Douglas Niles: The Golden Orb

Nearby was a ceramic dish, a large bowl containing his attempts at an experiment made the previous autumn-an experiment that had yielded disappointing results. The residue in the bowl had collected little dust over the winter, for he kept his room very clean. Specks of gold gleamed in the powder, and, spotting them, he was able to force a wry chuckle. In his homeland, the amount of gold he had used for this single experiment would have bought a family food for many years, allowed a man to build a decent house, or to be outfitted with weapons and armor enough to embark on a lifelong career of adventure.

Here, on Dracoheim, there was gold aplenty, drawn from the island’s own rich mines. This fistful came from a crate of gold dust the Dowager Queen had provided him for use as the basis of his experiment. He recalled the queen’s purpose and command. The ogress desired that he create a unique explosive material, something that her son, the king of Suderhold, could use to aid his constant wars against the humans.

He had combined the gold particles with simple salt and black cinder drawn from the slopes of one of Dracoheim’s several, mostly dormant, volcanoes. The gold, salt, and black cinder were augmented by rare ash provided to him by the Dowager Queen, something the powerful priestess claimed to have extracted from secret rituals, ordered by her violent god, Gonnas the Strong.

The Alchemist had respect for Gonnas the Strong. It was during one such ritual that the queen had also created the potion that above all else, gave him reason for living. He had set himself to his latest experiments in the fall, before the Sturmfrost, and had started out with a sense of optimism. If the ash had some concealed potency that, mingled with the other materials, could bring destructive force to life, he would discover that power, and he had every reason to expect that the queen would reward him.

He had tried for weeks, using the ingredients in a variety of concentrations and proportions, always working carefully lest he create an explosive that would destroy him in the process of discovery. His concoctions had fizzled and sputtered, smoked, and sometimes burned fitfully. At last, as the icy and snow and wind had isolated him in his tower, he had been forced to admit defeat. There was no hidden destructive power in the mix of salt, gold, cinder, and enchanted ash.

His disappointment was eased by the two full bottles of potion his mistress had brought to him, and during the long wintertime he had luxuriated in the pleasant, soothing haze induced by his elixir. He had forgotten all about the failed testing, the experiments.

Now, feeling sturdier, he collected his wits. His hand was, if not steady, at least shaking less violently. Taking no chances, he clutched the bottle in both hands, lifting it from the table, feeling the tragically light weight of the liquid contents sloshing around. The stopper was tight-the Alchemist above all others knew the cost of evaporation-but he clamped it in his teeth and pulled sharply.

The cork came out, clenched in his jaws as he pulled the bottle away, then-horror! The glass slipped through his fingers! He grabbed desperately with his bony hands, only serving to propel the narrowing neck of the container through his slippery grasp. He watched the bottle fall as though it tumbled in slow motion.

His mouth gaped, as he croaked out a desperate word: “No!”

The bottle paid him no heed as it struck the stone bench and shattered. Shards of glass flew outward, but he ignored those jagged missiles, lunging, reaching, desperate to salvage even a few drops of his precious liquid. He saw those drops bounce from the table, jiggle tantalizingly in the air, dance between his frantic fingers. One of those spatters passed right over the back of his hand. He felt numb with a sense of irredeemable loss, as it fell with a plop right in the midst of the powdery residue of his failed experiment.

His world turned an ungodly white. A noise burst his eardrums. He felt as though the fist of a mighty god had picked him up and hurled him, bodily, across the chamber. He became vaguely aware of flames licking across the room. In another instant his vision, his awareness, his white reality merged into impenetrable black.

The blue of the sky was so pure, so perfect and unblemished, that Kerrick imagined spending the rest of his life in total contentment, surrounded by that color. The hue of the sky, magnificent beyond words, was actually surpassed by the intense azure of the ocean, the sparkling water brilliant under the spring sunlight, a surface of dazzling reflection extending to the limits of his vision.

Kerrick stood atop the cabin of his boat, his right hand braced on the mainsail’s rigging. The sail was full in a mild breeze, the white wake trailing and sparkling behind the transom. He squinted into the distance… imagining, remembering, and, for the first time in many years, longing.

Of course, in some ways he raced down this same emotional gauntlet every spring, had done so after each of the eight long, sunless winters he had spent here in the Icereach. Over that time he had learned to dread the shortening days, the long darkness as autumn waned toward winter. Eight times he had joined the Arktos in cowering against the force of the Sturmfrost, the mighty blast of ice and wind and snow that marked the first and most savage onslaught of the cold, dark season of winter.

To Kerrick Fallabrine, an elf from sunny, temperate Silvanesti, an even worse ordeal than the Sturmfrost was the long stretch of sunless winter, the bleak period of weeks and months that followed the blast, when time seemed to slow, even stop, bitter cold and frozen as still as the sea.

Every year Kerrick watched the progress of the late winter thaw, anticipating the arrival of spring until this moment came, when he finally grabbed a chance to take his cherished sailboat onto the waters of the White Bear Sea.

Even in spring, of course, there could be brutal storms, a squall or perhaps even a late blizzard that might rage with but a few minutes’ notice. However, the elf had sailed this sea long enough, endured the vicissitudes of Icereach springs so that he knew he could master anything the weather chose to throw at him. Once the sun returned from its winter’s absence, once the warming began, there was no force on land or sea that caused him to turn back from the water.

Now he turned his face toward the sun, and though it was but a feeble flicker compared to the heat it would yield in a few months, Kerrick relished the rays caressing his skin. The wind was whipping past, still cool, but there was a hint of moisture and distant warmth in the air.

He was sailing southeast now, had been since he had departed Brackenrock Harbor a few hours earlier. His voyage was made in the service of the chiefwoman, mistress of the fortress, Moreen Bayguard. He was sailing to the Highlander citadel of Bearhearth, there to collect several chests of gold that had been promised to the Arktos as payment by the Bearhearth thane, exchange for allowing more than a hundred women and children of that clan to shelter in Brackenrock over the winter. The Highlanders had more people than could be crowded into their frosty, stone-walled castle, while the Arktos had plenty of room and ample reserves of food. Additionally, the guests had made themselves useful in Brackenrock over the winter, working on improving the fortifications, tanning skins, brewing warqat, and making clothes, while in the steam-warmed vaults of Brackenrock they had dwelt in much greater comfort than they knew in their homeland.

Kerrick was delighted to have the errand, a good excuse to take his boat out and fly across these waters, to relish the newly returned sun and race across the freshly melted sea. As the thrill tugged at him he grinned with a sudden thought, an irresponsible impulse. Once he collected this gold, he could bypass Brackenrock and sail through the Bluewater Strait, dodging icebergs on the vast Courrain Ocean, setting a northbound course. There was nothing to stop him from leaving the Icereach behind… in a month or two he would find himself again on the shores of Ansalon, probably making landfall somewhere on the coastline of his beloved homeland, Silvanesti. This was the month of Spring Dawning and there would be festivals, music, maidens…