“You never give me a reason,” Strongwind pressed. “I hope it is not that the sight of me repulses you?”

She smiled, a wry tilt of her lips. “Hardly. You’re right, I didn’t give you a reason. I don’t intend to give you a reason.”

“You’re a stern woman, Moreen, Lady of Bracken-rock,” Strongwind Whalebone admitted, “but I admire you, and I will send three hundred warriors to help defend your fortress, if and when the ogre king comes.”

* * * * *

“I think you should stay another night,” Strongwind persisted. The wind was gusting hard, and another of the periodic cloudbursts was drumming rain. “You too, of course, Kerrick-both of you, my guests. We’ll tell some stories, drink some warqat, and you can be on your way when this storm passes.”

Kerrick didn’t reply, but he concentrated all of his will on Moreen as she squinted in thought. It took all his elven reserve to conceal his elation when she finally spoke.

“Thanks, but if Kerrick’s willing, I’d like to try to get across right away-if the weather’s not too bad.”

“No problem for Cutter,” Kerrick quickly agreed. “With a wind like this, we’ll make it across in a few hours-though it will be a little bumpy.”

“Then let’s go,” said Moreen, though she turned a little green as she stared at the bay, where even the semi-sheltered waters were whipped into whitecaps. She turned to Strongwind. “Thank you again for your hospitality, and for your willingness to help.”

The king took Moreen’s hand and gazed up at her. “I am grateful for the discussions we were able to share… and may Chislev and Kradok together grant that we will lead our people into a new, bright era.”

“Yes,” the Lady of Brackenrock agreed, sincerely. “I look forward to seeing you and your warriors within the walls of our citadel.”

Kerrick offered his help as she started down the steep ladder beside the wharf, but Moreen hiked up her long skirt and hopped nimbly down the metal rungs. Kerrick followed, and soon the boatman was pushing the dinghy back to the moored sailboat.

They crossed back to Brackenrock with the sun barely visible between the scudding clouds. Kerrick was sore from sleeping on the ground, cold from sleeping outside, and queasy from the effects of too much camp-fire warqat. As Moreen sat beside the transom, wrapped in her own thoughts, her ashen face indicated that she, too, had indulged too much in the bitter but potent brew of the Icereach.

By noon the headland of Brackenrock rose before them. From several miles out they could see the fortress, the smooth walls reflecting the light of the bright sun, the towers and parapet shimmering like jewels in a crown.

Kerrick looked over at Moreen. She had been strangely quiet during the return trip. He guessed that she was steeling herself for the task ahead. The Lady of Brackenrock didn’t even notice the elf staring at her. As she studied the strait and the pillar at the mouth of the harbor, the grim look on her face made another kind of fortress.

“You know,” Moreen said finally, over her shoulder as she continued to look over the stern, toward Tall Cedar Bay. “He isn’t such a bad man. Not so bad at all.”

Two days later a veritable parade of curraghs began to cross the strait, and a week after that Strongwind Whalebone himself made the trip, bringing his personal bodyguard of veteran axemen. All told, more than four hundred and thirty Highlander warriors arrived to camp outside and inside the walls of Brackenrock.

10

The Forge

The royal smithy was a huge, vaulted chamber with numerous forges, ovens, anvils, and stout stone tables. Great piles of coal rose like black mountains in the far corners of the room, mingling with the shadows that seemed to creep outward from the walls. A hundred ogres and slaves could work in here at one time, raising a din like an enclosed thunderstorm. Now, however, most of the room was dark, though bright lamps illuminated the one forge where a fire burned and the master smith who worked on the artifact that would destroy Brackenrock.

Grimwar and Stariz stood on a railed platform just above the floor of the smithy. The stones had been swept, and the fans were pumping away, but the king still felt the air of sooty grime against his skin, smelled the acrid stench of the smelting process every time he drew a breath. If the queen noticed these same effects, she gave no indication. Instead, her eyes were alight, bright with the reflected light of the forge, and her thin lips were moist, glistening as she nervously licked them. Her attention never wavered.

The king, with considerable input from his wife, had decided to move ahead on invasion plans by dividing the powder from the Alchemist into two different weapons. One was small, a bell-shaped chalice designed to blast away the gates of Brackenrock and allow the ogre troops to gain entrance to the courtyard and the keep. There, Stariz’s spies had confirmed, the Axe of Gonnas was displayed above the great hearth, and she was determined that the hallowed artifact be retrieved.

After that, the main power of the Alchemist’s discovery would be brought to bear, enclosed in a round sphere of metal that the Alchemist had dubbed the Golden Orb. This weapon was a large sphere of pure gold, hollowed to contain the powder and a bottle of magic potion. When the orb was pitched into a target by catapult, the container would break, and the mixing of the potion with powder would detonate the full power of destruction.

The chalice intended for the initial attack was a small, trumpet-shaped cup of pure gold, currently gleaming on the smith’s anvil. The orb, in two hollow halves, sat nearby. When the two halves were fused together, it would weigh more than one hundred pounds and form a perfectly spherical shape.

Both vessels had been shaped precisely to the specifications laid down by Queen Stariz. The stem of the chalice was molded into a grooved mount upon a block of square granite, the heavy stone forming a solid anchor for the tall, flaring vessel. Right now the object sat on an anvil beside the forge, with the furnace doors open, blue-yellow flames flickering eerily from the coal. The smith, a burly human slave, applied foot pressure to the bellows, and the flames increased to white heat. His face was invisible behind a slit-eyed mask of steel, and his hands and forearms were protected by heavy leather gauntlets.

The dust, the treasure from the Alchemist, was now in both the chalice and the orb. Grimwar had watched his wife barely controlling the excited trembling of her hands as she poured the stuff into the two different vessels. She had taken care not to lose a single flake of the precious dust. The king had said nothing as she described to the smith the procedure for capping the potent powder in the chalice, but now he paid attention as the man carefully followed the queen’s instructions. The smith was preparing to seal up the cup, the first of the weapons to be completed.

The smith had a small disk of gold in his hand, a circle of metal with a slotted hole in the center. Now he pressed that plate down into the mouth of the goblet, and Stariz barked sharply. “The wick-don’t forget the wick!”

Grimwar knew that tone and bristled. The smith showed no irritation, merely nodded. “Of course, Lady Queen. I am merely checking to see the sizing is correct.”

“Very well,” she replied.

The man brought the disk out, then turned a valve and opened a small chute. Immediately a point of blue flame sprang up from the middle of the forge. This was a cutting flame, Grimwar knew. The smith held the golden disk in a small pair of tongs, masterfully rotating it so that the cutting flame sliced just a bit off the outer perimeter. Moments later, he pulled the plate aside, then took a slender bar of silver and inserted it through the slotted hole.