she’d throw bees in their face. That might actually work. Moss hornets were supposed to be pretty nasty: it was said you felt only the first sting because their venom numbed your nerves and eventually paralyzed you. Didn’t know if that would necessarily be true for a giant, but if it didn’t work, that hive was probably going to be dead in a few days anyway. I let them know that their hive was in danger and that it was the guy with the fiery axe who had it in for them. It took perhaps half a minute, but a cloud of iridescent black and green descended on that particular giant’s head. He roared and flared up, burning some of the hornets, but then the toxins overcame him and the flames died, shortly followed by the rest of him. I supposed with enough moss hornet venom in you everything went numb, including the heart. He keeled right over, and the hornets departed, leaving a shocked and bewildered work detail behind him, and more than a few shouts for help.
Several of the giants worked together to lift the body of the fallen lavaborn and carry him into the city through some gates on the south side; it was good to know they were there. I heard quite an uproar after that—anguished voices raised in lamentation—and then a huge blossoming cloud of flame rose into the air.
“Huh. He must have been someone important,” I said to my companions.
“Murr.”
“Eep.”
The houndsmen went into the city, following everyone else, and for the moment we had the plains to ourselves. I told the horses they could get up.
“Let’s put a bit more distance between us and the giants,” I said to them all. “I doubt I’ll have enough hornets to do that again. Getting rid of the rest of the lavaborn is going to require some study. Preferably out of sight.”
With Murr’s excellent nose we identified where the limits of the houndsmen’s patrol route was in the trees and went a bit farther east to be safe. It didn’t matter if the hounds caught our scent the next time they came through; they couldn’t tell their riders about us, and I could tell them to go away if they got too close.
We found cover for the horses among the trees, just slightly uphill from the great plain, and I made a dry camp and the futile offer of a belly rub to Murr. Bedding down with a blanket over some piled pine needles, I stared at the rising moon and stretched out with my kenning every so often, counting the animals to get myself to sleep. It was less effective than I hoped. Worry about what to do kept me awake until the moon was directly overhead, when I became aware of some new creatures moving into my range. That gave me an idea that could either work or get me killed. Since all my other ideas would just get me killed, I called it good enough and sighed, finally able to relax and drift off to sleep.
—
“So who was that lavaborn?” Fintan asked his audience. “Let’s find out!” He threw down a sphere and took on the seeming of Gorin Mogen.
The five children that Sefir and I lost to the boil in Olenik died as giants should: by forces larger, stronger than ourselves. Volcanoes, lava dragons, the axe of a worthy foe, or the ever-increasing weight of time—these are noble ways for a giant’s fire to be extinguished. We should not die in a cloud of blasted insects!
And yet my son is dead. Seeing him carried in on the shoulders of the work detail, I recognized his beard, but the rest of his face was swollen, blackened and purpled with poison, mountains of fluids and pus bubbling underneath the skin.
My legacy—hope for the future—oh, I will burn them! Burn them all. And dump their ashes in the ocean to dwell in cold darkness forever.
Jerin was an artist and a warrior, kind until the very moment he had to be ruthless, already showing that he could be a better man than me. I could not be more proud of him or have loved him more. And now he is ruined.
This city, all the plotting and killing I’ve done to make it rise from the grasses—what does it matter now? It’s all worthless, all for naught, because my son is dead. By triple-damned insects.
Someone had to explain to me what they were because I had never heard