CHAPTER 2

GIANTS

As Jason marched away from the river, the tall leafy trees prevented most of the milky moonlight from reaching the ground. Through the dimness, he pressed between dark bushes with fuzzy foliage, occasionally altering his direction when he encountered thorny brambles and tangled thickets. The farther he waded through the vegetation, the more overgrown the forest floor became. Repeatedly he was corralled by spiny barricades.

He paused several times, crouching beside shrubs or behind trees, listening and watching for enemies. No matter how long he waited, or how intently he strained his senses, he detected no sign of pursuers. Nor did he hear giants stomping around up ahead.

Jason inhaled the scent of little bell-shaped flowers, drooping from a slender stalk. The smell was familiar. He was back in Lyrian, crouched in the darkness, foliage obscuring the moon. Despite the danger, or perhaps in part because of it, his situation felt natural. He could do this. As long as he remembered some of the precautions he had learned from Ferrin and Jasher, alone in the woods he should be very hard to find.

After some time spent gradually climbing away from the river along a clumsily improvised route, Jason blundered onto a narrow footpath. He tried to use the moon to keep his bearings. As his hunger grew, he stopped a few times to get trail mix from his backpack.

Not long after daybreak, with his inner thighs raw from rubbing against wet denim all night, Jason reached a clearing where the footpath vanished into the deep grass of a meadow. Following the perimeter of the meadow, Jason hopped a narrow stream, disturbing a lynx. The sinuous wildcat hissed and bristled, tufted ears quivering, making Jason recoil in surprise. Crouching, he grasped a stone, but the creature sped away, low across the ground, to disappear in the brush.

Not far beyond his encounter with the lynx, Jason found a meager trail running to the northeast. He knelt down behind a thorny bush, just beyond the edge of the meadow, and gazed back across the clearing. After waiting patiently, he saw the lynx slink away into the trees, but otherwise viewed nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe he really had slipped away from the river unnoticed.

Jason pawed through his backpack for a protein bar, which he ate while walking. The sun moved toward its zenith as Jason advanced along the faint trail. Despite his exhaustion, he wanted to keep moving, at least until nightfall. He hoped to leave behind the forest and the threat of giants as soon as possible.

Some time after the sun passed its apex, Jason spotted a bubble-fruit tree not far off the path. Feeling like a veteran adventurer, he climbed the narrow trunk and plucked three pieces of the fruit. Back near the path, he sat with legs folded, enjoying the break and the bitter juiciness of the transparent bulbs. The taste, the surrounding trees, the solitude—it all seemed familiar to Jason and helped him feel firmly back in Lyrian.

While he sat, Jason removed the hand from his backpack, still wrapped in the plastic sack. Ferrin had taught Jason to recognize bubblefruit trees. Might the displacer suspect he had returned to Lyrian? Could he somehow sense his hand more near? Would it be foolish for Jason to contact him? Ferrin had claimed that he was currently on the run from Maldor, which could mean the displacer and Jason were now on the same side.

When Jason had first made contact, after Ferrin speedily mastered the sign language alphabet, the displacer had offered only terse, vague replies. Then one day Ferrin had related that his participation in Jason’s escape from Felrook had been discovered, and his messages became more elaborate. Still, because of past deceptions, Jason felt uncertain whether he could believe the information.

Supposedly, after Jason departed from Lyrian, Ferrin had gone undercover to a prison camp to discover how the inmates kept killing guards without leaving a trace of evidence. According to Ferrin, before his work there was complete, a scarlet rider had arrived with a message summoning him back to Felrook.

Ferrin had acted happy to comply, but quietly slipped away in the night, escaping into the western wilderness, eventually making his way to the port city of Weych. He later confirmed that as he had suspected, Maldor had discovered his involvement in Jason’s escape. Ferrin had remained in hiding ever since.

Throughout their conversations, Jason never hid his wish to return to Lyrian, and Ferrin had pledged his aid should Jason ever succeed. But Jason had deep misgivings about relying on Ferrin. Everything the displacer had asserted could have been fabricated to gain his trust. For the present, confiding in Ferrin would be irresponsible.

Invigorated by the snack, Jason stuffed the plastic sack with the hand into his backpack and trotted along the trail. He estimated that back home it was the middle of the night. His summer had been lazy so far, with plenty of sleep, so he didn’t expect an all-nighter to give him too much trouble. Besides, with the sun up, it felt earlier.

After some time, Jason reduced his pace to a walk. The day was too hot. Despite the humidity, his jeans were almost dry.

The little path he followed bent westward, then southwest. Jason continued, hoping the path would turn back to the north. The vegetation seemed closer and pricklier than ever.

Just when Jason was preparing to double back, the path intersected a larger trail that cut straight to the north. He followed the northward track, surprised at how wide it was for a path out in the wild. He noticed several places where foliage appeared to have been roughly chopped away to keep it from crowding the trail.

At one particularly mangled bush, Jason paused. Who was tending the trail? The maintenance was deliberate and relatively recent. Could it be giants? Or perhaps some industrious hermit?

Jason studied his surroundings. Given the dense undergrowth, if he left the path, his progress would be slowed to a frustrating crawl. Examining the trail, he found no huge footprints, but spotted traces of animal tracks—deer, perhaps. He decided to hurry along the pathway but to remain attentive. If he heard anything suspicious, he could always duck into the undergrowth.

With the heightened caution of a trespasser, Jason proceeded along the trail. The sun descended toward the treetops. Several times he paused at strange noises, and once he dove from the trail to roll under a scratchy shrub.

Every disconcerting sound turned out to be a false alarm, so it came as quite a shock when the trail curved around a tall bush and he found himself confronted by a twelve-foot giant, clutching a spiked club.

The huge man stood on the edge of the path, face twisted into a fierce grimace. Jason froze, deeply startled, then relaxed. The giant was a rough-hewn statue.

As Jason was calming himself, a shrill voice cried, “State your business!”