But Annam could not yield to Othea. He had seen that Toril would be a world of many races, not just ogres and giant-kin, but of humans and dwarves and dark-loving beings even more horrible. The All Father saw that if his children were to fare well, they would need a wise and powerful king to lead their empire.
So he spoke to Othea, saying, "You shall bear me one more giant, and he shall be the greatest of all, wise and strong and just, for he shall be king of giants."
"I have already borne you a titan," Othea replied. "Let him be king of the giants."
"Nay!" Annam decreed, and his mighty voice rocked Othea on her heels. "The titan is keen and strong and forthright, but he is also proud and vain. The empire of my children must have a better king than that."
Annam took breath, drawing it not into his chest, but deeper into him, down into his loins, and there he held it.
"Storm all you wish," Othea said. "I will not yield."
The All Father exhaled. The wind that came from his mouth was not a tempest, but a divine zephyr, warm with the breath of spring and the promise of life, and Annam blew this breeze upon Othea, so that it passed over her body as chiffon passes over a bride's head, and the Mother Queen trembled.
No obsidian was ever as black as Othea's face grew then. "What have you done, Annam?"
The All Father smiled, for his trick had pleased him well. "Can you not feel the answer in your womb?" he asked, and in his eye he had the look of a wyvern. "I have got a king on you."
"A king that shall never be born!" A bottomless rift shot across the plain, for such was Othea's anger. "I will hold him until the end of time!"
"Ha! That you cannot do," Annam said. "If you try, he shall grow within you until he splits your bulk asunder."
The Mother Queen gave thought to her husband's words, and after a time she said, "Then will I spill him out early and summon Vaprak's brood. They always have need of tender fodder!"
Annam's mouth fell open and out rushed the thunder and lightning. "He is your child too!" the All Father roared. "You would not feed him to ogres!"
"Not if you have gone," Othea said, and now a crooked smile was upon her craggy lips.
"You offer a bargain?"
"Leave Toril, and I will hold the infant until he can fight his own way from my womb," Othea said. "But if you return before he is born, then will I force him out, and then will Vaprak's brood feast on your spawn."
So cold was her voice that the clouds froze in the sky, and they fell to ground to become the glaciers of the mountains.
The All Father grinned. "Well do I like this game, for my seed is strong and will not long be denied," he proclaimed. "I shall return when my king-child calls my name, and then shall I watch the empire of my children spread over Toril as wind speeds across the plains."
Annam waved an arm toward the heavens. From his hand spilled a rainbow of five colors; onto this rainbow he stepped, and climbed into the sky with strides as long as rivers.
Othea watched him go, and when the blue firmament had swallowed him up, she looked toward the heart of Cold Ocean. Though the distance was immeasurably vast, she saw the terrible vengeance of her husband. There Ulutiu lay upon an iceberg all streaked with crimson, his body twisted as bodies cannot twist From his ears trickled dark blood and from his mouth bubbled red froth, and together they spilled into the gray waters of his sea.
"I swear the voice of Annam's child shall never sound outside my womb." Though Othea but whispered, the waves caught her voice and carried it across the waters to the ears of the Ocean King. "I wish I could avenge you better, but the All Father is powerful and this little is all I can do."
Ulutiu raised his head and to his lips came a smile. Across the ice he dragged himself, to where Cold Ocean lapped at the brink of his death-raft, and into the crimson waters he plunged his arm. For a long time he remained there, motionless, until it seemed the life had passed from his body, and the Mother Queen wailed forth her grief. From her mouth spilled the Hundred-Day Night, and that is why winter and darkness are as brother and sister in the northlands.
But Ulutiu had not yet passed from this world. The Ocean King rolled onto his back and pulled his hand from the cold waters, and on his fingertips hung five crystals of ice. They had the color of gems; they were emerald and sapphire, ruby, amber, and one as white as a diamond. The Ocean King plucked the crystals off his fingers and pressed them all to his collar, and there they hung as on a chain.
Ulutiu closed his eyes and from his throat came a long sigh; then did his spirit leave the world, as fog rises from the cold waters, and a shimmering fan of color soared from each crystal to dance like ghosts high in the sky. Thus were the Boreal Lights born. Then Cold Ocean encircled his death-raft with a towering waterspout and sprayed a shroud of ice over his body. The spout spun faster, and the shroud became a veil; faster it spun, and the veil thickened into a mantle, then into a coffin, and soon the ice had grown thick as a tomb.
The waterspout whirled faster, spraying the tomb with layer after layer of sleet, until the mound became a drift, the drift a hill, the hill a mountain, and still it grew. The winds raged harder. The sea waters froze into an endless white plain, and the heavens grew as gray as steel. Cascades of snow tumbled from the sky. The tempest whipped the flakes to every corner of the Cold Ocean, to the east and west, and to the north and south, and to all places between, and the vastness of the frozen sea vanished into the white haze of blizzard.
The storm continued without end, month after month, and the seasons grew into years and the years into centuries. All this time did Othea watch, and though her hunger howled as the blizzard, she took no food. Inside her stomach, Annam's child gnawed at her womb, craving the sustenance to grow, but always the Mother Queen denied him, and kept herself alive only by drinking from the Well of Health. Never did the unborn giant-king grow strong enough to free himself, and the Mother Queen returned often to Cold Ocean to watch the snow pile layer upon layer. The sea became a looming wall of ice, as broad as the horizon and so high it scraped the belly of the sky, until it had grown so vast that the ocean bed could not hold it, and it slipped the ancient shore and began to creep southward, slow and inexorable.
Then did Othea's laughter burst across the land like the crack of a distant volcano, for in the glacier's path lay the pride of jealous Annam: Ostoria, Empire of Giants.
Upon the floor sat an orb of blue ice, its perfect surface polished as smooth as glass and its pith as transparent as air. The sphere's creator, the titan Lanaxis, stood beside it. Gathered around him were Nicias, dynast of cloud giants, and Masud, khan of fire giants. There were also Vilmos, paramount of storm giants, Ottar, jarl of frost giants, and all the other Sons of Annam, the eternal monarchs born of Othea and destined to rule the races of giant-kind as long as Ostoria endured.
It had been thousands of years since Othea had sent their father away, but even lacking Annam's guidance, Ostoria had grown large and powerful. It stretched so far that in two ten-days Lanaxis could not walk from one end to the other. The empire extended almost as far southward, to where kingdoms of dwarves and humans were rising. Each race of giants held dominion over one area of this vast realm, and so the Sons of Annam were scattered far and wide.