Dawn of the Ice Bear Read Free Page B

buccaneers, regaining the Restless Heart and leaving the Argosseans stranded on the coast of Shem. They had set sail for Stygia, which should have been cause for rejoicing. But Donial didn’t feel like a celebration. What was ahead seemed at least as hard as that which lay behind them.
    Somehow, for the most part Alanya kept her spirits up. She was not the carefree girl she had been before their time in Koronaka, but she didn’t seem to take the frustrations to heart, as he did. Everything they had experienced had matured both of them, he suspected. But he was finding it ever more difficult to pretend to be happy and carefree. He could not remember the last time he had actually laughed out loud.
    Donial had been anxious for his childhood to be over. To be treated as an adult instead of a little kid. Now, undeniably, it was.
    He couldn’t help wishing maybe it had lasted a little longer.
    Almost before he knew it, he could feel sandy ocean bottom under his feet. He waded the rest of the way ashore, surrounded by the others. Moonlight washed the strip of beach he emerged onto, seawater running off him. Beyond the beach, he could see only more sand, broken by occasional dark clots that he assumed were bushes or low, stunted trees. Desert ran right to the ocean’s edge.
    The view, such as it was, matched Donial’s mood. Dark, and without much promise.
    He located Alanya and Mikelo, then Kral joined them. The four companions walked over to the edge of the group, where they could speak privately. “What now?” Donial asked. “Where do we go?”
    â€œI am still not sure,” Kral answered, his voice low. “But I have an idea.”
    â€œWhat is it?” Alanya wondered.
    â€œLook at what we know of Gorian and his soldiers,” he replied. “They came here from Tarantia, at the same time as we did and with the same sense of urgency. They are in league with a magician back in Tarantia. They seek something here in Stygia and expect to have to fight for it. All these things make me believe that their goal is the same as ours.”
    â€œThey are after the crown?” Donial asked, surprised.
    â€œI think they may be,” Kral said. “We know that some Stygian mage had it stolen from the thief who took it from your uncle. Lupinius was trying to sell it, so he would not have kept its existence a secret. We know, also, that numerous parties were aware of it, probably including those strangers we saw creeping away from your father’s home the night we found Lupinius wounded. We assumed that the thief who took the Teeth stabbed him and killed the Ranger, but it could as easily have been those men, who were empty-handed when they left. My thinking is that those men included Gorian, or someone working with him. Probably trying to find the Teeth on behalf of the sorcerer who gave him that magic stone he wears around his neck.”
    â€œYou make many assumptions, Kral,” Alanya pointed out.
    â€œYes, Alanya,” he said. “But the facts are the facts. How would a Stygian sorcerer have known the whereabouts of the Teeth in Tarantia? He must have heard about it from someone. There had not been time to send a message by any of the usual means, and then for those priests to have arrived to take the crown from Tremont. But one wizard to another might have been able to do it—they have ways of communicating that we cannot comprehend. If there are mages competing for the Teeth, is it not reasonable to expect that the Aquilonian one might have sent an armed force after it, once the Stygians had taken it?”
    Donial listened to Kral’s theory with disbelief. Had they spent all this time at sea with people who were after the same thing they were—and would fight to keep it? But the more he considered Kral’s words, the more he realized that they made sense. Surely there could have been some other reason for Gorian’s hasty journey to Stygia. But any