by Ed Greenwood
“No,” Filfaeril said. She shook her head vehemently, and now the tears did begin to spill out of her eyes. “It’s the truth. He never doubted you, but I did. I apologize.”
“Don’t,” Tanalasta said. “There’s no need to apologize. There was at least one time when you were right. When Gaspar and Aunadar tried to poison Father, I couldn’t have been less ready. I’m far from sure if I am now, but that hardly matters at the moment. With the ghazneths running loose, Cormyr is on the verge of disaster.”
“It is no longer on the verge, I fear.” Filfaeril wiped her eyes dry, then rose to her feet, assuming her familiar regal air. “The blight has destroyed every crop in the north, and it’s working its way south by the day. There are wildfires everywhere, whole villages are going mad, and others are dying of the plague, the orcs have massed in the north and…”
“And the Seven Scourges are upon us,” said Tanalasta. “Blight, Madness, War, Pestilence, Fire, Swarms.”
“That’s only six.”
“The seventh is ‘soon to come,’ and when he does…”
“‘Out come the armies of the dead and the legions of the devil made by itself,’ ” Filfaeril finished, quoting Alaundo’s ancient prophecy. “What then?”
Tanalasta could only shake her head. “We can’t let it come to that.” She threw her covers back and swung her legs out of bed, then looked toward the anteroom door and barked, “Korvarr!”
Filfaeril took Tanalasta’s arm. “What are you doing?”
“I did something in Goblin Mountain that weakened Xanthon,” she explained, all but dragging her mother to the wardrobe. “It may be that I’ve stumbled onto something.”
“What?” Filfaeril asked.
“I don’t know yet. It’s going to take some research.”
Tanalasta pulled her bed gown off and tossed it aside, then flung the wardrobe open-and discovered it to be empty.
The anteroom door slammed open, and Korvarr Rallyhorn, the lionar of her guards, burst into the room with a dozen men at his back. They all skidded to a halt, then nearly fell over each other in their rush to avert their eyes and retreat.
“I… I b-beg your forgiveness, Princess,” stammered Korvarr. “We thought you called.”
“I did.”
Filfaeril snatched the bed gown off the floor and thrust it at Tanalasta.
“Find Alaphondar and tell him to meet me in the library,” Tanalasta said, draping the bed gown more or less over her breasts. “And send me something to wear.”
“As you command, Princess.”
Korvarr did his best to escape the room without looking at Tanalasta.
As the door shut, Filfaeril turned to her daughter and said, “My, you have changed.”
Tanalasta smiled and draped her arm over her mother’s shoulder. “And you have not seen half of it-which reminds me, I have only heard half the news. What of Father?”
“And Dauneth, perhaps?”
Tanalasta rolled her eyes. “If you must, but I warn you, I have less reason than ever to interest myself in the good warden.”
“What a pity. You’d make such a handsome couple.” Though the pout Filfaeril feigned was playful, there was a serious element to it. The queen and king had yet to hear of Tanalasta’s marriage to Rowen Cormaeril-or her pregnancy. Filfaeril raised her hands as though to forestall her daughter’s ire. “I’m not goading-“
“Only ‘handling,’ perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” Filfaeril smiled briefly, then grew more serious. “The last I heard, your father and Alusair-“
“Alusair?” Tanalasta gasped. “Then she is safe?”
“Yes,” Filfaeril said. “Your father came across her in the Stonelands. As I was saying, they were to meet Dauneth and his army in Gnoll Pass-“
“Was Alusair alone?” Tanalasta demanded. After Vangerdahast’s disappearance at the battle of the Farsea Marsh, Rowen Cormaeril had somehow come into possession of the royal magician’s horse and set off to warn King Azoun about the ghazneths. Unfortunately, Tanalasta and Alusair had come across his trail a few days later, heading north into the Stonelands for some reason they could not understand. Alusair had set out alone to track Rowen down, and that had been the last Tanalasta heard of either one. “Did she find Vangerdahast’s horse?”
“As a matter of fact, Alusair did send a message for you-how silly of me to forget.” The queen’s sly smile made clear that she had not forgotten. “She said to tell you ‘the king has Cadimus, but your favorite scout is still on the prowl.’”
Tanalasta retreated to the bed and sank down, suddenly feeling weary and weak.
The queen came and pulled the cover up around her shoulders. “Tanalasta, I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea this would upset you.”
“It shouldn’t, I suppose,” Tanalasta replied. “The mountains have grown so dangerous, and I was hoping for something a little more… certain.”
Filfaeril leaned down and embraced her daughter. “I know. If I could even count the times I have wondered after your father’s safety… and often as not he was off with the daughter of some minor noble.”
Tanalasta shook her head. “Rowen wouldn’t do that-even if there were noble daughters in the Stonelands.”
“Rowen?” Filfaeril stood up again and frowned. “The only scout named Rowen I know is Rowen Cormaeril.”
Tanalasta nodded, then patted the bed beside her. “You’d better sit down, Mother. I have something to tell you.”
6
“They’ll draw off now,” Alusair said with some satisfaction, “and wait for the dark. Just make sure we’ve gathered brush enough for a good, big ring of fires.”
The royal army stood wearily leaning on well-used swords, atop three hilltops somewhere in the northern marches of the realm. They watched orcs beyond counting growl and hiss and snarl their way down the hillsides, leaving their dead heaped in spilled gore behind them.
The fray had been long and bloody, the tuskers rightly not believing that such a paltry few humans could stand their ground-even high ground-against charge after charge of tested and eager warrior orcs. The slaughter had been frightful, awing even gray-haired veterans among the Purple Dragons. If the orcs had been able to muster just a little more boldness, they might have forced their way past tired human sword arms and cleared the hilltops of human life, reaping a king and a princess among their kills.
The ghazneth had exhorted them with harsh Orcish cries and barked orders, shaking its iron cage in its eager fury, but to no avail. The attacking orcs, so far as Alusair’s experienced eye could tell, had mounted no special effort to reach the imprisoned creature.
In the eerie silence that had fallen on the heels of the retreating orcs, the Steel Princess and her father watched the first cautious forays of dragoneers and noble blades move out to gather brush, then turned to face each other.
“Time to learn what we can of the fate of Vangerdahast,” Azoun muttered, taking care to turn his shoulder between his lips and the watching ghazneth.
“Do you still have the tracing dust Vangey gave you to find wayward, rebellious princesses?” Alusair asked, arching an eyebrow.
Azoun nodded and said, “I’d not forgotten it. I yet retain the firefending magic he laid upon me, too.”
Alusair’s eyes fell to the wands hanging from her father’s belt, and settled on a certain one marked with a red rune. “Bait?” she asked simply, and the king nodded again.
“Let’s be about it,” he said tersely, and beckoned a lancelord to his side, to deliver the orders for everyone to stand back-a good twenty paces back-from the cage.
The ghazneth laughed harshly as the Cormyreans backed warily away, not sheathing their blades or taking their eyes off it for long. The deep, rumbling laughter grew as the two Obarskyrs strode forward to approach it.
“Made bold by your iron bars, paltry excuse for a king?”
“Well met, Luthax,” Azoun replied evenly. “Found your way out yet?”
The ghaz
neth who had once been the second most powerful-and in a brief, dark moment, perhaps the most powerful-war wizard in Cormyr hissed and rattled long talons along the bars. He could draw those talons right back into his fingers, Alusair noted, taking care to keep just out of reach of those corded black arms.
“Seeking to supplant the rightful royal magician of today?” the king continued, almost playfully.
Luthax threw back his bald head and laughed, the broken fringe of beard around his jaw giving him a truly bestial appearance. “Is that fool’s fate your most pressing concern? O blind King, you’ve far worse troubles to worry about right now. There’s the survival of your throne and kingdom, for instance.”
The ghazneth leered at Alusair through the bars, and asked, “How much for this she-wolf, Azoun? I have need of a spirited apprentice-or a breeding wench for the steed I plan to birth wrapped in truly powerful spells. Care to try your best mages against me?”
“Not particularly,” Azoun said, strolling around the cage with a humorless half-smile flickering at the edges of his mouth. “My duty is to preserve the lives and well being of my subjects as much as I can-even subjects such as you-not throw them away in pointless spell hurlings.”
“I’m not your subject!” Luthax spat. “Go find Vangerdahast, if it’s the fawning kisses of tame, groveling wizards you want.”
“And just where would I find him?”
“Oh, no,” Luthax taunted. “You must be used to crossing verbal swords with very dull-witted courtiers, Azoun. Think you to worm one word out of me that I don’t care to let fall? I’m Luthax, a mage the likes of whom you’ve never seen and can’t, brute-wits that you are, even hope to understand. Cormyr seems infested with ghazneths just now, doesn’t it? Enough of us-more than enough of us-to hold one feeble old Vangerdahast where neither you nor any other man will ever find him.”
“Think you so?” the king replied softly. “The royal magician’s magic has already told me otherwise.”
“‘Otherwise’?”
“The hold of a ghazneth,” Azoun said casually, “seems far less sure than at least one ghazneth presumes it to be. Certainly less powerful than these crude iron bars. I wonder, now, just how much more of the vaunted powers of ghazneths are mere bluff and arrogance?”
The dark creature in the cage roared in fury and laid hold of the bars, shoulders rippling. The cage shook with its straining, but the bars held fast, and the creature hissed and snatched its hands away, holding them curled and trembling as if it had been burned.
“Starved for magic?” the King of Cormyr murmured. Azoun waited until the ghazneth’s angry eyes were fixed on his, then brought into view the wand he’d drawn from his belt and held hidden behind his back as the ghazneth vainly tried to tear apart its prison. “I am prepared to make a little trade.”
He stepped back, and watched the ghazneth that had been Luthax struggle with rage, then several other emotions in turn, before he wheeled and asked in a deep rumble that was once more calm and cunning, “A trade of what for what?”
“This untrapped, operating wand of fireballs-” Azoun paused, watching the ghazneth’s fiery eyes flicker “-for complete and accurate identification that I can understand and deem sufficient as to the wizard Vangerdahast’s whereabouts, and any traps or guardians upon him or on the way to reaching him.”
Luthax seemed to freeze, sitting hunched in silent thought for a time that stretched longer than most men would have found comfortable, but the ghazneth and the king might have been two statues, so patient and still did they both remain. The bald head in the cage suddenly stirred, and its owner rumbled, “You have a trade, King. Approach.”
Azoun took a step closer to the cage then halted with a smile, holding out the wand crosswise. Both he and it were still well outside the ghazneth’s reach.
Luthax’s eyes flickered again, but he said merely, “Some seven hills southeast of yonder ridge is an abandoned stead: a house dug into a hillside, a privy, and a collapsed barn. There is a well between the house and the barn, and your prized wizard is at the bottom of it, yoked and weighted, wet but safe. He cannot speak, see, or move his hands, and from his shoulders rise two rings that a ghazneth-or you, with rope and hooks and a little patience-can draw him up by. He is well, if you’ll excuse the pun, but probably far from amused.”
“No traps?”
“None-unless you consider the uncovered, unmarked well hole a trap. I don’t suppose a wizard would be improved by having a Purple Dragon in full battle armor crash down on top of him.”
“This is all I should know?”
“By our bargain, all. Give me the wand, if kings yet have honor.”
“Kings still do,” Azoun told him dryly, and drew out the locking pins that held the sliding hatch lock shut. He threw back the heavy hatch with surprising strength for a lone man of his age, and hurled the wand into the cage.
The ghazneth snatched it out of the air, howled in glee, and boiled up into the air like a serpent striking at the sun.
His wings beat in a ragged blur as blue lightning raged around the wand, became a burst of light, and sank back into Luthax’s now empty hands as he spat. “I’ve not forgotten all my old spells,” Luthax said. “Lose a wand, and gain a meteor swarm!”
Balls of fire raced out from the ghazneth’s mouth, followed by bellows of wild laughter, straight at the king. Azoun stood his ground, shouting, “Everyone-get back and get down!”
On the heels of Azoun’s cry, the hilltop exploded in flames.
Hooting with laughter, the ghazneth tumbled backward through the air, flapping his wings exultantly. “A little warmer than you expected, Azoun? Ha! What an idiot! What a fool! This was the best the Obarskyrs could give the realm?”
The ghazneth circled the blazing hilltop once, roaring with laughter as the warriors below cowered away from him with their vainly upthrust swords bristling like blades of grass. Luthax flew away.
There were gasps of awe from the warriors as the King of Cormyr strode out of the raging flames, apparently unharmed, and snapped at the nearest swordlord, “Waste no time searching for fictitious wells or abandoned steads-a quarry I once lost a horse in lies seven hills southeast of yonder ridge.”
“Whither then, Majesty?”
Azoun Obarskyr pointed at the ghazneth in the distance. “Clever and arrogant war wizards gone bad may be-but they aren’t quite confident enough not to check on their captives, once the seed of doubt is planted.”
He smiled a tight smile and reached for the hilt of his ready sword.
7
Vangerdahast crested the last flight of crooked stairs in the great goblin palace and knew he had finally, certainly, lost his mind. The grand corridor was steeped in a savory, rich aroma-the same savory aroma that had drawn him into the murky warrens of the palace in the first place. A strange chorus of chittering voices echoed down the corridor from the left, where the expanse of dark wall was broken by a cockeyed square of yellow light. The voices were entirely alien to him, but the odor he recognized. Rabbit. Roast rabbit.
He plucked one of his eyelashes and encased it in a small wad of gum arabic from his pocket, then whispered the incantation of his invisibility spell. His hand vanished from sight, leaving only a halo of light emanating from his unseen commander’s ring. He slipped the ring off, then on again, suspending its magic radiance, and crept down the grand corridor. Though the hallway was the largest he had seen inside any goblin building, he still had to crouch to almost half his height. Grand goblin architecture expressed its majesty in the horizontal and more or less ignored the vertical.
As Vangerdahast neared the yellow light, it resolved itself into a lopsided doorway, with one side taller than the other and neither perpendicular to the floor. He began to pick out distinct speakers among the chittering voices, and the aroma grew deliciously, irresistibly overpowering. He had not been conscious of his hunger as such a palpable force for some time, but the smell of food-or the illusion of the smell-filled his mouth w
ith saliva and made his stomach rumble. Knowing the despair that would come over him when he rounded the corner and found an empty room, he almost turned back. His belt was wrapped around him almost double now, and he suffered regular blackouts and periods of weakness so severe he could not stand. Discovering this wonderful aroma to be mere illusion might be enough to kill him.
But of course Vangerdahast did not turn back. The smell drew him on, and the sound, also, of voices other than his own-no matter how strange and alien. Soon he stood hunched over the little door, craning his neck around to peer under the sill at a candlelit table laden with the steaming carcasses of ten plump skunks and several dozen crows.
They certainly looked real enough. The skunks had been fully dressed and spit-roasted, then served on their own fur. The birds had been prepared just as elegantly, having been baked enfeather with shelled walnuts in their beaks and silver root grubs in their eye sockets. Vangerdahast wondered what kind of sick trick his mind was playing. At any other time, the mere sight of such a banquet would have disgusted him to the point of illness. Now, it made his hands tremble and his mouth water.
Squatting on their haunches around the table were more than thirty goblins, well dressed in brightly colored loincloths and pale tunics girded with leather sword belts. Rather husky and short for their race, they stood at most three feet tall. They were also the wrong color. The eyes and hides of most goblins ranged in hue from yellow to red, but these had pallid green skin and pale blue eyes the color of Queen Filfaeril’s.
To Vangerdahast’s amazement, the goblins’ manners were as eloquent as the creatures themselves were strange. A dozen white-cloaked waiters stood stationed around the table at equal intervals, using bronze carving utensils to cut the meat into bite-sized chunks. Whenever a diner chittered at one of the servers, the server would flip a tasty morsel in its direction, which the creature then endeavored to catch by moving its open mouth beneath the food. There seemed to be something of an art to process, with diners being careful to remain on their haunches and keep their hands tucked securely behind their knees until the food arrived. Whenever a guest caught a morsel that had been flipped a particularly long distance, behind the back, or through a flickering candle flame, the others would break into a burst of appreciative hissing. Only once did Vangerdahast see a diner miss, and the others quietly averted their eyes while the embarrassed goblin pressed its face down to snap the morsel off the dirty floor.