Now, however, the driving need to confront the firbolgs propelled him, with no thought for the wonders around him. The High King's desire-for retribution, or vengeance-burned strong. Soon he would confront the firbolg chieftain and ultimately destroy him.
Then finally they came around the last ridge, starting a long, winding trail that led into the narrow valley. The enclosing walls prevented them from seeing very far ahead of them, but the northward orientation of the place was obvious.
The trail twisted across a steep climb, leading them past a great boulder in a path so narrow they were reduced to a single file. Moving carefully, with a hundred-foot drop falling away to their right, they crept steadily upward. They worked their way around the shoulder one at a time. Here the view opened up the valley, and after a few more steps, Finellen stopped abruptly, a gasp of astonishment escaping her lips.
Tristan looked up, following her gaze, and at first he thought that some huge pillar of stone blocked their view of the glacier. That impression lasted only a second, however, before the truth came home to him with a shocking wave of force: The pillar he saw was stone, but not normal rock; not a shapeless monolith, but a humanlike being that was alive!
The colossal figure was visible only from the belly up, as if the giant stood in a great canyon in the ground. Tristan refused even to consider how huge it would be if it were to stand with feet at ground level.
"By all the gods!" gasped Keane as he and Alicia came up behind the king.
"What is it?" the princess wondered, awestruck. The chiseled, craggy face peered into the unseen distance as the gigantic being stared vacantly over their heads. Yet in the steady rise and fall of his breath and in the massive sweep of his arms, with his fists planted firmly on the ground, she saw evidence of life, of humanlike dexterity.
"Grond Peaksmasher," Finellen answered for them. The dwarf moved forward, allowing the rest of the file to pass around the rock and stare upward at the gigantic figure. They gazed with slack, stunned faces, in the silence of awe, wonderment… and fear.
Tavish had remained hidden as Grond Peaksmasher rose before the princess-or, more significantly in the bard's deduction, before the Silverhaft Axe. In the hours that followed, the bard had been alternately thunderstruck and appalled.
Following the example of the gigantic avatar, the firbolgs themselves had bowed in craven obeisance to the young Princess of Callidyrr. Deirdre had coolly accepted the worship as no more than her due. Speaking in the gruff tongue of the giant-kin, she had dispatched several of them to guard various approaches to this valley. Then the princess had put the rest of the band to work.
Deirdre had ordered the firbolgs to excavate a great pit, with steep walls and a depth sufficient that a firbolg within the hole was perfectly invisible to an observer on the ground. The space enclosed was quite large and an almost perfect square, Tavish saw, estimating perhaps thirty human paces on a side. She wondered about the purpose of the pit and was impressed by the sharp, regular outlines of the corners and sides.
Grond Peaksmasher had stood aloof from this project, looming over the valley bottom, his eyes gazing away to the north, as if he could see something a thousand miles away that triggered his deep, primeval memory. Yet while he took no part in the activities around his feet, Tavish had the feeling that he simply awaited Deirdre's command.
No sooner had the giant-kin completed their great, precisely oriented square hole in the ground than one of the lookout firbolgs hastened back from the mouth of the valley. Watching his gestures, Tavish understood that the fellow warned the princess about the approach of intruders-dwarves or humans, the bard guessed from the crude gestures.
She wondered idly who the newcomers were, but from her position of cover, there seemed to be little that the bard could do to influence events. So, instead, she waited.
For the moment at least, the colossus hadn't seemed to notice Tristan and his companions. The group gathered underneath the screen of several tall pines. The king, the dwarven captain, and the princess advanced cautiously to peer through the densely needled branches.
"Legend said that he was frozen in the ice years before the coming of humans to the isles," Finellen explained in a hoarse whisper.
"It's moving!" Alicia hissed.
The giant turned slowly, sweeping its gaze downward, past the silent observers and into the bowl of the valley before its flat, slablike stomach. A low hillock of ground blocked their view into this bowl.
Then a figure came into view, a small human-sized shape that stood on the grassy knoll and looked directly at the three watchers in the woods.
"Father-and you, too, my sister-come here," commanded an imperious voice, a voice that the king and princess recognized at once, even as the wind gusted out Deirdre's long black hair. "And bring the dwarf as well!"
Instinctively Alicia and Finellen pulled back farther into the shadow of their cover, astonished that their presence had been discovered. The High King, however, pressed the branches back to either side and stepped into the daylight. He was stunned by his daughter's appearance here, his first reaction a genuine explosion of relief because she looked so strong, so robust.
But very quickly that relief was tempered by puzzlement and a growing suspicion. The looming form of Grond Peaksmasher rose to the sky behind his daughter, yet now it stood like some placid manservant awaiting its master's whim.
"What do you mean, giving me orders?" Tristan demanded, approaching the young princess.
Deirdre regarded her father with an expression of aloof, icy disdain. For the first time, he noticed her hands. She carried a huge axe, the blade balanced on the ground while she leaned a hand easily against the base of the shaft. "Not just you-I order all of your companions forward as well."
When no one emerged from the tiny grove, Deirdre snapped her fingers once and pointed at the trees. Immediately a shadow fell across Tristan as the gigantic figure leaned forward.
"No!" he cried. "You can't! That's your sister in-"
But he was too late-or rather, Deirdre took no notice of his objection. Instead, she watched impassively while massive fingers closed around the treetops. Wood splintered, and the incongruously pleasant scent of pine filled the air through the entire valley as the Peaksmasher lifted the trees from the earth as a gardener might pluck some annoying weed.
Tumbling figures were clearly visible amid the gaping holes of dirt left behind. Alicia and Keane crawled from the debris, then a sputtering Finellen followed. Slowly, one by one, the others appeared, uninjured for the most part, though one of the dwarves had suffered a broken arm in the upheaval of the grove.
In the meantime, Tristan looked back to his daughter, amazed at the cool air she exuded-the air of the conqueror, he decided. Then he saw other figures moving behind her, and his astonishment grew to a numbing kind of disbelief as this rank of new arrivals moved forward to take up station on both sides of the princess.
Firbolgs! Serving his daughter, as loyally obedient as any guard of honor, they arrayed themselves along the grassy hillock as the remainder of Tristan's party dusted themselves off and came forward to join the king. Alicia, he was relieved to see, had suffered no injury except to her pride. Her eyes flashed rage at her sister, but surprisingly she held her tongue.
Keane, Brigit, and Hanrald followed the princess, and they, too, regarded Deirdre with suspicion and silent hostility, since the overwhelming presence of Grond Peaksmasher was more than enough to stifle any obvious resistance.
Tavish risked emerging from her cover as the princess and the firbolgs hurried down the valley to the grassy hillock where Deirdre confronted Tristan and his companions. At last the bard understood what she had long suspected: Deirdre was working against the wishes of her father and family, and hence to Tavish, against the good of the Moonshaes. Furthermore, she had the High King and his companions at a severe disadvantage.