A Plague of Giants

There was nothing for me to do but return to Khul Bashab and, should I make it there, figure out some way to survive without a family.

  I squinted at the bloodcat, which sat on its haunches and waited.

  “What do you want?” I asked it. “Don’t you want to be with your nest?”

  Standing on all fours, the bloodcat snorted and began to pace back and forth in front of me. Its red-brown fur, perfect for keeping it concealed among the nughobes, stood out against the pale grasses of the plains. It didn’t belong out here. Neither did I.

  “I’m going to walk north,” I said, pointing. “Follow in the path of the kherns so long as they go in that direction. I have to make it back to Khul Bashab. It’s probably four days from here depending on how fast I go. You can come if you like, but I have nothing for you to eat and only enough water for me.”

  “Murr,” the bloodcat said in his throaty rumble, and began to walk north. I followed after, and I supposed that was my answer, though I still didn’t understand how such behavior was possible. Soon we were walking side by side again, this time with the bloodcat on my left, but thinking of my family and my responsibility for their deaths prevented me from dwelling on the strangeness of it. By the time the sky had arced above us into afternoon, it no longer seemed strange. I had grown used to the creature and began to think perhaps it deserved a more dignified name than “creature.”

  Perhaps it already had one.

  Feeling absurd, I introduced myself. “I’m Abhinava. What’s your name?”

  “Murr,” the bloodcat replied.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Murr. Thank you for your company today. Should you become hungry or thirsty, please do whatever you need to do. I’ll just keep walking north and you can catch up easily.”

  The bloodcat angled its head to look at me for a few steps, then it uttered a short acknowledging grunt and faced forward again. We walked in silence another quarter hour before Murr’s ears perked up and he darted off to the west after something. I didn’t see him again until evening when I had made my camp for the night in a small thicket of woody shrubs. I had to dismantle one of the shrubs to make a serviceable fire. There were small rodents in the thicket and at least one poisonous viper preying on them, along with a portly tusked boar that seemed content to coexist with me in his neighborhood. He watched me build the fire and didn’t move until Murr showed up, and then he took off with a squeal.

  “Welcome back,” I said to the bloodcat. “Did you find something to eat?”

  “Murr.” He lay down across from me and began to clean his paws with his tongue.

  “Good.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. Once he had left that afternoon, I never thought Murr would seek me out to lie by the fire again. It was definitely not natural behavior, and as I munched on a few raw root vegetables, I wondered if he would follow me all the way back to Khul Bashab, and if so, what would happen when we approached the gates.

  Murr fell asleep almost immediately, his belly full of something. I frowned and got out my journal again.

  Here is a crazy idea: What if I have found the Sixth Kenning? Ha ha! No.

  But consider: the first and most basic gift of any kenning is that the blessed person becomes invulnerable to that kenning’s nature. The lavaborn cannot burn. I do not know what the Brynts call their blessed—the soaked? Anyway, they cannot drown. If the Sixth Kenning is related to animals in the way that the Fifth Kenning is related to plants, would that not mean that the blessed would never be eaten by an animal—the way that I have not been eaten by anything so far, starting with the bloodcats, and then moving on to the wheat dogs I heard, the complete lack of insect bites, snake bites, or any number of other hungry things, like flesh eels, that should have finished me off by now? And might not this single bloodcat’s strange and somewhat friendly behavior be explained by the kenning? Murr acts at times as if he understands what I’m saying—what if he does?

  Kalaad in the sky, if this is true and I am somehow the first person to discover the Sixth Kenning, what do I call myself? What are my powers? And … does Kalaad have anything to do with this? Why me and why now? So many questions and no one to answer them. I will have to experiment.

  A strange thing happened when Fintan banished his seeming: everyone seated on the benches below the wall rose to his or her feet and applauded thunderously. The bard had received loud applause before, of course, but I had never seen Brynts behave this way. What had caused them to erupt from their seats so? The possibility that the Sixth Kenning, long rumored to exist, had finally been found? That must be it. Like them, I had to assume it was the truth—why else would Fintan include this hunter’s story in his tale? Staggering, really, to hear of such a discovery happening in our time, and so recently. A new kenning with animals—that could only benefit everyone, right?

  I wondered how the Nentians who disliked the bard’s portrayal of their people would react. Would they finally feel pride in their countryman, or would this enrage them further?

  Föstyr found me after the bard’s tale and pressed some coins into my hand as a stipend. “Come to the palace in the morning for breakfast with your old friend,” he said, and then disappeared into the crowd that was streaming off the wall into the city where all the mead and ale was.

  I didn’t go back to the Randy Goat or any other inn. I spent my stipend on a new bed frame, or rather a used one with a cracked beam on one side that I chose to regard as charming and well loved rather than poorly made or broken. I spent far more finding a new feather down mattress on the principle that used mattresses are an astoundingly bad idea.

  I bought a bottle of spiced Kaurian rum in the marketplace two blocks from my house, a few logs for my fireplace even though it would not be so cold that night, and a small chapbook of ribald poetry by a wit from Sturföd who might or might not still be alive. It was not luxury, but it was warm and gave me a glimpse of what my home might grow to be in the future. It was enough.

  Pelenaut Röllend was blessedly not dressed in orange for our meeting in the morning but in a palette of varied greens edged in black.

  “Let me guess: The Fornish are coming today?”

  “No, I just like green,” he said. “And I’ve discovered that avoiding blue and white helps me stand out in the Wellspring. Lots of military in there these days, and I like to give the idea that someone is still concerned about other matters than active warfare.”

  We talked of trifles until breakfast was served and the longshoremen departed to let us speak privately.

  “How did the orange meeting go, then?”

  “I think the ambassador got the message. He came with a wrapped gift, saw me all in orange, and then said the gift was for someone else and he’d be sending some prized stock of his own tea to me later.”

  “Ha! Well done.”

  “Yes, but lying about that gift was just the beginning of a strange meeting. I asked him about that Bone Giant prisoner they have in their dungeon—Saviič, right? And he claimed to have no knowledge of it. Either Mistral Kira is keeping her own diplomatic corps in the dungeon on this after all this time or the ambassador was lying about that, too.”

  “Again I’m grateful to not have your job.”

  The pelenaut snorted. “And how does your job go? What did you learn about the Triune Council?”

  “Oh. Yes, I asked Fintan about that. I’d worry about the one named Clodagh.”

  “Why?”

  “He diplomatically chose to say nothing about her, which I think means he had nothing positive to say.”

  Rölly nodded. “That fits with what we’ve heard elsewhere.”

  “Do I get to hear it, too?”

  The pelenaut inspected a piece of bacon, didn’t appear to like the look of it, but crunched into it anyway. “She’s quick to suggest military solutions to problems. She’s not been able to do much in that regard because the other councillors keep her in check, but we—I mean the Fornish and the Nentians and everyone else—suspect she’s been
doing a lot of work in deep waters.”

  “Eating away at us in the darkness? Look, if you want to know what the Raelechs are up to, isn’t there a better way to go about it than having me ask the bard roundabout questions?”

  “There is, yes. Föstyr knows someone who specializes in that sort of thing. I needed to know where to point that particular weapon, and all the signs are pointing to Clodagh. But I asked you here for a different reason.”

  “Oh?”

  “This threat on Fintan’s life is real. The Nentians are not playing around. You need to be armed from now on.”

  “Armed?”

  “Sword or rapier. Something. Maybe wear some chain underneath your tunic.”

  “I’m a target now?”

  “No, he’s still the target. But you’re with him for much of the day, and you need to be on guard in case they try something.”

  “I thought that’s what the mariners were for.”

  “They are. But it’s best to be prepared.”

  “I’m out of practice.”

  “Get into practice again. Föstyr tells me they are looking for an opportunity, Dervan. You can’t be complacent anymore.”

  Chagrin smeared my face into a wince. “I actually don’t have a weapon. Haven’t had one since I was discharged from the mariners.”

  “Easily remedied,” Rölly said. “I’ll requisition one for you. And practice, Dervan. I mean it. In fact, go see Mynstad du Möcher at the armory right after this, get your weapon, and arrange to spar with her. She’s excellent with the rapier. Without equal, I suspect. She trains me. She’ll do for you.”

  As I walked up to meet Fintan and his mariner escort outside a nondescript chowder house, I covered up an uncomfortable burp with my fist, the ghost of breakfast haunting me with memories of thick sauces on eggs. I had spent a few hours practicing after picking up my weapon, but even that exertion had not been enough to banish the meal completely, though it was now lunchtime.

  “Ah, that’s the belch of a man who ate rich food at the palace this morning,” Fintan said.

  “You can tell?”

  “No, it was just a guess. A good one, apparently. You also look worried. A transfer of the pelenaut’s concerns directly to your face. And a transfer of a weapon from the armory to your hip,” he said, pointedly staring at my new sword.

  “Ah, yes. Being seen next to you is a dangerous thing now.”

  The interior of the chowder house was poorly lit except for candles in orange glass on the tables, providing pools of light that gave off an air of mystery, an air that Fintan noted with approval.

  “I appreciate the atmosphere. A bit spooky, somewhat ominous, makes you wonder if any of this is legal: that’s what good chowder is all about.”

  It made for a terrible work environment, though. We had to ask for extra candles so I could see what I was doing. Once I could see a bit better and the place filled up with locals, I relaxed. The chowder was hot and the beer was cold, and no one bothered us. Fintan determined to give them a good report from atop the wall that afternoon.

  When we got there, he prefaced his starting song with a few words. “I have learned this morning that the Fornish force coming here to join our counterattack will be primarily composed of grassgliders and thornhands.” That startled everyone, including me, since I had not heard any such news. “You might not be terribly familiar with either or what they’re able to do, but we’ll meet some grassgliders today in Nel Kit ben Sah’s portion of the tale and the thornhands later. In the meantime, I’ll share with you a Raelech song about the First Tree.”

  Not blood but sap runs through its limbs,

  It has no breath to speak its mind;

  Yet if you threaten aught in Forn,

  You will very quickly find

  The First Tree is the Canopy.

  By root and stem it speaks to Fornish,

  And if they ever feel the need

  To Seek more power than they were born with,

  They can always choose to feed

  The First Tree of the Canopy.

  Perhaps their blood will water the roots,

  Perhaps it will reward their nerve

  And bless them with the Fifth Kenning,

  So that they’ll be bound to serve

  The First Tree of the Canopy.

  The song made me shudder. The semisentience and hunger of the First Tree always left me feeling vaguely ill whenever I was reminded of its existence. Unlike the sites of the other kennings, where Seekers simply cast themselves into it, the First Tree took people and then decided whether to eat them or bless them. To my admittedly small understanding it seemed more monstrous somehow than the impersonal sites of the other kennings. I know the Fornish argument is that Bryn or Reinei or the other gods of the kennings are making decisions on who to bless every much as the First Tree, but somehow the other sites don’t inspire the same horror; perhaps because it’s not like the wind or water is eating the Seekers.

  Fintan smiled after the break and held up his first seeming stone. “Let’s see what Nel is up to, shall we?”

  The days after making my report to the Canopy were bittersweet. I missed Yar and deeply regretted his death and the others that happened under my command.

  Yet amid the pallor of death a column of sunshine speared through the shadow: the prestige of the White Gossamer Clan improved markedly as a result not only of my efforts on behalf of the Canopy but of the demonstrated success of our net launchers against Hathrim houndsmen. It’s the nets more than the launchers that made the difference, but our clan now has more orders than they can fill and prosperity is blossoming for us. And my influence in the sway has increased significantly, just as Pak Sey ben Kor feared. But it was not at his expense; he and the Black Jaguars are still very much the broad leaves and drink up most of the sun.

  The need for more information required a second trip, and I was tasked by the sway to lead a party of grassgliders over the Godsteeth and secure a thorough scouting report. I was to be the only greensleeve this time, which meant leaving Pak Sey ben Kor behind. That suited me perfectly.

  The grassgliders entrusted to my command were a picked squad from several clans and cared nothing for politics—even better. They were professional, in fantastic shape, and a pleasure to work with. They met me at the same stand of sentinel trees our first party had left from, and we followed the same route, slowing down and picking our way very carefully through the pass with the bantil plants; they had grown naturally and spread, feasting on new creatures, and we would need to contain the growth soon but let it remain for now as a line of defense against possible Hathrim invasion. On the other side of the pass we kept high up on the mountainside, where the houndsmen were least likely to patrol among the thick stands of trees, and cut straight west on the edge of the Godsteeth until we saw the ocean.

  We paused next to a grand moss pine, the sort that the Hathrim were cutting down, and the eldest of the grassgliders, Nef Tam ben Wat, pulled pigments out of his pack and began mixing them to match the pine bark. All the other grassgliders retrieved pots of base coat pigment and stripped down to their dark undergarments. They applied the dark base that would serve as shadow and afterward would apply the lighter bark pigments on top. We had camouflage material to mimic silverbarks and all manner of trees in the Canopy but nothing for these pines, so we would have to take the time to use paint. I simply wore a custom black bodysuit and mask because I couldn’t smear pigment on my silverbark, and the plan was for me to crouch down in the center of them anyway. The other grassgliders helped one another with their backs, and they were so practiced and quick that we were ready to go in an hour.

  “Orient yourself on this tree,” I said. “We’ll leave our packs here. Hooks and spikes ready?” They nodded like animate wood, reddish brown bark scales painted on their skin and their hair dyed black like mine. I had my miniature crossbow and a few bolts treated with a paralytic developed by the Red Horse Clan. They were famous abroad for their teas and
medicinal herbs, but inside Forn they were known for developing poisons.

  The grassgliders formed up around me and then employed their kenning, which allowed them to make no noise when they moved on or through plant life. Since I occupied the space between them and benefited from the cone of silence they projected about themselves, I was completely silent, too. And thanks to Nef’s expert mixing of pigments and the squad’s practice at application, we looked from a distance like a lightning-blasted stump of a grand moss pine as long as we stayed close together.

  We moved in complete silence down the mountain. We could still be smelled, still be seen, but could not be heard. Instead, we would hear any Hathrim patrols long before they were in range to see us. No one said a word until we had descended far enough to see the Hathrim encampment through the trees, and it was I who broke the silence.

  “May the First Tree shield us,” I whispered when I took in the breadth of the Hathrim city. For that is what it was, a city—not a camp of desperate refugees. They had paid the Raelechs to build high walls, and only our vantage point on the mountainside above allowed us to see what they had going on inside them. They might not have grand buildings erected yet, but they had the sites staked out, tiny fires that would be family hearths someday. They had the beginnings of a smithy going if I wasn’t mistaken, and a long mead hall. It spoke of extensive planning; no one suffers a surprise eruption of his or her home and lays out a new city like this so quickly without thinking about it long beforehand.

  The eruption of Mount Thayil might have been a catastrophe for those who couldn’t escape it, but this level of organization made it clear that it was also something for which Gorin Mogen had been waiting.

  “We can’t have this here. They can ship all their firelords to this point, walk over the pass, and overwhelm us. Stage timber raids on our hardwoods all along the western coast from the safety of their port. No. We can’t have it.”

  It was impossible to tell where Mogen’s personal hearth was; no markers of importance or ostentation separated one fire from another. The giants all dressed alike in leathers, but I had heard that you could tell the lavaborn apart from the rest sometimes by the color of the leather; theirs had to be made out of the fireproof hide of lava dragons, which were gray creatures with black heads and a black spiny ridge all the way down to the tips of their tails, sometimes with a swirl of maroon here and there. Some of the giants had different hair colors, but I had no idea what color Mogen’s was supposed to be.