Finally Yak and the other firbolgs headed back toward the pastoral vale of the Moonwell and the small village of his tribe. Though he didn't display his fear, the great firbolg's heart nearly burst from tension as he approached the place. If the dragon had found it, he knew, all of his kin might have perished in the butchery of a few moments. Even worse, to the reverent creature, the Moonwell they had so diligently tended might have been so polluted by blood or soot that it was no longer a fit place of purity and worship.
Yak's sigh of relief was heavy and real when they crested the rim of the little vale, and he saw that the houses and pool remained intact. Sunrise had lightened the clouds, though the gray filter cast everything in a haze, and Yak even saw many of his tribe gathered in the center of the village. They looked expectantly toward him as he trudged down the steep slope and into the little swale.
"What did your searches reveal?" he asked them.
"The creatures attacked all along the shore," said one called Beaknod. "We took shelter as you directed us, for we arrived too late to influence any of the fights."
"Aye," huffed another, Loinwrap, a strapping warrior with a face like a granite cliff and muscles to match. "Though it did not sit well, this cowering and watching a fight. Still," he admitted, "your wisdom cannot be denied. The monsters did not learn of our village."
"Nor," said Yak pointedly, "of the well. That is the important thing."
"Why is it so important, if our whole island is sacked in its protection?" questioned Loinwrap, who was no theologian.
Yak sighed. "Why bring children into the world? Why sow grain in the spring? Why do we bother to breathe? You may as well ask me these things, for they are all answered the same.
"I know humans," continued the chief of the village. "They will soon seek one to blame for these deaths, and we must ensure that such charges do not fall against us."
"Why?" countered Loinwrap again. "On our rock, we have naught to fear from humans!"
"Contrarily," disputed Yak, who had indeed learned something of the nature of mankind. "If they decide we are to blame, then we shall have no peace against the numbers of them who come here."
"And how do we change this?" inquired an elderly female, Yildegarde.
"I shall sail to Alaron and speak with them myself," announced the firbolg, enjoying the gaping mouths of his tribe members as they regarded him with astonishment. "You, Beaknod, and you, Loinwrap-you will come, too."
"Whyfor is the sea like a woman?" inquired the painted halfling, with a sweeping bow to the throne. The bells dangling from his many-pointed cap jingled, and his costume ballooned around him, humorously exaggerating the gesture. Within the lofty seat, Svenyird Olafsson, King of Gnarhelm and Proud Master of the Surrounding Seas, guffawed heartily.
"Tell me, fool. Whyfor is the ocean the same as a wench?"
"Because when once she grasps a man full in her embrace, he will never again be free of her!" The voice, from the door of the great lodge, drew all attention away from the suddenly perspiring hauling.
"Brandon-my son! Welcome!" boomed the king, rising and holding open his arms in an expansive greeting. "But your mission has finished early! Do you bring word from Callidyrr?"
"Far better, Father. I come with an emissary of the kingdom to the south. She is the High Princess Alicia, daughter of King Kendrick and now ambassador to our realm of Gnarhelm!"
The painted jester stepped back, and the prince led his guests to the great throne. The assembled northmen stared at the woman who followed Brandon into the lodge. Though she wore riding breeches and a stout travel-stained tunic, she walked with a bearing that bespoke her royalty. She approached the throne of King Svenyird and performed a gesture that was half bow, half curtsy.
"Greetings, king of the north. I bring salutations and warm wishes from my father and inform you of his own desire that peace between our peoples shall last well past the times of our children's children!"
"Good speech," agreed the king. "And welcome to mine own lodge. Come, we will talk as soon as you have rested. I grow weary of the prattling of my fool.
"We shall make feast tonight!" proclaimed Svenyird, feeling more relief than he cared to admit now that he was reassured the Ffolk did not plan to make war against him.
"We have news, sire," said Brandon, pressing forward and trying to catch his father's eye.
But the king was in no mood for serious talk now. "It shall be our first topic of conversation after we eat! Now, my son, don't be a boor! Show our guests to quarters in my lodge!"
"Aye, sire," agreed Brandon, with a quick look at Alicia. She seemed to enjoy his awkwardness, and he flushed. "Well, let's find some place for you to stay," he grunted, leading the three Ffolk from the Great Hall of the smoky lodge.
"You, Danrak, must be the one." Meghan spoke firmly, the strength in her voice belying her cronelike appearance.
"But there are many more worthy," protested the druid, suddenly frightened. "Mikal, who tamed the great brown bear … or Isolde, daughter of the glen! Surely they are wiser than I!"
Meghan's lips twisted, and she allowed her eyes to smile a little. "Wiser. . perhaps. But you, Danrak-you are elf-reared, and of us all, you have strength enough that you might endure the trials before you. And then there are the dreams. . the tokens."
The last remark could brook no argument. Danrak bit his tongue, further objections dying unsaid. He looked at the bedraggled Ffolk around him and realized that she spoke the truth. These, the ones who remained of the druid apprentices of twenty years before, made a battered lot, ill-used by the passage of time.
Mikal, whose beard had streaked silver before Danrak shaved his first whiskers, was indeed too old to make the trip. Now he leaned upon the great bear that, during the last dozen years, he had reared and tamed. It served as his steed, in fact, and was the sole reason the withered druid had arrived at this council. And for the quest before them, Danrak knew that no companion could help.
That was why the druids had gathered here, upon the far northern shore of Gwynneth, where the land reached with rocky fingers into the Sea of Moonshae. Standing at the very headland of Gwynneth, the druids overlooked many miles of gray water. The coasts of Alaron, to the east, and Oman, to the west, lay far over the gray horizons, and to the north lay hundreds of miles of chill, rolling sea.
It was stormy water, and a surface that must be crossed by the druid sent on this quest.
A rocky promontory dropped sharply a hundred feet or more into the foaming surf. The steady cadence of the sea came to them from below like a booming tempo that marked away the minutes remaining to them. Danrak felt, with a cold shudder, that those minutes had become all too few. Perhaps not the entire time of his life had been good, but he surprised himself by realizing, when faced with its possible and potentially imminent end, how much he wanted to keep living, to sample many more minutes of existence.
Closing his eyes, Danrak offered a quiet prayer to the goddess. Though he felt no response to his act of faith, the litany soothed him, and he felt better prepared to face the challenge implicit in Meghan's remarks.
"Here, Danrak," said a softly female voice. "I made this for you-just the way it was in my dream." Petite Isolde, her black hair framing a round and very serious face, held an object in her hand.
"Thank you, sister," he said, clasping the small feather in his hand.
"And here, brother," offered Kile, extending a small curved object, the crossed talons of a great wolf's paw.
"You, too, Kile?" Danrak could not help asking. "You had this dream?"
"Aye, and I carved the claw as it was in the dream."
A young druid called Lorn gave Danrak a shiny pebble, which he said had come from a shallow streambed. Danrak saw that it bore a circular spot, like the pupil of an eye. Lorn had smoothed and polished the bauble until now it glowed more brightly than gold.
One by one the others gave him the gifts they had made-things of animal, or plant, or earth. With each bestowal, Danrak f
elt a flowing of love and a slowly growing sense of power. Each of the druids had spent months in the preparation of the talisman, and now all of their might, limited though it was, flowed together into one. All of them had made the objects of their dreams, and in those dreams, they had given them to Danrak.
Only Danrak had had no dream, had seen no token. Yet he couldn't ignore the combined will and prescience of the others.
"I will go on the quest as the goddess commands," announced Danrak, when they had finally finished. He carried the talismans about his person, in belt pouches and pockets and, in some cases, pinned to his woolen tunic.
"May her benevolence watch over you," said Meghan quietly, her voice catching. Danrak was surprised and touched to see tears gathering in her eyes.
The others stood back, forming a loose ring around him. Trying to suppress the trembling in his knees, Danrak stepped to the edge of the promontory. He didn't look down, yet he remained acutely conscious of the surf pounding against the jagged boulders far below.
It had been decades since any druid had gained power from the goddess, either to cast a spell or to employ the innate abilities of their order. This had been the reason for the talismans, but none of them knew if their hopes had any basis in truth.
Now Danrak took the pebble from Lorn. He looked at it and stroked it with his fingertips. Finally he touched it to his forehead, and then cast it into the distance, watching as it soared to the north and then suddenly veered to the right, to the east. He felt a strong sense of destiny and purpose and now, with the flight of the stone, he knew where to go.
Still, it took an act of faith to see if his intuition-indeed, the hopes and plans of all the druids-had been correct. They didn't know if the years of toil and craftsmanship had indeed been able to impart to them some sense of the old art, the old skills that had gained for the order mastery over the wild places of Moonshae.
Slowly, reverently, Danrak took the feathered token given him by Isolde from a pouch at his side. He looked at the woman and saw her as she had been twenty years ago, a red-cheeked girl bursting with the faith of nature, then confused when that faith had seemed to desert her.
Now she smiled, and once again Danrak saw her as that girl. He tried to remember some of his own faith when the goddess had been real, her power accessible to any druid of serious nature and righteous virtue. Surprising himself, he felt the memories flow into him, bringing a surge of joy the like of which he had never known.
He held the feathered token lightly between his fingers, feeling the wind carry the plumes away as he slowly toppled forward. An image came into his mind, of a white gull dipping along the shore of a sea. Wind rushed into his face, roaring in his ears, and the shoreline whirled below him, rushing upward terribly fast.
And then, instead of striking the rocks, he flew.
From the Log of Sinioth:
My princess, you tantalize me with your dreams. Soon-very soon now-you shall make your pledge, and we will share the same master. Then the secrets will be yours and mine to share.
And then, too, will we share the land of your people.
14
Gnarhelm
The northman capital of Gnarhelm was, to Alicia, disappointingly small and rustic by comparison to Callidyrr. The city centered around a hundred great log buildings, which Brandon proudly indicated as the lodges of Gnarhelm's sea captains. Many houses of drab, weatherbeaten wood dotted the shoreline and pastures around the lodges. Tracks of dirt led to them, and sheep and goats grazed on the scruffy patches of grass that browned the yards.
Beyond these great lodges, across the grassy moors that spread inland for miles and reminded Alicia of the rolling country of her parents' home in Corwell, hundreds of small farms dotted the land. The barns and pastures looked brown and withered and much less prosperous than those of the Ffolk. Sheep and goats and occasionally cattle or horses managed to eke out a survival from the harsh terrain.
The streets seemed empty, almost deserted. The princess enjoyed the bustling market of Callidyrr, with its crowds, music, jugglers, and booths. Of course, the rain, steadily drumming since her arrival, discouraged such activity here. In Callidyrr, the buildings along shop streets were lined with overhanging arches, sheltering the walk down either side of the road. Gnarhelm offered no such amenity. Still, she had accepted Brandon's offer to tour the town, and she knew it would be fruitless to wait for a cessation of the rain.
"These are the smithies and the wainwright!" the prince explained as they walked along the edge of the main street of mostly hard-packed dirt. The center of the avenue was a morass of ruts, mudholes, and pools of brown water.
Brandon pointed out several great barnlike buildings. Sounds of hammering emerged from one where the doors stood open, and Alicia saw a craftsmen pounding an iron rim onto a spoked wheel. The princess realized that these, the great centers of this capital, were no larger than any of a dozen such shops that could be found throughout the mercantile quarter of Callidyrr. She refrained, however, from speaking of her conclusions, since the prince's pride in his realm was obvious and she had no wish to offend him.
Finally Brandon led Alicia to the waterfront, and here she saw real fire come into the northman prince's eyes. Salmon Bay jutted like a stabbing finger of sea into northern Alaron, and Gnarhelm occupied the shoreline of a sheltered cove near the southern end of the bay. Alicia marveled at the many graceful longships at rest in the dark, gentle waters of the large, natural harbor.
She counted more than a score of the vessels, each nearly a hundred feet in length, with sweeping lines and proudly curved prows. On some, she saw figureheads, many of women, though others depicted great beasts such as an eagle-headed griffon, a bear, or even a leering dragon. The princess watched a crew haul in the anchor of one sleek longship several hundred yards from shore. The sail of the vessel unfurled with a sudden billow, revealing the image of a crimson hawk, wings spread wide. With practiced ease, the helmsman turned the prow toward the mouth of the harbor, and the ship fairly sprang into the bay.
Among the anchored longships, gathered like dogs slumbering among horses, bobbed a number of fishing craft, some with sails hoisted, others tacking out to sea, where they swiftly vanished in the gray haze. Like the longships, these sturdy knarrs were deckless. Crates, nets, buoys, and baskets filled the hulls of the smaller fishing vessels. Great sheds at the other end of the dock emitted the unmistakable smell of fish, and Alicia felt a sense of relief when Brandon led her in the other direction, along the length of the solid wharf.
Beside the long pier stretched an area where the princess saw the bony outline of a new longship, the keel formed from a trunk of a gigantic mountain fir. Even in the partial state of the vessel's completion, she recognized a grand ship, larger than any of those currently within the bay. Hull boards ran partway up the ribwork, but she saw that the gunwales lay far above the unfinished section.
Piles of logs lay nearby, and shirtless northmen, their hair constrained by long braids down their backs, labored at shaving these into planks. Other men carried the lumber to the skeleton framework, where still more workers skillfully formed the boards to fit the sleek shape of the hull.
"She's beautiful," Alicia said sincerely.
"And she will be mine," Brandon replied. For once, the pride that had filled his voice with boasts faded into the background, replaced by a reverent sense of awe that the woman found very compelling.
"What's her name?"
Brandon smiled, his eyes distant. "I haven't chosen one yet. It will be an important decision."
The princess sensed the pride in his voice, and it seemed to soften the warrior in her eyes. She remembered Mouse and Brittany and her own fast chariot, and she understood how Brandon felt about his ship.
"Look out there," said the prince, indicating one of the largest longships currently floating in the bay. The ship's prow curved into the sweeping figure of a long-beaked bird. "That's the Gullwing. She's been my ship for five years now, and a prou
d vessel she is."
"The hulls are so low," Alicia observed. "It's amazing the waves don't pour inside!"
"We have to bail now and then," Brandon laughed, stepping so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body beside her through the damp chill of the air. The princess had a sudden desire to board the ship, to feel the smooth hull slide over the waves of the wide sea. With the prince of Gnarhelm at the helm, nothing would be safer-or more exciting.
As if reading her mind, Brandon turned to her. "Perhaps when our business is concluded you'll allow me to carry you back to Callidyrr in the Gullwing."
"I'd like that."
Alicia looked at the waterfront again and realized that she saw the heart and soul of Gnarhelm here. No wonder the streets had seemed so plain, the shops and houses mere structures of log, with little adornment and no sense of permanence, entirely unlike the great stone edifices of her own home city. Why should these people devote such efforts to their landbound dwellings? Now she sensed, for the first time, a thing she had long been taught but had never really understood: The northmen looked to the sea for everything-for their homes, their sustenance. . even, in times past, for their wives. As a daughter of the Ffolk, Alicia had been reared with tales of young women, during her mother's day, seized by northern raiders and carried away to lives in lodges just like these.
Finally she began to understand the neighbors of her people, and in that knowledge, there was no fear, but rather an exciting kind of anticipation.
Yak, Beaknod, and Loinwrap made their gruff farewells to the rest of the tribe and then started for the shore. The great war chief, resplendent in his cat's-head cape with its grinning, fanged helm, desired to depart with little formality.
"Where do we go once we get in the boat?" asked granite-faced Loinwrap, none too enthusiastic about the impending voyage. Yet, as the strongest giant in the band, Loinwrap was indispensable to Yak's mission should they be received with other than open arms.
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