“You’re not!” the verbeeg yelled. “You’ve had centuries to pull it free!”
“Liar!” Snad slipped around to place himself between the axe and Orisino. “Snad only find axe last winter- after he kill old Kwasid.”
The name brought Tavis to a halt. Not many years before, he had known a fire giant by that name. But Kwasid had been an athletic young fire dancer-hardly someone that even a dull-witted hill giant would call old.
“And how old are you Snad?” Tavis yelled down.
“Still plenty young to be the One.” Snad kept his eye fixed on Orisino. “Fifty summers.”
Tavis gasped. At fifty, a hill giant was barely an adult. The high scout began to consider the wisdom of turning back while he still had the strength-then Orisino leapt for the axe’s ivory handle.
Tavis’s reservations vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. He found his runearrow in his hand, nocked and ready to fire, and in his heart there burned a fierce desire such as he had not known since his wedding night.
Tavis aimed at Orisino’s heart.
Snad’s ancient foot lashed out and caught the verbeeg in the chest. The chieftain crashed back into the bones from which he had crawled, and Tavis switched targets without thinking. The runearrow caught Snad squarely in the ribs.
“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis yelled.
Nothing happened, except that Snad reached up and snapped the shaft off at the head.
“Stupid firbolg magic can’t hurt the One!” Snad chortled. He cast a suspicious glance at Orisino’s motionless form, then stepped away from the axe to finish what he had started. “Kill verbeeg dead this time-then kill Tavis Burdun.”
“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis repeated.
A resounding crack shook the cavern, then a brilliant blue light flared inside Snad’s translucent body and scattered his dark bones in every direction.
The rumble had not even faded before Orisino was on his feet and charging the axe. The ivory hilt was nearly as long as the verbeeg was tall, but that did not stop him from wrapping both arms around the shaft. He braced his feet on the floor and tried to pull it free.
“Come to me!” Orisino cast a nervous glance in Tavis’s direction, then stooped beneath the motionless handle and pushed against it with his shoulders. “By Karontor, I shall have you!”
“Wrong god.”
Tavis dropped Mountain Crusher and stretched both hands toward the axe. Then, speaking the ancient syllables that Basil had made him repeat a thousand times in the last two days, the high scout called Sky Cleaver to him:
“In the name of Skoraeus Stonebones, Your Maker, O Sky Cleaver, do I summon you into the service of my hand.”
With a groan as ancient as Toril itself, the mighty axe pulled its dark blade from the cleft and rose into the air. Orisino leapt up and snatched the ivory handle with both arms. The axe shook him off as a dragon shakes off a mountain lion, then floated into the scout’s waiting arms. The weapon stood as tall as its new owner, with a head as big as his chest. It was so heavy that the mere act of swinging it would drain the last ounce of Tavis’s strength, but he did not care.
Sky Cleaver belonged to him.
15
Tavis sat upon a moonlit drumlin, staring down at the narrow rift as though he could force it open through will alone. The crevice ran northward across the frozen plain for nearly a thousand paces, ending beneath a cloud- scratching wall of ice that could only be the Endless Ice Sea itself. Nowhere along its entire length was the fissure as wide as a dagger blade, yet the titan’s trail stopped here at the near end, beneath a lonely, ice-caked inselberg that Basil had dubbed Othea Tor. Somehow, Lanaxis had descended into that narrow cleft, and with him he had taken Brianna.
The high scout would have her back, and it did not matter that a titan had locked her away in a prison of solid bedrock. Tavis was the One Wielder, and he would have whatever he wanted. With Sky Cleaver in his hand, there was no enemy he could not slay, no riddle he could not solve, no evil he could not conquer. He could do whatever he wished, have anything he wanted-anything, that is, except what he needed most: sleep.
Tavis had lost count of the days it had taken to cross this frozen waste, but it had been more nights than that since he had rested. He trembled almost constantly with exhaustion, and he moved about in a waking stupor that would long ago have given way to deep sleep, save for Sky Cleaver. It was not that the axe gave him strength- though perhaps it provided more than he knew-but that Tavis did not dare close his eyes. The verbeegs watched him constantly, their thieving gazes riveted on his weary eyelids, waiting for him to nod off so they could steal his axe. They were watching now, gathered below in the still, cold air, sitting on their haunches and staring at him with the gluttonous patience of vultures.
Tavis knew better than to think he could send them away. They came with Sky Cleaver. They would do anything he commanded-march across barren snows, jump into dark abysses, fight ancient titans-but never would they leave him. They would always flock to the One Wielder, as ready to serve as to usurp. Six of the boldest had tried already and died for their trouble; more would follow tonight. He could feel their thirst building.
Tavis hoped one would be Orisino. The verbeeg had actually touched the ivory handle, and he had heard the ancient words of command. Like the One Wielder himself, Orisino had not slept since Split Mountain, and his eyes never left the axe’s sable head. His lips often twisted into strange configurations, forming the half-remembered syllables of the ancient words of command. Sooner or later, the chieftain would try for the weapon. Then Tavis could kill him, but not until then.
The crunching of boots on ice sounded behind the One Wielder. He laid Sky Cleaver at his feet and jumped up, straddling the mighty axe and pulling his sword from its scabbard. Sky Cleaver was much too awkward and heavy for Tavis to heft in battle, and so far he had been forced to defend it with bow and blade.
“Easy, Tavis,” urged Galgadayle. The seer stopped a cautious distance away and turned up his palms to show that his hands were empty. “I didn’t come to steal your axe.”
Galgadayle looked as haggard as Tavis felt. The seer’s beard was caked so thick with ice that his cheeks sagged beneath the weight, making the circles beneath his eyes seem even darker and deeper. The cold had long ago turned his flesh as white as the moonlight, and the tip of his nose had lost several layers of frozen skin.
Tavis sheathed his sword. He picked up Sky Cleaver, resting the pommel in the snow and the obsidian blade against his shoulder.
“Come closer, my friend. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Tavis glanced around the base of the drumlin, where his verbeegs sat waiting on the milky snowpack. “But I must be vigilant. Orisino is waiting to steal my axe. They all are.”
Galgadayle’s face twitched with some emotion destined to remain hidden beneath his frozen flesh. “You belong more to that axe than it does to you. It would have been better for us all if you had died in the cavern and left Sky Cleaver unfound.”
“How can you say that?” The One Wielder was aghast. “Think of all I can do! Drive the giants from the northlands! Unite the ’kin under one law!”
“What if our brothers have no wish to live under the law?”
The question left Tavis confused and blank-minded, for it had never occurred to him to think of what they might want. He considered the matter for a moment, then decided there would be no need to compel the obedience of the verbeegs and fomorians.
“They will live under the law. Uniting will make them strong, and the only way to unite is to live under the law.”
Galgadayle shook his head. “The law is the firbolg way. Fomorians do not understand it, and verbeegs only
