The Druid Queen

13

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!"

"Then you're making a great mistake," Keane replied bluntly, meeting her indignant gaze with a thoughtful look of his own.

Still annoyed, the princess bit her tongue and tried to understand what he meant. "Well? How did this water get here?"

"As near as I can tell, it isn't really here at all. It just seems to be."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Perhaps he means that the righteous wrath of the gods wishes to direct your faith in more proper directions," said Parell Hyath, who had approached, unnoticed, to join in their conversation.

"Speak plainly!" Alicia snapped, in no mood for theological discourse.

"I mean this tired obeisance you show to an ancient and withered goddess! You tell us not to trample the grass in that 'sacred' place. You forbid the taking of game for food, and treat each wildflower as some kind of miracle! This goddess holds you in thrall, and by doing so, she holds you, holds your people, back!" replied the patriarch, his tone equally firm. "It is time for these isles to welcome the pantheon of deities that are known to all the rest of the Realms."

Alicia's eyes blazed, and for a moment, rage swept through her, fomenting a torrent of angry words that nearly exploded from her. Instead, however, she remembered an early lesson of her mother's: Such rage could only be destructive, and thus it should be conserved for those times when destruction was necessary.

Drawing a deep breath, the princess felt the tension flow from her body, replaced by a serene calm that enabled her to meet the cleric's arguments rationally. In the clarity that followed, she recognized the supreme arrogance that propelled him and knew that her own faith could be strong enough to prevail.

"This 'tired' faith you deride is the lifeblood of my people," the princess explained. "It flows in my veins, and in the veins of all the Ffolk, and it won't wither or weaken in the face of your conceits!"

"Conceits?" Now it was the patriarch who sounded amused. "My dear child, you haven't begun to see the glories that the true gods can work."

"I saw glory enough in Myrloch Vale to last the rest of my life," Alicia retorted. Indeed, there she had felt the magical power of her island, of her home, in a fashion that she had never known before.

"A point in this debate-perhaps minor, but I think significant," Keane ventured, after listening carefully to this exchange. "But it seems that we shouldn't mistake the acts of humans, however potent and arcane, for the will of the gods they purport to serve."

"What do you mean?" snapped Parell Hyath, turning on the lanky tutor with a menacing gaze.

"This swamp, for example," Keane continued, unperturbed. "The will of the gods? The acts of vengeful deities, determined to prove us wrong? Or is it instead the work of a treacherous cleric-one who presents himself as friend and ally, but works instead to thwart the true purpose of our mission?"

"What lies do you speak?" demanded the Exalted Inquisitor.

"There is a spell I know of… called 'hallucinatory terrain,' I believe." He turned to Alicia, explaining calmly. "It can only be wielded by a powerful cleric, though I'm certain it falls within the range of ability possessed by our erstwhile companion here."

"Did you bring this water around us?" the princess demanded, confronting the patriarch.

"He's mad!" protested Hyath, fixing Keane with a baleful gaze. "What would a simple ambassador know about magic and gods?"

Alicia laughed once, a quick and bitter sound. Keane, too, seemed mildly amused. "My 'simple ambassador,' " the princess shot back, "has a certain familiarity with the arcane arts."

"Denterius-valteran!"

Keane's sharp, magical incantation cut through the air like a thunderclap, and the blood drained from Parell Hyath's face as he recognized the spell.

"The wizardly enchantment of 'dispel magic,'" Keane confirmed.

But his remark proved unnecessary as, with miraculous speed, the water standing in pools around the tree trunks vanished, leaving ground as dry and musty as a highland forest. Indeed, Alicia saw with astonishment, none of the bark, leaves-nothing near the ground, where the water had stood-was even the slightest bit wet!

"This is preposterous!" sputtered the cleric. "This might even be your own illusion, designed to trick the princess into following an obsolete faith!"

"I'd stay here and argue with you all day," the princess responded curtly, "but now that we've got a path before us, I think it's time that we who are loyal servants of King Kendrick moved out!

"Your treachery might have cost us days of march!" she continued, confronting the flush-faced patriarch. "If it had, it would also have cost you your life! As it is, we no longer desire your presence in this expedition. You are not to accompany us when we march! Return to Corwell or to your own land as you see fit!"

"Your father needs me to heal his wound!" the cleric objected forcefully. "Even now he embarks alone on a great quest in the name of the gods. He'll need me when this matter is concluded!"

"For all we know, it might have been your spell that sent him on this wild errand, your deception that brings this matter onto our heads. Leave us, before I change my mind about your punishment!" Alicia declared, uncowed.

Keane stood firmly beside the princess, and when the cleric's eyes met those of the wizard, Hyath apparently thought better of any further objections. Without a backward glance, he spun on his heel and stalked away. When he was out of earshot, he mumbled an arcane command.

The magic-user tensed, ready for treachery, but then he saw a familiar shape, the glowing wheels bracketing the Chariot of Sustarre, taking shape in the air before the Exalted Inquisitor. Slowly the two horses, prancing eagerly, outlined in fire, materialized.

By the time the cleric took to the air, Alicia had already gone to gather the sergeants, while the wizard watched the final departure of Parell Hyath, the trailing cloud of sparks marking the path of the chariot as the horses lunged into the sky.

Within a few minutes, the men of Corwell had hoisted their weapons and standards to their shoulders and once again resumed the northward trail, accompanied by their chant: "For the kings of Corwell!"

The wizard found Alicia at the head of the column, riding at a fast walk through the once more passable forest. He spurred his old nag up to the side of the princess, lighting up when she turned to him with a smile. Still, a sense of foreboding lingered inside him, and he had to tell her of his twinge of misgiving.

"Good riddance to him, I say," Alicia declared.

"I certainly hope so, but perhaps not," Keane cautioned. "Corwell's to the south of here, Baldur's Gate to the east. Yet when he flew away, he was making straight for the north."

Tavish waited for fifteen painful minutes after she heard the last sounds of firbolg conversation. The rough landing when the giant-kin had dragged the longship onto shore had twisted her spine one final time, and she wasn't at all sure that she'd be able to walk when she did dare to venture out

Nevertheless, she finally crawled forth, wriggling from beneath the bench to lie in the bottom of the hull. Dismayed, the harpist found that she was even more stiff and immobile than she had expected. It took her another ten minutes before she could sit up, and even then her feet remained numb and her arms tingled painfully with slowly returning circulation.

Yet finally she could look around and breathe air unfouled by firbolg feet. White clouds scudded across the mostly blue sky overhead, while a fairly dense forest extended to both sides, just back from the flat and gravelly beach. Above the trees, now with its summit shrouded by wisps of clouds, rose the distinctive cone of the Icepeak.

She raised her head and saw the Strait of Oman to the south, though there was no sign of Gwynneth beyond. It made sense. With no massif such as the Icepeak, the lowland of Winterglen lay below the horizon.

"So they sailed to Oman's Isle," she said aloud. Why firbolgs would do something so unalterably purposeful was a real mystery to the bard. Of course, if this island had been their destination all along, she understood why they'd been so determined to seize the Princess of Moonshae.

But this yielded no further light on the issue of why the giant-kin had wanted to come here in the first place. On that question, Tavish could only muse with steadily growing interest and curiosity. She recalled the stooped giantess, clutching that glorious axe so possessively, and she wondered if the explanation lay with that venerable female.

At length, sensation and control returned to her limbs. Twisting and stretching for a few more minutes, she finally felt ready to climb out of the leaning hull. Sitting on the lower gunwale, she crossed her legs over the rail and dropped the short distance to the smooth surface below, landing with a lurch and a jarring of harpstrings, but she suffered no injury.

Once she had checked her lute, determining that it needed a careful tuning but had suffered no damage, she started across the stones. Her curiosity had grown far beyond the realm of idle interest. She felt that, whatever drew these giants, there must be a compelling tale at the end of it.

The trail of the lumbering giant-kin wasn't hard to find. The firbolg band had followed a game trail, widening it frequently by breaking off branches or stomping small bushes underfoot. Hoisting her harp, the bard started along that same path, following the broad footsteps of the giants.

"How did you manage to stay alive the last twenty years without me to bail you out?" Finellen demanded gruffly, the tone of her voice not hiding the real affection she felt for the High King of the Ffolk.

"I've not been in many pickles like this over that time," Tristan allowed, leaning from his saddle to clasp Finellen's fists in his good hand. "But sure enough, when it happened, there you were! Many thanks, old friend."

"Enough about the last twenty years," Brigit said, not unkindly. "What about the next twenty minutes?" She pointed across the cornfield to the trolls who plunged toward them, furious at the escape of the king.

"Back to the woods! Quickstep!" barked Finellen, and the dwarves hastily reversed the course of their advance. With the monsters on the attack, the dwarven leader decided that her company should face the enemy with the benefit of some cover around it.

Fortunately the dwarven charge hadn't progressed far before Tristan broke free, so they quickly reached the shelter of overhanging oak limbs and tangled dogwood trunks. The obstructions would hamper the larger humanoids far more than they would the diminutive dwarves.

"Crossbows about! Fire at will!" cried the bearded captain, and those of her troops with the stocky missile weapons quickly loosed a volley of steel-headed bolts.

Immediately the archers began cranking their heavy weapons to reload, while the first rank of monsters faltered, many falling with the lethal bolts jutting from their bodies. Unlike an arrow from a standard bow, the quarrels from the crossbows struck with great punching power, sometimes with enough force to knock even a troll off its feet.

"Fires!" shouted Brigit. "We need fires to burn the trolls!"

From nowhere appeared the druid Danrak. "I've got tinder piled back here. I'll ignite it," he said to Finellen, "if you'll send some of your dwarves to carry the brands to the fight."

"Aye-good thinking." Finellen nodded and quickly dispatched several trustworthy veterans.

A second volley met the onrushing foe as the giant predators reared only a few paces from the edge of the forest. Following the shot, the archers dropped their missile weapons and all the dwarves, together with their human and Llewyrr allies, met the humanoids with sword and axe, hammer and shield.

Tristan stood near the center of the line, singling out a strong company of trolls for the attentions of his powerful sword. As the first of these sprang through the hedge at the border of the field, the High King split him from chin to pelvis with a slashing downward blow of Trollcleaver. Spewing gore, the monster collapsed beside him as Tristan already clashed blades with his next opponent.

All around he heard the gruff cursing of dwarves, the hissing shrieks of bloodthirsty trolls, and the bellowing cries of the giant-kin. Ranthal snarled and snapped beside him, while wolfdogs lunged at the mighty moorhound with slavering jaws.

Trollcleaver met a troll's heavy axe, the resounding clang driving daggers of agony through Tristan's bones, but he held firm, and as the troll recoiled for another blow, the king's sword snaked out, piercing the gristle of the monster's chest and finally puncturing the knotty ball of its heart.

Smoke wafted through the air. In other places, fallen trolls were charred by snapping flames, dry timbers piled upon the corpses to ensure that they wouldn't rise to fight again. Ranthal, ranging from side to side but always battling close by Tristan's flank, added his fierce snarl to the din, while cheering dwarves raised their voices in triumph each time another of the beasts succumbed to the blaze.

But amid the cheering, the king heard darker, more painful sounds. Dwarves groaned, and all too often he heard the piteous exhalation that Tristan recognized as the last sound of a dying warrior. Wounded dwarves tried to stifle their moans, but were not always successful. Too many of them, fallen amidst the chaos of the melee, expired simply because there was no one to help at hand.

Nearby, the king saw another familiar knight. The Earl of Fairheight, wielding his huge, two-handed sword with deadly precision, stood between two large oaks, anchoring a good portion of the line. The sister knight of Synnoria fought at his side, making certain two razors of sharp steel met any firbolg or troll foolish enough to try to press through.

Finellen moved back and forth along the line of battle, at times lunging forward to help out one of her hard-pressed countrymen, or else carrying flaming brands of dry timber to stack on the temporarily slain corpses of the trolls.

"Need some fire here?" grunted the stalwart dwarfwoman as Tristan carved a deep wound into the leg of a troll, crippling the beast. The monster dropped like a felled tree, scuttling crablike away from the fight.

Gasping for breath, the king shook his head. Already half a dozen troll corpses lay motionless around him, and in the lull, Tristan grinned at Finellen's look of astonishment.

"Good sword," was all she said as the High King raised the weapon to face another push, this time three trolls rushing him together.

Fortunately the tangle of trees kept two of them from coming fully to bear, and the third one danced quickly backward to avoid a thrust from Trollcleaver. As one of the others darted in, Tristan's blade chopped into the beast's arm and Finellen's axe carved a deep wound into its thigh. The monster fell, and Tristan stabbed it once in the skull, driving the tip of his blade deep into the fetid brain; the creature wouldn't menace them further. Ranthal, meanwhile, held the third troll safely at bay.

"Nice work," grunted the dwarfwoman as the ebb and flow of battle momentarily gave the pair a berth of space.

But then came a deeper sound, a growing roar of hoarse triumph from firbolg throats. At the same time, dwarven voices hollered in alarm. The scene of the commotion was perhaps twenty or thirty paces to their right, though the humans could see nothing in that direction because of the screening forest.

Finellen, however, didn't need to see in order understand the significance of the alarm.

"That's bad news," she said, starting toward the noise at a jog. "It means that the giants have breached the line!"

The sounds of fighting came to Brandon and Koll through the trees, and their ragged force of northmen and Ffolk broke into a jog, quickly emerging from the forest into a field of trampled grain. Across the broad expanse, they saw the source of the noise-a seething chaos of bloody melee, where the army of the trolls and firbolgs attacked some foe concealed in the woods across the field. The backs of the humanoids faced Brandon and Koll's men, and that was all the incentive that the two veteran warriors required.

"It's them-the trolls, I mean!" barked Knaff the Elder, pacing at his prince's side. "But who are they fighting?"

"Whoever it is, they can use our help!" Koll barked.

"Charge!" the two captains bellowed in unison, and the men who had been driven from the battlefield of Codscove loped steadily into the field. Voices rose in lusty courage, and many an axe and sword blade gleamed in the midday sun as its wielder brandished his weapon overhead.

To an onlooker who purported neutrality, their onslaught seemed like madness. Though they couldn't know what force they aided, their own numbers equaled but a fraction of the foe's. Yet their defeat on the field at Codscove had branded all of these men with a burning desire for vengeance.

As the humans sprinted and shouted and jeered, dozens of trolls broke from the mass of the attackers, drawn by the sounds of the fresh attack. Many firbolgs, too, hoisted their clubs toward the new threat, lumbering at the heels of their green-skinned comrades.

Loping back into the field with their deceptively speedy gait, the trolls met the men of Brandon and Koll's force with savage tooth and rending claw. The human charge stopped immediately as a dozen men were slain in the first shock. In another moment, the courageous warriors found themselves fighting for their lives against an overwhelming press of savage, hulking humanoids.

Brandon chopped hard into the forearm of a troll, sending the creature reeling backward, but another stepped in to take its place even as the wound began to mend. At the same time, a man beside the prince screamed as a pair of trolls ripped his torso in two.

Furiously the Prince of Gnarhelm slashed one troll in the side, but the creature whirled with deceptive speed, knocking Brandon flat onto his back. He lay immobilized, gasping for breath and trying unsuccessfully to move. The monster picked up a longsword, dropped by another slain northman, and thrust it down, straight toward the prince's unprotected chest.

A wiry body blocked out the sun, and Brandon blinked, knowing that he stared death in the face. The troll stabbed, and the muscular shape-a human shape-took the piercing blow intended for the Prince of Gnarhelm. Brandon's strength returned in a wave of energy, and he sprang upward, hacking the troll's chest open with his great axe. He chopped again and the monster fell.

Only then did Brandon turn to see the man who'd given his life for him. Knaff the Elder lay upon the ground, blood emerging like a fountain from the puncture wound in the chest.

"No!" gasped the prince, dropping to his knee beside his trusted helmsman and mentor. Desperately, fruitlessly, he tried to stem the flow of blood.

With gentle pressure, Knaff pulled his hand away. "Go and fight, my prince-for Gnarhelm and the Moonshaes!"

And as the warlike gleam in his eyes faded for the last time, Knaff's jaw remained set in a grimace of battle.

Shaking his head in a failed attempt to dispel his numbing grief, Brandon lurched to his feet and chopped savagely at a nearby troll. Sir Koll of Codscove fought nearby, but the prince saw with dismay that most of his loyal fighters had been driven from the field or slain. A sea of the enemy surged around him, and everywhere he saw the fallen bodies of his friends.

He heard a bullish battle cry and saw the armored figure of Koll, bashing several firbolgs back with his great sword. Brandon limped to the knight's side, driving back a troll that lunged at the Ffolkman's back.

Finally Koll and Brandon stood back to back in the center of the field, using sword and axe to hold a seething ring of trolls at bay. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, gasping and staggering from exhaustion, each gave every shred of his mind and muscle to the effort to prolong the fight for just a little longer.

For beyond this battle, both veteran warriors understood, there would be only the eternal peace of death.

The Moonwell looked much the same as Robyn remembered it, thought the last time she saw it seemed more than a lifetime ago. Cool white water glowed with health amid a setting of bright lily pads and brilliant, dew-glistened flowers. Nearby, through a gap in the trees, the crystalline waters of the Myrloch sparkled like diamonds in the sun.

Great, flat-topped arches of stone surrounded her, for this Moonwell had a special significance. Once, for a period of many centuries, it had been the well at the center of the Great Druid's grove. Then, during the Darkwalker War, this well had been corrupted. As the Darkwell, it gave birth to the Darkwalker itself, the young king's mightiest foe.

Now vines of ivy climbed those stone obelisks, some of which had toppled during the intervening years. The druid queen found a stone bench where she remembered it would be, though she had to clear it of fallen leaves before she could use it to rest.

When she had made herself comfortable, she sat there for a very long time. The sun slipped below the western horizon, and the stars broke into the sky. Then the full disc of the moon came into sight, rising into the night and spilling its creamy rays across the waters of the Moonwell.

For a time, Robyn's mind drifted across the people she loved, those who had given her joy and to whom she had tried to return happiness and affection of her own. Tristan … Alicia … Deirdre … The images and faces began to swim together in the waters, and then they grew indistinct, muddied by the Moonwell into a vague blur. The water… the moon.. the earth beneath her … all these images swept across her conscious mind. They did not supplant the memories of the people, but they took on a life of their own, and in that life, they demanded her love every bit as jealously as any member of her family.

Slowly, over a tranquil period of several hours, Robyn felt the waters of the Moonwell grow warm, powerful. At first, the glow within them was something like a pearly luster, a vague illumination originating somewhere deep within the well, viewed as if through a thick, translucent filter. The sensation grew stronger, the warmth turning to a solid heat so definite that the queen half expected the liquid to bubble into steam.

Yet this was not that kind of heat.

Instead, she saw the whirling turmoil of anger, even of killing rage. She sensed that the goddess recoiled, under siege, surrounded by menace and incapable of fending off those threats with her innate power. The druid queen opened her heart and her soul, and the might of her goddess mother slowly began to concentrate, to gain focus.

Robyn's heart slowed to a calm, steady cadence, and she felt the pacing of her life slow to match. And as she watched and meditated through the long night of the full moon, the will of the goddess began to appear.

Thurgol led his band on the course he had chosen for them, and as night fell and moonlight washed their mountaintop vantage, his mind was occupied by one overriding thought: It was unbelievably, unthinkably, cold up here!

They had marched up such a barren ridge that they could find no stick of wood for a fire, though it hadn't been until nearly dark that this thought occurred to any of the giant-kin. Naturally, then, it had been Garisa to acidly make the observation.

But there was nothing to do but curl up in their furs and wait for the dawn. Outlined in a clarity of moonlight that astounded him, Thurgol even spent much of the night staring in awe at the vista of the island below him, or the icebound, aloof grandeur of the peak that still loomed high above.

When he finally slept, it was fitfully, as if he understood that his life had reached the edge of the future. Tomorrow they would reach the summit and, if the legends were true, the icy bier of Grond Peaksmasher. Garisa still carried the Silverhaft Axe, and the firbolgs remained willing and determined to chop their immortal founder from his icy prison.

Then, Thurgol mused, everything would fall into the hands of the gods.

By nightfall, Tristan knew that the battle was lost, but the knowledge only infused him with a greater will to resist. He fought with a small knot of fighters-Hanrald, Brigit, and Finellen among them-anchored in a crude bulwark formed by four stout oak trunks.

He had seen the brave charge of a few humans into the grainfield, though he hadn't known who they were. It had been a courageous gesture, but the men had been too few to make a difference in the battle's outcome. Now, out there, only a few survivors of that valiant band stood amid the trampled crop, courageously facing the doom that must inevitably claim them. Two warriors in particular stood back to back, outlined in brilliant moonlight, surrounded by a ring of trolls and firbolgs. The pair wielded battle-axe and sword so effectively that they held the horde at bay for long, desperate minutes.

In this spirit of bleak despair, the High King raised his sword and charged out of his rude shelter. Three trolls felt the fatal kiss of Trollcleaver before the monsters even realized that one of the humans had been so rash as to abandon his shelter. They swarmed around him like bees, but when Finellen darted out to cover his back, the king and the dwarf were able to fight their way back to the clump of trees.

Then, when the humanoids closed in once more to attack, the braying of silver trumpets sounded across the field. Looking up with renewed hope, the warriors of Finellen saw fresh banners unfurl over the muddy terrain. Some two dozen riders appeared off to the left, charging into the field and smashing into the flank of the attacking humanoids' formation. As Tristan stared in disbelief, watching the eerie attack unfold in the moonlight, he saw-or did he imagine? — a familiar, golden-haired head above the charging troops.

"Hail the Princess of Moonshae!" shouted four hundred hoarse voices. Banners of Corwell and Llyrath, of Dynnatt and Koart, waved overhead as rank upon rank of armed men marched toward the horde of monsters.

"For the kings of Corwell!" they added, shouting the standard battle cry of that venerable kingdom until their voices could shout no more.

Arrows filled the sky overhead, the missiles appearing like sleek ghosts against the full moon, until they fell among the monsters like the stinging, deadly darts that they were. Tristan heard sergeants-major bark profane commands-was that Sands' voice? And Parsallas, too! He recognized his two veteran leaders, and when the sharp crack of a lightning bolt sizzled into the ranks of the beast horde, he knew that Keane was there as well.

The monsters, this time struck in the flank by a force that was much larger than their own, howled and milled about in confusion, a confusion that proved fatal for many of them as Alicia led the men of Corwell in a vigorous charge. Firbolgs fell before the lances of the horsemen, while trolls, slain in melee combat, were quickly doused with oil and set afire. Within a few minutes of Alicia's arrival, the entire horde was reeling in confusion that verged upon panic.

Tristan's heart swelled with elation. In the instant of their deliverance, he charged once more out of the sheltered clump of oaks.

Then one lanky humanoid moved in front of him, snarling in venomous hatred, looming like a stout but misshapen tree before the tip of the High King's blade. Tristan recognized the brute by the monster's own sword. This was the troll the king had attacked earlier, only to be thwarted when many other monsters had swarmed to this one's aid. Then, as now, Tristan felt quite certain that this was the monster commanding the whole ravaging horde.

Raising its massive, saw-toothed sword, the troll blocked Tristan's path, holding the blade ready to parry any attack the king made. The surge of charging Corwellians rushed closer, and the troll's attention wavered for just a moment as the monster turned its black, emotionless eyes toward the rank of Alicia's charging troops.

Seeing his opening, Tristan lunged in a quick, savage attack, chopping downward with Trollcleaver and aiming for the beast's momentarily unprotected chest. Sensing the attack, the monster whirled back, raising its forearm and that massive, serrated blade to block the charge.

The High King twisted his attack, missing the troll's weapon but also missing the black, corrupt heart. Instead, the keen sword blade bit into the beast's arm at the elbow, slicing through skin and sinew and bone. The monster shrieked-a hideous, bellowing sound of awful pain and agony-and then, still holding its great blade in the other hand, the troll turned and bolted into flight.

Deirdre reached a hand outward, touching the smooth, pale surface of ice. At that moment, the moon crested the towering ridge of the Icepeak, washing the vale in the cool light of the silver orb in all its summer fullness.

The illumination imparted a magical glow to the imprisoned giant, spilling through the valley and washing the princess in a warmth that was the lightness of the gods.

Her past was gone now. A vague part of her mind remembered her murder of the guard at Corwell with a certain sense of curiosity. It was insignificant, that death, except that it clarified for her the stakes, tied her destiny to the battle of the gods.

Reverently, knowing that she served the masters who would grant her ultimate, undreamed of power, Deirdre sat down to wait for that destiny to take shape.

Yet she could not sit for very long. Impatient, she glanced at the sky and rose to stalk across the shallow vale. It was time now! She was ready to act, but the pieces of the puzzle were not yet complete. Angrily she cursed, and studied the horizons. They should be here by now, and yet they were not.

Where were the firbolgs-the giants who would bring her the Silverhaft Axe?

The Earthmother beheld her great druid through the window of the Moonwell, and the goddess found the mortal wanting. For too long Robyn had dwelled among men. No longer did her heart beat the deep, fundamental pulse of her faith. The goddess feared that Robyn now lacked the passion, the keen understanding and self-sacrifice that would have blazed a trail of, if not triumph, at least hope.

Instead, the High Queen had enjoyed good food, company, and drink. . she had languished within the protection of stone walls, used the fire of a rock-walled hearth to negate the winter chill. Could she muster the strength required for this desperate, final battle?

Whether she could prevail or not, necessity forced the choice, for the druid queen was the only weapon that the Earthmother possessed.