Chapter One: Frellyx

The loss of a pet is a terrible wound, more so when the beast is a spiteful and inconstant man. While Eurilda had borne home nicks from dryad spears, and a hole where one of those false-faced women lanced her deep, the deepest cut was that Khyte chose the flower-eyed abomination. Six months had smoothed scratches into scars, but she had not forgotten the injury to the core of her being, because by the grace of the Divine Atheist—which is to say a lucky break that feels like providence—the blade had narrowly missed the other, concealed, target, the hybrid that thickened her middle with nausea and discomfort quicker than any giant baby could form. While not born out of love, Khyte had left her with a memento, nonetheless, and only time would tell what the half-human signified.

Eurilda tossed and turned at the thought of Khyte with that piece of kindling, and this frustration set her spinning on the axis of her levitation spell, so that her nightgown nearly flew over her head, and her long, blonde, hair went into her eyes and mouth. By instinct, she grasped at her bookshelf, and nearly pulled it over. until her mind reached out, and she stopped. Then the sorceress sunk into the cool air of her tower top room, drifting a little until she found the sweet spot, and her eyes half-closed. While now adept at relaxing her body as a spell buoyed her, learning to sleep on a bed of levitation is difficult, so that for Eurilda's first year as a senior apprentice, she would fidget in the air for a fitful hour or so before giving up and sleeping on the tower floor. Now, when her heart came to rest on Khyte, she found him an unending wellspring of unwelcoming funk, and her levitation became a restless cushion. Not for the first time, she thought how satisfying it might be to sneak in a real cushion, made not of capricious magic, but of feathers or cotton, and she immediately felt the sting of her geas, her constant reminder that she should not think of things forbidden under Otoka the Wise's discipline. Promotion to senior apprentice meant much prestige, but unfortunately, no bed, along with the expectation that she should never do a mundane thing—even sleep—when there were magical means at hand. And as the prohibition of the geas did not know degrees, her desire for a mattress was admonished with as much force as her recurring desire not to be with child; and as Otoka despised cheaters, she could resent not having a bed as much as she wanted, but as soon as she started to think about procuring one, it stung. And while it was a geas and not a wasp, and couldn't literally sting her, the figurative sting was so sharp that it caused her jaw to set and her joints to lock for a moment. She was becoming inured to the magical punishment, however, due to how often thoughts of the giant-human hybrid growing within her triggered its discipline.

Giants had two year gestation periods, but this half-human grew faster than a giant embryo, as if aiming for the end of the year. This burgeoning enlargement, as well as mighty kicks that felt like hooves, and the roiling of her stomach that made it hard to hold down more than a mouthful every hour, made her fear the coming child. But she did not want it, less for fear that their union would result in monstrous offspring—first among these impossible anxieties was the baby's arm snaking out of her womb to seize her heel like a viper—and more for fear of being unable to love it if it looked like Khyte, for whom she harbored murderous daydreams and unrequited longing. His spurning her was so unforgivable that she feared the death she wished on Khyte would transfer to the unborn within her. But she was still Otoka the Wise's indentured apprentice, the property of her master, and giant law allowed him to compel her obedience with the geas. The spell lurked, and her spine twitched whether her thoughts turned toward the child, or the imagined demise of the father. It seemed odd that her human lover numbered among Otoka's bans, but she had trained herself not to question her master's will; not because Otoka banned questioning—he did not—but because she loved Otoka the Wise. It could not be said that she loved him like her father or like a god, having low opinions of both, but that she loved him was a wondrous thing, because she had only loved one other in her life, the aforementioned faithless pet, Khyte. And while she knew the master wizard did not love her back, he had never let her down, so she chose to live as if he did love her, as the sorcerer's apprentice had always preferred a beautiful illusion to a noble truth.

When Eurilda heard the baying of the dukortu, she tied her scarlet apprentice robe with a copper sash, noting with a scowl that she would soon need a longer swath to close it. Then she subtracted her weight to near-nothingness and stepped off the balcony window.

Not only do senior apprentices sleep on beds of levitation, but the stairs do not run to their doorless tower residences, which they enter and exit through their windows by varying magical means. Some mastered skinchanging into avian forms such as the jikalna bird, while others trusted to their levitation though the ground was hundreds of feet away from the top of the giant-scaled towers, but Eurilda preferred to hone the illusions that she had made second nature. Perhaps stimulated by their curiosity of the tinier races of The Five Worlds, giants had become more adept than their smaller neighbors at the magic of illusion, which they had crafted until it was as much energy as sense, and as much substance as seeming, so that they could alter not only their height, but their mass, and a subtle caster like Eurilda could, and did, walk in the cities of humans, goblins, and elves, sit on their chairs and become full on their tiny meals, sleep in their beds, and take lovers among them. Giant illusions could make unwanted words drop from another's mouth, or manipulate smells to nauseate or to entice; she had even delved into some of Otoka the Wise's hidden lore which spoke of covering not only memories but histories with illusions.

As Eurilda drifted to the ground, her red robes fluttering, she observed the baying hounds had cornered a miniature intruder. At the shoulder, Dukortu stood a little less than waist-high to Eurilda, and the interloper was half their size. At this distance, she could not tell if it was a man or woman, or human, elf, or goblin, but as there was something familiar about the way this one moved, she half-ran the rest of the way.

By the time she recognized the violet-haired and violet-bearded Alfyrian, he had cut a circle around him in the grassy dirt with his sword, and where the blade tore the soil, sparks glinted, and the dukortu turned their heads and padded away.

"Eurilda," he said, smiling smugly so that his long chin jutted insolently, and she remembered how much she hated that smile.

"Frellyx," she answered, her tone not a greeting, but an accusation—the way one would say "murderer" to one that had killed one's beloved. When she first met Khyte, he was inseparable from this arrogant elf, and she had inexorably insinuated the tiniest of illusions, inserting objectionable words in their conversations and covering the two men's faces with emotions neither felt. As the elf had his own magical talents, she worked these illusions at a subtle pace, to seem so natural as to be undetectable, and during these long weeks, her designs on Khyte were thwarted. Even now, she disliked Frellyx for the simple reason that he once stood in her way.

"Are you here in a professional capacity," asked Eurilda, "in which case I'll leave you to my dogs, as I presume your employment of choice is still thief, layabout, and adventurer, or is this a social call, in which case I'll give you a five minute head start?"

Frellyx laughed. "Neither. I'm here on another's business, bearing a message of great joy."

"Does it say 'Frellyx is dead?'"

In spite of himself, Frellyx laughed again. "Since we're being honest, I'd give four to one you don't share the great joy."

The giantess had a darkening suspicion. "Hand it over."

"Formalities?"

"What?"

"I've come a long way through the Abyss on Baugn-back, with nothing but floating fruit and hard bread to eat."

"Are you asking for a handout?"

"A handout?" Frellyx looked like he might turn a deep shade of purple to match his hair and beard. "This is why I like goblins. They may be greedy, but they're not stingy."

"I knew you were after something," said Eurilda, her face twisted into a sneer. The elf had chosen his words well, as no giant liked to be compared unfavorably to another race, not even the ancient elves, and definitely not the ground-grubbing goblins that were so afraid of heights as to be unable to look a giant in the face; moreover, Eurilda was not just any giant, but through long study had buttressed her giant prejudices with the tools of philosophy. But while these elegant proofs of her bigotry were central to her character, the geas was an equally fundamental, if artificial, motivator, that compelled her to do as her master bade, and Otoka had bade her many times to be helpful to visitors. "Come grub in the pantry," she said, trying not to smile, and failing, as the geas pulled her strings.

She led him down a costly thoroughfare of red sand imported from Nahure. The larger grains crunched under their feet, while the smaller grains puffed a few inches into the air and then settled again. When the manor's black iron double doors, inset with Nymerean pearl letters, loomed over them half again as tall as the giantess, she turned left, and took him along a side path, well-trodden in everyday, completely ordinary, dirt. And when Frellyx didn't ask, and an opportunity to put the elf in his place was passing her by, she said, "since you're playing the messenger today, Frellyx, we'll use the servant's entrance. The master won't find this interesting, so there's no need to annoy him by opening that noisy door."

Frellyx still said nothing, so Eurilda added, "I suppose you could have entered like vermin, crawling under the door."

As the elf followed quietly, Eurilda remembered their first meeting. Otoka had sent her to Alfyria on a book buying expedition, and when she was having trouble identifying the books that she needed, Frellyx introduced himself and his young human friend Khyte. Within a minute the elf had adduced that Eurilda was 1) giant, not human, from her golden irises; 2) a sorceress, as that followed from 1) given her artificial stature; and 3) fluent, but illiterate, in Alfyrian, and in dire need of a guide to the bookstore's four stories of tightly packed shelves. While an observant idiot could have determined the third deduction from the way she walked around the book stacks a little too rapidly without asking a clerk for help—also, her eyes may have been watering (due to the dustiness of the tomes, she told herself)—it was unarguably astute that he recognized her as Otoka's apprentice from the bold, black, runes on her robe's left breast: one was the rune for Giant, and the others, symbolizing the Five Worlds, orbited it like a planet.

Frellyx laughed, and asked, "does the center of the universe need help?" She had never met any non-Giant—and very few Giants, at that—that knew the meanings of giant runes. It would also prove to be a remarkable question in that the elf would never ask her another, instead preferring to raise oblique observations after he had asked questions of his own eyes. She hated him and his rolling eyes at first sight, and familiarity only bred contempt to mate with the hate, so at first, her designs on Khyte were to repay the elf for his insolence.

The servants' door was a much humbler point of entry: just one hand taller than Eurilda, the cheap plywood swung both ways on hide hinges. Eurilda walked down the hall to enter the larder, then realized that she had lost Frellyx. Retracing her steps, she found the elf staring at the door.

"Of course you find this shoddy door fascinating." she said, instantly regretting it, because if she had waited, the elf may have revealed his ignorance. "And I'm sure you'll tell me why," she added.

"It's wood made from wood," said Frellyx. "What a useful innovation for a giant."

"Only for a giant?"

"Since giant-sized lumber, even on Nymerea, is available only in short supply, you must make lumber to order."

"Not me personally. I'm not the right person to ask. But please: report your findings to every giant you meet, and I promise that none will take offense. Being studied would be a new experience for most of them, just as passing through giant intestines would be novel for you. Speaking of which, aren't you hungry?" But when they arrived in the kitchen, Frellyx was equally fascinated by the shelves: particle board slats of the lowest grade. So she carved from a leg of hiltryak, tore bread from a baguette, and found guliope that were only a little overripe. Guliope was better when overripe, though, as it improved the sweetness. Then she stooped to pick up Frellyx, who would not have been able to reach the giant table from the kitchen stool, and put him on the table.

"And, since Otoka has been known to be impatient for his meals, I'll add a bit of practice to this lovely picnic," said Eurilda, then cast a diminishment spell to put her on an even stature with Frellyx and, as she still weighed a pebble due to her earlier enchantment, jumped from the floor to the table top.

Frellyx had not waited on her, but stopped mid-chew, with the food balled up in his cheek, to say, "While giants made interesting advances in woodcraft, elves did away with the ugly business of apprentice sorcerers centuries ago."

"You live for centuries, and learn to play nice by necessity," said Eurilda, kneeling next to the cross-legged elf.

"Yes, you would think so," said Frellyx, stopping mid sentence to swallow, then continuing, "but universities are a cutthroat environment. Still, the power of our professors is diminished by not being in loco parentis guardians as well. We're pupils, not props for a sorcerer's prestige." He took a bite of the crusty baguette, which Eurilda had slathered with a spread made from oil and shaved cheese.

"You're saying I'm part of a show," said Eurilda, "a piece in an entourage, for which I have no argument."

"That's reasonable," said Frellyx, "and this is delicious," he added, indicating the spread on his plate. "Thank you. I wish we could have been friends."

Eurilda chewed her food, and said nothing to this, so Frellyx continued, "I never thanked you for solving my problem."

Eurilda swallowed, and looked at him. "Think nothing of it. I do, because I don't know what you're talking about. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you had a problem, I'd do my best to exacerbate it."

"I'll allow that there's a universe in which there's a right way to take that," answered Frellyx, "as I'm also being facetious. I meant to say thank you for taking Khyte off my hands. He's a wonderful friend and the best of men, but occasionally I grow tired of companionship, and when you swooped in, as you did, with your wooden illusions that tried so hard to be innocuous, I jumped at the opportunity to enjoy the serenity of my own thoughts for a space."

Eurilda reddened in rage and embarrassment, but the combination of the reins of the geas and the reorienting of her egotism left her a little dizzy. She felt an urge to crush this elf, but fear of Otoka and what he would do if she slew a traveler in his kitchen would have stopped her had not the geas stopped her balled fists first. "I must bring you to Otoka. Come," she said.

"I'm still eating, and you have a letter to open," he said.

"Neither of us have a choice in the matter. Come or be carried." She leaped off the table, and, as enforcing her threat was her next order of business, resumed her normal size.

"I see," said Frellyx. "An apprenticeship geas, either compelling your master's order or proscribing violence in the manor. Fascinating. Though they were popular two hundred years ago in Alfyria, yours is the first I've seen in over twenty years. Tell me how it feels?"

In answer, Eurilda seized Frellyx by the back of his shirt and dragged him out of the kitchen. The elf's heels scraped all the way down the hall before she let him find his footing. Even then, instead of leading the way, she let him walk in front of her, shoving him right or left until they arrived at the main classroom.

Otoka paused his lecture when Eurilda and Frellyx entered. Half a head taller than the average giant, and nearly half again as wide as his lectern, a width magnified by his voluminous silver and black robes, the giant sorcerer was massive and imposing. "Class," said Otoka, "work out problems nine and ten. If you finish, keep quiet until I return. If I do not return, go to your assigned duties upon the hour, and solve problems eleven through twenty for tomorrow." The sorcerer stepped into the hallway, and closed the door. "What is this about, and who are you?" he asked, looking toward Eurilda for the first half of his question, and toward Frellyx for its conclusion. "Oh, I see," he nodded. "Tsk. You triggered your geas. Again. That's the second time this month."

"Oh good," said Eurilda, "that means it didn't happen, since the month is a Nahurian invention. Nymerea doesn't have any moons, so we shouldn't have months, either."

"Some fictions," said Otoka, wryly, "are more convenient than truths."

"Don't quote my thesis," said Eurilda.

Otoka turned to the elf. Although he was unmistakably old, with a wizened tuft of a white beard, sparse eyebrows, and as bald as a tree stump, he was unbowed, and with thick muscles from the neck down that you'd expect on a career general. "I apologize for my student, although I trust her judgment and wonder what cause you gave her."

"None at all," said Frellyx, "I have only this letter."

"That's all? Give it here," said Otoka.

"Was I unclear?" asked the elf impishly. "It is for Eurilda."

"Do I know you?" asked the sorcerer, suddenly. "Surely I know you, because there can't be more than one elf so impertinent in The Five Worlds."

"I would wager that there are thousands, if not millions, knowing my people," said Frellyx, "but doubtless my reputation precedes me, given how your apprentice is known for having a mind and a mouth like an open door."

Eurilda felt the geas this time not only in her backbone, but her arms and legs, as it braced against her ill will and even clenched her jaw and made her tongue corpse-still, so that she could not embarrass her master. Otoka laughed to see his senior apprentice's discomfort, and said, "I remember. Your mutual friend, Khyte, sang this insolent elf's praises. Khyte was never the keenest blade, though he learned to hold his tongue around giants. Like you, I know my people well; we are not known for suffering fools."

"A scholar like yourself must admit, however, that there are many fables in which giants are known for being fools."

"Well, well," said Otoka. "Let's have your message then, so you can be on your way. Let's not read it in the hall, though, in the event that the message offends more than the messenger. I won't have my students' ears burning. Bring him," he ordered Eurilda, who dragged the elf with even less grace through the manor until they reached the sorcerer's reading room, which was lined with books, and had a large sofa crafted at a high cost in blood and sweat from monstrous bones, covered with throws made from gigantic feathers.

"Read it, then," the sorcerer commanded Frellyx.

"I swore that I would not," said the elf. "and that I would give it only to Eurilda."

"If it's from Khyte, I want no part of it," said Eurilda, and received a stern look from her master for the hidden meaning.

"Give it here," sighed the old sorcerer. "I'm sure it's nonsense, as that Drydanan could barely read books from his own world. Not that there's more than a handful of human books worth my time."

"Oh, I concur," agreed Frellyx. "With your thoughts on Hravakian literature, anyway. As for Khyte, when last I saw him, I considered that project finished: he had become not only articulate, but eloquent, and while only acquainted with the basics of science, he had the quiet, prepared, mind that comes from familiarity with the forms of knowledge. Moreover, I would guess him a better listener than anyone in this room. So as to this letter, since you are Eurilda's master and guardian, I'll allow it...if you recant your base discourtesy towards my friend." Frellyx then proffered the letter politely. Eurilda suppressed her laugh at the minuscule elf, who thought to hold accountable a giant sixty times his weight, that could eat two months' of the elf's lunches in a single meal, and that was the mightiest sorcerer known in The Five Worlds. It shamed her a bit to see him stand up to Otoka, as even when Khyte and she were in a good place, she would never have thought to stand up to slights against him, and certainly not at the risk of embarrassment or injury. And what was the point in protecting the reputation of a friend that was several years behind him and a world away?

"Fear not, insolent elf, my sights are set higher than either your friend's honor or your own. Forgive me," said Otoka, then took and opened the letter, unfolded the enclosed paper, and read aloud, "Once dear, always remembered, but better forgotten, Eurilda.." He cleared his throat, as if for a dramatic pause, but the harrumph stretched into a gargle, then into a rattle, then into a hacking cough, and blood spattered the page. By reflex, his left hand clenched on the letter, scrunching it into a crumple, and his right hand reached for his neck.

Eurilda had never touched her master, and even in this moment, she did not relax this inhibition, but stayed respectfully back from the convulsing sorcerer. Her blood raced and her breath tightened as Otoka slumped against the wall, and his eyes dimmed, but did not die, as he managed a silent series of gestures, and the coughing abruptly stopped.

Otoka stood, and said to Eurilda, "Come. They will soon be at the walls. Bring that one." She seized Frellyx by his arm and towed him behind her.

"I did not know," said Frellyx.

"Be quiet," commanded Otoka. "We do not have long. Do you think I do not know a fool when I see one? I know you are not to blame." He strode forward and led them through the manor, arriving at a large laboratory that was built like a stone coffin, with the walls and ceiling all of the same deep black stone. "Eurilda, I need the copper spellglass, and the small silver bowls." Otoka rolled up the sleeves of his charcoal gray robe, and began selecting vials and bottles from a stocked shelf of alchemicals, putting them on a metal cart as he did so, which he then wheeled over to the central work table. Eurilda found both the spellglass and the stacked bowls in a curtained closet , and she dropped Frellyx to the floor as she retrieved them. The elf staggered to his feet and sprinted for the door, which he found too heavy to budge.

Otoka pricked his thumb with a slender steel needle, and after the blood pooled in the smallest bowl, he took the copper spellglass, held it to his eyes, spun its brass wheels and knobs, and gazed at the drops. Then he handed the spellglass to Eurilda without comment, and began to pour vials into the largest bowl. As Eurilda only saw a streaked red blur through the optical contraption, she fiddled with the objective to find her point of focus, and when the image resolved, the spellglass fell from her hands to clatter on the tabletop.

"If you break my spellglass, Eurilda, I'll ban you from my lab."

"Master!" she said. "Tell me what to do."

"As my chief apprentice, Eurilda, you must save my students. This may help," he said, funneling the concoction into a bottle. "Once you have fled, I will shore up the manor."

"You must come with us," said Eurilda.

"By staying here, I might stem the tide so fate flows in your favor." Otoka turned to her directly and looked into her eyes. "But make no mistake: no matter what I do, they are coming."

"Who is coming?"

"Sorcerers. Assassins. My cannibal opponents at council," he said.

"Cannibals?" Frellyx mustered a weak laugh. "Your master jokes, yet you seem so serious."

"This one sees only with his eyes," said Otoka. "I thought he was a sorcerer?"

"I dabbled for a decade or two" said Frellyx, "but you must forgive me for being rusty, as that was long ago."

"Ah. A recanter," said Otoka. "Do you not know this is why you fly all over The Five Worlds? If you do not spin the webs, they will spin you. Even a god does not take up magic only to put it down again. Sorcery is a jealous art." Otoka decanted another compound into a long vial, then faced the elf. "I will explain it in a way that might pierce the fog of your drug-addled brain. I am a dead man, murdered by the spell that you brought in that envelope, and this manor, one of the last bastions of enlightenment in the nescient city of Uenarak, is surrounded by giants: assassins, sorcerers, cannibals. Nay, the word cannibal does not encompass their depravity, as these are zealots in a cannibal cult that seeks to convert all of Uenarak to its degraded theology, and all of the Five Worlds to fodder for an army of giants..." The old giant trailed off, then said, "Eurilda will explain on the way."

"No, master!" said Eurilda.

"Disobedient to the end, I regret," said Otoka, "and my end, not yours, which doesn't seem fair."

"You've succeeded," said Frellyx. "I'm frightened, though I don't believe you in the slightest. You just described the worst of all possible futures. What doesn't make sense is—why now?"

"For the past few years, in the resurgence of these atavistic influences, their desire to maintain a semblance of propriety protected us, but I started laying the wards the first time they tried to lay me low in my own house, knowing I could no longer trust in the politeness of my political enemies."

"And the wards die with him," snapped Eurilda.

"But...how did they enspell the letter?"

"Who cares?" said Eurilda.

"She could be nicer, but she does not lie," said Otoka, appearing somewhat paler. "You don't have long."

"Wait," said Frellyx. "Perhaps I can fix this."

"Unless you can muddle your way through a ward spell after centuries of clouding your mind, there's nothing you can do."

"While I am out of practice, Otoka need not die. One of the few spells I still use is the death glamour. Have you heard of it?"

"We call it the sleep of death," said Otoka. "I prohibited that spell, as it bears risks that I wouldn't allow my students to suffer. It might work. For a few days, at best."

"We could take you to Ielnarona," sais Eurilda. "The dryads could cure you."

"I forbid it," said Otoka. "I must maintain the wards until you escape with my students."

"Why?" asked Eurilda desperately. Turning to Frellyx, she asked, "would it work?"

"Yes. The death glamour, as an illusion of death, suspends the processes of life, so that it theoretically should slow down a true death..."

Eurilda cut him off. "I don't need the lecture. Cast your spell. Now!"

Otoka, realizing that his senior apprentice was about to save his life at the possible cost of those in his care, began to mutter darkly, but whatever incantation it was shushed when Frellyx, with the adroitness and alacrity that came from long habit, shot out the syllables of his own spell, and tapped the giant on the shin. When Otoka turned an even whiter pallor, it was too much for Eurilda, tears sprang unbidden, and she seized Frellyx.

"He lives!" shrieked the elf. "Your master lives!"

The giantess stared into Frellyx's averted eyes, as if she could see truth lurking in the whites, threw him onto the work table, and then lowered her head, first to Otoka's breast, and then to the sorcerer's mouth. This was the first time she touched her master, and though she was cold with fear and shivering with grief, she felt she had attained something in touching him, something more than relief, though he was as still as one dead.

"His heart does not beat, and there is no breath," she said.

"It does, and there is," insisted Frellyx, "but too slow for you to hear. Quickly—cast your diminishment spell."

The walls shook then, as if rattled by a great wind. "The wards have fallen," said Eurilda. "You will help."

"That is what I am doing," said Frellyx. "I swear it."

"No," said Eurilda. "We must do as Otoka bade, and save as many as we can, or though he lives, I will die from shame." She cast her diminishment spell upon her master, and put him in the same pouch upon which she had once put the elf Azuri. She mulled that she had cleaned it three times before the shit smell abated, and she regretted putting her teacher in there; also, she realized that this was the first time that she had touched her master. "You will have to be a bigger man than you are," said Eurilda, extending her finger in an enchantment, then stepped back as Frellyx swelled to her height, but much wider, as the Alfyrians are very muscular, and Frellyx, well-proportioned for his kind, kept his natural proportions at the giantish scale. Now he looked a match for any three giants. "Draw your sword and follow me," she said, then picked up the vial and bottle that Otoka had mixed, and seeing the crumpled letter lying on the floor, picked that up as well.

As they hastened to the students' quarters, a scream shook the dark corridor. "That was the kitchen," said Eurilda. "They will have entered by the servants' quarters."

"As you said, this is not the time for talking," said Frellyx, suddenly seeming much more confident, as if courage had filled him along with the enlargement of his flesh. "Lead the way."

"You're not my master, elf," snapped Eurilda. They continued through the manor until they stepped into the upper hall of the main gallery, where they saw below them, in the lower hall, the most depraved and monstrous-looking of giants dragging nets bearing a clump of balled up child-giants, still in their bed-clothes.

Another giant hurled a large dark net up at them, but it hit the balcony rail and fell back. Frellyx fired back, a blazing golden bolt that leaped from his outstretched hand, and it would have looked very impressive if it had been on a giant's scale, and not on an elf's, which it was. The fiery dart struck home, but seemed to be swallowed up by the enormity of its target...until the telltale halo of smoke rose from its scalp, followed by a burst of flame, and when the giant's head became a flaming death's head, it rolled around on the floor and screamed until its voice kindled along with its crackling skull. While the giant was burning to death, everyone in the lower hall and the gallery above held perfectly still, until Frellyx leaped down with his outstretched sword.

When she tried to jump down behind him, and the geas still sang in her spine and reeled her back two steps, Eurilda scowled. She was relieved to know that Otoka indeed still lived, but frustrated that the spell still compelled her to keep Khyte's offspring safe. And as Frellyx could surely not fight five giants by himself, and the geas would allow her to do nothing that could endanger Khyte's unborn child, she ran to the stairs, and this brought her down behind the giants, where the students were tangled in the nets.

Rather than trusting to common sense, which told her to help Frellyx in his uneven fight, she surrendered herself to the geas, and cut free the students, whose safety was the last thing that Otoka bade. Eurilda thanked the geas, for if it were not for that, she could not do as she ought, as the foremost thing in her mind was the grief for the death of her master which her senses told her was real despite the assurances of the elf, and the second most thing in her mind was her consuming passion and despising of Khyte. Yes, Eurilda thanked the geas, which simulated a conscience in her, although the sliver of conscience that she truly possessed was grateful that Otoka had not bade her to assist him in his self-destruction or forbade her from saving his life. Had Otoka the presence of mind to do that, and not attempt to block Frellyx's spell with a spell of his own, her master would now be in his final throes.

She did not care what happened to the elf, but if she did, she would have had no reason to fear, for Frellyx was once Khyte's peer with the sword until her lover's natural talent acquired the elf's refinements and surpassed him, but compared to the brutal giant thuggees in front of Frellyx, his sword was in so many places at once that they could not press the advantage of their greater numbers. Frellyx fought defensively, though, yielding a yard at a time, because if he pressed the attack it might give one the opening that they needed. And all seemed lost when two more of the assassins arrived in the hallway behind Frellyx.

Despite her malice toward the Alfyrian, she cried out, "behind you!" This caused two of the giants facing Frellyx to wheel upon her, which was the death of one of them, as this created a large gap in the wall of swords through which he impaled one in the neck and rocked back on his heel just quick enough to mellow a decapitating blow, so that it only grazed his cheek instead. The elf drew another blade from the hem of his cloak, a truncated falchion with a dull iron blade, and turned so that his left flank faced his new assailants, and his right side faced the others. Though he inclined his head by slight degrees to the left and the right in order to keep his eyes on all of them, it was only a matter of time before they wore Frellyx down.

Keep the students safe, said the geas, which now became, keep this elf alive, because she knew of only one other warrior in The Five Worlds with more skill, and that one was not here to help her protect Otoka's apprentices. I wish I wasn't crap with a sword, she thought to herself, steeling herself to face the lone giant in front of her. He swung straight at her middle, and she jumped back, but lost her balance and fell to one knee before she caught herself with her left hand.

As the students ran to the stairs, the assassin raised his sword overhead and brought it down on Eurilda, who raised her own blade to meet it. Here was where Eurilda had a lucky break, for her sword was forged from the shorn flank of the iron mountain Irutak. It was a goblin blade of the highest quality—even Eurilda did not deny that goblins made the best blades in The Five Worlds, and for this one they shaped a dense, obdurate, steel to an unrelenting edge, and her parry cleaved the opposing sword. While the giantess wasn't an artist with a sword, she had drilled enough to know to follow through, and follow through she did, with her sword's edge biting hard into forehead and brains behind, so that her sword was wrenched from her hand when the cannibal fell. But she didn't have time to pull it free, as Frellyx's parries were now flagging. When she cast a lighten enchantment on the one closest to her, then shoved him hard against the two to Frellyx's right flank, so that they all sprawled, the one closest was decapitated by his careless looking backhand as he turned to the ones on his left.

Frellyx seemed bored with two against one, and quickly ended it, striking one in the sternum with such force that the giant shuddered on the point before he died; then he swung the falchion with a slice as light and fast as a flyswatter, which made the giant all the more surprised to find himself holding in his bowels before collapsing in a pool of entrails.

That was when ten more assassins entered the gallery.

"Down the stairs!" shouted Eurilda, then added, "you too, elf!" The students jostled each other on their way down the narrow stairwell. The shoving continued farther than Eurilda thought it would, as long after they passed into the darkness, they were still trying to walk three abreast in a circular stair that could only allow one at a time, or two child-giants, at best. The spell-sconces were unlit, and as the giantess wasn't about to light them to make it easier on their pursuers, they continued their haphazard descent until a few minutes later, when spell-light glinted at the top of the stairwell, and she spoke the syllables to activate the lights. When the lights flickered on the assassins rushing down the steps, the children pushed even harder against each other.

"To the Doorway," Eurilda called out when they neared the bottom flight, and the students fled through a perfectly round passageway into a deep and abiding gray, a gray so oppressive that it tainted the children with grayness as they passed to the other side.

One of the older students, Jynatu, a black-braided giantess whose plumpness came from an undying fondness for sweets, turned before she entered the passageway into the catacombs, and said, "What of the others?"

"Quiet. Unless I believe there are no others, the geas will not let me leave. Be glad that you're the bird in the hand."

"And the beast? And the sentry?"

"Don't frighten the children. We'll be behind you." Eurilda and Frellyx stood at the bottom of the steps and waited for the last of the students to disappear down the passageway. "Wait as long as you can before following us," Eurilda said to Frellyx.

"I'm coming with you," said Frellyx, stepping through the passageway before her. "I'm not fighting ten giants." The elf sprinted ahead.

"Worm!" shouted Eurilda, then ran after him. When blue sparks shot past them and dissipated into the gray stone of the catacombs, the giantess picked up her pace and was about to pass Frellyx when the elf turned, flung another fiery needle back at the onrushing assassins, then continued running.

"Where are we going?" panted Frellyx. "They'll soon corner us."

Eurilda saved her breath, as it was grueling to run so long while bearing child. Though not unhealthy, the giantess had never been much of a runner, and now she was so ungainly that she could not find the right rhythm for her gait. So she ran, and ran, and ran, until her panting became heaving, then sucking at the stale air, then breathless fish-like gulps, until at last, when they poured into a large grotto. The dark stone of this cavern, spotted by black, volcanic glass, seemed to have erupted into the uninterrupted gray of the catacombs, and it broke the unrelenting gray pattern of that ancient grid. Sleeping like a cat in the middle of that humongous bubble of rock, was Otoka's guardian cutornu, a creature like a manticore, if a manticore was the size of an elephant, with two heads, muscular haunches the size of small huts, and wings that looked more like razor-sharp metal fans than a means of flight. At the sight of the immense monster, the elf barked a stammering shout of alarm, and the guardian seemed to double in volume as it stood on its columnar legs.

For all of Frellyx's vaunted observational skills, he did not notice the fearlessness of the giant children, as they ran under the cutornu's legs, and the elf stood there, stock still, taking in the enormity of the monstrosity, so that he was an easy target when the giants funneled in behind them. As there was no time for any other stratagem, Eurilda released her control on the elf's enlargement spell, so that when the two giants swung their swords, in what were surely decapitating arcs, their blades cleaved only air, and the overextended assassins collided. When one fell to the rocky floor, the other fell on top.

Frellyx, finding himself suddenly deflated, reeled, as if all the blood in his enlarged feet had ended up in his normal-sized head, but he still had the presence of mind to backpedal, then turn, then dash after the apprentices. He skidded on an enormous streak of saliva, as the slavering cutornu, seeing an abundance of appetizing meat, drooled on the floor of the grotto. But the elf picked himself up, ran to the passageway's continuation on the opposite cavern wall, and disappeared within its mouth.

Eurilda knew that there might be twenty, fifty, or a hundred more assassins, that it would be prudent to leave the assassins to their grisly end, and that Otoka's geas would compel her to do so before a minute had passed, but there was a stronger compulsion that she could not resist—the cruelty of her own heart. So she waited out the minute at the passageway's mouth.

When the cutornu pulled its chain taut to down a giant with two choking bites, the other giants split up, with some moving left, and others running right, but they were dismayed to discover that the chain reached every nook and cranny. Eurilda had forged the chain for her journeyman sorcerer's test, in which Otoka required his apprentices to design one non-magical tool, "to demonstrate that cleverness was its own reward, and magic only one tool among many." While another journeyman was to make the collar, Eurilda forged the chain to secure the cutornu in the obsidian cave. Eurilda resented the test, and was insolent during the oral portion. When asked why the chain was so long, she retorted "why handicap a guard meant to disembowel thieves?" Otoka laughed, agreed, and, to her great embarrassment, singled the young giantess out for praise not only that year, but for every journeyman's test since. Not even now—as the cutornu's wings halved three giants with one slash, or as its heavy paw pinned another to the ground while its slavering jaws twisted off the giant's head—did she feel that simply making a long chain a little longer was worthy of Otoka's recognition. She was watching not inspiration unfold with the chain, but common sense, and feeling only the momentary rush of her innate cruelty, not the sophisticated moral pleasure of vengeance. Their deaths didn't satisfy because they were the dull links of a chain: no story, no moral, no symmetry in the experience.

"What are you waiting for," said a small voice behind her. It was Frellyx. Absently, she restored the elf's enlargement, and he swelled again into enormity.

"For them."

Frellyx did not answer, but sat with her as the beast slew the giants. "This is no victory," said the elf.

"No," said the giantess, "unless you can say that a dog vanquishes a bone. I was hoping one or two would make it to this side."

"That isn't wise," said Frellyx. "There may be others, and who is to say whether the next force through that passage can overwhelm Otoka's pet."

"Curse your reasonableness," sighed Eurilda. "It has activated my geas. Let's go."

"If it dispelled the clouds of the geas," said Frellyx, "does that not make it good advice?"

When they trotted down the passageway, there was a jagged break where the volcanic stone gave way to the ancient gray of the catacombs.

For a few moments, Eurilda had felt a connection with the Alfyrian, but then he ruined it with a lecture. Why didn't this insufferable elf ask questions like anyone else? Why must he be an authority in everything?

The students had gathered in a large hemispherical catacomb. The circularity of the room was near perfect, and the passageway continued at the other end.

"How old are you, Frellyx?"

"Five hundred and forty-three in the Alfyrian calendar. Five hundred and forty in the Uenarakian."

In that moment, she hated the elf and her own unbridled curiosity. "How do giants misplace three years?"

Jynatu smiled, and said, "I know this! Because we don't use the true Nahurian month, we lose three days a year." Then she frowned. "Where are the others?" she asked.

"Right behind us," lied Eurilda.

"We should wait."

"No," said Eurilda, then intoned in a stammer that suggested she only recently committed the invocation to memory. As she did so, a diaphanous sphere materialized in the exact center of the room, and from the surface of the hovering orb stemmed four ethereal tentacles. It was a perfectly clear magical construct, with its only dimensions being the barely visible parameters of the spells that gave it volume and animation.

"A ward sphere," said Frellyx. "I've only read of those."

"You've only revealed it," said Jyantu. "Are you going to deactivate it?"

"I thought I did," said Eurilda. When she carefully enunciated the last stanza of the syllabic formula, nothing happened. "Am I saying it wrong?" She attempted a third time.

"Your pronunciation is good," said Jyantu, "but that's the old trigger code. Otoka changed it last month."

"You're right," said Eurilda. "I remember that now, but not the new code word."

"It's OK," said Jyantu. "I have it." When she intoned the last verse with the correct form, the ward sphere's tentacles balled around itself tightly.

"I don't want to know how you know this," said Eurilda, "as Otoka may recover, and my geas would compel me to divulge what I know. But I imagine some of you secretly travel to Wywynanoir, Kreona, and other cities in The Five Worlds. Promise never to do something so reckless again."

"We promise," said some of the students.

"I don't," scoffed Jyantu. "But I won't tell."

"Do as you will," said Eurilda. "It matters little. I am to earn my sorcerer's staff soon enough, and then it will be you in the third tower, laced tightly with the spell strings of a geas that will compel you to worry for these brats." Eurilda remembered the day, two years ago, that she passed her senior apprentice test and took possession of the third tower, which was five times the size of the room she shared with three students. In the pride of her achievement, she had thought her only hardship was figuring out how to move her belongings through the window of the stairless, doorless, tower room, when Otoka told her of the increased responsibilities of her new position, the seriousness of which he reinforced with the absolute authority of the geas. Though the spell was painless on first touch, it wasn't long before the artificial conscience trained her with discomfort, pricking her when she thought irresponsibly and cramping her limbs when she acted foolishly. Now she looked forward more to the extraction of the geas than the receipt of her sorcerer's staff.

They crossed the spherical room to pass through the dimly lit, but no less gray, passage on the other side, and the luminosity magnified as they proceeded, until they arrived at another room through which the bale light flickered. Inside the chamber, an inverted cone of gray illumination gyrated in its far wall, and smoke poured through the slash in reality, so that the room was hip deep in the vapors. On the floor was a shuddering, black, mass; it whined and whimpered such inconsolable tones that Eurilda's eyes watered, and her fingers went to her ears by reflex, but they stopped halfway there when she heard another sound that made her smile—Frellyx phrasing his curiosity as a question, like normal people.

"What is that light?" the elf asked, forgetting himself. "And how is a Baugn underground? It should be dead."

Eurilda recognized the creature then, realizing that disbelief had blocked her from noting it for what it was. She stooped by the side of the noble, ugly, beast, and laid her hand on its breast. Its pounding heart drummed against her palm, and seemed to echo in the room. "It will be," she said. "It must have arrived by this Doorway. Has Khyte not told you about Doorways?"

"Do you mean the portals between worlds? He called them Furrows," said the elf with a little too much innocence for Eurilda's taste. Only Khyte would keep a bad joke running that long.

"Doorways," said Eurilda. "It obviously arrived by the Doorway. Which means there is a Doorway so high as to be accessible by Baugn."

"That would serve no purpose," said Frellyx, "if the Doorways are themselves conveyances. What would be the point of flying a Baugn into one? The Baugn found its way here by accident."

"You know so much now," said Eurilda, "much more than mere moments ago." She laughed, a forced laugh that none of the others shared with her.

"I don't understand," said the elf. "Is there some giant custom I'm not observing?"

"Forget it," said Eurilda. "Or rather, you can explain it to me later, once you understand."

"Am I to understand that I'm being insulted?"

"Yes, but if you have to ask, I doubt that you understand it." This finally got from the other students the validating titter that Eurilda wanted.

"We must take it with us," Jyantu blurted out. "The poor beast is dying."

Eurilda retrieved the ancient controller from its sconce in the wall—it was a preternaturally bright dagger, with a blade that retained only the gray of the catacombs in its pure surface. Had she looked at it, she knew from experience that it would be proof from the reflections of the giantess, the elf, any of the other students, or any object in the world other than the catacombs. "We're going to Wywynanoir, on the Dryad World. Perhaps it can find its way to the skies from there."

"No! You can't" said the student. "If you connect the Doorway to Ielnarona, the Baugn may never get back."

"That follows," said Frellyx, "as we can presume that the Doorway may still connect to the beast's point of departure, but if you order up a route to Wywynanoir, its path will be erased."

"While that is sensible," said Eurilda, her brow creased and her fists clenched, "if you do not do what I bid, and follow me to safe haven, I won't be responsible for what the geas makes me do."

"Who is to say safe haven isn't on the other side now?"

"To a a Baugn, safe haven means a perch or precipice inhospitable to us."

"There may be one other alternative," said the elf, "which your master, and all of Uenarak, will want to know. It may even provide some respite for your current political situation."

"Which you presume to know."

"I can surmise it, from the allegations of cannibalism and that giants eat 300 pounds a day."

"I'll give you two minutes."

"Help me first" said Frellyx, stooping at one end of the Baugn. When Eurilda reluctantly stooped at the other, the giantess and the enlarged elf carried the bulky world-beast through the Doorway. Frellyx backed into the gray light with the Baugn's head and forequarters, but when Eurilda's fingertips would have passed into the glowing gray vortex, she dropped her end and stepped back.

The students waited, then waited some more. Eurilda was certain that it had been much longer than two minutes. Though sorry to lose the Alfyrian's prowess, she needed to fulfill what Otoka had bade, and prepared to redirect the Doorway. When she was about to select the ancient inscription that signified Wywynanoir, Frellyx emerged. The elf's height was reset, so that he came no higher than a giant's lower thigh, since passing through the gray light separated him from Eurilda's influence.

"I was right." The students laughed longer than they should have at the Alfyrian's tiny voice, for it was only a little funny, but after being chased by assassins under the legs of a cutornu, they were looking for an excuse to break the tension. When Eurilda gestured, the elf swayed as he was stretched to a giant's height for the third time that day..

"Explain, You know you want to..." Eurilda was interrupted by Frellyx's shrill cry.

"Behind you!" The volley of javelins rained upon them, not only piercing the students in the back row, but some arching over, so that one struck through Jyantu hard enough to knock the life out of her on the spot, and pinned the dead girl to the ground as her corpse fell forward from the impact. When another flew at Eurilda's head, she flinched left, and if she had only pulled left an eighth inch more, it would have grazed her, but the javelin drew blood as it tore past her temple, and a red flow drowned her right eye.

"Run!" screamed Eurilda, drawing her sword. How? How had they passed the guardian and the ward sphere?

The assassins, now outnumbering the survivors of their volley, stepped from the catacomb passageway and moved forward with blades drawn.

"Move and die," said one, a robed and cowled giant with a sorcerer's cloak and a long wooden staff painted red.

When the students bolted for the Doorway, she felt a sense of pride that may not have been the geas whispering. Educated by Uenarak's greatest cynic and skeptic, they knew that the reverse—stop, and die—was as likely true as the insincere threat. To make their courage count, Eurilda stepped towards the giants—only to duck when a fiery lance scattered the assassins. Frellyx then seized Eurilda under her arms and dragged the half-blind giantess through the Doorway.

To go from a low stone ceiling that smelled of salt and dust, to an infinite black expanse irradiated by vermilion, caused the giantess, already staggering from a head wound, to fall to the grass—an absurdly placid fall, as if adrift in water, a fall with the temerity to try her patience when she expected the curtains drawn. She had the good sense to vomit before she fainted, not after.