skin.
“You have something of mine,” the god said. “Return it, and I shall return what is yours.”
Tavis held Sky Cleaver out at arm’s length. “Take your axe, please. It has no place on Toril.”
“That shall be for you to decide,” Annam replied. “I know you mortals. It is easy enough for you to behave when you are frightened, but you do tend to change your minds at the last moment.”
Tavis felt himself sinking through the emptiness. He tried to toss Sky Cleaver toward the god, but the ivory handle would not leave his palms.
“Wait! How do I-”
He emerged above the Bleak Plain, with Lanaxis’s palace below. He was in exactly the same place as when he had cleaved the titan’s madness, but the shadowroc was no longer there. Tavis clutched Sky Cleaver to his breast, waiting for the familiar cold tingle that would mean the weapon was saving him.
The high scout continued to fall, the cold wind whistling past his ears ever faster. He started to cry out for the weapon to work its magic, then remembered Annam’s comment about mortals. He drew his arm back and tossed the axe into the sky.
“Take it!”
Tavis never saw what happened to Sky Cleaver. He had hardly released the handle before the shadowroc swooped down between them, obscuring his view of the weapon. The bird’s powerful claw closed around his body, bringing his fall to an abrupt end.
The great raptor wheeled on its wingtip and dived toward Bleak Palace, where Brianna and the two ’kin still stood on the ruined portico, staring into the sky. For a moment, Tavis thought the bird actually meant to rescue him. Then its claw bore down, squeezing the air from his lungs. His bones began to pop and groan under the terrible pressure, and he felt a talon slip between his ribs.
The shadowroc swooped low over the palace cupola, then beat the air with its great wings. It came to a near stop over the shattered portico and started to drop, sending Brianna and the others scrambling for weapons and cover. Then, just when the high scout thought his captor meant to land, the bird beat its wings again. Its claw opened, dropping Tavis on the rubble-strewn portico.
Brianna was on him almost before the pain. “Where does it hurt? Can you feel…” The queen’s mouth fell open, and she gasped, “In the name of Hiatea!”
Tavis peered to the suddenly empty sky. He pushed himself upright, expecting to feel the anguish of some gruesome injury. Instead, he seemed amazingly well, save for a few bruises from his fall and the talon wound in his torso. The high scout raised his hand and saw that not only had his flesh returned to its normal ruddy complexion, it was no longer wrinkled or spotted with age.
“You’re young again!” Brianna cried.
“For the most part, anyway.” Galgadayle stepped over to the scout’s side and fingered a lock of gray hair. “I doubt this will ever be bronze again.”
“I’ll settle for gray.” Tavis stood up and looked from Brianna’s empty arms to Galgadayle’s. “Now where’s my son?”
“Be patient,” growled Basil. “We’re coming.”
The runecaster sounded older and more tired than ever. Tavis turned to see a disconcerting figure tottering toward him. Unlike the high scout, Basil had not recovered from Sky Cleaver’s effects. His face was a mask of yellow bone set with moving eyes and a few translucent strings of muscle. The runecaster’s body was worse; it looked as though he had somehow survived being flayed by fomorian hunters.
Basil passed Kaedlaw into Tavis’s arms. “What happened to Sky Cleaver?”
“I gave it back… I’m sorry.”
The verbeeg looked down at his translucent body, then shrugged. “It’s not your fault. Even knowing the cost, I’d do the same again. I had to know.”
“What?” Brianna stepped to Tavis’s side and took his hand. “What did you have to know?”
Basil’s mouth twisted into an ecstatic, if particularly gruesome, smile. “Everything,” he answered. “Everything that matters.”
An uneasy chill ran down Tavis’s spine, though he could not say whether it was because of the runecaster’s reply or the eerie keen he heard building across the plain. The high scout turned to face the noise. He saw the shadowroc’s silhouette wheel high in the sky, then dive toward the western horizon. The screech arrived a moment later. At such a distance, it was hardly powerful enough to knock anyone off his feet, but the skirl set their ears to ringing and caused Kaedlaw to start crying.
“Ssssshh.” Brianna stood on her toes, holding Tavis’s arm while she comforted their son. “The titan can’t hurt you. Your father’s here.”
Epilogue
I soar upon the ashen winds of dusk, a restless shadow in the eternal eventide, a hunter always chasing and never catching. The sun lies just below the horizon, sinking as fast as I fly, forever retreating, forever calling me onward. Below passes Toril, the world the giants should have ruled: swarthy deserts behind gloom-shrouded mountains that loom over twinkling cities standing upon the shores of glimmering seas strewn with islands as numerous as stars, an endless procession of savage lands and forbidden realms and lost kingdoms, a vast, exquisite reward for a crime as dark as the night.
Now and again, I see the ones who did this to me, standing upon the parapets of their brittle castle, holding my nephew in their arms and teaching him to be a frail human king. Often I swoop low over their heads and cry a greeting, shaking the loose stones from the crenelations and blasting the guards from their feet. This frightens the groveling humans, I know, but never Kaedlaw. He has begun to walk now, and in the summers he often sneaks onto the keep roof and waits for my umbral wings to appear in the dusk sky. When I screech, he claps his hands with glee and chortles madly until his father the firbolg rushes out to gather him up.
There was no reason to save Tavis, I know. Do not ask me to explain. Perhaps I was repaying him; he struck with compassion when he could have slain, and I suppose that creates a bond of sorts.
“If that’s what you believe, then it’s true…”
Or perhaps it was Sky Cleaver’s doing; Tavis was the One Wielder, after all, and I was as bound by Annam’s will then as I am now.
“… to be free? Stop crying, now you are…”
It was my own mortality, then. I didn’t know this before I left the Vale-how could I? — but there is a bond between all things that die, and in the firbolg’s passing I saw reflections of my own.
“… sound like a sop. Talk like that…”
Say what you will, whoever you are! I have learned better than to listen to your voices.
