Free Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts Page B

a fortune in that tower.”
    Haldeth lifted the ward crystal from his friend’s unsteady grasp. Even lit by its radiance his eyes shone much too bright. “You’ve won crown and kingship also,” he observed.
    Korendir winced. A pained look crossed his face. “I’d forgotten.” He followed with a vulgar word and hammered his knee with his fist.
    * * *
    Four days later, he and Haldeth arrived at the palace of Torresdyr, the wardstone slung in a cloak between them. The tired old gatekeeper winched back the portals and stared through astonished eyes at blossoming orchards and lush new grass. Across the kingdom, farmers were plowing weeds from the fields, and though spring lay six months distant, the seeds they sowed sprouted and matured almost under their feet.
    The king wept shamelessly. His steward accorded Korendir the courtesy due a prince and babbled excited plans for coronation.
    “Cancel that!” Korendir said sharply. “I came for Anthei’s gold. Loan me an apple cart, and I’ll leave with it.”
    “You’ll take no reward at all?” said the king, distressed to realize the ruffian meant every word.
    “A draft horse and a harness,” Korendir replied, faintly vexed. He accepted no more than that.
    Later, as the wagon rattled empty toward the tower which housed their winnings, Haldeth studied his companion; he knew the flush of triumph on those features could never last. Korendir was not a man to put aside his restlessness. Yet had he dared to speculate, Haldeth would never have guessed they would seek to challenge the dreaded Cliffs of Whitestorm, where gales keened over the bones of dead dragons, and not even wizards dared landfall.
    * * *
    The brig’s captain regretfully regarded the bronzehaired man who had just proved that his gold was not offered in jest. “I’m sorry, young master,” he said at last. “No coin ever struck will buy passage to Whitestorm Cliffs. It’s mutiny I’d have, if I charted a course through those waters, and cut throats for us both ere we rounded lrgyre’s Rocks.”
    The stranger, who named himself Korendir, took the refusal in calm stride. Untitled, rootless, and apparently without surname, he had recently acquired both fortune and reputation by rescuing Torresdyr from a wizard’s bane. Rumor had branded him reckless. Still the captain was startled when the young man inquired next of Fairhaven’s shipyards.
    “You’ll meet your death, lad,” he snapped.
    A bland, chilly smile touched Korendir’s features.
    “Perhaps not. Would you recommend a shipwright? I’ll need a responsive craft with sturdy construction.”
    “Are you daft?” The captain spat over the seawall.
    “The best vessels built become fish bait off the Cliffs of Whitestorm. Foul weather aside, icefloes have the bottoms out o’ them twixt one gust and the next. I’ll not lend my advice to the murder of good timber. That’s begging ill luck.”
    Korendir’s smile disappeared. He turned abruptly to leave, and confronted by the determined set of his shoulders, the captain felt strangely moved. He called out. “Ask for Sathig! He’s got an eye for a sound plank.”
    Korendir glanced back, jostled by the press of the fishmarket. “Fortune to you,” he said. “Sathig it will be.”
    The captain watched the adventurer’s black tunic disappear into the softer beiges of the crowd. Suddenly sorry he had spoken, he sighed and shook his bald head. The idiot would never return alive.
    * * *
    Parchment was barely laid out on Sathig’s design boards before every sailor in port at Fairhaven had heard of Korendir’s desire. The madman intended to challenge the Cliffs of Whitestorm for the dragon’s hoard trapped in a chain of caves at the tidemark. Once the quest had been common. But at the time Sathig inked the lines for a two-man boat, adventurers no longer talked of treasure. The dragons themselves were bones, solidly frozen in the ice at White Rock Head. Folk whispered at the dockside and sadly