The Titan of Twilight (36 page)

“Throw it, Basil!” The cry was not so much a command as a prayer, for not even Basil had believed he would have the strength to part with Sky Cleaver once he touched it. “Now!”

As they passed by, Tavis kept his gaze fixed on the palace. To his amazement, Basil grasped Sky Cleaver’s heft and began to spin like a hammer-hurler. The shadowroc dipped a wing and wheeled around. Tavis lost sight of the verbeeg, then felt a sudden rush of wind as Lanaxis drew a deep breath through the cavernous bird nostrils.

The high scout whipped his head back around in time to see Basil releasing the axe. In the same instant, the shadowroc voiced the terrible screech Brianna had warned them about. An anguished ringing erupted in Tavis’s ears, and his entire body stung from the powerful vibrations that reverberated through the bird’s beak. The cry swept Basil from his feet and hurled him across the portico into Galgadayle and Brianna.

Sky Cleaver dropped toward the ground.

Tavis pulled one hand from the shadowroc’s nostril and stretched it toward the axe. “In the name of Skoreaus Stonebones, Your Maker—” The high scout’s ears were ringing so painfully he could not be certain he was uttering the syllables correctly, but the axe began to rise into the air. “Sky Cleaver, do I summon you—”

The shadowroc screeched again, and wheeled around so violently that Tavis slammed against the side of its head. As they turned, the high scout glimpsed the axe sailing after them. He finished the last part of the command, unable to hear his own words

“Into the service of my hand.”

Sky Cleaver flew to Tavis, turning its heft toward his outstretched palm. The shadowroc flapped its wings madly. Once more the vibrations of its deafening screech racked the high scout’s body; then he felt the axe’s ivory handle in his palm.

The bird flung its head wildly, trying to throw its passenger away before he could strike. Tavis glimpsed the moonlit snows a thousand feet below. He knew Sky Cleaver would save him even if he destroyed the shadowroc, but Brianna had warned him against thinking he could kill the titan so easily. He would have to defeat Lanaxis another way.

Tavis waited and hung on, more for his son’s sake than his own. When at last he felt himself bouncing toward the shadowroc’s face, he struck not with the edge of the axe blade, but with the flat.

“Cleave!” he commanded. “Sunder this madness!”

Tavis could never speak of what happened next, not even to Brianna. He remembered a wind that shined like light and a radiance that boomed like thunder. He stood on the whirling emptiness between the stars, with the titan kneeling at his side, head bowed toward a majestic figure that resembled the smell of freshly cut spruce and the sizzle of lightning and the howl of a lonely wind sweeping over an endless glacier. A voice like oak coursed through the high scout’s body and, he supposed, through Lanaxis’s as well.

“I can return, but why?” demanded the majestic figure. “You poisoned your brothers. You destroyed Ostoria. You cannot raise it again.”

“But the voices, Father!” Lanaxis seemed as young as the day he had walked from Othea’s birthing caves, with a strapping lean body, curly brown hair, and a brow unfurrowed by centuries of worry. Only his eyes, as deep and sad as twilight, betrayed his timeless remorse. “I have listened to them—I have studied them—for decades of centuries. You want me to rebuild Ostoria. The message is clear!”

“Message? There is no message! The time of giants has passed without notice on Toril, and that is your doing. The voices are punishment, nothing more.”

A sob of boundless anguish rose from Lanaxis’s throat. “No, Father!”

“Your punishment is not eternal, Lanaxis.” The god’s voice had grown so hard that it scraped along Tavis’s bones like a rasp. “After all, you are a mortal now.”

Lanaxis gave a cry, then suddenly dropped through the whirling emptiness and vanished from sight. The high scout prepared himself to follow, but instead felt Annam’s voice, as supple as a chamois brushing over his skin.

“You have something of mine,” the god said. “Return it, and I shall return what is yours.”

Tavis held Sky Cleaver out at arm’s length. ‘Take your axe, please. It has no place on Toril.”

“That shall be for you to decide,” Annam replied. “I know you mortals. It is easy enough for you to behave when you are frightened, but you do tend to change your minds at the last moment.”

Tavis felt himself sinking through the emptiness. He tried to toss Sky Cleaver toward the god, but the ivory handle would not leave his palms.

“Wait! How do I—”

He emerged above the Bleak Plain, with Lanaxis’s palace below. He was in exactly the same place as when he had cleaved the titan’s madness, but the shadowroc was no longer there. Tavis clutched Sky Cleaver to his breast, waiting for the familiar cold tingle that would mean the weapon was saving him.

The high scout continued to fall, the cold wind whistling past his ears ever faster. He started to cry out for the weapon to work its magic, then remembered Annam’s comment about mortals. He drew his arm back and tossed the axe into the sky.

Take it!”

Tavis never saw what happened to Sky Cleaver. He had hardly released the handle before the shadowroc swooped down between them, obscuring his view of the weapon. The bird’s powerful claw closed around his body, bringing his fall to an abrupt end.

The great raptor wheeled on its wingtip and dived toward Bleak Palace, where Brianna and the two ‘kin still stood on the ruined portico, staring into the sky. For a moment, Tavis thought the bird actually meant to rescue him. Then its claw bore down, squeezing the air from his lungs. His bones began to pop and groan under the terrible pressure, and he felt a talon slip between his ribs.

The shadowroc swooped low over the palace cupola, then beat the air with its great wings. It came to a near stop over the shattered portico and started to drop, sending Brianna and the others scrambling for weapons and cover. Then, just when the high scout thought his captor meant to land, the bird beat its wings again. Its claw opened, dropping Tavis on the rubble-strewn portico.

Brianna was on him almost before the pain. “Where does it hurt? Can you feel…” The queen’s mouth fell open, and she gasped, “In the name of Hiatea!”

Tavis peered to the suddenly empty sky. He pushed himself upright, expecting to feel the anguish of some gruesome injury. Instead, he seemed amazingly well, save for a few bruises from his fall and the talon wound in his torso. The high scout raised his hand and saw that not only had his flesh returned to its normal ruddy complexion, it was no longer wrinkled or spotted with age.

“You’re young again!” Brianna cried.

“For the most part, anyway.” Galgadayle stepped over to the scout’s side and fingered a lock of gray hair. “I doubt this will ever be bronze again.”

“I’ll settle for gray.” Tavis stood up and looked from Brianna’s empty arms to Galgadayle’s. “Now where’s my son?”

“Be patient,” growled Basil. “We’re coming.”

The runecaster sounded older and more tired than ever. Tavis turned to see a disconcerting figure tottering toward him. Unlike the high scout, Basil had not recovered from Sky Cleaver’s effects. His face was a mask of yellow bone set with moving eyes and a few translucent strings of muscle. The runecaster’s body was worse; it looked as though he had somehow survived being flayed by fomorian hunters.

Basil passed Kaedlaw into Tavis’s arms. “What happened to Sky Cleaver?”

“I gave it back… I’m sorry.”

The verbeeg looked down at his translucent body, then shrugged. “It’s not your fault. Even knowing the cost, I’d do the same again. I had to know.”

“What?” Brianna stepped to Tavis’s side and took his hand. “What did you have to know?”

Basil’s mouth twisted into an ecstatic, if particularly gruesome, smile. “Everything,” he answered. “Everything that matters.”

An uneasy chill ran down Tavis’s spine, though he could not say whether it was because of the runecaster’s reply or the eerie keen he heard building across the plain. The high scout turned to face the noise. He saw the shadowroc’s silhouette wheel high in the sky, then dive toward the western horizon. The screech arrived a moment later. At such a distance, it was hardly powerful enough to knock anyone off his feet, but the skirl set their ears to ringing and caused Kaedlaw to start crying.

“Ssssshh.” Brianna stood on her toes, holding Tavis’s arm while she comforted their son. “The titan can’t hurt you. Your father’s here.”

I soar upon the ashen winds of dusk, a restless shadow in the eternal eventide, a hunter always chasing and never catching. The sun lies just below the horizon, sinking as fast as I fly, forever retreating, forever calling me onward. Below passes Toril, the world the giants should have ruled swarthy deserts behind gloom-shrouded mountains that loom over twinkling cities standing upon the shores of glimmering seas strewn with islands as numerous as stars, an endless procession of savage lands and forbidden realms and lost kingdoms, a vast, exquisite reward for a crime as dark as the night.

Now and again, I see the ones who did this to me, standing upon the parapets of their brittle castle, holding my nephew in their arms and teaching him to be a frail human king. Often I swoop low over their heads and cry a greeting, shaking the loose stones from the crenellations and blasting the guards from their feet. This frightens the groveling humans, I know, but never Kaedlaw. He has begun to walk now, and in the summers he often sneaks onto the keep roof and waits for my umbral wings to appear in the dusk sky. When I screech, he claps his hands with glee and chortles madly until his father the firbolg rushes out to gather him up.

There was no reason to save Tavis, I know. Do not ask me to explain. Perhaps I was repaying him; he struck

with compassion when he could have slain, and I suppose that creates a bond of sorts.

“If that’s what you believe, then it’s true…”

Or perhaps it was Sky Cleaver’s doing; Tavis was the One Wielder, after all, and I was as bound by Annam’s will then as I am now.

“… to be free? Stop crying, now you are…”

It was my own mortality, then. I didn’t know this before I left the Vale—how could I?—but there is a bond between all things that die, and in the firbolg’s passing I saw reflections of my own… sound like a sop. Talk like that…”

Say what you will, whoever you are! I have learned better than to listen to your voices.