Douglas Niles: Winterheim

The hardest part about being the king’s mistress-secret mistress, for now-was that Thraid was required to be patient, and patience did not come easily to her. She had come to the railing because for the immediate present she had nowhere else to go. The king would debark then be busy for several hours … but she knew that he would soon be anxious to see her. She hoped he would like it, the little place she had prepared for them on the terrace level. It was discreet, perfectly private, and sumptuously appointed.

The best feature: a single tunnel rose from the rear of the chambers all the way to the royal section of the city, so the king would be able to come, perfectly unseen, to his tryst.

Thraid had entrusted her slave Wandcourt with a message for Grimwar Bane, detailing the arrangements. Wand was a human, but he had proved himself loyal over many years. Indeed, she trusted him more than any ogre for this task. Sooner or later, the king would come, and she would be there.…

She watched as the queen marched down the gangplank, glaring around the city as if seeking reason for complaint, looking for signs of things that had gone wrong during the absence of the royal couple-an absence that despite the king’s pledge to the contrary had lasted all summer.

Her heart, her very being, brightened as her Grimwar, the most handsome, strapping, powerful-indeed, beautiful-ogre in all Krynn, came striding off of the gangplank. She felt vicarious pride as the ogres who had gathered on the waterfront, nearly a thousand of them, burst into cheers at his arrival. He waved-he was always gracious to his people-but even from this height she could see that he was tired, discouraged, weary beyond words.

How desperately she wanted to take his broad head and nestle it between her breasts, to stroke his hair and murmur soothing words of affection. How he needed her! No doubt the long voyage, trapped aboard the ship with that hateful ogress, had taken a terrible toll on him.

Of course, Thraid had heard things, tales of a battle lost, Hornet destroyed, even rumors of some dire disaster on Dracoheim, but in the mind of the king’s mistress, those things were of secondary, even trivial, concern. To look for the cause of Grimwar’s fatigue she had to search no further than the presence of that awful queen.

At that moment Stariz turned and stared behind her, not at Grimwar but at something else, something on the ship. Thraid watched the rest of the crew trudge up from the rowing benches and plod wearily down the gangplank. One figure caught her eye: small among the ogres and golden haired. He was chained, but even in shackles he walked with a bearing of unbreakable pride.

A human, she realized-a captive taken by her Grimwar, brought back to the city.

The man glared around him, and somehow Thraid felt the dazzling ice of that glance, even as far above as she was. He was intriguing, this prisoner, and strangely appealing. Queen Stariz all but spat in hatred as she stared, and the ogress at the railing quickly saw that the human was the source of the queen’s hatred.

Immediately Thraid wanted to know more about him.

As the ship was made fast to the dock, Strongwind Whalebone warily examined his new surroundings. Whatever fate held in store for him, he lacked the energy, the stamina, to put up much of a fight. However, his spirit remained vital, so he would look for ways to rebuild his strength, to study his enemies, and to plan.

He had welcomed his release from the hold primarily because of the chance to breathe fresh air. For two weeks the fish guts and whale blubber that mingled effluence in the deep hold of the galley had raised a stink that choked and nearly suffocated him. There, below the benches where ogre oarsmen labored, a heavy wooden hatch had sealed out any glimpse of sun or sea, rendering the little chamber into a smothering cell.

The lone prisoner had suffered in silence and immobility, since stout manacles secured his wrists, chafed his skin and held him awkwardly across a wide bench. Water, carrying an irregular and ever shifting array of flotsam, sloshed across the floorboards and kept his feet permanently cold. His wounds burned, while hunger gnawed at his belly and thirst parched his lips. Nevertheless, Strongwind Whalebone was determined to make no complaint, to offer no display of weakness that might give his captors a sense of satisfaction or reward.

Indeed, what complaint could he have made? What mere verbiage could possibly articulate the devastation that blackened his heart, rendering insignificant his own predicament? There was a greater truth that doomed his whole future, signaled the end of his dreams and visions. He knew this in the naked honesty of his own heart.

For the Lady of Brackenrock was dead.

When the ogres had shackled him and thrown him into this dank hold he had felt a sense of vague relief-not that he had survived but that he was locked away so that he could grieve in private. In that compartment he had cried like a baby until numb, bruised, and drained, he fell into a well of dreamless sleep. Whenever he was awake, he grieved, and for the weeks of the journey his only respite had come from fitful intervals of sleep.

In that solitary gloom he had come to understand something about himself, a surprising realization driven home by the insurmountable pain in his heart. Though he had pursued Moreen aggressively for years, making the case for their marriage as though he were proposing a political treaty-which, on the one hand, he was-he had never really considered the possibility that he truly loved her. Certainly he had desired her more than any other woman he knew, but this desire had been a feeling such as the hunter holds toward the prize stag. Moreen Bayguard seemed a trophy, valuable and even cherished but little more than that.

Now she was dead, and he saw how very wrong he had been.

He didn’t count the days or nights; he knew only that it was a very long time later that the hatch opened and ogre guards came down the ladder, seized his chains, and hauled him up to the deck. He saw the mountain, forced his expression to remain bored despite the wonder of this place as they glided inside.

So this was Winterheim. He viewed the massive gate with a sense of detachment, didn’t marvel at the enclosed harbor, barely recoiled at the great crowds of ogres cheering their rulers and jeering the new captive. As the shadows of the underground harbor embraced him, the king of the Highlanders looked up as the archway passed overhead, wondering if he was looking at the sun for the last time in his life.

That, too, didn’t really seem to matter.

For the Lady of Brackenrock was dead.

The Lady of Brackenrock and Kerrick Fallenbrine had to do something-fast-or they would drown together in the cold, deep waters of the White Bear Sea.

Just a moment ago their boat, the submersible craft that was the invention of the gnome called Captain Pneumo, had collided with the rocky gate of Brackenrock’s harbor, crushing the cylindrical vessel’s metallic prow and bringing water gushing inside with furious force. Kerrick, jammed against a collection of pipes and valves, felt a fiery pain in his right leg and guessed the limb was broken. Water poured around him, an icy torrent already surging up to his waist. Choking smoke and steam swirled through the tainted air, and the vessel lurched sickeningly.

“Head for the hatch!” cried Pneumo. “We’re going down!”

The elf tried to force himself upright but was still stunned from the force of the collision. He was aware of the cold water rising past his belly, of the two gully dwarves bouncing against each other, one clawing to reach the ladder leading up from the control chamber, while the other strove irrationally to flee toward the boiler room in the stern. The first broke free to scamper upward and twist the valve, pushing the hatch open to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of sunlight, a precious waft of fresh air.