She smiled wanly, then nodded to the chest in Bruni’s wheelbarrow. “I see you’ve had the gold brought down. Do you think that will make a difference to your king?” She didn’t know the full story of his exile-none of these humans did-but she had gleaned enough of his past to know that he had departed his homeland under something of an shadow.
“I know it will, at least in these modern times. Centuries ago, in the time of Silvanos and the great houses, who knows-I’d like to think the elves had loftier pursuits. Now we might as well be Istarans, dwarves even-we are as enthralled with gold as any people on Krynn.”
“You know…” Moreen hesitated, choosing her words. “I… that is, we, will miss you very much.”
He almost winced. That was how it was with her-everything was about the tribe, nothing about herself. “You should know that I will miss all of you. I’m only starting to realize how much,” he responded levelly. He would miss her the most of all, Kerrick knew, but he lacked the words, the human brashness, to articulate that sentiment.
“You are welcome to return, any time you want to come back,” Moreen continued. “In fact, I do hope we-I- will see you again.” She gazed across the harbor, out the narrow gap onto the sea beyond. “Perhaps it won’t be during my lifetime,” she mused ruefully. “You could still be a young man, and come back to find our grandchildren as the new masters of Brackenrock.”
“I… I want to be back before then,” he said awkwardly. The difference in their life spans-he had centuries of adulthood waiting before him, a trackless road ahead of him, while she would become an old woman in forty, fifty, or some other finite number of years-had always yawned like a gulf between them. Now he felt an irrational tickle of guilt.
“Know that if you don’t come back for a hundred years, the Arktos will remember you and make you welcome,” she said quietly. For the first time ever he saw a tear shimmer in her eye.
“For all those years, and longer, I will carry the memory of this place, of your people-and of you-close to my heart,” he said somberly.
Kerrick held Moreen for several heartbeats, feeling the fierce strength of her embrace, the wiry muscle of her body, and he found himself wishing it could be forever. But it was she who broke the embrace, blinked, and said, “May Zivilyn Greentree ride with you across the waters! And Chislev Wilder wait for you in the forests on the other side!”
The blessing of their two gods was like a benediction around his shoulders. Kerrick could think of nothing else to say, so he climbed aboard his boat, raised the mainsail, and started toward the beckoning sea.
Cutter burst from the Bluewater Strait like a cork exploding from a bottle. A cold south wind gusted from the direction of Winterheim and the Icewall, a reminder of winter so lately departed. Still, Kerrick welcomed the breeze, for it had strength and would bear him in the direction he wanted to go.
The sky was cloudy now, a slate color perfectly matched by the sea. The hue matched the elven sailor’s mood. Playing out the jib, riding straight before the wind, he flew northward until the bulwark of land that was Brackenrock vanished from his view. Even then he continued, reckoning by compass, imagining the miles … twenty, fifty… eighty and more… passing under his keel.
Only when the sun angled into the western sea did he haul in the jib and turn the mainsail to lessen his headlong speed. He watched the long, slow sunset, realized that it was prolonged by his northern position. Within a week the sun itself would remain visible, low on the southern horizon, throughout every night, and many weeks would pass before it again set below Bracken-rock’s horizon. He chuckled as he thought of the phenomenon that the Arktos called the midnight sun. Certainly he would describe it to the elves of Silvanesti, but he didn’t expect that they would believe him.
Setting the tiller and boom with ropes tied to hold a steady course, Kerrick went into his cabin and opened his sea chest. From there he took out a delicate tube, a container shaped by Dinekki from a whale’s tusk. Carefully he extracted the scroll of sheepskin and spread the supple cloth across his table, where he could see clearly in the daylight spilling through the porthole.
It was a crude map by the standards of cartographic mastery, but it was a work that had occupied him for much of the past eight years. Every voyage he had taken in Cutter, every trip back and forth on the White Bear Sea, had been logged here, with coastlines drawn and redrawn, islands discovered and circumnavigated, great glaciers rendered into ink strokes, a mockery of their dazzling majesty.
The shore of the mostly landlocked White Bear Sea Kerrick had completely mapped several years ago. Despite the bothersome presence of the ogre galley Gold-wing, the elf sailed those waters with impunity. Virtually constant winds swept the sea, ensuring that the sailboat could easily escape the much heavier, oar-powered ogre ship. On several occasions the elf had dared to taunt the minions of Grimwar Bane from within hailing distance, only to cast up his jib, cut a new angle across the wind, and whisk away like a swallow in flight.
So he had allowed himself to be diligent and meticulous in his explorations, poking into every cove and bay, doing numerous soundings across the tidal flats, rendering the coastline in as accurate detail as he could manage. It was on these voyages that he had taught Little Mouse to sail, watching the lad grow into a sturdy young man. Later, Feathertail had accompanied them, or the Highlanders Randall and Lars Redbeard. Even Moreen had sometimes sailed along, and he cherished those moments especially, laughing with her as spray washed across the deck or both of them staring in wonder as a huge iceberg calved from the face of a lofty glacier. Even in rough waters, with foaming crests breaking across the prow, she had never displayed any fear. Instead, she had been curious about the sea and as a result had learned a great deal about sailing.
His bold sailing had continued last year, even when the ogre king had launched a second galley. Even Kerrick had to admit that Grimwar Bane had built quite an impressive, seaworthy craft. No doubt he had employed human slaves for a great deal of the work. The design had borrowed heavily from the model of the Goldwing, which had been launched as Silvanos Oak, once his father’s ship and pride of the elven fleet.
Despite the presence of those two great ogre ships, however, the elf sailor had continued to regard the White Bear Sea as his personal body of water. He sighted the galleys only rarely, and always made a nimble escape. In his mind his boat was the undisputed master of the sea, and his thorough surveying had given him a sense of certainty and confidence whenever he sailed in the area.
The same could not be said for the Icereach shore of the Southern Courrain Ocean. Here his map indicated broad strokes, a rough sketch of coasts extending eastward and westward from the mouth of the Bluewater Strait. From the point of Ice End, the northernmost outpost of this land, the eastern shore was backed by rugged mountains. The landscape was stony and inhospitable, without the gentle tundra that marked the Blood Coast or the stands of tall cedar and pine that characterized both sides of the strait. In his voyages that had extended for two or three hundred miles in that direction, Kerrick had failed to find a single attractive anchorage. Nor were there any settlements of Arktos, Highlander, or ogre along that desolate coast.
To the west, the headland of Brackenrock rose up against a lofty ridge of mountain. Beyond those summits, in a frontage of something like twenty-five miles, spread the massive face of the Fenriz Glacier, which was followed by another impressive spine of lofty summits. Beyond there, the shore devolved into a series of deep water fjords, extending an unknown distance into the interior.
Kerrick had been reluctant to explore these regions, for they were too much like traps-it was easy to imagine his little boat snagged like a helpless fish by the appearance of a great ogre warship, barring egress from the narrow channel. Still, he had sailed farther in that direction than to the east, for he had at least found several sheltered valleys of lush forest. Furthermore, there were remote villages of Arktos to the west, and he had stopped at these to trade and to learn. Eventually that shore turned south, creating the expanse of another sea, a body of cold water separated from the Courrain by a string of rocky, barren islands. The Arktos had called the place “Dragons Home Sea,” though none could recall seeing a dragon anytime within their, or their ancestors’, lifetimes. Now the elf felt a thrill of excitement as he gazed at his map and made up his mind. He would, at last, explore the far side of that sea, as it was convenient for his longer voyage to the north.
There was reputed to be a place called Summerbane Island, that lay far to the south of the continent. Traders reported carrying a variety of goods from the mainland, receiving payment in gold ingots, heavy enough to weight the hull for the return voyage. In ancient days it had been a place of dragons, and even now icebergs and frigid storms made it a dangerous place to which to sail. The tales were consistent, though, and came from many different sources. That was enough to give Kerrick a measure of confidence, a belief that Summerbane Island was a real place.
Kerrick had originally heard these stories in his younger days, when he had sailed the coast of Ansalon.
