It was a throne, partly wood, hewn into the trunk, and part stone, the arms carved in the shape of the great wyrms Corban had seen below Dun Carreg and in the cauldron’s chamber in Murias. Sitting upon it, slumped within it, was the cadaver of a giant. Stretched grey skin, here and there patches of ashen bone, a tattered strip of leather or cloth. And in its chest, through its chest, piercing the chair behind it and on, deep into the trunk, was a spear. Sap had leaked and congealed about the wounded trunk. Corban ran a hand along the spear shaft, which was thick and smooth, darker veins twisting through it, a spike of black iron at its butt. When his fingers reached the metal he snatched them away as if burned. For a moment he’d thought he heard voices, a hissing chorus inside his head.

‘It is Skald’s spear,’ a voice rumbled behind him.

Balur One-Eye.

‘With this blow our high king was slain, the Giant Wars were begun, and the Sundering sealed.’ Melancholy dripped from his voice.

‘Who did it? Who killed Skald?’

‘I did,’ Balur said.

Corban looked up at him and saw tears running down Balur’s craggy face.

A thousand questions rushed to the tip of his tongue but his voice faltered. The grief on Balur’s face was too much to disturb.

The questions will wait.

They stood in silence a while, the warband emptying from the tunnel beneath Drassil like ants marching from a nest.

Ethlinn appeared at his other shoulder.

‘Come, Bright Star, let Balur show us Drassil, first and greatest of the giant strongholds.’

‘You have not seen it before, then?’

‘No. I was born in Benoth, and like you I have only heard of it in tales.’

‘Come then,’ Balur grunted.

Corban walked the streets and courtyards of Drassil in a state of ever-growing wonder. The stronghold was built around a tree, although a tree the size of which Corban would have claimed was an impossibility. The main trunk was thicker and taller than any construct Corban had ever seen, more like a mountain rising into the sky than a thing of bark and timber. Its upper branches seemed so high that they touched the clouds. Branches sprouted from it, stone towers and walls spiralling and twisting about them as if set by some child-god’s unbounded imagination. Here and there the ground was scarred and ruptured by roots rising out of the ground like the ancient knotted knuckles of some colossal sleeping giant.

Hamil appeared from a side street and hurried over to Corban.

‘We have worked hard to prepare Drassil for your arrival,’ Hamil said. He wore the dark chainmail of the Jehar, and black linen beneath it, but he seemed less severe than most of the Jehar Corban had met.