'No!' screamed the queen, the spell of silence swallowing the sound but not the icy fear that gripped her heart.
In the next instant, Deirdre disappeared.
The princess flew, lending herself to the wings of magic and the power of unknown gods. Plunging through the space of ether, she traveled with dizzying speed through a whirl of colors and chaotic noise. She rode the void like the wild wind, feeling the blessings of a multitude of gods, growing steadily in might and power… and ambition.
The pulse of godhood thundered in her veins, carried through the artifact of Talos, the shards of mirror that had become part of her body and made of her so much more than she had been.
She felt the hand of a storming god clasping her own, and then those daggers of glass within her flared into light. Deirdre glowed like a sky speckled with stars, her flesh the cold night and the gleaming points of light coming from the immortal artifact that had torn into her flesh.
But not rending her-no, not at all. There had been no wound, no pain, when those fragments had pierced her. Now, for the first time, she understood that it had not been an assault against her.
In fact, it was the mirror of Talos that had made her whole.
11
Tristan's sword flashed in his hand the instant he saw the springing trolls. Even so, he barely raised the blade as the first of the beasts reached wicked talons toward his leg. Chopping frantically, he hacked at the monster's wrists, sending it scuttling backward with a shriek of pain.
A pair of trolls closed from his left, and he lowered his shield. The buckler's tight straps, modified to secure it to his handless arm, held firm as he bashed the shield firmly into the face of the first troll. The second monster stumbled to the ground, borne downward by the leaping Ranthal. The great moorhound locked his jaws around the troll's neck while the other dogs tore into the creature's legs.
Shallot whirled through a full circle, lashing out with his rear hooves to crush the chest of a troll leaping at them from behind. Newt had vanished, either in sudden flight or, more likely, concealed by his power of invisibility. A bark of pain from one of the trolls as tooth marks appeared in its shoulder solved that mystery.
'Go!' Tristan barked to Shallot, and the stallion sprang forward immediately. The sword flashed brightly in the sunlight, and a bleeding head flew from the body of a suddenly lurching troll. The corpse fell to the ground in a moment, growing still as dark, greenish black blood pumped from the gaping wound onto the ground.
The hounds cried out a challenge and followed, abandoning their original victim to pounce upon another pair of the monstrous humanoids. One of the dogs yelped and fell to the ground, and in a quick glance, Tristan saw the gaping wound along her side.
His sword dropped again, cleaving into the shoulder of a muscular troll. Shallot whirled away as another lunging monster narrowly missed dragging the High King from the saddle. Desperately stabbing, Tristan drove the point of his sword through the creature's face, almost losing the weapon when the troll dropped to the ground. With a powerful heave, he tore the blade from the bony wound as the stallion charged into another troll.
A ball of fire flared in the air, sending trolls scuttling away in panic, though as Tristan rode past the apparition, he could feel no heat. Newt's illusion was realistic enough to momentarily scatter the trolls, however.
Shallot trampled a troll while the hounds dragged another to the earth. Tristan's sword slashed to the right, decapitating one of the creatures as its claws raked across the king's chest and belly. Pivoting in the saddle, the man chopped to his left, scarring the face and long nose of another attacker. The stallion plunged and bucked, driving heavy hooves into the writhing body below it, and then Newt popped into sight, hovering in front of Tristan's eyes and gesturing behind him in agitation.
'Look!' cried Newt, pointing over the king's shoulder. 'Look at that!'
Twisting in alarm, Tristan propelled Shallot through a quick spin. The king raised his shield to ward off the anticipated attack, but he could see no threat there! Instead, he saw the wreckage of the fight, muddy hoofprints, the dying hound, and several dead trolls, including two he'd beheaded. But no attacker menaced him.
'What is it?' he demanded, spinning back just in time to see the remaining trolls bolt into the brush.
'Look!' blurted Newt again, his face twisting in sublime frustration.
And then it struck him. Stunned, Tristan looked back again, checking carefully-and it was true! The trolls he had killed were still dead! The import slowly dawned on him.
Then he saw one of the previously slain monsters move, carefully and stealthily drawing its legs and arms beneath it.
He remembered the beast-the dogs had torn its green skin to ribbons, leaving the creature dead in a pool of fetid blood. Now it was whole again, ready to attack or flee. Tristan readied his sword, intentionally riding closer to the monster.
With an ear-stunning roar, the troll sprang from a prone position into a flying leap toward the human rider. Tristan was shocked by the power of its arms and legs, the springing speed of its leap, but that didn't stop him from bracing in his saddle and raising the shield to meet the beast with a smashing clang. Lurching backward from the impact-the troll weighed at least twice as much as the man-Tristan nevertheless chopped savagely with his sword, cleaving the grotesque face from forehead to neck. The monster fell like a dead tree, slain again.
'Now do you see?' Newt persisted, popping into sight beside the king's ear.
'I think I do,' he said softly, not entirely certain he could believe what he saw.
Once more Tristan looked around the scene of the skirmish. The two headless trolls lay still. Though the gaping neck wounds had ceased to bleed, they showed no sign of healing. Another troll lay dead nearby, killed by a sword cut through its neck and into the chest. That wound, too, showed no sign of regeneration. On the contrary, it had clearly been the mortal blow. And there was the one he had stabbed in the face, the tiny wound belying the severity of the thrust that must have plunged all the way into the evil brain.
'Hsst! Over here!' said Newt, in an exaggerated whisper. The faerie dragon hovered over a dense patch of underbrush, pointing down with a tiny claw.
A furtive movement beneath a screening bush drew Tristan's eye. He dismounted, more and more curious, wondering what prevented so many of the slain trolls from returning to life. Shield raised protectively, sword held at the ready, he approached the dense thicket. Ranthal, hackles standing on end, snarlingly advanced beside him, while Newt remained in his bouncing hover.
Before they reached the cover, a troll bounded upward, startling the king with his looming height. Though the creature towered several feet over the human's head, it whirled away in apparent fear, darting from the brush and sprinting, panic-stricken, into the woods.
Tristan called to Ranthal, who had started after the monster, and as the moorhound returned to his side, the king stared after the fleeing troll. The beast's hands flopped loosely at the ends of its arms, where the wrists had been almost chopped through. Now he remembered: This was the first troll the king had fought, the one that had leaped from the underbrush only to meet the keen edge of that gleaming sword.
The sword… There was no longer any doubt in his mind, but just to be sure, he looked at the last troll to die, the broken body that had been smashed by Shallot's crushing hooves. The beast was nowhere to be seen. While Tristan had examined the place where the fight had started, the creature had apparently regenerated to the point where it could skulk away.
Only the wounds caused by this sword had failed to heal. What was it that the Exalted Inquisitor had told him? That the blade had been blessed by the gods, and their will would be shown in its use? Standing here amid the gore of trollish corpses, Tristan admitted to himself that that will seemed pretty clearly displayed.
'That's some sword!' said Newt, settling to the earth for a moment. The dragon was too agitated to rest for long, however, quickly springing back into the air to drift around Tristan in a circle.
'It is, at that,' the king agreed. As the fighting tension slowly drained from his body, he found himself
