That the bargain was false in all sooth has been made plain to us. Longwrath had tried to kill her because the Elohim wanted her dead.

“Your query,” Coldspray began, “concerns the gift of tongues for which the Giants once bargained with the Elohim. In the many journeys of our kind, we have learned that the peoples of the Earth tell their tales to please or comfort or obscure themselves, suppressing aspects which they mislike and glorifying portions which give them pleasure. For uncounted millennia, we have held to a different creed. Believing that joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks, we have told our tales fully or not at all—and have taken pride in doing so.

“Now we must hear joy in the knowledge that our ancestors were blind to machination and distorted truth. More, we must honor them for a blindness which was in some degree voluntary. So delighted were they with the gift of tongues, and with themselves, that they did not closely examine the proffer of the Elohim.

“We must hear joy in the recognition that Longwrath was in part betrayed to suffering and madness by his own people.”

Linden listened with only part of her attention. She remembered the deranged Giant’s lust for her death more vividly than the account of this bargain that she had heard from Grimmand Honninscrave long ago. In a moment of imposed sanity, Anele had warned her, All who live share the Land’s plight. Its cost will be borne by all who live. This you cannot alter. In the attempt, you may achieve only ruin. Nevertheless she was determined to leave her friends behind when she went with the Harrow. As soon as she gathered her strength—She already had too many victims. Jeremiah needed her. Other lives might have been better served if Longwrath had killed her.

Grimly the Ironhand explained, “You and Linden Avery, who was then the Sun-Sage, were informed that we received our gift in return for our tale of Bahgoon the Unbearable, and of Thelma Twofist, who tamed him. That is sooth—to the extent that our ancestors chose to believe it so. But we have learned that it is also falsehood. We perceive now that the Elohim found worth, not in the tale itself, but rather in one facet of it—and in our willingness to speak of that facet mirthfully. In their eyes, our mirth justified their intent.

“The tale itself I will not tell. Here I seek only to account for the feigned generosity of the Elohim. The pith of the matter is this. For the many deeds and attributes which caused him to be named Unbearable, Bahgoon was delivered involuntarily and forcibly into the un-tender care of Thelma Twofist.