The Druid Queen

14

"Incendrius!" cried Keane, pointing his finger toward the target of his deadly spell. The lanky mage stood on his feet, his loyal mount having fallen to a firbolg rock early in the attack. A deceptively small pebble of glowing light drifted outward, angling toward the knot of green-skinned humanoids before him.

In moments, a searing globe of fire erupted amid the rank of fleeing trolls, and when the crackling flames dissipated, it revealed columns of thick, oily smoke smudging upward from nearly a dozen charred corpses. In the moonlight, the smoke resembled solid pillars of dark rock.

Alicia, on Brittany, surged back and forth. Inspired by her leadership, the men of Corwell had attacked with courage and uncharacteristic savagery. The first rush shocked the lumbering humanoids, and the valiant militia never gave them time to recover their balance or their fighting spirit.

Exhausted but elated, the princess rode up to Keane, swinging down from the saddle to seize him in a bear hug of fierce triumph. He hugged her back, flushed with his own sense of victory.

"Look!" called a grinning Parsallas, pointing across the field.

"There's Father! He's got prisoners!" shouted Alicia, elated at the outcome of the sharp, sudden attack. She saw the king and recognized Hanrald and Brigit among a company of bearded dwarves. The group prodded a half-dozen surly firbolgs before them, the entire group limping toward the wizard, the princess, and their company.

The battle had lasted only a few minutes for Alicia and the men of Corwell, but judging from the trampled look of the field and the weary, battered appearance of the human and dwarven survivors, she knew that combat had been joined here long before her own arrival.

"We were none too soon," Keane said quietly as Sergeant-Major Sands led a number of men forward to take charge of the prisoners.

Alicia ran to the High King, overjoyed to see his smile, however wan and exhausted his appearance. He swept her into his arms and embraced her while she hugged and held him with overwhelming relief.

"Father!" she gasped, after she found her voice. "I'm so glad….I was afraid we'd be too late."

"Not too late at all, though five minutes more might have been," he said cheerfully as the rest of his companions joined them. Alicia embraced Hanrald and Brigit in turn, and then Tristan called to her.

"This is an ally from a previous war, but she saved my life here as well. Finellen of Cambro, I present my daughter, High Princess Alicia."

The princess bowed before the bristling beard of the sturdy dwarf, who regarded her with a frank but friendly sparkle in her eye. "The image of your mother, except for the hair. It's a pleasure to meet you, lass."

"The brave Finellen is someone I've heard about in many tales," replied Alicia. "I'm grateful for everything you've done for my father… and the Ffolk."

The dwarf shrugged. "Probably exaggerated, though I'm surprised my name came up at all, given the way the Llewyrr usually hog all the glory!"

In the glow of the moment, even Brigit didn't have the urge to dispute the statement. And then another companion joined them, one who caused all of them to stare in shock.

"Brandon!" cried the princess, the first to voice their surprise. Bleeding from a dozen wounds but smiling in obvious joy, the northman joined them, accompanied by an equally battered knight.

"The good Prince of Gnarhelm!" boomed the king, clasping Brandon on the arm. "Good fight, lad-and Sir Koll as well! I might have known. So you were the fellows who came across the field at such a timely juncture!"

"A rash move it was, too, Your Majesty," Brandon explained, his smile fading to a grim sorrow. "Most of our men paid the price."

"Knaff…?" Alicia asked tentatively, and when the prince shook his head, she felt her throat tighten. She had to turn away.

"We are fortunate indeed to have such loyal companions as you," the High King said to all the assembled warriors. "Each, arriving as you did, kept the fight alive for the others, and together we knew triumph!"

"Riding off alone like that was a good way to get yourself killed!" his daughter retorted. "What sort of madness took hold of you?"

Tristan smiled tolerantly, though certainly no one else in the assemblage would have dared speak to the High King in such a tone. He sighed and looked back to the edge of the forest. He thought of the vast woodland that began there, where Winterglen merged with Myrloch Vale … and for a week, he might as well have drifted in a different world. Once again he longed to hear the cry of the wolf, wished that the great beast would signal its approval, if not its forgiveness.

"It was perhaps a rash move," he admitted. He drew Trollcleaver, allowing the gleaming blade to shed gentle light around the gathered humans and dwarves. "Still, this blade gave me a better chance than I'd ever have thought. Perhaps there was something to that priest's prophecy."

"Father, that priest was treacherous to the core!" Alicia objected. She quickly recounted the tale of the hallucinatory terrain Parell Hyath had used to try delaying the company from Corwell, while Tristan frowned in displeasure mingled with confusion.

"If it hadn't been for Keane," the princess concluded, "we'd probably still be wandering around in a swamp that doesn't even exist!"

"Then why would he give me such a sword?" asked the king. "This blade is truly as mighty as any weapon I've wielded since the Sword of Cymrych Hugh. I have dubbed it Trollcleaver, and it is aptly named. If he intended for us to fail, what purpose is served by such a gift?"

"The priest is a mysterious figure," Keane suggested. "Some of what he said-about the trolls and firbolgs, for example-proved to be remarkably accurate. Yet our army was surrounded by an illusionary expanse of water, clearly of the cleric's doing. It could only have been placed there to stop us."

"There's more than a hint of madness to this whole affair," Tristan observed somberly, suppressing an ominous shiver as he recalled his aimless wandering. "It's only good fortune, and perhaps the favor of the goddess, that enabled us to prevail."

"And prevail quite remarkably," Hanrald noted. "From the edge of disaster, we earned a victory that destroyed the foe!"

"The foe is not entirely destroyed," Sir Koll amended. His face fell ruefully. "A small knot of trolls escaped into the forest-a las, but the northman captain and I were too sorely pained to give chase."

"Did you note a great one among them, with a bronze-edged sword-jagged teeth on the blade, like a saw?" asked the king quickly. "I believe him to be their leader, and I'm not sure if he was slain by fire."

"I'm sorry, Sire. I couldn't say for certain," replied the knight.

"We'll break into companies and root them out soon enough," Alicia suggested. "The bulk of the horde has been broken."

"Others might have gotten away as well," Brandon said with a cautionary tone. "I assume that you didn't see the Princess of Moonshae in Codscove," he said to Tristan.

"No-nothing afloat. Even the fishing boats had been sunk."

"She was taken by firbolgs!" exclaimed the northman bitterly. "Some of them must have put out to sea!"

"Why would they do that?" Brigit asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Another thing," Finellen interjected. She had just heard the whispered report of dwarven warriors who had been scouring the battlefield. "The Silverhaft Axe isn't here. No one saw it during the battle, and it wasn't found on any of the bodies."

"Perhaps we'd better have a word with one of the prisoners," mused Tristan. He picked a particularly dejected-looking firbolg, a brute who sat on the ground with his head in his hands. "Bring that one over here!" he called to Sands.

The sergeant-major and a few of his men prodded the reluctant creature toward the king and princess. The giant-kin regarded the humans and their allies with suspicion and fear, though there seemed to be little threat in his manner. Low, beetling brows shaded his eyes from the bright moonlight, but the sagging expression of his jowls seemed far more tired than angry.

"Here," said Alicia, handing the brutish fellow a small sausage from a nearby knapsack. The giant sniffed it cautiously, then popped it into his mouth with a quick gesture.

"There was a ship here," Tristan began, speaking in slow, clear common tongue. "Where did it go?"

"Thurgol took ship," the giant said, squinting in concentration.

"Where did he go?" blurted Brandon.

The firbolg turned, looking to the north. Trees screened them from the coastline, and from this distance, the looming summit of the Icepeak was lost in the haze. Yet the giant-kin unerringly pointed across the strait, to the summit rising above Oman's Isle.

"Thurgol took ship there," he said firmly. "To the big mountain with the snow. They go to the place of Grond Peaksmasher."

Baatlrap seethed with such fury and hatred that he felt as though he must certainly explode. His hand was torn away, his army broken. He led a group of no more than twoscore trolls, the only ones who had survived the battle with the human and dwarven armies. Now those of his comrades still alive regarded him with frank skepticism and loathing, as if it were Baatlrap's fault that the fight had eventually swung against them. He stared back at everyone who seemed likely to challenge him and was mildly gratified to see that, even one-handed, he could still cow the trolls of his band.

Yet his mantle of leadership rested insecurely. He knew that no troll could hold the reins of command for long if he proved incapable of leading his followers to victory and plunder, or at least some small measure of prosperity. Thus far Baatlrap had given them a great victory, at Codscove. Unfortunately that triumph had been followed by today's less-than-glorious setback.

But more than the memory of defeat tore at the hulking leader. Indeed, he felt nothing whatsoever for the many trolls, many of them lifelong companions, who had fallen in the fight. The firbolgs who had perished mattered even less.

To find the true cause of his bitter rage, he had to look no farther than the end of his left arm. The limb ended in a slashing, gory wound where once his wrist and hand had been. In one moment of chaotic battle, one violent act of combat, his hand had been sliced off by the human's sword.

And it wouldn't grow back!

Other trolls had suffered similar injuries. In fact, as they marched, one of the creatures, sliced across the gut by that same deadly weapon, fell to the earth, writhing. No longer able to hold back the weight of his insides, the creature finally gurgled out his last breath amid a circle of impassive, dead black eyes.

The trolls resumed their trudging march, leaving the last fatality where he had fallen. The hideous creatures moved in silence, each of them grimly aware of the deadly harbinger this sword might signify, for if humans could inflict trolls with wounds that wouldn't heal, the future of the humanoids suddenly seemed to hang by a very tenuous thread indeed.

In Baatlrap's mind, that hatred began to coalesce into an image of an enemy. He thought of the man who bore that mighty sword, the one his entire army had attacked. They had almost slain him then! A deep growl rumbled from the troll's chest as his fury grew. The lone warrior never would have escaped the encircling ring if not for the appearance of his accursed allies!

But to Baatlrap, it was the lone fighter who came to personify all the hatred, all the frustration that the seething predator now endured. If he could blot out that life, he thought, some of that rage must certainly be mellowed.

And another thought occurred to him. If, in the process of besting the human lord-he knew that such a warrior must be a leader of men-Baatlrap could gain control of that deadly sword, than there would be no troll who dared to stand in the path of his rulership over the clan.

With this thought on the great troll's mind, his pace of retreat slowed to a shuffle and finally stopped altogether. Then, with only a barked command for his tribesmen to follow, he turned and started back toward the gathering of their enemies.

"All the boats were sunk?" demanded Brandon, trying to discover a means to pursue his beloved longship. "Not a curragh or rowboat left?"

"I didn't inspect closely," Tristan said, "but there was nothing afloat in the bay."

"I looked," offered a newcomer. Newt popped into view above them, hovering lower until he came to rest upon Tristan's shoulder. His cheeks bulged, and the little faerie dragon quickly swallowed a mouthful of raw fish.

"I got hungry," he explained in response to Tristan's look of amazement. "And besides, it looked like you guys had the battle pretty well taken care of. Nice work, too. Hi, Alicia!" he added.

"Hello, Newt," she said wryly, amused by her father's reaction.

"Did you see any boats?" Brandon persisted.

"Yup. All sunk, though."

Disgusted, the northman turned to stalk angrily across the trampled field. "There must be some way to go after them!" he fumed. Spinning back to the dwarves, he confronted Finellen. "They've got your axe, too. You can bet on it!"

"Thurgol took Axe of Silver Shaft," the captive firbolg explained helpfully.

"There is a way, if we can be sure that Oman's Isle is where they've gone," Finellen said cautiously.

"The paths of the Underdark?" Tristan guessed quietly, and the dwarf nodded. To the others, the High King explained. "Many of the Moonshaes are connected below the surface of the sea by the rockbound trails of the dwarves. Once those same trails enabled Finellen to come to my rescue on Alaron when I thought all the while that she was still quartered on Gwynneth."

"Aye-and there is reputedly a trail that connects to Oman's Isle as well," the dwarf agreed reluctantly.

"Can you take us there?" Brandon pressed. "Show me how to get across the strait?"

"These are the secret ways of the dwarves," Finellen protested. "They are the pride of our nation, and one of the keys to our survival!"

"And if we use them to recover the Silverhaft Axe?" countered the king. "Doesn't that serve the nation of dwarves as well?"

"Don't play word games with me!" snapped Finellen, but the king could see that the argument had taken hold.

"How far is the nearest entrance?" he pressed.

"The entrances to the ways are known to only a few of the highest-ranking elders among us," the dwarven captain replied. "But we could get there in a day's long march. Still, it would take most of two days to make the march under the strait, and they've already got a day's head start on us."

"Let's go after them!" roared Brandon. "What else are we supposed to do? We know where they went, and you know how to get there! What are we waiting for?"

"An important concession from our allies," King Kendrick said sternly. "Finellen's right. The tunnels beneath the isles are the sacred province of her people, their last line of defense and their secure trade routes. She takes some risk by revealing their location to outsiders."

"That's correct!" she barked, mollified that Tristan understood her viewpoint so well. She pondered the matter a little more before she spoke.

"We've done well together as allies so far-and more to the point, I don't see that I've got much choice. I'll lead you along the tunnel," she said finally. "We'll go to Oman's Isle together and finish the job."

Thurgol's hands were numb, his feet frozen into blocks of ice, by the time morning came to the high slopes of the Icepeak. The other members of his band were similarly uncomfortable, but none of the hardy creatures seemed any the worse for their night of exposure. By the time they had followed the chieftain for the first mile, circulation and warmth had returned to them all.

This part of the climb took them across treacherous side slopes, where loose scree and fields of snow skirted the very pinnacle of the mountain's summit. Several times firbolgs fell, often sliding hundreds of feet before they scrambled to a stop, well scraped and thoroughly bruised. Fortunately none of the tumbling giant-kin was seriously hurt, though each exhausted himself during the long climb back up to his fellows.

Thurgol helped the old shaman across these parts, and by dint of careful footsteps, he prevented either Garisa or himself from suffering a fall. The old woman seemed preoccupied, carrying the Silverhaft Axe in both hands and constantly staring up at the snowcapped peak, her jaw slack with wonder.

"The eternal home of Grond Peaksmasher," Garisa said with an amazed shake of her head. "It's a miracle to finally be here."

During the arduous climb, she had tactfully avoided any mention of her previous day's suggestion. Thurgol realized now that the lower route, though longer, would have been more practical. Still, he appreciated her tact in avoiding the subject

The sheer summit soaring above them humbled the giant chieftain. Very carefully he skirted the highest region, leading the file of his tribesmen in a long, creeping traverse. Broad hands and wide feet grasped each bare hold on the steep surface as the chieftain slowly crept along. He led the way around a sheer shoulder, gaining a vista of Oman's Isle sweeping away to the north and of the plunging face of the Icepeak's summit directly ahead.

Thurgol stopped abruptly, vertigo seizing his brain with a whirling, overpowering wind. He felt as though it would tear him from the mountainside and he would plummet down the thousand-foot drop yawning immediately before him.

"The trail stops here," he grunted in disgust, returning to the slightly larger ledge where Garisa and the other giant-kin waited.

"Can we go around?" asked the shaman.

Thurgol looked below, ruefully studying a long, sheer ridge that neatly divided their route in half. They would have to go around that barrier, and the only way to do that was to backtrack nearly to the foot of the mountain.

"We'll have to go back," he replied bitterly. "You were right. We should have gone around Icepeak, not over."

Garisa shrugged. "Grond Peaksmasher has been asleep for centuries," she said. "A few more days aren't going to matter."

With more relief than disappointment, the rest of the firbolgs accepted the news of the necessity to backtrack. With their numbed hands and frostbitten ears, the thought of a march back to a land of firewood and windbreaks cheered them nearly as much as the thought of their destination itself.

The companions stole a few precious hours of rest following the battle, but when they awakened to resume their march, it was still the full moon, not the sunrise, illuminating their preparations. Finellen had agreed only to take the bare minimum of non-dwarves through the tunnel, so Tristan had declared that Alicia, Keane, Brandon, Hanrald, and Brigit would accompany them. Sir Koll, with the aid of the Corwellian men-at-arms and their capable sergeants-major, would be responsible for chasing down any remnants of the monsters that might still be roaming the area.

"With this start, we should get to the entrance by noon," Finellen explained quickly. "I'll tell you right now, though, the horses will never fit. You'll have to leave them here or at the mouth of the tunnel."

"Fair enough," Tristan agreed. "Might as well leave them in good hands." Sergeant-Major Parsallas took charge of Shallot and Brittany, as well as Hanrald's and Brigit's steeds, and with that decided, the companions and the column of dwarves started along the misty coast.

Crazed by rage, Baatlrap loped through the forest, the heat of his fury compelling action against the humans. Yet even his flaming anger did not entirely blind his cunning. When the scent of humans came to him on the breeze, he slowed to a creeping skulk, ordering his companion trolls to remain concealed in the woods.

Crawling forward flat on the ground, concealed beneath the green foliage of a thorny bush, Baatlrap observed the humans beneath the cool light of the moon. The great bulk of the army broke into companies and prepared to make camp. These did not interest the great troll.

Instead, his black, unfeeling eyes remained fixed upon the human lord with the great stallion. That man remained with the dwarves, and presently, to the great troll's bitter satisfaction, this small force marched away from the main body of the army.

Swiftly Baatlrap gathered his remaining warriors, staying well away from the human encampment as they started out. They circled the battlefield, then quickly found the trail of the dwarves and the human king.

Carefully, cautiously, staying well back from his quarry, Baatlrap led his trolls along the moonlit coastal trail.

The dwarven captain led the way along the coast for the better part of six hours as the dawn grew into a cloudless, bright morning. The heat began to increase, untempered by any breeze off the strait.

"I still can't figure out why they wanted to steal the axe," Finellen groused. "What use is it to them? Why, the dolts didn't even use it in battle!"

"And why did they break a peace of twenty years?" Tristan added, puzzled himself.

"I think the answer to both questions lies with these firbolgs, and the sooner we catch them and beat the truth out of them, the happier I'll be!"

Tristan shared his old companion's eagerness to conclude their pursuit, but he was surprised to find that his own sense of grim determination had begun to flag somewhat. He wanted to answer these questions as much as ever, but the lust for vengeance no longer burned quite so hotly in his heart. It had been replaced by a kind of wondering curiosity.

By midday, true to Finellen's prediction, the bearded dwarfwoman announced that they must turn inland. Tristan noticed a large split rock, jutting from a promontory on the shoreline, and assumed that this was some kind of landmark.

Indeed, after no more than a quarter-mile of hiking, they reached an apparently impenetrable clump of thornbushes. The branches were interwoven so thoroughly that any attempt to push through, or even to hack a passage, would have been painful if not impossible.

Nevertheless, the dwarf ducked low, lifting heavy branches lined with jagged, prickly thorns out of the way. Tristan followed, using his shield to part the thorny branches, but still he and the other humans had to crawl on their knees to make their way through.

Then abruptly the thicket gave way to a small, grassy clearing, completely surrounded by the thorny hedge. Finellen stepped to a broad stump, the only feature of the meadow, and twisted it once. Tristan wasn't surprised when it fell away, revealing a spiraling stone staircase descending into the earth.

Following the High King, Keane produced a small pebble and, with a snap of his fingers, caused it to burst into bright illumination. "Here you go, Sire," he said, passing it to Tristan.

The king lifted the stone as he followed the dwarf into the dank, tightly circling stairwell. Cool white light splashed along the walls and steps before him, clearly showing him the passage. In the confining space, with the ceiling low overhead and the walls constantly pressing against one shoulder or another, the king was profoundly grateful for the illumination.

The others followed, aided by several additional enchanted pebbles. The dwarves, with their natural night vision, had no need of such aid. After twenty or thirty steps, the stairway became a tight-walled, steeply descending corridor. In places, Tristan had to turn sideways just to make the passage, and he began to wonder if it would be possible to follow such a passage for any number of miles.

"It opens up before too long," Finellen said, as if reading his mind. "As soon as we join up with the main passage."

"Good news!" broke in a familiar voice.

Tristan whirled in surprise as Newt popped into sight behind him, hovering in the corridor that was so narrow his gossamer wings nearly brushed the sides. "Let's get going," said the faerie dragon, settling on the king's shoulder.

"I'm glad you're here, old friend," Tristan said, warmly touched by the little creature's courage.

True to the dwarf's prediction, a few hundred paces, all of it steeply descending, brought them to an intersection with a much wider tunnel. Finellen wasted no time in starting down this passageway, where Tristan was relieved to see that he could walk upright with no difficulty. Still perched on the royal shoulder, Newt nonetheless stretched out his wings, enjoying the extra space.

Keane and Alicia followed behind them, with Brandon, Hanrald, and Brigit next. The remainder of Finellen's dwarves marched silently in the rear. The tunnel drew them deeper into the underground world, the darkness seeming to thicken around them with each step.

As they continued on, the descent was much less noticeable, though it was still there. Onward they trudged, through the darkness of the underearth, while the humans became more and more conscious of the weight of seawater overhead.

For long, dark hours, they made their way along these dank passages. Pillars of stone draped from the ceiling overhead or jutted upward from the floor. In places, they did both, looking to Alicia uncannily like great jaws ready to snap shut on unsuspecting prey.

They talked little, listening instead to the sounds of their footsteps scuffing along the smooth stone floor, or else listening to the vast, unfathomable silence of the Underdark. When they paused to listen carefully, they heard only the echoes of their own passage slowly drifting into the infinite distance and darkness.

The lone dwarf stood guard at the thicket of thorns, assigned to wait there by Finellen as a simple precaution. The dwarfwoman had no reason to suspect that the route might be discovered, yet her natural diligence had required the posting of the sentry.

Now the warrior ambled around the periphery of the hedge, noting nothing unusual in the surrounding woods. He turned back to the thicket, where his captain and her companions had disappeared no more than thirty minutes before. He would have liked to have accompanied the war party, yet he pragmatically accepted the necessity of his current post.

In his musings, he failed to hear the faint crackling of undergrowth behind him-at least, not until it was too late. When the guard finally sensed a presence, he whirled, raising his axe. But here again his reactions were a fraction of a second too slow.

The great, jagged-edged blade of bronze dropped into the dwarf's shoulder, nearly severing his head. Instantly slain, the poor fellow tumbled to the ground while his attacker crept past his crumpled body.

The killer was a huge troll, and he had to bend nearly double to force his way into the thicket. He was further handicapped by the fact that he lacked one hand, the left, which had been chopped off above the wrist. A file of ragged trolls followed him through the tangled path.

Nevertheless, the hulking creatures soon reached the central clearing. They tore at the earth and shrubs, seeking something, and it was only a matter of moments before the great, one-handed troll pried open the tree trunk to reveal the passage leading into the ground.

A flaming chariot came to rest beside Deirdre Kendrick, and she welcomed the arrival of her ally. The Exalted Inquisitor joined the princess at the base of the Icepeak, knowing that the schemes of the gods approached fruition.

In preparation for their ultimate triumph, it was necessary for the princess to master a new aspect of clerical might, the enchantment that would enable them to clear the path for the entry of the New Gods. The magical mastery was beyond even the patriarch's skill, yet with his knowledge and experience, coupled with the clear favor of the gods, the man taught the woman what she needed to know.

Deirdre learned a spell reserved for gods and those of near godly power, for it affected the very fundament of the worlds. Through the immortal core of her body-the core formed by the shards of the shattered mirror-the ability came to her from the vastness of the cosmos. The princess was more than an agent to the gods; she was a part of them, an extension of their might in the world.

Thus they gave her the key to control-the thing that would allow her to master those who would, who must inevitably serve her. The spell they gave her offered control of the cadence of life, of the grand progression of events and existence that wove itself into the tapestry of life and history.

For Deirdre had been given the power to bring time itself to a stop.

Stirrings on Oman's Isle brought a chill to the body of the Earthmother. For ages of mortal time, the Peaksmasher had lain dormant, safely cocooned beneath the greatest mountain in the domain of the goddess. His threat had been countered once, when she was young and strong, and since that time her body had served as his bier.

Now she felt the assault of Talos and Helm, the powerful pressure of the New Gods. Her great druid would labor in her name, she knew, but she would not be enough. In order to prevail, the Earthmother would need more.

She would need nothing less than the aid of an immortal ally.