WHEN HENDRY AND the famhairean had returned with the dark druidess and the Skaraven, Oriana felt at first delighted. She had never tried to create a revenant from an immortal Pritani warrior, and wondered how much pain she could cause him during an attempt. The temptation to dismember him alive would be strong. Yet if she could end and then resurrect him he’d be the perfect weapon to wield against the rest of his clan.

Her joy soon shriveled as she stood and eavesdropped on Hendry’s conversation with Rowan. Murdina’s ramblings had suggested that he needed the druidess for some dark purpose, but that mattered nothing to her. Enslaving the Skaraven would doubtless keep Rowan placated until the time came for the druid to make use of her, which would likely arrive after the completion of the new totems.

Oriana admired the druid’s strategy, but the druidess’s presence meant she had to advance her own plans.

“Come walk with me, Tri,” she said to the damaged giant once Hendry had disappeared into the cottage. “I need your aid.”

“We go pick flowers?” Tri asked as he followed her into the dead forest.

That he expected to find anything blooming in this dead place made her chuckle. “I’ve another harvest in mind.”

All of the giants avoided the loch as if it were filled with wood worms, so Oriana had chosen a secluded spot near its banks. Tri stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw the water through the trees.

“No, Mistress.” He backstepped as he shook his scarred head. “Tri no like splash.”

“’Tis where I need your aid,” she told him, and gestured to the frozen ground. “You must sit and listen to me. I’m your friend, and I need your aid.”

“Aye.” The famhair dropped into a crouch. “Kind to Tri. Aid lady.”

Oriana knelt before him and reached into her cloak. “Look at the sun. See how high ’tis risen?”

Once the giant’s head fell back she drove her ritual blade into his chest and uttered the soul-snaring spell three times. The divided halves of Tri’s face splintered as they contorted with the surfacing of the other beings imprisoned within his form.

“Release me, I beg you,” a soft, feminine voice pleaded from one side of the famhair’s mouth.

“Pagan scum,” a much deeper voice roared from the opposite side. “My blade shall fill your throat.”

“Silence,” Oriana said, and when the giant clamped his maw closed she twisted the ritual blade. “No more be tethered to this creature’s soul. Begone with you, and leave him whole.”

Tri’s face lost its crazed animation as two streams of light poured from his flat eyes. They gathered into spheres that rose gracefully into the air, turning ever more transparent until they disappeared from sight.

Oriana looked into the giant’s still face, and summoned her power to begin the bone-conjuring. Tri made an odd sound as he reached for her hand on the dagger. Choking out a startled cry, Oriana pulled her hand away and watched wide-eyed as he removed the blade from his form and dropped it on the ground between them.

“No. I’ve freed you, and now you shall do my will,” she demanded, and quickly recast the spell.

As if immune to her power, the giant rose to his feet and sniffed the air. He turned toward the loch and shuffled toward it like he’d already been made a revenant.

Oriana stumbled after him, grabbing at his arm. “Stop. Dinnae go near the water. Tri, you must obey me.”

The famhair paused and glanced down at her before he shook her off like a gnat and continued through the trees.

Oriana pushed herself up, grimacing as one of her ankles swelled hot with pain, and limped after him. “Tri, you cannae. ’Twill end you. Come here to me before ’tis too late.”

The giant trudged into the still waters, sinking lower as he waded out. Soon he reached the depths and submerged, only to surface and turn around.

Unwillingly fascinated now, Oriana peered at his bulging, changing form. He grew taller and broader, taking on the shape of one of Hendry’s totems.

’Tis what he was before the massacre. An oak carved into a giant.

His flesh darkened and grew nubby as he absorbed all the water soaking him. As he stepped out of the loch Oriana saw his feet and legs sprouting roots, and his shoulders and arms reforming into branches. He shot up again, growing thinner and impossibly tall as he shuffled a few more steps to the edge of the woods. There he turned to face the loch as his feet split into a network of thick roots that sank into the soil. He lifted his arms as his garments vanished and his torso took on the broad, rounded shape of a tree trunk. A few moments later Tri finished his transformation, and went still as his roots disappeared into the earth.

Rage burned inside Oriana. She should have brought one of Hendry’s stone axes with her so she might chop the idiot famhair into kindling. She should have guessed that the two trapped souls had caused the tribe’s totems to evolve…

Suddenly she saw the other side of it, one that would serve justice to all the giants.

This was how she would end all of Hendry’s creatures, just as soon as they slaughtered the Skaraven for her. She simply had to untether the other souls trapped inside them, and they would revert back to what they had been, just as Tri had done.

She limped over to the oak, eyeing the deep scar high on the trunk, and the two knot holes on either side.

“You’ve given me much aid this day, my lad.”