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mind.”
    The scout carefully laid the mirror aside, then peered down into the hole. He saw Basil climbing the ladder, moving much more carefully than the boy. It was a wise precaution, for the runecaster was a verbeeg, another of the races of giant-kin. He was even larger than Tavis, with gangling arms and bowed legs as thick as aspen boles. His distended belly and hairy, stooped shoulders gave him a gaunt, half-starved look, but anyone who had ever made the mistake of inviting him to a banquet knew that was not the case.
    “Basil, what’s all this about being surrounded by giants?” Tavis called.
    “I can’t say yet,” the verbeeg replied, looking up. He had eyebrows as gray and coarse as the scrawny beard hanging from his chin. His thick lips gave him an affable-if somewhat sly-smile. That’s why I created the rune mirror. It’ll be much more accurate than relying on the peasants. They’re terrified, and you know how humans exaggerate when they’re panicked.”
    The scout clasped his friend’s wrist and pulled, helping him squeeze through the roof portal. Basil picked up the large mirror and balanced it on one hand as though it were a serving tray. He started toward Brianna and the others, the planks creaking and groaning beneath his great weight. Tavis took the precaution of staying a fan-distance from the verbeeg. Although the keep roof was supposed to be strong enough to support an entire company of soldiers, the firbolg worried that the combined mass of two giant-kin would be enough to snap one of the weathered planks.
    When Tavis reached the battlements, he stopped behind Brianna and peered over her head into the deepening twilight. He could still see the sentries on the outer curtain and the reflection of torchlit windows gleaming off the black waters of Lake Cuthbert, but very little else. If any giants were lurking on the dark lakeshore hills, the purple shroud of evening had already hidden them from sight Even the distant mountains were hardly visible against the murky clouds beyond their summits.
    “This is no use,” said Arlien. “The light’s too dim. Well have to send out scouts.”
    “That would be both dangerous and unnecessary,” said Basil.
    Arlien turned to see who had contradicted him. His jaw clenched in rancor. “A verbeeg!”
    “You don’t seem very fond of giant-kin,” Tavis observed.
    The spite in Arlien’s eyes did not fade. “In my land, verbeegs are not to be trusted.”
    “And in our land, people are judged on their merit-“
    “Basil is no ordinary verbeeg, I assure you,” Brianna interrupted. She stepped between Tavis and Arlien, then faced the runecaster himself. “What have you prepared for us, my friend?”
    Casting a haughty smirk Arlien’s direction, Basil took the mirror in both hands and turned the silvered glass toward the lakeshore hills. The reflection showed the rocky slopes as though the hour were noon instead of dusk. Tavis saw the stoop-shouldered figures of several hill giants scattered among the crooked scrub pines. The brutes sat on boulders or squatted atop rocky outcroppings, calmly watching the lakeshore below as a steady trickle of humans fled toward the castle bridge. Although it would have been a simple thing to toss a few boulders at the haggard serfs, the giants made no move to harass the refugees.
    “Wasn’t it fog giants you battled in High Meadow?” asked Avner. “Those look more like hill giants.”
    “They are,” agreed Tavis. “No doubt the same ones that have been laying waste to Earl Cuthbert’s hamlets.”
    “They’re not ferocious enough.” The earl stepped closer to Basil and squinted into the mirror. “If those were the giants who have been razing my villages, they’d be slaughtering my serfs, not allowing them safe passage.”
    Tavis shook his head. “Someone wants those people to reach us,” he said. “The more crowded your castle, the more uncomfortable well be during the siege.”
    “Siege?” gasped the earl.