“Well, you’re safe, at least,” Moreen said in irritation. “Five women of my tribe were slain in that same time!”
The elf looked stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Yes, I am safe. And my boat is unimportant compared to lives.”
“I am sorry about your friend,” said the chiefwoman. She felt very tired and no longer angry.
“What can I do to help now? Anything?” Kerrick asked. He tried to push himself upright, but his strength failed, and he collapsed against the cave wall.
“Yes. You can rest until you get your strength back. After that, you can come to the mouth of the cave. We’re going to build a wall of ice blocks, closing off all but a narrow doorway. If the tuskers come for us, we’re going to give them a fight.”
“Fight,” he said numbly. His head slumped to the side, and only the weak rattle of his breath told her that he still lived.
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.