Fibian! Cyrus bit his lip and willed himself to move. He clamberedover the smoking foremast and ran for the cabin. A third wave crashed over therailing. Cyrus burst through the cabin door. He ran to Fibian’sside. A splintering shriek reverberated throughout the wooden ship. Cyrus waslifted off the floor and thrown across the cabin. He felt his throat engage andheard his voice cry out. He was hurled, weightless, towards the cabin wall. Allwas lost.
Chapter 4
TIER
CYRUS SWAM THROUGH ENDLESSDREAMS.His thoughts twisted and spun as if caught in deep ocean currents. He felt warmand safe, yet he knew it would not last. Something cold and menacing was coming.How much time had passed? Passed since when? Where was he? What path had ledhim to this unknowable place?
“Who are you?”asked a deep and fierce voice.
Cyrus felt hissystem slowly wake. He was impossibly cold. Every part of his body ached or wastingly and numb. Was he on his ship? Was he dead? How long had he been unconscious?
“Who are you,and why are you here?”
He tried toremember how he had gotten there. Where? His memories were fragmented andfrigid, as murky as the North Sea. He attempted to raise his head. The effortwas too much. His vision swam with tiny white stars.
“Where haveyou come from?” a second voice asked, “Are you in league with the water klops? Do you serve their queen?”
Water klops? Cyrus felt his face gripped in thick, leathery hands. Heopened his eyes and looked about. He was within the ship’s cabin, but everythingwas on its side. Objects such as wooden shelves, rusted pans and broken glassscattered the floor. The wind gusted through shattered windows.
“I said, whoare you?” the first voice demanded.
The thickhands shook Cyrus’ head. He looked forward and found two furry giants standingover him, the nearest inches from his face. Cyrus felt he should be moreafraid, but did not have the energy.
The firstcreature’s fur was as yellow as straw. Her eyes were deep and dark, and her teethwere white and strong. The second beast stood over the first’s shoulder. Shewas the color of snow. She aimed a strange bow-like weapon at Cyrus’ head.
Cyrus tried tospeak. A wave of dizziness forced his eyes shut.
“We’ll take themback for interrogation,” the blonde giant ordered.
“Runa will notapprove,” the snow colored beast replied.
“I will dealwith my mother,” the blonde said.
She drewCyrus’ knife from the sheath on his hip and stowed it in her belt. Then shepicked him up and laid him over her hairy shoulder. Her fur was thick andcoarse on his face. She smelled of musk and the forest. Cyrus felt thecreature’s heart beat like a heavy drum within her thick body. Her lungssounded like a blacksmith’s bellows. The giant seemed at least eight feet tall.What was she going to do to him?
The creaturecarried Cyrus out of the twisted cabin and climbed down the remains of thebroken ship. Cyrus strained to look around. It was night. The stars were manyand the moon was full and bright. He saw the ship’s tiller lying sideways. Was thatwhere he had last seen Edward? Edward? Where was Edward? He felt somethingsmall shift in his shirt pocket. Thank the Angels, he thought. Edwardhad somehow found his way into Cyrus’ shirt, or had he put the spider there?
Cyrus lookedover at the second giant as she stepped out of the cabin. Fibianlay over the beast’s shoulder. Was Fibian alive?Cyrus fought to stay conscious.
The twocreatures climbed off the broken wreck and stepped knee-deep into the ocean.They aimed their weapons towards the shoreline as if about to be ambushed.
The ship hadwashed ashore a white, forested land. Through groggy eyes, Cyrus looked towardsthe sea. Some ways beyond the shore, the ocean crashed over a jagged reef. Whywas that reef so familiar? An image of a mast, splitting in two, flashed beforehis eyes.
The giantswaded through the lapping waves and picked their way up a snowy pebbled beach. Thestones babbled and grated under the giants’ heavy footsteps. Like hunters, theypressed into the forest and moved through the trees with silence, their weaponsat the ready. All around, the white forest glowed with the light of the moon.
Cyrus’ exhaustiontook hold. He drifted in and out of consciousness. He saw smudges of woods,beaches and mountains, mixed with images of beasts, turtles and endless seas.How much time passed, he never knew.
The creatures’trek led them to a jagged cove. The cove was protected by steep cliffs and harboreda towering, cliffside ice fortress built over a frozen waterfall.
Cyrus coughed.The air was acrid and sour. Heat had melted the stronghold’s spires, givingtheir peeks a waxen feel. Some sort of projectiles had blasted holes in severalof the fortress’s crystal walls. Black slag seeped from the walls and pooledlike frozen blood on its broken steps.
The giantstraversed the cove through a tunnel and along a narrow cliffside path. The seacrashed against the rocks far, far below. Cyrus grew woozy. He closed his eyes.
From there, inCyrus’ memories the trail became flat and winding. After some time, the giants’path took them into the coastal foothills.
The mountainsbordering the coast seemed dizzying, stabbing fatally through the clouds, andtheir forests appeared never-ending, vanishing into the murk above.
The giantscame to
