Douglas Niles - The Druid Queen

One of the large wolfdogs of the firbolg camp charged Ranthal from the side, but the hound whirled and broke the wolf's neck with a single bite. Another troll dove, knocking the dog to the side, but Ranthal rolled quickly and came up biting, clasping iron jaws around the troll's wrist until the creature shrieked to the snapping of bone.

The shout of a voice from across the grainfield carried dimly through the fray. Immediately the trolls turned away from Tristan, gesticulating and barking in alarm. The king forced himself to a sitting position, astounded to see the Earl of Fairheight and Brigit Cu'Lyrran galloping at full speed toward the army of trolls and firbolgs.

"No!" Tristan cried, his voice coming out as a strangled gasp. He saw something else then-plumes trailing from helmets, just above the level of the corn. Dwarves-a rank of them moving toward him.

Sudden, wild hope infused Tristan's body and soul. Where was Shallot? He climbed to his knees and whistled, drawing the horse toward him at a gallop. Seizing the pommel as the stallion raced by, Tristan awkwardly pulled himself off the ground, finally throwing a leg across the wide back and lifting himself fully into the saddle.

The trolls, still jabbering about the sudden arrival of reinforcements, were taken by surprise when the king on his war-horse, the limping moorhound racing alongside, exploded toward the encircling beasts. One of the wolfdogs sprang at Ranthal, but the powerful hound sent the creature yelping back to its masters with a snap on the muzzle. In another moment, Tristan thundered free, Shallot flying toward the other two riders with Ranthal close on his heels. The other moorhound was nowhere in sight.

Brigit and Hanrald halted their rush as the king broke away from the monstrous horde. When the High King reached them, the trio wasted no time on congratulation. Instead, they raced back toward the dwarves, while the trolls finally raised a great howl of indignation and leaped into pursuit

Whirling through the ether, then plummeting with dizzying speed, the princess finally came to rest upon the world of mortals. Before her loomed the massive physical image of a legend. Grond Peaksmasher was encased in ice of deep, primeval blue. The giant's craggy features might have been carved from stone. His great beard flowed down his chest like the distant whiteness of a pristine icefield.

She stood at the base of a steep glacier, looking upward at the ice-chiseled form. But where others might gaze with reverence or even with awe, Deirdre studied the ice-encased image, as big as a small mountain in its own right, with a different eye.

The gods would give her a tool, they had promised, and now she knew what that tool was to be. She couldn't break the great avatar free, not yet, anyway, but she knew that it would only be a matter of time.

Deirdre sat for hours, enthralled by the image of the great giant-god before her. Stars came into view above her, and for the first time, she realized that she was outside, yet she had no desire to leave, to seek any kind of shelter. A soft glow seemed to emanate from the great ice-clad figure before her. Whether or not it was her imagination, the glow seemed to warm her, insulating her flesh against the chill of the mountain night.

The princess gradually absorbed the fact that she was in a high, rockbound vale. Towering ridgelines loomed near on the left and the right, while the giant-and the glacier that imprisoned it-stood at the southern terminus of this deep, U-shaped valley.

Grond's face looked to the north, and the enclosing walls shaded him from sunlight at all times of the year. No doubt this was one reason the ice could survive here, maintaining its constant pressure around the colossal prisoner.

Or at least, it had been constant pressure. Staring at the mountainous form, Deirdre felt an overwhelming sense of pending power. Soon that power would be hers; this she knew by the commands of Talos.

The closer she approached to the great statuelike form, the greater became Deirdre's sense of awe. The huge body, nearly as tall as the high tower of Caer Corwell, loomed like an ivory obelisk amid the bluish cast of its icy bier.

It would be hers!

The Earthmother felt a quickening in the flesh of her body, the Moonshaes. The source of that renewed vitality was known to her, though long ignored. Yet now she sensed a power awakening, one whom she had faced and vanquished in the past. What did it mean? How great a threat was it? She would have to wait, to face the problem as it arose.

For she knew that she could do nothing to prevent Grond Peaksmasher from returning to life.

Alicia was forced to dismount, leaving Brittany on a small hillock of dry ground while she probed forward for some sign of a trail. Instead of finding a path, however, she saw the plants growing thick behind her even as she passed, and water trickled from somewhere to pool around the trunks of trees. Pads of lilies lay flat upon the stagnant liquid where meadows of flowers and brush should be.

Still the princess pressed onward, growing desperate in the few minutes since she had left her company of men. In fact, she suspected that the trail behind her was now inundated, since by the time she had left the troops, some of the men had already hoisted themselves into the lower branches of trees in order to keep their feet dry. The source of the water remained a mystery, but finding a path through the swampland formed a far more significant problem to Alicia.

Codscove wasn't far away, she sensed. Yet now her entire force threatened to bog down in this impenetrable swamp. Why now, of all times?

The dark forest dripped around her, pressing close on all sides. She felt as though something watched her. Nervously, sword in hand, the princess spun through a circle. As far as she could tell, she remained alone.

She wondered, with a flash of irritation, why Keane had been reluctant to accompany her. She hadn't ordered him to do so, but when she had asked he had quietly dissuaded her, suggesting that it was best right now if he remained with the rest of the company. It surprised her and, if the truth be told, it annoyed her, too, this feeling that she needed Keane's presence before she could feel comfortable. But, still, he should have come with her!

"What's he going to do, fly the men out of here?" she muttered, brushing strands of sweat-soaked hair back from her face.

The trees around her seemed healthy and firmly rooted, not what she would expect to find in such a swampland. After her previous experience with the quicksand, she had learned to walk carefully, but even the ground felt surprisingly firm.

Yet in every direction, she quickly found herself facing an expanse of placid, murky water. It pooled around the trees, dark and fetid, concealing the ground, deceptively obscuring any pitfall or irregularity in the terrain. Finally, with considerable disgust, she made her way back to the column of Corwellian men-at-arms.

"Nothing-there's no dry path out of here," she said to Keane in disgust. "Not that you would have helped find it!" she added bitterly.

Keane smiled thinly, ignoring her tone, which only made her more irritated. "What did you stay back here for, anyway? Checking to see if it's going to rain?"

"No," he said, quietly. "No rain would make any difference in this flood."

"What do you mean? How can the water level be rising when there isn't any rain?"

"That's the big question, isn't it? If you'll notice, there hasn't been any rain for several days, yet the water flowed in behind us as soon as we passed a certain point."

"And now we're surrounded," Alicia added. "But I'm not so concerned with why the water got here as I am with finding a way around it!"