by Doug Niles
Strongwind nodded. “Yes—Dannard has turned it over to me for as long as we need it.” He turned to Kerrick. “Randall was hoping to see you, I know. I daresay I’d rather spend the evening with you men around the fire, drinking and tell tales, than to have to bear these burdens of state.” He smiled, but Moreen saw little humor in the expression—it was more the smile of the wolf who has tired his prey and now closes in for the kill.
Kerrick smiled gamely in return, and his humor seemed genuine. “The crown weighs heavy, eh, my lord? Well, we’ll save you a draught in case you can slip away.”
“No chance of that,” said the king, turning and wrapping a lanky arm around Moreen’s shoulders. She twisted slightly to break free of his grip, taking his elbow and walking at his side to the inn. Kerrick headed in the opposite direction.
At the door to the inn Strongwind bowed, and extended a hand. “My lady, know that all the hospitality of this little den is available to your merest whim.”
“Why, thank you my lord,” she said, slightly mocking him as she passed inside. Taking a deep breath, she waited as Strongwind poured several large glasses of warqat. He led her to a pair of comfortable chairs before the hearth, where a low fire burned. Then she began to talk.
She told him of Kerrick’s encounter with the dying thanoi, the missive from the ogre king to his mother on mysterious Dracoheim. She said she was convinced of the truth of the threat, that the ogres had some powerful new weapon. Moreen related the results of Dinekki’s auguries, indicating they still had some time to prepare their defense. The king listened thoughtfully, drinking slowly from his goblet, until at last Moreen was done talking and ready for his reaction.
“Will you stand with us against this new threat?” she asked. “If you will send warriors to Brackenrock to reinforce our own fighters, we can present a united front—and give the ogres a serious defeat if they do come against us.”
Strongwind nodded solemnly, and for a few moments Moreen wondered if he was going to say anything at all. She took a sip of her warqat, feeling the warmth slide down her gullet, surprised to note that her glass was nearly empty. Finally he looked up at her and spoke.
“I remember Dinekki,” Strongwind said softly. “It was she who brought our two gods together, caused the very ground to shake—and helped save our lives when the ogres attacked eight years ago. If Dinekki is convinced of the threat, that is enough for me. Added to the elf’s story about saving the thanoi, I agree that we are in for some dangerous times. For now, of course we will help,” he said, “but I beg you to think of this alliance more for the long term.”
“What do you mean?”
“Become my queen!” Strongwind pleaded in a burst of emotion. “Marry me, and unite our peoples in a way that will bind them together through the future. Certainly, I will send warriors to aid you now. I assume you would do the same, if we learned of any threat against us. That is to be expected of old friends, but that is not enough! If we were wed, our descendants would be linked forever, and we would present a front against the ogres they would never shatter!”
“You make a compelling case, politically, at least,” Moreen said dryly, feeling more touched by his proposal than she cared to admit—even to herself. “But I had always hoped that, if I married, it would be for a more personal reason. I am my people’s leader, but I am also a woman … a woman who wants to love and be loved.”
“I do love you!” proclaimed the king. He set down his goblet and kneeled beside Moreen’s chair, taking one of her hands in both of his. “I’ve loved you since I first saw you. I only wish I had told you the truth then, rather than speaking in political riddles. Speak, lady chiefwoman: Could there be any glimmer of love in your soul, for me?”
Moreen drew a deep breath. Strongwind’s words were seductive, and his blue eyes, so close to hers, were overpowering.
“You are a good man, Your Majesty,” she said softly. “Perhaps the best I have ever known.” But she felt it was wiser for them to defeat the enemy first, and then talk about marriage afterward. “We have time to talk about these things,” she said. “For now, would you fill my glass again and join me in a toast to this summer’s alliance?”
“A new weapon, hmm?” Randall speculated. “Something to blow Brackenrock right off the face of Krynn. Of course, if it can destroy that citadel, it could blow up anything else, too. Guess I’ll be there with ye to stand against the bastards, if they come.”
The Highlander drew from his mug of warqat and instead of swallowing spat a stream into the fire. Blue flames surged upward, and Kerrick relished the feel of the sudden heat against his face. The waters of Tall Cedar Bay shimmered in the twilight, and the salt smell of the sea mingled with sweet pine smoke. Dry logs crackled as the flames devoured them, mingling with the lapping of waves against the shore—the only sounds in the still summer night.
Furtively, the elf looked up the hill, toward the inn. Subdued lights, like a fire fading low in the hearth, still glowed in the windows. Moreen Bayguard and Strongwind Whalebone were in there, alone, had been for many hours. It was past midnight, though it had never really grown dark.
Randall saw his glance and shook his head. Lars Redbeard, the third of the companionable trio gathered around the fire, sighed sympathetically. “Don’t know what they can be talking about for so … long,” he said without much conviction.
Kerrick could imagine but didn’t want to. The king of the Highlanders was unwed, and his desire for the chiefwoman was known to all. For eight years Moreen had stood independent of the king’s will, safely distant behind Brackenrock’s high walls. If she was really frightened, convinced her tribe was in dire danger, would she weaken?
“Would the ogres be comin’ this summer, then?” inquired Redbeard. “That would be a hard blow.”
“Yes, but we’ll be ready,” Kerrick said, surprised at the realization that he had included himself among the Arktos. “Most of the past eight years have been spent building and expanding the fortress, reinforcing walls, putting up new bulwarks. We’re ready for war.”
“I have some business over in Brackenrock, anyway,” Lars said casually. “The men from my clanhold are itching for a ride across the strait. Maybe we’ll come over, camp out for awhile. We shan’t be any bother.”
Kerrick was touched by the offer of support, and he knew that Moreen would be too. “Thanks, and I’m sure your presence would be welcome,” he said. Again he looked up at the inn. The lights were even lower now, it seemed.
“Here,” the elf said, reaching a hand toward Randall. “Let me have a drink.”
She woke up to see the light of dawn brightening the eastern sky, through the unshuttered window. The great, broad swath of the Icereach morning brightened the sky to a rosy coral. Reclining on the cushioned bench, she sleepily looked out the window, between a gap in the tall cedars.
A rattling snore drew her attention to the nearby chair, where the king of the Highlanders slumbered. A goblet lay sideways on the floor, just beneath his dangling hand. Strongwind rustled slightly in his chair, extending one foot. Moreen saw the big toe jutting from a hole in his woolen stocking.
Her own head hurt, and her mouth felt gummy and sour. Grimacing with distaste she rose and crossed to the water pitcher. Her legs were unsteady, and the movement brought the pounding in her head to an uncomfortable crescendo. She drank deeply, felt a little better. Crossing back to the bench and chair, she smiled wryly, then flung the contents of the pitcher into Strongwind’s face.
The king came up swinging, almost surprising her before she hopped out of the way. Groggily Strongwind opened his eyes, wringing his long hair in both hands. “What did you do that for?” he demanded, then winced as if the sound of his own voice stung the inside of his skull.
“It’s your turn,” she said, gesturing to the goblet that lay sideways beside the king’s chair, “to make a toast.”
He gaped at her, then, grudgingly, chuckled. “You wore me down, didn’t you? A little thing like y
ou, and I fell asleep in the chair. I know I can’t out-talk you, but by Kradok I was pretty sure I could out-drink you!”
She looked at him, feeling a strange tenderness. “Actually, I was pouring it into the spittoon after the first few rounds.”
“Waste of good warqat,” the king muttered glumly. “So that’s it, then? We talk for half the night, and that’s all we do, as usual. You won’t be my queen?”
Moreen shook her head. “You’re a good man and a good king, but I’m not ready to marry you,” she said.
“You never give me a reason,” Strongwind pressed. “I hope it is not that the sight of me repulses you?”
She smiled, a wry tilt of her lips. “Hardly. You’re right, I didn’t give you a reason. I don’t intend to give you a reason.”
“You’re a stern woman, Moreen, Lady of Brackenrock,” Strongwind Whalebone admitted, “but I admire you, and I will send three hundred warriors to help defend your fortress, if and when the ogre king comes.”
“I think you should stay another night,” Strongwind persisted. The wind was gusting hard, and another of the periodic cloudbursts was drumming rain. “You too, of course, Kerrick—both of you, my guests. We’ll tell some stories, drink some warqat, and you can be on your way when this storm passes.”
Kerrick didn’t reply, but he concentrated all of his will on Moreen as she squinted in thought. It took all his elven reserve to conceal his elation when she finally spoke.
“Thanks, but if Kerrick’s willing, I’d like to try to get across right away—if the weather’s not too bad.”
“No problem for Cutter,” Kerrick quickly agreed. “With a wind like this, we’ll make it across in a few hours—though it will be a little bumpy.”
“Then let’s go,” said Moreen, though she turned a little green as she stared at the bay, where even the semi-sheltered waters were whipped into whitecaps. She turned to Strongwind. “Thank you again for your hospitality, and for your willingness to help.”
The king took Moreen’s hand and gazed up at her. “I am grateful for the discussions we were able to share … and may Chislev and Kradok together grant that we will lead our people into a new, bright era.”
“Yes,” the Lady of Brackenrock agreed, sincerely. “I look forward to seeing you and your warriors within the walls of our citadel.”
Kerrick offered his help as she started down the steep ladder beside the wharf, but Moreen hiked up her long skirt and hopped nimbly down the metal rungs. Kerrick followed, and soon the boatman was pushing the dinghy back to the moored sailboat.
They crossed back to Brackenrock with the sun barely visible between the scudding clouds. Kerrick was sore from sleeping on the ground, cold from sleeping outside, and queasy from the effects of too much campfire warqat. As Moreen sat beside the transom, wrapped in her own thoughts, her ashen face indicated that she, too, had indulged too much in the bitter but potent brew of the Icereach.
By noon the headland of Brackenrock rose before them. From several miles out they could see the fortress, the smooth walls reflecting the light of the bright sun, the towers and parapet shimmering like jewels in a crown.
Kerrick looked over at Moreen. She had been strangely quiet during the return trip. He guessed that she was steeling herself for the task ahead. The Lady of Brackenrock didn’t even notice the elf staring at her. As she studied the strait and the pillar at the mouth of the harbor, the grim look on her face made another kind of fortress.
“You know,” Moreen said finally, over her shoulder as she continued to look over the stern, toward Tall Cedar Bay. “He isn’t such a bad man. Not so bad at all.”
Two days later a veritable parade of curraghs began to cross the strait, and a week after that Strongwind Whalebone himself made the trip, bringing his personal bodyguard of veteran axemen. All told, more than four hundred and thirty Highlander warriors arrived to camp outside and inside the walls of Brackenrock.
he royal smithy was a huge, vaulted chamber with numerous forges, ovens, anvils, and stout stone tables. Great piles of coal rose like black mountains in the far corners of the room, mingling with the shadows that seemed to creep outward from the walls. A hundred ogres and slaves could work in here at one time, raising a din like an enclosed thunderstorm. Now, however, most of the room was dark, though bright lamps illuminated the one forge where a fire burned and the master smith who worked on the artifact that would destroy Brackenrock.
Grimwar and Stariz stood on a railed platform just above the floor of the smithy. The stones had been swept, and the fans were pumping away, but the king still felt the air of sooty grime against his skin, smelled the acrid stench of the smelting process every time he drew a breath. If the queen noticed these same effects, she gave no indication. Instead, her eyes were alight, bright with the reflected light of the forge, and her thin lips were moist, glistening as she nervously licked them. Her attention never wavered.
The king, with considerable input from his wife, had decided to move ahead on invasion plans by dividing the powder from the Alchemist into two different weapons. One was small, a bell-shaped chalice designed to blast away the gates of Brackenrock and allow the ogre troops to gain entrance to the courtyard and the keep. There, Stariz’s spies had confirmed, the Axe of Gonnas was displayed above the great hearth, and she was determined that the hallowed artifact be retrieved.
After that, the main power of the Alchemist’s discovery would be brought to bear, enclosed in a round sphere of metal that the Alchemist had dubbed the Golden Orb. This weapon was a large sphere of pure gold, hollowed to contain the powder and a bottle of magic potion. When the orb was pitched into a target by catapult, the container would break, and the mixing of the potion with powder would detonate the full power of destruction.
The chalice intended for the initial attack was a small, trumpet-shaped cup of pure gold, currently gleaming on the smith’s anvil. The orb, in two hollow halves, sat nearby. When the two halves were fused together, it would weigh more than one hundred pounds and form a perfectly spherical shape.
Both vessels had been shaped precisely to the specifications laid down by Queen Stariz. The stem of the chalice was molded into a grooved mount upon a block of square granite, the heavy stone forming a solid anchor for the tall, flaring vessel. Right now the object sat on an anvil beside the forge, with the furnace doors open, blue-yellow flames flickering eerily from the coal. The smith, a burly human slave, applied foot pressure to the bellows, and the flames increased to white heat. His face was invisible behind a slit-eyed mask of steel, and his hands and forearms were protected by heavy leather gauntlets.
The dust, the treasure from the Alchemist, was now in both the chalice and the orb. Grimwar had watched his wife barely controlling the excited trembling of her hands as she poured the stuff into the two different vessels. She had taken care not to lose a single flake of the precious dust. The king had said nothing as she described to the smith the procedure for capping the potent powder in the chalice, but now he paid attention as the man carefully followed the queen’s instructions. The smith was preparing to seal up the cup, the first of the weapons to be completed.
The smith had a small disk of gold in his hand, a circle of metal with a slotted hole in the center. Now he pressed that plate down into the mouth of the goblet, and Stariz barked sharply. “The wick—don’t forget the wick!”
Grimwar knew that tone and bristled. The smith showed no irritation, merely nodded. “Of course, Lady Queen. I am merely checking to see the sizing is correct.”
“Very well,” she replied.
The man brought the disk out, then turned a valve and opened a small chute. Immediately a point of blue flame sprang up from the middle of the forge. This was a cutting flame, Grimwar knew. The smith held the golden disk in a small pair of tongs, masterfully rotating it so that the cutting flame sliced just a bit off the outer perimeter. Moments later, he pulled the plate aside, then took a slender bar of silver and inserted it through the slotted hole.
“The wick is installed, my queen,” the smith declared. “Pure magnesium. It will burn with a fire as hot as the sun.”
“Hotter still, when the dust takes light,” Stariz replied, with another lick of her lips. She almost smiled.
Quickly the smith pressed the disk down into the chalice, compressing the dust in the bottom. With practiced gestures the man took a small cup of molten gold and poured it carefully into the chalice, sealing the disk in place as the metal cooled. Finally he slammed the door to his furnace, immediately cooling the large chamber, and lifted his mask to regard the queen with a blank expression.
“It is finished, Lady Queen. The chalice may lay on its side or even upside down, and the dust is contained in the base. It is penetrated by the shaft of magnesium, and when that wick is ignited the fire will inevitably take its course. The granite gives it plenty of heft, of course, so that once the weapon is placed it will remain stationary.”
“To the orb, then,” the queen declared curtly. She produced a clear bottle that Grimwar saw was full of a cloudy liquid, the magic potion that would interact with the powder.
“Careful!” she snapped, as the smith took the vial, inspected the stopper—which was waxed in place—then carefully set it into the shell of half the orb.
Following Stariz’s instructions, the smith lifted the second half of the sphere into place, and used an oil torch to carefully fuse the two halves together with a bead of molten gold. When it was finished, Grimwar saw an object that looked almost innocently like a large child’s ball.
“You have done well,” Stariz said. The smith bowed and departed. He was a man with rare skills and a unique status among the slaves of Winterheim. He knew that he would collect a reward later. The queen turned to her husband.
“The weapons are prepared. We must depart for Brackenrock immediately.”
