Douglas Niles: The Golden Orb

“I… I am not sure I fully understand, Your Highness. The guards on duty summoned me, but of course I dared not enter the sacred sanctum. Nevertheless, as I stood without, I heard sounds like thunder and saw flashes of brightness coming from beneath the door. I know it is impossible, but I felt as though I observed a thunderstorm, bellowing and crashing within the precincts of Winterheim itself.” Broadnose dropped to one knee. “I beg Your Majesties’ forgiveness if I have overreacted, but I felt it best that I come at once and report.”

“You did well,” Stariz declared, as Grimwar suppressed the urge to kick the lackey right in the face. The queen, turning to her husband, again glared suspiciously at him. “This matter demands my immediate attention. I suspect that there is word from your mother in Dracoheim.”

Dracoheim. Grimwar Bane shuddered in spite of himself. The very name evoked chilly mists, lonely images of a nearly forgotten isle, remote and barren, with ancient dragons swirling through the sky, bringing fire and death, scouring life from the land. Of course, those dragons were gone, vanished with all the dragons from Krynn some four or five centuries ago, during the time of the Knight Huma’s war, but that did not much lessen the menace of Dracoheim.

Dracoheim was not uninhabited. Grimwar’s mother, the Dowager Queen Hannareit ber Bane, lived there, maintaining the exile she had begun during the reign of her husband, Grimtruth Bane. She had been banished there by Grimtruth when that king, growing tired of his older, brute-faced wife, had taken a younger mistress. The elder queen had chosen to remain there in stolid isolation, even though her husband was now long dead and her son had assumed the throne-for Grimwar Bane steadfastly refused to take vengeance on Thraid Dimmarkull, the mistress his mother blamed for her exile. For her part, Queen Hanna (for she retained that honorific) had vowed never to return to the capital so long as that brazen strumpet of an ogress still lived.

Grimwar had discovered, when he visited Dracoheim five years ago, that Hanna had made herself quite comfortable in the ancient castle. The island was rich in gold. In some places it was sulfurous and scorched by the heat of infernal flames, in others honeycombed by rich mines, steam-blasted caverns, and bubbling volcanoes. More than a thousand human slaves worked the mines, and much of the fabulous wealth was sent to the capital, but Queen Hanna, who managed the mines, kept a grand share.

Also on Dracoheim, Grimwar reflected, was the laboratory of the royal Alchemist. From the chamber of that sagelike servant, with his vats and forges and diagrams and bizarre elements, came dire weapons and inventions that added to the Bane kings’ power. Perhaps the current summons meant news of some discovery made by the Alchemist, something that would accrue further power and riches to the reign of the ogre monarch.

Grimwar Bane really didn’t care about that, not right now. He thought with a sigh of his mistress, waiting. He watched his wife dismiss Broadnose and enter her dressing room to prepare for a return to the temple. She would undoubtedly be occupied for hours, and during those hours the king would have his opportunity. He smiled, keeping his reaction private by turning to study the great fireplace, apparently meditating upon the great black bearskin hanging on the wall over the mantle.

For Thraid Dimmarkull was not just the former mistress of his father, the ogress behind the cause of his mother’s exile. Thraid, she of the full bosom and rosy lips, of soft curves and willing caresses, had been the son’s lover for many years now. Currently she awaited him in their private trysting chamber. With his wife heading off to the temple for a major spellcasting session, Grimwar Bane knew that he would be able to visit his beloved after all.

Queen Stariz strode through the lofty, arched entry-way leading to the Temple of Gonnas in the Royal Quarter of Winterheim. The sanctuary occupied a huge building in the mountain city and was devoted to the worship of the Willful One, the tusked and brutal god of ogrekind. The floor was black marble, the entry chamber dominated by the lofty statue depicting the god himself, a solid pillar of obsidian more than three times the height of the largest bull ogre. Twin tusks, inky black and as long as swords, jutted from the stern jaw of the implacable image, and the priestess-queen paused for a moment of reverence, bowing her head and clasping her hands before the forbidding visage.

She moved on, past kneeling slaves, into a dark hallway leading toward the deeper reaches of the temple. She moved with purpose, and the lesser priestesses who had gathered before the Ice Chamber scurried out of her way, genuflecting and chanting their mantras.

Stariz ignored them all as she halted before a broad, tall door of granite.

“Leave me!” she commanded, and waited for a short time as the priestesses all scattered to the other parts of the temple.

She could understand Broadnose’s description of the “disturbance.” Now she too heard the rumbling as of a great storm, saw the bright flashes-very much like lightning-pulsing across the floor through the narrow gap at the bottom of the door.

Only when she was certain that she was alone did Stariz reach forward and push on the stone portal, murmuring the word of command that released the door from its enchanted protection. Soundlessly, smoothly, it swung open, and she followed inside with a purposeful stride, marching into this hallowed room that was her province alone.

Her breath immediately frosted, for it was cold inside. The irregular walls were lined with frost, and in many places icicles draped downward from bulges, outcrops, and ledges. The far side of the chamber was different, however: There, instead of bare rock, the surface was smooth and shiny, slick like a sheet of ice made wet by a gloss of meltwater. It was as though a mirror was mounted in the rough stone, shadowy and yet illuminated at the same time.

Indeed, that smooth surface was the source of the crackling lightning, periodic flashes sparking within a roiling murk. To Stariz it looked as though she was witnessing a powerful storm from above, watching lightning burst between dark thunderheads. From the violence of the images, she knew immediately that the Dowager Queen’s message was urgent.

“Cartas Danir! Boraga, Orktan Gonnas!” Stariz chanted, the words exploding from her mouth like small thunderclaps.

Immediately the roiling image faded, the churning murk pulled back from the center of the ice sheet to bluster and swirl around the edges, like a frame of black smoke around a slowly clearing picture.

As the picture gradually became distinct, Stariz beheld her counterpart, former queen of Suderhold, now mistress of Dracoheim. The Dowager Queen Hannareit ber Bane met her gaze with an expression of triumph. The elder ogress bared her tusks slightly as she allowed her pleasure to twist her face into a smile. She might have been an older version of Stariz, they looked enough alike, though the two queens were not in fact related.

Still, they both had that square-jawed face, small eyes glowering below a large, round forehead. Each wore the mantle of a priestess around her shoulders, a rippling robe of black, smooth wool.

“My Queen Mother,” Stariz began, with a cool nod of her head. “I sense that you have important, and encouraging tidings.”

“You sense correctly, my Queen Daughter,” replied Hannareit. “Glory to Gonnas, the Willful One,” she added, her words a frosty whisper in the shadowy alcove.

“May his strength be ours,” Stariz responded. “What is your news?”

“The Alchemist has made an important discovery,” the elder queen reported, “though at some cost to himself.” Her lips curled into a smile that was as cruel as it was cold. “Indeed, it nearly cost him his life.”