Everything about this place, she suddenly realized, was designed to flaunt his greatness, and she found herself wondering: How great can he really be that he needs this exaggeration to awe me?
She came to a stop below the lofty throne. She was only vaguely aware that Lars and Bruni had stopped somewhere behind her. Her mounting irritation, as it so often did, found its way to her tongue.
“Are you Strongwind Whalebone?” she demanded. “I can hardly see you way up there!”
She heard gasps and mutters from the surrounding galleries, and footsteps behind her indicated that Lars Redbeard was hastening forward. Those footsteps ceased when Strongwind held up a hand glittering with gold rings. Moreen was startled to see amusement sparkling in his eyes, which-now that she looked closely-were a rather appealing shade of light blue.
“I had better climb down, then” he said mildly, scrambling out of the big chair and down the several steps to the floor with surprising ease-surprising, considering the full weight of gold that was draped about his person, his wardrobe, including the massive, antlered, solid-gold-seeming helm. “I greet you, Moreen Bayguard, chief of the Arktos.”
There were some snickers at his words, but the king-she couldn’t help now but think of him as a king-glared sternly into the galleries, and the rebuked fell instantly silent.
“And I greet you, Strongwind Whalebone, King of the Highlanders.”
“Thank you for coming to see me,” he said, and he sounded genuinely grateful. “I know this has been a tragic year for your people, and I want you to know that you have my sympathy and my support.”
Moreen was suddenly glad she had come. To her, the Highlanders had always been strange and vaguely frightening beings whom the Arktos had encountered only rarely. Sometimes these meetings resulted in trade, sometimes in violence, but never had she stopped to consider that the Highlanders were humans like herself.
“Please, may I have the honor of showing you my castle?” inquired the king, with a tone of utmost respect. He gestured toward a door in the side of the great hall.
“I would be greatly interested,” Moreen replied sincerely. He extended his arm and, after a moment’s hesitation, she put her hand on his elbow. The courtiers in their path scurried out of the way as he led her away, and the door closed behind them. She felt stronger, somehow, emboldened by the fact that they were now beyond the hostile scrutiny of his citizens.
They went down a long, partially open hallway, meeting only a few servants who scuttled, eyes downcast, out of the way. To their left was a series of columns, beyond which lay a small courtyard. Moreen took in an array of laundry tubs and saw a large cage where dogs barked and yelped, scampering back and forth as they spotted the king.
“My pack,” the king said proudly. “They pull sleds over the snow in the winter and chase game during the warmer months.” He indicated the antlers that hung so ostentatiously from his helm. “It was my dogs that brought this stag to bay, though I myself took it with a spearcast.”
They went into a square, stone-walled building where he proudly showed her his mint, where molten gold was poured into molds, shaped into small bars with the emblem of the weapons and antlers embossed on each. This was a dark, sooty place, with a scent of smoke that stung Moreen’s nostrils, but she listened politely as he showed her the melting vats and the great, coal-fired furnaces that melted metal. The woman had not seen coal before, but she nodded and watched as the firetenders shoveled the stuff into the great roaring maw. Even from across the room she could feel the tremendous heat, knew that this was a blaze hotter than any fueled by wood or charcoal.
“We mine gold from the highland valleys above Guilderglow,” explained Strongwind. “We possess the richest ore-fields in all the Icereach.”
“This gold is why you call yourself king of Icereach?” Moreen asked bluntly.
The monarch scowled, momentarily irritated. “No! It has helped me to ensure that the other lords appreciate my status,” he admitted. “Here, let me show you something in my map room.”
He led her into a large chamber, with a mosaic of tiles and several small pieces of gold set into the floor. Much of the floor was blue granite, which met the more detailed tiles along a twisting and irregular line. Other tiles were green, white, or black.
“Here is Guilderglow,” Strongwind proclaimed, indicating the largest of the gold markers, one that had been stamped into the shape of a star. He stepped to the side, straddling the smooth sheet of blue stone. “This is the White Bear Sea, upon which shore your people have made their villages. Here is the place you called Bayguard.”
Moreen was startled to see how accurately her world was portrayed. She recognized the land enclosing the small bay and the rugged coastline to the north.
“This white stone is glacier and permanent icefield,” the king was explaining, now walking around the floor and indicating a portion of the map showing terrain to the east of his city. “These lands I do not think you know, as your people have stayed near the coast.”
“Where is the place called Ice End?” she asked.
Strongwind paused to take two small glasses from a servant who had entered, quietly, bearing a small tray. “Please, will you try our beverage? It is called warqat.”
“Uh, I have heard of warqat,” Moreen admitted, taking the glass and sniffing. She blinked in surprise-never before had she smelled anything so pungent. It burned, in an admittedly pleasant fashion, all the way down her throat.
“It is brewed from grain, steeped in the ice of a secret glacier.”
“All of your people drink it?”
The king shrugged. “For us, it is the Winterfire. It takes the place of the sun during the long, dark months.”
The Highlander drank his entire glass in a single gulp, but she took only one more sip and set her drink besides Strongwind’s empty glass on the servant’s tray. Yet it was warm in her belly and seemed to bring a pleasant lightness to her mood.
“Now, Ice End?” she repeated, finding a smile coming easily to her lips. Still, she remained alert. In the back of her mind she was wondering about Brackenrock. Though she looked along the northern reach of the map she could find nothing suggesting such a ruined citadel.
“Yes, of course. Here is the extent of Icereach,” Strongwind replied, pointing. She saw a narrow peninsula marking the terminus of the land. Somewhere just south of there, she suspected, the Arktos might find their ruin.
Moreen indicated another mass of land, across a narrow swath of blue. “What’s that?”
The king shrugged. “You would know better than I what lies on the far shore of the White Bear Sea. The narrows here I have heard called the Bluewater Strait, but as to the western coast, only a boat could visit there.”
“Indeed.” Moreen agreed, though she had never taken a kayak far enough to see the opposite coast of the gulf of Bayguard. At the strait, of course, it looked much narrower. She remembered her visit to Tall Cedar Bay-there she and her father had seen a rugged horizon across the sea. Now, looking at the map, she could see how that coastline extended south, making a long shore on the other side of the White Bear Sea.
One more question occurred to her. “What of monsters called dragons?” she asked. “Are they known to you?”
The king looked surprised, shaking his head. “Do you not know the legend of Huma and the banishing of dragons? That happened four centuries ago, so my teachers claim. I have no reason to dispute them.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
Moreen did not want the conversation to turn toward legendary Brackenrock, so she merely shrugged and pretended to study the gold inlays, each of which, the king quickly explained, symbolized one of the many clanholds of Highlanders.