“Tavis, he won’t wait,” Basil warned. “You can’t trust him.”
“I wouldn’t make the bargain even if I could.” Tavis kept his eyes fixed on Orisino. “Whether I’m dead or alive, I certainly wouldn’t want a verbeeg to be the One Wielder.”
“I suppose that’s wise,” sighed Basil.
Orisino was not so accepting. “Have it as you will, fool!” Despite his anger, the verbeeg backed away as he spoke. “The axe shall be mine in the end, and it makes no difference to me if I have it sooner rather than later.”
Tavis pushed past Galgadayle, pressing the tip of his sword to Orisino’s throat. “My thanks for the warning,” the high scout hissed. “It’s a courtesy I wouldn’t have expected from you, and I shall repay it with a warning of my own: if you come within ten paces of me again, I shall take you at your word.”
Tavis stepped away, then turned and followed Basil toward Othea Tor. The mount towered more than two hundred feet above-hardly as high as the ice wall at the other end of the crevice, yet somehow more looming, more imposing. Even beneath the thick mantle of ice, it was not difficult to see why Basil insisted the inselberg was the lifeless body of the ancient Mother Queen. The crag resembled the figure of a fleshy woman kneeling deep in the snow, with her haunches resting on her heels. Her thighs were two snow-capped knolls that led up to the rounded slopes of her rolling stomach, her bosom was a pair of stony buttresses, and her arms were steep aretes that curved down sharply from her massive shoulders. An ice-draped boulder hung tipping out over the goddess’s chest, resembling a rather flat-faced head with deep, shadowy hollows for a mouth, nostrils, and eyes.
Basil stopped at the base of the tor, where a small, deep-shadowed crater lay at the southern end of the rift. Beyond the basin, a chain of smaller depressions-the titan’s snow-filled footprints-advanced from around the corner of Othea Tor. Despite the clear night and bright moon, it was difficult to tell much more about the site. Since Lanaxis had passed through, several storms had battered the area, blanketing the entire site beneath three feet of fresh snow. Tavis had been waiting for dawn’s light to make his careful inspection and learn the secret of his quarry’s escape.
Apparently, Basil saw no reason to wait. He gathered a handful of snow and packed it into a tight sphere, then removed an awl from his cloak and carefully traced one of his magic symbols on the surface. The ball’s surface turned icy and hard. In the heart of the orb, a shimmering glow sparked to life and rapidly brightened. The runecaster waited until the light had grown painfully brilliant, then tossed it into the sky above the crater. As the globe reached the top of its arc, he pointed a crooked finger at it and commanded, “Stay.”
The ball stopped in midflight and hung motionless, casting a dazzling silver radiance over the face of Othea Tor, the surrounding drumlins, and the crater at their feet. Tavis could now see that the small basin was about fifteen feet deep, with the indistinct outline of a buried firecircle in the center. Flanking the fire-scar were a pair of ten-foot terraces where the titan had placed his feet, and on the rim above was broad depression where his rump had rested.
“The titan stopped and made camp.” Tavis glanced back to make sure Orisino and the other verbeegs were keeping their distance, then sheathed his sword and climbed over the rim into the crater. “He was waiting.”
“That rules out one of my most troublesome theories.” Basil started down the slope after Tavis. “If Lanaxis stopped to wait here, his magic isn’t what opens the rift-or holds it closed.”
Galgadayle had to scramble to catch up. “What were they waiting for?”
“Lanaxis’s punishment was to live forever in the twilight of Othea’s shadow,” Basil explained. “So it seems probable that the rift opens at twilight. That would be the only time it could open without allowing the sun to pour in.”
Tavis reached the bottom of the crater and scraped the snow away from the fire-scar, then pulled a half- burned torch from beside the stump.
“That can’t be, Basil,” he said. “If they were waiting for the sun to go down, they wouldn’t have needed this.”
The high scout tossed the torch to the runecaster.
Basil caught the stave. “Oh, dear.”
“Perhaps it stays open only during twilight,” Galgadayle suggested. “If they arrived during the night after twilight, then they would have had to wait until the next evening.”
Tavis scraped more snow away from the fire circle, then pointed to the charred stubs of a dozen thick logs. “When was the last time you saw a tree?”
The seer shrugged. “A tenday ago?”
“So Lanaxis carried this wood across the Bleak Plain,” Tavis said. “He planned to arrive after dark.”
“Which would imply the vale opens at dawn,” Basil said. “But that makes no sense for a place of perpetual twilight.”
“Maybe it does.”
Tavis climbed the crater wall, using Sky Cleaver’s shaft as a walking stick. When he reached the rim, he found Orisino and the other verbeegs cautiously stealing forward to look into the basin. The scout cast a warning glare at the chieftain, then fixed his gaze on the ground and started to count the number of paces between them.
Orisino gave him a sneering smile and slowly backed away.
When Basil and Galgadayle climbed out of the crater, Tavis asked, “Can you move that light over the rift, Basil?”
“Of course.” The runecaster pointed a finger at the glowing sphere and whispered, “Move.”
Basil swung his crooked digit toward the rift, and the silvery snowball drifted into place. Tavis went to the end of the crevice and knelt in the snow, sighting down the entire length of the fissure. As he suspected, the snowpack sloped away from the dark line ever so gently.
“The snow is higher along the rift,” Tavis reported. “The sun never shines on it, so it melts more slowly.”
“Yes-now I see!”
In his excitement, Basil tried to approach Tavis and collided with Galgadayle, who, as he had promised, remained between the scout and the runecaster. Basil scowled briefly, then seemed to realize what was going on and backed away.
He continued his explanation without complaint: “As she was dying, Othea told Lanaxis, ‘Already I have laid my curse upon you… Can you not feel my shadow? When I leave here, it shall remain behind.’ ”
“And there can be no shadow without the sun,” surmised Galgadayle.
“Exactly,” Basil said. “The vale opens in the morning, when Othea’s shadow first touches it. It doesn’t close until evening, when the dusk shadows take the place of the goddess’s. That way, the valley always remains in shadow; it never knows the light of day, or the dark of night.”
“So it’s always in twilight,” Tavis surmised.
“Yes… precisely.” Basil’s tone was absentminded. He turned toward Othea Tor, at the same time swinging his glowing snowball toward the goddess’s head. “I wonder…”
The runecaster let his sentence trail off and said nothing more, lost deep in thought.
“You wonder what, Basil?” Tavis asked.
The old verbeeg smiled broadly. Then, speaking to himself as though the others were not there, he uttered, “By Stronmaus, I think it might work!”
“What, Basil?” Tavis stepped toward the runecaster, only to find Galgadayle scowling down at him. He remembered himself and clutched the axe more tightly, then peered around the seer’s flank. “What might work?”
The runecaster smiled broadly. “What do you suppose would happen if tomorrow after the vale opens, you used Sky Cleaver to split Othea Tor down the center?” Without awaiting a reply, he answered his own question, “The vale would have its first sunrise in thousands of years!”
“Or it would close instantly,” Tavis countered. “I’d never reach Brianna.”
“That’s a possibility, of course, but I don’t think so.” Despite his assertion, Basil appeared far from certain. “The key must be different shadows; once Othea’s shadow opens the vale, it’ll stay open until dusk. Then it will close and, assuming we have cleaved the tor correctly, it will never open again.”
Tavis shook his head resolutely. “If you’re wrong, Brianna will be trapped forever.”
“He can’t be wrong!” Galgadayle sounded as excited as Basil. “As I recall, the titan is no friend of sunlight.”
