The high scout’s stomach felt queasy and heavy. If the fire giants were dead, Brianna was with the firbolgs. “In that case, maybe I should fetch your shaman,” Tavis suggested. “It would be safer if he removed the blade.”
“No!” Galgadayle objected. “I won’t live… long enough.”
“They couldn’t have gone far.”
The seer started to reply, then thought better of it and glared at Tavis. “You’re as devious… as a human,” he said. “Can you lie, too?”
“I would if I could,” Tavis said truthfully. “I’ve sworn to protect the queen, and I’d do anything to keep that vow.”
With that, the scout took Mountain Crusher in both hands and whispered, “tnaillirbsilisaB.” A rune flared with sapphire light, then the entire bow radiated a pale blue glow. Tavis leaned the weapon where it would illuminate the injury. He pulled his dagger and cut Galgadayle’s fur cloak away from the wound. The scout had little trouble finding the end of the steel shard, for it protruded from a short crescent of severed sinew and sliced meat. Whoever had planted the blade had deliberately tried to work it back and forth, a vicious killing technique more commonly employed by assassins and thieves than by honorable soldiers. Tavis knew instantly who had done this to the seer.
“You’re lucky, Galgadayle.” Tavis pulled a wad of soft, clean cloth from his satchel and laid it on a stone beside the seer. “Avner usually strikes truer than this.”
“Who?”
“The one who stabbed you in the back.” Tavis pinched the stub of the broken sword between his fingers and jostled it, lightly, to see how securely the blade was lodged. “I hope you didn’t kill him.”
Galgadayle shook his head. “The coward got away,” he hissed. “But if I-”
“Got away?” Tavis interrupted. If Avner had escaped, so had Brianna. The youth’s ethics were certainly questionable, but not his loyalty. “Your warriors didn’t capture him?”
Galgadayle’s head pivoted toward the mountainside, then he realized his mistake and looked away. “I’m feeling weak.”
Tavis glanced up the gloom-shrouded slope. He saw only a purple, inky darkness as deep as the Abyss itself, but he was smiling when he looked back to his patient. “Avner has taken my wife into the mines, hasn’t he?”
Galgadayle’s eyes widened. “I don’t… I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Before his distracted patient realized what was happening, Tavis pulled the shard from Galgadayle’s back. The steel slipped out of the wound like a dagger from its sheath, and it was removed before the seer could open his mouth to scream. The fragment was about two feet long and covered with a dark coating of slime and blood.
“You… tricked me!” Galgadayle seemed more surprised than angered.
“You have nothing to complain about.” Tavis tossed the bloody shard aside. “The blade came out in one piece, didn’t it?”
He used the cloth he had set aside earlier to stanch the heavy flow of blood, then guided Galgadayle’s hand to the wound. Once he knew his patient was strong enough to hold the dressing in place, he helped the seer sit up. Tavis took his healing potion from his cloak and uncorked the purple flask.
“Drink this.” He placed the elixir in Galgadayle’s free hand. “And when you feel well enough to move, find someplace warm to spend the night.”
The seer did not lift the flask to his lips. “You will not… you cannot save the child,” he said. “There are many… many miles of tunnel up there.”
“I’ll find my way.” Tavis stood and grabbed his rune-etched bow. “Now drink up. I’d hate to see you spill the last of Simon’s elixir.”
The seer lifted the potion to his lips and downed it in a single gulp. When he finished, he raised the empty flask to Tavis.
“I thank you for my life.” He still sounded weak, but the anxious edge had slipped from his voice. “And I would repay your favor with… with a warning.”
“I’m listening,” Tavis said. “But if this is about the child-”
Galgadayle shook his head. “Watch out for the… verbeegs… and the fomorians,” he said. “And pray… pray that Raeyadfourne finds your wife… before they do.”
Brianna’s litter-bearers were exhausted. Their efficient double-time trot had degenerated into a disorderly jog occasionally punctuated by the thud of tripping feet. The sound of their labored breathing echoed through the tunnel like the wheezing of a punctured forge bellows.
The party was passing through a labyrinth of winding passages that the tunnel wizards called “the drifts,” where the narrow corridors crossed and recrossed each other as they followed the meandering “drift” of the silver veins. The queen did not dare call a rest. Even suspended on her cloak, she felt the stone floor rumbling beneath the heavy boots of her pursuers, and she heard their distant voices echoing louder at each fork in the tunnel.
Brianna did not know what had become of Avner, but it seemed apparent the young scout’s plan had failed. She had heard the crack of his runebullet and, for a short time thereafter, the sounds of pursuit had fallen silent. The queen and her bearers had slowed their pace so he could catch up, but he had never arrived. Then a distant rumble had begun to build behind them and resolved too soon into the tramping boots of a firbolg troop. The front riders had been running hard since, and Brianna had knotted her stomach into a snarl worrying about her young friend.
Kaedlaw stopped suckling, then fixed his handsome blue eyes on Brianna and opened his mouth wide to cry. The noise that came out sounded nothing like a sob; it was more of a long, gurgling growl. Several of the queen’s exhausted bearers cast nervous looks over their shoulders, peering not at the infant, but down the dark passage behind them.
“Carry on,” Brianna said. “It’s only Kaedlaw-commanding to be burped, I imagine.”
“Strangest sound I ever heard a baby make, Majesty,” huffed the torch holder. “Sounds more like a-”
“Marwick, you’d do well to save your wind.” Brianna started to ask the young front rider if he expected a half-firbolg prince to sound the same as his own peasant runt, but she caught herself and said instead, “If you have that much breath left, you can change places with Thatcher.”
A crimson flush crept over Marwick’s face. His green eyes flashed briefly to Kaedlaw, then he fell back and traded his torch for Thatcher’s place at her cloak.
The queen was still using one hand to keep her incision closed, so she balanced her son on her chest and used her free hand to gently pat his back. Kaedlaw’s growl only became louder. She covered him with her shift, thinking he might be cold, but that also failed to silence him.
“Don’t worry, Majesty,” wheezed Gryffitt. “He’s just tired. It’s a rough way to come into the world.” “Yes, it is,” Brianna agreed.
The queen felt as exhausted as Kaedlaw, and that worried her. She had already lost so much blood that she was cold, sleepy, and dizzy, and blood continued to seep from the incision. A dark curtain had begun to descend inside her mind. When it fell completely, her son would be left an orphan, with nothing more than half-a-dozen exhausted guards to defend him from the firbolgs.
The front riders carried Brianna deeper into the drifts. Always, they strived to follow the largest passage, on the theory that it was the least likely to come to a sudden end. Kaedlaw’s growls gradually abated to mere murmurs, and the clamor of their pursuers grew steadily louder. It was not long before the queen could make out some of what the firbolgs were shouting:
“… clear here.”
“This… empty.”
“Not in here.”
The cries kindled a glimmer of hope in Brianna’s breast. She propped herself on her elbow, then watched the gray walls and mineral-crusted timbers slip past. At the next fork, she ordered her litter-bearers to carry her down the smaller of the two passages.
Thirty paces later, the queen almost missed what she had been looking for. A small drift branched off the main corridor; its entrance was so narrow and ragged that it looked like a shadow. The passage itself was barely as wide as a man’s shoulders, with the walls lying at a cockeyed angle and the floor sloping down toward the heart of the mountain.