The Golden Orb

by Doug Niles

  “Indeed, the doors are well proofed against sound,” Grimwar Bane said with a deep chuckle, relaxing on the soft mattress, willing sleep to slowly rise up and claim him. He looked at his cherished one, watched her drowse, relishing the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed deeply.

  For some reason, he was not tired, not even relaxed. Though it hadn’t taken Thraid long to fall asleep, the king could not do the same. Restless, he worked his arm up from beneath her and sat up, frowning. He found it hard to relax, for he was distracted. He knew that his wife was talking to his mother, that there would be some disturbing bulletin from Dracoheim.

  Now that Grimwar was temporarily sated, he was preoccupied by his strong suspicion that the news, however welcome it might be to Stariz, would involve some onerous task for himself.

  ow about the third terrace? Is there enough topsoil there for plowing and planting? I don’t want to lose half the crop again in the late summer rains!”

  Moreen Bayguard, the Lady of Brackenrock, frowned as she looked down the mountainside, her gaze following the long slope descending from the fortress to the ocean shore, two miles away. She stood atop one of the two gatehouse towers flanking the entry to the citadel. This was the best vantage for examining the progress made by her people in their annual effort to capitalize upon the few months of precious sunlight.

  “Not yet, my lady,” said Lukor. The gray-haired farmer frowned sympathetically and rubbed his dirty, gnarled hands together. “We have hauled a hundred cartloads of black dirt from the fen, but there are still many rocks. With luck and hard work, we will be ready for planting within another few days.”

  “That will have to do, then,” Moreen said, dissatisfied with the assessment but knowing there was nothing she could do to improve upon things. “You have every one of the Highlanders working on it?”

  “Of course, Lady. They know that their best hopes for a good year of warqat come from the barley we grow right here. You could say that they are rather enthusiastic assistants.”

  The chiefwoman chuckled briefly. “Just keep them out of last year’s brew until the task is done.”

  “Certainly,” Luk replied. “I must say, they are strong men and seem cheerful enough as long as they know they have something to work for. They like life in Brackenrock as well as do we Arktos.”

  “Aye, the Highlanders are ripe for hard work,” she agreed, then turned as she heard a loud laugh from the trapdoor leading to the gatehouse observation platform. “Ah, Bruni, welcome,” she said. “What do you find so funny?”

  The big woman pulled herself through the hatch and stood up, looking over the tall farmer and all but dwarfing the relatively petite chiefwoman. She chuckled again. “These Highlanders do all kinds of work,” she said genially. “Marta just told me that she, too, is expecting a baby this autumn.”

  Moreen nodded, not surprised, but not necessarily pleased by the announcement. Of course, in a way it was good news. The male warriors of her tribe had been slain in battle nine years earlier—had it really been that long?—and the influx of strong, handsome, and cheerful Highlander men had undeniably given the Arktos a new lease on their future. Since she and her people had restored Brackenrock, they held the most desirable land in all the Icereach. Because of this, men were willing to come here, work, and many of them married into Moreen’s tribe.

  The chiefwoman understood, hypothetically, that if her tribe had been still eking out survival in the small, vulnerable fishing village on the Blood Coast of the White Bear Sea, the migration would have worked the other way around. Inevitably the women of her tribe would have slipped away to join the Highlanders in their own citadels, sacrificing the legacy of their people for the security of a life behind stone walls. None of those Highlander forts was as tall as impregnable Brackenrock, but every one of them had been safer than a waterfront village—until Moreen’s tribe had taken over and fortified Brackenrock.

  After the ogres’ massacre of her people, including her father, the chief of the Bayguard clan, Moreen had led the survivors—women, children, and elders—to safety, assuming leadership of the desperate tribe. In that role she had brought them to the ruins of ancient Brackenrock and made this place not just a home but an unassailable fortress. The ogre army, led by the ogre king, had assaulted Brackenrock and failed, and over the past eight years the ogres had not dared to launch another full-scale attack.

  But the ogres persistently harried Moreen with raids against remote Arktos villages, and forays against some of the smaller castles of the Highlanders. Refugees from those other battles had come here to be welcomed and provided with food and shelter. Moreen knew deep in her heart that Brackenrock was only temporarily a refuge, that the ogres would not leave them alone forever.

  “You were down at the waterfront, right?” Moreen asked Bruni. “What about the harbor boom?” Even though she couldn’t see the protected circle of Brackenrock’s little port from here, Moreen stared downward, as if her penetrating gaze might bore through the solid rock of the mountainside and bring the object of her concern into view.

  “The logs and chains are in place. They need to float it across, then test it. As soon as that’s done, we should be able to bar the entrance against any hostile ship.”

  “Such as the ogre king’s galley,” the chiefwoman finished grimly. Bruni let that statement pass without comment.

  “Where’s Kerrick? I thought he was going to be back from Bearhearth in time to help finish the boom!” Moreen wondered, her worry changing into a crossness in her voice.

  Bruni shrugged and looked northward, across the newly sparkling waters of the Courrain Ocean. “I expect he’s taking his sweet time on the trip. You know how he gets during the winter, all cooped up … and this is his first sail since the ice broke up. Still, he’s been gone for three days. I would expect him back before nightfall.”

  “I wish he would pay a little more attention to the work that needs to be done,” groused the chiefwoman.

  Bruni chuckled, the sound irritating in Moreen’s ears. “What’s so funny this time?” she demanded.

  Her friend looked down at her with an amused but exasperated shrug.

  “Sometimes I get the feeling that if Kerrick marched in here with Grimwar Bane’s head on a pike, you’d complain that he didn’t make a neat enough slice through his neck!”

  Moreen glowered up at the big woman. “If Kerrick ever brings me the ogre king’s head—or any part of any ogre!—I expect I could make a proper show of gratitude! But there’s so much to do here, and it seems sometimes as if he just doesn’t care about anything! Anything—except that damn boat of his or all the gold he’s accumulating.”

  Bruni nodded sagely, and the chiefwoman found that reaction similarly aggravating, especially when her friend spoke. “Remember the first gold he earned? We gave it to him willingly, so he would ferry the tribe across the strait. If he hadn’t been there …”

  “I know, I know. We’d all be living under Strongwind Whalebone’s protection. I’d probably be his wife by now.”

  As she thought of the trials of the past years, the strength she had gained and the prosperity her people now enjoyed, Moreen acknowledged privately that she owed a great deal to the elf they had come to regard as the Messenger. Not only had he and his boat carried her people across a previously impassable water barrier, but he had risked his life in their subsequent battle for survival. Once Brackenrock had been secured, he had shown her people how to build boats, mint coins, to do so many things that were commonplace in his world. As she looked across the sculpted fields she recalled that it had been Kerrick Fallabrine who had explained the technique of terracing farmland, of bringing water through sluice gates and channels to irrigate fields, giving Brackenrock—and Moreen—claim to the most fertile granges in all the Icereach.

  When she pictured the elf’s handsome face, his golden hair and large, penetrating eyes—even the ragged scar of his left ear, which she secretly admired as a sign of his character—she fel
t different emotions. As always, she recognized a danger in those feelings and forced her emotions aside. As she turned to go, she looked at Bruni and shook her head.

  “For someone who’s almost ninety years old, Kerrick Fallabrine still has a lot of growing up to do, is what I think,” she declared.

  Bruni snorted. “You could do with a little grow—oh, never mind,” she declared curtly.

  Moreen immediately felt guilty. “I’m sorry—I don’t mean to snap at you,” she said, then laughed. “I guess he’s not really as bad as I make him out to be.”

  “What about you having some fun for a change, doing something just for the sheer pleasure of it?” the large woman asked eagerly. “You mentioned Strongwind Whalebone—he’d be delighted to hear from you, see you. Going hunting, fishing—something like you used to do in the old days! Who knows, the king of the Highlanders might start to look pretty good to you.”

  Shaking her head, Moreen laughed again, wryly now. “No … I think you’ll have a mate long before I will,” she said.

  Bruni’s shoulders slumped. She turned away, pretending interest in the work on the fields. The chiefwoman regretted her remark. She knew that her friend had never attracted the interest of any man. Unlike Moreen, Bruni found the lack of male interest depressing, and lately she had gone through several bouts of melancholy brought on by her loneliness.

  “Will you do me a favor if you see Kerrick?” Moreen asked quickly

  “Sure,” said Bruni, with another shrug.

  “Tell him I need to talk to him,” Moreen said, before slipping through the trapdoor into the coolness of the tower. Already her mind was ticking through the rest of the list—a dozen, a score, a hundred things needed to be done.

  As usual, it seemed as though she had to supervise them all.

  Cutter glided past the Signpost, the rocky pillar that stood at the mouth of Brackenrock’s harbor. The elf had already stowed his jib, and the mainsail was tightened to a small portion of its vast surface as Kerrick steered the boat slowly toward one of the sturdy wooden docks that now extended into the placid water.

  He could hardly believe how this place had changed in the years since he had first glimpsed it. Six boats, seaworthy if rather round and ungainly, bobbed at anchor. A solid quay with two long piers lined the shoreline that had been jumbled with rocky debris eight years before. To his left was the boatyard, where two new curraghs were nearly ready for launching, skeletal frames complete and awaiting only the cured leather hides that would render them seaworthy Beyond those round, tub-like craft, a gleaming hull of wooden planks rested between framing beams. That boat had the sharp prow and deep keel of a true sailboat, somewhat shorter and wider than Cutter but nevertheless a sleek and modern craft.

  A lanky young man, his long black hair bound into a long ponytail, stopped planing the hull long enough to wave at the elf.

  “How did the wind hold?” asked Mouse, shouting across the rippled water.

  “About like you’d expect for the first of spring,” Kerrick replied, cupping his hands around his mouth to help his voice carry across the harbor. “Like I could have made it to Ansalon by tomorrow! Then I had to tack all the way back.”

  He turned the tiller and Cutter glided easily up to the longest dock. Several youths hurried to take the line he tossed ashore, and in moments the slender boat was lashed securely to the stout pilings. Knowing he had taken on a good amount of spray, Kerrick promised the boys a gold coin if they’d pump out the bilge, and they gleefully accepted.

  “Do you want the sail in the locker?” asked the oldest, swaggering forward with the long experience of one whole summer as a boathand.

  “Not yet,” the elf replied, suddenly reluctant to abandon the freedom of the sea. “Who knows? If the weather holds, I might take another run before sunset.” He knew that today’s sunlight would only total seven or eight hours, but he was not willing to relinquish the good spring weather, not just yet.

  Mouse had wandered over to say hello, and now he raised his eyebrows. “Another run before dark? Well, you’re the captain.”

  “At least, on this boat,” Kerrick said with a laugh, clapping the strapping young man on the shoulder, then gesturing to the nearly completed hull, the sleek boards his friend had been smoothing. Unlike the leather-shelled curraghs, the new boat was similar in shape to Cutter, with a keel, long deck, and single, low cabin.

  “It won’t be long until you’ve got Marlin afloat.”

  “I know.” Mouse’s face lit up at the mention of his boat. “Once we’ve got a stretch of solid good weather I’ll take one of the tubs across to trade for pitch in Tall Cedar Bay. I’ll get the boys to help—they’re always ready for a ride in a curragh. When I bring that back and caulk Marlin’s hull, I’ll be ready to put her in the water. I think I’ll be sailing before the sun sets in fall.”

  “I’ll enjoy the sight of another beautiful boat on these seas,” Kerrick suggested. He gestured ruefully to the round shapes moored around them. “You’re right. These curraghs look more like laundry tubs than proper sailing craft.”

  Mouse laughed. “They’ve changed the way we live, and that’s the truth. It’s hard to believe that ten years ago no one from my tribe had seen the western shore of the White Bear Sea. Now we have small towns on both sides, and people go back and forth dozens of times in a year!”

  “You Arktos are natural sailors,” the elf agreed. “Taking these open boats onto the White Bear Sea is bold work.”

  “They’re the best we can do around here, I suppose, with the materials and tools of the Icereach. You know, some day I’d love to see the shipyards of Silvanesti, or Tarsis … all the places you’ve told us about,” the young man said dreamily. “To see the work of those who made Cutter.”

  “I don’t doubt that if you had proper oak and mahogany in the Icereach, you’d make a vessel that’s equal to Cutter. You’ve done wonders with the materials you have. Think of Marlin, a pine-board longboat with leather stoppers and but two sails … and she’ll be able to ride the deep ocean as well as any king’s galley. She’ll take you to Tarsis, my friend, or to anywhere else you want to go.”

  Mouse nodded, then looked almost guilty as his eyes flicked upward toward the fortress that loomed unseen beyond the mountainside overhead. “Of course, I wouldn’t want to leave Feathertail that long,” he assured the elf.

  Kerrick smiled ruefully. “She’s as much a sailor as you are, and don’t think she’d let you leave her behind. As a matter of fact, it’s not exactly common for someone to sail by himself. Don’t get the wrong idea just because I showed up here that way. I was unusual even among Silvanesti sailors.”

  “But you had Coraltop Netfisher along, didn’t you?” asked the young man. “You’ve always said so!”

  The elf winced, remembering his dream. He had felt a stab of melancholy when he had awakened to find that his old companion was not in fact present on the boat. It was rare for him to think of Coraltop or dream of him these days.

  “Maybe. I’m not even sure myself, any more. It’s been so long that I have to wonder if he really existed, or if Moreen is right, that he was a just figment of my imagination, created out of the long months of boredom at sea. Though I did have a dream about him,” he admitted, “just a couple of nights ago.” Kerrick thought of Coraltop’s suggestion that his father might have returned to Silvanesti in his absence. That was impossible, of course, but it was strange how the notion, once planted in his subconscious, kept rising to the surface.

  Mouse frowned. “I’ve never heard you say that Coraltop didn’t exist! Didn’t you see him right here in your boat the day we won Brackenrock?”

  Kerrick squirmed inwardly. He didn’t like to consider the suggestion that the kender wasn’t real—it sounded far too much like madness—but somehow here, today, he keenly felt the glaring lack of evidence to the contrary.

  “That was eight years ago, and I never saw him again. That day no one else saw him, either. No, that kender may as w
ell have been pure fancy. I’m glad to say that I’ve put the past behind me.”

  “If you think so, that’s the important thing,” Mouse agreed, though he avoided looking Kerrick in the eye. “Um … how was the run to Bearhearth?”

  “Smooth, no problems,” the elf replied, grateful for the change of subject. “Say, do you know why they call it that?”

  “No. I never thought about it.”

  “The thane told me that, five or six generations ago, there wasn’t a castle there, and the clan was a wandering tribe. Their leader speared a bear high in the mountains and tracked the animal down to the shore and along the beach for ten miles, or maybe more. When he finally caught up to the creature, he found the bear dead, right in the middle of a flat clearing above a sheltered cove. The Highlanders decided that the place was perfect for a stronghold. It turned out that the bear perished right on the spot where they put the fireplace in the great hall.”

  “Bears,” Mouse noted. “They play a big role in our folklore, Highlanders and Arktos alike. You’ve heard our own clan’s legend about the black bear?”

  “The one slain by Moreen’s grandfather, yes,” Kerrick replied. “It was a harbinger of greatness, I recall, the sign that the Bayguard clan would lead all the Arktos. I never got to see the skin—the ogres captured it that summer, before I got here—but I believe that is one prophecy that has come true.”

  “Maybe someday Moreen will get that fur back,” said the young man ruefully.

  The elf didn’t see how that was possible, since the trophy, so far as anyone knew, was kept in the ogre fortress of Winterheim, but he didn’t dash his friend’s hopes. “Well, we have the ogre’s sacred axe,” he suggested with good humor, “so maybe we got the best of the trade.”

  “Perhaps,” Mouse mused, but he was looking southward. The elf knew he was remembering the talisman of his people.