The Titan of Twilight (23 page)

Brianna pulled up her cloak to shield Kaedlaw and her partially exposed breast. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m nursing.”

“I’m truly sorry for the intrusion.” Anastes made no move to look away. “And if you’ll forgive me for expressing my concerns, I must say a tiny thing like you will never keep a baby giant fed.”

“Lanaxis thinks I’ll make a fine nursemaid.” Although the scratching had grown no louder, it filled Brianna’s ears like a trumpet blare. “He seems to believe that’s all a mother is good for.”

“I suppose that’s what comes of being born to a mountain.” Anastes was referring to the legend that Lanaxis and his brothers had been born of the mountain goddess Othea. “When one crawls from the birthing cave fully mature and immortal, how can one fathom the soothing balm of a mother’s love?”

“Perhaps you’d better teach him,” Brianna suggested. “Or your new emperor will grow up as warped as your titan.”

A doleful look came to Anastes’s silver eyes. “Would that I could, but we storm giants have already brought misery enough to the world. By trying to change what is destined to be, we can only make things worse.”

“How convenient for you.”

Anastes’s face darkened to sullen blue. The thunder outside growled plaintively, and a flurry of birds flashed past his face. The sulking storm giant looked away, turning his enormous ear to the window.

The queen’s stomach knotted with alarm. She rose and paced across the floor, holding her son to her shoulder as though she were burping him. Kaedlaw immediately growled his protest, filling the chamber with such a rumble that the birds fluttered off their roosts. Even Brianna could no longer hear the scratching in the fireplace.

Anastes turned back to the chamber. “Poor child. The pain of life is so new to him.”

“Perhaps he is cold,” rumbled a second storm giant. “We could strike a fire.”

“No!” Brianna spun around to find a huge gray eye peering through the arrow loop behind her. A pair of brown falcons were roosting on the sill, their cocked heads turned toward the giant. “The chimney’s blocked. We’d choke on the smoke.”

‘That’s a small matter to fix,” offered another giant, this one peering through an arrow loop by the chimney. “I’ll have the flue clear in an instant.”

“I don’t want a fire!” Brianna insisted. She doubted the smoke would trouble Avner in the bottom of the chimney, but she didn’t want a giant dropping a stone on the young scout. Besides, the queen suspected she would find it difficult enough to crawl into a flue that was cold. “I’ll only have to put it out when Lanaxis lifts the tower, and even then I’ll have embers flying all over.”

Anastes knitted his brows, but did not argue. “Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?”

“What I really need is to eat.” It was the truth, but Brianna also hoped to keep the storm giants busy. “If you want to help, bring me some fresh rye bread, goat’s cheese, and a warm meatcake.”

“There’s a pair of moose in the fen beyond that forest,” rumbled one of the giants. “Wouldn’t they be enough for you?”

Brianna shot an impatient scowl at Anastes. “Do you see my cooks here? Or perhaps you expect me to eat raw moose?”

“Nikol and Ramos can cook them for you,” offered the giant.

“Very well,” Brianna sighed. “But my moose must be slow-roasted on a spit, and cooked through. Of course, I shall need wine to wash it down, a honeycomb to sweeten the flavor, and a bowl of pottage to settle my stomach.”

Anastes paled. “You have demanding tastes, milady.” “You’re the one who suggested moose,” Brianna reminded him. Td be just as happy with my first request—but if that’s too much trouble, perhaps you could keep the milk flowing for your new emperor by feeding me finches and falcons.”

Anastes winced. “No, of course not! We wouldn’t think of such a thing!”

He was speaking more to the birds than to Brianna, but that did not keep the queen’s unwanted guests from leaving the chamber in a squawking flurry. Clearly, the creatures understood more than she would have liked.

Kaedlaw let out an enormous burp and stopped growling. Brianna continued to pace, sliding her feet across the floor to mask the sound of Avner’s work.

“Well?” she demanded. “What shall it be?”

“We will cook the moose,” Anastes sighed. His head rose out of view, then his muffled voice reverberated across the third-story floor. “Nikol and Ramos, you roast the moose. Sebastion, you and Patma find some wine and vegetables for the queen’s pottage. Eusebius, see if the thrushes can guide you to a beehive.”

The giants did not rush off to do their paramount’s bidding.

“Before we go, I would like to behold our new emperor,” said one. “Perhaps we are not worthy of the honor, but it is truly my heart’s desire to lay eyes on him at least this once.”

Brianna started to pull Kaedlaw from beneath her cloak, then thought wiser of it. She might make better use of this boon later.

“The emperor is resting now.”

The storm giants sighed, and a chain of frigid drafts twirled through the chamber. Somewhere above the tower, half-a-dozen hawks voiced a string of forlorn seers. The wind picked up and whistled past the arrow loops, spinning flurries of graupel into the room, and, save for Anastes, all of Brianna’s captors lumbered off to gather the food she had demanded.

“You are right to deny us, of course.” Anastes looked away, and a peal of long, soft thunder rumbled across the sky. “It is wrong for us even to hope we might lay eyes on one so sublime.”

“And why is that, Anastes?” Brianna was at once sympathetic and impatient with the giant’s self-pity. She went to the shattered arrow loop and stopped there. “What ancient wrong did Lanaxis call you to amend? No deed can be terrible enough to condemn an entire race to such suffering.”

The storm giant lifted his chin and fixed an enormous, woe-filled eye on Brianna. “I fear you are wrong, milady.” His lips trembled with shame. “Our race is to blame for all the misery and suffering on Toril.”

Behind Anastes, forks of lightning lanced down from the gray snow clouds, stabbing at the ground and spewing great plumes of hissing steam into the sky. The birds screeched as though they were dying. The graupel battered the giant’s shoulders so fiercely he grimaced.

“That’s a heavy burden to claim,” Brianna observed. “Are you certain it belongs to your race alone?”

“Oh, yes. There can be no doubt.” Anastes’s voice was growing louder and more pained with each syllable he spoke, once again raising the storm outside to blizzard proportions. “We are the ones who plunged the world into chaos and war. We are the ones who slew Ostoria’s divine ruler, Hartkiller, and drove Annam the All Father from Toril forever!”

The howling winds buffeted the tower so harshly that Brianna had to brace her arm against the wall. “I see!” she shouted. “But did you ever consider that your ancestor might have done other races a favor? Perhaps they had no wish to be ruled by giants.”

Anastes looked aghast, and the storm lulled. “How can you say that?” he demanded. “You, a descendant of Hartkiller!”

“I’m more human than giant,” Brianna reminded him. “I’m glad to rule Hartsvale instead of the giants, and the humans are happy to have me.”

Anastes shook his head in disbelief. “Then you are as foolish as your people,” he declared. “Annam decreed that the giants would rule Toril, not for our sakes, but for the welfare and harmony of all races. By killing Hartkiller, we defied the All Father’s will. We destroyed Ostoria.”

“Now you’re the one who’s being foolish,” Brianna countered. “My runecaster has translated the histories written by the stone giants. I know who destroyed Ostoria, and it wasn’t your ancestor. It was Lanaxis.”

Anastes’s face went as white as the snow. The birds on his shoulders took flight, and the storm grew so quiet that even the graupel seemed to hang frozen in the sky. The scratching of Avner’s knife hissed loudly in the queen’s ears.

Brianna pinched her son. Kaedlaw responded admirably, filling the chamber with a low, angry growl.

“You mustn’t say such things about Lanaxis,” Anastes warned. “Never!”

“Why not?” Brianna demanded. “Must I tell you the legend? Annam the All Father wanted true giants—his progeny—to rule Toril. But faithless Othea spawned children by many different gods, and she wanted all her offspring to share the world. That’s why she helped one of her lovers unleash the glacier that would one day wipe Ostoria from the land.”

“I know the history of my own people!”

“Then think about it.” Brianna was beginning to hope she could make an ally of the storm giant. When men consumed by false guilt learned the truth, they often turned against those who had abused their emotions. “After Othea forbade Lanaxis from destroying the glacier, he poisoned her, and that made him a murderer. What did he become when he allowed his brother kings to drink the same poison?” “He loved Ostoria!”

“Lanaxis would not be the only fool to destroy what he loves most,” Brianna replied. “Nor the only one to go mad after he realized what he did.”

Kaedlaw fell silent. Though Brianna could still hear the faint scratching of Avner’s knife, she did nothing to cover the sound. Anastes was lost in thought, and it seemed a worthwhile risk to let him think in peace.

At length, the birds returned to the storm giant’s shoulders, and the wind howled as mournfully as before.

“We still bear the blame for Hartkiller’s death.” Anastes sounded almost relieved. “Lanaxis did not murder him.”

“By then, Ostoria was already lost,” Brianna said. “Your race has been blaming itself for a tragedy the gods set in motion. By trying to right things now, you’ll be making a mistake even more terrible than the one for which you have blamed yourselves all these centuries.”

The giant’s silver eyes grew thoughtful, and he looked away. Once again the winds quieted, the graupel fell more slowly, and the birds deserted their roosts—then a muffled clatter echoed out of the fireplace.

Anastes’s head snapped back toward the tower. Brianna braced herself for a tempestuous display of temper, but the storm remained calm.

“How do you know?” demanded Anastes. If he had heard the clatter, he paid it no heed. “What makes you certain Lanaxis is wrong to restore Ostoria?”

Brianna breathed no sigh of relief. She pulled her son from beneath her cloak and said, “I know because I have seen the face of your new emperor.”

Another clatter sounded from the fireplace, this one too loud to miss. Brianna turned Kaedlaw toward the shattered arrow loop and thrust his hideous visage toward the storm giant.

Anastes’s silver eyes opened wide, and he grimaced with revulsion. “There is nothing I can do.” He looked away from the tower. “What will be will be—the matter is entirely out of my hands.”

Surprise Attack

The birds would be a problem, Tavis knew. The birds and the cold. He had never seen so many birds, and he had never been so cold. He felt sick with cold. His clothes were frozen stiff with his own sweat, and his thoughts bumped through his mind like icebergs. The weather was not particularly frigid, but, as Munairoe had warned, the high scout’s system had been weakened by too much magic. After last night’s long run, his body lacked the stamina to keep itself warm, and now he would have to deal with the birds. There were thousands and thousands, from warm lands and cold, representing every species Tavis knew and a hundred he didn’t.

On the icy winds above wheeled a dozen glacier vultures, their black heads and blue-tinged wings all that showed through the dusky snowstorm. A clan of dervish owls sat perched on the battered rim of the queen’s tower, their huge golden eyes tracing every movement of the strange blue pheasants below. On the shoulders of the storm giants, kestrels roosted with sparrows, harriers with siskins, hawks with crows; only the egg-stealing skunkbirds sat apart, their white-striped bodies tangled like bats amidst the giants’ windblown hair. There was even a pair of condors waddling around the roasting fire, snatching slabs of moose off the spits when the cooks looked the other way.

Tavis was studying the scene from atop a thirty-foot knoll, where he and the three giant-kin chieftains lay belly-down in a deep blanket of wet graupel. The ‘kin army was behind them, quietly gathering at the base of a long, gradual slope. Ahead of them, the hill descended in a steep, rocky scarp to the snow-covered meadow of an abandoned farm village.

In the center of the meadow, a low, snow-mantled drumlin spewed plumes of white steam into the air and occasionally stirred in its sleep the titan lying blanketed beneath a thick jacket of snow. The queen’s tower stood nearby, with a storm giant kneeling beside it so he could peer into the second-floor chamber. At the west end of the field was the roasting fire, where two giants were tending a like number of spitted moose. At the opposite end of the meadow, two more were rummaging through the debris of the demolished village. The sixth giant was in the forest beyond the hamlet, his location marked by trembling treetops and a halo of circling birds.

The fomorian chieftain, Ror, shifted in the snow at Tavis’s side. “What we do now?” he whispered. ‘Them storm giants don’t let us kill baby, no.”

“Ror, we’re here to recover Kaedlaw, not kill him.” As he spoke, Orisino cast a sidelong glance in Tavis’s direction to make certain the high scout was listening. “What happens after that is up to Tavis.”

The fomorian’s froggish face winced, and he said, “Right. Ror mean rescue kid.”

The high scout paid the exchange little attention. He knew better than to think either chieftain would keep his word, but Raeyadfourne had pledged the Meadowhome firbolgs to let Tavis decide Kaedlaw’s fate. When the time came, that promise would go far toward countering the treachery of the verbeegs and fomorians.

“How shall we do it?” Raeyadfourne cast an uneasy glance toward the sinking sun. “We don’t have much light left, and I don’t fancy fighting storm giants after dusk.”

‘Titan sleeping. Kill first, him,” suggested Ror. “Then storm giants leave, them.”

“That’s absurd, Ror,” said Orisino. “How will you kill that titan?”

It was Raeyadfourne who answered. “We wounded him last night, and many of our axes still bear Basil’s rune marks.” The chieftain squinted at the titan for a moment, then reluctantly shook his head. “But Lanaxis is no fool. Even Tavis couldn’t get within a hundred paces of him without being seen. One way or another, we’re going to have fight the storm giants first. I say we attack as soon as our warriors are ready.”