The Titan of Twilight ttg-3

by Troy Denning

  Avner did not hear the answer, for he had already settled into the emptiness between the stones.

  14

  Split Mountain

  Tavis skirted a monolith the size of a castle tower, then clambered up another as large as an entire keep. He and Galgadayle were following Basil through the swarthy depths of Annam’s Hallway, an icy gorge running straight as a lance through the heart of Split Mountain. A thousand feet of jumbled talus boulders, some as enormous as hills, covered the canyon’s floor. Its sheer granite walls soared more than a mile upward, narrowing into a pair of jagged, needle-tipped peaks that could have been mirror-images of each other. According to Basil, Annam the All Father had created the chasm a hundred centuries earlier, when, exasperated with Othea’s faithlessness, he had hurled Sky Cleaver into the mountain.

  The runecaster stopped atop a monolith, then slipped his divining rod from his belt and held it before him. The glowing tip bent downward at nearly a right angle.

  “We’ve found it!”

  “Not so loud!” Tavis urged. Though Orisino and the verbeegs still trailed a hundred paces behind, the high scout did not want his friend’s elated voice to carry to their ears. The last thing he needed was to let Orisino hear about Sky Cleaver. Tavis stopped next to Basil. “Put your rod away.”

  On the other side of the monolith, a boulder-lined pit corkscrewed a hundred feet down into the talus stones. The deep-worn channel of an ancient trail spiraled along the shaft’s jagged walls, jumping from one listing monolith to another like some sort of cockeyed fomorian staircase. At the bottom of the hole, the track slipped beneath a stone as large as Keep Hartwick and vanished into the crooked maw of a dark, yawning grotto.

  “I thought Sky Cleaver was a lost weapon,” Tavis said. Although he still felt the cold, the scout was well-enough rested that it no longer made him stutter. “How come it has a guardian? Lost weapons don’t have guardians.”

  Basil shrugged. “The stone giant histories don’t describe any guardians.”

  Tavis gave the runecaster a sidelong glance. “Have you read anywhere that the axe is guarded?” he asked. “Saying yes won’t stop me from trying.”

  Basil met his gaze squarely. “I’ve told you all I know.” The runecaster showed no irritation at Tavis’s mistrust. “This is for Avner. I wouldn’t hold back.”

  Tavis accepted the reassurance with a nod. Avner had been half grandson, half accomplice to Basil. The runecaster would never lie on the youth’s name.

  “Well, someone lives down there,” Tavis said.

  “And he must be as old as the mountains,” added Galgadayle. Though it had been two days since the storm giant battle, the seer remained hunched over in pain. Despite the death of his own shaman, he refused to allow Orisino’s healer to mend his cracked ribs. “To wear a trail that deep into solid granite must have taken ten centuries.”

  “At least ten centuries, but the path was not made by a single walker,” Tavis said. “The steps are too erratic. Everything from verbeegs to cloud giants has lived down there.”

  Galgadayle raised a brow. “Then the axe can’t be here. Someone would have claimed it by now.”

  “If they knew how to free it-which isn’t possible,” said Basil. “It took me three years and two new languages to learn the secret, and even I wouldn’t have succeeded without the library at Castle Hartwick.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the trail,” Tavis said. “If whoever’s down there can’t retrieve the axe, why do they stay here?”

  “Because a mortal doesn’t possess a weapon of the gods,” Galgadayle answered. “It possesses him. This is a bad idea, my friends. By recovering Sky Cleaver, we may do more harm than letting the titan keep the queen and her child.”

  “I’m still going after it.” Tavis spoke softly, for he heard Orisino and the verbeegs clattering toward their location. “It’s the only way I can kill Lanaxis.”

  “And after the titan is dead? What will you do then?” Galgadayle also spoke more quietly. “If you lack the strength to slay Brianna’s child, you have only unleashed two scourges on the world.”

  “Perhaps not,” Basil countered. “The titan’s death will certainly alter Kaedlaw’s future.”

  “You cannot change a person’s destiny,” Galgadayle warned. “You can only kill him before he fulfills it.”

  “If you’re right, we’ll know soon enough,” Basil said. “Sky Cleaver can cut to the heart of the matter. After that, Tavis will do the right thing.”

  “Assuming he can recognize it,” Galgadayle replied. “Sky Cleaver’s power will be a bright and shining thing. Even Tavis’s eyes may be dazzled by the glare.”

  “Then you and Basil will help me see.” Tavis glanced over his shoulder at the approaching verbeegs. “And now we will discuss the matter no more.”

  The three companions turned to await the exhausted verbeegs, who were laboriously pushing and pulling each other over the massive talus boulders. Only twenty-five of their number had survived the battle with the storm giants, and many of those suffered from wounds their shaman had not yet healed. Still, with the fomorians strewn in ashes over Cuthbert Pass and the firbolgs annihilated, even two dozen warriors were sufficient to give Orisino command of the war party. Tavis had tried to win back control by waiting for the two companies of royal footmen trailing them since the storm giant battle, but the crafty verbeeg chieftain had ordered his followers to keep moving, objecting that humans would only slow the company down.

  Leaving his warriors to assemble at the bottom of the monolith, Orisino climbed to Tavis’s side. “What’s… this?” he panted, peering into the pit. “The Twilight Vale?”

  “Does that hole look titan-sized to you?” Basil scoffed. “But it might be a shortcut through the talus field. Tavis will see, then come back for us.”

  Orisino’s eyes flashed with suspicion. “Why don’t we all go together?”

  Basil gestured at the pit. “Look at those steps. If the passage happens to be full of giants, or it’s a den instead of a shortcut, we’ll save a lot of trouble by letting Tavis scout ahead.”

  Orisino considered the explanation, then said, “It sounds reasonable, but I want Tavis to say it.”

  “I don’t have anything to add,” the high scout replied.

  “All the more reason to hear it from your mouth,” Orisino insisted. At the base of the boulder, his huffing warriors were straining to hear the conversation. “Tell me this is a shortcut.”

  “I don’t know that it is,” Tavis replied. “But if it’s full of giants, we all have a better chance of reaching the gorge’s far end if I’m alone.”

  Orisino narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know who you hope to fool, but it won’t be me! You’re not going alone.”

  “Fine,” said Basil. “You go with him. The rest of us will wait here until you two return.”

  Tavis shot the runecaster an angry glance. “He’ll be in the way!”

  “Perhaps, but Orisino’s suspicion is understandable,” said Galgadayle. “Take him along. It’s the only way to assure him you aren’t trying to desert us.”

  “The two of you will make less noise than the entire war party.” Basil glanced at the exhausted verbeegs gathered below. “And I’m ready to collapse as it is. The last thing I want is to follow you into some cavern, then find we’ve wasted our effort and retrace our steps.”

  This brought a hearty murmur of agreement from the verbeegs, and even Orisino looked as though he were having second thoughts.

  Tavis turned to Orisino. “You’d better keep those flat feet of yours quiet,” he growled. “And I won’t wait for you.”

  “You won’t have to,” Orisino sneered. “You’re not so strong anymore-or have you forgotten the price you paid for Munairoe’s healing?”

  “I’ve strength enough to take care of myself,” Tavis replied. “It’s you I can’t defend.”

  “I never thought you’d bother,” replied Orisino. “I certainly wouldn’t for you.”

/>   Orisino went off to gather a few things to eat and a torch to light his way. Tavis simply asked Basil to paint a rune of light on the blade his dagger. While he waited for his friend to finish, the high scout peered into the shaft, studying the spiraling trail and its awkward steps. It did not take him long to decide that it would be safer, and faster, not to trust the cockeyed staircase. He removed a short length of white rope from his satchel and dangled it over the shaft.

  “suordnowsilisaB.”

  A silver spider climbed from the cord’s end and dropped into the pit, trailing a single filament of white silk. The strand began to sparkle and grow steadily larger in diameter, becoming as thick and sturdy as any rope. Tavis waited until he could see several feet of line lying loose on the shaft floor, then looped his end of the cord around a small boulder and tied it off with a secure anchoring knot.

  Without waiting for Orisino to return, the high scout straddled the rope. He wrapped it around one hip and over the opposite shoulder, running the line parallel to his bow. He sat over the edge of the pit and rappelled down with slow, easy strides. As he touched bottom, the sweet, stale odor of old age wafted from the cavern mouth behind him. He kept a careful watch over his shoulder, but the grotto itself remained as silent and still as a crypt.

  Tavis untangled himself, then took a few minutes to examine the area. The floor was covered with six inches of glassy ice, so clear that he could see a pair of yard-long bootprints frozen in the mud underneath. The tracks had been old and weatherworn even before freezing. They revealed little now, save that the giant who had left them was not very large and seldom left the grotto. There was no sign that anyone else lived in the cave, and that troubled the high scout. Only ettins were solitary by nature, and the two-headed giants seldom viewed visitors as anything but a convenient meal.

  A loud rattle sounded from the rim of the pit, then Galgadayle cried out, “Watch yourself!”

  Tavis looked up, expecting to find a stone plummeting toward him. Instead, he saw several stones. Close behind came Orisino’s gangly figure, bouncing down the wall in great, barely controlled arcs. The verbeeg was clearly an inexperienced mountaineer. In addition to wrapping himself into the rappelling line backward, he was trying to slow himself by squeezing the rope with his guide hand, while his braking hand clutched at the cliff in a frantic effort to keep himself upright.

  Tavis retreated into the cavern, then grimaced as first the stones, then the verbeeg crashed to the bottom of the icy pit.

  “So much for being quiet!”

  “Karontor take this rope!” Orisino sat up and hurled the tangled line at the wall. “It did nothing to stop me from falling!”

  “It did too much,” Tavis retorted. “If it hadn’t slowed you down, I wouldn’t need to worry about all the witless things you’re bound to do inside the cavern.”

  Without waiting to see if Orisino could hoist his battered frame off the ice, Tavis drew his glowing dagger and started into the cave.

  The place was a confusing web of dark, jagged voids that shot off in all directions, with the sharp corners and broken edges of huge talus boulders jutting into the passages from every angle. In the distance, curtains of wayward sunbeams hung across the skewed corridors, like gray tapestries concealing the private halls of some madman’s castle. If not for the deep grooves of the ancient giant trail, the high scout would have been as lost as a child in a fen. Within the area lit by his glowing dagger alone, he saw at least fifty corridors, and off each of those there would be fifty more.

  Unlike true caverns, whose depths were kept above freezing by the mountain’s warm heart, this jumbled maze of angles and corners was as frigid as a glacial crevasse. The cold air seeped down from above like drizzle down a chimney, riming the granite with hoarfrost and leaving the listing, sloping path as slick and treacherous as a ribbon of frozen stream. Tavis moved slowly and carefully, leaving his sword sheathed and Mountain Crusher on his shoulder, never taking a step without first finding a secure hold for his free hand. In this tangle of monoliths, any fall could be a fatal one, shooting the victim down the jagged mouth of an impossibly deep pit, or lodging him forever between a pair of granite boulders.

  Orisino came up behind the high scout, clattering and groaning as he struggled to maintain his footing on the icy trail. The verbeeg had not bothered to light his torch, which left him both hands to maintain his balance. This was just as well. If the verbeeg happened to fall and injure himself, Tavis would feel compelled to offer help. Until the chieftain actually violated their agreement, the law demanded that he be treated as an ally, and allies did not leave wounded comrades to die in cold caverns.

  “Be quiet, fool,” Tavis growled. “The giant will hear you coming a thousand paces away.”

  “It hardly-ahhhh!” Orisino clutched Tavis’s arm, nearly falling and sending them both off the edge of a monolith. The verbeeg regained his balance, then said, “We can’t use this shortcut. We’d lose half our warriors on this ice.”

  Tavis disengaged himself from the chieftain’s grasp. “You go back if you want. The trail may dry out up ahead.”

  “Dry out? This whole place is one… big…” Orisino let his sentence trail off, then his voice grew sly. “What are you looking for? It’s no shortcut.”

  The high scout did not reply. He continued forward, finally stopping at the head of a steep chute where one boulder stood against another. The corner between their two faces formed a long, angular ravine that descended into inky darkness beyond Tavis’s light. Some ancient giant had cut a series of huge, zigzagging stairs down the trough, but the frost-rimed treads were spaced at eight-foot intervals. Anyone as small as Tavis or Orisino would have to jump from one icy platform to the next. The only alternative was to climb down the center, using the seam between the monoliths for fingerholds. If either of the ’kin slipped, there was no telling how far they would fall.

  “We’d better get our rope,” Orisino suggested.

  Tavis did not bother to remind the chieftain of the line’s true ownership. Verbeegs considered private property an uncivilized and archaic concept, claiming instead that all things belonged to all people.

  “If you want my rope, you fetch it,” Tavis said.

  “And I suppose you’ll wait here until I return?” the verbeeg scoffed. “You go down first. I’ll watch how you do it.”

  The wily chieftain was proving more difficult to scare off than Tavis had expected. The high scout sighed in exasperation. “If I don’t want you falling on me, I’d better teach you how to do this.”

  Tavis passed his glowing dagger to the verbeeg, then removed his gloves and demonstrated how a person could support himself by jamming his fist into a narrow crack, such as that between the two boulders. Though the concept was simple, the art itself was full of nuances. Depending upon the width of the seam and the climber’s position, the fingers had to be folded into all manner of different configurations to lock the hand securely in place. Orisino paid careful attention, and was quickly able to run through the standard positions.

  “You can twist your boots against the sides of the seam to wedge them in place, but don’t trust any footholds on the walls themselves,” Tavis cautioned. “The stone is too slick. Stay in the crack and you won’t have trouble.”

  The high scout retrieved his glowing dagger and slipped the handle between his teeth, then lay on his belly and swung his legs over the chute. He wedged a foot into the crack and climbed down a short distance to wait for Orisino. The verbeeg reluctantly dangled his toes over the edge, kicking blindly at the crevice and grunting in frustration. For a time, Tavis thought his unwelcome companion would turn back, but the chieftain finally locked a boot into the crack and started to creep downward. After that, it did not take long for the verbeeg to gain his confidence, and soon the two ’kin were moving at a steady pace.

  The stones grew colder as they descended. After a few minutes, Tavis’s bare hands felt so numb that he had difficulty feeling his handholds. It was imp
ossible to tell how far they had come, or how far they still had to go. There was nothing but darkness below, with shadowy boulders and jagged, murk-filled passages advancing on them from all sides. In the bewildering array of gray corners and gloomy hollows, only the faithful tug of gravity prevented Tavis from losing his bearings and becoming completely disoriented.

  A startled shriek broke from Orisino’s mouth and skipped through the crooked labyrinth in all directions, nearly concealing the clatter of the chieftain’s boots slipping free of their holds. Tavis pulled himself tight against the rock and twisted his hands and feet into the crack, locking himself in place. He gritted his teeth against the coming impact and silently cursed his companion’s clumsiness. Despite the frosty walls, the chute was no more difficult to descend than a ladder; as long as a climber kept a hand and foot lodged in the crevice at all times, falling was next to impossible.

  Orisino did not land on him.

  “Tavis, did you feel that?” The verbeeg’s voice was shrill with panic.

  Tavis looked up and saw his companion dangling by a single arm, the soles of his hobnailed boots scant inches away. The chieftain was looking over his shoulder into a lopsided triangle of empty air.

  The high scout freed one hand to take the dagger from his mouth. “The only thing I felt was you-almost knocking us both to our deaths. What’s wrong?”

  Orisino gestured at the dark triangle. “Something pushed me! I felt a gust of warm air-a giant’s breath, maybe-then something big reached out of there and tried to push me off!”

  Tavis raised his glowing dagger, illuminating the mouth of the dark passage Orisino had indicated. The high scout could not see far, but it was readily apparent that while a giant’s arm might squeeze through the hole, not even a verbeeg could actually crawl into it.

  “I don’t see anything now,” the high scout said. “Maybe it was a bat.”

  “It pushed me, like a hand!” Orisino insisted. “I’m not imagining this.”