Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

The great floe disintegrated before his eyes. To his right, the bow segment rolled ashore upside down, waves breaking over it. To Mixun’s left, the stern section was still at sea, caught in an eddy. It spun madly, half a mile of ice whirling like a soap bubble in a wash basin. Between these two spectacles, the main portion of the iceberg was breaking up. Each fresh wave helped pound the floe against the unyielding island, and the cyclonic wind threatened to roll the monstrous mountain of ice onto land. Mixun tried to stand and pull Raegel to safety, but he was too drained. He turned Raegel over on his stomach to protect him from flying shards of ice and threw his arm over his face to await what would be.

He heard voices-many voices, high-pitched like children. Peeking out from under his arm, he saw the surf was full of gnomes. Some were bobbing in watertight baskets, other were dog-paddling around with inflated pigskins tied to their waists. They seemed not the least concerned by the tempest or the crumbling iceberg. Indeed, upon sitting up, Mixun realized the gnomes were shouting theories and calculations at each other even as the catastrophe thundered about them.

Mixun began to laugh. Waterlogged, beset by pirates, storm, and mountains of ice, he laughed and laughed.

Shaking Raegel’s shoulder until he revived, Mixun laughed in his comrade’s half-drowned face.

“We’re alive!” he said between guffaws. “Rejoice, son of Rafe! We are alive!”

By the time the storm was done, there wasn’t a piece of ice in sight bigger than a gnomish house. The coastline of Enstar was covered with melting blocks of ice for miles, and all the flotsam of Nevermind South came ashore, too. Not one gnome was lost in the wreck of the iceberg, but there were many broken bones and bruises.

The Chief Designer got his people organized. (Disorganized is more like it, Mixun thought privately.) Teams of gnomes combed the sand for lost equipment. Mixun and Raegel scrounged as well-Mixun for valuables and Raegel for food. They found little of either.

At dawn the following day the gnomes gathered to hear long-winded reports on their situation from a series of designated committees. Mixun let them wrangle a while, then asked, “Now what? How will we all get home?”

“I’ll appoint a committee to study the problem,” said the Chief Designer.

“I’m sure you will. What about the ice?”

The gnome wrung seawater from his long beard and shrugged. “The Excellent Continental Ice Project will have to be repeated,” he said.

Before noon, the first islanders came down from the cliffs above to investigate the strange castaways. They were tough looking folk, darkly tanned and chapped from the wind. They weren’t pirates, but they had dealt with Artagor and his kind before and probably weren’t above wrecking and looting if the opportunity presented itself. The Enstarians looked over the gnomes’ wreckage and scratched their heads. Where was the ship? Where was the cargo?

Raegel watched the hard-eyed men and women poking among the melting ice. He had an idea-a surprising idea. He whispered part of it to Mixun, who grinned when he got the gist of it.

“I’ll ask,” he said, hurrying away.

“Wait, Mix, there’s more to it-”

Mixun did not wait for the full explanation, but sought out the Chief Designer, the calculator, Wheeler, and other important gnomes. With expressive gestures, he pointed to the growing crowd of islanders picking over the remains of the gnomes’ experiment. The gnomes all regarded him blankly.

“Just say yes,” Mixun said tersely.

“What you say is not scientific, so it does not concern us,” said the Chief Designer. “Do as you will.”

Mixun clapped his hands together and waved to Raegel. Together they approached a likely mark-a lean, hungry-looking Enstarian who wore the rod and chains of a moneychanger on his belt.

“Hail, friend!” Raegel said. “Fine morning, is it not?”

“ ‘Tis always fair after a great storm,” the man replied warily. “You’re in good spirits for a shipwrecked man.”

“Oh, we’re not shipwrecked, friend! We were blown off course by the storm, but we meant to land here all along.”

The moneychanger narrowed his already close eyes. “What brings you to Enstar?”

Mixun gestured broadly. “Ice!”

“Ice?”

“Ice. Tons of ice, made from the sweet, pure snows of Icewall and brought to you by the enterprise of my colleague and I, and by the skill of our gnome friends,” said Mixun. He introduced himself as Mixundantalus and Raegel as a count again. In glowing terms, he described their expedition to Icewall to retrieve an iceberg and sail it to Enstar.

“Why here?” said the woman on the moneychanger’s left. “Why bring your ice to us?”

“As a test, dear lady,” Raegel said. “Being close to Icewall, yet surrounded by temperate seas, we wanted to see if we could bring our ice to you without losing too much to meltage. I think we did all right. Don’t you, friend Mixundantalus?”

“We did, Count Raegel.”

“You mean to sell that ice?” said another islander.

“We do,” Raegel said. “One steel piece per hundredweight.”

The moneychanger laughed harshly. “One steel piece! What’s to stop us from picking up your ice from the beach?”

“Why, nothing but the loss of future fortunes to come,” said the bogus count.

“What’s your meaning, stranger?”

Mixun picked up two fist-sized chunks and banged them together. He passed out the resulting slivers to the growing crowd of islanders. They put them in their mouths, chewed on them, or held them in their hands until they melted to pure water.

“You hold the finest fresh water in the world, and the coldest,” Raegel said grandly. “Our company intends to sell Icewall ice in every port between here and Sanction-for drinking water, chilling beverages on hot days, preserving meats, and many other uses! We need a friendly port where we can store the ice before we ship it off to its ultimate destination. Enstar could be that place.”

“Are you selling this ice for one steel per hundredweight to others?” asked the moneychanger. He sucked noisily on a sliver of ice while Raegel answered.

“Not at all!” he said. “As a luxury item, we plan to sell ice in port cities for one steel per pound.”

The islanders murmured to each other, trying to calculate the wealth in sight if the ice could be sold at that price.

“It’s good ice,” said one man. “I have a plot of land on Kraken Bay. You could build your warehouse there.”

“Not so fast, Jericas!” the woman interjected. “I saw the strangers first!”

“I spoke to them first,” the moneychanger shouted.

“Friends, friends!” Raegel said. “There’s ice and profit enough for all. Since our stock is currently melting on the beach, why don’t those of you interested in our proposition leave us your names and a small deposit? Once our fortunes are restored, we’ll mount another expedition to Icewall for more ice.”

Like gnomes arguing over an obscure point of mathematics, the Enstarians crowded around the two men, thrusting handfuls of coins at them while shouting their names. Mixun made a great show of writing down everyone’s name and the amount of their payment. He then urged them to help themselves to all the ice they could carry. Whooping like children, the hard-bitten islanders swooped down on the rapidly melting ice and hauled it away in buckets, jackets, even women’s skirts.

Away from the mob of islanders, Raegel and Mixun counted their money. “There must be two hundred steel pieces here,” Mixun chortled. “Who’d have thought? We can sell anything to anyone!”

“We must share the money with the gnomes,” Raegel said.