Swords of Eveningstar

by Greenwood, Ed

The hargaunt belled anew.

  “Ah, but it has worked every time. I’ve slain elf after elf, though I’m going to have to work very swiftly indeed, now. Word is spreading, and Fair Folk are abandoning use of their mantles from Evereska to the Dragonreach shores. I’ve been stealing the spells of the most powerful mages I can catch alone, avoiding only masters of the High Magic—and with each mind I empty, the spells at my command grow richer.”

  The hargaunt made its querying whistle, accompanied by that wisp of pink that meant, as clearly as if it had shouted out the word in Common: “Why?”

  Horaundoon shrugged. “The ranks of the Zhentarim grow steadily unfriendlier, the schemes and betrayals and false blamings crowding in hard and fast, one upon the other. If I remain, with the wits and standing all know I have, I continue to be a target. Sooner or later, most probably sooner, some rival or cabal of rivals will inevitably slay me.”

  The archmage raised a hand, and the air around him sang, briefly and faintly, reassuring him that his shielding spells—that blocked all scrying, and warned of attempts to intrude, or to shatter or alter them—remained intact.

  “So I must grow powerful enough to make myself a way out of the Zhentarim. That’s why I tolerate apprentices. Already my magics have made them my slaves, though they know it not. When the time is right, I’ll force one of them to take my shape and seeming. The others, just as spellbound, will slay this false Horaundoon. Leaving me, in a new guise fashioned by you, to vanish from the notice of the Brotherhood. Free once more.”

  The hargaunt trilled, throwing up a scene that flashed briefly blue.

  “Already? Haularake, where does the day go?” Horaundoon hurriedly loosened the sash of his robes and shrugged them back off his shoulders, letting them fall to where his arms held them up at his waist. “I know, I know,” he added, before the hargaunt could interrupt him. “Spellcrafting always takes longer than I think it will. Naed, we’ll have to really hurry now.”

  He extended his other hand to the skull. It promptly bulged, coiled, and became an ivory-hued, sightless snake, oozing up his arm with purposeful speed, and leaving no sign of the skull it had been.

  “Naed, naed, naed,” the archmage murmured impatiently, the last word muffled by the hargaunt flowing over his lips as it molded itself to his face, giving him quite a different visage. A woman’s face, strikingly beautiful.

  Below Horaundoon’s newly pointed chin, the bulk of the hargaunt had molded itself into a pair of decidedly feminine—and decidedly attractive—breasts.

  He was breathing hard in his haste by the time he reached the wardrobe mirror, and cast the spell that turned him from a rather gaunt and hairy man with an incongruously smooth and beautiful woman’s face and front, into a shapely and curvaceous woman. Blowing himself a mocking kiss, he whirled into the wardrobe, snatched out a suitable gown, thanked the watching gods (and not for the first time) that the current fashions in footwear were low-heeled and the current jewelry simple, and hurried to pin up his hair.

  He was staring into a mirror, three of the pins in his mouth and one in his hand, when a hollow chant arose from whence he’d come. He slammed the hairpins down on the table and hurried back to his study.

  “An intruder!” the remaining two skulls chanted in unison, jawbones wagging. They were still rising up from the table as Horaundoon slid to a halt in front of them. “An intruder!”

  “Blast him down!” Horaundoon roared, “and trouble me no more with such trifles!”

  He was two running strides back toward the mirror when the floor under him shook slightly, there was a long and rolling booming sound, and the skulls ceased their chanting in mid-word.

  Duly blasted. Good.

  Horaundoon snatched up the pins and grimly set to work again pinning up his hair. With all the war wizards infesting this oh-so-peaceful Forest Kingdom, beautiful and wealthy merchants’ widows could get far closer to king’s lords than archmages widely suspected of being Zhentarim could.

  And there was a lord or three in Cormyr he wanted to befriend. They might well come in very useful when the time was right. Soon.

  “We … we’re following the stream, aren’t we?” Lady Narantha gasped, clambering up to join Florin beside an overhanging tangle of exposed tree roots and boulders.

  The forester gave her a sharp look. “We are. Well spotted. ’Tis the best way not to get lost.”

  “Won’t the bears and the … the hunting beasts follow it, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “But—” Narantha started to scramble up a stairlike tangle of roots, to look over the boulders. Florin’s hand shot out and caught hold of her elbow—and Narantha found herself struggling to climb but not moving one fingersbreadth forward. “What’re you—?” she gasped.

  Florin drew her close and murmured sternly, “Never show yourself over the top of a ridge like that. Haven’t you been watching me? Cautious, duck low, show as little head as possible as you take a good look; that’s the way. Now, you just used one of my least favorite words: ‘but.’ What were you going to say after that?”

  The noblewoman blinked at him, as they stood nose to nose, then frowned as she remembered. “But if the beasts follow the stream, they’ll find us—and what then?”

  “Ah.” Florin nodded. “Then this.” He held up the sword Narantha had all but forgotten was in his hand.

  She looked at it, then up at him. He asked, “You’ve never been trained to use one of these, have you?”

  Narantha frowned. “Well, of course not.”

  “ ‘Of course’ nothing. What were your parents thinking? Or not thinking? Lord Hezom will likely have you swinging steel—something light enough for to suit your arm, mind, not this.”

  “Crownsilvers,” Narantha said haughtily, waving an airy hand to indicate phantom legions of retainers in lace and livery, “need not swing swords. We have servants enough to do that for us.”

  “Oh?” Florin crooked an eyebrow. “And if the person who seeks to slay you is one of those servants? What then?”

  The noblewoman looked incredulous. “No servant would ever dare—”

  “And yet I do—constantly, it seems—and again and again you exclaim that I wouldn’t or shouldn’t. I think you’d be unpleasantly surprised at just what some folk of Faerûn will dare, if ever they catch someone as beautiful and as important as you alone.”

  Narantha stared at the forester, eyes widening and face going pale, then took a swift step back from him. Unfortunately, a root was right behind her.

  A moment later she was blinking up at him, flat on her back and winded, with Florin reaching down a helping hand.

  She gazed up at him for a long, hard-breathing moment, face unreadable. Then, slowly, she reached out and took that proffered hand.

  Gently but firmly, the ranger pulled her upright. “Lady Narantha,” he said, “I don’t mean to give you orders or offer you rudeness. Yet understand this well: doing the wrong thing, out here in the forest, can get us both killed. Please do as I suggest until you are safely in the hands of Lord Hezom—or your family. Please.”

  The flower of the Crownsilvers was breathing fast and her face was set, her eyes hard and unfriendly. But she nodded, curtly, and snapped, “I’ll try, man—what was your name again? Hawkhand? Falconhand? I’ll try.”

  “Florin Falconhand thanks you, Lady,” the handsome forester said, his manner almost humble.

  Narantha inclined her head regally. “That’s better,” she declared, starting to climb the ridge again.

  This time, Florin let her go, merely snaking swiftly around a boulder to look at the forest ahead before whatever might be lurking in it got a good look at a wild-haired young noblewoman of Cormyr with a dirty, once-translucent nightrobe plastered to her, and large, flopping mens’ boots on her feet.

  A bird took startled wing at Narantha’s appearance, but nothing more sinister seemed to be lurking in the trees just ahead.

  “Coming, Falconhand?” the Lady Crownsilver called im
periously. “I grow tired of seeing nothing but rocks and trees. Is all this corner of Cormyr endless rocks and trees? No wonder no one ever goes here, or thinks of it. My father must be mad.”

  Florin rolled his eyes. So much for terrifying her. So this was a high noble of Cormyr.

  And this was an adventure.

  Florin rolled his eyes again. Ye gods.

  “I will see the crown princess alone,” Vangerdahast said, cold iron in his voice. The royal magician was making it clear that he’d grown unused to having to repeat orders—and that this was not one of his patient days.

  The two most senior highknights of the Bodyguard Royal hesitated. “Our orders—”

  “Were given to you by me, as I recall,” Vangerdahast almost snarled. “Now, to a thinking man, wouldn’t that lead rather readily to the conclusion that having given them, I can also countermand them?”

  The knights nodded reluctantly, turned and saluted the princess between them, turned again, and marched out of the Greatgauntlet Audience Chamber, bootheels clicking on the tiled floor. Just before the two war wizards outside the doors closed them, to leave the royal magician and the crown princess alone together, one of the highknights remarked to the other, his voice carefully pitched to carry clearly back into the audience chamber, “Well, old Thunderspells is certainly having one of his bad days!”

  Vangerdahast turned away before the Princess Tanalasta could see him smile. Better that she thought him furious, and sat still to listen, for once.

  Fourteen years old and turning into quite the Lady Wildnose; he should have squashed her rebelliousness long ago. Of course Azoun and Filfaeril had spoiled her. Nevertheless, his duty was clear. Well, he could make a good start on it today. He casually turned back to the princess—and found her looking away, down to the dark and empty end of the room. Obviously she did not want to be here, and was trying to pretend, for a few breaths more, that she was elsewhere.

  Tanalasta turned her head away in case wily old Vangey could tell she was fighting down a smirk. It wouldn’t do to give him something to pounce on as evidence of her “wild, wanton waywardness” he was so fond of complaining to Mother about. He wanted to have a free hand in disciplining her—short of chaining her up and flogging her with a whip, the way they broke wild horses, or perhaps not short of that—and would seize on just about anything to achieve that.

  And in Cormyr, what the royal magician wanted, the royal magician got. Well, doomed or not, she was going to make him work hard for this prize. She was going to be as solemn and as regal as she knew how, all stiff formality and words chosen with care.

  Vangerdahast clasped his hands behind his back and strolled toward her. Just as he swept out a hand to point at the lone highbacked chair he’d ordered set in the center of the room, and before he could order her to sit down on it, Crown Princess Tanalasta folded her skirts gracefully under her and sat down unbidden, as if assuming a throne.

  “You requested audience with me, Magician Vangerdahast,” she said in neutral tones, looking not at him but up at the giant’s gauntlet for which the room had been named, a long-ago battle trophy hung high on the opposite wall. “Your request was couched in terms that the queen my mother termed ‘just shy of a command,’ and I concur with her. I find it highly … unusual to find myself unescorted by my maids or my knights-of-presence, meeting with you in private.” Her hands went to her half-cloak and drew forth the Fire Tiara. She donned it with slow deliberation, ere raising her eyes to meet his gaze directly. “As this must be a matter of state, I have come prepared, yet uninformed. So, Royal Magician: why am I here?”

  So, Tana was playing her I-can-be-very-solemn-and-grownup-look-you act, determined to be regal, and cleaving to stiff formality. Halting in front of her, Vangerdahast kept his wry inward smile off his face. She’s shaking with self-importance; how long before her manner breaks, I wonder?

  “You are here,” Vangerdahast told her flatly, “because you are the crown princess. Ceremonially anointed with that title or not, from the moment your brother Foril perished and you were confirmed as a child of Azoun and Filfaeril Obarskyr, you have been the crown princess. The next ruler of all Cormyr.”

  The royal magician started to pace. “Being a princess—any princess—of the Dragon Throne is not a matter of wearing pretty gowns and murmuring diplomatic nothings, of smiling and waving. Cormyr needs princesses who can think. All too many princes and noble lords conduct their reasoning only with their codpieces, so you lasses who lack them must do their thinking for them.”

  “I am unaware that any of my tutors have thus far discovered or reported any deficiency in my reasoning,” Tanalasta said stiffly, her face an expressionless mask. “My judgment may be lacking, but it must needs be informed by my experience, which thus far has been scant. May the gods grant that the king my father sit the Dragon Throne for decades to come, and keep my experience meager—for the good of the realm, which flourishes so under his wise and just rule.”

  Vangerdahast found himself chuckling. “Ah, as smooth as any adroit courtier, and better than most! Well said, Princess!”

  Tanalasta gazed once more upon the great gauntlet on the wall. “Are you mocking me, Royal Magician? I confess I am unused to hearing your mirth, and may misjudge you.”

  “I never mock any citizen of Cormyr. Their lies, yes, and their foolishly founded opinions, on occasion—and all of those occasions are in debate, in open court, for all to hear. Yet no matter, Princess; I confess that I am more than used to being misjudged. Hear me well: I mean you no harm, nor seek to coerce you by menace. As you must be aware, I often counsel your royal parents, separately and together, in private; it is my most important daily duty. As Heir Royal, it is important that you receive my counsel too. My wisdom may not be great, but—scourge the gods—it is better by far than any other advice you are likely to find in our fair realm.”

  “I hear similar sentiments from Alaphondar, and Dimswart, and nigh twoscore highknights, heralds, maids, and courtiers, too. Yet I do not intend to debate the quality of your counsel with you, Royal Magician, but merely move forthwith to its content. The day draws on, and this tiara is heavy. I ask again: what do you desire to tell me?”

  Vangerdahast inclined his head as if acknowledging a shrewd point, hooked his thumbs through the belt that gathered his severe robes together at his ample waist, and said, “Rulers may in the end rule by force, but frequently swording subjects soon leave a king ruling empty land—and a land without farmers is a land wherein a king and his knights starve. So rulers enact daily justice and order through rules: laws. Cormyr is no different, and our laws, royal decrees, treaties, and records of legal disputes and their resolutions fill vaults beneath us, scribes’ workrooms all around us, and secure chambers in four other places in the realm: fortresses in Arabel, Marsember, and High Horn, and in a secret forest location. Of the specifics of such laws you have hitherto no doubt remained blissfully ignorant, but it is high time that you, as heir, were made aware of the boundaries outlined by a few of them, so—for the good of the realm as well as yourself—you set no foot wrong in time to come. You must know your rights and responsibilities, so no false advice nor claims of those who seek to do harm to Cormyr can lead you astray. This learning will take some years, and we will have many meetings like this one. However, we must begin with a matter you must be informed about before another day passes. I speak particularly of the laws of succession, beginning with royal life and death.”

  “Surely those are matters I have no control over? I do not recall, mage, being consulted beforehand about my birth.”

  “Jest if you feel the need, Tanalasta. I won’t be forcing you to read over legal documents this day or any other for some months to come; it is more important that you understand what the laws—the rules all Cormyreans live by—are and what they do, in simple terms. So I ask you: what would happen, gods forfend, if your father and mother had died this morning? What are you obligated to do? What would you try to do?”

/>   “Summon the overpriests of Chauntea, Helm, Torm, and Tyr to have my father and my mother brought back from the dead, to rule on. Not only is this my desire, it is my obligation.”

  “Not so. In seeking to do so, you would be breaking the law and dooming the realm.”

  “What?”

  “When this realm was founded, the first Obarskyrs to dwell on these shores entered into agreements with the elves who held this land, just as the elves had with the dragons who ruled here before them. Down the years, there have been many disagreements as to just what happened back then, and what was agreed to—and to quell ceaseless civil war using such pretexts as its banners, solemn treaties have been written, and laws devised and passed pertaining to those treaties. In short, no matter what really befell, Cormyr has agreed to commonly accept and abide by a certain version of events and rules tied to them. If this agreement is broken, we are taught (and so the heads of households grand and rude all across this kingdom believe) the Dragon Throne will shatter, the dragons will return in great numbers to hunt humans, and the realm will be swept away.”

  “So a treaty dictates what will happen, if my—if the king and queen die.”

  “Indeed. Simply put, in Cormyr, nobles of the realm cannot be magically restored to life, it is expressly forbidden to resurrect ruling monarchs and regents, and all other members of the blood Obarskyr will only be brought back if they agree to this before death, and do not principally follow a faith that forbids such customs. Heirs cannot be recalled to life and still remain heirs; no one who has died and been returned to the living can inherit the Dragon Throne, or even sit upon it by right of conquest. Even if the royal family is extinguished, and the succession passes to other houses—a process that almost certainly will plunge the realm into bloody civil war.”

  The eyes of Princess Tanalasta had grown very large and dark. “Why—” She licked dry lips, swallowed, and tried again. “Why can’t my father just change this inane treaty? Why can’t any Dragon King name a clear sequence of successors, to head off war?”