He had raised his gelding, Duncan, from a foal and had gentled the animal himself. Now, caressing her wrist, he spoke to the young giant as he had once done to the fractious colt. She turned her face, tracking his every move. “I’m not a healer,” he told her. “Neither is Oburne. Captain Vyergin knows some field medicine, but his experience is limited to humans. A giant would—”
“Terrek?” Gaelin’s sleepy voice jolted them both. He stood on the drift, blinking down at them, his frayed cloak askew across his shoulders. “What . . . ?” He rubbed his eyes. “How did I get here? I feel . . . Terrek. Are you well?”
“Gaelin.” Terrek willed the giant to keep calm. Gaelin’s arrival had caught him off guard, but he was glad of it. “I need Holram to answer a question for me. I must know if it’s safe for him to help her.”
Squinting, Gaelin bent low. A section of the drift’s upper crust collapsed under him, skittering in chunks between the tangled trees. Then Gaelin fell, dropping his staff as he slid on his rump with a shower of frigid powder, to land on his stomach by the giant.
“Steady!” Terrek reached to catch his friend.
“She’s hurt?” Gaelin asked. He peered past Terrek at Avalar’s bloody mail, and her eyes wide with fright. “She is! But I don’t . . . She wasn’t last night, was she? How did it happen, Terrek? When?”
“Avalar,” Terrek said, “will you trust me?” Once more, her frantic gaze found his. Her muscles were unyielding beneath his palm, her entire body tensed for battle.
“Avalar, no!” Terrek sat on her arm. In a moment, she would throw him, and he would be powerless to prevent it. “Giant, listen to me! Gaelin won’t use his magic unless you agree. I promise! And only if the warder assures us it won’t hurt you.”
Her breathing rasped in her throat as she glared up, her blond hair forming a halo behind her head. Terrek nodded at Gaelin. Then once more he struggled to raise her mail enough to bare her wound. The black-robe had blasted a hole above the giant’s hip. The damage, inflicted by old magic, spread noticeably as the warped power absorbed strength from its contact with the air.
Terrek held his breath at the warmth in Gaelin’s expression. A hum reverberated in the younger man’s throat. “She is strong,” Gaelin said, and Terrek started at the strangeness of the voice, how it projected deep and hollow as though from a well. He had heard it before when he had grabbed at Gaelin during the battle above Heartwood.
Staring at Gaelin, Terrek found nothing familiar—no glimmer of humanity in the staff-wielder’s darkened eyes. Avalar flinched at Gaelin’s touch on her cheek, her breath quickening as Terrek felt heat beneath his fingers, a fire rising from the giant’s skin.
“No,” Avalar groaned.
“Gaelin.” Terrek jostled the young man’s arm. “You heard what I promised. Not without her consent!”
“I heard you,” Gaelin replied. “But we can restore her. Holram demands that I . . .” Gaelin reached for his staff. “Avalar, let me help. The magic is warped and doesn’t care that you’re a giant. It is feeding on you!”
“Do not!” She wrested her arm free from Terrek’s hold and clambered upright, slapping aside their attempts to detain her. “I am a giant! I will mend!”
Terrek jumped to seize her hand and, with all his weight, swung her to confront him. “Obviously, you won’t! It’s not just your life at stake here. It’s the world! You’re a giant, Avalar. You must stay alive!”
“And you are human,” she said. “How can you under—” She stopped, gawking openmouthed as a ribbon of light clamped onto her right forearm and then, flicking sideways, looped to ensnare her left wrist. The quicksilver thread rippled to gird both her waist and neck, then descended to manacle her knees.
Terrek spun to Gaelin. The younger man stood with his staff leveled at the giant. Fiery tentacles of power swirled from Mornius’s stone, up the giant’s legs, and around her body.
Avalar yanked her arms free and drew her sword. “I said no!” she howled, hacking at the strands connecting her to the staff.
Terrek recalled the lessons he had learned of the giants, how they retained the memories of their forebears. Her great blade flashed in the morning sunlight. She was blind with fury, yet she was beautiful as she fought, uninhibited and wild.
Terrek snatched out his own sword and, facing the angry giant, leapt to stand in front of his healer. Then a feeling like ice stabbed into him from behind. He glimpsed a flashing below his ribs. His body going numb, he plunged to his knees while the magic from Mornius, striking him in the back, passed through him to hit the giant. With an astonished gasp, Avalar dropped senseless to the snow.
“When she wakes,” a powerful voice droned, “she will not remember this, Terrek Florne.”
“Avalar!” Oburne flung himself down what remained of the drift, skidding on his heels toward the giant. The big man bent to touch her brow as he glared at Gaelin. “You reckless fool! What have you done?”
The staff-wielder’s expression was dark, with the same fierce intensity Terrek recalled during the brawl at Kideren when Gaelin had saved his life. “I healed her,” Gaelin said in that oddly flat voice. “She would have died.”
“Died?” Oburne echoed, the angry glint in his brown eyes fading.
Terrek climbed to his feet and sheathed his sword. “She was wounded defending Tierdon. You must have heard her whimpering in her sleep last night. She was in pain.”
Oburne laid his hand on Avalar’s chest, watching it rise and fall. “She was dreaming,” he said. “There was a name she kept calling. Someone she wanted to protect. I think he must be dead now. He must have died in the city.”
“Or was taken,” said Terrek.
“I’m sorry,” Gaelin muttered, and Terrek sighed, for this was the Gaelin he knew. “She was dying. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“How in this world did humans enslave giants?” Terrek asked. “I can’t control even one!”
Oburne twitched his bearskin from his shoulders and spread it over Avalar’s chest. “She’s young, Commander. It’s common for giant children to be difficult.”
“You call this a child?” said Terrek. “I thought she was older. Is it because they don’t age, or is that a myth?”
“No, it’s true,” Oburne said. “But first they must reach adulthood, and she hasn’t. At a hundred and twenty, Avalar’s not stopped growing yet. That won’t happen until she reaches her prime—assuming she gets to. We must convince her to go home.”
Terrek frowned as he stared at the still-smoking pyres and the ruins of the city his brother had loved. A human did that, he thought grimly. Someone in that cult has a lot of power.
“Avalar says she can’t go home,” Terrek informed his warriors standing on the drifts above. Vyergin descended to join Oburne, and before long, both men were struggling to roll the senseless giant onto an oiled swath of canvas. “She can’t.”
Oburne climbed to his feet. “She must! She’s not safe here! Thalus is the last place that any giant should be.”
“When I asked her to leave,” Terrek told him, “she argued that her boat was destroyed, so either we abandon her here, which would endanger her life, or we bring her with us until we can think of something else. You’ve described how skilled she is with her sword—we can use that. If she wishes to travel with us, we’d be fools to deny her.”
To Terrek’s surprise, Gaelin pushed between him and his senior lieutenant. “Mornius healed her,” Gaelin said. “You have no choice now, but to allow me to protect her.”
“You will do nothing when it comes to her,” Oburne said. “If I catch you anywhere near her with that thing, I’ll rip your head off!”
In a motion too swift to follow, Gaelin seized Oburne by his throat. “What did you say?”
“Gaelin!” Terrek gripped the staff-wielder’s bony shoulders, subduing him while Oburne pried the smaller man’s fingers from around his neck. “No!” Terrek yelled as Gaelin lunged again, and deflected the younger man’s momentum, sp
inning him toward Tierdon. “Nothing will shield her if we meet whoever did this to Camron’s city. Not even your warder.”
Gaelin was silent, his muscles rigid beneath Terrek’s grasp. Then his voice rose quivering above the wind. “He talks to me, Terrek, but now I listen. I still don’t know what he is, or what he wants, but I feel . . .”
Terrek retreated. Gaelin’s pupils were dilated—twin pools of nothingness, desperate for light. Yet under the surface, Terrek spied a glint of silver, as if another’s eyes also appraised him. “You are mistaken,” the staff-wielder said, his bearded face stern.
Terrek scowled. “How exactly am I wrong—” he began, but Gaelin cut him off.
“Never presume,” the younger man said, his words clipped and very precise as though he had never used his tongue before, “to tell me what I can or cannot do!”
Chapter 19
VYERGIN GRUMBLED AS he sorted through the staples. Fehley oats filled the iron pot near where the captain knelt, enough for the porridge he prepared for the company’s breakfast, yet something eluded him. “Grakan’s teeth!” he muttered.
Seated on the length of a fallen tree, Gaelin watched Terrek’s second-in-command search for a moment longer, then, smiling, he extended his leg. With the toe of his boot, he prodded the little white pouch of sea salt, nudging it into Vyergin’s view from among the pack’s scattered contents and closer to the captain’s questing hand.
“Ha!” Vyergin, grinning, snatched up the diminutive bag and worked at its knotted ties.
Gaelin winced at the sudden thudding in his ears. The noise had awakened him before dawn. Holram had slipped into his head, had manipulated his pulse to get his attention, and now the intruding warder was back, making his blood thump so hard he had to strain to make out the captain’s words.
“. . . old age,” Vyergin was saying. “I must be going blind. What do you think, Wizardling? Would your—”
Vyergin’s lips continued to move, but Gaelin had stopped listening. He glowered at the castle far away atop the cliff. This was the sight Holram wanted him to see, the warder who partially dwelled inside him. So often now he heard the strange being’s messages merging with his thoughts, hissing in whispers like falling snow.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Terrek straddle the big log he sat on. Caven Roth, stopping beside Terrek, kicked the splintered wood where lightning had struck it, and Gaelin felt the vibration under his thighs. “When Cheron was attacked, we were protecting Vale Horse,” Terrek said. “And after we left Kideren to chase what we thought was an army, that’s when Kideren fell! We’re fighting two forces now, with next to no men!”
Roth pulled off his gloves with his teeth and flexed the swollen fingers of his sword-hand. “We can’t disband. There’s no way I’m going to quit after what they did to my family. What if we hide and wait near the places they travel? We can study their habits and ambush them when they’re vulnerable.”
Terrek sighed. “And when will that be? No trickery or traps can stop what we saw hit Kideren, and now it’s taken Tierdon. It must have flown over us while we were sleep—” He broke off. “We won’t disband. But it’s plain to me we must alter our tactics, and there’s only one left: attack them directly.”
“I think,” Roth replied, “I’d like nothing more than to . . .”
Gaelin scowled as the voice faded. His blood crackled in his ears, overwhelming Roth’s response, as well as the clink of Vyergin’s spoon as the captain stirred the boiling grain and the crunching of Grenner’s boots when the bowman sauntered near. Then shouting from the warriors beyond the trees reached him, the sound luring his gaze to where the giant practiced among the men, the playful young creature laughing behind her blade. She doesn’t remember I healed her, he realized with dismay. Has she forgotten her wound?
“We’re going to fail,” he announced to the empty air. His thoughts had become vague beneath the throbbing of his pulse, slipping from his reach when he fought to pin them down. He shifted on the log to face Terrek. “We’re missing something vital. Our journey hasn’t ended yet.”
“Of course it hasn’t,” Terrek said. “But what makes you say that?”
“I hear words in my head,” Gaelin replied with a nod to his staff, “and yet I don’t. They’re telling me we must go to that castle. There’s a task we have to complete before we can hope to defeat Erebos, and . . .” Gaelin frowned at Roth’s pursed lips and blazing eyes. “We can’t do that unless we go. Someone is trapped there, Terrek. We must set him free.”
“What fool would get trapped there?” Terrek asked. “Gaelin, we can’t just—”
“No, we can’t, Commander,” Roth interjected. “We just survived the mountains. We burned hundreds of dead! All those children. Now your brother’s gone; we need to grieve for him! And the men, what about them? They’re exhausted!”
“Roth, stop it!” said Terrek. “How am I supposed to think with you hanging over me like that?”
“The men can stay here,” Gaelin told them. “Wren is still breathing too hard. I wanted to heal him this morning, but he won’t let me since I helped Avalar. Please,” he begged. “I first spotted the castle last night, and now I have thunder in my ears, words telling me we have to go. We must free the trapped warrior, and we can’t leave this valley until we do!”
Roth crossed his arms. “You’re not going anywhere without me, Terrek. I’ve lost one good friend already. I won’t lose you, too.”
Gaelin jumped as a large hand clamped his shoulder. “I shall also be coming,” Avalar said in her rumbling voice. “It will take my mind off . . .”
“Off what?” Gaelin asked.
“Off my anger at you,” she answered with the hint of a smile.
✽ ✽ ✽
SHELTERED BY DENSE forest, the pathway was clear, the frigid ground drumming beneath the soles of Gaelin’s boots as he walked. He lagged behind Terrek and Roth, the giant flanking him as he contended with his vertigo and aching joints, having left the two horses tethered among the frozen greenberry bushes they loved.
Gaelin quickened his pace when Terrek disappeared from sight around a bend in the trail. He followed Avalar’s stare as she surveyed the pale cliff past the wintry pines. “Your steps are longer than mine,” he said. “If you’re angry at me, why not walk ahead with the others?”
Avalar sniffed. “Because they carry swords while you do not. And mayhap I wish to shield you from harm. Or perhaps because the best solution to danger, other than to avoid it, is to keep it close and learn its ways.” She grinned. “My uncle Kurgenrock taught me that.”
“But I’m not a—” Gaelin stopped when she came at him, her big thumb pressing the center of his chest.
“You are a danger!” she said. “As long as you carry that staff, you threaten all the giants on this world.”
“No, I don’t. Look!” He tipped his staff downward, letting the weight of its Skystone tap the frosted ground. “See? That’s old magic touching Mornius, isn’t it? Yet there’s nothing. So why is it any different with you?”
She seized him by the elbow, yanking him up the narrow track. “You fail to understand,” she said. “Though our magic is everywhere, how it responds depends on the characteristics of whatever it connects with. When you dig, the dirt yields, does it not? It sinks or crumbles apart under your weight when you step on it. Likewise, when your staff comes in contact with the magic in the soil, it behaves in the same way.”
“Everything is white,” said Gaelin, pulling at her grasp. “It’s winter. What dirt?”
She pointed to the sky. “Now consider the air,” she said, ignoring his frustration. “We call it animal magic because all living creatures take it in so it becomes a part of them. It is ever moving and difficult to master, which makes it the weakest of the Circle’s links.”
Her toe sent a small boulder skidding from her path as she walked. “Stone,” she said, “is durable, and yet its magic is brittle. Only a skilled elf can make use of it. Even the ground u
nder your feet can be more reliable, if it is dense enough, though not so much as fire.”
“Fire’s magic is strongest?” Gaelin, aware of the fact she strove to instruct him and anxious to appease her, watched the rock tumble along the trail’s edge and into the brush. He grimaced, recalling when the flames had bowed to the giant the night before and how her eyes had laughed at them.
Avalar shrugged back her blond braids. “Fire is eager, yet water defeats it and restores life. Water submits to change and holds little or no consistency. Which is why the slavers of giants preferred it.
“Rare are my people, Staff-Wielder. Because so few of us survived our slavery, the magic in our flesh is stronger.
“Two things anchor the Circle to this world, the bloodstones deep and the giants tall. Though we are less, the same magical currents fill us as they did when we were many. It is a strain on our bodies, so much that the elves suspect if one more of us should perish, those forces might tear us apart. So until we give birth to enough children to regain our numbers, our magic defends us and prevents us from aging. No one can say what will happen to the world if one of us dies. No one wishes to.”
Avalar dropped to her knees in front of him. “Here,” she said, “mayhap this will help.” Gently, she cupped his shoulders and drew him against her, lifting his head to press his cheek to her armored breast.
Gaelin heard the quiet murmur of her breathing near his ear, the slow, steady thumping of her heart, and something else, a soft thrum of power, like the wind through the branches, or an unending sea.
“That sound you hear is my magic,” she said. “All living things have it, even plants and trees, which is why the elves require you to build with dead wood. Yet nothing else has as much power as giants. Now do you comprehend?”
She let him go, but something small, aching, and lost rose up in him. He could not recall when he had last felt so protected or had known the feeling of another person holding him tight. A pain throbbed in his chest, the longing of a child who had been denied for so long. With an instinct made blind by tears, he reached out to return her embrace.
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