Ulutiu, the Ocean King, knew not the woman's name, nor did he care, as long as she came often to dangle her feet in his sea. Then he liked to climb to her shoulders and come sliding back down, to twirl his sinuous body around her peaks, to slip down her stomach and glide along the cleft where her thighs pressed together, then to leap off her knees at journey's end and splash back into the freezing waters. So much did the Ocean King like this game that he would climb onto the icy shore and do it again and again, doing it for days with no thought of hunger or fatigue or anything but joy, temporal and fleshly.
And the woman, who was called Othea, also loved the game well. The feel of Ulutiu's slick hide slithering over her skin she craved as her lungs craved air. She liked to brace her hands against the frozen ground, lean back, close her eyes, and think only of the icy pleasures ravaging her body. Deep into torpor would she fall. She would sink into a stupor as blissful as it was cold, and at last she would collapse in utter ecstasy. Then would her body quake, rocking lands far away, ripping green meadows asunder and shaking the snow from the mountains to crash down into the valleys with a fury as great as her rapture.
All this Annam the All Father saw. Mighty was his wrath, and mightier still because it was his curse to hear their thoughts and feel their lust. He raised himself from the canyon where he had lain, and even the crashing flood waters when the river flowed again were not as fierce as his temper. The All Father spat out his disgust, and a storm of sleet raged across the gray waters of Cold Ocean.
Annam strode forward. So heavy were his steps that the creatures of the air forsook their nests and flew, geese and harpies together, eagles beside dragons; so many were there that they darkened the sky with their wings. The beasts of the land also fled, hooves and claws tearing the plants from the meadows, and also the monsters of the sea, their fins and flukes churning the ocean into a cold froth.
Then did Ulutiu know he had transgressed against a high god. He peered over Othea's knee, and his whiskers twitched and his ears lay against his head.
"Othea!" Annam's voice howled across the shore like the blustering wind, and truly there had never been a tempest so terrible. "Have I not spoken against your dalliances?"
Ulutiu's dark eyes grew wide with terror, and he disappeared behind Othea's bulk. Annam heard a splash in Cold Ocean and was not pleased. He rushed to the sea in two quick bounds and there he knelt, and when he spied a dark figure slipping from shore he stretched out his long arm and scooped the Ocean King from the icy waters.
"Annam, harm him not!" Othea's voice rolled across the icy shore as the rumble of a fuming mountain, and it was plain that she spoke in command, not supplication. "Ulutiu bears no blame in this. He was playing, nothing more."
"I know well enough what his games beget!" The All Father rose to his exalted height and faced Othea, and the cold water that dripped from his hand fell over the land like rain. "Firbolgs, verbeegs, fomorians, ettins!"
"Nay, not the ettin," Othea corrected, and when she spoke she showed Annam no fear. "That one you sired."
"Perhaps, but that is not the matter here."
Surely, it would have pleased Annam to deny the ettin's paternity, but the All Father knew he had sired the monster, and Othea would not say it had been someone else. That she denied him even this boon made his anger greater, and he thought that her punishment would be very hard indeed.
Othea paid no heed to Annam's ire, for she was not happy to have her game interrupted. "What is the matter, Husband?"
"I took you as Mother Queen of the giants," Annam answered. "You are to people Toril with my progeny-true giants-not with Ulutiu's bastard races!"
"Toril is as empty as it is young," Othea responded. "There is room enough for giant-kin."
"Did you not claim the same defense after your dance with rat-faced Vaprak?" Annam demanded. "And now ogres overrun Ostoria. Everywhere, they plague the empire of my children, gnawing at its seams like vermin."
"Perhaps your children are weak and Vaprak's are strong."
"I should have drowned the ogre when first you bore it!" Annam stormed, and a blizzard swept across the shore on roaring winds. "I should have crushed Vaprak's skull for daring to cuckold me. I shall not make the mistake twice."
The All Father made tight his grip. Though the shriek that rose from the Ocean King's throat was long and loud, it was a mere gust against the tempest of Annam's anger. Ulutiu saw he would soon die, so he pulled with hands that were like flippers and he kicked with feet that were like flukes. But Annam was the strongest of the strong, and nothing could escape his grip.
"Do not!" Othea's tone remained sharp.
Annam was not pleased. "This shall be a lesson to you."
The All Father bore down, and bones snapped and organs burst. Ulutiu wailed, and a tremendous swell rose far out in Cold Ocean. It came rolling to shore with a terrible speed and crashed against Annam's looming figure, breaking over his head and tearing at the Ocean King's body.
Even the sea could not defy Annam. He stood against the torrent as steady as the pillars of his palace, and when the receding waters no longer swirled about his waist, the All Father held Ulutiu. The Ocean King was limp and silent, but still his heart beat. Weak and erratic it beat, and Annam thought his punishment had been just.
"As with Ulutiu, so it shall be with all your lovers," Annam proclaimed. The All Father turned and whipped his arm toward the center of Cold Ocean, and Ulutiu's body raced through the sky as a shooting star. "I will have no more bastard races loose in the empire of my children!"
Othea watched a long time, until Ulutiu faded to a fleck of darkness in the sky. She watched until that speck arced downward, and still she watched as it splashed among the icebergs at Cold Ocean's distant heart. Then she looked at Annam, and the tears in her eyes were as large as ponds.
"There shall be no more giant-kin," Othea promised.
"That is good." Annam smiled, to make plain she had pleased him. "For I will not tolerate them."
Othea smiled not. Verily, she twisted her mouth into a sneer, and the sneer was more angry than a fiend's snarl. "Neither shall there be more true giants."
"What?" Annam demanded, and he was not happy.
"I will bear no more races for you," Othea said again. In her eyes shone a black gleam of anger, and it was a fury so cold that her tears turned to ice and tumbled down her face like an avalanche. "I love Ulutiu's children more than I love yours, and so I have done with you."
"I am the All Father!" Annam's voice tore at Othea's face as a fierce wind tears at a mountainside. "You cannot refuse me!"
"Why can I not?" Othea demanded. "Will you punish me as you punished Ulutiu? I welcome it!"
So mighty was Annam's fury that he could but roar, and the winds howled as they had never howled before, on their breath bearing shards of ice that scoured the plants from the soil and the soil from the stone. From his belt the All Father took the great axe Sky Cleaver and raised it to strike.
His rage did not frighten Othea, for she had spoken in truth and would gladly follow Ulutiu. When Annam saw this, the fury in his heart changed to shock. Sky Cleaver slipped from his hand, and the axe sailed far over the plains, until at last it came down on a mountain and split it asunder, and so Split Mountain was created.
Annam did not see this, for his thoughts were as mad dragons, whirling about his head in a tumult more befitting a mortal than a deity. He was the All Father. It was his right to have Othea, and he could have her by force, if he wished. Yet Annam was no evil god, and it would not please him to loose the spawn of a wicked union on this young world. The ettin had been horrible enough. Anything worse would destroy the empire of his children and not strengthen it.