Ulutiu raised his head and to his lips came a smile. Across the ice he dragged himself, to where Cold Ocean lapped at the brink of his death-raft, and into the crimson waters he plunged his arm. For a long time he remained there, motionless, until it seemed the life had passed from his body, and the Mother Queen wailed forth her grief. From her mouth spilled the Hundred-Day Night, and that is why winter and darkness are as brother and sister in the northlands.

But Ulutiu had not yet passed from this world. The Ocean King rolled onto his back and pulled his hand from the cold waters, and on his fingertips hung five crystals of ice. They had the color of gems; they were emerald and sapphire, ruby, amber, and one as white as a diamond. The Ocean King plucked the crystals off his fingers and pressed them all to his collar, and there they hung as on a chain.

Ulutiu closed his eyes and from his throat came a long sigh; then did his spirit leave the world, as fog rises from the cold waters, and a shimmering fan of color soared from each crystal to dance like ghosts high in the sky. Thus were the Boreal Lights born. Then Cold Ocean encircled his death-raft with a towering waterspout and sprayed a shroud of ice over his body. The spout spun faster, and the shroud became a veil; faster it spun, and the veil thickened into a mantle, then into a coffin, and soon the ice had grown thick as a tomb.

The waterspout whirled faster, spraying the tomb with layer after layer of sleet, until the mound became a drift, the drift a hill, the hill a mountain, and still it grew. The winds raged harder. The sea waters froze into an endless white plain, and the heavens grew as gray as steel. Cascades of snow tumbled from the sky. The tempest whipped the flakes to every corner of the Cold Ocean, to the east and west, and to the north and south, and to all places between, and the vastness of the frozen sea vanished into the white haze of blizzard.

The storm continued without end, month after month, and the seasons grew into years and the years into centuries. All this time did Othea watch, and though her hunger howled as the blizzard, she took no food. Inside her stomach, Annam's child gnawed at her womb, craving the sustenance to grow, but always the Mother Queen denied him, and kept herself alive only by drinking from the Well of Health. Never did the unborn giant-king grow strong enough to free himself, and the Mother Queen returned often to Cold Ocean to watch the snow pile layer upon layer. The sea became a looming wall of ice, as broad as the horizon and so high it scraped the belly of the sky, until it had grown so vast that the ocean bed could not hold it, and it slipped the ancient shore and began to creep southward, slow and inexorable.

Then did Othea's laughter burst across the land like the crack of a distant volcano, for in the glacier's path lay the pride of jealous Annam: Ostoria, Empire of Giants.

Upon the floor sat an orb of blue ice, its perfect surface polished as smooth as glass and its pith as transparent as air. The sphere's creator, the titan Lanaxis, stood beside it. Gathered around him were Nicias, dynast of cloud giants, and Masud, khan of fire giants. There were also Vilmos, paramount of storm giants, Ottar, jarl of frost giants, and all the other Sons of Annam, the eternal monarchs born of Othea and destined to rule the races of giant-kind as long as Ostoria endured.

It had been thousands of years since Othea had sent their father away, but even lacking Annam's guidance, Ostoria had grown large and powerful. It stretched so far that in two ten-days Lanaxis could not walk from one end to the other. The empire extended almost as far southward, to where kingdoms of dwarves and humans were rising. Each race of giants held dominion over one area of this vast realm, and so the Sons of Annam were scattered far and wide.

Rarely did the Sons convene, but when they did, it was here at Bleak Palace, Lanaxis's home. This day, the titan had summoned his fellows onto his wind-blasted veranda. Here, no wall or pillar blocked the northward view, where the vast-ness of the Great Glacier loomed beyond the frozen plain, creeping relentlessly southward to swallow their empire.

Lanaxis said, "I have called us together for good reason." As he spoke, wisps of inky blackness gathered in the depths of his ice orb. The giants showed no surprise, for magic came to titans as naturally as smashing to hill giants.

Lanaxis continued, "I have found Ulutiu's grave. Now can we destroy his crystal necklace, and with it the Great Glacier."

A murmur of support rustled among the Sons of Annam, for they hated the Great Glacier as they hated nothing else. But one giant, Dunmore, thane of wood giants, did not add his voice to the approving chorus.

"You have called us here for nothing." The thane's voice was as stiff as the bole of an ironwood tree. "Has Othea not forbidden us to set foot upon the Great Glacier?"

"We will not tell her we are going."

Lanaxis eyed the thane as he spoke. Dunmore was a runt for a giant, thinly built and standing barely as tall as the titan's thigh. With a hairless body, oversized head, and oak-colored skin, he looked more like kin than true giant, and Lanaxis often wondered if Othea had not lied about the wood giant's sire.

"You can't deceive Othea!" Dunmore gasped. "Her punish-"

"I love our empire too much to let ice wipe it away," Lanaxis interrupted. "I will save Ostoria-and after that is done, I'll gladly bear any punishment Othea lays on me."

Lanaxis shifted his attention to the other giants. "Let me show you where Ulutiu lies, and then it is my hope you will vow to help me."

The titan stepped away from the ice sphere and spoke a mystical command word. The inky wisps inside coalesced into the image of a winter night, with the Boreal Lights stretched across the darkness like a curtain of gossamer color. The lights danced for a moment, then a white cloud churned up from the orb's depths to engulf them in a raging blizzard. An instant later, the jagged tip of a mountain appeared in the storm.

The peak grew larger until its massive bulk completely filled the interior of the orb-then the sphere seemed to pass inside the mountain. The crag was made not of stone, but of blue clear ice, and it was streaked with the gemlike colors of the Boreal Lights. The globe drifted downward, following the dancing aura deeper into the mountain, until it reached a pool of crimson blood frozen in the ancient ice at the heart of the mountain.

In the center of the red stain, suspended in the ice, hung a slick-furred corpse that seemed part otter and part human. The figure had a slender body, broad flat arms ending in flip-perlike hands with long fingers, and feet turned outward to resemble a whale's fluke. On his chest lay a necklace of five crystals, and from each crystal shot one of the Boreal Lights.

"The ice mountain stands near the center of the Great Glacier," said Lanaxis. A chill as cold as his magical orb ran down his spine, for the titan hated the glacier as he hated nothing else on Toril. "To save Ostoria, we must go there and exhume Ulutiu, so that we may crush his necklace."

'That will be easier said than done," hissed Ottar. As the frost giant spoke, a cloud of vaporous breath spewed from his blue lips, then rose to obscure his white face and icy blue eyes. "The Great Glacier is vast, and the Eternal Blizzard will not make it easy for us to find our way."

"Leave the storm to me!" blustered Vilmos, paramount of storm giants. He was almost as large as a titan, with violet skin and a flowing beard of silver "But what about the glacier itself? After we reach the mountain, we'll never chop through all that ice. It could be ten thousand feet thick!"

It was Nicias, the cloud giant, who answered. "The ice does not concern me, my brother." His voice was as wispy as his white hair. 'Together, we Sons of Annam can accomplish much."