Noote's eyes opened wide. "Kol dead too?" he thundered, glaring at Sart. "Who at High Gate?"

Sart swallowed nervously. "No one," he admitted.

The chief snatched his bone dagger from his belt, but managed to keep himself from hurling it at Sart's helpless form. "Go back!" he thundered. He pointed the tip of his knife at two more giants. "You, too!"

The two new sentries jumped from their seats and lifted Morten off Sart, then the three sentries could not scramble from the lodge quickly enough. After watching the trio leave, Brianna turned back to Noote with a bemused smile.

"There's no need for such concern. The ogres won't be bothering you." Brianna motioned at her two companions. "Morten and Tavis stopped them."

At the mention of the scout's name, an astonished buzz rustled through the chamber. Tavis Burdun was as famous among Noote's tribe as he was among humans- perhaps more so, since he'd often been called upon to track down and slay their rogues. A crowd of curious hill giants began to gather, and Morten quickly pushed his way between them to protect the unconscious scout. As he did so. Brianna noticed the wart-covered face of the dancing slave peering down at Tavis from between two burly shoulders. The princess was surprised by the adoration on the slave's face, for she knew Tavis's arrows had also thinned the ranks of many fomorian tribes.

Brianna's attention was drawn back to Noote and his queen when, after a lengthy consultation with his wife, the chieftain asked, "Them firbolgs kill all ogres?"

The sneer on Noote's lip made it clear that he did not believe they had.

Brianna shook her head. "No, just one," she said. "Goboka."

She smirked hugely, deliberately twisting her face into an expression the hill giants would find difficult to read. In spite of her words, the princess was painfully aware that the shaman had only been driven away, not killed. She avoided lying when possible, but had learned on her father's knee that diplomatic necessity sometimes dictated saying things that were not strictly true.

In this case, convincing Noote and his queen that her firbolgs had actually killed Goboka served two very important goals. First, if they thought the ogre was dead, they would not be tempted to return her to him. Second, if they knew how powerful the shaman was, they might well think it wisest not to anger those who had killed him.

Much to Brianna's relief, her strategy seemed to be working. Noote and his queen had pressed their faces cheek to cheek and were whispering furiously into each other's ears. So intense was their conversation that the princess could hear certain words flying back and forth, among them "spirit," "ogre," and her father's name. Finally, after a particularly sharp exchange, the queen shoved her husband away.

"Tell me, if Goboka is dead, why do you need an escort from us?" asked the queen.

The princess's jaw dropped. It was a rare giant who could speak so articulately, and for a hill giant to express herself so fluently was unheard of. Brianna could see that she had badly underestimated the queen. By the standards of her race, at least, the giantess was a genius. Even among the earls of Hartwick, she would have to be considered shrewd-and therefore dangerous.

"Perhaps the reason you can't answer my question is that Goboka isn't dead."

The queen was probing, trying to convince Brianna that she knew more than she really did. It was a trick the princess had seen her father use often. "Goboka is dead," she replied. "Unless having his head severed and his heart pulled from his chest does not kill an ogre shaman."

Brianna added this last part in an innocent voice, as though she were really afraid that such treatment might not have killed her enemy.

The queen smiled at Brianna's response. "No, I'm quite sure you killed him if you did that," she replied. "But I'm afraid we won't be returning you to your father."

A cold ball of dread formed in tile princess's stomach. "I warn you, the king will be angry if you don't help me."

The queen's smile turned into a sneer. "I think not, my dear," she said, glancing at the raven on her shoulder. "You see, he said we could take you to the Twilight Vale ourselves."

Avner could remember exactly when he had last been this cold-inside the Needle Peak glacier, wading up the icy stream to rescue Brianna. He had almost died.

He felt certain he was about to die now, as the wind howled along the cliff face, spraying the stone-which was already slick-with freezing sleet, coating the hoisting chain with clear ice, and stealing the warmth from his body with each clatter of his teeth. The thief could hardly bend the frozen fingers on his good hand, but that really did not matter, since it was trembling so hard that he would not trust it to support his weight anyway.

Avner was two links from the bottom of the hoisting chain, his body wedged through the loop and swinging in the freezing wind. He had no concept of how long he had been hanging there, for the last thing he remembered was his stomach rising toward his throat as Kol stepped off the end of the platform.

The sky had arced out of sight in a single flash, and he had found himself staring at the distant spires of the fir forest below. Then Kol's hand crashed into something hard and flew open. Avner felt rough iron scraping down his back and realized it was the chain. He twisted around, arms flaying madly, and nearly wrenched his arm out of its socket as he jammed his hand through a link.

The chain crashed into the cliff. Avner felt the bones in his wrist being mashed to powder as the chain ground his arm against the cliff. His entire body went limp; had his hand not been trapped, he would have plunged after Kol into the trees below. But his pain served him well, reminding him that he was still alive and might stay that way if he reacted quickly enough. With his good hand, the boy grabbed hold of the link and pulled himself up, wedging his body through the center as it twisted away from the wall. He banged into the granite several more times, less violently than before, then his pain washed over him like a dark, cold river, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, and the chain was still swinging. The wind was howling, Avner's teeth were chattering, and the boy did not know whether the laughter spilling from his throat was caused by joy or hysteria. But he did know that he had to get off this mountain, and fast. By morning, the only thing lodged in this link would be a hunk of frozen flesh.

Avner wrapped an arm around the outside of the icy loop, then pulled himself up until he could work a leg through the opening and straddle the bottom. The link was just tall enough that he could sit hunched inside it. He tried to examine his injured arm by moonlight, but the shadows under the platform were too thick to see clearly. All he could tell for certain was that it was horribly swollen, and he could not bend it from the elbow down.

"I sure hope Brianna's still alive," he whispered, not quite certain why he was afraid to speak out loud. If there had been any giants on the platform above, he would have heard their footsteps echoing through the timbers.

Avner drew his dagger and cut the sleeve away from his injured arm, then used the cloth to bind his arm to his side. Next, he took his rope off his shoulder and tied a series of loops. By the time he finished, he had a makeshift ladder of about a dozen feet, easily twice as long as he needed to reach from one link to the next.

The boy passed the rope through the link above, pushing the line through one of the loops he had tied to secure it in place. He slipped his good arm, still trembling from the cold, into another loop and began to climb. The young thief moved quickly and efficiently, for many times he had used similar techniques to climb the exterior of some tower that supposedly could not be scaled-though he had seldom found anything inside worth the trouble. Once he had even used the method to climb from Earl Dobbin's well, after he had been forced to jump down the pit to elude a company of murderous guards.