The Titan of Twilight Read online

  “As you wish.” A sly grin crept across Orisino’s lips, and he bowed deeply, but did not back away. “I have no wish to trouble you—provided we make a bargain.”

  “I’ve no interest in bartering with you,” Tavis sneered.

  “Not even if it allows you to sleep?” Orisino countered. “I will promise not to take Sky Cleaver as long as you live.”

  “Why would you make such a promise?” Galgadayle interposed himself between Tavis and the verbeeg.

  “Obviously, because I don’t think Tavis will live very long,” the verbeeg retorted. “Even if he doesn’t destroy himself like Snad and all the other Ones, the titan will do it for him. All I ask is that he teach me the calling command, so that I may retrieve the axe after he’s dead.”

  “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 wo
rk!”

  “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.”

  Tavis backed away, raising Sky Cleaver and holding it between them. “What else would you say?” he snapped. “Nothing would please you more than to see the rift slam shut forever, with Kaedlaw and Brianna trapped inside.”

  Galgadayle’s hurt showed even through his frozen flesh. “Before we became friends, perhaps—but not now. No one hopes that my vision can be changed more strongly than I do. And, more importantly, I know how much you need Brianna. If you cannot control Sky Cleaver, what Kaedlaw wreaks on the world will pale by comparison to the evil you unleash.”

  More than anything, Tavis wanted to hear Galgadayle’s voice break, to hear the telltale squeal of a lie and know that the seer was trying to manipulate him. But Galgadayle’s voice remained steady and deep. The scout could only conclude that it was Sky Cleaver, not the firbolg, trying to manipulate him, to undermine the only power in the world that could save the One Wielder from himself: his true friends.

  Tavis lowered his axe. “If you think that’s best. All I ask is that you do everything you can to be certain of yourselves.”

  Basil’s glance drifted to the axe, and a hungry gleam came into his ancient eyes. “If you want to be certain, we could use Sky Cleaver’s power.”

  Tavis shook his head. “No, there are some things better left to the judgment of friends.” The high scout turned away from Basil’s shining snowball and studied the stars until he found the Midnight Circle, high overhead. “We have about six hours until dawn, Galgadayle. Is that enough time for me to learn how to change sizes?”

  “It should be plenty, even with the disadvantages of your upbringing,” the seer replied. “I have taught the technique to children in six minutes.”

  Tavis glanced back toward the verbeegs. They were standing twenty paces down the rift, near the drumlin upon which the high scout had been sitting earlier. Their hungry eyes were locked on Sky Cleaver’s dark blade, and Orisino’s cold-burned lips were silently moving to the half-remembered syllables of the axe’s ancient summoning call.

  Tavis looked back to Galgadayle. “Now’s as good a time as any to teach me, as long I won’t be impaired.”

  “You might feel a little dizzy as you grow larger.” The seer glanced toward the verbeegs. “But I doubt Orisino or his warriors will dare approach when they realize you’re big enough to swing Sky Cleaver. I suggest you lay aside anything you don’t want to grow with you. Whatever you’re touching when you start the process will grow larger along with you.”

  Tavis glanced down at Sky Cleaver. Something inside whispered not to set the weapon aside, that Galgadayle was only trying to trick him and steal it.

  The high scout dropped the axe at his feet. “I’m ready.”

  The seer glanced at the weapon, then nodded and smiled. “I believe you are,” he said. “Now, changing sizes is basically a breathing exercise. You start by exhaling slowly, then draw a deep breath and hold it.”

  Tavis filled his lungs with icy air.

  “Look inward and see yourself growing larger,” the seer instructed. “Sometimes it helps to close one’s eyes, but that’s not necessary—especially if it’s going to make you worry about what you’re not holding.”

  Tavis closed his eyes.

  “Good,” Galgadayle said. “Exhale again, but don’t open your mouth. Blow the air out of your lungs into the rest of your body, and you’ll start to grow.”

  Tavis tried to do as the seer instructed, but the air came rushing out his nose.

  “That’s okay,” Galgadayle said. “You’re not really blowing yourself up—it’s only one way to visualize the change. Try again, and push your tongue back to block your throat. It’ll help you seal off not only the air passage, but the energy channels as well.”

  Tavis took another frigid breath, held it, and pushed his tongue to the back of his throat. He tried to exhale. He felt a terrible pressure inside his chest, and it seemed his sternum would crack under the strain. An instant later, the force simply melted away. His torso felt strangely hollow, then his entire body swelled up, not with air, but with muscle and bone. The One Wielder heard Basil’s voice, and something dark and sinister whispered that the runecaster might be calling Sky Cleaver.

  Tavis put the thought out of his mind and drew another breath.

  “Good. You’ve grown half-a-foot already,” Galgadayle reported. “Continue as long as you can. Your body will know when you can’t take any more.”

  Tavis expelled the breath and felt himself swell, then inhaled again. He continued for many minutes, never opening his eyes, growing larger and stronger with each lungful of icy air. Soon, his head began to spin, as Galgadayle had warned it would, and his muscles started to burn with weariness.

  “By Stronmaus!” Basil hissed.

  “How are you feeling, Tavis?” Galgadayle asked.

  “Dizzy,” the high scout replied. “Weak.”

  Tavis gulped down another lungful of frigid air.

  “Perhaps you should stop,” Galgadayle suggested. “Given your condition and lack of sleep, it might be best not to press matters.”

  Tavis expelled the breath into his body, and again felt his chest grow hollow. “One more time,” he gasped. “When I face Lanaxis, I want … to … be …”

  A whistling roar filled the scout’s ears, replacing his own voice. He felt himself falling. It seemed to take forever before his face met the ground, and then he heard a strange choking sound: himself, trying to breath snow as fine as flour. A pair of tiny hands, no larger than those of a child, grasped his shoulder and laboriously rolled him over. Another hand, no larger than the first, slipped between his lips and cleared his breathing passage.

  “Tavis!” It was Basil’s voice, but much more tinny and high-pitched than normal. “Are you all right?”

  “He’ll be fine.” Galgadayle’s voice also sounded sharp and high. “He needs to sleep. I should have known that as tired and feeble as he is, he wouldn’t have the strength to—”

  Galgadayle suddenly stopped speaking, and Basil hissed, “What’s that?”

  Tavis opened his eyes and saw the faces of his two friends, barely half their normal size. They were looking away from him, back toward the drumlin where the verbeegs were waiting. Then the One Wielder heard it, Orisino’s shrill voice calling out to Sky Cleaver in the ancient language of its divine maker:

  “In the name of—”

  Tavis sat up, his hands flailing about for the axe, but finding only snow.

  “—Skoraeus Stonebones, Your Maker, O Sky Cleaver—”

  “Enough of that. Move!” hissed Basil.

  The runecaster pointed at the shimmering silver snowball that still hovered over the fissure, then swung his finger down at Orisino’s distant figure.

  “—do I summon you in—”

  The snowball crashed over Orisino’s head, ending the intonation in midword. The silver sphere shattered into a
thousand pieces and spilled its shimmering radiance over the chieftain, who immediately fell motionless. His flesh turned as glossy and hard as ice, then he toppled onto his side and did not move.

  “That will keep him quiet,” Basil chuckled. “At least until he thaws out—which could be quite some time.”

  Tavis continued to thrash about in the snow. “My … axe,” he gasped. “Sky Cleaver!”

  Galgadayle grabbed the high scout’s wrist and guided his hand through the snow. Tavis felt a familiar handle in his palm. Though the shaft was much smaller than he remembered, the One Wielder could feel the energy of Orisino’s half-completed call coursing through the ancient ivory. He pulled the weapon to his breast and collapsed back into the snow, his weariness descending upon him like a flight of starving wyverns.

  “That’s right, Tavis. Sleep.” Galgadayle’s whispering voice was fading fast. “Rest. Let your friends watch over you until dawn.”

  16

  Titan’s Vale

  Tavis stood on the summit of Othea Tor, watching a veil of flaxen sunlight cascade down the Endless Ice Sea’s looming face. As the sun behind him rose higher, the curtain fell faster, until it was descending so swiftly that when the sallow light finally reached bottom, it splashed out onto the bleak snows and spread across the entire empty plain in the span of a single expectant breath. Othea’s shadow did not fall over the rift so much as appear along its length all at once, and suddenly the high scout found himself staring into the purple bowels of a deep, gloomy abyss. He could hardly comprehend what had happened. There had been no earthquake, no plume of billowing darkness, nor even a thunderous rumble to proclaim the opening of the fissure. The vale had simply appeared, as though it had been there all along and required only the goddess’s umbral touch to reveal itself.

  The abyss was shaped exactly like Othea’s shadow: a long, narrow triangle that stretched from the base of the tor to the foot of the Endless Ice Sea. Its walls were as sheer and black as slate, descending more than a hundred feet before they vanished into the swarthy murk that filled the bottom of the chasm. In the center of this gloom hung the silhouette of a palace roof, supported by nothing that Tavis could see except viscous shadow. The structure appeared to be a harmonious balance of three symmetrical wings arranged around a central cupola, but it was impossible to tell more. The rest of the building remained a dusky, half-sensed enigma, as nebulous and obscure as the vale itself.