Troy Denning - The Titan of Twilight

Leaving his warriors to assemble at the bottom of the monolith, Orisino climbed to Tavis’s side. “What’s… this?” he panted, peering into the pit. “The Twilight Vale?”

“Does that hole look titan-sized to you?” Basil scoffed. “But it might be a shortcut through the talus field. Tavis will see, then come back for us.”

Orisino’s eyes flashed with suspicion. “Why don’t we all go together?”

Basil gestured at the pit. “Look at those steps. If the passage happens to be full of giants, or it’s a den instead of a shortcut, we’ll save a lot of trouble by letting Tavis scout ahead.”

Orisino considered the explanation, then said, “It sounds reasonable, but I want Tavis to say it.”

“I don’t have anything to add,” the high scout replied.

“All the more reason to hear it from your mouth,” Orisino insisted. At the base of the boulder, his huffing warriors were straining to hear the conversation. “Tell me this is a shortcut.”

“I don’t know that it is,” Tavis replied. “But if it’s full of giants, we all have a better chance of reaching the gorge’s far end if I’m alone.”

Orisino narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know who you hope to fool, but it won’t be me! You’re not going alone.”

“Fine,” said Basil. “You go with him. The rest of us will wait here until you two return.”

Tavis shot the runecaster an angry glance. “He’ll be in the way!”

“Perhaps, but Orisino’s suspicion is understandable,” said Galgadayle. “Take him along. It’s the only way to assure him you aren’t trying to desert us.”

“The two of you will make less noise than the entire war party.” Basil glanced at the exhausted verbeegs gathered below. “And I’m ready to collapse as it is. The last thing I want is to follow you into some cavern, then find we’ve wasted our effort and retrace our steps.”

This brought a hearty murmur of agreement from the verbeegs, and even Orisino looked as though he were having second thoughts.

Tavis turned to Orisino. “You’d better keep those flat feet of yours quiet,” he growled. “And I won’t wait for you.”

“You won’t have to,” Orisino sneered. “You’re not so strong anymore-or have you forgotten the price you paid for Munairoe’s healing?”

“I’ve strength enough to take care of myself,” Tavis replied. “It’s you I can’t defend.”

“I never thought you’d bother,” replied Orisino. “I certainly wouldn’t for you.”

Orisino went off to gather a few things to eat and a torch to light his way. Tavis simply asked Basil to paint a rune of light on the blade his dagger. While he waited for his friend to finish, the high scout peered into the shaft, studying the spiraling trail and its awkward steps. It did not take him long to decide that it would be safer, and faster, not to trust the cockeyed staircase. He removed a short length of white rope from his satchel and dangled it over the shaft.

“suordnowsilisaB.”

A silver spider climbed from the cord’s end and dropped into the pit, trailing a single filament of white silk. The strand began to sparkle and grow steadily larger in diameter, becoming as thick and sturdy as any rope. Tavis waited until he could see several feet of line lying loose on the shaft floor, then looped his end of the cord around a small boulder and tied it off with a secure anchoring knot.

Without waiting for Orisino to return, the high scout straddled the rope. He wrapped it around one hip and over the opposite shoulder, running the line parallel to his bow. He sat over the edge of the pit and rappelled down with slow, easy strides. As he touched bottom, the sweet, stale odor of old age wafted from the cavern mouth behind him. He kept a careful watch over his shoulder, but the grotto itself remained as silent and still as a crypt.

Tavis untangled himself, then took a few minutes to examine the area. The floor was covered with six inches of glassy ice, so clear that he could see a pair of yard-long bootprints frozen in the mud underneath. The tracks had been old and weatherworn even before freezing. They revealed little now, save that the giant who had left them was not very large and seldom left the grotto. There was no sign that anyone else lived in the cave, and that troubled the high scout. Only ettins were solitary by nature, and the two-headed giants seldom viewed visitors as anything but a convenient meal.

A loud rattle sounded from the rim of the pit, then Galgadayle cried out, “Watch yourself!”

Tavis looked up, expecting to find a stone plummeting toward him. Instead, he saw several stones. Close behind came Orisino’s gangly figure, bouncing down the wall in great, barely controlled arcs. The verbeeg was clearly an inexperienced mountaineer. In addition to wrapping himself into the rappelling line backward, he was trying to slow himself by squeezing the rope with his guide hand, while his braking hand clutched at the cliff in a frantic effort to keep himself upright.

Tavis retreated into the cavern, then grimaced as first the stones, then the verbeeg crashed to the bottom of the icy pit.

“So much for being quiet!”

“Karontor take this rope!” Orisino sat up and hurled the tangled line at the wall. “It did nothing to stop me from falling!”

“It did too much,” Tavis retorted. “If it hadn’t slowed you down, I wouldn’t need to worry about all the witless things you’re bound to do inside the cavern.”

Without waiting to see if Orisino could hoist his battered frame off the ice, Tavis drew his glowing dagger and started into the cave.

The place was a confusing web of dark, jagged voids that shot off in all directions, with the sharp corners and broken edges of huge talus boulders jutting into the passages from every angle. In the distance, curtains of wayward sunbeams hung across the skewed corridors, like gray tapestries concealing the private halls of some madman’s castle. If not for the deep grooves of the ancient giant trail, the high scout would have been as lost as a child in a fen. Within the area lit by his glowing dagger alone, he saw at least fifty corridors, and off each of those there would be fifty more.

Unlike true caverns, whose depths were kept above freezing by the mountain’s warm heart, this jumbled maze of angles and corners was as frigid as a glacial crevasse. The cold air seeped down from above like drizzle down a chimney, riming the granite with hoarfrost and leaving the listing, sloping path as slick and treacherous as a ribbon of frozen stream. Tavis moved slowly and carefully, leaving his sword sheathed and Mountain Crusher on his shoulder, never taking a step without first finding a secure hold for his free hand. In this tangle of monoliths, any fall could be a fatal one, shooting the victim down the jagged mouth of an impossibly deep pit, or lodging him forever between a pair of granite boulders.

Orisino came up behind the high scout, clattering and groaning as he struggled to maintain his footing on the icy trail. The verbeeg had not bothered to light his torch, which left him both hands to maintain his balance. This was just as well. If the verbeeg happened to fall and injure himself, Tavis would feel compelled to offer help. Until the chieftain actually violated their agreement, the law demanded that he be treated as an ally, and allies did not leave wounded comrades to die in cold caverns.

“Be quiet, fool,” Tavis growled. “The giant will hear you coming a thousand paces away.”

“It hardly-ahhhh!” Orisino clutched Tavis’s arm, nearly falling and sending them both off the edge of a monolith. The verbeeg regained his balance, then said, “We can’t use this shortcut. We’d lose half our warriors on this ice.”

Tavis disengaged himself from the chieftain’s grasp. “You go back if you want. The trail may dry out up ahead.”