The Golden Orb i-2

by Douglas Niles

  Kerrick seized the gnome by his long beard and leaned close, staring into watery blue eyes.

  “Cutter was built by my father, and carried me along the coast of Ansalon and across the Courrain Ocean. She was going to take me home again, too-and she would have, if your god-cursed Whalefish hadn’t rammed her and cut her in two!”

  The gnome spluttered something else but couldn’t articulate his words because Kerrick was pulling his beard upward, lifting the little fellow a few inches off the deck.

  “Who are you anyway? What is this strange thing?” Moreen’s voice, calm and forceful, cut through the commotion. Shaking his head, Kerrick relaxed his grip. The gnome pulled away, darting behind a small table. He regarded the trio with wide, accusing eyes.

  “This is my Whalefish,” he finally said, with an unmistakable pride. “A submersible boat of my own invention, powered by steam, and unique in the annals of Krynn’s seafarers-as far as I know-though it is my sincere hope that, someday, undersea travel inspired by my design will be commonplace across the oceans and seas of our world. I am her master, Captain Pneumatic-operationspressurefitterandchydraulicmakerwelderex-traordinairephilosoph-”

  “We will call you Captain Pneumo,” Kerrick interrupted quickly, having had enough experience with gnome appellations to realize that the recitation of the name would likely have continued through the better part of the next three days. “Are you claiming that you didn’t sink my sailboat intentionally?”

  “Well, yes, I am… that is, if you’re certain I did sink it!”

  “Quite certain,” Randall said. “I spotted that sliver blade on the bow of your, er, submersible. It swam through the water, then cut right through our boat. Sent her straight down, more’s the pity.” He looked at Kerrick with genuine sympathy. “She was a beautiful vessel, she was,” he declared.

  “I assure you, that was not my intent!” Pneumo declared, coming out from behind the galley table. “You see, there are still a few, not exactly flaws but, well, unexpected wrinkles in Whalefish’s design. Such as, it’s rather difficult for me to see where I’m going. But I can always get there at very high speed!” he added.

  Kerrick glanced around the narrow, tube-shaped hull. There were compartments fore and aft, both secured behind metal hatches. The air was surprisingly warm and very humid, smelling faintly of coal smoke and steam. A dull roar of sound emerged from-he guessed it was the stern, though he couldn’t really be certain-somewhere.

  “Do you operate this… thing:”-Kerrick couldn’t think of it as a boat-“by yourself?”

  “No! I have a crew. Steady loyal sailors, both of them. Divid! Terac!” called the gnome, his voice a piercing screech.

  A hatch opened, revealing a narrow compartment in the direction Kerrick guessed was the stern. A billow of black smoke emerged, followed by two rotund figures who tumbled through the hatch, then scrambled to stand at attention.

  “Close the hatch!” demanded the gnome, and one of the sailors immediately lunged back through the passageway while the other slammed the door shut, turning to rub a grimy fist against his soot-covered eyes.

  “This is Divid,” explained the captain, drawing a deep breath as the other crewman came back through the hatch, releasing another cloud of smoke before he shut the door behind him. “And Terac.”

  The two small figures stood in the shadows. At first Kerrick thought they were more gnomes, but as his eyes adjusted he noted the weak chins, barely covered with peachfuzz beards, and wide, staring eyes. Terac’s jaw hung slackly, allowing a trickle of drool to dribble from his mouth, while Divid had a finger buried past the first knuckle within a great beak of a nose.

  “Gully dwarves? Your crew is gully dwarves?”

  “They work very hard, mostly, and they come cheap,” Pneumo declared proudly.

  Before Kerrick could say anything else, Whalefish suddenly angled sharply downward. A great stream of icy water spilled through the still-open hatch atop the hull, and the elf had the sickening sensation, once again, of a deck dropping away beneath him, starting a plunge that seemed likely to carry them all to the bottom of the sea.

  “The elf is coming! For all we know, he’s here already! We have to be prepared, guard against…” Grimwar stalked around the great hall of Dracoheim Castle, bellowing wildly in alarm. Only when he heard the echo of his voice coming back to him did he realize he didn’t know what to say, what the real danger was.

  “Guard against what?” testily demanded Stariz, who was still out of breath after the hasty climb up from the harbor. Goldwing had arrived in port barely a half hour ago. She stomped over to the hearth, held her hands out to soak up the warmth from the glowing embers. “We managed to beat him here. What do you think he can do against all your soldiers?”

  “Yes, my son. What exactly are you worried about?” Hanna’s voice was maddeningly calm, but the fact that she echoed his wife’s irritating question was like a second knife in Grimwar Bane’s guts. He leaned back and roared his frustration at the vaulted ceiling, while the two ogresses waited with infuriating patience for him to regain his composure.

  “Reports! I need reports, from all around the island! These are still the days of the midnight sun. He cannot bring that boat into shore under the cover of darkness. When there is fog I want guards standing shoulder to shoulder, every place he could land! I need trusted ogres watching every inch of our shoreline, alert for any sign of that cursed boat.”

  “We have watchmen out now,” Hanna said, “regular patrols around the whole island. We can increase the number, but my son, he is one elf, with only a few companions. It would have been good if you captured him at sea, but I don’t see how he represents a serious threat.”

  Grimwar growled. His mother was right, of course. What could one elf and a few of his friends do? Still, he had a gut feeling that something was amiss.

  There was a staccato rap on the heavy door.

  “Who is it?” demanded the king, spinning on his heel to glare at the entryway.

  The door was already open, and the Alchemist was halfway across the great hall. In another second he had reached the trio and was bowing to the king.

  Grimwar blinked, nonplussed by the fellow’s surprising quickness. Even as he was standing still he seemed to be quivering, ready to bolt in any direction.

  “I came to report on the status of the orb,” the Alchemist stated quickly, barely drawing breath. “The components will be assembled and purified by the end of the day-and by tomorrow morning I will have them inside the orb, and I will be ready to melt the bead of gold around the rim, to seal it. After that, it will be ready for use.”

  The king nodded, as though distracted, whereas the newcomer had actually helped to focus his thoughts. He pointed at the Alchemist and spoke to the two ogresses.

  “He is coming here to stop the Alchemist,” Grimwar Bane declared firmly. He waited tensely, half-expecting his wife or his mother to mock his statement. To his surprise, they looked at each other, eyes widening in understanding.

  “Oh, you are right,” said Stariz in a genuinely awed voice. “Your insight is keen, my lord. Indeed, that is the only explanation that makes sense.” She looked at the slight, trembling figure and nodded in appraisal. “He seeks to stop you-kill or cripple or capture you, somehow.”

  “But I don’t understand,” declared the now twice as jittery Alchemist. “Why would this person you speak of try to do that? Why should I fear him? What is this all about?”

  “You should fear him,” Grimwar Bane said in cold triumph, utterly certain now. “Because he, too, is an elf!”

  “The hatch!” cried Kerrick, lunging past the flailing gnome. He clawed his way up the small ladder, fighting the force of rushing water until he found the handle on the inside of the trapdoor. He wrenched it down, and the water pressure helped slam it shut, though the elf was knocked down the ladder and sent sprawling on the metal deck.

  Captain Pneumo rushed past him, scrambling up the ladder to turn a metal valve that
apparently cinched the hatch in place. Water ceased to spill down the hatchway, but the deck was still angled steeply downward. Something barreled into Kerrick, sending him sprawling into a tangle of metal pipes, and he realized that one of the gully dwarves-Terac, it looked like-had bowled into him.

  Light flared as Pneumo adjusted the flame on a wildly swinging lantern. Kerrick coughed, breathing steamy fumes, then blinked as he saw the gully dwarf dive headfirst into the water churning in the downward-pointed bow.

  “More fire!” cried the gnome. “Feed the boilers! Scoop the gold! Plunge the ballast! Strike the vanes-no, strike the ballast and plunge the vanes!” The bearded captain seized a great hammer and raced away from Kerrick, pulling open the constricted hatchway leading into the stern. The other gully dwarf, Divid, remained amidships, spinning some of the bewildering array of valves. If the little fellow knew what he was doing, his frantic gestures gave no clue.

  Kerrick raced after Pneumo, using his hands to pull himself up the steeply canted deck. He cast a glance behind, saw there was no sign of Terac in the water churning in the bow. Strongwind had found a rope from somewhere and was headed in that direction, Moreen at his side. Randall, his expression almost bemused, trailed the elf.

  Cracking his head on a low bulkhead, Kerrick cursed, then reached for a handhold that turned out to be a scalding hot pipe. Only Randall’s strong hands against his back prevented him from falling, but quickly the elf recovered his balance and continued to move upward, scrambling toward the rear of the seemingly plummeting Whalefish.

  He found Pneumo in a large chamber that was illuminated by red light spilling from the open door of a boiler. The gnome was frantically pitching chunks of coal into the furnace, releasing thick smoke that brought tears to Kerrick’s eyes. He blinked, saw familiar brightness shining among the sooty black, and realized that there were nuggets of pure gold mingled with the fuel.

  “That valve!” shrieked the gnome captain, pointing to a great, spoked wheel as the elf drew near. “Turn it-we need more pressure!”

  “Which way?” Kerrick asked, taking the metal rim in his hands. The surface was warm, slick, and oily, but he felt it budge under the pressure of his grip.

  “How should I know?” demanded the gnome, still pitching gold-laced coal into his boiler. “Just turn it!”

  Kerrick gave the valve a hard twist, and immediately a gout of steam exploded from an unseen vent. The eruption blasted Pneumo away from the boiler, sent him tumbling across the narrow, cylindrical chamber.

  “Not that way!” shrieked the gnome.

  Reversing the direction of spin, Kerrick opened the valve, feeling a thrum of power as steam somehow hissed through the system of pipes. Randall, meanwhile, slammed the door of the boiler shut, leaving the room in an eerie darkness split by the crimson glow of several glass panels around the boiler. The Highlander pulled the sputtering gnome to his feet and brushed him off.

  “You lost a little hair, fella, but you’ll be okay,” he said.

  “The vanes! We have to turn the vanes!” cried Pneumo, breaking away, racing back the way he had come, down the steeply tilted deck.

  “Vanes?” Kerrick repeated, trying unsuccessfully to imagine what the gnome was talking about.

  “I’ll tend the fire here,” Randall offered. “See if you can help.”

  The elf lunged after Pneumo, sliding down the sloping passage, ducking under the bulkhead to find himself back in the Whalefish’s lamp-lit central compartment. Despite his initial impression of a tightly cramped space, after the hellish confines of the boiler room this now seemed to Kerrick like a spacious cabin.

  Water still sloshed in the forward section of the submersible, and he spotted Moreen and Strongwind, holding their rope, staring futilely into the murky liquid. The chiefwoman caught his eye when he entered and shook her head.

  “No sign of the other little one,” she said grimly.

  Pneumo, meanwhile, had seized a crank mounted high on the bulkhead and was kicking and straining to try to turn it. The mechanism, so far at least, seemed unyielding. Kerrick suspected this was one of the “vanes” that must be turned, and as he advanced to help he spotted a similar apparatus on the opposite side. He went to that one and gave the handle a pull.

  He got it down a few inches, against tremendous pressure, but found it would move no farther. Pneumo was jumping up and down, tugging on the handle but having no visible success with the crank.

  “What do the vanes do?” Kerrick asked, shouting, then wincing in surprise as his voice boomed and echoed though the narrow hull.

  “Point us up-or down!” shrilled the gnome. “Now, they’re steering us to the bottom!”

  Frantically the elf tugged at the mechanism, but he couldn’t get the crank to move much. When he loosened his hold to adjust his grip, the pressure on the vane spun the handle back to its starting position.

  “More power!” screamed the gnome, bouncing up and down as he tried, still without success, to rotate his own handle. “Feed the boilers! Drive the propeller!”

  Kerrick suddenly halted, went to the gnome, and wrenched him away. He shook Pneumo by the shoulders, kneeling to stare the captain in his wide, watery eyes.

  “You say the vanes are steering us downward?” he demanded.

  The gnome gave a frantic affirmative nod.

  “Then why do you want more power?” cried the elf. “Won’t that drive us down-faster?”

  Pneumo opened his mouth, beard bristling, eyes bulging. Abruptly he clamped his lips together and nodded. “Right,” he said. He shouted toward the stern. “Less power! Starve the boilers! Stop the propeller!”

  Leaving the gnome, Kerrick scrambled back to the boiler room to find Randall awaiting him expectantly. The elf went to the large valve he had opened scarce minutes earlier and quickly wheeled it shut. The plunging momentum of the boat slowed perceptibly.

  Back in the control room, Moreen and Strongwind were hauling a blue-faced Terac up from the flooded bow section. The gully dwarf spewed a great lungful of water, coughed, and retched but looked as if he would be all right.

  Only then did Kerrick notice the water spilling along the deck, draining from the bow as the boat, recovering from its headlong dive, gradually leveled out. Slowly they floated upward. A pair of thick crystal panels revealed the increasing illumination of the water as they ascended through indigo, blue, and soft emerald depths. The light continued to grow until, long minutes later, the Whalefish popped to the surface, and the glass panel brightened with the almost forgotten light of the wonderful sun.

  “We need more gold,” Pneumo announced, after he had inspected his metal watercraft. “That’s the only thing that will power the boilers enough to get us out to sea.”

  “Gold? You burn gold?” asked the elf, incredulous.

  “Yup. Otherwise, the smoke infects the fish, and we can’t eat any, and we all die,” the gnome explained.

  “Even gully dwarves, who can eat just about anything.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, leaning away from Divid and Terac, who were gobbling some vile porridge at the galley table. “They’re my third crew. The first two pairs, well, let’s just say that it wasn’t pleasant.”

  “Where did you get them?” Kerrick asked.

  “Why, Dracoheim, naturally. There’s lots of ’em living under the mountain there, and they make good, loyal crewmen.” Pneumo lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Dumb as two lumps of bricks, of course.”

  “You’ve been to Dracoheim?” Kerrick should his head in amazement. He had a hard time believing this was all happening, but his bruises and burns-and the memory of his beloved sailboat’s loss-convinced him that the experience was real. “And gold? You burn gold in your engine? How do you get that?” he demanded.

  Pneumo looked at him as if he was a stubborn student who simply refused to learn. “Why, where else would you go if you needed gold? Dracoheim, of course!”

  21

  Shore of Cinder and Ash

  The two
halves of the golden orb lay open on the Alchemist’s workbench. One of them would soon be filled with the lethal powder mixture. The other would be filled with the potion, then the halves would be sealed together.

  The Alchemist had some work to do before he finalized the powder, and for that he needed to concentrate, to forget about the new danger menacing him. After all, he had guards-six bull ogres of the Dowager Queen’s personal escort-and was high up in the tower of the lofty castle. He ought to be safe, beyond the reach of any intruder.

  He set to work with a vengeance, his movements swift and precise. At least, such was his intention. Increasingly, however, his fingers trembled, or he found himself leaning on the bench to catch his breath, fighting dizziness.

  He proceeded, as best as he could. First, he distilled acid over a low fire, allowing the caustic material to sizzle through a series of tubes until it collected in a glass decanter. He mixed gold dust with the sacred ashes in a great vat, while sorting other elements into a centrifuge powered by the pedaling of an ogre watchman.

  In fact, all six of his guards crowded his lab, stood too close, stepped on his toes, and generally got in the way. His impatience grew until finally the Alchemist barked at them.

  “Stand back, you louts! Do you want to call down the wrath of the Dowager Queen?”

  The warning had the desired effect. The guards, all afraid of the elder ogress-with good cause, he knew-withdrew to the far side of the laboratory. There they watched him with narrowed eyes and muttered growls. He ignored them, focusing anew upon his work.

  He found his attention wandering again, musing on the danger presented to him by this elf the king had called the Messenger. For more than a decade the Alchemist had feared such a vengeful visitor. He had long expected that, somehow, the elves, his people, would find him and punish him.