The Messenger

18

Hail Grimwar Bane, king of Suderhhold!”

The cheers rang through the hall, and the newly crowned king allowed himself to beam with pride.

“I knew you could do it, Your Majesty. I knew it all along!” Baldruk Dinmaker, standing on a chair beside the ogre king, leaned over to whisper hoarsely in his ear.

“Knew that I could recite the names correctly?”

“No! Knew that you could, you would, take the throne from your father. Why, I’ve been working toward that end since I came here, nigh on twenty years ago. Surely you appreciate that!”

Grimwar Bane was about to snort skeptically but stopped to think. Perhaps the dwarf had been working toward this end for all these years. Certainly he had welcomed the prince’s ascension with manifest enthusiasm. Baldrunk’s pride in Grimwar was evident even now as he stood at the new king’s side, and they let the cheers wash over them, cheers that rumbled throughout the Hall of Blue Ice, proclaimed to all of Winterheim the dawn of a new era

Later, Stariz let her pride be known, though in a more cautionary fashion, as she spoke to him in their private chambers.

“You can be a mighty king of Suderhold, my husband, but you must be wary of threats on all sides.”

“Yes, the elf,” Grimwar said impatiently. “You have told me that the elf is due to come to Icereach. In the spring I will embark on a quest with my best warriors, and we will scour the shores of the White Bear Sea until we find this damn elf and kill him!”

“I pray that will be sufficient,” the new queen said. She wasn’t wearing her obsidian mask, but there was still a godly aura about her, although she was frowning, which Grimwar did not find reassuring. He sat and listened attentively because he dare not do otherwise.

“It may be, so far as the elf is concerned. But these is another matter, one about which my spells have raised a caution.”

“And that is?”

“The dowager queen, Thraid Dimmarkull,” said Stariz bluntly. Her small eyes narrowed to burning holes that bored into the king’s face. “She is a threat,” she said, startling her husband. “She has the power to bring your rule to an end.”

“What would you have me do?” asked Grimwar guiltily. Indeed, he had just been thinking about his father’s young widow, and not in the context of any danger.

“Perhaps she could be sent to Dracoheim … there to keep the Elder Queen company,” Stariz suggested casually.

Grimwar gulped. He could think of no more awful fate for the young ogress, than to send her where she would be wholly within the power of Queen Hannareit, whom she had supplanted in Winterheim.

“I will consider it,” he said noncommittally, rising to his feet and departing the room before his wife could make any other recommendation.

Soon thereafter, he met his protocol officer. Lord Hakkan bowed, then looked around to make sure that the two of them were alone. “Your father’s widow awaits you in her chambers,” he said coolly. “The slaves have been sent away.”

“Very good,” said the new king. He made his way through the royal apartment, and decided that, in fact, this was turning out to be the best winter of his life.

The Sturmfrost raged, expanding outward across the frozen sea, surging against mountainous barriers, curling back only when it reached the bottleneck of the Bluewater Strait. All Icereach lay buried beneath a blanket of deep snow, in some places five feet deep, in others even higher, its drifts burying houses, villages, whole groves of trees. This was a world of utter darkness, for even the faint twilight that might have brightened the land at noon remained masked behind the murky clouds, the constant, ice-laden winds.

Everywhere the landscape was frozen, except for one small speck of wetness, a pool of water in a steep-walled, sheltered cove, where hot springs fed small streams, bubbling upward from the bed of the sea. Around the shore the water froze and the snow piled, but enough warmth seeped up from the seabed to hold back the ice from the inner cove.

Cutter was now triple-roped to the Signpost rocks, and though ice crusted her decks, mast and cabin, the water beneath her hull had stayed warm beneath the continuous steam and fortunately the boat remained intact. The wind whipped, and the waves churned. The sun was absent. Sometimes Kerrick believed it had disappeared forever. He could barely make out his boat, pitching and rolling in the small circle of warm water.

Though it had been a full month since his landing here, Kerrick found himself still searching for the lost kender, kicking through the deep snowdrifts along the shore, staring into the dark water where the hot springs bubbled. Surely there ought to be some trace of Coraltop Netfisher! It seemed monstrously unjust that he couldn’t give his friend a proper thanks or a hero’s farewell.

He thought back to the landing, trying to reconstruct in his memory as much as he could of that frigid night. The ring of his father had given him the strength to survive until Bruni had found him, but once he had been carried into the cave the magic had seemed to sap his strength beyond recovery. He barely had the awareness to slip off the ring and conceal it in his belt pouch.

He had lain in the same spot for a week, surviving on only gruel, while the Arktos-Dinekki and Little Mouse-nursed him back to health. During that period he had come to understand the fullness of his father’s gift, and also his warning. Without the magic assistance of the ring, he would have certainly have perished in the Sturmfrost. Yet if he had worn it much longer, it might have killed him.

In the aftermath, he had vowed never to put it on again, but he doubted his own commitment. Once he had taken it out of the pouch and held it in his hand, ready to hurl it into the water, but he couldn’t. He carried it still, tucked away, hidden from view but never far from his thoughts.

Sighing, shivering, he tromped back to the cave, seeing the narrowed shadow of doorway, all that was left after the Arktos had walled off the entrance. Already his tracks were half filled with drifting snow. Experience told him that by the time he came out tomorrow for his daily round of investigation, they would be gone.

The attack caught him in the forehead, a blow out of the darkness that knocked him backward and sent shivers of ice down his face. He flinched in shock, then chuckled as he understood what had hit him.

“Mouse!” he hissed, immediately squatting, compacting his own ball of snow with his gloved hands. His keen eyes, elf-sensitive to warmth, saw a flash of movement in the doorway. Little Mouse leaned out, trying to discern the effect of his snowball.

Kerrick uncoiled in a fluid motion, the hardpacked missile soaring true, splotching into pieces across the lad’s face.

He arrived at the cave mouth and slipped through the narrow door. Warmth assailed Kerrick, and he shrugged out of his cloak with relief. He and Little Mouse were in the large entryway to the cave. One Arktos, often Little Mouse, remained on watch here at all times, peering from the narrow crack into the polar night.

Now the youth was laughing, wiping the snow from his face, pulling it out of his collar. “For someone who never threw a snowball before this winter, you’ve gotten real good at it,” he said.

“Considering how many times you’ve ambushed me,” the elf replied, “I can’t believe I still get taken by surprise.”

Little Mouse grew serious, looked out the door. “Your shipmate?”

“No sign of him,” the elf said, “but the boat is doing fine. Thanks again for your assistance getting those extra lines lashed down.”

“I’m glad to help,” Mouse replied. “I think sailing on your boat, coming over here, was one of the most fun things I’ve done.”

“It can get into your blood, the sea can,” allowed Kerrick, somewhat wistfully. “I admit that I can’t wait to return to open water.”

He leaned against the small doorway, staring into the black, impenetrable storm. He wondered if the relentless roaring of the wind would ever stop.

“Tell me how you found him, again, at sea,” Mouse said.

Kerrick settled beside the lad. “Well, I was sleeping, running with short sail and tiller lashed. I woke up when Cutter crashed into something big and hard.…”

He told the story in full detail, lingering over description of the monstrous dragon turtle, as the youth listened intently to every word.

Others of the tribe, Moreen in particular, had seemed skeptical of his tale, some even going so far as to suggest that the kender might not have existed except in his imagination. It helped, Kerrick thought, to be able to talk about his passenger with someone who did believe. He could reassure himself that, yes, his heroic companion had really been there, had sailed with him to the end of Krynn.

The Sturmfrost surged and seethed. In time that relentless pressure spilled north, roaring through the Bluewater Strait to expand across the Southern Courrain Ocean, where-finally-it was diffused by distance and sunlight into a mere tempest. As the power of the storm waned, slowly, gradually, the Sturmfrost began to relinquish its grip upon the world.

Urgas Thanoi was the mighty-tusked chieftain of the Citadel of Whitefish. He had three fine wives, each of who maintained a delectable layer of fat even through the late winter months. His wives saw to his comfort, and two had already given him fine babes. As the chief bull in this fine place, his life was splendid indeed.

This fortress had been ceded to Urgas, personally, by a mighty ogre prince. Those same ogres had spent the past year exterminating the hated humans, the tribespeople who had made the White Bear Sea a dangerous place for the last four centuries. While routing a human attack, his tusker warriors killed four of the enemy. Those bodies had served as food for the Sturmfrost rites, before the tribe of walrus-men had settled, snug and comfortable, to wait out the worst of the winter storm.

For Urgas Thanoi, life was good, his position secure, his tribe stronger than ever before. Still, he was worried. He padded through the snowdrifts now, on the wall-top parapet surrounding his mighty citadel. Here and there sentries greeted him with tusk-bobbing bows. It pleased him to know that his warriors, alone among the peoples of the Icereach, could actually survive in the face of the Sturmfrost. Of course, he allowed his guards to spell each other every day or two, but no walrus-man would think of complaining merely because the wind was blowing icily or a snowdrift was mounting around his feet. The tuskers were blessed with thick, leathery skin, and, so long as they were well-fed, their underlying layer of blubber insured their survival even in the most bitter of conditions.

Urgas Thanoi finally came to the great gatehouse, which-since it lacked an actual gate-was the weakest link in his citadel’s defenses. He plodded down the stairs inside the tower, kicking through the snow that even here had drifted to a height of a few feet. On the ground he peered through the open arch of the great entryway. Once, he knew, a great slab of iron-strapped wood had secured this portal against assault. Of course, that wooden barrier had rotted away centuries ago. Perhaps, the tusker chieftain thought, he should capture some human slaves, as the ogres had done, slaves who could build him a new gate.

A round-shouldered shape moved in the darkness, and Urgas tensed, before recognizing one of his trusted lieutenants.

“Splitlip-you have returned from the shore. What did you learn?”

The second thanoi, nearly as tall as mighty Urgas, paused in the gatehouse, out of the wind. A long icicle draped each of his tusks.

“It is as you feared, my chief. The humans are still down there. They took shelter in the great cave, and they watch the entrance. They have built a wall of ice and seem prepared for any attack.”

Urgas released a bleating, nostril-flapping explosion of disgust. They were his special curse, humans! Now they had followed him across the sea and seemed destined to camp on his very doorstep.

The thanoi chieftain peered into the storm, sensed that the wind was waning, that the peak of winter’s onslaught had passed. He thought of what he must do, and he was unhappy, but he could see no alternative.

“Tell my wives I will return to them before spring,” Urgas Thanoi said to Splitlip. “I am going to take this news to Grimwar Bane.”

“The wind is dying. I think the worst is past!”

Strongwind Whalebone shouted the words over the howling of the blizzard. He and Lars Redbeard stood atop the loftiest tower of Guilderglow Castle, staring into the eternal darkness of the Sturmfrost night. A comfortable amount of warqat burned in the king’s belly.

“Yes, Sire, I believe it is!” shouted back his wolf-capped lieutenant.

Both men were bundled in many layers of woolens and furs, hoods cinched tightly. The king’s beard was frozen, and his breath came in icy rasps. His hand were encased in two layers of mittens, sheepskin and lambswool, but his fingers felt frostbitten. He was anxious to move, to take action, to do something. After five weeks of sitting in his castle, drinking warqat, feasting, listening to the Sturmfrost roar outside his walls, he found he was unbearably restless.

He looked at Redbeard, was unable entirely to contain his scorn. “You have a wife, Lars. Home life has softened you, I see. You would be content to stay inside past the long winter, to grow weak.

“Sire, I can only say that I live to serve your command. Should you have a task for me, I would offer my very life-”

“Yes, enough, enough.” The king moved to the edge of the parapet, as Lars followed. The blizzard howled around them, but perhaps the strength of the gale was fading slightly. No longer did they see rocks whirling past, icy boulders falling from the sky. No longer did black moaning cyclones tear at the land.

“She asked me if I knew about dragons,” Strongwind said suddenly, turning and speaking directly to Lars Redbeard.

“Sire?”

“I mean, she was thinking about dragons. She must have been thinking about Brackenrock!”

“Moreen of the Arktos?”

“Yes, of course! Those barbarians must know the legend of the Scattering, the reason humans were driven from Brackenrock. She has figured out that with the dragons gone she might take her people there. That’s where she was going, why she needed that accursed boat. She didn’t want me to know it, didn’t mention the place, but I’m sure of it now. She took her people to Brackenrock.”

“A possibility,” Lars admitted, turning his back to the wind and sheltering behind the wall. “Without a boat of our own we were not be able to pursue her. Once the weather allows us, however, we can embark.”

“You are correct,” Strongwind Whalebone said decisively. “But you are also wrong. There is a way. There is a way to cross the strait without a boat.”

Lars looked askance at the king, and gestured to the storm. “You can’t mean-”

Yes!” Strongwind cut him off with a fierce grin. “Yes, we can cross the strait before the ice breaks up. We will summon my priests, and they will send the word to all the clans. I am ordering the Highlanders to make a winter march!”

“Tell us something about Silvanesti,” Moreen asked, as Kerrick sat with the Arktos at another meal of tough, dried whale meat.

He sighed. After eight weeks in the cave with the tribe, he felt as if he had exhausted every anecdote, every detail about his homeland. During the same time, of course, he had learned much about life in Icereach, about the ogres and their prince, Grimwar Bane, about the villainous dwarf who was his henchman, who had slain Moreen’s father with his magical, poisoned blade.

They had also spent much time exploring the cave, which had proved to be surprisingly spacious. There was a wide entryway, mostly closed off from the outside by the wall of ice, and after a short, narrow passage the place widened into a large cavern where the whole tribe gathered for meals. A wide, fast stream of comparatively warm water churned through the center of this chamber, until it plunged through a deep hole. This was a vortex, the most dangerous spot in the whole cavern, and the Arktos took pains to keep their children away from it. Anyone who fell in would be swept into a lightless chasm and drowned somewhere in the bowels of Krynn.

Far back, the cave devolved into small passages, several cozy grottos with their own hot springs, and a few passages that were dark and dirty and seemed to twist around forever. Though Little Mouse had volunteered to spend the whole winter exploring these passages, Moreen had forbidden him to roam beyond the sight and sound of the rest of the tribe.

Their stay here had been comfortable enough. Their biggest enemy was boredom. As Kerrick chewed on the tough jerky, he thought that the food would make passable sailor fare, and he was reminded of another tale, one of the few he hadn’t told yet.

“There was a time, not too many years ago,” he began, “when Silvanesti went to war with the great human kingdom of Istar.”

“What did you fight over?” asked the ever-curious girl named Feathertail.

“Lots of things,” the elf admitted. “But mostly, it was about gold.…”

The Sturmfrost had relaxed its icy grip to the point where sometimes the wind barely gusted, and during clear spells the sky revealed a vista of stars. The midday hours were marked by a brightening of the northern horizon, like the promise of a dawn that had not, thus far, actually materialized.

It was no longer dangerous to go outside, and despite the deep snow, it was possible for the hardy to move about.

“Summon the clans,” Strongwind Whalebone ordered, and the priest of Kradok, bruinlike in his massive fur robe and cap made from the skull of a great bear, nodded.

The two men were alone on the highest tower of Guilderglow, and the king forced himself to curb his impatience as he watched the priest at work.

The man kindled a fire, burning seven sticks of coal that had been shaped into smooth rods and piled into a narrow-peaked pyramid. As blue flames began to flicker through the shafts, the priest chanted in the guttural tones of his ancient language. Strongwind stood back, musing that the man sounded like a bear as much as he physically resembled one of the great creatures.

The blue smoke spiraled upward from the coal fire, swirling like a corkscrew, rising through the still, frigid air. When the pillar of vapor was thirty or forty feet tall, it ceased ascending. More smoke rose from the fire, seeming to surround and compact the first spire, until the king saw a shaft of darkness so thick and lightless that it might have been mistaken for solid obsidian. Still the smoke poured from the coal, thickening the spume, and still the priest growled his incantation. The column of murk swayed this way and that, propelled by mysterious pressure, for there was still no breeze. Strongwind felt a tightness in his belly, a sense of impending release.

“Gather to your king!” cried the priest at last, reverting to the normal tongue of his people. “Gather on the Blood Coast, where the tall cedars grow!”

The cleric spread his arms wide, hands in taloned gloves reaching up like bear paws. Instantly the smoke pillar erupted, tendrils of darkness exploding into missiles that flew up and away, soaring through the dark sky.

Through the air the magical summons flew, arcing high, then at last soaring back to Krynn, one to each of the citadels of the Highlanders that lay within a week’s march of Guilderglow and the sea. Each missive found a priest in its destination, and within minutes each priest was telling his thane or chieftain of the king’s command.

Within seven days a force of one thousand Highlanders emerged from their winter quarters, riding great sledges pulled by their dogs, or walking on snowshoes, some sliding on skis. Each made his way by the fastest route, moving through the winter to the great mustering in the grove of tall cedars. These men of the Icereach were dour and fierce, ready to march.

When all had assembled, they started across the icy waste of the frozen sea, dogs barking, men grunting and cursing. It was a great gamble that the king took, for a late-winter blizzard could roar up from the south and wipe out the whole force.

Kradok seemed to smile on his chosen people, though, for the skies stayed clear and starry, the winds light. Like a great, furred snake, the column of the marching army moved onto the ice, bearing for the opposite shore, and the ancient realm known as Brackenrock.