runs out of tunnel. If he doesn’t fight, the firbolgs won’t hurt him.”

Gryffitt and another front rider carried Brianna into the cock-eyed drift, tipping her sideways to prevent her broad shoulders from becoming lodged in the narrow confines. The warm stench of sulfur filled the passage, causing Kaedlaw to start murmuring again. The other front riders crammed themselves in behind the queen’s litter; then Marwick took the torch and left, plunging the drift into a darkness as thick as sap. Already, Brianna heard firbolg axes clanging against the walls of nearby tunnels.

Kaedlaw began to complain more loudly, filling the drift with a deep, rumbling growl. Brianna turned his face toward her breast, hoping he would start to suckle again. That only made him angrier. She laid her hand across his cheek to muffle the noise. He still sounded as loud as a snoring bear.

A chorus of shouts erupted from the fork as the firbolgs spotted Marwick’s light. They rushed after him, the fury of their pounding boots shaking the drift walls. The thunder continued for minutes. Kaedlaw’s growls grew ever more ferocious. He kept twisting his head away from Brianna’s hand, determined to make himself heard. The queen found herself holding her breath, as though that would quiet her indignant son. She prayed to Hiatea that the din would continue until he wore himself out.

But Kaedlaw was a strong boy. The thunder gradually began to diminish, and the newborn’s complaints seemed that much louder. Brianna tried to reassure herself with the thought that her pursuers could not possibly hear the child over the hammering of their own boots.

She was finally beginning to believe herself when a hand shook her ankle.

“Thatcher says a firbolg’s coming down the tunnel,” whispered a front rider. “He wants to know if he should attack.”

Brianna appreciated the young man’s diplomacy. He was really hinting that she should find a way to quiet Kaedlaw, but he was too wise to suggest the queen’s child might be placing the party in danger.

“Tell him to be ready, but to hold fast unless I call the order.” Brianna would battle her pursuers to the death, but she was under no illusions that it would save her child. If it came to bloodshed, the rest of the firbolgs would quickly realize they had been tricked. “I’ll do what I can to spare us a fight.”

The queen pressed Kaedlaw more tightly to her breast. She pulled the edge of her cloak over him, but even the heavy fur could not smother his cries. The thunder of the firbolg boots continued to diminish, and she saw the first dim glow of torch light flickering outside the drift. It was growing steadily brighter, as though the warrior were walking carelessly down the passage, not really expecting to be ambushed.

“Kaedlaw, forgive me,” Brianna whispered.

The queen slipped her hand over her son’s face and covered his mouth. He began to struggle, beating and kicking at her chest and trying to twist out of her grasp. Although her fingers muffled his cries, he still had enough air to continue his protests. He sounded more like a fox kit than an infant, but Brianna knew better than to think their pursuer would be fooled. She tightened her grip until she felt her palm pressing into Kaedlaw’s jaw bone, then pinched his nostrils shut and started to count. If the firbolg was still here when she reached a hundred, she would order Thatcher to attack.

A firbolg’s deep voice rang down the corridor outside their hiding place. “It’s no use hiding, Queen,” he called. “We’re going to find you.”

Brianna felt her men tense and heard hand axes swishing from their sheaths.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

The firbolg was trying to draw them out. If he really knew they were here, he would be calling his fellows back, not yelling threats into the dark-that was what Brianna hoped.

The queen’s count reached twenty-five. Kaedlaw finally ran out of breath and fell silent, but he continued to struggle against the smothering hand. Outside the drift, the thunder of the main troop suddenly grew quieter, as though they had rounded a corner in some distant tunnel, and Brianna heard the rustle of heavy boots scuffing across the stone floor outside.

“What’s that bitter scent?” the firbolg called. “Is that giant spawn I smell?”

Brianna counted fifty, and she bit her tongue to keep from answering the insult with an attack order. The affront was the worst a firbolg could offer, for the enmity between ’kin and their true giant brethren dated back to the birth of their races.

The rumble of the firbolgs’ main troop had grown so muted that Brianna heard other voices in nearby passages. Like the pursuer in the drift outside, they were attempting to lure her from hiding by hurling taunts into the darkness. The queen counted seventy-five, and Kaedlaw stopped struggling in her arms.

An icy fist closed around Brianna’s heart, but she did not dare remove her hand from the child’s face. She could see her men’s heads silhouetted against the light of the firbolg’s flickering torch. The warrior would certainly hear the slightest gurgle. She already feared that her own throbbing pulse was loud enough to give the party away, and she smelled her own sweat growing heavy beneath the sulfurous stench of the drift. It would not be much longer, she knew, before the odor grew thick enough to reach the warrior outside.

“Think about what you’re doing, Queen,” the firbolg called. “The wicked twin will slay his brother to assure ascension to your throne. A strong queen-a good mother-would protect both her kingdom and her worthy child. She would give the giant spawn to us.”

Brianna counted eighty-five. She slipped her fingertips under Kaedlaw’s jaw and searched for a pulse. She could not find one, and the infant remained as still as death. The queen silently called upon Hiatea to protect her child. In reply, she heard the dark, angry voice of another god, one who promised that if the firbolgs forced her to smother her own child, her vengeance would be as terrible as her grief.

Brianna shuddered. She did not want vengeance; she wanted to escape with her child.

At ninety-five, the queen heard Raeyadfourne’s weak, raspy voice call out from the fork. “Let’s go, Claegborne,” he said. “We’ll have trouble enough catching the others.”

The warrior did not reply. The tunnel fell so quiet that Brianna could hear Claegborne’s torch hissing and sputtering. The firbolg had to be within two or three paces of her hiding place. A strange, muted rumble sounded inside her skull, and the queen realized she was grinding her teeth. She stopped, fearing her pursuer had already heard the noise.

The count reached a hundred.

“Stop wasting my time,” Raeyadfourne ordered. “If you’ve found something, say so.”

A pair of heavy steps sounded from the fork as Raeyadfourne started down the passage. Brianna opened her mouth to order the attack, then the torchlight outside suddenly dimmed.

“Don’t trouble yourself.” Claegborne started back toward Raeyadfourne. “I smelled something, but it was just brimstone blowing up the passage. This tunnel must connect to the bottom of the mine.”

The icy fist inside Brianna’s chest clamped down, squeezing so hard that she feared her heart would burst. Kaedlaw had already been without air for nearly two minutes, but she forced herself to keep her palm over his face as she listened to the firbolg withdraw. The thought that she might be smothering her own child left the queen shivering and queasy, but she would feel no better if the firbolgs returned to murder him before her eyes.

Finally, the heavy steps of the two firbolgs abruptly faded to muted thumps as they reached the fork and started up the opposite tunnel. Brianna pulled her hand from Kaedlaw’s face, ready to slap it back at the slightest hint of a grumble. When the child made no sound, she wet her fingers and held them before his nostrils, alert for the faintest stir of breath.

The queen felt nothing but the drift’s sulfurous breeze.

“Someone strike me a light,” Brianna commanded. “Thatcher, go to the fork and keep a watch for our enemies.”

A noisy rustling filled the cramped darkness as the front riders scurried to obey. Brianna placed her lips over Kaedlaw’s nose and mouth and blew a slow, gentle breath into his lungs. When he did not cry out, she pressed lightly on his abdomen to push the air back out, then repeated the process. As she worked, she heard the sharp crack of someone breaking a lance, then the shrill rip of cloth. A cork popped as it was pulled from a flask, then the pungent reek of torch oil filled the passage. Brianna silently begged her son to breathe, but he did not cry out or gasp.

A front rider scratched a flint across a striking steel, filling the tunnel outside with brief sparkles of white light. Forgetting about her own wound, the queen used both hands to raise her son’s chest to her ear. She heard a single, feeble thump, then nothing. “I need that light!”

The queen cradled her son in the crook of her elbow, then blew another gentle breath into his lungs. A tiny orange light flickered at the end of the passage. It gradually grew bright enough to reveal the form of a man squatting in the tunnel outside, blowing gently on a small pile of burning tinder. It took only a moment for the flame to grow steady enough for a second man to light the head of a makeshift torch. He passed the brand into the cockeyed drift, handing it to the front rider at Brianna’s feet.

As the torchlight fell over her son, the queen cried out in alarm. Kaedlaw’s handsome face was gone. In its place was an ugly round visage with brown eyes, a pug nose, and puffy cheeks. The infant’s lips had suddenly become meaty and bluish. He had a mouthful of snaggleteeth and a rolling double chin, and he looked as cold as a statue.

“What is it, Majesty?” asked Gryffitt. “He isn’t dead?” “I don’t know yet.”

The queen looked up and realized that she was the only one who could see her son’s new face. Gryffitt was standing on the low ground behind her, and the man at her feet had to reach across his chest to hold the torch for her. He could not look in her direction without staring directly into the flame.

Brianna placed her thumbs over her son’s sternum and began to press down in the rhythm of her own heart. Kaedlaw opened his mouth, unleashing a belch as deep and foul as an ogre’s growl. A blue sparkle appeared in his brown eyes, his meaty lips pursed out to suck a lungful of air, then, all at once, his heavy jowls disappeared, his teeth straightened, his nose lengthened, and once more he was her handsome young son.

The change puzzled Brianna only briefly, for she quickly decided what she had seen was an illusion. Those who lost too much blood often became disoriented and confused. The transformation had been no more than a hallucination of her blood-starved brain. The queen was sure of that.

“Majesty, what of the child?” Gryffitt asked. “Is he well?”

“He’s going to be fine,” Brianna answered.

All the front riders sighed in relief.

“Then perhaps we should see to you, Majesty,” Gryffitt suggested. “Unless we finish Avner’s work, I fear…”

The front rider let his sentence trail off, apparently thinking better of what he had almost said.

“It’s okay, Gryffitt. I’m no more anxious to make an orphan of Kaedlaw than you are. Take me into the tunnel.” Brianna clutched her son more tightly to her breast, then added, “And Hiatea have mercy on the firbolg that makes me cover my son’s mouth again.”

Tavis stood at the tunnel wall, peering into the black throat of a crooked, craggy-sided chimney that yawned overhead like the serpentine gullet of a famished wyvern. Mountain Crusher’s recurved tip pointed up the gloomy shaft at a slight angle. Only the high scout’s firm grip kept the weapon, still glowing with magical blue light, from flying up the hole of its own accord. Brianna was up there somewhere, at least if the bow’s seeking rune was to be trusted.

Unfortunately, that knowledge did not mean Tavis could actually reach his wife. The rune merely pointed in her direction, without indicating whether the route was passable. The chimney, which the miners called a raise, might end a dozen yards overhead. It might wander within a foot of the queen, only to turn in the opposite direction and leave the high scout farther from her than before. Or, it might lead straight to Brianna. The only way to find out was to climb.

Tavis tied his quiver to his hip and slipped Mountain Crusher over his chest. The tip of the bow swung around so that it pointed up the shaft. The weapon would have floated free if the string had not caught in the high scout’s armpit. Tavis gulped down a lungful of the tunnel’s sulfur-reeking air, then reached into the chimney and hauled himself up.

He barely fit. Though the raise was more than eight feet wide, it was not much thicker than Tavis’s torso. To pull himself into the cramped space, he had to wedge his back against one wall and press his palms against the other, keeping his elbows tucked tight at his sides. It was strenuous work, and the high scout still felt weak and dizzy from his injuries. By the time he had pulled himself up far enough to use his knees and feet, his muscles were burning with fatigue. The sulfur stench from the tunnel below made matters worse, filling his lungs and throat with such a scorching stink that he could hardly breathe.

Tavis forced himself to gulp down more air, then clenched his teeth and pushed himself up another few inches. It would be slow going, but he had few alternatives. Shortly after leaving Galgadayle, a group of firbolgs had seen his glowing bow and started rolling boulders down the slope at him. The high scout had been forced to duck into this tunnel, trusting Mountain Crusher’s magic to help him find his wife before her pursuers.

Nor were the Meadowhome warriors Tavis’s greatest worry. He had yet to spy any verbeegs or fomorians, but the high scout knew better than to doubt Galgadayle’s word.

Both groups were formidable foes.

The verbeegs were as organized as they were cunning. They would move quickly to seal every exit from the mountain, then begin a search of the entire warren-no doubt aided by the magic of their shamans and ingenious runecasters. If they captured Brianna before the virtuous firbolgs, they would not content themselves with killing her child. Almost certainly, they would also demand an impossible ransom for her release.

The fomorians posed an even greater danger. Although they were the largest and least intelligent of the giant-kin races, they were born to darkness. They could squeeze their peculiar, deformed bodies through holes half their size, and they walked through pitch blackness in utter silence, with the patient, slow movements of spiders on the stalk. When their hunt was successful, nothing delighted them quite so much as twisting their live prey into grotesque parodies of their own malformed bodies.

Brianna had to be at the end of this raise; Tavis could not bear to think of what might happen if she was not. Unfortunately, the farther he climbed, the more Mountain Crusher pointed at the wall instead of straight up. He began to fear that soon the tip would be leveled at an impassable wall of solid granite.

Tavis came to a rocky choke point too narrow for his thick torso. He blew out his breath and tried to pull past, but succeeded only in lodging himself between two craggy ridges of granite. He tried to push back down, thinking he could traverse sideways and climb through at another angle. He could not descend.

Tavis attempted to break free through sheer force, trying to move up, down, sideways, and all directions between. He succeeded only in exhausting his battered body. His weary muscles began to shake uncontrollably, and the granite grew damp and slick beneath his palms. His boots trembled free of their nubby footholds, leaving him suspended in the crevice like a thief stuck in the palace chimney. For each breath, he had to struggle against a crushing glove of stone.

Tavis’s own odor, as musky and bitter as minkwort, overpowered the sulfurous stench from below. The firbolg could see nothing but the stone before his eyes, glowing eerily blue in his bow’s magic light. The darkness around him grew heavy and smothering, as though the immense weight of the mountain itself had poured into the absolute blackness of the raise. Nothing existed below his feet save the impenetrable murk, and nothing above him, nor around him, but more of the same. The high scout had a vision of himself: a tiny, buglike creature trapped in a minor crevice lost deep within the mountain’s immense, cloying gloom.

Tavis’s pulse sounded in his ears. With each beat, he felt the cold stone grating against his ribs, sending sharp pangs of agony through his battered torso. He tried to squirm sideways. The pain only worsened, and he grew more convinced that he had lodged himself forever. He heard his own voice groaning and snarling, as though someone might actually hear him through all those immeasurable tons of granite.

The high scout forced himself to stop struggling, to close his eyes and mouth and simply feel his situation. He was caught beneath his chest. Somehow, he managed to push the largest part of his body-his breast and shoulders-past the choke point. After a moment’s reflection, he realized he had been trying to pull himself through the constriction, which meant his arms had been raised above his head.

Tavis unfastened the ties on his scout’s cloak, then blew out his breath and raised his arms. The pressure on his ribs abated, and he slid down a few inches. He let his body go slack and fell out of his coat. Mountain Crusher slipped over his shoulder and started to float up the raise, and the high scout fell into the darkness below.

Tavis thrust his feet and hands against the chimney wall, bringing himself to a quick halt-then almost lost his hold as his heavy scout’s cloak landed on his head. He pulled the coat off, then realized that the raise was still illuminated by Mountain Crusher’s blue light. He looked up and saw his glowing bow a dozen feet above the choke point, where the raise gradually bent over and became a narrow corridor with cockeyed walls. The weapon was scraping along the ceiling, slowly floating into the drift.

Tavis folded his cloak over his quiver and climbed back to the choke point. This time, he slipped through with only a minimum of grunting and cursing. He scrambled up the raise and caught his bow a few steps inside the drift. The cockeyed passage sloped upward at a gradually decreasing angle for about fifty paces. There, dancing on the wall of a junction with another corridor, he saw the orange glow of torch light.

Tavis felt he would find Brianna near the torch, but he had no idea who would be with her. He wrapped Mountain Crusher inside his cloak, then crept up the drift as silently as a fox on the stalk. His heart was pounding so hard that he did not hear the strange, gurgling growl until he had almost reached the junction. He stopped and quietly eased his sword from its scabbard.

A woman hissed, then groaned in pain-Brianna!

With visions of cruel, malformed fomorians dancing through his head, Tavis threw his cloak into the passage to distract his wife’s captors. He followed with his sword raised, then heard several voices cry out in surprise. He found himself stooped over in a small tunnel, staring down at his wife’s fur-swaddled form. One man was holding a torch over her, while another knelt on the floor, hunched over her bare midsection. There were no giant-kin-fomorians or otherwise-anywhere near the queen.

Tavis lowered his guard.

Someone behind him hissed, “Firbolg!”

“Wait, it’s me!”

Tavis was spinning even as he spoke, bringing his sword around to deflect the misguided assault. A sharp crack rang off the tunnel walls as his blade sliced through a well-aimed lance, but even the lord high scout of Hartsvale was not fast enough to counter the thrust of the second front rider. The point of a lance sliced across his flank, opening a long gash above his hip.

Tavis grabbed the lance and jerked it from the man’s hands. “Is this the proper way to greet me?”

“Lord High Scout!” The men uttered the exclamation together, then one continued, “But you-Avner said you fell to the fire giants!”

“I did.” Tavis returned the lance he had taken, then pressed his hand over his bleeding wound. “But-”

“But Tavis Burdun always honors his duty,” interrupted Brianna. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Even if he must cheat death to do it.”

“Firbolgs can’t cheat, milady,” he replied. “You know that.”

Tavis sheathed his sword and faced his wife. She had a pearly grin upon her lips and a violet sparkle in her eyes, but her joy could not hide how hard the last hours had been for her. She looked haggard and weak. Her golden hair was sweat-plastered to her head, and her complexion was more pale than alabaster. Her pain showed in the lines etched into her brow and around her mouth, and her cheeks were as sunken and hollow as a corpse’s. Although her belly was no longer swollen in pregnancy, Front Rider Gryffitt was carefully sewing shut a long incision that someone had cut across the lower part of her abdomen.

Tavis could hardly bring himself to look away from the wound. If he had not seen the joy in her eyes, he would have assumed that one of their enemies had cut the child from her womb.

Tavis knelt at his wife’s side. “What happened?” he asked. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Brianna’s voice was as serene as moonlit snow. “And Tavis-I have something to show you.”

The queen opened her cloak. There, suckling at her breast, was the most hideous infant Tavis had ever seen. The baby was the size of a two-year-old, with stubby limbs and pudgy red fingers that pinched at its mother’s flesh like talons. It had dull brown eyes as ravenous as they were vacant, a short pug nose, bloated cheeks, and blood-red lips. Sparse tufts of wiry black hair covered its fat, round head, and the thing resembled a goblin more than a child.

“Well, Tavis?” Brianna asked. “Don’t you think he looks like you?”