“Over here on the butte, you dumb hairy giant!” Rkard yelled.
As he spoke, the young mul pressed his fingers to his sun-mark. Again, he felt a warm tingle descending through his arm. Had it been daylight, he would have pointed his hand toward the crimson sun instead of touching it to his forehead. The feeling in his arm would have been excruciatingly hot rather than merely warm, but he was far from glad to avoid that pain. His spell would have been much stronger during the day, perhaps strong enough to do more than merely distract the giant.
After searching the slope of the butte for a few moments, the giant’s dark eyes finally settled on Rkard’s small form. “I’m not as dumb as you,” he said, squinting at the boy. “I know better than to make fun of-”
Rkard pointed his hand at the giant’s face and spoke a mystic syllable.
A crimson ball formed around the giant’s head. The titan screamed and dropped his stone, almost crushing his own foot. He raised his hands to his face and began stumbling about, screeching as though his flesh were melting.
Rkard knew that the giant’s reaction was more fear than pain. While the crimson sphere might look fiery and even feel hot for a brief moment, it was far from a searing ball of flame. The spell consisted entirely of red light, shaped into a bright orb with flickering tails that looked like fire. His father had taught it to him so he could honor the sun on days when blowing sand obscured the real thing, and because it served as a good distress signal.
Anticipating the giant’s reaction when he realized the true nature of the spell, Rkard jumped off his boulder and threw Sadira’s limp body over his shoulders. Though the sorceress was much larger than he was, he had no trouble carrying her up the steep slope. As a young mul, he was already as strong as most humans. Besides, she did not weigh much more than the huge water pails his mother made him fetch from the village well every day.
By the time the young mul was halfway up the butte, the giant’s screams had ceased. Rkard paused to look back and saw his spell rising over the valley, casting an eerie orange glow onto the rocky ground. Once it was high enough, the sphere would stop and hang motionless in the sky, just like a miniature sun.
Now that his head was no longer engulfed in the bright light, the giant had begun to stumble toward the butte. He was rubbing his eyes with one hand and holding the other out before him. The titan had left Magnus where he had fallen, motionless but out of danger for now.
“Papa’s going to be angry when he sees this,” Rkard said, continuing his climb.
The boy did not even consider trying to deceive his father, for he had grown up with the certain knowledge that the sun would always bring the truth to light.
As Rkard reached the summit of the bluff, he heard stones clattering below as the giant clambered up the base. The young mul slipped behind the crest of the butte and onto a narrow ledge that overlooked the road to Tyr’s iron mine.
“Come back, you little varl!” thundered the giant. “Don’t hide-it’ll only make me madder!”
Rkard pushed Sadira into the deep crevice that he had selected earlier as a good hiding place, then quickly stacked boulders over the entrance to conceal it. By the time he finished, the giant was so close that his heavy steps were shaking rocks off the ridge overhead. Knowing that the angry titan could easily tear the top of the butte apart, the boy decided to lure his pursuer away from Sadira. He rushed along the ledge until it ended, then scrambled up a rift and onto the top of the butte.
Rkard found himself standing at the giant’s feet. Wishing that he were strong enough to cast more than one spell a day, he swallowed and drew his weapon. The glow of his sun-spell sent glimmers of red light twinkling along the edge of his sword’s obsidian blade.
“What are you going to do with that thorn?” demanded the giant. “Stick me in the toe when I step on you?”
Rkard stepped forward, raising his weapon. He focused all his attention on keeping his blade from shaking and craned his neck upward to meet the giant’s gaze. His mother had always told him that a show of confidence would do more than ten blows to defeat a powerful enemy, and if ever there had been a time he hoped she was right, it was now.
“Leave me alone-and Magnus, too,” Rkard said, imagining that it was Rikus and not himself speaking. Without taking his eyes off the giant, he pointed his sword toward the edge of the cliff. “Go away, or I’ll cut off your foot and push you over the cliff.”
The giant’s big belly shook with laughter-until he looked toward the edge of the cliff, where Rkard was pointing. Then the titan’s huge mouth fell open and his eyes widened in surprise.
“You?” the brute gasped.
“Yes, me,” Rkard replied. He stepped forward and poked the giant’s yellow-nailed toe with his sword.
“Now, listen,” the boy ordered. “What you want isn’t in Tyr-and even if it was, you couldn’t have it.” Rkard pointed his sword down the hill, then added, “Now go home and tell all the other giants what I said.”
The giant looked toward the cliff edge again, then licked his lips as if uncertain of what to do. “I can’t go back without the Oracle,” he said, his tone more pleading than insistent. “We need its magic to make us smart again! Patch is the smartest one of us left, and he’s getting dumber all the time!”
Rkard considered this. Even at his young age, he understood that without a smart leader, any community would collapse into disorder. “Maybe you can have the Dark Lens back after we’re through with it,” the boy suggested.
Some of the tension drained from the giant’s huge face, and he looked directly at Rkard again. “How long will you keep our Oracle?”
The boy paused before answering. In his short life, the only journey he had ever made was from Kled to Tyr, and he could not imagine how much farther away the village of Samarah must be. “We’ll be gone a long time-a hundred years,” he answered. Having lived all his life among dwarves, who commonly lived three times that long, the guess did not seem unreasonable to the young mul. “Maybe even longer.”
The giant shook his head stubbornly. “No! We’ll be dumber than kanks by then!”
Rkard raised his sword, expecting the brute to stomp him, and tried to look confident. The attack never came. Instead, a deep voice behind him said, “Then you will learn to live like kanks!”
Rkard spun around and found two giant-sized heads peering over the top of the cliff-though it may have been an exaggeration to call them heads. One had a hideous, misshapen skull with a sloped brow and gnarled cheekbones, while the other one’s neck ended in a knobby stump just above the shoulders. Regardless of whether they had skulls or not, pairs of orange embers burned where their eyes should have been, and coarse masses of tangled beard dangled from where their chins had once hung.
Though Rkard could not see the bodies hidden beneath the cliff edge, he knew they were little more than huge skeletal lumps, warped into shapes scarcely recognizable as manlike. The legs were gnarled masses with knotted balls for feet, and the thighs, knees, and calves were all curled together.
“Jo’orsh! Sa’ram!” Rkard gasped. They were the last dwarven knights, who had become banshees after they had disavowed their life focus and had died without killing Borys. The young mul had not seen the pair since they had returned his namesake’s belt and crown to him, then told him that he would slay the Dragon. “You’ve come back!”
“We never left,” said the one with the lumpy skull, Jo’orsh.
The other banshee focused his floating eyes on the giant. We have let you giants use the Dark Lens for too long. Rkard heard the words inside his head, as if a mindbender were speaking them. You have all grown weak and foolish. It is time you learned to live without it.
The giant gasped, and a rancid-smelling wind washed over Rkard. “We can’t!” the brute cried.