The Titan of Twilight (17 page)

The garrison guard rushed into the temple, raising his crossbow to his shoulder. Avner backed away from the window, and the weapon clacked, sending a bolt of black iron through the casement. In the same instant, a purple lid slid down to cover the buckler outside.

An eye!

The quarrel passed through the lid without tearing the skin or drawing blood; it simply disappeared as though it had entered a bank of fog.

“Hiatea help us!” Brianna clutched Kaedlaw more tightly to her breast. “No giant is that big!”

The lid rose, once again revealing the huge eye. The pupil was as black and deep as Memnor’s cold heart. A low, rumbling thunder reverberated through the temple walls. So sonorous was the sound that it took Brianna a moment to recognize it as a voice.

“…the child,” it growled. “Come to the window.”

Another clack sounded from the door, sending a second quarrel past Brianna’s shoulder. This time, the eye didn’t blink. The bolt simply sailed into the black pupil and vanished.

Avner grabbed Brianna’s arm and pulled her toward the stairwell. The narrow passage was crammed with soldiers, each holding a loaded crossbow and struggling to see past the warrior ahead.

“Stand aside, you men!” Avner yelled. “Let the queen pass!”

The young scout forced his way into the stairwell, shoving two men aside so Brianna could squeeze in after him. Though the soldiers were pressed flat against the wall, the corridor was so tiny she could barely force her way past their armored bulk. From behind her came the sound of clanging steel; the men who had already entered the temple were attacking with their swords.

A tremendous crash shook the chamber. A gray cloud of dust billowed into the stairwell, filling Brianna’s mouth with the caustic bite of powdered rock and mortar. A pair of screams sounded from the temple. The guards at the top of the stairs fired their crossbows, then pulled their hand axes and rushed into the room. The next sound was the shrill grate of crumpling armor. One of the soldiers fell instantly silent. The other began to wail. It was not the cry of someone who would die quickly, but the spastic gurgle of a man drowning in his own blood.

The queen and Avner had barely pushed past the next guard before this man also fired and charged. His scream was mercifully short, then a deafening clatter sounded from the top of the stairs. Brianna glanced over her shoulder and saw a purple hand tearing away the curved wall behind her. The appendage was the size of a double door, with knuckles as large as boulders and fingers the length of battle-axes.

The fist withdrew to discard the rubble in its grasp. A pair of guards hefted hand axes and shoved past the queen. The appendage returned to the cramped corridor, and the two men began hacking at the wrist. Their blades sank through the purple flesh as though it were mist. The hand pushed past them and reached for Brianna.

“Go, Avner!”

The youth flung himself headlong down the passage, shoving the guards over backward. Brianna sprang after the young scout—then felt something cold and ethereal slipping around her waist. She tried to break free but managed only to crush her tender abdomen against her captor’s hand. Searing pain boiled up through her stomach, filling her with such agony that she screamed and nearly dropped Kaedlaw. She was entwined from the waist down by four dark fingers, each as large as a firbolg’s arm.

Avner gathered his feet and spun around, drawing his sword. Brianna pulled Kaedlaw from inside her cloak. Avner’s face went pale. “No, Majesty!” ‘Take him!”

Brianna thrust the infant into Avner’s free arm, then lost sight of the pair as she was dragged up the devastated stairwell. She tried to twist free, but her captor’s grip was secure. She clutched at the wall and succeeded only in bloodying her fingertips.

The fiend pulled her into the rubble-strewn temple, where the odor of blood hung so thick the air smelled like liquid copper. Heaps of mangled armor lay everywhere, often with the groaning remnant of a shattered body still twitching inside. One man lay upon the broken altar, the crimson head of the queen’s faith spear protruding from his punctured breastplate.

Brianna stretched her fingertips toward the spear. “My goddess, help me!”

“The gods won’t answer, child. It is by their will that I have come for you,” rumbled her captor. “Now you must be quiet and save your strength. You have suffered much, and it is a long journey to my Vale.”

“Twilight!” Brianna gasped. “No!”

A wave of cold air rolled down the queen’s back as the Twilight Spirit pulled her through the shattered window casement. The keep walls spun out of sight, and Brianna found herself staring into a purple face as large and murky as the darkening sky. Seen from a distance of a mile or two, the titan’s square features and even proportions might have been handsome, but from so close, the visage was hideous in its very hugeness. His shadowy brow overhung his eyes like a parapet hoarding, his nose jutted out like a cliff buttress, and from his cavernous mouth wafted a breeze as cold and stale as a tomb’s breath.

“Where is your child?” The titan’s angry voice shook Brianna to the core, setting her ears to ringing and her stomach to quivering. “What have you done with my nephew?”

Another tremendous crash sounded inside the ward, shaking the gateway so violently Tavis nearly lost his footing. He took the clamor to be a good sign. If the titan already had what he wanted, he would not be tearing Wynn Keep apart handful by handful. The high scout reached the end of the vaulted passage, and, with Basil close behind, followed their escorts through the wicket door at the base of the ironclad gates.

When Tavis entered the ward, his heart sank into his stomach. The keep roof lay scattered across the cobblestones, crumpled into twisted heaps of lead and rafter. Inside the fortress itself, several fires were burning out of control, casting streaks of dancing orange light through the slender arrow loops and pouring huge plumes of black smoke into the sky.

The titan stood at the front of Wynn Keep, a looming figure cloaked in purple gloom, barely distinguishable from the fading dusk light. He was straddling the dry moat that guarded the approach to the entry gate, ripping the upper story off the temple tower with one hand and holding Brianna in the other. A semicircle of garrison soldiers stood at his feet, firing a constant stream of crossbow quarrels into his body. The bolts simply passed through the colossus and bounced off the walls behind him, drawing no attention whatsoever from their target. Perhaps a dozen men lay wounded at the feet of the colossus, their open mouths voicing screams that could not be heard above the din of demolition.

The sergeant who had been guarding Tavis pulled a hand axe, then turned to his small company of men. “Ready yourselves!” he yelled. “We’ll save the queen!”

“How?” Tavis asked. “What makes you think your axes will have more effect than those crossbows?”

The sergeant spun on the high scout, frowning at his presence in the inner ward. “Milord, the queen barred you—” The objection came to an abrupt end as the titan dropped another handful of rubble to the ground. A sheepish look fell over the sergeant’s face, and he glanced back toward the keep. “Never mind—but we’ve got to do something!”

The titan lowered his head to peer into one corner of the tower. He plunged his free hand deep into the building and began to feel around, like a man trying to pull a weasel from its hole. Since he already had Brianna, the colossus could only be searching for Kaedlaw.

Tavis pointed to one of his escorts. “You, fetch my bow and quiver from my chamber.” As the man left to obey, the high scout turned to Basil. “We need your help.”

The verbeeg was already holding his runebrush. “Show me your blades, all of you,” he ordered. “And keep them steady!”

The high scout drew his sword and braced it over his arm. Basil touched his brush to the weapon and painted, tracing a moon-shaped pattern of turquoise light upon the metal. A rich blue stain crept outward from the glowing sigil, turning the entire blade the color of sapphire. The steel began to shimmer like starlight, then became dusk-purple and vanished from sight, save for the rune itself and a gleaming line of cobalt along the weapon’s edge.

Basil nodded his approval, then moved to the sergeant’s hand axe. “These runes will help your steel find purchase in Lanaxis’s armor,” he said, using the titan’s ancient name. “But don’t swing your weapons about unnecessarily.”

“Why?” The sergeant scowled at the glimmering stain spreading across his axe blade.

“My runes haven’t had time to dry.” Basil was already working on the next soldier’s weapon, and he did not even look up as he spoke. “The night air will rub them off.”

Across the ward, Lanaxis had moved to the back end of the keep and was peering into the red tower. He reached inside, came up empty-handed, then grunted in anger and slapped his palm against the spire. The third story came loose and crashed to the ground with a deafening boom.

Tavis shouted an order, but realized his ears were ringing so hard that even he couldn’t hear his own voice. He motioned for the sergeant to join him, then started across the ward at his best sprint. The others would have sense enough to follow when their weapons were ready.

By the time Tavis dodged past the rubble heaps and reached the temple tower, his hearing had returned to normal. He found a dozen stunned crossbowmen waiting for him, their faces shocked and hopeless.

“It’s no use, milord,” said the leader. “He’s a phantom. Nothing will touch him!”

“These will!” Tavis raised his sword and, without slowing his pace, pointed to the glowing rune. “Come along, and when someone falls, arm yourselves with his weapon.”

Fifty paces away, at the other end of the keep, the titan pulled a struggling body from the red tower. Tavis’s stomach turned queasy with fear that it might Avner, who was the most likely person to whom Brianna would have entrusted Kaedlaw. A steel gleam flashed between Lanaxis’s dark fingers, and the high scout breathed easier.

His young friend never wore armor.

The titan opened his hand and let the steel-clad figure drop. The man screamed briefly, then crashed to the ground twenty paces ahead of Tavis. Lanaxis stooped over and pushed his arm back into the red tower, allowing the high scout a brief glimpse of Brianna. Her eyes were fixed on the interior of the building, her mouth hanging open in a terrified expression that left no doubt who Lanaxis would pull from the tower next.

From inside came the rumble of collapsing walls, followed by the muffled screams of dying men and the clack of firing crossbows. A flurry of black quarrels streaked from the keep’s arrow loops and sailed harmlessly through the titan’s body.

Then Tavis was upon his foe.

The high scout found himself at eye-level with a murky shin so large he could not have stretched his arms around it. There was no time to slip behind the leg to attack the heel tendon. Tavis drew his weapon back and chopped at the front of the ankle, hurling his full weight into the blow.

It was like trying fell a mature spruce with a single axe-strike. The impact numbed Tavis’s arms to the shoulders, and his stinging hands lost their grasp on the hilt. A deafening roar boomed down from the sky, then he found himself stumbling across the cobblestones. The high scout braced his feet and managed to regain his balance. The ground heaved beneath his feet as the titan shifted his immense weight, jerking his injured foot into the air. The fetid smell of stale blood filled Tavis’s nostrils, and a cascade of warm brown fluid rained down on his head.

The high scout did not look up. He simply dived away and hit the cobblestones rolling.

Lanaxis’s heel came down behind him, cratering the ground and bouncing him into the air. Tavis slammed down on his back, tumbled onto his feet, hopped twice as he regained his balance, then spun toward his attacker. His sword was still lodged in his foe’s ankle, the blade buried at least ten inches into the joint, but that did not stop Lanaxis from drawing his leg back to kick.

Tavis bent his knees, gathering himself to leap away. Lanaxis’s foot reached the zenith of its arc, nearly ten yards away, and started back down.

Three soldiers charged past to meet Lanaxis’s gloom-booted foot. They hit with a mighty crash and flew off in three separate directions, leaving their rune-scribed axes buried in the titan’s instep. The foot continued to sweep forward.

The high scout leapt aside and grabbed for his weapon, deftly jerking it free. Lanaxis’s leg reversed direction and came swinging back like a pendulum. The foot was upon Tavis so fast that he barely had time to bring his sword around. The heel impaled itself on the tip, then drove straight down the rune-scribed blade and slammed into his shoulder.

Tavis felt the bone snap beneath his biceps, then his feet left the ground. He flew through the air for what felt like a dozen seconds. Finally, he crashed onto the cobblestones and started rolling, each somersault more painful than the last. He did not stop until he slammed into the jagged stones of the inner curtain.

Tavis slumped in a battered heap to the ground, a venomous haze of pain poisoning his mind with thoughts of surrender. Every fiber of his pain-racked body demanded that he relinquish himself to the numbing mists of oblivion. But something outside him kept urging him not to give up, to keep his eyes open and hold on. It was a voice, a woman’s voice, and she was screaming his name.

Tavis looked toward the center of the ward and glimpsed his wife, still gripped in Lanaxis’s hand and staring in his direction. He tried to wave to her, but his broken arm would not rise. The titan turned to face a small company of guards assailing him with Basil’s rune-scribed axes, and the high scout lost sight of Brianna’s terrified face.

A whoosh sounded through the ward, and Lanaxis’s shoulders rose. He tipped his head forward to look at the men clustered about his shins. A keening wail filled the air, then a blustering cloud of purple murk spewed from the titan’s mouth and gushed over his attackers. Voices screamed and armor clanged, and the men went tumbling across the cobblestones to slam into the stone walls of the inner curtain.