Brianna had to be at the end of this raise; Tavis could not bear to think of what might happen if she was not. Unfortunately, the farther he climbed, the more Mountain Crusher pointed at the wall instead of straight up. He began to fear that soon the tip would be leveled at an impassable wall of solid granite.
Tavis came to a rocky choke point too narrow for his thick torso. He blew out his breath and tried to pull past, but succeeded only in lodging himself between two craggy ridges of granite. He tried to push back down, thinking he could traverse sideways and climb through at another angle. He could not descend.
Tavis attempted to break free through sheer force, trying to move up, down, sideways, and all directions between. He succeeded only in exhausting his battered body. His weary muscles began to shake uncontrollably, and the granite grew damp and slick beneath his palms. His boots trembled free of their nubby footholds, leaving him suspended in the crevice like a thief stuck in the palace chimney. For each breath, he had to struggle against a crushing glove of stone.
Tavis’s own odor, as musky and bitter as minkwort, overpowered the sulfurous stench from below. The firbolg could see nothing but the stone before his eyes, glowing eerily blue in his bow’s magic light. The darkness around him grew heavy and smothering, as though the immense weight of the mountain itself had poured into the absolute blackness of the raise. Nothing existed below his feet save the impenetrable murk, and nothing above him, nor around him, but more of the same. The high scout had a vision of himself: a tiny, buglike creature trapped in a minor crevice lost deep within the mountain’s immense, cloying gloom.
Tavis’s pulse sounded in his ears. With each beat, he felt the cold stone grating against his ribs, sending sharp pangs of agony through his battered torso. He tried to squirm sideways. The pain only worsened, and he grew more convinced that he had lodged himself forever. He heard his own voice groaning and snarling, as though someone might actually hear him through all those immeasurable tons of granite.
The high scout forced himself to stop struggling, to close his eyes and mouth and simply feel his situation. He was caught beneath his chest. Somehow, he managed to push the largest part of his body-his breast and shoulders-past the choke point. After a moment’s reflection, he realized he had been trying to pull himself through the constriction, which meant his arms had been raised above his head.
Tavis unfastened the ties on his scout’s cloak, then blew out his breath and raised his arms. The pressure on his ribs abated, and he slid down a few inches. He let his body go slack and fell out of his coat. Mountain Crusher slipped over his shoulder and started to float up the raise, and the high scout fell into the darkness below.
Tavis thrust his feet and hands against the chimney wall, bringing himself to a quick halt-then almost lost his hold as his heavy scout’s cloak landed on his head. He pulled the coat off, then realized that the raise was still illuminated by Mountain Crusher’s blue light. He looked up and saw his glowing bow a dozen feet above the choke point, where the raise gradually bent over and became a narrow corridor with cockeyed walls. The weapon was scraping along the ceiling, slowly floating into the drift.
Tavis folded his cloak over his quiver and climbed back to the choke point. This time, he slipped through with only a minimum of grunting and cursing. He scrambled up the raise and caught his bow a few steps inside the drift. The cockeyed passage sloped upward at a gradually decreasing angle for about fifty paces. There, dancing on the wall of a junction with another corridor, he saw the orange glow of torch light.
Tavis felt he would find Brianna near the torch, but he had no idea who would be with her. He wrapped Mountain Crusher inside his cloak, then crept up the drift as silently as a fox on the stalk. His heart was pounding so hard that he did not hear the strange, gurgling growl until he had almost reached the junction. He stopped and quietly eased his sword from its scabbard.
A woman hissed, then groaned in pain-Brianna!
With visions of cruel, malformed fomorians dancing through his head, Tavis threw his cloak into the passage to distract his wife’s captors. He followed with his sword raised, then heard several voices cry out in surprise. He found himself stooped over in a small tunnel, staring down at his wife’s fur-swaddled form. One man was holding a torch over her, while another knelt on the floor, hunched over her bare midsection. There were no giant-kin-fomorians or otherwise-anywhere near the queen.
Tavis lowered his guard.
Someone behind him hissed, “Firbolg!”
“Wait, it’s me!”
Tavis was spinning even as he spoke, bringing his sword around to deflect the misguided assault. A sharp crack rang off the tunnel walls as his blade sliced through a well-aimed lance, but even the lord high scout of Hartsvale was not fast enough to counter the thrust of the second front rider. The point of a lance sliced across his flank, opening a long gash above his hip.
Tavis grabbed the lance and jerked it from the man’s hands. “Is this the proper way to greet me?”
“Lord High Scout!” The men uttered the exclamation together, then one continued, “But you-Avner said you fell to the fire giants!”
“I did.” Tavis returned the lance he had taken, then pressed his hand over his bleeding wound. “But-”
“But Tavis Burdun always honors his duty,” interrupted Brianna. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Even if he must cheat death to do it.”
“Firbolgs can’t cheat, milady,” he replied. “You know that.”
Tavis sheathed his sword and faced his wife. She had a pearly grin upon her lips and a violet sparkle in her eyes, but her joy could not hide how hard the last hours had been for her. She looked haggard and weak. Her golden hair was sweat-plastered to her head, and her complexion was more pale than alabaster. Her pain showed in the lines etched into her brow and around her mouth, and her cheeks were as sunken and hollow as a corpse’s. Although her belly was no longer swollen in pregnancy, Front Rider Gryffitt was carefully sewing shut a long incision that someone had cut across the lower part of her abdomen.
Tavis could hardly bring himself to look away from the wound. If he had not seen the joy in her eyes, he would have assumed that one of their enemies had cut the child from her womb.
Tavis knelt at his wife’s side. “What happened?” he asked. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” Brianna’s voice was as serene as moonlit snow. “And Tavis-I have something to show you.”
The queen opened her cloak. There, suckling at her breast, was the most hideous infant Tavis had ever seen. The baby was the size of a two-year-old, with stubby limbs and pudgy red fingers that pinched at its mother’s flesh like talons. It had dull brown eyes as ravenous as they were vacant, a short pug nose, bloated cheeks, and blood-red lips. Sparse tufts of wiry black hair covered its fat, round head, and the thing resembled a goblin more than a child.
“Well, Tavis?” Brianna asked. “Don’t you think he looks like you?”
7
The muggy underground air suddenly felt cool and crisp, a sure sign that Tavis and his companions were finally nearing an exit. They were deep down in the mine system, wading through the turbid orange waters of a drainage tunnel as long as it was straight. The walls babbled with the constant echo of dripping water, and the ceiling was so lofty that even the high scout could stand upright. Dozens of side tunnels opened off the main passage, all filled with streams of cloudy, auric water that stank of iron and copper and a dozen other minerals too obscure to name. But it was the heavy smell of brimstone-sharp and acrid and fresh-that concerned Tavis. The queen’s party could not be far from where the fire giants had broken into the mine warrens.