IN THE MORNING, THEY ran with the Giants. Day followed night. Night followed day. All the daylight revealed was how many creatures she had been unable to recall from death. Allory did not try to understand why this should be. Speaking with the Giants until late in the night, she had faced their uncomfortable and unanswerable questions as best she was able. Why not all? Over three hundred Giants still lay where they had fallen, yet one hundred and ninety-two had risen to fresh life.
Joy mingled with grief.
If only she could do more. Be more. Were she not the smallest, the weakest, the incapable one …
The power demanded by this mass revival had left her too weak and achy even to stand, so she rode with Yaarah, who perched upon Yamorenne’s hand as they ran across the canyonlands. She ran like a young Giantess, light-footed and lithe, beautiful and strong, leading out the band of twenty-five Giants who had chosen to escort the companions on this next stage of their journey. Crossing the Gasheni Road and ducking beneath the Bridge of Dreams, they would take a secret Giant route up to a location near the Gates of Saradoom. Then, the Giants would return to arm themselves for war.
They would not take this Dragon assault lightly.
For the first time in centuries, all of the Giant tribes were united, having agreed to set aside their differences or face being wiped out entirely. As Yaarah put it bluntly – and in private, thankfully – no-one appreciated being served up as food for vampiari spirits, least of all proud Giants.
That was the point, was it not? Fresh fodder. Great masses of life force to play with. The slaughter out on the barrens had presaged the most powerful attack yet on Middlesun. She had been hurt. It had cost her to help heal the Giants, and even today, the scholar had remarked upon how wan the sunlight seemed, how it illuminated but failed to warm quite as it ought.
Why did she think of the Middlesun entity as a ‘she’? Did it fit?
Allory could only have said that the inkling felt right.
She watched the landscape scroll by the speeding Giants. By midmorning, they reached the black paving stones of the Gasheni Road, twenty feet wide and eventually over one and a half thousand leagues long, it was said, crossing more realms and kingdoms of Spheris than even the scholars could enumerate. Yaarah stated this fact proudly, as if ignorance were cause to rub his golden paws together and contemplate a journey from one end of the Gasheni Road to the other as his next enterprise. Just as soon as he resolved this small issue with Spheris.
Here, the rust-red barrens gave way to the first wall of the canyonlands, as it was called, sheer cliffs over a mile tall. Higher up, colonies of burrowing Dragons protected the cliffs from being scaled, but they led only to a mighty mauve mountain range too tall in most places for creatures on foot to surmount or winged creatures to overfly. An area famously rich in minerals, metals and jewels, this was the start of the mountain fastnesses inhabited and claimed by the Dragonkind, too.
Ten or eleven miles farther along the cliff, following the Gasheni Road, they came to the Bridge of Dreams. This marvellous structure, a masterwork conceived by the Elves of old, took smaller travellers up from the base of the Canyonlands to the Gates, a two-and-a-half-mile climb along fluted, arched spans of white bridge too lightweight of construction – deliberately so – to allow Giants passage to the heights. This winding white ribbon first ascended a peninsula that jutted out from the canyon wall, before starting to leap between columns, on and on, ever upward into the peaks, until it disappeared into the clouds.
Allory tweaked a neck muscle trying to take in the wonder. Naturally, she had not even a hint of sparkle left to deal with it. Annoyance! How unreasonable was she to let an unresolvable crick in the neck grate on her nerves this much? How ungrateful was she, when she would gladly have spent anything she had, even the tiniest hint of healing she could scrape up, to help even one more of those Giants?
Did all people find their hearts to be this contrary and fickle?
Since the Bridge was now heavily guarded by Dragons, they had learned from the Rhumos Giants whose territory this was, they took the companions another way.
First, they jogged farther along that final massive cliff than needed. Here, Giants hunted for a lizard creature they claimed was delightfully tasty barbecued in a fire pit using wood washed down from the mountain slopes by the wet season floods. The bright blaze could be seen for miles about, which was the intention. Then, in the early hours, they left the glowing coals behind and melted into the night. Giants could do sneaky. Chameleons had their tricks and Sabline was of course best friends with all shadows, her natural colouration seeming to attract darkness about her being, but for creatures of their size, the Giants also impressed. For roughly two hours, they padded along in single file, covering the distance back to the peninsula where the Bridge of Dreams began. After scouting carefully to ensure that no fiery eyes gazed upon their enterprise, they stole around the sun-spinward side of the lower bridge, ducked beneath an early span about a hundred and twenty feet above the canyon floor, and snuck into a hidden cleft, an ancient watercourse.
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Karamor, the Giant Elder who was husband to Yamorenne, led the way inside. With a dint of wriggling, grunting and a few swear words softly advanced by the brawniest of their number, the Giants squeezed into a long, low gallery – low by Giant standards – where several of their company lit torches to illuminate the way. Slick, pale red rock, heavily eroded pools and tumbled boulders at the base of the cavern proclaimed its wet season purpose. Water, and plenty of it.
“Not even passable for half the year,” Karamor whispered aside to Allory, flying just ahead of his left temple. “The next part is fun. I need two Giants to guard the – thank you.”
Two Giants melted away into the night outside to guard their backs.
Fun involved building a quick Giant tower five persons tall, which took them straight up a sleek pipe with no handholds or footholds in sight. They dropped a hawser from the top and everyone proceeded to ascend normally, except for an Elf who simply had to show off how adept her kind were at climbing. The winged contingent eyed all of this effort with something akin to pity.
Once the Giants reached the ledge above, they coiled up the hawser and Karamor led them along a perilous path that ran along the edge of a deep chasm leading farther into the mountain.
A rumbling sound echoing along the ravine shortly resolved into a waterfall of four separate white plumes that plunged from a carved hand about a mile overhead. Allory blinked and twizzled her neck, realising that the entire slope up to that point was a colossal stone face characterised by gorgeous waves and swirls of variegated greens. Karamor confirmed that this was a single monolithic vein of jade which had been carved by creatures unknown, presumably Giants, in ages past. Simple carved handholds and footholds to the right of the main statue allowed them to ascend easily to the top, where he pointed out how an unground river gushed out of the heart of the statue, running along a groove carved in the hand before tumbling away between the fingers.
Harzune popped a nectar gourd into Allory’s fingers. “Drink. It’s a restorative.”
Sigh. Clearly, he was the all-round sort of hero who would iron the sheets of his lady’s boudoir one minute and pluck up his weapons to defend her honour the next. Some lucky girlfae – whose every droplet of sap a selfish part of Allory despised at that moment – was going to enjoy this treatment every day for the rest of her life.
Karamor worked a secret lever that operated a stone door which led to the underground river. They hiked along its winding course for what seemed to Allory to be four to five hours, in water sometimes up to waist deep to the Giants, passing beneath or between striking rock formations created by seepage of mineral-rich water from the cavern roof. Yaarah was full of detailed questions and erudite commentary, as always, explaining the different geological features to his audience. This Scintillant just wanted to get lost in the wonder. Sabline and Ashueli played a game of taking turns to slip ahead and ambush one another.
Warriors. Never short on the snap and snarl.
At last, they came to the shore of an underground lake and Allory became aware of a faint pre-dawn light filtering down from a narrow crevice in the ceiling.
Pointing ahead, the Giant Elder rumbled, “That’s the way out. You’ll find yourself at the base of the longest bridge span. The road winds a number of times as it goes up, but you winged types should find that no problem. At the top, you’ll emerge fairly much directly opposite the Gates of Saradoom but about a mile back. I hope you’re feeling brave, because that has to be about the best-guarded mile in all of Spheris, if you catch my meaning.”
“Clear as daylight, mrrr-hrrr,” Sabline hissed.
“Clear as Middlesun’s own glorious radiance,” Yaarah said at the same time.
Allory blinked. Apparently, showing one another lots of fangs and the fire-scorched innards of one’s throat passed as Felidragon romance?
No accounting for the oddities of felines.
“There’s no cover in sight,” Karamor continued, “but this area is often busy with Marakusian traders which will be to your advantage. We’d take you further, but we don’t want to compromise this secret route unnecessarily.”
“This is excellent,” Ash said.
“A great boon unto us, friend Giant,” Harzune said formally.
Karamor’s bearded face broke into a wide grin. “Friend Fae, I do believe you were born a Giant in heart.”
The Chameleon Fae made to puff up his chest, but then exhaled with a low laugh. “I’m a hero in sore need of essaying a few heroic deeds, but I do appreciate the compliment. While I’d wish nothing more than to smite these Marakusians most sorely, I believe that stealth must be our watchword this day. Thank you once again for your able help. We are indebted.”
Lacing his fingers into his wife’s, the whitebeard replied, “It is we who owe you … immeasurably much.” His huge eyes touched very softly upon Allory, causing a tingle of scintillance to run all over her skin before it sparked suddenly off her antennae and wingtips. “Call upon us anytime you have need. We Giants shall not let such small matters as gates, mountains or Dragon hordes stand in our way.”
“I’d want to hug you, Allory Fae,” Yamorenne smiled, her eyes crinkling wondrously at the corners, “but I hear you arm wrestle Giants for a living?”
Chuckles all around.
“Finger hug?” Allory offered.
She could not even reach around the tip of the Giantess’ smallest finger. Not by a long way. Just a speck of butterfly blue fluttering up against the whorls of that callused fingertip.
Guess it still counted, because she was not the only one who dabbed at her eyes as they winged and loped away to face a new challenge.