The Messenger

“And me?” Her tone was icy enough that the king stopped short. “Will I be a second wife? Or perhaps a concubine, given a luxurious apartment so that I can make babies for you?”

“Oh, no!” Strongwind looked relieved, apparently concluding that he could give her the answer she desired. “You will reign here as my sole queen, having the rights to all the bounties of my realm! I have no wife, but I want one. I want you!”

Moreen stood as tall as her slight frame would allow, turning the full force of her glare on the king. “Let it be known that I am not a commodity to be harvested or minted-not like your wool and your gold and your beef and your hounds. I am the chiefwoman of the Arktos, and I will not be summoned to become anyone’s wife. Not even for a king who wears stag’s antlers on his head. Incidentally, did anyone ever tell you how ridiculous they look?”

The king’s jaw dropped in an almost comical expression of shock. He reached up to touch the broad rack extending to either side of his scalp, and for a moment a strange emotion-a wounded sense of hurt-flashed in his eyes. That expression of vulnerability vanished, and those blue eyes darkened to a color like that of a boiling sea.

“Think about what you are saying,” he declared grimly. “Do you really think your people will survive the Sturmfrost, much less the coming years, without men to protect them? I am offering you that protection, and you would be wise to-”

“I would be wise to make my own decisions!” snapped Moreen, turning to start down the stairs. She spotted Bruni, waiting below in the courtyard, looking upward with a curious expression.

“Do not do this-do not shame me thus!” hissed the Highlander, his hand seizing her arm in a vicelike grip. His expression was so dark and furious that Moreen, for the first time, felt a twinge of real terror. But that could not overcome her stubbornness.

“Shame?” she spat back at him, fiercely twisting her arm away. “What greater shame could there be, than to sell myself, sell my whole tribe, for the chance to eat steak?”

“You will regret this mockery,” growled the monarch. He shook his head, astonishment obviously tempering his rage, giving him a moment’s pause. “I tell you again-do not do scorn me!”

“Know this, Strongwind Whalebone, king of the Highlanders,” she replied. “I am chiefwoman of the Arktos, and I shall do as I please. No man, be he slave or peasant or king, will order me otherwise!”

Her fury did not abate as she hurried away. Bruni joined her, hastening to keep up as she stalked out of the castle, down the city streets, and finally through the gate and away from the citadel called Guilderglow.

10

Courrain Currents

For a time, Kerrick knew nothing, and when awareness returned it was with the reality of head-splitting pain, agony that threatened to blanket his entire existence in miserable torment. He tried to open his eyes, but something seemed to be holding them shut. His swollen tongue filled his mouth, all but choking him, and he groaned and thrashed and tried to lift himself up.

He couldn’t move. From somewhere he felt cool water trickling between his lips, and he drank greedily. His pain remained, and his blindness, but with his thirst somewhat quenched merciful oblivion returned, and he slept.

The next time he returned to vague consciousness he became instantly aware of the pain trying to crawl its way out of his skull. It seemed almost a living thing, a serpentine enemy that coiled through his brain, rubbing up against every nerve, hissing through his body. One of his arms, too, seemed a seething furnace, the pain searing his flesh. For a moment he wondered if he was dead, then decided no-death couldn’t possibly hurt this much.

With that realization came the first return of memory. He wasn’t rocking in a cradle, he was aboard a boat, most probably Cutter. He was suffering the residue of terrible injury … an assault that should, by rights, have shattered him and his boat and ended his life. An image loomed in his mind: That great, spiked tail lifting from the sea, trailing great sheets of brine as it swept through the air and lashed into the mast and boom of his sailboat. He remembered the snap of breaking wood, something smashing into his skull with brute force, and then oblivion.

How long had he languished? The only thing he remembered was a wet rag somehow finding its way between his lips, again and again offering him a few drops of moisture, at least sufficient to keep his tongue from curling up, to allow his throat muscles to work through a few reflexive swallows.

He realized that only his arm was immobile. The rest of his body he could move and flex ever so slightly. So thick was the fog in his mind that it was a very long time before he realized that someone was tending him, offering him the lifesaving moisture, over and over again. Oh yes, there was that kender who had leaped from the back of the dragon turtle into his boat … that was who it must be. Coral Fisher … something like that … some kind of nautical name … that much he remembered.

The elf awoke and shifted in his bunk, peering into the grayish light seeping through his eyelids. He turned his head toward the open cabin door. Searing pain shot through his head, but it was a welcome sensation for it was proof that he wasn’t permanently blind. He all but sobbed with relief, before turning his head away and collapsing back onto the bunk.

This was the cabin of Cutter, he realized. Somehow the little boat had survived the attack of the sea monster. He tried to speak, and though the sound that emerged was a mere croak, he took encouragement from the fact that he could make and hear the noise.

“Did you say something?”

The kender’s voice chirped from the entranceway, and then Kerrick felt the warmth of his companion’s presence seated on the edge of the bunk beside him. Coraltop Netfisher-that was his name! Once more the elf dared to open his eyes. He looked into a small face, old beyond its childlike shape, eyes dark with concern. The kender’s green shirt smelled damp and, vaguely, of seaweed.

“What happened?” Kerrick asked-the words sounded like “Wuh ha’n?”, and the kender’s face broke into a broad smile.

“What happened? Well, the dragon turtle swam away luckily, but unluckily its tail knocked into our boat. It broke that wooden thing off, and that wooden think conked you on the head. Just about broke your skull, too. I don’t think the turtle actually saw us, I mean, you and me. It doesn’t eat ships usually, you know, just sailors. When you got all tangled up in the sail, I fell down in the back. I think the big dumb dragon turtle looked around and decided there was no food here. The tail just kind of whacked us almost by accident when it swam away.”

“It broke off the mast?” At least, that’s what he tried to say, as he struggled to keep up with the kender’s rapidfire explanation. “Ih oh off uh ass?”

“Well, yes, it just snapped off. I tied it to the boat, so it’s kind of floating along next to us, but I didn’t know how to fix it.”

Now the despair returned, deeper than ever. Without a mast Cutter was simply a cork bobbing in the current. The boat was directionless and uncontrolled, at the mercy of the first storm that came along. Certainly the harsh currents of the Courrain Ocean would doom them, would carry the boat farther and farther from land, into the trackless and icy southern end of the world. For a moment the elf wallowed in self-pity, wishing that the broken mast had in fact crushed his skull and brought him to a quick, merciful end. All the time he had been kept alive in the cabin had merely postponed his deserved fate.

That raised another question. “How ‘ong ‘a’ I ‘in ‘yin’ ‘ere?”

“How long have you been lying there?” The kender squinted in concentration. “Let’s see-there were seventeen days before you even twitched. I don’t mind telling you it wasn’t much of a twitch either. It’s like my Grandma Annatree used to say: ‘If it looks dead and acts dead, well, then, it just might be dead.’ Then you started to grunt and groan a little bit, here and there. That went on for-don’t worry, I made a mental note-let’s see, twelve more days. Then it was five days ago that you looked like you were trying to move. You’ve been getting slowly but steadily better, no doubt about it.”