surge rose from Sky Cleaver’s shaft. Two pillars smashed down beside the One Wielder, then a section of entablature landed across them. Tavis found himself buried in a sheltering cave of rubble, sitting in a pond of the titan’s hot blood.
The portico continued to shake and tremble for several moments, until at last all of the massive debris had finally fallen. Even before the quake subsided, Tavis was already working to dig his way out, pushing cornices and capitals away as fast as his exhausted body would allow. He had no idea how old he had grown in the past few moments, but the wheezing that he heard in his ears did not sound as if it came from the chest of a young firbolg.
At last, Tavis reached the surface and clambered over the rubble to the front of the portico. To his surprise, he did not find Lanaxis waiting to attack, or even lying helpless at the foot of the palace stairs. Instead, a river of blood led across the broken plain to the single boulder that was all that remained of Othea Tor. There was no sign of the titan himself, but Basil and Galgadayle were kneeling atop the stone, staring down at its purple shadow with their faces twisted into expressions of utter astonishment.
17
The battle roar continued to ring in Brianna’s ears long after the portico had come crashing down, so she did not hear the scuttling boots until the walker had already crossed most of the fume-choked antechamber. The steps were ponderous and slow, not loud enough to be the titan’s, but too heavy to be man or ’kin.
Brianna slipped off the plinth where she had been sitting and rushed to place herself between the entrance and Kaedlaw, who remained wailing upon the floor. She did not try to take her child into her arms. It would have been easier to grab a cloud. No matter how closely she approached before kneeling beside her son, the queen always found herself beyond arm’s length. She removed Hiatea’s talisman from her neck and pulled a sliver of broken mirror from her cloak pocket, determined that if she could not touch the child, neither would anyone else.
While the battle raged outside, Brianna had stayed in the throne hall with Kaedlaw, so she could only guess who, or what, was coming after her son now. By the sound of his shuffling gait, he was large, patient, and either wounded or exhausted-possibly both. He also had to be someone of incredible power; no one else could have survived the harrowing battle that had shaken Bleak Palace for the last ten minutes. The queen half-expected to see a god’s avatar stepping out of the fumes to claim her son.
It hardly mattered to Brianna. She would attack, and without fear. The queen had long since worried herself into such an emotional frenzy that she could no longer feel anything except a seething, mindless anger: at Lanaxis for leaving her unable to defend her child, at Tavis for failing to stop the titan at Wynn Castle, and, most of all, at herself for drinking a spy’s drug and allowing an ettin to get a child on her. Whoever was coming did not realize it, but he was doing her a favor. She would fight him to the end. She could no longer bear to watch her child suffer, and death was the only escape left to either of them.
A large, stooped shape shambled into the smoky doorway, the silhouette of a great axe clutched in his hands. Brianna silently called upon her goddess’s magic and felt the talisman growing warm. When she uttered her spell incantation, the sliver vanished. A silvery light flashed from her hand and bounced off the throne room walls, returning in the form of a thousand long, gleaming needles. The queen pointed at the gray figure, and the silvery darts hissed toward him in a deadly stream.
A weary groan rose from the newcomer’s throat. The torrent of needles suddenly parted and tinkled off the floor around him, changing into harmless sparkles of light. Brianna cursed and reached for her knife.
“Brianna?”
The voice was a reasonable imitation of Tavis’s, save that it quivered like an old man’s and was far too deep. She hurled her dagger at the doorway. The weapon flew as level and true as any throwing blade, for she had enchanted it with a feather from the shadowroc’s wing.
Again, the stranger groaned. The knife veered off course and shattered against an unseen pillar. The fellow let the axe head drop to the floor, and he leaned on the heft.
“Stop that.” He sounded even older than before. “I can’t stand more of this.”
Brianna pulled a ball of candle wax from her pocket. “Imposter!”
“That was Julien, not me.” The stranger shuffled into the hall, moving with the weary steps of an old man. “And what he did doesn’t matter. Remember what I said when he claimed to have gotten a child on you? It’s still true today: ‘I believe you. I always have.’ ”
Brianna returned the wax ball to her pocket. “Tavis? It’s really you?”
“None other,” replied the ancient voice. “I’m sorry I took so long, milady.”
The newcomer-Tavis-stepped out of the smoke, revealing a beardless, elderly firbolg who would have stood as tall as a small hill giant, if not for the hunch in his back. His hair had turned as silver as a coin, a blue haze hung over the pupils of his ice-colored eyes, and his wrinkled skin was so thin and translucent that Brianna could see through it to the stringy muscles beneath. In his liver-spotted hands, he held a huge axe with an obsidian head and a wondrously decorated ivory shaft.
Tavis squinted around the room for a moment, then finally seemed to find Brianna. He smiled. “I hope you can do something about my eyes.” He shuffled toward her. “Fighting Lanaxis is hard enough when I can see.”
“Tavis!” Brianna screamed again. She couldn’t quite believe he had really come, or comprehend what she was seeing. “Has it really been so long? How can it have taken you a lifetime to find me? Kaedlaw has aged only a month!”
The high scout glanced down at himself, then chuckled grimly, almost madly. “It has been a lifetime-but not the way you mean. My age is Sky Cleaver’s doing.”
Tavis raised the great axe in his hands, and a wave of heated nausea rushed over Brianna. She had experienced such feelings before. They were premonitions sent by her goddess to warn her of some terrible danger, but the sensations had never been this strong.
The queen backed away. “Don’t come any closer.”
The high scout frowned, but stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“You tell me,” Brianna said. “Put that axe down.”
Tavis’s eyes narrowed. “What for?” He did not lower the weapon. “It’s mine. I won’t let you steal it.”
Brianna slipped her hand into her pocket and rolled the wax between her fingers, suspecting it would do her no good even if she had to use it.
“You don’t sound like Tavis Burdun,” she said. “The lord high scout would never disobey his queen’s order.”
An angry light flashed in Tavis’s eyes. “As you command, milady.” He laboriously stooped down to place the axe at his feet. “But I must warn you, Sky Cleaver’s hold on me is great. If you try to steal it, I-”
“Steal it!” Brianna scoffed. She was beginning to understand her premonitions of danger. It was not her husband that was dangerous, but the weapon’s hold over him. “What would I want with an axe so large I could not pick it up?”
Tavis’s gaze remained suspicious for only a moment, then he blushed in shame. “Forgive me, Brianna. It seems my heart is not as pure as yours.”
Brianna shook her head, relieved. “We both know that can’t be. It’s just that I’m more accustomed to dark temptations.”
The queen had almost decided it was safe to embrace her husband when she heard the distant clamor of more ’kin clambering across the rubble-strewn portico. She positioned herself between her wailing son and the doorway, clutching her goddess’s talisman in one hand and dipping the other into her cloak pocket.
“Valorous Hiatea-”
“There’s no need for that.” Tavis raised a silencing hand. “That would be Basil and Galgadayle. They won’t harm Kaedlaw.”
“How can you say that?” Brianna demanded. “Galgadayle wants him dead!”
