Troy Denning - The Titan of Twilight

Galgadayle glared at him with one white eye. “I have brought harm to your… family,” he said. “Why show me mercy?”

“Because you’re no longer a threat,” Tavis replied. “Killing you would make me a murderer.”

“Perhaps,” Galgadayle groaned. “But the law does not require… nowhere is it decreed you must help an enemy.”

Tavis shrugged. “I have learned a different kind of law with the humans,” he said. “It comes more from inside than out, and it can be as nebulous and shifting as a cloud, but I must obey it nonetheless.”

Galgadayle considered this, then took his hand away, revealing a large, mangle-edged hole in his cloak. Though it was too dark to see more, Tavis smelled fresh blood. It was heavy with the scent of urine, a sure sign the seer would die without help.

“You’ll have to lie down so I can reach the wound.” Tavis gently guided Galgadayle onto his stomach.

“This changes nothing.” Despite Galgadayle’s words, there was a note of gratitude in his strained voice. “When the child is born… Raeyadfourne must still-aarghh!”

Tavis began to probe the wound, bringing Galgadayle’s sentence to a harsh end.

“What happened to my wife?” Tavis continued to work. His fingers came across the stub of sword blade that had been broken off just below Galgadayle’s kidney. “Who has her?”

The seer shook his head. “That I will… not tell you,” he groaned. “Leave me, if you wish. I’ll probably die anyway.”

“No, you won’t,” Tavis said. “I have a healing elixir.”

Galgadayle craned his neck to glance up at Tavis, his eyes flashing with a brief hope that quickly vanished behind dark clouds of despair. The seer gave Tavis a wry smile, then shook his head. “Keep your potion,” he said. “The cost is too dear.”

“I’m not trying to buy your knowledge.” Tavis had watched Brianna deal with her earls often enough to know there were more effective ways than bribery to learn a person’s secrets. “The potion is yours, but it won’t do any good unless I pull that broken blade out of your back. To do that I’ll need light”

“All-all I have is a sparking steel.” Galgadayle sounded forlorn. During the time it took to start a fire and make a torch, the seer could well bleed to death.

“I have a magical light,” Tavis said. “But I don’t want to attract fire giants.”

Galgadayle sighed in relief, and when he spoke, he sounded like a dead man to whom the gods had given a second life. “You won’t,” he said. “There’s no need to worry about that.”

“How do you know?” Now that the seer’s thoughts were on saving his own life, Tavis could try to draw out the information he needed. “If a straggler attacks while I’m pulling out the steel, there won’t be much I can do.”

“There… aren’t any… stragglers.” Galgadayle sounded as though the frustration of trying to reassure Tavis would kill him long before he bled to death. “Our warriors… killed them… all of them.”

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.