Tavis fixed his gaze on Lanaxis, who was peering out from the portico’s shadowy depths. He pointed Sky Cleaver’s head at the titan’s dark figure.
“No!” Lanaxis’s voice echoed out of the colonnade, trembling and quivering with fear. “I forbid it!”
“See what the titan has made of his immortal brothers!” Tavis cried. “Cleave!”
A stinging fire erupted inside the One Wielder’s hands and rushed up his arms into his body. Ottar stopped, then Obadai, Vilmos, and the others. Their shriveled eyes sparkled with glimmers of reason, and one by one they turned to face Bleak Palace.
Lanaxis’s looming figure strode forward through the shadowy portico. As he neared the entrance, he hunched over and scuttled sideways, presenting his shoulder to the sun and shielding his face behind his dingy cloak. He looked more ancient than ever, with a bald pate protruding through his golden crown and a back as hunched as a fomorian’s. He waved a gnarled hand at the giant-kings.
“I release you!” His voice was brittle with age. “Return to your graves!”
The giant-kings raised their weapons as they had done when they attacked Tavis. One of Lanaxis’s eyes opened wide, then the titan abruptly drew himself to his full height and turned to meet his brothers head-on.
Tavis leapt off his boulder and left his dazed companions behind. He sprinted across the broken ground, praying that the angry zombies would not destroy Bleak Palace before he rescued Brianna and Kaedlaw.
He needn’t have worried. As the giant-kings released their cyclone, Lanaxis retreated into his portico and called out the incantation to some spell so ancient and powerful that Tavis felt the air draw tight and crackle with faerie lightning. A shimmering silver curtain fell over the portico, and the zombies’ cataclysms ricocheted off the screen like stone-tipped arrows off steel armor.
Tavis stopped running and crouched on the ground, watching in awestricken wonder as rivers of flame and seas of lightning broke over Bleak Palace. The plain itself was melting around the portico, filling the air with billowing clouds of gray steam. Lanaxis’s citadel did not even quiver beneath the attacks. The giant-kings continued to press forward, persevering in their assaults until at last they reached the building’s entrance.
The cataclysms faded as suddenly as they had begun. Tavis rose and started running again, but he was still a hundred paces from the entrance. Nicias whirled his pearly morningstar and swung it against the shimmering screen Lanaxis had raised. The magical curtain vanished with a blinding flash and a deafening crackle, then an entire corner of the portico crashed down upon the cloud giant’s head.
Nicias fell beneath the avalanche, his huge body broken beyond recognition. The other giant-kings rushed through the opening he had created. Lanaxis stepped forward to meet his zombies, swinging a great sword as tall as gate tower. A thunderous tumult erupted from within the colonnade. Ruk came crashing out of the side wall, his body severed in two. Next fell Masud, who perished beneath untold tons of stone when he knocked a pillar from its foundations. The slaughter continued; Obadai, then Vilmos, and the rest, the portico crashing down around their heads, battering the plain so severely that crevices and rifts shot out hundreds of paces in all directions.
By the time Tavis danced around the pools of melted stone and reached the bottom of what had once been the palace’s entrance, the giant kings had all fallen. Lanaxis stood amid the ruins of his portico, leaning on his great sword and huffing gusts of searing wind across the plain. As far as the One Wielder could tell, the titan had suffered no injuries. The zombies were shattered beyond recognition; bits of their blackened flesh hung across toppled pillars, shards of their broken bones lay scattered through the rubble, and pools of their blood boiled in the cratered floor.
Tavis dragged himself up the great stairs as though he were climbing a cliff, his lungs burning with exertion and his muscles aching with fatigue. The stones jumped beneath his body as the titan pounded down the shattered colonnade to meet him. The scout tried to climb faster, but his aged body simply would not move as quickly as he wanted to. His liver-spotted skin had turned slightly translucent with his last use of the cleaving power, and he did not know whether to attribute his quivering muscles to his racing age or to the general weakness he had suffered since Wynn Castle. It did not matter; the battle would be over soon enough, and as long as he had the axe, Lanaxis could not harm him.
When Tavis clambered atop the last stair, he found himself staring at the titan’s ancient knee. He raised Sky Cleaver to attack. Lanaxis backed out of range, stepping over a toppled pillar as thick as Tavis was tall.
“You have done well, but Sky Cleaver is not for mortals,” the titan rumbled. “I shall take my father’s axe.”
“Never!” Tavis could not tell whether concern for Brianna or love of Sky Cleaver inspired his anger, but at least he was sure of its target. “I am the One Wielder!”
Tavis charged, leaping onto a column pedestal and from there to the toppled pillar over which Lanaxis had retreated. This time, the titan did not withdraw. He lowered his hand and called to Sky Cleaver in the same ancient language that Basil had taught Tavis.
“In the name of Skoraeus Stonebones, Your Maker-”
Tavis felt Sky Cleaver’s handle slipping. “No!” The One Wielder’s fury became a fiery red curtain, so brilliant and hot he could barely see. He began his own chant. “In the name of Skoraeus Stonebones-”
“-O Sky Cleaver-” boomed Lanaxis.
So fierce was the titan’s angry voice that it knocked Tavis backward off the pillar. He felt a cold surge rise from the axe’s handle, then landed on his feet amidst the jumbled rubble. Sky Cleaver slipped another inch through his fingers.
“-Your Maker-!” Tavis yelled, but he could tell that his voice was no match-and never would be-for the titan’s.
“-do I summon you into the service-”
Tavis grasped the shaft with all his strength and leapt toward the titan. “Cleave!”
“-of my hand,” Lanaxis finished.
A fiery surge of pain shot through the One Wielder’s body, then he felt himself being pulled through the air as Sky Cleaver answered the titan’s call.
Tavis held on to the axe’s ivory handle with all his strength. He slammed into Lanaxis’s palm, and the titan’s fingers closed to crush him. Another wave of cold energy surged from the axe handle. The scout found himself falling, holding on to Sky Cleaver by no more than its pommel.
It was enough. The blade bit Lanaxis’s leg above the knee, then sliced through the great limb as cleanly as it had cleaved Othea Tor. A thundering cry of pain pealed across the steam-shrouded skies, then Tavis dropped, once more cushioned by Sky Cleaver’s defenses, onto the bloody, rubble-strewn floor.
Lanaxis tumbled from the portico and slammed into the shattered ground below. The entire building bucked beneath the force of his fall, bringing the remains of the colonnade tumbling down about Tavis’s head. Another cold surge rose from Sky Cleaver’s shaft. Two pillars smashed down beside the One Wielder, then a section of entablature landed across them. Tavis found himself buried in a sheltering cave of rubble, sitting in a pond of the titan’s hot blood.
The portico continued to shake and tremble for several moments, until at last all of the massive debris had finally fallen. Even before the quake subsided, Tavis was already working to dig his way out, pushing cornices and capitals away as fast as his exhausted body would allow. He had no idea how old he had grown in the past few moments, but the wheezing that he heard in his ears did not sound as if it came from the chest of a young firbolg.
At last, Tavis reached the surface and clambered over the rubble to the front of the portico. To his surprise, he did not find Lanaxis waiting to attack, or even lying helpless at the foot of the palace stairs. Instead, a river of blood led across the broken plain to the single boulder that was all that remained of Othea Tor. There was no sign of the titan himself, but Basil and Galgadayle were kneeling atop the stone, staring down at its purple shadow with their faces twisted into expressions of utter astonishment.