Willful One, it was her husband, Grimwar Bane, who was the oft-burdened executor of those decrees. Undoubtedly there was some onerous task lurking in the monarch’s near future.
There would be time enough later to find out what was his next job. For the time being, for at least this full day and part of the next, he could slip away. Perhaps it would be his very last chance for a long time. He had already sent a message to his lover and knew that she would be waiting for him in the private suite of apartments he kept for their all-too-infrequent meetings. It was time to make haste. The king leaned closer, listening to one more resonant breath. He could picture the queen’s broad nostrils flexing with the snore and was finally convinced that she had lapsed into her deepest stupor.
Grimwar did not depart from the front of the royal apartment, for he knew that his wife had spies throughout the mountain city of Winterheim. Any number of them could be lurking out there, watching and waiting to record the surreptitious activities of their ruler.
Instead, he crossed the great room, with its arched ceiling and massive fireplace. His feet, clad in soft leather boots for indoor comfort, made no sound on the plush rugs of white bearskin. Entering the hallway leading to his own sleeping quarters, he continued past his anteroom to the place where the corridor ended in a stone wall decorated only with a single torch sconce. The stout stick remained cold, for there was rarely need for light in this remote alcove.
The king grasped the torch sconce with his burly fist and pulled. It took all of his massive strength to wrench the metal bracket downward. Gears, well greased and huge, rumbled slightly, and a crack appeared in the corner as the end of the corridor slid back to reveal a shadowy passage. Swiftly, the king stepped through the secret entrance, turning to put his shoulder against the heavy granite slab.
He heard the knock at the door, the sound coming from the outer entrance to the royal chambers. Several sharp raps echoed explosively through the stillness, and after a moment the rude summons was repeated.
He froze, startled, trying to think. Who would dare disturb him now in his quarters, when he had left specific orders that the queen was acquiring her well-deserved rest and that the king desired to be left alone to meditate? The question was overridden by a more urgent concern-the disturbance, if it continued, would inevitably arouse his wife from her well of exhaustion.
Grimacing, unable to suppress the growl of irritation rumbling within his cavernous chest, he slipped back around the secret door to reenter the royal apartments. Hastily he pulled on the sconce until the massive portal rolled shut, then hurried into the great room. The knock on the door was repeated again, a little louder this time, annoyingly persistent.
“What do you want?” snarled Grimwar Bane in what he hoped was a loud whisper, leaning close to the double doors that gave egress from the king and queen’s abode.
“Begging the king’s pardon,” came the tremulous reply, the deep voice denoting a large and powerful ogre.
“But there is a… situation… in the temple of Gonnas.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“I fear not, Sire. The situation is in the Ice Chamber, and Her Majesty, Queen Stariz, has left longstanding orders that she is to be alerted at once, should there be a disturbance in that most holy of rooms.”
“The queen has retired and is exhausted by her previous labors. I am certain that she will want to wait until-”
“What is it?” Grimwar’s statement was cut off by his wife’s sharp voice and sudden appearance. The door to her chambers flew open to reveal the immense, square-faced ogress. Stariz wore her sleeping robe, a cloak of gray linen, but there was no sign of fatigue or dullness in the bright spots of her eyes.
“A disturbance in the Ice Chamber,” Grimwar grunted, trying to cover up his frustration as he opened the outer door. “Enter,” he declared, moving into the great room as the messenger followed behind. The king stood with his back to the fireplace and glared at the other ogre. He recognized the fellow as a captain in the Royal Guard, one Broadnose ber Glacierheim. “What is going on?”
His wife, her great tent of a gown flapping around her, shambled into the entry hall. Stariz glared at Grimwar, those small eyes glittering, and the king wondered how she could have woken so quickly and completely.
“What is the nature of the disturbance?” she demanded from the messenger.
“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
