Neeva glanced over her shoulder and saw her son standing over the sorcerer’s headless corpse. The boy was pointing at the driver, who had left his place on the beast’s shoulders to climb toward the howdah. In the street beyond him, the other two inixes, whose drivers were paying no attention to the fight, were slipping out of Kled with their heavy cargoes of dwarven treasure.
Neeva tossed her second weapon to her son. “You know what to do, Rkard.”
Not even waiting to see if the boy caught the weapon, Neeva stepped toward Frayne. The slaver had returned to his feet, a confident sneer on his lips. “A child against a lancer?” he scoffed. “That’s as foolish as facing me with a single short blade.”
“Perhaps,” Neeva replied.
Although she did not allow it to show on her face, she felt more confident than ever. Frayne was an adept swordsman, but his comment suggested that, like so many who learned to fight outside the arena, his attention was focused more on his foe’s blade than on his foe. When fighting a gladiator, a person could make no greater mistake.
Neeva flipped her sword about in a block-and-attack pattern, moving forward behind the flashing blade as she knew Frayne expected her to. Determined to keep the advantage of his longer blade, the raider shuffled to the side, only to have his move blocked when she lunged forward and made a clumsy chop at his ribs. Taking the bait, Frayne whipped his sword at her head in a brutal backslash.
Neeva threw her legs from beneath herself and wrapped them around the slaver’s waist, at the same time falling to her side. Frayne’s blade sailed harmlessly over her head, then she hit the howdah floor and rolled. The sudden twist swept the raider off his feet. He landed flat on his back with her legs still wrapped around his waist. Neeva sat up, pinning his sword arm to the floor with one hand and driving the tip of her own blade deep into his gullet.
Neeva turned toward the front of the inix. She saw the tip of a lance coming straight at her head as the driver leaped into the howdah. Her son picked that moment to rise from his hiding place behind the wall, holding his sword in front of the slaver’s belly. The raider’s momentum carried him onto the blade. He screamed in agony and dropped his lance, burying Rkard beneath his bleeding torso.
Neeva reached out and finished him with a quick chop to the back of the neck, then rose to her knees and rolled the corpse off her son. The boy lay atop the sorcerer’s headless body, covered in blood from head to foot.
“Rkard, are you hurt?” Neeva asked, going to his side.
The boy did not answer. His attention seemed fixed on the floor next to the sorcerer’s body.
“Answer me!” Neeva said, pulling the mul into her arms.
“I’m fine, mother,” he said, holding his hand up to her face. “Look what I found.” Rkard held a square crystal of blood-smeared olivine.
Neeva took the gem from his hand and wiped it clean. “Where did you get this?”
She had to work hard to keep from sounding angry. Twice before, when she had still been a citizen of Tyr, she had seen such crystals.
“It fell out of the sorcerer’s pocket,” Rkard explained. “Can I keep it?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
Neeva held the crystal out at arm’s length, and the tiny image of a sharp-featured man appeared inside. He had a hawkish nose, beady brown eyes, and long auburn hair bound in place by a golden diadem. It was Tithian, the man who had once owned her.
“Neeva!” he gasped. “How did you come by my gem?”
“I killed your sorcerer,” she growled. “You’re next.”
Tithian frowned doubtfully. “Come now,” he replied in a smug voice. “I’m the king of Tyr. That would mean war.”
“I doubt it,” Neeva scoffed. “After Agis and his council hear you’ve been taking slaves, they’ll want to cut your heart out themselves.”
With that, she closed her fist around the gem, cutting off her magical contact with the figure inside.
ONE
THE GIANT
Agis of Asticles stopped his mount and wiped the grit from his stinging eyes, certain his vision had betrayed him. A steady wind rasped across the Balican Peninsula, its hot breath bearing long ribbons of loess from the Sea of Silt’s southern estuary. To make matters worse, dusk had settled over the rocky barrens an hour before, leaving the road ahead swaddled in purple shadows and half buried in drifts of plum-colored dust.
A short distance ahead, a craggy ridge formed a wall of black rock. It stretched for miles in both directions, rising so high that Agis had to crane his neck to see the stars glimmering above the summit. To his relief, the caravan trail did not climb the steep hillside, but entered a narrow canyon slicing directly through the heart of the bluff.
An immense boulder sat in the middle of the trail, blocking the entire gorge. Its shape resembled that of a seated man, save that it was larger than the gatehouse guarding the entrance to Agis’s estate. Bats wheeled high over the monolith’s crown, silhouetting themselves against the haze-shrouded moons, and a flock of golden dustgulls roosted on one shoulder, their forms softened by distance and blowing silt. The nobleman could just make out two huge males pecking at each other with rapierlike beaks.
As Agis watched, the pecking contest erupted into a true battle. The angry birds rose into the air, slashing at each other with beaks and talons. The larger gull used his bulk to good advantage, relentlessly driving his foe back until the bird was trapped against the crag above their roost.
For the second time since Agis had spied it, the boulder shifted, and the noble knew that his eyes had not deceived him earlier. A massive hand rose from the dark silhouette to slap at the gulls. It caught both birds in its palm, smashing them against the shadowy crag. The blow landed with a resounding crack that made the ground tremble and sent runnels of sand cascading off the canyon walls. With a mad chorus of screeching and squawking, the rest of the flock launched itself into the air and fluttered about in anger, only to return to their roost as soon as the enormous hand crashed back to the ground.
The noble remained where he was, his kank’s carapace quivering beneath him. The insect was twice the size of a man, with six canelike legs, a jacket of chitinous black armor, and a pair of bristly antennae on its blocky head, although its bulbous eyes were so weak it could hardly focus on the ground beneath its mandibles. Agis was not surprised by its alarm. The beast’s drumlike ear membranes would be rumbling painfully from the thunderous slap that had killed the two gulls.
Agis urged the mount forward by tapping its antennae. “I don’t care if that is a giant,” he said, keeping his brown eyes fixed on the bulky form ahead. “We must get past him.”
As the kank scurried forward, the details of the hulking silhouette became clearer. The giant’s body was lumpy and stout, covered with gravelly skin and gnarled muscles that resembled nothing quite so much as the crags of a cliff. Long braids of greasy hair hung from his head, while scattered tufts of coarse bristle sprouted on his chest and back. The enormous face seemed a peculiar mix of human and rodent, with a sloped forehead, drooping ears, and a pointed nose ending in two cavernous nostrils. His eyes were set deep beneath his brow. Even under their closed lids, they bulged out of their sockets. A dozen jagged incisors protruded from beneath his upper lip, while a mosslike beard dangled from his recessed chin. All in all, Agis found the giant the ugliest individual he had ever set eyes upon.
Upon reaching the figure’s side, the noble halted his drone and dismounted. The entire gorge stank of unwashed flesh, and each time the giant exhaled, the fetid draught of his breath made Agis gag. The titan sat squarely on the road, with a massive elbow resting against one wall of the canyon. His feet were pressed against the other.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, Agis yelled, “You’re blocking the road!”