Death of the Dragon c-3

by Ed Greenwood

  “You have been looking into this. What are your thoughts?”

  “Lord Crownsilver and his guests bring the total number of assassinations this tenday alone to fifteen,” said Sarmon. “You really must have Lord Goldsword arrested before there are more.”

  Tanalasta did not turn from the garden. “And we know he is responsible how?”

  “By the fact that we aren’t,” said Sarmon. “He’s cutting your support from beneath you.”

  “Her support?” asked Owden, standing as always at Tanalasta’s side. “I thought what made these killings strange is that all the victims are neutral.”

  “Lord Goldsword is discovering how the nobles are leaning,” said Sarmon. “Clearly.”

  “It is not so clear to me.” Tanalasta turned and looked down at the old mage. “How does he find out before we do?”

  Sarmon’s wrinkled fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. “The war wizards cannot eavesdrop without drawing the attention of a ghazneth, Highness.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t doing everything possible.” Though frustrated by the situation, Tanalasta refused to be short with a man who had lost fifty years of his life defending her. She turned to her mother. “But what of our other spies?”

  The queen looked away uncomfortably and said, “I am afraid the loyalty of many is only to your father. There has been little to report.”

  “What’s wrong with these people?” Tanalasta shook her head and looked out over the refugee camp. Not for the first time, she wished Vangerdahast were there to guide here-or at least to activate his own formidable network of spies. “Can’t they see how much danger Cormyr is in?”

  “The only danger they see is their own,” said Alaphondar. “With the setbacks in the north, I fear Goldsword’s call to accept help from the Sembians is falling upon more receptive ears.”

  Tanalasta slapped the balustrade. “We would not need Sembia’s help if our own nobles would pick up their swords and fight!” She paused a moment to collect herself, then looked to Owden and said, “I am beginning to think I should have married Dauneth. At least the nobles could not use my husband’s name to flout my authority.”

  “They would find another excuse,” said Owden. “Do you really think they would become brave only because you lacked the courage to trust your own heart?”

  The priest’s question allayed some of Tanalasta’s anger. “I suppose not.” She turned from the balustrade to her mother. “Speaking of cowards and traitors, have you had any luck locating the spy in our midst?”

  Filfaeril met Tanalasta’s eyes evenly. “Of course,” she said. “I have known his identity for some time now.”

  Tanalasta began to have a bad feeling about her mother’s conclusion. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “It would have accomplished nothing, except to alert the spy.”

  Tanalasta bristled at her mother’s tone. “If you know who he is, then why don’t I have him in our dungeon?”

  Filfaeril smiled. “Because spies can be very useful-especially the enemy’s spies.”

  Tanalasta raised her brow and asked, “Would you care to elaborate?”

  “Not at this time.” Filfaeril held Tanalasta’s eyes and did not look away.

  “As you wish,” Tanalasta said, realizing she would just have to be patient. “I suppose we’re done here.”

  “What about Lord Goldsword?” asked Sarmon. “You are going to arrest him?”

  Tanalasta shook her head. “If I do that, it will look like I’m frightened of him. That’s no way to inspire confidence among our wavering nobles.”

  Sarmon’s knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair, but he did not argue.

  “A wise choice, but we must do something,” said Alaphondar. “With matters as bad as they are, the people are losing confidence. They need to see you act.”

  Tanalasta glanced over the balustrade and cringed at the sight of all the people she was failing.

  “What those people need, Alaphondar,” the princess said, “is food.”

  The old sage frowned. “Of course they do, Highness, but what does that have to do with the matter at hand?”

  “Nothing,” Tanalasta admitted. She continued to stare into the Royal Garden and suddenly knew what she had to do. “Nothing and everything. Clearly, I can do nothing to stop the ghazneths, and it may even be that I can do nothing to stop Goldsword, but there is one thing I can do.”

  Alaphondar looked thoughtful. “And that would be?”

  Tanalasta turned away from the balustrade. “I can feed my people.” She motioned Korvarr forward. “Lionar, send a man to fetch the cooks, and have the bailey set with tables. I’ll be down in a hour, and I expect a ladle to be ready for me.”

  They met in a place in Suzail where such meetings took place, in the dimly lit store room of a shady tavern in a seedy quarter where no decent lord would be caught dead. That was why the six nobles had donned elaborately conceived costumes and disguised their faces with false beards, why they had dyed their hair and taken such care to be certain no one had followed them. The chamber stank of stale mead, mildewed wood, and unbathed sailors. It was surrounded on all sides by rooms kept vacant at the steep price of five gold crowns each, a price which had drawn even more attention to the group than the perfumed handkerchiefs they held over their noses as they approached their hidden refuge.

  Frayault Illance was speaking, his dandy’s face ridiculously disguised by a purple eye patch and a trio of wax scars. “It’s the princess. Natig Longflail told me himself that he had it from Patik Corr that the princess’s own dressmaker told his wife that she had sewn no wedding dress for Tanalasta, and he said he would support no bastard on the Dragon Throne, be it the child of Rowen Cormaeril or Alaphondar Emmarask or Malik el Sami yn Nasser-then he was dead! Her spies found him out, I tell you, and it was her assassins who killed him.”

  “And you are not blaming the princess just because she would have none of your soft talk, Frayault?” asked Tarr Burnig. A broad and burly man who normally wore a bushy red beard, he had cut off all his whiskers and disguised himself as the guard of a merchant caravel not long from the sea wars, and he was one of the few men there who looked the part he had assumed. “Natig told me that as long as the princess was married when she made the child, he’d stand with her, and to the Nine Hells with Emlar Goldsword and his Sembians.”

  “And why couldn’t the Sembians be the ones behind these murders?” asked Lord Jurr Greenmantle. “It wouldn’t matter to them which way we were leaning at all. They could just keep killing us until there aren’t enough of us left to stand with Tanalasta, even if we wanted to. She’d have no choice but to ask for their help.”

  The room erupted into a spirited debate, until a tall, dark-haired figure with a long beard rose and began banging his dagger on the table. “Enough! Enough!” The voice belonged to Elbert Redbow, who was neither tall nor dark, but wealthy enough to make himself appear that way for one night. “We could argue this all night, with every one of us coming to a different conclusion. I have even heard it said it could be the ghazneths-though I don’t know why they’d bother. Against them, the princess has proven ineffective enough as it is.”

  “Hear, hear!” It was the first thing all six had agreed about all night.

  “So have you a plan, Lord Redbow?”

  “I do.” His voice grew even deeper, and he braced his knuckles on the table. “We must stop reacting and start acting.”

  Again, there was agreement. “Hear, hear!”

  “We’ll send a man to all the suspect parties,” explained Elbert. “He’ll pretend to be a craven coward in fear for his own life and claim I’ve called a secret meeting to divulge evidence about the identity of the assassin.”

  “And we’ll know the identity of the cur by who shows up to kill us!” cried Tarr. “A grand plan, just grand!”

  “As far as it goes,” said Frayault, “but what do we do after we find out?”

  �
�You really are as slow as you look, aren’t you?” asked Lord Greenmantle. “We join them, of course!”

  It was at this point that someone knocked on the door. The eyes of all six lords darted toward it, and Elbert Redbow had the presence of mind to snarl, “We said not to disturb us!”

  “Yes, but you have not ordered a single mug of ale,” replied the tavern keeper. “How am I to pay for the room’s use? You must all buy at least one drink.”

  Elbert snorted in disgust, then looked to the others. “What say you? I’m thirsty anyway.”

  Lord Greenmantle nodded and stepped to the door. “A little refreshment never hurt anyone.”

  Greenmantle had barely slipped the chair from under the latch when the door crashed open and an anonymous hand tossed something tiny into the room. Elbert Redbow cursed and hurled himself across the table to make a diving catch. Something crackled, and suddenly the room stank of oil and brimstone.

  Lord Redbow cursed again, and the air went scarlet.

  24

  “Keep well apart!” the swordlords shouted, turning as they strode to look at the Purple Dragons trudging along behind them and to gesture with their swords at dragoneers they judged to be gathered too closely. King Azoun almost smiled. It had been well over half a century ago when he’d first noticed that officers seemed to love pointing and gesturing with their blades. Perhaps many of them kept those swords unused and shiny in a diligent search for the greatest effect, so the steel would gleam and flash back the sun impressively when employed in such sweeping gestures.

  The scouts were well ahead, their horns lofting from time to time to warn the advancing army of orc and goblin patrols or battle forays. The horn calls most often persuaded goblins to try to sprawl on the ground and await a chance to gut the unwary with knives before springing to their feet and racing away, but usually they made orcs retreat, trading muttered oaths and wary warnings. These retreats inevitably led to larger and larger whelmings in the hills ahead, until in the end, the king’s forces would face a tusker army.

  Azoun wasn’t worried about that occurring as any sort of surprise. A massed orc attack would be heralded, he was sure, by the appearance-probably involving diving out of the sky to tear men apart or incinerate them with fire-of the dragon. It seemed odd, really, that the sky had been empty of the vengeful wyrm for so long now.

  If only outpourings of magic didn’t bring ghazneths swooping down to the attack. If only he could use the war wizards as they should be used, so he’d know where the dragon was and what she was doing at all times. She might have torn apart Suzail by now, roof by roof and wall by wall, or sunk half the ships tied up to the docks in Marsember, or

  It was beginning to gnaw at him, this not knowing, and Azoun was past the age where nothing much made him fret, and even farther past the years when he’d welcomed fresh challenges atop ongoing adversities. He was beginning to be a lion of shorter temper and earlier bedtimes, who ached all too often, and who welcomed the familiar.

  He was beginning to feel truly old.

  Azoun answered the next swordlord’s shout with a wordless snarl that made the man blink and blanch and mutter some sort of confused apology. Azoun waved it away and dismissed the matter without even looking at him. The King of Cormyr was going to die out here, sword in hand and far from Filfaeril. His body would fall cold in the rolling backlands of the realm without ever warming his throne again or seeing younglings in bright finery take their first awkward strides at court after kneeling to their king. He was-in a shining moment of firmly clasping his sword hilt and lifting his head to stare away over the endless trees and the marching purple mountains beyond-quite content with it all. If he could but snatch magic enough so that he and Faery could look into each other’s eyes one last time, and say proper good-byes that both could hear… it would be all right. Truly. He would not mind dying out here, if die he must. After all, ‘twas the lion’s way… and like it or not, he was the old lion.

  A different horn call suddenly floated up from the ridge ahead, and Azoun forgot all about the death and doom to come. It was the signal that friendly forces had been sighted. That could only be Alusair and whatever she’d managed to salvage of her noble blades.

  Another, more distant horn replied, ringing out bright and clear. This was Alusair herself, telling all that she was coming in haste, with foes on her tail. All around the king, men drew weapons or checked on the readiness of daggers with a sort of satisfaction. The Steel Princess always brought either battle or revelry with her, and these men were at home with either.

  The pursuing enemy would be orcs, no doubt, perhaps accompanied by the dragon. It was time to save Cormyr again.

  “You’d think that after all these years I’d be good at it,” Azoun remarked to the empty air, causing more than one nearby helmed head to turn in curiosity then carefully look away again. Madness in one’s king is neither to be admitted nor encouraged, unless desperation descends. “I wonder if I am. While, we shall see. Aye, we shall see…”

  In the next moment he saw her, cresting the ridge. Alusair’s armor was glinting in the sunlight and her hair streamed around her shoulders in the usual tangled mess, with her helm-also as usual-off or lost. The Steel Princess was waving her sword just as Azoun’s swordlords were wont to, commanding, directing, and cajoling like any growling swordcaptain.

  Prudence counseled a forewarned army to take up a strong position and await the foe, but all around Azoun men were running forward and shouting, excitement lifting their voices. The Steel Princess had that effect on the men of Cormyr who went to war. It was as if the gods touched her into flame, a beacon for men to look to and take comfort in-a beacon that was running up to him now, arms spread wide to embrace him, and with a brightness in her eyes that could only be tears. Azoun thought he’d never to be alive to see those tears again.

  “Father!” she cried as she came. “Gods, but it’s good to see you.”

  “Old bones and all, eh?” Azoun replied, sweeping her into his arms in a clamor of clashing breastplates.

  Her arms were strong, and they rocked back and forth like two bears locked in some sort of shuffling dance for a moment before a laughing Alusair broke away, crying, “Enough! You can still break my ribs. I’ll grant you that without requiring hard proof.”

  “While you, lass,” Azoun murmured, sweeping her face close to his with one long and insistent arm, “can still lift the hearts of an entire army. This one of mine will follow you in an instant!”

  “That’s good to know,” she said with sudden, quiet seriousness, “because I seem to have lost most of mine.”

  “That weight never goes away,” Azoun replied just as quietly. “You just have to know you always spent lives in pursuit of good purpose, and cling to that. Lives used to guard Cormyr are never wasted… though I can’t say the same for those who fall because of royal folly.”

  “Am I guilty of that now?” Alusair asked, looking at her father sidelong through the worst tangle in her hair. The words might have been uttered with a defiant toss of her head, but the Steel Princess was listening very intently for his answer.

  Azoun did not pause to weigh his words, knowing that to have done so would have been to hand Alusair a silence more damning than any words could undo. “The only royal folly either of us has been guilty of since the present peril fell upon the realm,” he said firmly, “is trying to raise armies to meet our foes in bright and ordered array-when those foes either swoop from the sky to tear bloody havoc from our ordered ranks, or swarm all over the countryside with us in chase, burning farms at will.”

  Alusair nodded as sagely as any of the old retired battlemasters Azoun had ever studied under, and said, “I hope that means we won’t try to chase a hundred goblins along a hundred trails at once-or try to lure any goblinkin into an ordered battle up here in these wilderlands.”

  “I only wish that were possible,” the king replied. “Try though we might, we can never get all the orcs and goblins to stand on one fiel
d and face us-so I can never strike the blow that humbles them.”

  “Well,” his daughter replied flatly, “even if that opportunity seems to yawn open right in front of you, you must ignore it.”

  “Oh? How so?” Azoun asked, cocking his head to one side. This lass of his was sounding more like a veteran battlemaster all the time. What she said next might tell him if she was already fit to be a trusted leader.

  “It’ll be a trap, set to lure you to your doom,” Alusair assured him. “To hold the gathered might of Cormyr out here to be butchered by orcs and goblins beyond counting.”

  Azoun raised both eyebrows. “Is our situation so dire?” he asked, still playing a part to draw his daughter out.

  “Father, it is that and more,” the Steel Princess told him. She took two quick steps back to a high rock and sprang up on it. Azoun hid a proud smile.

  “There!” Alusair snarled, pointing with her sword. “And there!”

  Her father looked, knowing full well what he’d see. Scattered bands of goblins, and orcs beyond number were streaming down at the embattled Cormyreans from all sides. The tuskers were pouring over knolls and rock outcrops like rivulets of water poured over dry soil, seemingly endless dark fingers reaching greedily for human lives-reaching on three sides, and soon the fourth. If the Cormyreans didn’t flee like the wind from this place, they’d be surrounded and butchered in vain, leaving all the realm undefended against the dragon and her ravening creatures.

  “Sound the horns,” Azoun said almost bitterly. “It’s Arabel for us, though I begin to doubt if even its strong walls will be shield enough. Gods, look at them!”

  “The ballistae and catapults on the walls should thin a few hundred out of those,” Alusair mused, “though I’d be happier if we had a blade to use on them that could slay thousands at a stroke. They are numerous, aren’t they?” She gnawed thoughtfully on her lip. “No time to dig fire trenches..

  “That water ditch, though,” the king said slowly, “is not finished yet, if I recall Dauneth’s last report. It should be dry.”