Douglas Niles - The Druid Queen

Hanrald chopped down a troll, but then the blow of a second sent him reeling. Twisting, he saw a golden-haired figure fly past him, driving a shining steel blade deep into the troll's belly. The monster bellowed and tumbled away.

But a third troll had avoided discovery for a second too long. It leaped from the shadows behind a rock, dodging around Brigit's sharp parrying blow. With a sweeping dive, the creature ripped a clawed hand across the sister's knight's face. Brigit made no sound as her head twisted around. Instead, the Llewyrr knight fell soundlessly to the earth, lying in a growing pool of blood.

"No!" Hanrald screamed, hacking his sword through the body of the hateful beast, dropping the troll in two pieces. The grotesque remains writhed upon the ground, each scrambling away from the fight, but the man's horrified eyes had already turned back to the pathetic, motionless figure on the ground.

Groaning unconsciously, he knelt beside Brigit, gently reaching out to touch her cheek. Her eyelids were shut, and no sign of breath disturbed the golden strands of hair that had fallen over her mouth and nose.

But she was not dead-not quite yet, in any event. Her eyes, large and almond-shaped, fluttered open, and she looked up at him in a mute expression of her love. And when he clasped her small hand in his, he felt the slight returning pressure of her grip.

Then, as his heart broke, she died.

Tristan confronted the one-handed troll as the monster raised his toothed sword. When the beast leaped at him, the king slashed deeply into one of his legs, knocking him to the ground. Grim and implacable, as the monster wriggled at his feet, screaming, the High King drove the tip of Trollcleaver through the troll's foul heart.

A circle of the monsters had collected around him, standing well back from his gory blade, silently staring at the dead body of their leader. Tristan wasn't certain whether they intended to attack or flee, but the question quickly became immaterial as Grond Peaksmasher extended a stony arm and brought the massive, rock-studded club of his fist to earth, crushing the monsters in a single, smashing blow.

Too surprised to wonder about the colossus's apparent change of sides, the king turned back to his companions. Then, closer, he saw Deirdre and Robyn facing each other. Racing to them, he stumbled in between the two.

"No!" shouted Robyn. "This is my fight!"

"There won't be a fight!" he shouted back. "This is Deirdre-your daughter!"

"She is not our daughter! She has become the sword of the New Gods!" Robyn screamed back.

Deirdre lunged, swinging the axe into an arc that would have cut through Tristan and into Robyn had it landed. But stone fingers dropped from above with surprising quickness, plucking the diamond blade from Deirdre's fingers. Grond raised the axe, the artifact looking insignificant and tiny in his hands. Then, with a flick of his fingers, he crushed it to dust.

The dark-haired princess shrieked in rage, her face distorted beyond humanity. Like a deranged banshee, she raised her hands, spitting the initial commands to a destructive spell.

Before the incantation was complete, the tip of a steel blade erupted from Deirdre's chest in a fountain of blood. The princess looked down, gaping without comprehension, before slumping face forward to the ground.

Her sister, High Princess Alicia, stood behind her, blood still trickling down her blade while she stared at Deirdre's body in uncomprehending shock.

Exalted Inquisitor Parell Hyath stood upon the brink of pitching chaos, his hands held over his stomach in a posture of reflection and contemplation. This goddess, this Earthmother, was a deity of power beyond his calculations. Clearly it was time to summon his chariot, to return to societies more fertile to the dogma of Helm.

But before he could cast that spell, another man stepped from behind a tree. Hyath recognized Keane.

"It was you," said the wizard, his voice level. "I know that now. Once before I saw a spell cast in that pose, hands clasped over a fat belly. It was you!"

"What are you talking about?" demanded the priest

"It's the earthquake that made me remember," Keane explained, slowly approaching the cleric. Hyath took a step backward, frightened by some vague menace in the magic-user's demeanor. "I saw you during another one, another earthquake, but not so great as this."

"Explain yourself!" shouted Parell Hyath.

"In Baldur's Gate," the wizard continued, his voice still low and calm. "You cast the spell that consumed Bakar Dalsoritan. You killed him!"

The inquisitor's face went pale. "You're mad!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with terror, a terror that revealed beyond doubt to Keane that his memory was correct

The cleric suddenly pulled a hand from beneath his cloak, raising three fingers toward the magic-user in a desperate attempt to cast a spell, any spell that might divert the Ffolkman's righteous wrath. But the wizard was ready, and his own finger pointed, his own voice barked a word before the cleric could strike.

Destructive magic whirled forth, commanded and controlled by the wizard's grim enchantment. The force ripped into the cleric's body, working in the space of a deadly instant, tearing flesh and bone and blood into insignificant fragments, scattering those pieces toward the four winds. When the violent spell expired, there was nothing left to show where the cleric had stood.

This was the power-and the grim, ultimate finality-of the disintegration spell.

"You had no choice," Tristan said, numb with shock as he held his daughter in his arms.

"What happened to her?" demanded Alicia, her voice almost a wail. "Why did she do it?"

"It wasn't Deirdre," Robyn said softly, her own voice numb with grief and shock. "It was all the enemies of the goddess … all those jealous deities who wouldn't let her survive in peace. They were the ones who killed Deirdre, and the only thing we could do was try to stop the monster she'd become."

"But why?" Alicia persisted, shaking her head in disbelief.

"That's not a question we can answer-but at least it's over now," Robyn said.

Slowly the others came limping back. Hanrald, his face blanched with his own grief, bore a slight form in his arms. Ranthal dragged a twisted leg, while even Newt settled, unspeaking, onto Tristan's shoulder. The earl brushed Brigit's golden hair, now streaked with blood, back from her face, and when he laid the sister knight gently on the ground, it almost looked as though she slept. Even the gruff Finellen couldn't hold back her tears at the sight of her old rival's lifeless body.

Brandon, too, came up to the king. The northman's battle-axe was stained with green trollish blood. "Where's Alicia?" he asked Tristan, and the king looked around in surprise.

"I don't know-she was just here."

"There she is," Brandon said, his voice falling. Following the northman's gaze, Tristan saw his daughter run into Keane's arms as the wizard slowly approached them. The lanky magic-user held the sobbing princess silently, allowing her grief to fall against him, soothing the pain that she felt.

The Prince of Gnarhelm turned away, his face tinged with the sadness of his own loss, when Brandon's eyes fell on someone else. "Tavish!" he cried. "I thought you were lost with the Princess of Moonshae!"

"No," chuckled the bard ruefully, rubbing a bruised lump on her head where the priest's spiritual hammer had struck. "And your ship's not lost, either. That big giant had the sense to pull it up onto the shore."

"He's a shrewd one, that firbolg," Brand agreed as several of Finellen's dwarves approached with the surviving giant-kin under guard. "I wonder what made him do it."

"You know, they didn't fight at the end," Tristan remarked thoughtfully. "They could have turned the tables by joining the trolls, but they just stood there and watched."