Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

“Nah, little one,” growled the hunter. “The Dragon’s just coughing a bit Now move along. No time to dawdle here.”

Zeke, Dirk, and Knight Commander Vern Hasterck also enjoyed the soft and relatively clear level ground of the valley floor. The insect pests were admittedly more of a problem here, but not as bad as on the plains approaching Gimmenthal Glacier. Here the pools of water were clear and briskly cold. Wildflowers dotted the valley floor. As the area went, Hasterck thought that this was a good place to settle. That worried him. The Ice Nomads could find reinforcements, though none of them had been able to see any settlement in the flats from their earlier high vantage point.

“Ice folk are too stupid to live in a green valley,” smirked Zeke. “They want to shiver on the ice where they are safe from animals and enemies.”

“Cowards, everyone of them,” agreed Dirk. “Look at them scamper away. When the battle comes, they’ll freeze for sure.”

Both laughed heartily at that, but Vern Hasterck wasn’t so sure. Something was going on. Something he didn’t understand.

It was almost dark as they approached the towering wall of ice filling the valley from spiny edge to edge. Thrak led them to the western cliff-face from whence the ice flowed down, and they climbed high up along the edge of the glacial spill. Finderkeeper looked longingly at the verdant green valley floor below-a better place to sleep if it hadn’t been for the Knights pursuing them. The Knights obviously agreed, as they had made a camp in the valley, complete with a roaring fire for warmth, by the time that the Ice Nomads and the kender stopped climbing.

Finderkeeper was ready to sleep, but Thrak and Bodar obviously still had plans for the evening. “The Dragon’s almost ready,” Finderkeeper overheard Thrak say.

“Aye, you’re right about that. I heard the coughing myself.”

“We need to tickle her throat a bit. That’s all there is to it. I’ll be the one.”

“No, Thrak. I’ll go. You’ve much to teach Garn yet.”

With that, Bodar picked up his axe and headed down the rocks to the top of the wall of ice.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” interjected Finder-keeper as Thrak watched Bodar depart. “What is this Dragon’s Throat you keep talking about? If I am going to die, I might as well die well informed.”

Thrak just turned away, but Garn spoke up. “The valley below is the Dragon’s Throat. I’ve heard of it before, but never seen it. You see, the glacier from the western edge here is not at the head of the valley. The valley continues far back south, where sits another glacier, providing a good bit of melt-off due to how the western winds come through the mountain passes. The glacier here advances down into the valley each winter, crossing it and grinding up against the eastern ridge. The advancing ice completely blocks the water from the melt-off up-valley and a lake forms behind the dam of ice.”

Scratching his head, Finderkeeper peered into the darkness to the south. Indeed, he could see a huge lake almost even with the top of the ice dam extending far to the south.

“As the spring and summer come, the ice dam begins to melt and the blocking glacier begins to retreat. At some point, the rising water begins to spill over the ice dam-a trickle at first, but quickly and fiercely erosive. Within minutes the water begins to cut through the ice dam. In less than an hour, the Dragon roars and the entire lake empties out down the valley. That’s why no one lives there. It’s not safe.”

“But where did Bodar go?”

Thrak, who had listened approvingly to Gam’s explanation, interrupted. “She’s not quite ready, but with Bodar’s help, she’ll go hy dawn.”

Indeed, in the distance, Finderkeeper could hear the methodical wet smack of Bodar’s ice pick on the top of the ice dam. If the Knights heard it, they paid it no mind. Thrak could see their flickering campfire below.

Hasterck was up at dawn. Today they would catch the Ice Nomads and the kender, and the Irda magic, whatever it was, would be his-or at least his master’s. He took care of his morning ablutions and then squatted at the stream to fill his canteen with the clear, cold water that flowed from the edge of the glacier. It must be warming slightly, he thought. The stream looked higher than he remembered from the evening before.

Suddenly there was a sharp crack, as if lightning had struck nearby. He turned to see a huge slab of ice break off the face of the ice wall several hundred yards up-valley. Though startling, it did not immediately frighten him. Their camp was far enough back that the slab would do it no harm.

What did frighten him severely an instant later was the cascade of water flowing rapidly over the scarred edge of the ice that had just calved. The glint of the crystal water rushing over the deep cobalt of the freshly exposed ice flank was beautiful, but he also knew it was deadly. He ran as fast as he could to the western cliff, yelling for Zeke and Dirk to awake and follow. He knew that they would not make it in time. He was unsure if he would. He climbed as if his life depended on it, because it did.

Bodar’s arms ached with a weariness he had never known. His hands no longer responded to his commands. They were fixed in a death grip on the handle of his axe. The freezing water dulled the pain that had fired through his hands for the first few hours, but he knew that the best he could hope for from his evening’s activities was that both his hands would turn black- frozen more solidly than the hibernating lemmings they dug up for food. As the early dawn approached, his efforts had grown more and more fevered. Finally, he had completed the narrow trench, and the water had begun to flow.

It all happened so fast after that. One moment, he had been hacking through still water of the makeshift trench in the top of the ice dam. The next moment, the water was moving swiftly through the trench, doubling its depth in seconds. Then the water seeped into unseen cracks with a gushing force that opened them ever wider. A rumble caused the trench to fork and he realized, too late, that he stood on the most unstable portion of the dam. A sharp crack and the huge V-shaped slab of ice on which he stood broke free of the dam and plummeted down the face of the ice cliff. A torrent of frigid water raced the berg.

He knew as he died that the Dragon had roared in time.

Thrak, Garn, and Finderkeeper had watched through the night, sleeping only fitfully. They worried as they saw the Commander of the Knights awake and begin to break camp. Then they, too, heard the crack of the glacier’s thunder. For a moment, they glimpsed Bodar, upright, before the ice sheeted off beneath him and the water started its tumultuous rampage.

A moment before, the tremendous lake behind the ice dam had been a placid mirror, reflecting the red and purple of the sun rising above the snow-capped spires of the eastern ridge of the valley. The wake of a water bird spread out over the calm surface and lapped gently at the top of the dam as a loon heralded daybreak in the distance. But Bodar’s trench was more than a mere slit in the ice dam, it gave the coursing water a way into a multitude of cracks and fissures in the melting glacier. The surface of the lake lurched downward and crashed into the valley below. Rumbles quickly became pops and huge, thunderous claps, as the disintegrating glacial dam shuddered and broke into giant, tumbling slabs of ice.

The tumultuous surge carved off tremendous, unstable bergs of ice and created a wall of rushing, foaming, angry water and house-sized chunks of ice that inundated the peaceful green valley at more than twice the speed of a galloping horse. Birds nesting in the valley grasses squawked as they wheeled upward, abandoning their eggs. Tremendous boulders littering the valley floor, perhaps from the aftermath of prior onslaughts, were picked up by the force of the water and tossed about like an angry child’s marbles. Cliff-sides collapsed into the torrent as the ice-slabs and rushing water eroded their underpinnings.