can be terrible enough to condemn an entire race to such suffering.”
The storm giant lifted his chin and fixed an enormous, woe-filled eye on Brianna. “I fear you are wrong, milady.” His lips trembled with shame. “Our race is to blame for all the misery and suffering on Toril.”
Behind Anastes, forks of lightning lanced down from the gray snow clouds, stabbing at the ground and spewing great plumes of hissing steam into the sky. The birds screeched as though they were dying. The graupel battered the giant’s shoulders so fiercely he grimaced.
“That’s a heavy burden to claim,” Brianna observed. “Are you certain it belongs to your race alone?”
“Oh, yes. There can be no doubt.” Anastes’s voice was growing louder and more pained with each syllable he spoke, once again raising the storm outside to blizzard proportions. “We are the ones who plunged the world into chaos and war. We are the ones who slew Ostoria’s divine ruler, Hartkiller, and drove Annam the All Father from Toril forever!”
The howling winds buffeted the tower so harshly that Brianna had to brace her arm against the wall. “I see!” she shouted. “But did you ever consider that your ancestor might have done other races a favor? Perhaps they had no wish to be ruled by giants.”
Anastes looked aghast, and the storm lulled. “How can you say that?” he demanded. “You, a descendant of Hartkiller!”
“I’m more human than giant,” Brianna reminded him. “I’m glad to rule Hartsvale instead of the giants, and the humans are happy to have me.”
Anastes shook his head in disbelief. “Then you are as foolish as your people,” he declared. “Annam decreed that the giants would rule Toril, not for our sakes, but for the welfare and harmony of all races. By killing Hartkiller, we defied the All Father’s will. We destroyed Ostoria.”
“Now you’re the one who’s being foolish,” Brianna countered. “My runecaster has translated the histories written by the stone giants. I know who destroyed Ostoria, and it wasn’t your ancestor. It was Lanaxis.”
Anastes’s face went as white as the snow. The birds on his shoulders took flight, and the storm grew so quiet that even the graupel seemed to hang frozen in the sky. The scratching of Avner’s knife hissed loudly in the queen’s ears.
Brianna pinched her son. Kaedlaw responded admirably, filling the chamber with a low, angry growl.
“You mustn’t say such things about Lanaxis,” Anastes warned. “Never!”
“Why not?” Brianna demanded. “Must I tell you the legend? Annam the All Father wanted true giants-his progeny-to rule Toril. But faithless Othea spawned children by many different gods, and she wanted all her offspring to share the world. That’s why she helped one of her lovers unleash the glacier that would one day wipe Ostoria from the land.”
“I know the history of my own people!”
“Then think about it.” Brianna was beginning to hope she could make an ally of the storm giant. When men consumed by false guilt learned the truth, they often turned against those who had abused their emotions. “After Othea forbade Lanaxis from destroying the glacier, he poisoned her, and that made him a murderer. What did he become when he allowed his brother kings to drink the same poison?”
“He loved Ostoria!”
“Lanaxis would not be the only fool to destroy what he loves most,” Brianna replied. “Nor the only one to go mad after he realized what he did.”
Kaedlaw fell silent. Though Brianna could still hear the faint scratching of Avner’s knife, she did nothing to cover the sound. Anastes was lost in thought, and it seemed a worthwhile risk to let him think in peace.
At length, the birds returned to the storm giant’s shoulders, and the wind howled as mournfully as before.
“We still bear the blame for Hartkiller’s death.” Anastes sounded almost relieved. “Lanaxis did not murder him. ”
“By then, Ostoria was already lost,” Brianna said. “Your race has been blaming itself for a tragedy the gods set in motion. By trying to right things now, you’ll be making a mistake even more terrible than the one for which you have blamed yourselves all these centuries.”
The giant’s silver eyes grew thoughtful, and he looked away. Once again the winds quieted, the graupel fell more slowly, and the birds deserted their roosts-then a muffled clatter echoed out of the fireplace.
Anastes’s head snapped back toward the tower. Brianna braced herself for a tempestuous display of temper, but the storm remained calm.
“How do you know?” demanded Anastes. If he had heard the clatter, he paid it no heed. “What makes you certain Lanaxis is wrong to restore Ostoria?”
Brianna breathed no sigh of relief. She pulled her son from beneath her cloak and said, “I know because I have seen the face of your new emperor.”
Another clatter sounded from the fireplace, this one too loud to miss. Brianna turned Kaedlaw toward the shattered arrow loop and thrust his hideous visage toward the storm giant.
Anastes’s silver eyes opened wide, and he grimaced with revulsion. “There is nothing I can do.” He looked away from the tower. “What will be will be-the matter is entirely out of my hands.”
12
The birds would be a problem, Tavis knew. The birds and the cold. He had never seen so many birds, and he had never been so cold. He felt sick with cold. His clothes were frozen stiff with his own sweat, and his thoughts bumped through his mind like icebergs. The weather was not particularly frigid, but, as Munairoe had warned, the high scout’s system had been weakened by too much magic. After last night’s long run, his body lacked the stamina to keep itself warm, and now he would have to deal with the birds. There were thousands and thousands, from warm lands and cold, representing every species Tavis knew and a hundred he didn’t.
On the icy winds above wheeled a dozen glacier vultures, their black heads and blue-tinged wings all that showed through the dusky snowstorm. A clan of dervish owls sat perched on the battered rim of the queen’s tower, their huge golden eyes tracing every movement of the strange blue pheasants below. On the shoulders of the storm giants, kestrels roosted with sparrows, harriers with siskins, hawks with crows; only the egg-stealing skunkbirds sat apart, their white-striped bodies tangled like bats amidst the giants’ windblown hair. There was even a pair of condors waddling around the roasting fire, snatching slabs of moose off the spits when the cooks looked the other way.
Tavis was studying the scene from atop a thirty-foot knoll, where he and the three giant-kin chieftains lay belly-down in a deep blanket of wet graupel. The ’kin army was behind them, quietly gathering at the base of a long, gradual slope. Ahead of them, the hill descended in a steep, rocky scarp to the snow-covered meadow of an abandoned farm village.
In the center of the meadow, a low, snow-mantled drumlin spewed plumes of white steam into the air and occasionally stirred in its sleep: the titan lying blanketed beneath a thick jacket of snow. The queen’s tower stood nearby, with a storm giant kneeling beside it so he could peer into the second-floor chamber. At the west end of the field was the roasting fire, where two giants were tending a like number of spitted moose. At the opposite end of the meadow, two more were rummaging through the debris of the demolished village. The sixth giant was in the forest beyond the hamlet, his location marked by trembling treetops and a halo of circling birds.
The fomorian chieftain, Ror, shifted in the snow at Tavis’s side. “What we do now?” he whispered. “Them storm giants don’t let us kill baby, no.”
“Ror, we’re here to recover Kaedlaw, not kill him.” As he spoke, Orisino cast a sidelong glance in Tavis’s direction to make certain the high scout was listening. “What happens after that is up to Tavis.”
The fomorian’s froggish face winced, and he said, “Right. Ror mean rescue kid.”
The high scout paid the exchange little attention. He knew better than to think either chieftain would keep his word, but Raeyadfourne had pledged the Meadowhome firbolgs to let Tavis decide Kaedlaw’s fate. When the time came, that promise would go far toward countering the treachery of the verbeegs and fomorians.
