Douglas Niles - The Druid Queen

Grond Peaksmasher had stood aloof from this project, looming over the valley bottom, his eyes gazing away to the north, as if he could see something a thousand miles away that triggered his deep, primeval memory. Yet while he took no part in the activities around his feet, Tavish had the feeling that he simply awaited Deirdre's command.

No sooner had the giant-kin completed their great, precisely oriented square hole in the ground than one of the lookout firbolgs hastened back from the mouth of the valley. Watching his gestures, Tavish understood that the fellow warned the princess about the approach of intruders-dwarves or humans, the bard guessed from the crude gestures.

She wondered idly who the newcomers were, but from her position of cover, there seemed to be little that the bard could do to influence events. So, instead, she waited.

For the moment at least, the colossus hadn't seemed to notice Tristan and his companions. The group gathered underneath the screen of several tall pines. The king, the dwarven captain, and the princess advanced cautiously to peer through the densely needled branches.

"Legend said that he was frozen in the ice years before the coming of humans to the isles," Finellen explained in a hoarse whisper.

"It's moving!" Alicia hissed.

The giant turned slowly, sweeping its gaze downward, past the silent observers and into the bowl of the valley before its flat, slablike stomach. A low hillock of ground blocked their view into this bowl.

Then a figure came into view, a small human-sized shape that stood on the grassy knoll and looked directly at the three watchers in the woods.

"Father-and you, too, my sister-come here," commanded an imperious voice, a voice that the king and princess recognized at once, even as the wind gusted out Deirdre's long black hair. "And bring the dwarf as well!"

Instinctively Alicia and Finellen pulled back farther into the shadow of their cover, astonished that their presence had been discovered. The High King, however, pressed the branches back to either side and stepped into the daylight. He was stunned by his daughter's appearance here, his first reaction a genuine explosion of relief because she looked so strong, so robust.

But very quickly that relief was tempered by puzzlement and a growing suspicion. The looming form of Grond Peaksmasher rose to the sky behind his daughter, yet now it stood like some placid manservant awaiting its master's whim.

"What do you mean, giving me orders?" Tristan demanded, approaching the young princess.

Deirdre regarded her father with an expression of aloof, icy disdain. For the first time, he noticed her hands. She carried a huge axe, the blade balanced on the ground while she leaned a hand easily against the base of the shaft. "Not just you-I order all of your companions forward as well."

When no one emerged from the tiny grove, Deirdre snapped her fingers once and pointed at the trees. Immediately a shadow fell across Tristan as the gigantic figure leaned forward.

"No!" he cried. "You can't! That's your sister in-"

But he was too late-or rather, Deirdre took no notice of his objection. Instead, she watched impassively while massive fingers closed around the treetops. Wood splintered, and the incongruously pleasant scent of pine filled the air through the entire valley as the Peaksmasher lifted the trees from the earth as a gardener might pluck some annoying weed.

Tumbling figures were clearly visible amid the gaping holes of dirt left behind. Alicia and Keane crawled from the debris, then a sputtering Finellen followed. Slowly, one by one, the others appeared, uninjured for the most part, though one of the dwarves had suffered a broken arm in the upheaval of the grove.

In the meantime, Tristan looked back to his daughter, amazed at the cool air she exuded-the air of the conqueror, he decided. Then he saw other figures moving behind her, and his astonishment grew to a numbing kind of disbelief as this rank of new arrivals moved forward to take up station on both sides of the princess.

Firbolgs! Serving his daughter, as loyally obedient as any guard of honor, they arrayed themselves along the grassy hillock as the remainder of Tristan's party dusted themselves off and came forward to join the king. Alicia, he was relieved to see, had suffered no injury except to her pride. Her eyes flashed rage at her sister, but surprisingly she held her tongue.

Keane, Brigit, and Hanrald followed the princess, and they, too, regarded Deirdre with suspicion and silent hostility, since the overwhelming presence of Grond Peaksmasher was more than enough to stifle any obvious resistance.

Tavish risked emerging from her cover as the princess and the firbolgs hurried down the valley to the grassy hillock where Deirdre confronted Tristan and his companions. At last the bard understood what she had long suspected: Deirdre was working against the wishes of her father and family, and hence to Tavish, against the good of the Moonshaes. Furthermore, she had the High King and his companions at a severe disadvantage.

Grimly the bard crept from her rocky niche, working her way from boulder to shrub for concealment as she surreptitiously advanced toward the princess and her gigantic allies.

Slowly, gradually, she narrowed the distance between them. The harpist cursed the infirmities of age; at nearly sixty, she was no woodland scout! Yet her limbs responded with alacrity to the needs of the moment, and the attention of her targets remained firmly fixed upon the party before Deirdre-the group that included her own father and sister.

Tavish heard the arrogance in Deirdre's tone as she spoke to her prisoners, saw the firm set of the young woman's shoulders as she braced herself against the Silverhaft Axe. The princess seemed every bit the cool conqueror, though the harpist couldn't hear enough of the words to understand the purpose of her conquest. Surely it wasn't vengeance or hatred that motivated her! But what then? Ambition? That, too, didn't seemed likely. Tavish would never have suspected the bookish Deirdre of attempting to usurp her father's throne.

She forced the thoughts, the questions, aside. This was not a time to wonder about why. Far more important to Tavish, and to the Moonshaes, was what. Specifically, what should she do now?

The axe, Tavish sensed, was the real key to Deirdre's power, the tool that enabled her to compel the obedience of Grond Peaksmasher and the firbolgs. The bard's eyes focused on the potent talisman as she squirmed into the scant cover beneath a dense cedar. She had reached a point only twenty paces behind Deirdre, but there was no further cover between herself and the princess.

Yet she had also reached the point of no return. Gathering her legs beneath her, calling on them for one more burst of speed, she concentrated on the Silverhaft Axe. She would try to wrest the weapon from Deirdre. Whatever happened after that would be up to the king, his companions, and the firbolgs. Tavish's own chances of survival, she believed, were slim. If one of the great firbolgs reached her before Tristan or Keane could come to her aid, the bard had no illusions about the outcome.

But she had no choice, as far as she could see. Tense and alert, she watched Deirdre, waiting until the princess began to speak.

Then, knowing no time would be better, Tavish broke from her cover in a mad dash toward the black-haired Princess of Callidyrr.

"It is your arrogance!" Deirdre sneered, speaking to her father. "Your blindness to the need for change! That desire, to hold your people back with a primitive religion and a hidebound fear of progress, that is the evil against which I strive!"

"The evil has been wrought by your own 'friends,' " the king replied, with a meaningful glance at the firbolgs flanking his black-haired daughter.