face peering down at his mentor. “My father!”
Gavorial looked up, then motioned to Odion. “Come, my son. The time has come for us to say our farewells.”
Dragging his injured leg behind him, Odion clambered over the bluff and slipped down to sit at his father’s side. “You have not left me yet” The giant pulled off his tunic and began to rip it into tourniquet strips. “I can drag you back to Stonehome.”
Gavorial laid a hand on his son’s arm. “How can I continue to walk the warrior’s path without legs?” The stone giant began to shiver, and his voice grew weak. “Let me depart proudly the life I have chosen.”
Odion’s big shoulders fell into a slump. He slipped an arm around Gavorial’s neck and cradled his father’s head in the crook of his elbow. “It shall be written that you died with pride and grace, my father.”
Gavorial managed a weak smile. “Let it also be written that I was felled by the dauntless firbolg Tavis Burdun,” he said. “And that we both fought well, in causes as legitimate as they are ancient”
Odion nodded. “I shall inscribe the record myself.”
Tavis rose and started forward to say his own farewells, but before he had taken three steps, a deep groan slipped from Gavorial’s mouth. The giant’s black eyes went gray and vacant, and the purple shadow of death crept down his face.
Odion let Gavorial’s head slip from his lap, then stood and looked to the eastern horizon. “I shall see you in Twilight, my father.”
The stone giant turned and limped away, leaving Gavorial’s body behind as though it were no longer of consequence.
The shepherd boy clambered down the bluff and ran to Tavis, panting heavily from his long sprint. “You won!”
The scout shook his head. “I prevailed,” he corrected. “Gavorial was not evil, and in killing him I also lost.”
The youth shrugged. “You survived. I’m glad of that”
Tavis nodded. “We can be thankful for that.” He looked down at the youth. “What is your name?”
“Eamon Drake at your service.” The youth bowed. “And you would be Tavis Burdun, am I right?”
“You are,” Tavis answered. He looked toward the ledge on Wyvern’s Eyrie, where the boy’s mother and sisters still stood, nervously eyeing the injured giant limping toward them. “Can you get back onto the ledge with your family?”
“They have a rope they can lower.”
“Good.” Tavis pulled one of his regular arrows from his quiver and handed it to the youth. The shaft was only an inch shy of being as tall as the boy. “Take this to Earl Wendel. He’ll recognize it by its length and know you speak in my name. Tell him the giants have trapped Queen Brianna in Cuthbert Castle.”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
“Earl Wendel is to send a rider to summon the Queen’s Guard from Castle Hartwick, and he is also to gather as many warriors from his own fief and those of his neighbors as he can,” Tavis said. “When the Queen’s Guard reaches Wendel Manor, you are to lead the entire army back over this pass. Do you understand?”
Eamon managed to close his gaping mouth, then nodded. “You can trust in me.”
Tavis clapped the boy’s shoulder. “I know I can.”
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you going to do?” the youth inquired. “You’ve seen how narrow the canyon is. You’ll never get past all those frost giants.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Tavis said. He pulled Basil’s runemask from his satchel and turned toward Gavorial’s corpse. “They won’t even try to stop me.”
7
Sitting in the sun, with the smell of pine thick in the air and the sound of water gurgling off the gorge walls, Tavis could have fallen asleep. With a cool breeze wafting down the canyon and a pair of white-winged dippers sweeping low over the stream, it was the kind of day that called out to his firbolg blood, enticing him to rest and enjoy the most valuable of all the treasures the mountains had to offer: an afternoon of blissful, unsullied tranquility.
But even if his duty had permitted such a thing, the scout felt sure the frost giants coming up the canyon would bring the respite to a premature end. From his hiding place behind a boulder he could see fifteen of them filing through the gorge below, their pale, bushy beards and milky skin visible even from a distance of several hundred paces. They were just beyond the crest of a silvery waterfall, preparing to cross the stream at a narrow ford. The first warrior was climbing down to the water alone, while his fellows waited on the trail more than a dozen paces above.
Tavis cursed the giants’ caution. The ford was perfect for an ambush, located in one the narrowest places in the canyon and flanked on both sides by high, sheer walls of granite. There was even a large beaver pond less than two hundred paces above the waterfall. If the giants had been foolish enough to cross the stream en masse, the scout could have fired a runearrow into the dam and unleashed a flood that would have washed them all down the gorge.
Tavis did not understand why the frost giants were being so careful today. In a race notorious for its bluster, such caution seemed out of place, almost as though they were expecting trouble. The scout hoped the brutes had not somehow learned of his triumph over Gavorial.
Tavis slid down from his hiding place and retreated up the trail to a small clearing. He sat down next to a pool of still water and took Basil’s runemask out of his satchel. It now resembled Gavorial’s death mask rather than a smiling human face. The open mouth had tightened into the indifferent grimace of a stone giant, silver lids had descended to cover the gaping eyes, and the magical runes in its surface had rearranged themselves into crow’s feet and worry lines.
Tavis set Bear Driller on the ground next to him, then took off his sword belt and placed the mask over his face. A biting chill seeped from the cold silver into his flesh. His skin went numb, though he felt the muscles below being tugged and stretched as the runecaster’s magic folded his visage into the deeply lined image of a stone giant. He did not feel as though he were growing to giant size, but he did sense a dull ache in the bones of his skull and face. His jaw dropped and lengthened into a drooping chin, while his nasal septum descended to form an arrow- shaped nose. A pair of deep, permanent furrows etched themselves into his brow, then his bronze hair began to fall out, and he saw it floating away on the breeze.
Tavis found the whole process more uncomfortable than painful, thanks in large part to the mask’s icy numbness. When the stretching and tugging at last seemed to stop, he leaned over the still pond. The reflection he saw sent a cold chill creeping down his spine, for he felt as though he were looking at a small version of Gavorial’s ghost.
A painful lump formed in the scout’s throat as his Adam’s apple began to swell. He found himself first gasping for air, then unable to draw breath at all. His pulse started to pound in his ears, and he could feel his black eyes bulging from their sockets. A distant ringing echoed in his ears. The canyon started to spin, a black fog formed at the edges of his vision, and Tavis knew Basil had made some horrible mistake.
The dark fog grew thicker, until the firbolg could barely see Gavorial’s black eyes staring back out of the pond. The scout braced his hands on the pool’s marshy bank, fighting against his creeping lethargy. If he fell unconscious, he would choke on his own Adam’s apple, and then there would be no one to stop the spy from betraying Brianna.
Tavis’s arms trembled, and a terrible thought crossed his mind. Basil could be the spy! The runecaster himself had once admitted that verbeeg nobles prided themselves on treachery, and what if he were a noble? Nothing could be more perfidious than to earn the queen’s confidence, only to slay her bodyguard and betray her to the giants. It would make him a legend among his fellows!
The scout fell back onto his haunches and reached up to tear the mask away. To his horror, he discovered it
