by Ed Greenwood
A metallic clamor began to echo down the stairs. Xanthon glanced toward the sound, and the rat swarm poured up the stone steps. The men started to curse and yell, then one screamed and a tremendous crash reverberated down the spiraling passage.
Hoping to take advantage of the distraction, Tanalasta screamed for help, then shot her free hand across her body and slipped a bracer onto her wrist.
Before she could put on the second, Xanthon caught her arm and plucked the bracer from her grasp. “You are too kind, Princess.”
The luster of the metal faded at once, and the gruesome wound in Xanthon’s head healed before Tanalasta’s eyes. He discarded the band and grabbed the other one. As he pulled it off, he gave Tanalasta’s arm a vicious twist. She felt the bone snap, but heard only the briefest crack before her scream drowned out the sound.
A pair of guards stumbled out of the stairwell cursing and trying to kick the rats off their legs. The first lowered his halberd and drove it into Xanthon’s ribs, pushing the ghazneth off Tanalasta and pinning him against the wall. The blade did not penetrate, however, for it was made of steel and only weapons of cold-forged iron could wound a ghazneth.
Xanthon slapped the halberd aside, then grabbed the dragoneer by the back of the helmet and smashed his unarmored forehead into the tower’s stone wall. There was a sickening crack, and the man went limp. Xanthon finished the second soldier with even less trouble, blocking the attack with one arm, then catching the man beneath the chin and simply tearing his jaw off.
Tanalasta’s gorge rose with pain and revulsion. Clutching her broken arm to her chest, she pushed her way through the rat swarm and braced herself against the wall. A series of deep thumps reverberated through the tower as warriors outside began to hammer at the door, but Tanalasta knew better than to think they would break through the thick oak. She thrust her good hand into her cloak, trying desperately to slip her shaking finger into her commander’s ring.
Xanthon ignored the hammering at the door and stepped across the room. He squatted and pulled her hand from her pocket, then plucked the ring from her grasp. The wound in his head was almost completely healed now, and the scalp grew back as he drained the magic from her ring.
“Do you know who is doing this to you?” he asked. “It is important that you know who is killing you.”
Tanalasta nodded. “Xanthon Cormaeril.” She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. Whether or not she was going to die, she did not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her terror. “I know. Your cousin was a traitor, and you are too. May the both of you rot in the nine-hundredth pit of the Abyss.”
Xanthon grabbed her jaw. “I was no traitor until your father stole our lands.” He squeezed until a bone snapped, and Tanalasta nearly fainted from the pain. “But we Cormaerils have never been ones to hold grudges. Vengeance is so much sweeter.”
Something cracked in the door, and the hammering began to intensify. Xanthon glanced over his shoulder, then pulled Tanalasta up by her broken jaw. He reached around to grab the back of her neck with his free hand, and she realized he meant to rip her head from her shoulders.
A loud crack reverberated through the room, and the hammering at the door grew louder and faster. Xanthon’s fingers dug into Tanalasta’s neck, and she knew she would never survive until the thick oak splintered. A sudden calm came over her. She closed her eyes and began to pray, begging the Great Mother to watch over her soul and that of her unborn child.
“Open them!” Xanthon hissed.
Tanalasta croaked out something she meant to be What?, then was struck by the irony of Xanthon’s vengeance. Bitter laughter began to boil up from deep within her, racking her battered body and grating at the ends of her broken jaw. The pain flowed through her like water. Her mouth fell open, and she laughed in Xanthon’s face, fully and hysterically. His grasp tightened until Tanalasta thought her neck would snap, but still she laughed. She could not stop.
“No!” Xanthon shook her, and the pain meant nothing to Tanalasta. “Stop!”
“How can I?” she mumbled. “You’re killing a Cormaeril!”
“Liar!” Xanthon squeezed so hard that his fingers broke her skin. “You’re no Cormaeril.”
Tanalasta shook her head. “I’m not, but Rowen is.” She managed to stop laughing, then added, “I’m carrying his baby.”
“Never!” Despite his reaction, Xanthon’s jaw fell, and his gaze dropped to her stomach. “He’s a low-born dog, hardly worthy of the Cormaeril name.”
“Still my husband-still your cousin.” Tanalasta mumbled only the words she needed to. Now that her hysterics were passing, she saw a slim hope of forestalling her death, and with that hope came pain. “A Cormaeril could sit on the throne… could have not only your lands, but all of Cormyr.”
The gamble failed. Xanthon’s eyes flashed crimson, and the sinews of his dark arms rippled as he jerked on Tanalasta’s jaw. A terrible aching pain filled her head, but she fought to stay conscious, determined to defy her enemy until the end.
But her head did not come free. Despite the pain it caused, her neck remained solidly intact, and Tanalasta found herself staggering from one side of the room to another as the ghazneth tried to pull her head off her shoulders.
Xanthon’s ovoid eyes grew wide and scarlet. “Liar!”
He forced her to kneel and tried again. Tanalasta’s hearing faded and her vision narrowed to a mere tunnel, but the ghazneth’s doubt seemed to have sapped his strength. To keep from losing consciousness, she opened her mangled mouth and screamed.
The pounding at the door stopped, and a muffled voice began a spell. Xanthon glanced over his shoulder. For a moment his fading humanity was visible in the profile of his heavy brow and long nose, then he looked back to Tanalasta with a hatred more human than ghazneth burning in his eyes.
Tanalasta tried to say it was true, that if he killed her he would be robbing the Cormaerils of the first Cormyrean monarch to bear their blood, but she was too weak-and in too much pain.
All she could manage was a pompous smile and a short nod.
That was enough. In Tanalasta’s delirium, the shadow seemed to leave Xanthon’s body. Suddenly, he began to resemble little more than a naked man with hate-filled eyes and a bitter soul.
“Harlot!” Xanthon spat, and reached down for the sword of a dead guard.
Before he could pull it, Sarmon’s muffled voice fell silent. A loud boom reverberated through the tiny room, and the tower door came apart in a spray of shattered planks and twisted hinges. The explosion caught Xanthon full in the back, hurling him across the chamber but shielding Tanalasta from the worst of the blast. Armored soldiers came clanging through the door instantly, coughing and choking on sulfurous fumes.
Xanthon rolled to his feet and hurled himself down the stairs, disappearing into the musty depths beneath the tower before the dragoneers had taken two steps. A moment later, Alaphondar rushed through the door, Sarmon the Spectacular close on his heels.
“Tanalasta!” cried Alaphondar. “In the name of the Binder! No!”
The old sage collapsed to his knees and cradled her head in his lap. He started weep and rock to and fro, causing the ends of Tanalasta’s broken jaw to rub against each other. She moaned and reached up, clamping her fingers onto his arm to make him stop.
“By the quill! She’s alive!” Alaphondar pulled her higher into his lap, wrenching her broken arm around painfully, and waved Sarmon over. “Teleport us to Arabel-now!”
2
“No,” the oldest tracker said flatly, “no horse willingly gallops along bare rock when there’s soft turf to be had, unless the rider it’s obeying guides it so. If Cadimus went along here-as he must have done, to leave no trace for so long, and not having wings-then you can be sure someone was riding him.”
“His master?”
The tracker shrugged. “Who else?” Suddenly mindful that he was answering an anxious king and not an ignorant recruit, he added awkwardly, “Mind, Majesty, riders don�
��t exactly leave tracks of their own that we can follow, if ye take my meaning, but…”
“I understand,” Azoun said, lifting a reassuring hand. “You do good work, Paerdival-continue. The fortunes of the realm may depend on the trail you find for us.”
In reply, the tracker silently lifted a bushy pair of eyebrows for a moment, then bent over again to study the southern end of the bare shoulder of rock. In a matter of moments he’d given the impatient wave of his hand that meant he’d found signs left by the passage of the royal magician’s warhorse, and the army moved on.
The brief horn call that blared a breath or two later brought the army to an abrupt halt, and hundreds of heads turned in haste. A man was running from the rear guard, waving his hands as he came.
“To arms!” he cried. “Orcs behind us-thousands of them!”
The king did not hesitate. “Up this hill-everyone!” he bellowed. “Form a ring, spears to the fore, all with bows within and readying them. Move!”
The swordlords and lancelords around him began relaying the orders as Purple Dragons surged into motion, rolling up the hill in a vast, gleaming wave.
“I’ll be needing a foray force,” Azoun called to the lords Braerwinter and Tolon. “Gather forty men at most-men who can move swiftly and have good eyes, but none of the scouts. They deserve a rest.”
As he spoke, the horns that would call in the far-flung scouts sounded, and the first men reached the crest of the hill. In involuntary unison they turned and peered in the direction the rear guard had indicated for the orcs.
“Move, Tempus-damned sheep!” a swordcaptain bellowed at them. “Time for sightseeing later-there’s a war on, and we’re in it!”
Several mock bleats came as a reply as dragoneers moved hastily into a ring, grounding their spears and looking for their accustomed officers.
“Move, I said!” the swordcaptain growled at a lone, motionless figure, then fell silent, realizing he’d just bawled an order at the king.
Azoun spun around and clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly. “Keep right on doing that,” he murmured. “You never know when you might save a royal life. Just be assured that most of the time, I’ll ignore you.”
They traded grins-albeit a rather sickly one on the swordcaptain’s part-and took their own places. The officer stepped into the ring, and the king stood beside the two nobles who’d wisely selected some veteran officers to lead the force rather than trying to claim glory for themselves. They were standing with about twenty men. The king nodded approvingly.
“I’ll be needing some swift swords to seek out the enemy,” he told them. “If anyone is footsore or slowed for any reason, say so now. Your lives will almost certainly depend on being fleet in the field.”
He looked again at the hill from where the rear guard’s warning had come and stiffened.
A lone figure was running toward them, stumbling with weariness. It was a warrior, armor covered with dust, but seeming somehow familiar-a Cormyrean, to be sure.
Orcs were streaming up over that hill now, close behind the running knight. They were going to catch him and slay him right under the king’s nose, in full view of all the royal army.
Azoun’s mouth tightened. It would be foolish to abandon a strong defensive position to go down there to swing blades with so many orcs, but the last thing he wanted was to stand idle and watch a man he might have saved get hacked apart while he did nothing.
It was also something he didn’t want Purple Dragons to see and remember. The lone figure might be them, next time. What good is a king who stands heartless when a subject is in need?
“Foray force-down, and defend that knight! The rest of you charge when the hilltop is covered with orcs!” he roared, and set off down the hill.
“Majesty!” a lancelord protested, and another cried, “This is madness, good king!”
Azoun turned without slowing and cupped his hands around his mouth. “I can only hear officers who run with me,” he called. “If one man dies while I stand idle, what kind of king am I?”
He heard the approving murmur from the warriors in the ring, and the officers heard it too. No more protests came to the royal ears as the King of Cormyr, and his strike force raced down the hill, angling their charge so as to come between the foremost orcs and the lone fleeing figure.
Gods, but it was a horde. Hundreds of tall, hulking orcs, fresh and eager, loped along with their blades out and their tusks gleaming, howling as they saw the humans rushing to meet them.
The two running forces crashed together in a sudden mass of shouts, ringing blades, and thudding bodies. Azoun pointed at the lone, gasping knight they were trying to rescue to make sure no orc slipped through the fray. He saw that Tolon and Braerwinter were leading four dragoneers to form a ring, then he crashed into a knot of struggling men with the old, quickening eagerness for the fray. The king drove his sword half through an orc’s forearm. The beast screamed and tried to shake the steel free. Azoun barely heard an unexpected shout through its noise.
“Father! Azoun! Father!”
It could only be Alusair, but her voice was a raw sob. The king fell back from the fray, raising his ring. “Alessa? Lass?”
“Majesty!” Braerwinter’s voice arose like a trumpet, and Azoun realized that the exhausted, fleeing knight had been his daughter.
He sprinted across the field, hearing the mighty roar of his main army behind him as it charged down the hill to slay the orcs. He ran to where the small ring led by the lords stood around a lone, shuddering form.
The Princess Alusair was sitting, her mouth wet from the healing potion Braerwinter had already forced down her throat, her face streaked with dirt and rivulets of sweat. Her eyes were dull with weariness, and she was shuddering between gulps of air.
He might have stood on a hilltop and watched orcs butcher her-one of the best warriors in the realm.
“Lass,” he said fervently, dropping his sword and putting his arms around her in as gentle a cradling as he could manage. Her own embrace was fierce, and she put her face against his armored chest for only a few heaving breaths, never letting the men standing watchfully around them hear a single sob.
“I… found a grove of those twisted trees… It was full of orcs… Been running since… Spent all the magic I had fighting and running… Ring wouldn’t take me to you… How came you here to my backlands?”
The battle was rising around them in earnest now, men and orcs shrieking and shouting as they died, their cries almost lost in the incessant ringing of steel.
“Alessa,” Azoun said, rocking her slightly in his arms, reluctant to let go of what he’d come so close to losing, “I’m looking for the man who always knows what to do, no matter how much you two have crossed swords down the years. I need his counsel now, more than ever. Vangey’s warhorse came this way. We’ve been following the trail, hoping to find him alive.”
Alusair shook her head. “Cadimus was carrying someone else on this ride. Vangerdahast was-is-missing.”
“What? Vangey wasn’t in the saddle?”
Alusair shook her head again. “I fear he is truly lost,” she whispered.
The king threw back his head as if someone had slapped him, paying no heed to the battle raging close around them now. The endless orcs were slowly driving back the men of Cormyr.
The king closed his eyes and shook his head grimly. “No,” he muttered. “Gods, no.”
He let go of her and walked away, as if alone in a fog. Alusair and the lords exchanged startled glances, then sprang to their feet and followed. The Steel Princess scooped up her father’s forgotten sword.
“I’m no good at riddling my way out of prophecies!” Azoun told the air around him despairingly.
“Father?” Alusair slapped the blade back into her father’s hand and shook his shoulder, imploring, “King Azoun-speak to me!”
“Vangey’s wisdom lost to me, when I need it most?” Azoun murmured. “After all these years…”
He whirled ar
ound and snapped, “It cannot be. The old wizard’s off on some quick work of his own. Something he hasn’t told us about, as usual.”
“And if he’s not?” Alusair almost whispered.
Her father looked at her grimly, then said almost calmly, as if he were noticing the weather out a castle window, “Then the gods have truly turned their backs on me.”
A horn call rang out, bidding the army of Cormyr to try to return to their hilltop. The sound was almost lost in the derisive roar of a new wave of orcs.
3
Vangerdahast sat atop the highest step of the grandest goblin palace in the great goblin city, holding his ring of wishes in one hand and his borrowed mace in the other, staring out over the black expanse of the central goblin plaza into the great goblin basin where a pair of scaly golden membranes lay furled along opposite rims of the pool, giving it the slitlike appearance of a giant reptilian eye watching him watch it watch him watch it and so on so on to the end of all things, like a mirror mirroring a mirror, or an echo echoing an echo, or a man pondering the depths of his empty, empty soul. A wizard could lose his mind in a place like that.
Perhaps a wizard already had. The plaza around the pool seemed to be turning scaly and red, save for a long chain of giant white triangles that bore an uncanny semblance to teeth. Vangerdahast could also make out the shape of a sail-sized ear and the curve of a bridge-length eyebrow, and even the arcs of several lengthy horns sweeping back from the crown of the head. Taken together, the features gave him the uncomfortable feeling of looking at the largest mosaic of a dragon he had ever seen.
Probably, Vangerdahast should not have worried about failing to notice it earlier. At the time, he had been fighting for his life, trying to capture Xanthon Cormaeril and force him to reveal the exit to the goblin city. There had been flashing spells and gruesome melees and hordes of droning insects, and it would have been normal for even the most observant of combatants to miss the mosaic.