A sharp crack sounded from the window, followed by a blast of icy wind. Avner cried out, and Brianna looked over her shoulder. The shutter was gone. Avner was staring gape-mouthed through the casement, his eyes fixed on a buckler hovering outside. The shield had a peculiar design, with a black, platter-sized disk set in a damson circle.
“Stand aside!”
The garrison guard rushed into the temple, raising his crossbow to his shoulder. Avner backed away from the window, and the weapon clacked, sending a bolt of black iron through the casement. In the same instant, a purple lid slid down to cover the buckler outside.
An eye!
The quarrel passed through the lid without tearing the skin or drawing blood; it simply disappeared as though it had entered a bank of fog.
“Hiatea help us!” Brianna clutched Kaedlaw more tightly to her breast. “No giant is that big!”
The lid rose, once again revealing the huge eye. The pupil was as black and deep as Memnor’s cold heart. A low, rumbling thunder reverberated through the temple walls. So sonorous was the sound that it took Brianna a moment to recognize it as a voice.
“… the child,” it growled. “Come to the window.”
Another clack sounded from the door, sending a second quarrel past Brianna’s shoulder. This time, the eye didn’t blink. The bolt simply sailed into the black pupil and vanished.
Avner grabbed Brianna’s arm and pulled her toward the stairwell. The narrow passage was crammed with soldiers, each holding a loaded crossbow and struggling to see past the warrior ahead.
“Stand aside, you men!” Avner yelled. “Let the queen pass!”
The young scout forced his way into the stairwell, shoving two men aside so Brianna could squeeze in after him. Though the soldiers were pressed flat against the wall, the corridor was so tiny she could barely force her way past their armored bulk. From behind her came the sound of clanging steel; the men who had already entered the temple were attacking with their swords.
A tremendous crash shook the chamber. A gray cloud of dust billowed into the stairwell, filling Brianna’s mouth with the caustic bite of powdered rock and mortar. A pair of screams sounded from the temple. The guards at the top of the stairs fired their crossbows, then pulled their hand axes and rushed into the room. The next sound was the shrill grate of crumpling armor. One of the soldiers fell instantly silent. The other began to wail. It was not the cry of someone who would die quickly, but the spastic gurgle of a man drowning in his own blood.
The queen and Avner had barely pushed past the next guard before this man also fired and charged. His scream was mercifully short, then a deafening clatter sounded from the top of the stairs. Brianna glanced over her shoulder and saw a purple hand tearing away the curved wall behind her. The appendage was the size of a double door, with knuckles as large as boulders and fingers the length of battle-axes.
The fist withdrew to discard the rubble in its grasp. A pair of guards hefted hand axes and shoved past the queen. The appendage returned to the cramped corridor, and the two men began hacking at the wrist. Their blades sank through the purple flesh as though it were mist The hand pushed past them and reached for Brianna.
“Go, Avner!”
The youth flung himself headlong down the passage, shoving the guards over backward. Brianna sprang after the young scout-then felt something cold and ethereal slipping around her waist. She tried to break free but managed only to crush her tender abdomen against her captor’s hand. Searing pain boiled up through her stomach, filling her with such agony that she screamed and nearly dropped Kaedlaw. She was entwined from the waist down by four dark fingers, each as large as a firbolg’s arm.
Avner gathered his feet and spun around, drawing his sword. Brianna pulled Kaedlaw from inside her cloak.
Avner’s face went pale. “No, Majesty!”
“Take him!”
Brianna thrust the infant into Avner’s free arm, then lost sight of the pair as she was dragged up the devastated stairwell. She tried to twist free, but her captor’s grip was secure. She clutched at the wall and succeeded only in bloodying her fingertips.
The fiend pulled her into the rubble-strewn temple, where the odor of blood hung so thick the air smelled like liquid copper. Heaps of mangled armor lay everywhere, often with the groaning remnant of a shattered body still twitching inside. One man lay upon the broken altar, the crimson head of the queen’s faith spear protruding from his punctured breastplate.
Brianna stretched her fingertips toward the spear. “My goddess, help me!”
“The gods won’t answer, child. It is by their will that I have come for you,” rumbled her captor. “Now you must be quiet and save your strength. You have suffered much, and it is a long journey to my Vale.”
“Twilight!” Brianna gasped. “No!”
A wave of cold air rolled down the queen’s back as the Twilight Spirit pulled her through the shattered window casement. The keep walls spun out of sight, and Brianna found herself staring into a purple face as large and murky as the darkening sky. Seen from a distance of a mile or two, the titan’s square features and even proportions might have been handsome, but from so close, the visage was hideous in its very hugeness. His shadowy brow overhung his eyes like a parapet hoarding, his nose jutted out like a cliff buttress, and from his cavernous mouth wafted a breeze as cold and stale as a tomb’s breath.
“Where is your child?” The titan’s angry voice shook Brianna to the core, setting her ears to ringing and her stomach to quivering. “What have you done with my nephew?”
Another tremendous crash sounded inside the ward, shaking the gateway so violently Tavis nearly lost his footing. He took the clamor to be a good sign. If the titan already had what he wanted, he would not be tearing Wynn Keep apart handful by handful. The high scout reached the end of the vaulted passage, and, with Basil close behind, followed their escorts through the wicket door at the base of the iron-clad gates.
When Tavis entered the ward, his heart sank into his stomach. The keep roof lay scattered across the cobblestones, crumpled into twisted heaps of lead and rafter. Inside the fortress itself, several fires were burning out of control, casting streaks of dancing orange light through the slender arrow loops and pouring huge plumes of black smoke into the sky.
The titan stood at the front of Wynn Keep, a looming figure cloaked in purple gloom, barely distinguishable from the fading dusk light. He was straddling the dry moat that guarded the approach to the entry gate, ripping the upper story off the temple tower with one hand and holding Brianna in the other. A semicircle of garrison soldiers stood at his feet, firing a constant stream of crossbow quarrels into his body. The bolts simply passed through the colossus and bounced off the walls behind him, drawing no attention whatsoever from their target. Perhaps a dozen men lay wounded at the feet of the colossus, their open mouths voicing screams that could not be heard above the din of demolition.
The sergeant who had been guarding Tavis pulled a hand axe, then turned to his small company of men. “Ready yourselves!” he yelled. “We’ll save the queen!”
“How?” Tavis asked. “What makes you think your axes will have more effect than those crossbows?”
The sergeant spun on the high scout, frowning at his presence in the inner ward. “Milord, the queen barred you-” The objection came to an abrupt end as the titan dropped another handful of rubble to the ground. A sheepish look fell over the sergeant’s face, and he glanced back toward the keep. “Never mind-but we’ve got to do something!”
The titan lowered his head to peer into one corner of the tower. He plunged his free hand deep into the building and began to feel around, like a man trying to pull a weasel from its hole. Since he already had Brianna, the colossus could only be searching for Kaedlaw.
Tavis pointed to one of his escorts. “You, fetch my bow and quiver from my chamber.” As the man left to obey, the high scout turned to Basil. “We need your help.”
The verbeeg was already holding his runebrush. “Show me your blades, all of you,” he ordered. “And keep them steady!”
The high scout drew his sword and braced it over his arm. Basil touched his brush to the weapon and painted, tracing a moon-shaped pattern of turquoise light upon the metal. A rich blue stain crept outward from the glowing sigil, turning the entire blade the color of sapphire. The steel began to shimmer like starlight, then became
