The Golden Orb

10

The 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.”

“One more day,” growled Grimwar Bane, in such a tone that his wife had to bite her tongue. “There are still preparations to be made, but the galleys will sail on the morning tide.”

“Very well,” she said, regarding him with that gaze that seemed to bore into the center of his being. “I will prepare for a departure on the morrow.”

The king nodded. He was not happy that his wife would accompany him on this campaign-she rarely journeyed onto the sea, and when she did she was invariably ill-tempered and demanding. All the same, he was glad to have her aboard the ship, for there was another reason, even more compelling, that he didn’t want to leave her behind when he embarked for war.

“How-how long will you be gone?”

Thraid was still pale from her spell of sickness, though she had smeared some rouge upon her round cheeks. The effect was rather garish, Grimwar thought, though he made no remark. Instead, he patted her hand and tried to answer her question.

“Maybe a month. It’s hard to say, with these things. I will return in plenty of time for the Harvest Festival.”

“That’s not terribly long, then,” said the ogress, trying bravely, albeit unsuccessfully, to control her sniffling. “Not like when you campaign over the whole summer.”

“No,” he agreed, not sure what else he could say. “How are you feeling?” he asked lamely.

“It’s passing, I think,” she said bravely. “The purgatives of the royal physician seem to have made a difference.”

“Good.” He wanted to tell her about his arrangement with Stariz, the queen’s pledge of safety, but somehow he feared even the mention of the other ogress, as if her name was a toxin that would weaken, perhaps kill, his cherished mistress.

“I wish… I wish that I was able to send you off with a proper farewell,” the ogress said, with just a hint of her old sexiness. He felt the familiar flush, and though he tried to remain silent his chest rumbled to an unconscious growl. Thraid smiled. “However, I will be waiting for you here, my king, when you return.”

“And I, my lover, will find my way back to you soonest,” he pledged.

Whatever the cost, he vowed to himself. He rose, bent over to kiss her cheek, and turned to the door. The golden orb was ready, and Brackenrock awaited.

Sunlight spilled through as the great harbor doors rumbled open. Hundreds of slaves labored, straining against their lines, as the huge capstans rotated and the gap between the massive slabs grew wider and wider. Open water beckoned, shimmering in the sunlight, and the two great ships moved forward, like eager creatures ready to emerge from a long winter’s hibernation.

Goldwing was in the lead, the king standing at the rail, accepting the cheers of the thousand ogres gathered on the waterfront to wish the warriors well. Light swelled around him as the harbor shadows fell behind, and the salt breeze was sweet in his nostrils. He let the accolades wash over him, bearing him into that light, and he tried to convince himself that he embarked upon an epic mission.

At the edge of the prow he saw Stariz, impassive in her great mask. She was holding a long pole, with several smoldering pots swinging from the tip of the shaft. The odor of the sacred incense wafted past the monarch’s nostrils as the galley slid into the open air of Black Ice Bay.

The twin summits of the Ice Gates, lofty peaks marking the watery passage into Winterheim, loomed tall and dazzling, sunlight glittering from the many glaciers and ice fields rimming their flanks. Looking to the stern, the king admired the great massif of Winterheim rising above, even higher than the Gates. Great cliffs were draped with ice, and streams and waterfalls sparkled on the lower slopes as the huge mountain shone with midsummer vitality.

Hornet, slightly smaller and lower than the great flagship, came behind, and Grimwar watched the steady strokes of the oars move that galley past the wharf, out through the great arch into the light of the full summer sun. The king felt a thrill of pride, knowing that the second ship had been built at his order. The Alchemist had provided the design, of course, but ogre skills had shaped the vessel. Now it glided along as tangible proof of Grimwar Bane’s greatness, a seafaring majesty no ogre monarch of Suderhold could claim over the past three thousand years.

For the current mission, each galley was being rowed by ogres instead of the normal complement of slaves. Although the brutish warriors were less adept at propelling the ship than humans, they would serve to swell the ranks of the king’s army after they landed below Brackenrock. In this fashion he would be able to amass nearly a thousand of his veteran ogre troops against the human citadel.

The two ships, one following the other, crossed Black Ice Bay and made their way through the narrow fjord, flanked by the lofty peaks known as the Ice Gates. Soon the king saw whitecaps streaking the water before him, and he felt the wind of the open sea. The big ship was stable, pitching only slightly as she emerged from the narrow way to forge through deep, choppy waters.

Grimwar’s thoughts turned to the strongbox locked in his cabin amidships. The golden orb was in there, while the heavy catapult that would ultimately launch it rested on the rear deck. The chalice, primed by the smith, was also resting in the strongbox. Stariz had created several small flares, any one of which, when ignited, would burn hot enough to ignite the magnesium fuse. The orb, of course, was fused by the bottle of potion inside of it. The ogre king tried to imagine the coming devastation, to picture the power of the strange new explosive, but after only a few moments his thoughts drifted.

“Pick up the pace,” the king declared, knowing the message would be quickly borne to the helmsman. “I want us to reach Brackenrock in five days.” And be done with this war and return as soon as possible, he added to himself.

“Very good, Majesty,” came the reply, even as the rhythmic pounding of the cadence drum accelerated. Very slowly, the galley surged forward. The western coast of the White Bear Sea slid past. The course had already been laid-they would stay as close to that shore as possible, to minimize the chance of discovery. He pictured the scene. They would erupt upon the human citadel with surprise as their ally, blast the gate from its hinges, seize the Axe of Gonnas, and proceed to blow the place off the face of Krynn.