“We don’t have time to be quiet,” Avner retorted. “Whatever Lanaxis is doing, I’ll wager it has to do with twilight. He’ll be on his way again as soon as dark falls, and us with him if we’re still here.”
It was late afternoon, the day of the battle between the giant-kin and the storm giants. Brianna had crawled down the chimney into the tower’s first-floor chamber, where all manner of weapons had been knocked from their racks and scattered across the floor during the rough journey northward. The room’s only outlet, aside from the chimney flue, was a doorway that had once opened into the internal passages of Wynn Keep’s thick walls. Now, the portal was covered by a twinkling curtain of purple gloom, as were the sally port, the arrow loops on the second floor, and all of the tower’s other exits. Lanaxis had used his magic to draw the dark screens over the openings shortly before twilight, when he had suddenly stopped and set the tower down. Brianna and Avner had no way to look outside and so did not know where their captor was presently. But a minute earlier they had felt the floor shuddering, presumably as the titan walked away.
The grating in the fireplace ceased, and the stone fell free with a muffled clack. A brief rustle sounded in the flue as Avner rearranged himself, then a puff of icy wind rolled out of the fireplace. The young scout stuck his head down beneath the lintel.
“Now’s the time, Brianna.” As Avner spoke, little black clouds billowed from his soot-packed beard. “I’d say we still have twenty minutes before dark.”
Brianna passed Avner a waterskin filled with her milk and a rope they had found in the room’s debris. Then she pressed her lips to Kaedlaw’s brow and held them there for a long time.
At last, Avner said, “Majesty, I’m not fond of this plan of yours, but if it’s going to work, we’d better be on our way.”
Brianna nodded, then looked into Kaedlaw’s round face. “Good luck, my son. I love you-both of you.” With tears in her eyes, she passed the child to Avner, then touched the young scout’s soot-covered face. “And arrow’s speed to you, my defender. Watch over my child.”
“With my life,” Avner assured her. “I’ll see you at Wind Keep.”
“Don’t wait. That’s not my purpose.”
“I know,” the young scout replied. “But you’ll fool him. Hiatea will help you.”
Avner withdrew onto the smoke shelf, pulling Kaedlaw out of the queen’s sight.
Brianna tried to stop crying for a moment, then gave up and went to the side of the fireplace. She removed a rock from the mouth of a tin ewer and thrust her hand inside, grabbing a terrified rat Avner had caught for her. The rodent tried to bite her and squirm free as she pulled it from the pitcher, but the queen had it by the back of the neck. It was helpless in her grasp. She removed Hiatea’s amulet from her neck and took a tress of Kaedlaw’s coarse hair from her pocket, then pressed them both to the creature’s chest.
“Valorous Hiatea, take mercy on your humble servant,” Brianna beseeched. “Grant this lowly creature the aspect of my beloved son, that mad Lanaxis may have a prince worthy of his mad plans.”
The tip of the silver spear glowed red and the flames began to dance, singeing the fur from the helpless rat’s chest. The creature let out a shrill squeal and writhed wildly, but Brianna’s grasp remained secure. She uttered the mystic syllables of her spell. The rodent grew calm, tranquilized by the goddess’s magic. A flickering yellow fire spread over the beast’s body, burning away the fur and revealing skin as pink and tender as a baby’s.
The rat began to grow, its narrow face broadening into the round, double-chinned visage of her son. The muzzle receded to form Kaedlaw’s flat, rather swinish nose, the long fangs shrank into a mouthful of snaggled incisors, and the lips grew puffy and as red as blood. As the rodent’s size increased, its body softened and thickened. Its claws retracted to become toenails and fingernails, its gaunt limbs changed into an infant’s chubby arms and legs, and almost before she knew it, the struggling creature in her arms appeared to be her son. Only the eyes gave away the truth; the black pupils were almost as large as the irises, and so full of fear that the queen felt sorry for the confused beast.
Brianna swaddled her decoy in a pair of woolen cloaks, wrapping him tightly so that he could not squirm, then crawled into the fireplace. The breeze hissing down the flue smelled of spruce and pine, and its frigid bite felt good against her skin. The queen pushed her shoulders through the damper throat, and a pale, wintry light shone through a square hole in the back of the chimney. She laid the rat-child on the smoke shelf and hoisted herself up, then retrieved him and sat down, pushing her feet through the opening. A mountain stream outside gurgled softly under its ice, and trees rustled in the wind, but she heard no sound to suggest that the titan waited nearby. Clutching her burden to her chest, she squirmed through the passage and dropped into the cold snow.
Brianna found herself next to a moonlit ribbon of ice that snaked its way through a broad, round-bottomed canyon. A blanket of gangly conifers covered the valley bed, but the forest grew steadily thinner as it crept up the steep walls of the dale. A short distance downstream, the frozen creek abruptly became an icefall and dropped away into nothingness, with only sky and the distant Baronies of Wind beyond. The queen saw no sign of the rope Avner had taken, which was good. It meant he had already reached the bottom of the waterfall and retrieved his rappelling line. By now, he would be well on his way toward the canyon mouth and the shelter of Wind Keep.
Brianna turned to inspect her own route. The flat expanse of a snow-covered tarn lay fifty paces upstream. Beyond the frozen lake, the dale’s craggy headwall rose a thousand feet to the narrow saddle of Cuthbert Pass, where the slender silhouette of Gap Tower was barely visibly in the afternoon light. At its crown flickered the orange speck of a signal fire, a sure sign that the garrison had observed Lanaxis’s approach. The queen saw no sign of the titan himself.
Brianna clutched the rat-child close to her breast and started up the canyon.
On the last sun-tipped peak I stand, the savage winds whistling across the ashen sky, cold twilight flooding the purple valleys below. In the distant west, a golden crescent sinks behind endless ranks of sawtooth mountains, shooting effulgent rays across the heavens to stab, like daggers, far, far into my wounds.
There was a time when warmth and light caused me no pain, and well do I remember it. Thinking of those days does me no good now, yet I will stay longer-in memory of what once was, and to honor what will come again.
She will run; of course she will. I could lodge the tower in the granite heart of this mountain, and still Brianna would run. The queen is, after all, a daughter of Hartkiller’s line, and it will take time to tame her. She must learn for herself the futility of defiance; only then can she embrace the glory of what she has spawned.
I have grown old today, immeasurably ancient and more feeble than I would admit. Perhaps my strength will return with the darkness, or perhaps the ebbing light will leave me even weaker. I do not know; how could I? This is the first sunset I have seen in three thousand years. Perhaps nothing will happen, perhaps I will shrivel into a withered husk, vulnerable to even a mortal’s † it will be safer to find the answer alone.
So I wait, if not enjoying the feel of the sun on my face, then at least savoring the memory of a forgotten joy. I watch the yellow beams as they trickle between the teeth of the distant mountains. One-by-one, the golden rays sink away. Twilight rises higher in the valleys, and the last bead of golden sunlight settles below the jagged horizon. A familiar dullness laps at my feet, like the frigid waters of a sea too salty to freeze, and the pain fades from my crippled heel. A blush of evening gloom creeps over my legs, rich and deep as the last moment of dusk, and beneath this cold murk my shriveled skin grows supple and young again. As the purple tide rises higher, it laves the aches from my bones; the arrow floats from my shoulder, the iron quarrel sinks from my eye, and the strength flows back into my body. I am well again. I am Lanaxis the Chosen One, the Titan of Twilight.
A cold, tingling energy seeps into my body. I step forward into the purple gloom, with aught but a thousand feet of frigid void below, and stretch my hands to my sides. I plummet a hundred feet through the darkness, and shadowy layers of feathers sprout along my arms. I fall another hundred feet, and an umbral tail fans at the base of my spine. My legs become a pair of sticklike silhouettes, my toes the talons of a great raptor. Two hundred feet more, and my lips stretch into a hooked beak. The winds swell beneath me. My umbral wings beat the air, and I rise into the night. I feel as light as a cloud.
At last, the shadowroc is free! I climb higher and soar as I have only dreamed of soaring. The mountains below become dark ruffles of stone streaked by the creamy, writhing snakes of moonlit glaciers. Baronies and fiefs pass like clouds beneath my breast, and the stars above twinkle and wink at me, beckoning. If I had time, I could fly to them, but already the sun has sunk too far below the horizon. Purple twilight is fast yielding to night, and with its dying light shall go my umbral wings.
I wheel and dive. All the northlands spread beneath me, from the sparkling sands of the desert Anauroch to the Coldwood’s black tangle. I sail over valley after valley, crossing aretes and ridges and whole lines of mountains,
