by Troy Denning
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 impossible 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.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Tavis replied. “But we can’t do much about it now.”
The high scout returned his dagger handle to his mouth and continued downward. Orisino kicked his feet back into the crevice, then drew his own knife and followed. Their descent slowed significantly. Not only did the verbeeg insist upon keeping one hand free to hold his weapon, he spent more time peering into dark crannies than he did searching for handholds. Even then, he continued to cry out at random intervals, claiming that he smelled a foul odor or felt a gust of hot breath. Tavis never shared any of these sensations, nor did he hear the slightest clatter or flutter to suggest something was stalking them.
The high scout had finally decided his companion was imagining things when a sharp crack sounded above. A loud, clattering rumble reverberated down the chute, and the walls shuddered beneath the power of a tumbling boulder. Tavis pulled the dagger from his mouth and held it out over the trough, illuminating a pair of frost-rimed steps on the walls below.
“Jump!”
Knowing Orisino would leap for the closest step, the high scout jumped toward the one on the opposite wall. With the rumble reverberating ever louder in his ears, he dropped through eight feet of darkness and hit above the stair he wanted to reach. He turned his face toward the stone, scratching at the cold granite with his dagger and numb fingers.
A crack sounded from the center of the chute. The gray blur of a boulder bounced past his shoulder, with Orisino’s shrieking figure sliding down the trough close behind.
The stone vanished beneath the high scout’s face and chest, then he slammed onto the front half of the stair he had tried to reach. He flailed at the icy shelf with both hands.
A tremendous crash reverberated in the bottom of the chute.
Tavis’s glowing dagger caught in a crack and brought his fall to an abrupt halt. He glimpsed the blade bending under the sudden strain, then a sharp ping echoed through the cavern. Basil’s light rune abruptly faded, and the scout slipped.
Tavis released the hilt and grabbed for the broken blade. He felt a strange, painless sensation as the edge sliced into his numb palm, but he stopped sliding. He slipped the fingers of his free hand into the same crack where the blade had caught, then pulled himself onto the step.
A booming voice, deep but wavering with age, echoed down the chute. “You ’live, stupid thieves?”
Tavis did not respond, nor did Orisino—whether due to wisdom or injury, the high scout did not know.
“Answer Snad, stupid thieves!” quavered the giant. “You dead, or what?”
The dull-witted questions and low, booming voice left little doubt that Snad was a hill giant—but he was hardly an ordinary one. Though hill giants were clumsy and no more able to see in the dark than firbolgs, there had not been so much as a rustle or a glimmer of torchlight as this one slipped into place for his ambush.
“ ‘Kay, stupid thieves! Snad comin’ down,” the giant warned. “Better be dead when he gets there!”
Tavis cupped a hand to his ear and craned his neck to look up the chute. There was not the slightest rustle, nor the faintest gleam of light. For all the high scout could tell, Snad was a mere voice in the dark—a resentful voice.
Tavis crawled to the edge of his step, then lay on his belly and stretched his bleeding hand along the face of the dark granite. He barely managed to reach the center of the chute and slip three cold fingertips into the narrow crevice. The high scout pulled himself toward the opposite wall, at once swinging his legs off the stair and reaching for the fissure with his good hand.
The soles of his boots landed on the far side of the trough, slipped on the hoarfrost, and shot out from beneath him. Tavis started down the chute, then caught the crevice with his second hand and jammed a fist inside. The craggy stone scraped away long ribbons of skin, driving the numbness from his flesh, but the hand held. He brought himself to a halt.
Tavis resumed his descent, moving as quickly as he dared in the darkness. He had no idea whether Snad was descending the chute above or coming via another passage, but he suspected it would not be long before the hill giant arrived. Before then, the high scout wanted to have Orisino’s torch lit and be well down the trail.
A dozen steps later, the sole of Tavis’s boot came down on the jagged corner of a small boulder. He lowered himself onto the rock, then slipped down its side to something that felt like a jumbled platform of firewood. With a series of brittle cracks, his weight settled onto the sticks.
The sharp point of a sword poked Tavis in the short ribs. The scout le
aned away from the tip and thrust a leg out, aiming a rear stomping kick just below the weapon. His boot sank into something soft. The breath left his attacker’s lungs with a muffled whumpf, then a ’kin-sized body slammed into a monolith and slumped to the floor. A series of receding clangs echoed through the cavern as the ambusher’s weapon skittered down an unseen slope.
Orisino simultaneously groaned and wheezed for breath. “Tavis … why’d … you do that?”
“Why did you stick a sword in my back?”
“I didn’t mean … any harm.” Aside from his lack of wind, Orisino sounded healthy enough. “I thought you were the giant.”
“He’ll be here soon enough,” Tavis replied. “Give me your torch.”
When Tavis reached down, the verbeeg grabbed the proffered hand and used it to pull himself up. “I don’t think a torch is smart. It’ll lead the giant straight to us.”
“He’ll find us anyway.” Tavis reached around the verbeeg and pulled the torch from his belt. “Until he does, we need to see where we’re going.”
Tavis removed his tinderbox from his satchel and knelt on the floor, spreading a mound of tinder before him. He found his flint and steel and fumbled with them until his numb fingers struck a fire. As the flames flickered to life, the high scout was surprised to see that the floor was covered not by sticks, but by a yellow tangle of bones.
“It appears we’re not Snad’s first victims,” Orisino said.
“We’re not victims yet.”
Tavis touched the torch to the tinder, which was already burning out, and blew gently on the flames until the oil-soaked head caught fire. The brand’s broader circle of light revealed thousands of bones. A few were fresh enough to have bits of withered hide clinging to their surfaces, but most were naked and almost petrified with age. A few were so gray and soft that they would powder at the slightest touch. They came in all sizes and shapes, from tibias no thicker than arrows to ribs as long as the floor planks of Keep Hartwick. Giants and ’kin were represented in equal proportions among the skulls scattered through the tangle, as were humans, elves, and other small races.
Tavis led them away from the bones, following the well-worn trail along a contorted route of corners and doglegs that took them ever downward. They heard no more of Snad until his splintered voice echoed through the stones above their heads.
“Snad the One! Not you, stupid thieves!” The giant’s voice sounded more imploring than angry. “Come back now, or Snad—”
The rest was too garbled to make out.
“The giant’s moving!” Orisino whispered.
“True, but at least he seems to be behind us.” Tavis passed the torch to Orisino, then pulled Mountain Crusher off his shoulder. “Assuming you’ll lead for a while, I’ll be ready when he catches up.”
Orisino looked dubious, but turned down the path. Tavis kept pace easily, even with his bow in hand, and stopped often to study the murky passages around them. Once a warm draft wafted out of a side passage. The high scout fired an arrow into the breeze on the off chance Snad had caused it; the shaft clattered against an unseen rock. Their pursuer remained a mere voice in the dark.
They continued to descend, slipping and sliding over the frosty stones, until at last they traversed the face of a long monolith and came to a fork in the trail. One route turned sharply to the right, while the other zigzagged down a small shaft. The ruts descending the shaft looked about twice as deep as those in the horizontal passage.
Orisino passed the torch to Tavis and sat on the edge of the pit. “I’m going to need both hands for this climb.” He glanced at the scout, then added, “That is, unless you’re so mad that you really are looking for a shortcut.”
When Tavis did not reply, a crafty smile crossed Orisino’s lips. “I thought as much.”
The chieftain climbed down to the limit of the torchlight, where he sat upon a huge, well-worn step to wait for Tavis. The high scout dropped the brand to the verbeeg, then slipped his bow over his shoulder and climbed down to the same place. They had to repeat the process only twice more before Orisino reached the bottom of the shaft.
“I think we’re almost there.” The verbeeg turned to peer down a dark, diamond-shaped passage. “The floor in there is solid bedrock, and I can see—”
A large stone flew out of the side passage and struck a glancing blow off Orisino’s brow. The chieftain’s head snapped back, flinging blood across the walls, and he collapsed in a crumpled heap. His eyes remained open and vacant, focused somewhere in the darkness high above Tavis’s head.
“Snad warn stupid thief!” rumbled the giant’s quavering voice. “Snad the One!”
Tavis dropped the torch into the pit, then descended to a ledge above the diamond-shaped passage. He pulled Mountain Crusher from his shoulder and started to nock his last runearrow, then thought better and selected a normal one. He had killed plenty of hill giants with regular arrows, and it would be wiser to save his magic for a more desperate situation.
“Go back, stupid firbolg thief!” cried Snad. “Snad keeper of Great Axe, not Tavis Burdun!”
“How do you know my name?” Tavis slipped out of his cloak.
“Snad know,” Snad replied. “Axe have Snad.”
Tavis raised his brow at the choice of words, then nocked his arrow. He tossed his dark cloak into the pit.
A large rock sailed out of the passage. The stone caught the cape in midair and carried it across the shaft, where it bounced off the wall and came down on Orisino’s arm. The verbeeg’s fingers flinched, but Tavis had no time to consider what that meant. He dropped onto the pit floor with his bowstring drawn and his arrow pointed into the diamond-shaped tunnel.
Tavis could not quite grasp what he saw. At the end of the corridor, the darkness changed from soot-black to a silvery hue that was neither glow nor gloom. Standing before this strange ether was the shadowy skeleton of a hill giant. It was as though Tavis and Orisino had descended through the talus boulders into the realm of the dead.
“Stupid tricks not fool Snad!”
The dark skeleton twisted toward the wall, stretching his arms out to grab another stone. Tavis drew Mountain Crusher and aimed at Snad’s midsection. Normally, he would have tried for the heart, but he doubted that strategy would kill a skeleton. His only chance of a swift victory was to shatter the spine.
Snad pulled his boulder from the wall. Tavis forced himself to wait, struggling to keep his arms from trembling. Once, he could hold a true aim and a taut bow for minutes, but now he was too weak for that. As Munairoe had warned, his strength was failing.
The skeleton turned, exposing the dark line of his spine. Tavis let the arrow fly, but he could feel by his trembling hands that his aim was not true. He stepped away from the passage mouth, already reaching for his last runearrow—then Snad bellowed. A muffled bang echoed down the corridor as the giant dropped his boulder.
Tavis peered around the corner, half-expecting to be knocked as senseless as Orisino. Instead, he saw his foe turning away, hunched over and holding the bones of one hand to his midsection. The arrow hung in the emptiness where Snad’s stomach should have been, a foot short of the spine.
Tavis’s jaw fell. He was looking not at a living skeleton, but at the skeleton inside a living giant.
He traded his runearrow for a normal one, then nocked and fired again. The shaft caught its target between the shoulder blades. Snad roared and tumbled into the room beyond. If his body crashed to the ground, there were no shuddering stones or thunderous booms to betray that fact. The giant simply dropped into the eerie gray murk and vanished.
A pair of flat feet slapped the shaft floor behind Tavis. He spun and saw Orisino already upon him. The verbeeg’s eyes were mad with battle lust, and he held the torch in his upraised hand. Tavis brought his bow up to block, at the same time reaching for his sword.
Orisino brushed past without attacking. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted, racing down the corridor. “Hurry up, or we’ll be on the
wrong end of our axe!”
The scout started down the passage, feeling rather foolish. From the verbeeg’s perspective, there was no reason to argue over the axe. After they recovered it, the weapon would belong to him as much as it did to Tavis.
A loud wail broke from the far end of the passage, then a fierce gale tore through the narrow corridor, extinguishing Orisino’s torch and hurling him back into Tavis. Both ’kin lost their footing and went tumbling down the corridor, bouncing from one jagged wall to the other.
Tavis covered his head with his free hand and used the other to keep a firm grasp on his bow. He lost contact with Orisino, then his arm was nearly jerked from its socket as Mountain Crusher caught on something. He held fast and dragged himself out of the scouring wind into a small cranny alongside the passage.
“Tavis?” Orisino’s voice was barely audible over the wind, but it came from someplace ahead. “What’s happening?”
Tavis cupped his hands to his mouth. “The axe’s magic!” Basil had said the weapon could control weather. “Are you hurt?”
“Can’t understand you,” came the reply. “Come forward.”
Though Tavis had long ago learned the wisdom of pushing his arrows into a cork pad fastened in his quiver, he took the precaution of checking his supply. He had lost half-a-dozen shafts, but the runearrow remained in place. The high scout pushed it deeper into the cork, then squirmed into the passage and crawled. He stayed flat on his belly and kept his eyes pinched shut against the blowing ice and sand. Every now and then he risked raising his head to peer forward, and eventually he found himself a mere arm’s length from the strange pearly hue at the end of the passage.
Though Tavis could see only the top half of the chamber, it looked as vast as a castle bailey. The ceiling was formed by the haphazard vaulting of a dozen huge monoliths, which had fallen together like the steepled fingers of two gnarled hands. Ribbons of snow and ice were whistling around the room and whirling down upon him with bone-battering force.