The Titan of Twilight Read online

  The royal sleigh, the first in the procession, continued to come toward Tavis. It was drawn by the queen’s favorite horse, Blizzard, a white-flecked mare with a snowy mane and a disposition as fierce and unpredictable as her namesake. The beast did not halt until she reached Tavis’s side, where she cast an angry glare into his eyes and snorted sour-smelling steam into his face. He grabbed the horse’s bridle and pushed her head away, then fixed his attention on the sleigh’s fur-swaddled driver. The young man was a lanky border scout with a yellow beard, twinkling gray eyes, and a touch of larceny in his ready smile.

  “Avner, keep a taut rein on the Queen’s Beast,” Tavis advised, calling the petulant mare by his favorite nickname. “I don’t like her look.”

  Before the young scout could reply, a muffled voice sounded behind the fleece curtain that enclosed the sleigh’s passenger compartment. “Tavis? What was that horrible crash?”

  “Falling ice, milady.”

  A mittened hand drew the curtain aside, revealing the striking form of Tavis’s wife, Queen Brianna. She was a tall, big-boned woman with robust features and a chin as strong as a man’s. Even her white fur cloak could not conceal the fact that she was enormously pregnant. She filled three-quarters of the booth, with a belly so swollen she could barely close her coat. There were dark circles under her eyes, for her condition made sleep difficult, and her cheeks were puffy and red from the bitter cold—but Tavis hardly noticed these flaws. He saw only her maternal radiance, the most ravishing of any beauty.

  “Falling ice?” Brianna asked. “It sounded more like a falling mountain, Lord Scout.”

  Tavis pointed at the enormous ice blocks scattered along the far bank of Wyrm River. “There was some sort of blast behind us. It shook an ice curtain off the canyon wall.” He nearly had to yell to make himself heard over the wind. “The road’s not blocked, but we shouldn’t go on until I know what happened.”

  “In that case, we may continue.” The speaker rode into view and stopped his gray stallion on the far side of Brianna’s sleigh. He was the earl of the Storming Gorge, Radborne Wynn, a stout old man wrapped in a cloak of silver ermine. With a tuft of ice-caked beard and a long mane of gray hair, he looked as august and feral as the mountain goats that roamed the canyons of his wind-blasted barony. “A tunnel wizard’s spell caused the blast”

  “You told me there would be no mining magic while Brianna is in the canyon!” Tavis barked. “Didn’t you issue the command?”

  Radborne responded with an icy glare. “The wizard responsible will be severely punished, Lord High Scout,” he said. “I assure you, there is no need to speak to me in such tones.”

  The high scout clamped his jaw shut and looked away, running his eyes over the craggy slopes as though he had not heard the comment. He had learned not to apologize to nobles—such overtures were interpreted as signs of weakness—but the earl had a point. Tavis had been anxious and short-tempered the entire journey—though with good reason, he thought.

  The earl’s miners had struck a rich new vein deep in the gorge, and with the royal reserves bled dry by three years of war against the giants, the treasury needed the extra silver. Unfortunately, the deposit could not be mined until Brianna blessed it. An ancient tradition held that Skoraeus Stonebones would swallow anyone who took ore from an unconsecrated vein, and tunnel wizards considered their calling dangerous enough without incurring the wrath of the stone giant god. So despite her delicate condition, Brianna had undertaken a difficult winter journey that would bring her within eight leagues of a fire giant stronghold at the canyon’s far end. As the lord high scout of Hartsvale and the first defender of her majesty the queen, Tavis would have been remiss in his duties if he were not worried.

  The high scout tried to steady his nerves by reminding himself that he had taken every possible precaution. The fifteen horse lancers of the Royal Snow Bear Company sat fifty paces up the canyon, in front of a roadside mine portal, their white chargers snorting steam and the pennon flags of their posted lances snapping in the wind. Ahead of the riders stood a hundred pikemen armored in frost-rimed breastplates. In front of the footmen, there was a contingent of swift, lightly armored front riders. A rearguard of six lancers and twenty footmen followed behind the royal entourage, while several bands of border scouts patrolled ahead, behind, and to both sides of the procession.

  Tavis could do nothing more to ensure his wife’s safety, but still he was plagued by the incessant sensation that he had overlooked some lurking danger.

  Perhaps he was worried about the firbolg seer, Galgadayle. The old prophet had not bothered the queen since last spring, but Tavis doubted that had been the end of the matter. The fellow’s dreams were never wrong, and everyone in the Ice Spires knew it. Twice, Galgadayle’s prophecies had saved entire tribes, once when he foresaw a landslide that engulfed a verbeeg village, and another time when he predicted a flood that deluged a fomorian cave. If the seer claimed that one of the queen’s twins would grow up to lead the giants against the northlands, there would be no shortage of people trying to put the babe to death. It did not even matter that the queen’s own priest had divined the contents of her womb and discovered that she had only one child inside. Given the choice of believing Galgadayle or the imperious Simon of Stronmaus, most people would choose the beloved seer.

  Even Tavis had his doubts. Like a knelling bell, Galgadayle’s prophecy echoed through his dreams at night, woke him at dawn, and tolled through his mind all day long. Firbolgs could not lie. If the seer claimed to have dreamed ill about the royal offspring, then he had. But why had he seen twins, while the queen’s priest divined but a single child?

  After a few moments of being ignored, Earl Wynn grew impatient “If we hurry, we can still reach the Silver Citadel before twilight.” He cast a nervous eye at the crooked sliver of winter sky hanging over the canyon. Although it was barely two hours past noon, dusk was already beginning to darken the gray clouds. “I’m sure her majesty will appreciate a hot meal and a warm hearth this even—”

  An enormous subterranean boom cut the sentence short. The road bucked, and Blizzard whinnied, her voice as shrill as the wind. The big mare reared against her harness rods, lifting the front of the royal sleigh high into the air. Tavis leapt past her slashing hooves and grabbed her bridle. He jerked the startled creature back to all fours, already casting an angry glance in Radborne’s direction.

  “Earl, do any of your tunnel wizards heed your commands? One miscreant is bad enough, but two are—”

  A deafening roar erupted behind the high scout, drowning out his complaint. The ground trembled beneath his feet, and a blast of hot wind scorched his neck. The same mordant fumes that he had sniffed earlier filled the canyon with a caustic, acrid stench. Tavis spun around and saw an immense tongue of flame lashing from the mine portal beside the road. Inside the inferno he glimpsed the writhing, wraithlike shapes of rearing chargers and flailing riders, then he was half-blinded by the glare and had to look away. Over the horrible crackling of the fire came the squeal of burning horses and the howls of dying men.

  Blizzard neighed wildly and shied away from the blast. Only Tavis’s grip on her bridle kept the mare from spinning away and toppling the royal sleigh. She reared, jerking the high scout off his feet. He came down hard on the icy road, then lay on his back, struggling to hang on to the bridle as Blizzard whipped her head to and fro. He twisted his hand into the leather and pulled. Although a runt by the standards of his race, Tavis was still a firbolg. His strapping arms were more than strong enough to manhandle a creature as small as a horse.

  Tavis pulled Blizzard’s nose to within reach of his free hand, then pinched her nostrils shut. The mare’s eyes flared, but she quieted instantly. The high scout returned to his feet and looked back toward the sleigh, where Avner sat blanched and wild-eyed, cursing the Queen’s Beast under his breath. Brianna sat far back in the passenger compartment, gripping the hand rails so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her complexion had
turned pale, and the shadow of a grimace lingered on her face.

  “Milady, are you injured?” Tavis asked. “Did that jolt—”

  “I’m pregnant, not feeble.” Brianna glanced over the scout’s head, then hissed, “Hiatea have mercy!”

  For the first time, Tavis noticed that the deafening roar behind him had been replaced by the hiss and pop of melting ice. The searing heat had yielded to the flesh-numbing cold of deep winter, and the acrid stench of the explosion had been swept down the canyon by the fierce boreal gale. A few of the wounded had raised their voices to shriek in eerie harmony with the wailing wind, but most were too stunned to do more than groan.

  The three closest horse lancers had already struggled to their feet and were calling to their mounts, which were clambering up the steep hillside as fast their hooves could climb. More riders lay scattered across the road, their flesh as black as their scorched armor. Despite their terrible burns, several men were crawling over the hissing ice to their charred horses, already drawing the daggers that would put the loyal beasts out of misery. A huge plume of yellow smoke was billowing from the mine portal beside the road. The fumes were so thick that Tavis could not see the coughing, confused footmen on the other side of the cloud.

  Behind Tavis, Avner gasped, “Milady, no! You’re the queen!”

  “I’m also Hiatea’s high priestess.” Tavis turned to see his wife climbing out of her sleigh, her gaze fixed on the groaning soldiers ahead. “And those men are suff—”

  Brianna’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, then she groaned sharply. She clenched her teeth and grabbed her abdomen with both hands.

  Tavis bolted to her side, catching her in his arms. “The baby!”

  He lifted Brianna back into the sleigh, then cast a wary eye toward the yellow smoke boiling out of the mine ahead. He did not relish the thought of his pregnant wife passing through those caustic fumes, but he cared less for the idea of watching her give birth in the open. Turning around was out of the question. It would be dark before they could clear the courtiers’ sleighs off the narrow road behind them.

  “Avner, close the curtain,” Tavis ordered. “We’ve got to get the queen to the Silver Citadel, now!”

  “There’s … no rush,” Brianna gasped. “It’s nothing … I’ve had these pains before.”

  “What?”

  The queen let out a slow breath, then sat up. “They probably don’t mean anything, Tavis.” Her face no longer appeared anguished, but her cheeks remained pale, and the pain was slow in fading from her eyes. “I’ve been having them now and again.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Tavis growled. “When we left Castle Hartwick, you must have known your time was near!”

  “I knew no such thing—and I still don’t,” Brianna retorted. “It could be another year before I give birth—we really have no way to tell, do we?”

  The high scout could not argue. The queen had been pregnant more than three years already, since just after the war broke out. Tavis had not worried for the first two years, since firbolg women carried their offspring that long, but he had grown steadily more concerned over the last year. The blood of Brianna’s divine ancestors still ran strong in her veins, and Tavis secretly feared that the three racial stocks of their progeny had combined in some terrible way to prevent the birth—or to make the infant the hideous monster of Galgadayle’s dream.

  A low, grating rumble sounded from someplace inside the mine tunnel, then Radborne’s shocked voice echoed off the canyon wall. “F-Fire giants!”

  Tavis looked toward the mine, where the large, boulderlike shape of a giant’s head protruded from the smoking portal. The brute’s ebony face was surrounded by a halo of orange beard and scarlet hair, but the high scout could see little more through the billowing yellow fumes.

  Tavis took his bow off his shoulder. At eight feet long, the weapon was not quite as large as the legendary Bear Driller, which had been destroyed three years earlier in a battle against an ancient ettin. The new bow, however, was easily a match for Bear Driller, as it was strung with woven steel and reinforced with the rune-etched ribs of a glacier bear.

  “Be ready, Avner.” Tavis pulled an arrow from his quiver. It was thicker than most, with red fletching, a stone tip, and runes carved along the shaft. “I’ll clear the way.”

  The high scout was surprised to hear a nervous edge in his voice. Usually, he felt coldly tranquil at the beginning of a battle, unconcerned about anything except maneuvers and tactics. But today his thoughts were a boiling cataract of fear and doubt. Images of his pregnant wife kept appearing in the churning froth inside his head, like a swimmer being swept downstream.

  The fire giant squirmed forward until his lanky shoulders came into view, then he thrust his powerful arms out of the mine and dug his fingers into the tunnel’s stone collar. He began to pull his torso out of the hole. The ice hissed and turned to steam beneath his breastplate, as though the heat of the forge still lingered within his black armor.

  Tavis nocked his arrow and pointed the stone tip into the fuming portal, not even bothering to search for a gap in the giant’s black armor. The high scout drew his bow, at the same time hissing, “taergsilisaB!” A ruby gleam flared from one of the runes etched into his weapon, then flashed out of existence. He released the bowstring. A sharp clap echoed off the canyon walls, and the arrow flashed away, leaving a blinding streak of crimson between the bow and the tunnel mouth. The shaft flew into the mine, then pierced its target’s thick armor with a muffled clang.

  The fire giant did not drop dead, for even an arrow driven by the lord high scout’s magic bow was not powerful enough to fell such a foe in a single strike. The mighty warrior merely grunted in surprise, then instinctively reached for his wound.

  “esiwsilisaB!” Tavis cried, speaking the command word that would activate the runearrow’s magic.

  From inside the mine came a glimmering blue flash and a mighty boom. The fire giant’s torso shot out of the portal and plummeted over the steep bank of Wyrm River, trailing a spray of crimson blood from the truncated waist. Blizzard whinnied in alarm, and Tavis grabbed her reins. A muffled crack reverberated deep within the mountain.

  There was no opportunity to cry out or to cringe in fear, and even the queen’s mare did not have time to rear. The hillside simply folded inward over the tunnel. At the top of the ravine, a frozen buttress of stone lost its hold on the canyon wall and came rumbling down the slope. Tavis and Blizzard barely managed to retreat half a dozen steps before the avalanche roared over the mine portal and swallowed the fallen lancers of the Royal Snow Bear Company. The churning mass spread up the road, then spilled over Wyrm River’s steep bank and rumbled across the broad ribbon of ice, engulfing the fire giant’s truncated corpse and finally crashing against the far side of the canyon.

  For a moment, Tavis could do nothing except stare at the mountainous jumble before him, listening to the dying thunder of the avalanche echo down the crooked gorge. He felt himself shivering in the cold wind and realized that he had broken into a nervous sweat. The landslide had come so close to swallowing his wife’s sleigh, and him with it, that he could have reached out with his bow and touched a frost-rimed boulder as large as himself. Even Blizzard seemed stunned by the close call. She stood stiff and motionless at his side, the muscles of her powerful shoulders trembling with fear.

  Brianna was the first to speak. “It seems we finally have a name for your new bow, Tavis,” she said. “I hereby dub it Mountain Crusher.”

  “Hear, hear! The giants will need Surtr’s own help to dig out of there.” Radborne’s eyes were fixed on the hillock of stone and ice ahead. The heap rose thirty feet above the mine portal, and the choking yellow plume that had been pouring from the tunnel a moment earlier had now been reduced to a few scattered wisps. “Well done!”

  From the other side of the rubble heap came a sergeant’s terrified voice: “Your Majesty? Lord Scout?”

  “The queen is well!” Tavis yelled bac
k. “What of the footmen?”

  “Mostly able. The slide buried a dozen of us,” he replied. “What would you have us do?”

  “Climb over here,” Tavis called. “We’re going to need you to carry the queen’s sleigh over the avalanche.”

  The high scout did not even consider abandoning the sleighs to retreat up the canyon. Even if Brianna had been in any condition to ride, they would only find more fire giants coming down the road. The fumes he had sniffed after the first, distant explosion smelled the same as the mordant smoke that had been pouring from the mine ahead. Unless the magic of Radborne’s tunnel wizards bore the same odor as fire giant alchemy, it seemed likely that their ambushers had planned to trap the queen between two war parties.

  The footmen began to cross the landslide, their armor clanging loudly as they clambered and slipped over the ice-rimed boulders. Tavis relayed orders to the front riders to dismount and wait on the other side of the avalanche in case the queen’s party needed to borrow the mounts. While the high scout arranged his wife’s escape, Avner unhitched Blizzard and set her free. The trails that laced the canyon walls were too narrow and precarious for sleighs, but the stubborn mare had followed her beloved mistress over paths far more perilous.

  Tavis was about to send word for the courtiers to abandon their sleighs when a familiar, sharp odor came to him on the wind. He heard a soft crackling, as of a distant fire, then a cry of alarm rose from the back of the column. The high scout turned to see the first of his enemies rounding a bend, about three hundred yards beyond the entourage’s rearguard.