The Search For Magic

Go With The Floe

Sea, sky, and Raegel’s face were almost the same color, a flat green-gray, relieved only by white-caps, pale shredded clouds, and, in Raegel’s case, a shock of carrot-colored hair. Raegel mumbled something to Mixun about being seasick, but Mixun knew better. They’d been at sea long enough to get over being seasick. Raegel was just plain scared.

He had reason to be afraid. Both young men lay on their sides, facing each other. The deck rolled gently beneath them. They were twenty-two days out of Port o’ Call, twenty-two days as prisoners of a man they had sought to cheat of five hundred steel pieces. Most of the voyage had been spent in the ship’s rope locker, unable to see where they were going. Last night, after eating their once-daily ration of beans, the pair had fallen into a deep sleep. Some soporific had been added to the meal. When they woke, it was gray, cold morning, and they found themselves on deck, with their hands and feet tightly tied.

Balic Persayer, captain of the caravel Seahorse, emerged from his cabin. He was heavily swathed with scarves and wore a thick woolen coat and peaked hat. Very little of his face showed save for his piggish eyes, red-rimmed and veined with blood, the broad tip of his nose, and his ruddy cheeks, all of which glowed in the raw wind like a trio of ripe crabapples.

“Let’s have them up,” Balic said. Sailors in rough cloaks and fleece jackets hauled the two men to their feet. Only then did Mixun get a clear view of where they were. His previously stubborn spirits sank.

Lying off Seahorse’s starboard rail was a high, rugged coastline, sheathed in ice and snow. Wind, steady as a flowing river, blew off the ice and over the bobbing ship, chilling everything it touched.

Icewall. Captain Persayer had brought them to the frozen end of the world.

“Well, gents, I hope you had a pleasant voyage,” the captain said genially. Mixun told him what he could do with his pleasant voyage. Balic promptly boxed the young man’s ear. He had a fist like a tackle block, and the blow drove Mixun to the deck. Laughing, the sailors dragged him upright again.

“What’s this about?” quavered Raegel. “Do you mean to kill us?”

Balic chuckled unpleasantly. “By my beard, no! If that’s all I wanted, I could have cut your throats back in Port o’Call.”

“Yeah, but murder’s a crime there,” Mixun said.

“So it is, and I am a respectable ship’s master.” Balic gestured, and the sailors behind Raegel and Mixun cut the bonds around their ankles. Their hands were left tied.

Instinctively the two men moved apart. “What are you doing, then?” Raegel asked anxiously.

“Dispensing justice,” said Balic. “Prepare the longboat.”

“What does he mean?” murmured Raegel.

“We’re being marooned,” answered Mixun. “The good captain is putting us ashore on the worst land in the world.”

Two sailors with drawn cutlasses prodded Raegel and Mixun to the rail. As they watched, the ship’s longboat was rigged and lowered over the side.

“Call it what you will, you’re murdering us,” Mixun said as he watched the preparations.

“No sir, I am not,” said Balic, sounding quite cheerful. “You shall leave this vessel alive and breathing. What happens to you afterward is between you and the gods who still live.”

“No!” cried Raegel. “Please, good captain, don’t do this! It’s all a misunderstanding! We never meant to cheat you-”

Balic crossed the deck in two strides and took hold of Raegel’s flimsy shirt. “Of course not! You didn’t know the casks of fine pearls you sold me were filled with old oyster shells, eh?”

“No, we didn’t! Our supplier from Schallsea duped us!”

“Enough lies!” Balic backhanded the frightened man. “Get this scum off my ship!”

Struggling and protesting, Mixun and Raegel were herded to the gap in the rail at swordpoint. With their hands tied in front of them, they were able to hold a rope as they descended the hull cleats to the longboat. Six oarsmen and the bo’sun, a quarter-elf named Tamaro, were waiting for them. Mixun missed a step near the bottom and fell into the boat. Raegel made his last step, then toppled over as a vigorous wave dashed the longboat against the caravel’s hull.

“Wear away!” Balic roared. “Look to your oars!”

“Aye, Captain!” Tamaro shouted back. He took his place at the tiller and ordered the sailors to dig in. Slowly, the longboat worked its way toward shore. Rowing into the wind made the bow leap and plunge, but Tamaro kept them on course for the flat, rocky beach beneath a frowning glacier. Mixun struggled upright as his tall companion slid down among the boat ribs.

Raegel’s lips were already turning blue. “I’m cold.”

“We’re going to be a lot colder,” Mixun said. He was glad now he hadn’t cut his hair in Port o’ Call. It was well below shoulder length and gathered in a thick hank. At least it warmed his neck a little.

There were no shallows near the beach. The dark water never lightened, never gave way to curling breakers as they rowed in. Tamaro ran the bow right on the stony shore, and the sailors shipped oars.

Drawing his cutlass, Tamaro said, “All right you two, out!”

“You’re murdering us! You know that, don’t you?” Mixun said.

“Captain’s orders,” replied the bo’sun. “If I didn’t obey, he’d have me put ashore with you.”

Sullenly, Mixun stood up and worked his way forward. He swung his leg over the bow post and dropped to the gravel. With much cursing, bumping, and thumping, Raegel staggered through the waiting rowers and joined his companion on the stark shore.

“Are you leaving us any food or clothing?” Mixun gasped, clutching his arms against the knife-sharp wind.

“I’ve none to give you,” Tamaro said. The quarter-elf s features were not without sympathy. He came to the longboat’s prow and opened his coat, revealing the hilt of a sturdy iron dagger. Concealing his movement from the sailors behind him, Tamaro flipped the weapon over the side. Mixun caught it before it clanked on the rocks.

“And now we’re done,” said Tamaro. “May you find the fate you deserve.”

He resumed his place at the rudder and ordered the sailors to backwater. The longboat grated off the gravel beach, spun around, and rowed briskly away. As it receded, Mixun saw Tamaro’s face, white against his dark wool cloak, as he looked back at them several times.

“Wretch!” said Mixun. “He should’ve used his dagger on Captain Persayer!”

Raegel took the weapon and began sawing through the cords around his wrists. “But it was very decent of him to help us,” he said. Lengths of cord fell at his feet. Free, he set to work on Mixun’s bonds. “I always had hope for Tamaro.”

Mixun raised a single eyebrow. His partner had the habit of making puns at the worst possible moment, like the time in Ergoth they were caught selling painted lead bars as real gold, and were thrown into a dank, rat-infested dungeon in Gwynned. Mixun remarked about having been in worse jails, to which Raegel said, “As prisons go, this wasn’t so bad, barring the windows.”

“Don’t start,” Mixun said. He shivered hard. His flimsy city finery, intended to impress the gullible, was no help against the climate. Already the brass buckles on his knee breeches were conducting blistering cold into his legs. His thin velvet boots offered little resistance to the insistent chill.

It began to snow.

“We’ve got to find shelter,” he said. “We’ll be dead in an hour if we don’t.”

Raegel stamped his feet, trying to warm them. “Maybe there are caves in the cliffs?”

There was nothing better to try, so they set off for the towering glacier. Before the snow completely closed them in, Mixun cast a last look. Seahorse, topsails set, was driving out to sea. Someday, he fumed, someday he and Captain Persayer would cross paths again, and the result would be much different.

“Come on,” Raegel was calling. He’d found a path to the glacier. Different layers of ice had fractured and fallen, creating a broad, slippery set of steps leading to the summit. Mixun untied the ribbon holding his hair in place and combed the long strands forward to protect his dark, frowning face from the raw wind.

Raegel, Rafe’s son, was a country boy from Throt. At twenty-four, he’d been on the run for seven years. While hoeing onions on his family’s farm one day, he was taken by a press gang from the Knights of Neraka. The Knights needed men to fill out the depleted ranks of their army, and lately they’d begun impressing free men rather than hiring expensive mercenaries. Raegel went along without a fight, and the press gang sergeant was the first of many to take him for a simpleton. He didn’t look like he had two thoughts to rub together. Tall, gangling, with a shock of red hair that had the habit of standing up on his head like a worn-out broom, Raegel learned at an early age to let people think what they wanted about him. While everyone discounted his wits, Raegel went about life with a peculiar grace, unhindered by conscience.

He escaped the unwary Nerakans, and after various adventures, made his way to Sanction, where he found work as a footman to the seer Gashini. Old Gashini did a lucrative trade in fortune-telling and dispensing advice to the high and low in Sanction, but his powers were not derived from magic. Gashini was a snoop, and he employed an army of lesser snoops to ferret out gossip and private news which he later dispensed as supernatural revelations. Raegel learned pick-pocketing and eavesdropping from Gashini, among other vices.

While working waterfront grog shops for his master, Raegel met a kindred spirit-a tough, sullen young fellow named Mixun, “short for Mixundan-talus,” as he often said. Mixun was down on his luck. He wouldn’t speak of his origins, but he’d come to Sanction as the bodyguard of a steel merchant named Wendelsee. Wendelsee had died-poisoned by a jealous rival-and Mixun was left without gainful employ. It was hard for a bodyguard to find a new job when it was commonly known his last master had perished violently.

The two men hit it off, although a more disparate pair would be hard to imagine. The tall, seemingly guileless Raegel and the dark, dangerous-looking Mixun began running small capers of their own, like rigged dice games, or liberating high-value goods from warehouses. They did well at petty larceny for a while, until the lord governor of Sanction, Hogan Bight, announced his intention to clean up the waterfront and drive out the criminal gangs hiding there. Less than a week after Bight’s decree, Raegel and Mixun found themselves invited to leave town, which they did, taking ship to the west before the leaves changed that fall.

Ironically, the duo did very well in honest, upright Solamnia. Posing as refugees from Nerakan oppression, they worked a number of successful capers in Port o’ Call, including the pearl scam. They salted oysters with seed pearls and convinced their marks they could grow pearls of any size by using a magical powder (which was just black sand from Sanction). They worked this scam successfully three times. On the fourth try, they ran afoul of Captain Persayer, who was not fooled. Instead of a handsome payoff, the farm boy from Throt and the sullen bodyguard found themselves taken by the vindictive captain and left to die on the frozen shore.

By the time they reached the top of the glacier, the snow was pelting down in great feathery globs. It was very wet, sticky snow, and they quickly found themselves soaked through to the skin.

Raegel gazed across the featureless plateau of ice. His scarecrow hair was laden with handfuls of fluffy white snow. “I don’t see any place to go.”

Mixun replied, “Inland is just ice. We must stay close to the ocean, where the glaciers break off. Maybe we’ll find a cave or something.”

They trudged on, the taller Raegel breaking a trail. Every footfall broke through the crust of ice over the last layer of snow, and lifting his heavy feet reminded Mixun of trying to free himself from a bear trap. They blundered on like this for almost a mile, getting colder and wetter with every faltering step, then Raegel broke through an extra deep drift and sank into the snow up to his chest. He struggled for a moment, lost his balance, and fell face down in the snow. Mixun halted. His friend tried to stand, but another shell of ice cracked beneath him, and he disappeared below the surface.

“Raegel! Ho, Raegel!”

Mixun moved forward carefully, but not carefully enough. The ice gave way under him too, and he slid feet first into the depths.

He slid quite a ways-more than twice his own height-before coming to rest against a pile of loose snow. Mixun sat up and saw Raegel lying on his stomach a few feet away.

“Ho!” he said. “Are you alive?”

“So far,” was the whispered reply. “Don’t talk so loud, if you want to keep living.”

Mixun looked around and saw the reason for Raegel’s concern. They had fallen into a large hollow in the ice, ten feet or more below the surface, and if the rest of the roof gave way, they’d be buried alive under tons of ice and snow.

With great deliberation, Raegel sat up. His face and hands were chalk-white with cold, leaving only the tips of his ears and his nose with any color in them. Mixun was shocked, but knew he was at least as far gone.

“Well, we’re out of the storm,” Mixun said in a very low voice.

His lanky friend remarked, “Snow news is good news.”

Mixun was too cold to groan. He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his square chin on them.

“Never thought I’d go like this,” he muttered. “I always thought I’d die with a sword in my hand, fighting to the end.”

Raegel imitated Mixun’s fetal posture and said, “I always wanted to die in the arms of a beautiful lady. A rich, beautiful lady.”

They said little more. Breath froze on their lips, sealing their mouth with ice. After shivering apart for a while, Raegel crawled to his friend’s side and huddled close to him.

Last post, Mixun thought. He would never see home again, never complete the task he’d dedicated his life to. Everything had ended in this white desert, forever frozen and dead.

He closed his eyes. With his last bit of strength, he found Raegel’s hand and clasped it. His friend returned the gesture with a slight squeeze, just to let Mixun know he was there.

Shut off from the sensations of his body by the encroaching cold, Mixun fell into a twilight of dreams, images, and lost desires. He saw again the wide sandy wastes of home, the burning sun overhead, and the wind stirring the dust into whirlpools around him.

Strangely, he felt no heat from the sun, which should have been beating down on his exposed face like a torch. He felt nothing at all.

The landscape shimmered, though not with heat. It trembled with a rapid, rhythmic pulse that he first thought was his own heart beating, but it was too fast, too even. The pulsation grew stronger. The darkness around Mixun lightened a bit as he struggled to rise to consciousness.

“Stop kicking me.” Raegel sounded slurred, like a drunken man.

“I’m not kicking you, you idiot.” Mixun did kick Raegel then, and was delighted to feel his leg respond to his mental command.

A roaring filled the ice chamber, and snow cascaded down. The cold skin of Mixun’s face was still warm enough to melt it, and he opened his eyes, breaking the lacy crust of ice on his lashes. He sat up. Raegel was lying on his side, curled up in a ball. The noise wasn’t in Mixun’s head, it was real.

“Raegel! Raegel, wake up!”

“Scratch my back, will you?” the drowsy man replied.

“Get up, jackass! The hole’s coming down around us!” Mixun said hoarsely. He drew back his foot and planted a sharp kick on his friend’s backside. Raegel flinched hard and rolled over, rubbing the spot.

Dragging his benumbed friend by the collar, Mixun scrambled up the ramp of snow created when “he and Raegel had tumbled down into the ice cave. The tremors were very rapid now, almost continuous, and the roaring, grinding sound was deafening.

Mixun glimpsed the chill gray sky and burst through the last few inches of loose snow. Once in the open, he thrust both hands into the hole and hauled Raegel out.

Towering above them was the source of the noise and shaking-an enormous wheel, fully thirty paces high, made of heavy timbers and strapped with black iron bands. The wheel stood upright and was turning at a goodly rate, digging plow-like teeth into the ice. Snow and ice sprayed out behind the wheel in two high arcs, creating artificial drifts on either side of the deep trench the device was carving. The axle on which the wheel turned was as broad as a man was tall, and protruded some distance from the center of the wheel. Rising from the ends of the axle were two tall wooden masts, topped with windmill vanes, spinning briskly.

“What is it? What in the name of the four winds is it?” Mixun shouted, backing away on his feet and hands, sliding on the seat of his pants across the ice. “Some kind of machine,” Raegel said. “I can see that! But what kind of machine?” As if in answer, the churning wheel sounded a shrill blast on a brass horn. The windmill vanes canted, presenting their edges to the breeze, slowed, and stopped. At once the vast device slowed. The plow blades no longer tore smoothly through the ice crust, but bit and bounced on the stone-hard surface. Lethally large chunks of ice flew, and for some moments the two men were kept busy dodging them.

Without high rotational speed to steady it, the great wheel wobbled. Finally the long axle touched the snowy ground, and the amazing contrivance ground to a halt, leaning on its side like a monstrous child’s top.

A hatch opened on the axle’s upper surface and a head covered by a puffy black hat emerged. Mixun, though stiff and reeling from the cold, stood up and tried to look dangerous. Raegel didn’t bother. He sat crossed legged in the snow, awaiting whatever fate lay ahead.

The puffy black hat was attached to a puffy black suit. The person in the suit climbed out and dropped to the ground, staggered, and fell down. Another round, padded hat appeared in the hatch.

Mixun started toward the strange visitor. Raegel grasped his leg as he passed.

“You don’t know who they are,” he warned.

“They have warm clothes, and probably have food and drink,” Mixun said. “And I want some!”

By the time he reached the axle, four black-suited figures had come out. They all wobbled in circles, as if drunk. Mixun grabbed the closest one. He was small, shorter by half than Mixun, who was not a tall man. Mixun snatched at the lacing on the front of the puffy hat and shoved it back. Out came a mass of silver-white hair and an ageless pink face.

Gnomes. He should have guessed. The strange giant wheel had all the earmarks of a gnomish mechanism.

“Greetings!” cried the gnome. When Mixun did not promptly reply, he repeated his salutation in Elvish, Old High Dwarvish, Ogrespeak, then whinnied like a centaur.

“Common tongue will do,” Mixun said, setting the little fellow back on his feet. “Who are you?”

Eight minutes later the gnome concluded his name.

Three-quarters frozen, the only part Mixun remembered was the first bit: “Master maker of wheels, wheel-rims, spokes, hubs, axles, cotter-pins, bearings (roller and ball), fabricated in wood, bronze, brass, iron, and steel…” In lieu of all that, Mixun thought of him as “Wheeler” from then on.

The other gnomes gradually recovered their equilibrium and surrounded the freezing pair. They chattered volubly about the weather, thickness of the ice beneath their feet, the formation and texture of snowflakes-on and on without pause, as Raegel slumped to his knees and Mixun’s eyelashes grew heavy with frost.

“We’re dying!” he managed to gasp. “Can you help us?”

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Wheeler. The near-identical gnome on his right said, “Over-active glands. Gets ‘em every time, these big people.”

“Maybe they have the Wingerish Fever?” said another.

“You have the Wingerish Fever,” said Wheeler severely. The gnome in question put a hand to his neighbor’s forehead.

“How can you say that?” he replied. “My blood pressure feels normal!”

“The c-c-cold,” Raegel chattered. His eyes fluttered and closed, and he fell backward in the snow.

“Dear, dear,” said Wheeler. “They aren’t dressed for the climate, are they? Come, let us repair to the Improved Self-Propelled Ice Engraver and warm these poor men.”

“Did I hear you say the ISPIE needs repair?” asked the gnome with the Wingerish Fever. “No!” said the other four gnomes.

Wheeler took Mixun by the hand and led him to the hollow axle of the stupendous wheel. The rest of the gnomes took hold of Raegel’s hands and feet and dragged him to the open hatch.

The interior of the axle was very tight, sized as it was for beings of gnomish height and bulk. Mixun crawled through a thorny hedge of levers, rods, and pulleys, finally falling exhausted between two brackets of the axle frame. At least it was warm.

The gnomes put Raegel in the niche across from Mixun. One gnome gave him a steaming mug of liquid, and Mixun took it gratefully. He raised the cup to his lips, but the smallest of the gnomes stopped him.

“That’s not a beverage,” he said.

Mixun looked over the mug rim at the round, pink-faced creature, framed by a wreath of silver-white hair. The gnome’s wide, round eyes were filled with concern.

“What’s it for?” he asked.

“It’s Supreme Cold Weather Foot Wash. You pour it on your feet.”

Mixun stared at his boots-encrusted in snow, which was rapidly melting. The littlest gnome took the mug from his hand and poured the steaming green liquid over his feet. The snow disappeared, and a strong sensation of warmth flooded Mixun’s feet. Unfortunately, the most appalling stench also arose. Mixun covered his nose with his hand and said, “Faw! What’s that stink?”

“A side effect of the compound,” said the gnome. “I’m still working on it. But your feet are warmer, are they not?”

He had to admit they were. Pleased despite the smell, he asked the gnome his name.

Seven and a half minutes later (for he was younger than Wheeler, and therefore had a shorter name), the little gnome finished his proud epithet. From it, Mixun understood the gnome was a maker of oils and unguents, a mixer of soaps, greases, and anything slippery. Because of his expertise, Mixun dubbed him “Slipper.”

“Take start positions!” Wheeler shouted. Slipper thrust a second mug of footwarmer upon Mixun.

“For your friend,” he said, and dashed away.

“Flywheel to neutral! Spring tension sixty percent! Wind velocity, twenty-two!”

“Blood pressure one hundred seventeen over fifty-five,” said the gnome with Wingerish Fever.

“Shut up!” said the rest.

Huddled between the axle ribs, Mixun could see the gnomes hopping about, working their mysterious apparatus and happily shouting numbers and figures at each other. The center of the axle was a cage-like structure made of wire and rattan, and inside this stood Wheeler, his feet planted on a narrow board studded with four small wheels. That puzzled Mixun. Why was the gnome standing on a wheeled platform?

“Make secure all loose securables!” Wheeler cried.

The gnomes took turns strapping each other into bags of rope netting hanging from rings on the axle wall. When one gnome was fully laced into his bag, his neighbor would climb into his own hammock and wait for the secure gnome to wriggle out and lace him. Mixun thought this would go on forever, as one gnome would always be left free by such an absurd process, but after several go-rounds, the last free gnome was tied in place by Wheeler, who left his rattan cage just long enough to finish the job. He climbed back onto his wheeled plank, threw a big lever, and the giant wheel began to shake.

All at once Mixun realized he and Raegel weren’t tied down at all. “Ho!” he called. “What about us?”

“No time for tea or hotcakes now,” said Wheeler, setting a pair of leather-framed goggles over his eyes.

Mixun was about to protest when the gnomes threw several levers at once. The windmill vanes outside caught the wind, and their motion was transferred by crown gears to a huge stone flywheel inside the rim of the great wheel itself. As the ponderous disk of granite gained speed, ropes wound tight, sandbag counterweights rose and fell, and the entire device shivered with building power. The tip of the axle lying on the ice rose a bit, then fell back with a bump. Mixun braced his arms against the hull and looked on wildly.

His feet warmed and stinking, Raegel came to. Rubbing the melted frost from his eyes, he saw his friend facing him, gulped, and said, “Hullo, Mix. What’s happening?”

“Gnomes!” That said it all.

The axle rose again, higher this time, wobbled in a circle and dropped back once more. Both men were thrown in the air and settled back in their former places with a heavy thump.

Wheeler picked up a mallet and used it to whack a large, red-painted peg outside his cage. With a shriek of tortured tackle and straining leather straps, the full force of the flywheel was applied to the outer wheel structure. The axle leaped into the air, shaking violently. Pounding blows rattled Mixun’s teeth and made Raegel’s head bang painfully against the wooden axle wall. Mixun knew what was causing the bone-jarring vibration-the sharp iron plows were chewing up the ice again.

The noise was deafening. Vision blurred by the heavy pounding, Mixun could see his friend’s mouth move, but he could not hear what was being said. Then the gnomes launched the great wheel forward.

Raegel and Mixun tumbled over each other as the cabin turned a full revolution with each rotation of the wheel. During his wild flight, Mixun saw Wheeler standing upright and unconcerned in his rattan cage, his wheeled board canceling out the motion of the manic machine under him. The other gnomes twisted and tumbled in their rope bags, allowed to turn head over heels, but held in place.

The two men were thrown together like dry peas in a cup. Raegel’s suede boots, no doubt toasty warm on his feet now but smelling like all the sewers of Sanction, kept colliding with Mixun’s nose. His own noxious footwear were curled beneath him, but he managed to straighten them out so he could return the favor to Raegel.

“Try… to… get a… grip!” Mixun cried as they whirled.

“On what?” Raegel retorted.

Mixun braced his feet and hands against the axle ribbing, and that stopped his dizzy tumbling-or it did until Raegel fell on top of him and broke his hold. They rattled around a few more revolutions, then Raegel managed to loop his arms around a wooden bracket. He ran in place as the great wheel turned, then planted his feet against the ribs as Mixun had done. Soon they were both stable, though rotating with the axle. Raegel found himself staring at Mixun’s kneecaps, and Mixun’s view of the world was framed by his friend’s long, bony legs.

The gnomes thundered along in this fashion for some time, the massive wheel chewing through layer upon layer of packed snow and ice. The machine bore right and picked up speed. Suddenly there was an extra hard jolt, and the wheel bounced into the air. For a second the noise and shaking stopped. There followed a resounding splash as the wheel struck the water.

“See! See!” Wheeler was crowing. “Thus it is proven! The ISPIE works as well in the water as it does on land!”

“Nonsense! Preposterous!” his fellow gnomes responded. “The efficiency of the plows as paddles cannot exceed thirty percent!”

“Fifty!” Wheeler shouted back.

“Thirty!”

“One hundred twenty-six over forty-nine,” announced the gnome with the Wmgerish Fever.

“Shut up!” the gnomes chorused.

“Excuse me,” Mixun said in the brief moment of silence that followed. “Not that my friend and I aren’t grateful, but where are we going?”

“Nevermind South,” said Slipper, turning in his rope bag to see their guests. “Our base of operations for the Excellent Continental Ice Project.”

“And what, pray, is the Excellent Continental Ice Project?” asked Raegel.

“Our purpose here,” Wheeler said. “We’ve come to harvest the abundant natural concretion of solidified sub-freezing water.”

“The what?”

“The ice,” said all five gnomes in unison.

The giant wheel, which the gnomes informed Mixun and Raegel was named Snow Biter, paddled down the coastline, making good time in the choppy gray sea. When the wind dropped, the vanes outside slowed and Snow Biter lost speed. When the wind kicked up again, the strange contrivance churned ahead. The axle, as tightly caulked against wind and water as a well-made ship, kept everyone inside dry and warm.

Well past midday, Wheeler announced they were going inland again. Everyone braced themselves. Angling ashore, Snow Biter climbed the beach and tore at the crusty, rock filled snow. Amid a barrage of nonsensical orders, the giant wheel turned sharply to the left and halted. The sudden cessation of motion and noise was startling. Raegel neglected to lower his voice and kept shouting everything he said, while Mixun seemed to want to keep on turning of his own accord. Men and gnomes tumbled outside, weaving and spinning like dandelion seeds caught in a zephyr.

Gradually the world stopped turning, and Mixun was able to survey their surroundings. The gnomes had created a fantastic miniature town. It lined the shore of a shallow bay like a toy village wrought in snow by children. Everything was gnome-sized, and hundreds of the little people were about, coated in all manner of strange garb. The men saw gnomes dressed in waxed cotton coveralls smeared with grease, leather capes with seagull feathers glued all over, and furs of every shade. A pair of busy-looking fellows rolled past, sealed inside globes of glass four feet in diameter. Oddest of all were the gnomes who wore only a breech-cloth and stockings, yet stood about in the frigid air as calm and comfortable as they pleased. Raegel was about to inquire about their state of warmth when the wind changed.

“Awk!” he said, gasping. “That smell!”

“Slipper’s foot-warming lotion,” Mixun said, nodding. “They must use it all over.”

He and Raegel were freezing, so they loudly demanded some protection from the cold for themselves. Wheeler was in a hurry to report to his colleagues, and he dashed off, leaving little Slipper to assist the humans.

“I’m doubtful there’s any clothing in camp that will fit you,” he said, stroking his beardless chin.

“Anything you have-blankets will do. Anything!”

“Very well. Follow me.”

They followed Slipper to a low structure made of driftwood and blocks of ice, cut and fitted with all the care of traditional masonry. Both men had to duck to enter the icehouse. It was surprisingly warm inside, which accounted for the walls running rivulets of water and the ceiling yielding a constant supply of shockingly cold drops.

The building was a warren of corridors and rooms, all sized to gnomish standards. Slipper led them a merry route through the bustling halls, and more than once Mixun lost sight of their guide as he passed through a crowd of fellow gnomes.

“Little mites all look alike!” he declared under his breath. Raegel chided him for his ignorance.

“They’re as different as you and me,” he said. “See? There’s Slipper, over there.”

“All right, hawkeye, you lead!”

Graciously, Raegel did just that. Before long, Slipper led them to a supply room. Furs and yard goods lay in heaps everywhere. “Help yourselves,” said the gnome. He turned to leave.

“Wait!” said Mixun. “These aren’t clothes. They’re just piles of cloth!”

“Can’t you make your own clothes? I can show you how to make your own, using the Improved Squirm-Proof Full Body Stitcher. You lie down on a table, see, with cloth beneath you and on top, and the machine sews around you, creating perfectly fitting clothes-”

“Never mind, friend Slipper,” Raegel said. “We’ll manage.” He found a brown woolen blanket and cut it into strips with Tamaro’s dagger, winding the strips around his legs as puttees. Mixun draped a gray linsey-woolsey blanket around his shoulders like a mantle.

Slipper sniffed. “If you want to be crude about it!” He tried to leave again.

“Wait,” Mixun said. “What about food? Where can we get something to eat?”

“Follow your nose. It will lead you to the Nevermind South Efficient Eatery and Experimental Food Shop.”

Raegel tied his leggings in place. “Now that sounds like fine dining to me.”

More warmly dressed and their hunger assuaged by a visit to the Efficient Eatery (“Just our luck-it’s experimental food day,” Raegel said when he saw the strange victuals offered), the men wandered around the gnome camp, trying to figure out what the little men were doing.

Former farmer Raegel, who developed an eye for counting free-roaming chickens as a child, estimated there were a thousand gnomes in Nevermind South. Other giant wheels, like Snow Biter, came and went via the sea. Since gnomes were always shouting their business for all to hear, Mixun heard every returning wheel master declare things like “The cut is sixty-nine percent complete,” or “the cut is seventy-seven percent complete.” At one point he snagged a busy gnome and asked, “What is this ‘cut’ I keep hearing about?”

“The cut that will make the Excellent Continental Ice Project,” said the gnome.

“You’re cutting out blocks of ice?” said Raegel.

“No, just one block.” The full-bearded gnome, clad in the cut-down pelt of a polar bear, slipped out of the puzzled Mixun’s grasp and hurried on.

“These little men are mad,” he declared.

“That’s been said before,” Raegel agreed. “Still, they do have lots of energy.”

Just then a shrill metallic whistle screamed, causing the two friends to leap, ready to run from whatever danger had just been announced. Instead of an attack, the gnomes poured out of their huts and houses and formed themselves into a disorganized mass, all facing northwest.

Even then, they couldn’t stop talking. A quartet of senior gnomes (recognizable by their knee-length beards) climbed atop a platform of ice bricks and waited for the mob to calm. It never did, so one of the elders put a large, elaborate-looking horn in his mouth and blew. The same piercing shriek emerged, overpowering all conversation.

“Comrades! Fellow inventors! Lend me your aural and ocular attention!” cried the longest-bearded gnome on the platform.

“Lend him what?” asked Raegel.

“I don’t know, but I’m not giving them any money,” Mixun warned.

“Shh!” said six gnomes in front of them. “The Chief Designer speaks!”

“Fellow technocrats! As of three o’ clock and ten minutes past this afternoon, the cut has reached eighty percent of our goal. At this rate it will take just two more days to reach the next phase of the Excellent Continental Ice Project!”

The gnomes on either side of the Chief Designer did some rapid calculating with nubs of chalk on slates.

“Uh, Chief, it will take two days and eight and half hours,” said one.

“Ha! You forgot to carry the one! It’s three days, two hours-”

“You forgot to allow for wind resistance!”

“Colleagues, colleagues! What about the Wingerish Fever?”

“Enough!” bellowed the Chief Designer. “Culmination is nigh, whatever the exact hour! At the Splitting minus one day, the hammer towers will begin operation. At Splitting minus six hours, all colleagues will secure their work and await the Splash.”

“Do you have any notion what he’s talking about?” Mixun asked.

“Not a whit,” Raegel said. “Seems to me they’re digging trenches in the ice with those wheel-machines- maybe to roof ‘em over and make tunnels out of them. That way they can get around no matter how much it snows.”

Mixun was impressed by his friend’s analytical powers. He had only one objection. “What could the gnomes be getting around to? There’s nothing here but snow, ice, and rocks.”

In answer, Raegel only shrugged.

The men passed the night and all the following day in idleness, eating, sleeping, or wandering around the camp and observing inexplicable gnome behavior. The snowy scene was littered with their odd machines, often highly complicated devices to do the simplest jobs-like the pendulum powered potato masher in the Efficient Eatery, or the snow whisk operated by the increasing weight of seagull droppings collecting on a teetering platform overlooking the sea.

Their second night at Nevermind South, Mixun and Raegel bedded down in the storeroom of the main ice-building. They were alive and well, which was a great improvement over their prospects since leaving Port o’ Call, but Mixun was already restless.

“We’ve got to find a way off this snowpile,” he whispered in the dark. “I’ll go mad if I have to stay here too long! How’re we going to get back to the real world?”

“If we had a boat, we could sail across Ice Mountain Bay to the Plains of Dust,” Raegel said.

Mixun said, “That won’t do.”

“What’s wrong with that? The gnomes must have gotten here by boat. We could borrow one of theirs, I’m certain.”

“I’m not against taking a boat. I just can’t go to the desert country.”

“Eh? Why’s that?”

“Because I can’t, that’s why. Why don’t you want to return to Throt?”

Raegel cleared his throat. “I get your meaning. Hmm. Ergoth is a possibility.”

“Are we still wanted in Silvamori?” Mixun said.

“Um, dead or alive. I told you we shouldn’t have gulled Lady Riva’s factotum out of all that steel.”

Mixun snorted. “Fool. He deserved what he got.”

“Tdarnk still rules in Daltigoth,” Raegel said. “Plenty of opportunity there for men of wit and daring.”

Yes, opportunity to get drawn and quartered, Mixun thought. Raegel went on, listing cities and lands of the west, weighing the possible pickings they might find. Mixun stopped listening in the midst of his companion’s dissection of Zhea Harbor and lapsed into a deep, untroubled sleep.

Somewhere far away, a great bell tolled. The pealing was dirge-like and vastly deep. Mixun, who could sleep through most disturbances, opened his eyes. He and Raegel had rigged a hide tarp over their pallets to keep water from dripping on them as they slept. With each toll of the bell, a cascade of chill droplets ran off each corner of the tarp.

“Raegel? You awake?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s that sound?”

“Gnomes.” Raegel turned over, away from his friend. “Just gnomes.”

That wasn’t good enough for Mixun. He threw back his fur blanket and made his way out of the storehouse. It was an oddly warm morning for Icewall- still below freezing, but just barely. Heavy, low clouds reached down from the sky, gripping the stark landscape.

Bong.

The note was held a very long time. It seemed to come from all directions at once. Mixun would have asked the nearest gnome what was going on, but there were none in sight. Nevermind South was empty.

Bong.

The wind was still for the first time since their arrival at Icewall, and the sound carried with great clarity. It seemed to be coming from both east and west. Mixun drew his cloak tight and made his way through the snowdrifts toward a ridge of ice that ringed the landward side of Nevermind South. As he topped the rise, he heard the ringing sound again, followed by high, cheering voices. The gnomes were excited about something.

Mixun walked toward the cheering, and gradually he saw a tall tower in the clouds. It was a spindly construction of logs, with long ropes attached to it. As Mixun watched, a huge, wedge-shaped object rose inside the tower, drawn up by ropes. The gleam of metal meant it was sheathed in steel, and the iron box above it was filled with loose gravel. When the wedge reached the top of the tower, the tackle released, and it fell heavily to the ground.

Bong.

“So that’s it,” Mixun mused aloud. The gray sky echoed the massed cheers of the gnomes.

On closer inspection, he found the little people had carved out an amphitheater in the ice facing the tower, and they sat raptly watching as the great weighted blade rose and fell. The tower straddled a deep trench that ran as far as the eye could see east and west. From the piles of frozen slush on either side of the pit, Mixun guessed this was the cut plowed into the ice by the gnomes’ digging machines. The trench was so deep he couldn’t see the bottom, just glassy blue ice as far down as the eye could see.

He spotted Slipper in the crowd and hailed him. The tiny gnome waved back, never taking his eyes off the rising weight.

“Slipper-”

“Shh!” hissed two hundred gnomes at once. Mixun snapped his jaw shut, quelled by their unanimity. With a screech, the shackle opened, and the wedge plunged into the ravine. The gnomes cheered wildly.

“Slipper,” he said again, once the noise died down.

“What is it?”

“What are you doing?”

“Watching.”

“No. I mean, what are you doing there, with that tower?”

“This is the Splitting,” said the gnome beside Slipper. He had a fantastic snowsuit on, all covered with small, mirrored glass panels. Mixun asked what the Splitting was.

“The next phase of the Excellent Continental Ice Project,” said Slipper. Mixun had to wait until the wedge dropped again, then with strained patience he asked what the Excellent Continental Ice Project really was.

“We are separating a quantity of ice from the glacier, to take back home to Sancrist,” said the mirror-clad gnome.

“What for?” asked the amused human.

“Fresh water,” said Slipper.

“No, for our Low Temperature Laboratory!” said Mirror Suit.

A tubby gnome seated behind these two thrust his head between theirs and boomed, “Yer both wrong! The ice will be used to fight the red dragon, Pyrothraxus, who occupies our ancestral home, Mt. Nevermind! We’ll freeze ‘im in his lair!’”

Bong.

This time the blow sounded different. A prolonged cracking sound rose, like cloth being torn asunder. Every gnome in the theater rose on stubby legs and gazed rapturously at the tower.

“Slipper?” The little gnome did not answer Mixun until he tugged on the gnome’s down-stuffed sleeve. “How much ice are you taking?”

“One point six-eight cubic miles.”

“Miles?”

“Hurrah!” cried the gnomes. “Now the Splitting! Next the Splash!”

The ground heaved beneath Mixun’s feet. Before he could question or exclaim, the tower over the ravine snapped apart with a loud crack. Rope and timbers whipped into the deep gap, and the gnomes began spilling off their icy seats with commendable rapidity. Mixun found himself being borne along with the flow of white-haired folk. The glacier canted, first a little, then more and more. Gnomes went down like leaves in a fall wind, skidding into hummocks of snow or into Mixun’s legs. As little men piled up around him, Mixun lost his balance and fell too.

“Eight degrees! Fifteen degrees! Twenty-one degrees!” shouted a gnome gripping a surveyor’s quadrant. Mixun had the horrifying thought that “the Splash” would come when he and all the gnomes were dumped into the frigid sea.

The glacier shivered like a living thing, wracked from end to end by powerful forces. What was left of the derrick vanished into the widening ravine. Mixun rolled over, clawing at the snow for support. To his amazement, green seawater gushed skyward from the gap the gnomes had cut in the ice. So it was true. The little men had carved off a massive piece of the Icewall glacier!

For a fleeting, thrilling moment, Mixun felt himself falling. The ice dropped away from him and, in the next heartbeat, slammed into the yielding sea. Mixun flattened on the ice, spun around, and found himself buried under a squirming mass of frantic, excited gnomes.

By the time he extricated himself, Mixun felt a very slight rolling motion in the ice. He stood easily and surveyed the scene. Where once had been an expanse of ice all the way to the horizon, there was now a widening channel of swirling green water. Mixun dashed to the edge and looked left and right. There was nothing but ocean between them and shore. Cold wind was driving them out to sea at a notable pace.

The gnomes had sorted themselves out and were busily scribbling notes on any surface available-thick pads of paper, scraps of parchment, even their sleeves and the backs of their colleagues.

“What have you done?” Mixun asked, incredulous.

“Splash successfully survived,” noted Slipper on his foolscap. “The Splitting was more extreme than calculated.”

“Not so,” said another gnome. “My figures, posted three days ago on the wall of the Efficient Eatery, clearly indicate a maximum angle of twenty-six degrees before the Splash.”

“How many degrees was it?”

The quadrant-bearing gnome had marked his instrument at the most extreme angle. “Twenty-six degrees, two minutes, forty-four seconds!”

Slipper and the other gnomes bowed to the successful predictor. “Excellent calculations, my dear chap! Simply excellent!”

Mixun scratched his sprouting beard and said, “Excuse me, but what happens now?”

“Now we return to Sancrist Isle,” said the calculator.

“But how? Won’t we just drift with the wind?”

The assembled gnomes laughed in explosive chirps and soprano guffaws. “Not this iceberg!” Slipper declared. “We have propulsion!”

Mixun picked up a handful of snow. It melted quickly in the warm palm of his hand.

“Sancrist is a long way from here. Will the ice last, or will it all melt before we get there?”

This time the gnomes didn’t laugh. They deferred to the successful calculator, who made a rapid computation on his neighbor’s pants leg. When he was done, he smiled broadly.

“We can lose sixty percent of our total ice and still stay afloat,” he said. “The maximum amount we can expect to melt between here and Sancrist is no more than thirty-two percent.”

Mixun didn’t understand the percentages, but he was soothed by the gnome’s bland confidence. He had no reason to complain. Raegel had wanted to get office-wall, and now they were-in a way.

Raegel! He was still in the storehouse! Without a word, Mixun leaped over the gnomes, scrambling over the ridge toward Nevermind South. As he skidded down the slick hill to the camp (now teeming with gnomes again), he saw the great wheel machines being partially dismantled. One wheel was already being pegged into place at the edge of the iceberg so that the heavy plow blades dipped into the sea. Once in motion, the machines would act like giant waterwheels, paddling the floating island of ice to its ultimate destination.

Mixun burst into the storehouse, expecting to find a frantic Raegel stricken with fear. He did not.

“Raegel?” he called gently. The only reply was a soft and steady snoring.

Once he was wakened, Raegel didn’t believe Mixun’s story. The gnomes had sawn off a giant raft of ice, three miles long and a mile wide? It was ridiculous, and damned impossible!

“Come see for yourself,” Mixun said, rising from the iceblock table in the Efficient Eatery.

From the snow village, the only view was out to sea anyway, so Mixun and Raegel climbed the ridge above the town to see water all around them. Raegel opened his mouth a few times, but no words came out. He sat down on the mound of ice and gazed at the endless ocean.

Mixun held a ringer to the wind, then squinted at the sun. “North by west,” he said sagely. “Dead on for Sancrist Isle.” He sat down by his bemused companion. “It’s too much to believe. If these little folk can do something this grand, why don’t they command the world?”

“Don’t let the size of the deed fool you,” Raegel said. “Gnomes are smart, but they’re also more than a little loony. It took a thousand of them to carve out this island of ice, but in another time and place the same thousand might devote themselves to something totally useless, like…” He struggled for an example. “Counting the ants in an anthill or trying to catch clouds in a jar.”

“There’s gotta be something in this for us!” Mixun said, rising suddenly. “Some way to turn this to our advantage!”

“I’ll think on it. All this ice must be worth something. After all, it’s a chill wind that blows us no good.”

Mixun frowned and slapped Raegel on the back of the head.

The ridge above Nevermind South was the highest point on the floe. From there they could see for miles to all points of the compass. On their second day at sea, Mixun spotted the white sails of a ship bearing down on them from the northeast. It was running before the wind, while the ponderous ice island was paddling steadily against the prevailing zephyr. He interrupted Raegel’s plotting and pointed to the oncoming vessel.

“What do you think they’re thinking right now?” he said.

Raegel grinned. “They’re likely wondering what a big berg like this is doing so far from Icewall!”

The ship, a tubby two-master flying the colors of Solamnia, closed rapidly. It crossed the narrow “bow” of the island and drove down the length of the iceberg, barely a cable’s length away. Mixun and Raegel waved cheerfully to the astonished sailors working the rigging of the merchant ship.

The two-master sailed on, and so did the floe. The vast, bulky berg could not manage much speed, but the gnomish machines were tireless, and drove them at a tireless pace. Within three days, they were passing through the Sirrion Straits into the southern sea. The farther north they went, the more shipping they encountered. Five days after the Splash, the iceberg entered the major trading route between the western islands and the mainland. An hour did not pass without some vessel in sight-fat argosies with scarlet sails, trim sloops with brightly striped hulls, and dull gray fishing smacks from the coast of Kharolis. Their reaction to the mighty floe was the same: all put their helms over and steered wide of the glistening apparition.

All but one ship, that is. At sunset on the fifth day, a lugger appeared astern, loafing in the wake created by the iceberg’s paddles. Its green hull and dark blue sails made the craft hard to see against the water or evening sky. Mixun spotted the lugger and hunted up Raegel to get his opinion. The gangling redhead, munching a frozen fish fritter from the Efficient Eatery (every day was experimental food day, it seemed), climbed the ridge and followed his friend’s pointing finger until he spied the small ship.

“Pirates,” he said flatly.

“My thought too!” Mixun said. He dodged to and fro, nervously flexing his hands. “I wish I had a sword!”

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Pirates, that’s why!”

“I don’t think they’ll bother us,” said Raegel, pulling an uneaten fish tail out of his mouth and tossing it aside. “We’re not exactly a rich merchant ship.”

Mixun insisted on warning the gnomes, and Raegel agreed. They slipped and slid down the hill to camp. It was much warmer in the Sirrion Sea, and the iceberg was melting noticeably. Every surface was covered with a thin sheen of water, rendering everything slicker than an old gnome’s bald pate. Raegel and Mixun got used to falling down, but the gnomes embarked on an orgy of invention, trying to come up with devices to provide sure and steady walking. As the two men made their way to the Chief Designer’s house, they passed through a mob of bizarrely equipped gnomes. Some were on stilts. Others had fastened various spiky protuberances to their feet, while some merely sought to lessen the damage of frequent falling by covering their bottoms with pads and pillows.

Upon reaching the Chief Designer’s door, they saw a hand-lettered sign that read PULL STRING. There was no string in sight.

“Now what?” asked Mixun.

Raegel pointed to another, smaller sign over the doorknob: IN CASE OF STRING FAILURE, RING BELL.

“What bell?” Mixun demanded, voice rising.

As if in answer, a young gnome appeared through a swinging flap cut in the bottom of the door. He handed Mixun a brass hand bell, bowed, and crawled back through the door flap. The stocky fighter looked to his friend for guidance.

“Ring it,” said Raegel.

Mixun tried. He swung the bell hard, but instead of “ding-ding” or “clang,” the bell made a sweetly musical sound, like a songbird. It contrasted so sharply to the expected sound of a bell Mixun almost dropped it. He tried again, and the bell again went “tweet-tweet.”

“Even their bells are crazy!” he said.

The young gnome reappeared, opening the door this time. He did not admit the men but emerged with a step ladder and a ball of twine. Without a word, he set up the ladder and used it to replace the broken cord on a bracket beside the door. Once more he bowed and went back inside.

“Oh no,” said Mixun. “I’m not pulling any string. It’s your turn!”

With much affected dignity, Raegel grasped the string. “Twine waits for no man,” he said, giving the line a yank. No bell rang. There was a flat, flatulent sound, and a strange, unnatural voice boomed, “Come in!”

Mixun opened the door. Inside, he saw the string was attached to a bellows. When pulled, it forced air through a series of carved, flute-like tubes. Wind passing through the holes made the device speak two understandable words. Muttering, Mixun and Raegel went inside.

The Chief Designer, whose beard was longer than its owner was tall, was perched on a tall stool in the center of a round table. He was drawing furiously on a long roll of parchment, and when he finished what he was doing, he tore off that portion of the roll and handed it to a waiting assistant. This room, and the room beyond, was filled with young gnomes seated at long communal tables, busily scratching away with long quill pens.

“Ah, hmm,” Raegel said, clearing his throat.

“Yes, what is it?” said the Chief Designer, not looking up from his frantic scribbling.

Raegel stopped. He didn’t know how to address the gnome properly. While he dithered, Mixun burst out, “There’s a pirate ship following us!”

“Is there?”

The gnome’s mild response surprised both men. “Yes, I’m quite sure,” said Mixun.

“That’s interesting. Of course, we are passing within ten nautical miles of Cape Enstar. I understand the region is infested with maritime malefactors.”

“What?”

“Pirates,” said Raegel. “Cape Enstar crawls with pirates like flies on horse dung. Can we change course, steer wide of the cape?”

The Chief Designer finally looked up. “Change course? No.” He resumed drawing.

“But why? There may be danger if we stay on this heading!”

“Give me the rate figures for surface alluviation,” he commanded. Six gnomes slid off their benches and came running with sheaves of paper covered in close columns of figures. The Chief Designer ran through four sheets, tossing the unwanted pages in the air, until he came to the one he sought.

“Can’t change course,” he said. “We’ll lose too much ice if we do. Must get home with the maximum amount of ice.”

“What if the pirates attack?” asked Mixun.

The head gnome shrugged. “The ice must be defended.”

“How? Do you have weapons?”

“No, but we will invent some. I will appoint an Emergency Committee for Iceberg Defense.”

Both men were about to protest, but the Chief Designer turned his back on them and resumed work. The other gnomes ignored them too, so they left.

“Little fools,” Mixun said when they were outside. “I could take this berg with fifty good men.”

“No doubt, but what would you do with this gnome-man’s land?” Raegel said. Mixun winced and changed the subject.

By night, lights appeared to the north-colored and, in some cases, blinking. Mixun was sure the Enstar pirates were signaling the lugger on their tail. He hunted through the gnomes’ trash heap, looking for a suitable weapon. He found a staff of seasoned wood and lashed Tamaro’s dagger to it, making a workable spear. It seemed mighty inadequate for defending an island three miles long from an unknown number of pirates.

Dawn came with slate gray clouds towering in the southwest, and the low green coast of Enstar was in sight. It was warm enough now for Mixun to discard his mantle and go about in his shirt. He sat atop the slowly melting ridge, watching the sea. There were now two luggers tailing them. The wind had died when the sun rose, but the luggers had run out oars and were rowing to keep up with the iceberg.

The sun broke through the thick clouds a while later, filling the translucent ice with fiery brilliance. Glowing like a diamond, the ice began to melt more rapidly.

Streams of water ran off the upper surfaces into the sea. Mixun cupped his hands under one stream and drank the runoff. It was good water.

With the warming, the gnomes’ devices suffered. Ice-block houses collapsed, and the paddling machines began to work loose from their mountings. One by one they had to be shut down and the axles reburied in firmer ice. The berg’s forward momentum was great, but it soon slowed down. Currents around the cape started pushing the berg toward land.

While the gnomes were busy repairing their paddle machines, more ships appeared out of Enstar. Mixun counted twenty vessels, luggers, galleons, even a captured caravel or two. They all wore dark blue sails, which marked them as pirates as surely as any formal ensign.

Raegel scrambled up the slippery slope and saw the flotilla coming. “This ought to be something,” he said.

“You seem mighty calm.”

“I don’t think we’re in much danger.”

“How can you say that? Look!”

Raegel smiled. “Relax, will you, Mix? Have faith in our little hosts.”

Scowling, Mixun slid down the north slope of the ridge and hurried east, to the stern of the iceberg. The pirate fleet was massing there. The largest ship, a caravel with a gilded figurehead, took the lead. Sunlight glinted from the caravel’s tops and forecastle. The pirates were inspecting them with spyglasses.

Mixun kept low, creeping along crevices and cracks in the ice. All were full of water, which made his progress uncomfortable. A few hundred paces from the end of the floe, he settled into a niche between two streaming ice boulders and watched the pirates close cautiously. Before long they were near enough for him to hear the thump of oarlocks, and the shouted commands of individual ship’s masters.

Where were the gnomes? They were about to be invaded, and not one of them was in sight!

Mixun watched anxiously as a single lugger under oars approached the tail of the iceberg. The mighty island of ice was riding easily in the waves, bobbing far less than the small ship coming up to it. The edge of the floe stood well above the lugger’s rail, a good seven feet above the surface of the ocean. At once Mixun saw the pirates’ dilemma-how would they get on the berg?

After some deliberation, the pirates resorted to ropes and grappling hooks. Mixun crept out from his hiding place, spear ready. Crouched low, he couldn’t see the pirates, but from the grunting he reckoned some of them were climbing the ropes. He used the dagger to chip out the tines of the imbedded hooks. Both ropes whipped free, and with loud cries, the pirates tumbled into the water.

Grinning, Mixun waited to see if they tried again. Sure enough, three hooks clattered onto the ice shelf and bit into the gleaming surface. He hurried to the first one. The three hooks were widely spaced. Mixun was hard pressed to dig out all three. The first pulled free and fell, then the second. Before he could reach the third, a pirate gained the top of the iceberg. Their eyes met.

“Ai!” the fork-bearded buccaneer cried. “There’s someone here!”

Mixun whacked the man on the chin with the shaft of his spear, sending him plummeting to the deck of the lugger below. In response, archers loosed arrows at Mixun. None hit, but they flicked disturbingly close. He dodged away, arrows splintering on the ice at his heels.

“Alarm! Alarm!” he shouted. “Pirates! Pirates on the iceberg!”

He didn’t think there was anyone to hear him, but he hoped to make the brigands wary to follow him. Back in his hidden vantage point, he saw more lines thrown up. In minutes, fifteen well-armed pirates were on the ice. Since they had bows, it was foolish for Mixun to try and fight them, so he beat a retreat over the slick, melting hillocks for help.

He hadn’t gone half a mile before he ran into Raegel and a band of gnomes laden with mysterious (and probably pointless) equipment.

“Pirates!” Mixun exclaimed, grasping his friend by the arms. “They’re here!”

“Hear that, boys? Go get ‘em,” Raegel said.

The gnomes broke ranks and streamed around the stationary men.

“You’re sending them to their deaths,” Mixun protested. “They aren’t even armed!”

“What do you mean? That’s the Emergency Committee for Iceberg Defense. They’re armed enough.” Raegel’s blue-gray eyes danced with inner laughter. “Come and see.”

On a plateau above the end of the berg, the gnomes deployed their strange hardware. Mixun saw canvas hoses and bright metal tubing, windlasses and bags of salt.

Gnomes circled the flattened area, tapping the ice with small brass hammers. Now and then one would crow, “Found one!” and another gnome would mark the spot with a colored stake hammered into place.

Looking beyond them, Raegel and Mixun saw the pirates, now more than thirty strong, massing at the eastern tip of the berg.

“Better get ready,” Raegel said. Thehoss of the Committee-their old savior Wheeler-waved and shouted orders to his helpers.

Augers bit into the ice where the colored stakes had been driven. The drills were withdrawn and bronze pipes six inches wide were shoved into the holes. Bags of salt were cut open and the contents dumped into the tubes. When that was done, hoses were clamped to the tube and attached to the windlass powered machines. More hoses protruded from the other side of the devices, and teams of gnomes grabbed onto them, pointing them at the oncoming foe.

“Begin!” cried Wheeler.

Gangs of small, sturdy arms turned the cranks. The machines wheezed and burped. Wheeler called for more speed, and the gnomes raced around the crankshafts. Gradually, the hoses bellied. Mixun looked to Raegel for an explanation. Raegel just pointed.

The center team fired first. A jet of water burst from the open end of their hose, arcing off the plateau and striking the ice ahead of the pirates. The men withdrew a few steps, unsure what they were facing. Then one pirate doffed his hat and caught some of the stream in it.

He tasted it and laughed. “It’s just seawater!”

It wasn’t seawater, but salted fresh water. Raegel explained the gnomes’ plan as Wheeler had explained it to him. The many hollows in the ice had, over the past few days, filled with melted water. By adding salt, the gnomes made sure the water stayed liquid while pumping it out.

“What good will spraying water at them do?” Mixun said, despairing. He didn’t have long to find out.

Laughing, the pirates advanced. More gnome pumps spewed forth, and they focused on the front rank of pirates. The flow was hard, but not hard enough to knock the men down. It didn’t have to. The pirates came on a few paces and began to fall. They couldn’t walk on ice doused with salt water. They fell, got up, fell again, and kept falling. The archers tried to pick off the gnomes with arrows, but once they were drenched, their weapons were useless. Mixun let out a whoop.

“You’ve not seen anything yet!” declared Wheeler. “Special Super Pumps, on!”

Levers were thrown and the machines almost leaped off the ground. Hoses bulged, and the gnomes holding them down danced madly to keep their feet. Water roared out at many times the previous pressure. Now the pirates were washed away. A pair of streams hit one man and carried him several yards. He hit the ice sitting down and continued to slide until he shot off the end of the berg, into the sea. He soon had plenty of company. A dozen more pirates were sluiced into the ocean. Wheeler and the gnomes cheered.

Then things went wrong. The pump on the far right burst apart under the pressure, soaking everyone in the vicinity and sending fragments of jagged metal whizzing dangerously through the air. The gnomes on the third hose lost their grip, and the tube began thrashing about wildly, like a living thing. A portion of its powerful stream hit Mixun in the chest and knocked him down bereft of breath. Raegel helped him stand.

A second pump exploded, and the gnomes abandoned the rest. They ran for their lives, shouting “Hydrodynamics! Hydrodynamics!” over and over as they fled. Mixun decided Hydrodynamics must be the patron deity of the gnomes.

Sodden and shaking, the remaining pirates managed to stand. Seeing only Raegel and Mixun opposing them, they uttered fearsome oaths and vowed revenge. They slopped their way back to their ropes and climbed down to their ship. Signal flags fluttered from the lugger’s mast. More pennants appeared on the pirate flagship’s yards, and the fleet cracked on sail. At first the men hoped the pirates were departing, but this was not so. The blue-sheeted ships crossed behind the drifting iceberg and forged ahead.

“They’re making for Nevermind South,” Mixun said.

“How do you know?”

“It’s the only place on the floe with a beach. Their scouts must have seen it. They tried to surprise us by landing on the tail here, but since that’s failed, they’re going for the jugular.”

Mixun’s grim metaphor seemed apt. He gripped his makeshift spear, hands tingling for a fight. How he missed the clash and clang of deathly combat!

He stood up to strike a martial pose, slipped on the watery ice, and fell flat on his face.

The sky was heavy and darkening, threatening to storm, but the wind favored the Enstar pirates, and by the time Mixun and Raegel managed to stumble back to the village, it was all over. Scores of longboats were in the water, each deeply laden with fierce buccaneers. The gnomes had no defense to offer.

Raegel was all for hiding in the ice, but Mixun took his comrade by the ear and dragged him forward to help defend the gnomes. Here was his chance to perish gloriously in action.

All that really happened was his spear was taken away from him while he was picking himself up off the ice. Raegel sat down, crossed his legs, and waited what would be. Pirates forced the angry Mixun to kneel in a puddle of cold water, a brace of sharp swords at his back.

A stout, gorgeously dressed fellow wearing a gilded breastplate and a stolen Solamnic helm clumped ashore. As the most grandly dressed buccaneer in sight, they took him to be the pirate chieftain. He looked over the assembled mass of gnomes and scowled.

“Is this all?” he boomed. No one answered. “Who commands here?”

The Chief Designer elbowed his way to the forefront, hands still full of drawings and computations. He began his stupendously long name, but the master pirate snarled and cut him short. Mixun, for one, was grateful.

“I am Artagor, son of Artavash,” the pirate said. “Consider yourselves taken. What loot have you?”

“Loot?” said the Chief Designer.

“Gold, steel, gems, silks, furs, strong drink! Where is it?”

“We have no gold or gems, O Son of Artavash. We have some steel tools, which we need, but we do have some furs about somewhere. If you’re cold, we do have a special warming lotion-”

“Silence!” He drew a long, curved cutlass and laid the blade on the Chief Designer’s shoulder. “Rile me, and I’ll have your head.”

“If you need a head, mine has a larger cranial capacity,” said the gnome on the Chief Designer’s left.

“Rubbish and rot!” said the gnome behind him. “My cranial dimensions are much greater than yours, plus I have the Wingerish Fever!”

Like a match to tinder, the claim to having the biggest head spread through the gnomes until all one thousand of them were shouting and waving calipers, trying to prove that they had the largest skull around. Artagor roared impotently for quiet. He might as well have shouted at a waterfall.

He raised his ugly blade to strike down the Chief Designer. Before he could do so, Mixun evaded his distracted guards and caught the pirate chiefs wrist.

“Don’t do that,” he said mildly.

Artagor glared and tried to free his hand. To his surprise, the smaller man’s grip was hard to break. When a trio of sailors closed in to aid their chief, Mixun released him.

For all his previous bluster, Artagor held his temper in check and said, “Who are you, sirrah? I take you for a man of arms. You’re not with these mad tinkers, are you?”

“No indeed,” said Mixun. “They’re with me.”

Raegel gnawed his lip and said nothing. He’d worked with Mixun long enough to know when his partner had a scheme working.

Artagor laid the dull side of his cutlass on his shoulder. “Explain yourself, and be quick.”

“I am Mixundantalus of Sanction, and this is my colleague, Count Raegel.” The redhead gave the pirate chief a jaunty nod. “We hired these gnomes. They work for us.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Harvesting ice, of course.”

Artagor looked from Mixun to the mob of gnomes arrayed around them. The little folk were quieter than they ever had been, standing and watching the humans with clear, unblinking eyes-a thousand pairs. Artagor tugged at his beard.

“It changes nothing,” the pirate declared, unnerved by the gnomes sudden, quiet attention. “You’re all my prisoners. I want all your valuables gathered here”- he stabbed the ice with the point of his blade- “within the hour. You two will be my guarantees. I want no gnomish nonsense!”

“Of course not,” said Raegel, standing at last. “Take what you will, excellent Artagor.”

The pirates ransacked Nevermind South with brisk, professional thoroughness. The results were disappointing. A small heap of metal trinkets, mostly steel, grew in front of the impatient chief. As time passed and the pile did not progress, he began to roar again.

“What’s this?” he bellowed, gesturing to the modest haul of swag. “All you tinkers, and this is all the metal you’ve got? And you, from Sanction-if you’re the paymaster, where’s your pay chest?”

“The gnomes are working on account,” Raegel said smoothly. “They’re to be paid off when we reach our destination.”

“Which is where?”

Mixun opened his mouth, so Raegel let him answer. “Sancrist Isle, of course.”

A pirate wearing a mate’s cap ran up. “That’s all, captain. There’s no more to find.”

Artagor shoved the young buccaneer away roughly.

“They’ve hidden their loot!” he declared. “I’ll have it out of them, one way or t’other!”

Torture on his mind, he ordered a fire laid. The pirates tried, but there was no dry wood or tinder on the iceberg, and the ice beneath their feet was too cold and wet to allow a flame anyway. As Artagor consulted his mental repertoire of brutality, lightning flashed overhead.

Slipper sidled up to Mixun. “Sir,” he whispered. Mixun discreetly waved the gnome aside. “Sir,” said Slipper, more insistently.

“What is it? Can’t you see we’re all in peril?”

“It’s going to storm, sir.”

“I can see that!”

More lightning crackled overhead. The wind shifted direction, died, then started again from the opposite side of the compass.

“There’s going to be a cyclone,” Slipper muttered.

Mixun shot a look at the smallest of the gnomes. “Are you sure?”

“Barometric readings do not lie.”

As usual, Mixun had no idea what Slipper was talking about, but he believed him. The wind was increasing in strength out of the southwest. It was so balmy the ice around them began to visibly soften and lose its shape. Artagor was shouting for wood to build a pair of frames. Mixun understood he intended to hang him and Raegel by their feet and question them about hidden treasure.

Thunder boomed. The first fat drops of rain landed, followed quickly by an almost sideways sheet of wind-driven rain.

Signal flags whipped from the masts of every pirate ship. The lesser captains pleaded with Artagor to allow them to withdraw, lest the storm drive them into the ice island.

“I’ll not be cheated of my booty!” Artagor cried. “Not by the likes of them!”

“You already have been!” Mixun shouted back. “This is no natural storm! The gnomes have ways, devices, to influence the weather! Go now, Captain, before your fleet is destroyed!”

At his words, the pirates bolted for their boats. Artagor dithered a moment, then raised his sword. “I’ll not leave you to boast how you bested Artagor!”

He cut and slashed at Mixun and Raegel, who promptly leaped apart, dodging each other and the pirate’s savage swings. Rain and wind tore at them, making the ice impossible to stand on. Down went Artagor, heavily. Mixun would have leaped on the fallen foe, but he fell too. Raegel managed a strange pirouette and collapsed onto the crowd of gnomes.

The Chief Designer was shouting orders. Mixun heard something like “engage the propulsion units,” but the wind made hearing difficult. He got up on his knees just as Artagor did. The pirate thrust at him. Mixun felt the rake of cold iron, and a cut three inches long opened on his left cheek. He threw himself at Artagor’s swordhand and both men spun away, sluicing down the ice hill toward the water’s edge.

All the pirates had fled except Artagor’s boat crew, who stood by their gig anxiously waiting for their master. When he appeared, sliding down the ice on his back, grappling with the short, muscular Mixun, they broke ranks and ran to help. Not one made it two steps before falling. Several went right into the tossing sea.

Mixun was strong, but Artagor outweighed him by sixty pounds. He threw the smaller man off and rose warily. Mixun floundered helplessly at his feet. Grinning through his beard, Artagor raised his cutlass high.

There was a thump, a loud twang, and something struck the pirate chief in the face. He yelled and flung his arms wide, losing his sword. When he came down again, he was in the sea. Artagor surfaced once, spouting water and terrifying curses. It was obvious he couldn’t swim in his heavy breastplate and boots, and he went down again.

From his knees, Mixun saw the tall, gaunt figure of Raegel and the tiny beardless Slipper standing a few paces away. Raegel held some kind of fork-shaped device in his hand. With great effort, Mixun climbed the slippery slope on hands and knees until he reached his friends. Raegel was grinning widely.

“What happened?” asked Mixun.

“Friend Slipper loaned me his hand catapult,” said Raegel. With great ceremony, Raegel returned the device to the gnome, who shoved it in one of the many pockets on the back of his coveralls.

The pirates were gone. Artagor’s gig, rowed by just four sailors, was pulling for his ship. Of the pirate chief there was no sign. The rest of the fleet had scattered before the tempest and were trying to beat their way back to Enstar.

“We must take shelter!” Slipper piped. Most of his comrades had already done so. With the wind and rain pelting their backs, both men and the gnome slowly climbed the hill to camp.

What paddle machines there were still working rapidly collapsed in the storm. Their mountings in the ice had melted loose, and the fierce wind smashed them down. Powerless, the great iceberg turned in the wind, plowing sideways through the heaving sea. Raegel got seasick again.

In the storehouse, the gnomes were furiously working-sewing hides together, painting hot pitch on wicker baskets, and other nonsensical doings. Mixun and Raegel shut the driftwood door and slid to the floor, their backs against the flimsy, quivering panel.

“It’s a cyclone all right,” Raegel said, wiping his face. “We’ll soon be aground at this rate.”

“I estimate we will reach Enstar in ninety-two minutes,” said the gnome who calculated the Splitting so accurately. Despite his earlier success, he instantly had fifty other gnomes disputing his estimate. Mixun ground his teeth.

“Time waits for gnome one,” Raegel said, leaning his head back.

“Shut up! Are we in danger?” asked Mixun.

“Danger enough, even if this floe isn’t a ship. It may be ice, but it’s solid. We’ll go aground and that’ll be that.”

The gnomes were not about to see their great project end so ignominiously. They sewed their store of hides into a gigantic sail, which they announced they would spread between the peaks atop the iceberg. Using the wind, they would sail the floe away from Enstar.

“And what,” Mixun asked, “are the baskets for?”

The explanation was lengthy, but the crux of the matter was that they were gnomish lifeboats, for use in case the iceberg broke apart.

Tied together by an endless rope, the gnomes ventured forth in the storm. Small as they were, they were carried hither and thither by the tempest, hopelessly snarling the makeshift sail. Driven to help by sheer exasperation, Mixun and Raegel climbed the ridge, dragging the heavy sail behind them. At the top, Mixun threw one leg over and surveyed the scene. His heart climbed into his mouth.

The coast of Enstar seemed close enough to touch. Above a white sand beach, a dark headland loomed. Trees tossed in the scouring wind. Under him, Mixun felt the huge floe roll and pitch as it drove relentlessly toward land. Raegel arrived a few seconds later, still dragging the gnomes’ useless sail.

“Forget it!” Mixun shouted. “Look!”

The deep underbelly of the berg struck sand, and the island heeled sharply, throwing the men over the ridge. They skittered down the melting face of the ridge, jolting to a stop in a ravine full of rain and melt-water. Soaked, Mixun tossed the wet hair out of his eyes. They were still a good fifty paces from dry land.

With amazing delicacy, the ponderous floe pivoted on its natural keel. The ‘bow’ of the island was pushed ashore by the thundering wind. A monstrous grinding filled the air. The ice quivered.

“Here we go!” Raegel shouted.

With a crack as loud as the Splitting, the fore-end of the iceberg, fully half a mile long, broke off. Fragments of ice the size of houses crashed into the raging ocean. Out of balance, the broken segment heeled over on its end and piled ashore amid heavy waves. Now the rear of the iceberg was unsupported, and the floe swung in the other direction, grinding hard onto the sand. The vast crystalline mountain of ice, formerly clear as diamond, seamed with a million cracks.

Mixun got up and ran, ice disintegrating under his feet. Raegel overtook him, long legs pumping. Both men would have bet anything it was impossible to run on a slanting sheet of ice, but panic put spurs on their heels. Passing Mixun, Raegel was a dozen steps from the edge of the berg when the whole section shivered and fell apart. His startled cry was lost in the wind and the grinding of the ice.

Mixun went down on all fours and scrambled to the new edge of the berg. He looked down and saw the surf was dotted with ice-small chunks, large slabs- and Raegel’s head as he tried to keep afloat. The floe was still pushing against the shore, forced by the roaring storm. Mixun’s shouts to his friend could not be heard. When Raegel went under and did not immediately surface, Mixun slid feet first into the foaming water.

He was promptly brained by a piece of floating ice the size of a horse. Driven underwater, he shook off the blow and opened his eyes. He saw Raegel, stuck beneath a large slab of ice, arms and legs swinging back and forth limply with the tide. Mixun sank down until his toes found sand, then sprang forward and upward, catching Raegel around the waist. He pushed the ice aside and broke the surface, gasping.

With a noise like the end of the world, the center of the iceberg, two miles long and still almost a mile wide, heaved ashore. The ridge that ran down the center of the floe exploded into fragments, peppering the water as Mixun dragged his unconscious friend onto drier land. He hauled Raegel up the beach above the high tide line and fell breathless on the sand.

The great floe disintegrated before his eyes. To his right, the bow segment rolled ashore upside down, waves breaking over it. To Mixun’s left, the stern section was still at sea, caught in an eddy. It spun madly, half a mile of ice whirling like a soap bubble in a wash basin. Between these two spectacles, the main portion of the iceberg was breaking up. Each fresh wave helped pound the floe against the unyielding island, and the cyclonic wind threatened to roll the monstrous mountain of ice onto land. Mixun tried to stand and pull Raegel to safety, but he was too drained. He turned Raegel over on his stomach to protect him from flying shards of ice and threw his arm over his face to await what would be.

He heard voices-many voices, high-pitched like children. Peeking out from under his arm, he saw the surf was full of gnomes. Some were bobbing in watertight baskets, other were dog-paddling around with inflated pigskins tied to their waists. They seemed not the least concerned by the tempest or the crumbling iceberg. Indeed, upon sitting up, Mixun realized the gnomes were shouting theories and calculations at each other even as the catastrophe thundered about them.

Mixun began to laugh. Waterlogged, beset by pirates, storm, and mountains of ice, he laughed and laughed.

Shaking Raegel’s shoulder until he revived, Mixun laughed in his comrade’s half-drowned face.

“We’re alive!” he said between guffaws. “Rejoice, son of Rafe! We are alive!”

By the time the storm was done, there wasn’t a piece of ice in sight bigger than a gnomish house. The coastline of Enstar was covered with melting blocks of ice for miles, and all the flotsam of Nevermind South came ashore, too. Not one gnome was lost in the wreck of the iceberg, but there were many broken bones and bruises.

The Chief Designer got his people organized. (Disorganized is more like it, Mixun thought privately.) Teams of gnomes combed the sand for lost equipment. Mixun and Raegel scrounged as well-Mixun for valuables and Raegel for food. They found little of either.

At dawn the following day the gnomes gathered to hear long-winded reports on their situation from a series of designated committees. Mixun let them wrangle a while, then asked, “Now what? How will we all get home?”

“I’ll appoint a committee to study the problem,” said the Chief Designer.

“I’m sure you will. What about the ice?”

The gnome wrung seawater from his long beard and shrugged. “The Excellent Continental Ice Project will have to be repeated,” he said.

Before noon, the first islanders came down from the cliffs above to investigate the strange castaways. They were tough looking folk, darkly tanned and chapped from the wind. They weren’t pirates, but they had dealt with Artagor and his kind before and probably weren’t above wrecking and looting if the opportunity presented itself. The Enstarians looked over the gnomes’ wreckage and scratched their heads. Where was the ship? Where was the cargo?

Raegel watched the hard-eyed men and women poking among the melting ice. He had an idea-a surprising idea. He whispered part of it to Mixun, who grinned when he got the gist of it.

“I’ll ask,” he said, hurrying away.

“Wait, Mix, there’s more to it-”

Mixun did not wait for the full explanation, but sought out the Chief Designer, the calculator, Wheeler, and other important gnomes. With expressive gestures, he pointed to the growing crowd of islanders picking over the remains of the gnomes’ experiment. The gnomes all regarded him blankly.

“Just say yes,” Mixun said tersely.

“What you say is not scientific, so it does not concern us,” said the Chief Designer. “Do as you will.”

Mixun clapped his hands together and waved to Raegel. Together they approached a likely mark-a lean, hungry-looking Enstarian who wore the rod and chains of a moneychanger on his belt.

“Hail, friend!” Raegel said. “Fine morning, is it not?”

“ ‘Tis always fair after a great storm,” the man replied warily. “You’re in good spirits for a shipwrecked man.”

“Oh, we’re not shipwrecked, friend! We were blown off course by the storm, but we meant to land here all along.”

The moneychanger narrowed his already close eyes. “What brings you to Enstar?”

Mixun gestured broadly. “Ice!”

“Ice?”

“Ice. Tons of ice, made from the sweet, pure snows of Icewall and brought to you by the enterprise of my colleague and I, and by the skill of our gnome friends,” said Mixun. He introduced himself as Mixundantalus and Raegel as a count again. In glowing terms, he described their expedition to Icewall to retrieve an iceberg and sail it to Enstar.

“Why here?” said the woman on the moneychanger’s left. “Why bring your ice to us?”

“As a test, dear lady,” Raegel said. “Being close to Icewall, yet surrounded by temperate seas, we wanted to see if we could bring our ice to you without losing too much to meltage. I think we did all right. Don’t you, friend Mixundantalus?”

“We did, Count Raegel.”

“You mean to sell that ice?” said another islander.

“We do,” Raegel said. “One steel piece per hundredweight.”

The moneychanger laughed harshly. “One steel piece! What’s to stop us from picking up your ice from the beach?”

“Why, nothing but the loss of future fortunes to come,” said the bogus count.

“What’s your meaning, stranger?”

Mixun picked up two fist-sized chunks and banged them together. He passed out the resulting slivers to the growing crowd of islanders. They put them in their mouths, chewed on them, or held them in their hands until they melted to pure water.

“You hold the finest fresh water in the world, and the coldest,” Raegel said grandly. “Our company intends to sell Icewall ice in every port between here and Sanction-for drinking water, chilling beverages on hot days, preserving meats, and many other uses! We need a friendly port where we can store the ice before we ship it off to its ultimate destination. Enstar could be that place.”

“Are you selling this ice for one steel per hundredweight to others?” asked the moneychanger. He sucked noisily on a sliver of ice while Raegel answered.

“Not at all!” he said. “As a luxury item, we plan to sell ice in port cities for one steel per pound.”

The islanders murmured to each other, trying to calculate the wealth in sight if the ice could be sold at that price.

“It’s good ice,” said one man. “I have a plot of land on Kraken Bay. You could build your warehouse there.”

“Not so fast, Jericas!” the woman interjected. “I saw the strangers first!”

“I spoke to them first,” the moneychanger shouted.

“Friends, friends!” Raegel said. “There’s ice and profit enough for all. Since our stock is currently melting on the beach, why don’t those of you interested in our proposition leave us your names and a small deposit? Once our fortunes are restored, we’ll mount another expedition to Icewall for more ice.”

Like gnomes arguing over an obscure point of mathematics, the Enstarians crowded around the two men, thrusting handfuls of coins at them while shouting their names. Mixun made a great show of writing down everyone’s name and the amount of their payment. He then urged them to help themselves to all the ice they could carry. Whooping like children, the hard-bitten islanders swooped down on the rapidly melting ice and hauled it away in buckets, jackets, even women’s skirts.

Away from the mob of islanders, Raegel and Mixun counted their money. “There must be two hundred steel pieces here,” Mixun chortled. “Who’d have thought? We can sell anything to anyone!”

“We must share the money with the gnomes,” Raegel said.

“What! Why?”

Raegel looked at Mixun, but said nothing.

“All right,” Mixun said. “They did save our lives back on Icewall. We’ll give them something.” He mused. “Twenty percent?”

“Fifty percent. They’ll need it.”

“For what?” said Mixun, raising his voice.

“To equip our next trip to Icewall.”

Mixun jerked his comrade farther away from scavenging islanders and the gnomes. “Are you crazy?” he hissed. “We’re not going back to Icewall! That was a song for the marks, that stuff about selling ice in every port-”

“I’m going to do it,” Raegel said simply.

Mixun stared. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“I am. The figures I gave the island people weren’t lies. We can get a steel piece per pound in any port, mark my words. And how many pounds do you think was in that ice floe? A million? Two million? Twenty? That’s serious coinage, Mix, my friend.”

Twenty million steel pieces? All the scams for the rest of his life wouldn’t net Mixun so much money. Was this scheme of Raegel’s the real thing? On far less than twenty million he could redeem his inheritance and fulfill his destiny in his homeland.

He studied Raegel’s face. The former farm boy from Throt was lost in a waking dream-no doubt surveying some distant vista of ice. If they could sell it, they could turn an island of ice into an island of money. In that moment, Mixun caught the dream too.

“Hey, Slipper!” he called. The little gnome, seated on a broken barrelhead, turned to face him. “How much ice was in that berg, anyway?”

The calculations took only minutes, but the resulting argument lasted the rest of the day.