The Messenger by Douglas Niles

Author:Douglas Niles [Niles, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786962778
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 2012-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

“That cloud across the gulf—do you notice how it’s lingered there all day?” Moreen asked worriedly, as she and her two companions made their way along a ridge that ran parallel to the shore, perhaps a half mile inland.

“Yes, as if a part of the far shore is obscured,” Bruni noted. “It goes away when the wind blows, then comes right back.”

They were far enough north, now, that the opposite side of the gulf had come into view across the passage that Strongwind Whalebone had called the Bluewater Strait. They could see the shore when the fog and drizzle lifted enough, during the few hours of daylight. No more than ten miles away, they observed a rugged landscape of coastal bluff and steep mountains looming on the far side of the water.

“There—now the sun’s hitting it. What does it look like to you?”

“It’s a kind of wall!” Tildey said quickly, “and a tower, there on that hilltop over the sea. It’s some kind of citadel!”

“She’s right,” Bruni confirmed after a moment’s scrutiny. “A big one too, to show up so well at this distance.”

“I think that must be Brackenrock,” Moreen said, a knot in her stomach.

“The steam is coming from caverns below the city?” mused Bruni. “It makes sense to me. You were right!”

“No, I couldn’t have been more wrong!” She was thinking of Strongwind’s map, the fact that this ancient ruin had not been displayed there, and now she thought she understood why.

“It’s way across the water, isn’t it?” Tildey said quietly.

Moreen slumped down onto a rock and nodded bleakly. The truth was in plain sight: The citadel, the mythical place where the chiefwoman had hoped to find safety for her tribe, was miles away, way beyond any map, on the far side of this impassable bay.

“If we still had the kayaks …”

Bruni’s voice trailed off and Moreen bit back her sharp retort. Not only had the ogres broken up all the tribe’s little boats, but they had slashed all the sealskin shells when they abandoned Bayguard. It took a skilled builder the better part of a year to make a kayak, and one kayak could only carry one person, perhaps with one small passenger. That was no solution for the entire tribe.

“What about an ice crossing?” Tildey ventured, tentatively.

“After the Sturmfrost?” Moreen couldn’t keep the scorn out of her voice. She wondered to herself: How many of us will even be alive, after the assault of that first, lethal blizzard?

“Well, there’s no point in going back to Bayguard,” Bruni said. “Let’s keep going north somewhere. We might find that woods that you remembered. We have to be getting close. Being in a forest is better shelter than camping out here on the tundra.”

Moreen nodded stoically and let her friends hoist her to her feet. Her mind drifted. She pictured Gulderglow, with its high walls, heat-producing coal, stockpiles of food. The Arktos could survive the winter there, although Strongwind had made the price of that shelter very clear. Still,

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