by Ed Greenwood
She looked around, in a silence as sharp as a sword point. They were listening hard, their burning eyes on her, seeking hope. She gave it to them.
The Steel Princess calmly unbuckled her breastplate and swung it open. Her bodice beneath was a sweat-soaked mess of fresh bloodstains and shredded quilting, and fresh blood was glistening among the older, darker gore. More than one man murmured as he guessed at the wounds that must lie beneath, but Alusair unconcernedly thumped her breasts with a fist and announced matter-of-factly, “This still beats. As long as it does, I shall be hunting that dragon. So much is my duty.”
She turned slowly, pointing at man after man with her drawn sword, and added softly, “As nobles of the realm, only you can determine your own duty. Your families have always been the backbone of the realm-because your mothers and fathers and grandsires knew their duty, and did it. You know your duty too. When I leave this place, I’ll not look back to see who skulks away into the trees, and who strides with me. I won’t have to, because I know who-and what-you are. You are the very best and the bright hope of Cormyr’s future.”
She smiled, slid her sword into the crook of her arm, and buckled up her breastplate again. “We just have a little task before us, that’s all. We must ensure that Cormyr has a future.”
There were some grim chuckles at that.
The Steel Princess looked up from her buckles with that wry, lopsided, come-hither grin that her men knew so well, and asked softly, “Are you with me, men of Cormyr?”
“Aye!” Kortyl Rowanmantle shouted. “Aye!”
“Aye!” three men said together, raising their swords. “For the Steel Princess!”
“For Alusair, and Cormyr!”
Alusair sprang down from the stump and raised her own blade. “Then follow me-but save your shouts for when our blades cut deep into the dragon. No war cries!”
She turned and sprang away, to begin her usual swift lope-only to stagger, wince, and almost fall as one leg failed her. Swift hands shot out for her to grasp, and she leaned on them gratefully for a moment, stamped her injured leg down hard, winced again, then set off at a limping run, her men following.
It seemed only a short time before the trees thinned, and Alusair spun around and held up her hands for a halt. As panting noblemen gathered around her, she said, “The hills beyond are alive with goblins and their scouts, and the dragon has been landing on the hilltops beyond. We can’t avoid being seen, but magic will only bring our foes and darkness confuses our eyes, but not theirs. Moreover, the lives of many Cormyreans may be lost if we delay. So it’s time to be fools, I’m afraid, and just rush out to be slain. Let’s see if we can’t draw the dragon down to us in the process.”
She turned, blade flashing, ducked between two trees, and was gone.
After a startled moment, the noble sons of Cormyr-the expectation of looming death now clear upon their faces-charged after her.
Where the woods ended, farm fields began. It was rolling pastureland for the most part, with rubble-and-stump boundary fences, and goblins. The humanoids were camped in little clumps here and there, gathering on distant hills and sure to see the rushing human band, unless
A curious wall or hump of mist filled a low spot not far off on their right. It was a bank of fog that by rights should not have been there, unless the little creek that meandered along beneath it had suddenly spouted hot springs.
Alusair peered at it, as suspicious as any warrior who knows the countryside well and sees something strange in it, then shrugged, pointed at the mist with her drawn sword, and veered toward it. The men trotting behind her followed her into the whirlwind of mist, peering and keeping their blades ready in case this fog should prove to hold the dragon or another deadly beast.
They found no such hidden peril before Kortyl gasped to the princess, “How far do you think this extends, then, Highness?”
Alusair turned to answer, her face making it clear that “I don’t know” was going to feature in her utterance to come-then the world changed.
Everything was suddenly a deep, bubbling blue, and the ground was gone from beneath their feet. They were upright, and yet falling endlessly, or perhaps Faerun was falling away from them… then there was suddenly bare rock under their boots, without any sense of landing or jarring, and the deep blue radiance was fading, into deeper darkness.
“Torches!” Alusair commanded, stripping off one of her boots and plucking up the inner sole to shake a tiny glowpebble out of a hollow heel. “Use this to light them by.”
Those without torches or lanterns waited tensely in the darkness, listening with blades drawn until the torches flared up. Nothing rushed at them.
The flickering flames showed them a large, dank cavern on all sides-a very large cavern, with tunnel mouths opening like dark eyes in every wall.
“Where,” Kortyl Rowanmantle cursed, looking around in astonished dismay, “by all the dark pits of the Underdark and the fiends that dance in them, are we?”
His commander came up behind him and put a reassuring arm around his shoulders, bringing with her a smell of scorched hair and leather and smooth, muscled curves that awakened a sudden stirring in the noble knight as they pressed against him.
“Wherever we are,” Alusair told him calmly, “our work is clear. We slay the foes of Cormyr wherever we find them, until we see that dragon dead and the realm saved.”
“And where in all this murk are the hills of goblins and the dragon?”
Princess Alusair Obarskyr gave him a wolfish smile and replied sweetly, “And how by all the dark pits of the Underdark and the fiends that dance in them should I know?”
Azoun groaned, and his body spasmed, seeming to bound off the bed as it arched, and dragging astonished underpriests with it. They clung to the royal limbs and turned pale, frightened faces up to their superiors.
Aldeth Ironsar, Faithful Hammer of Tyr, rose from his knees with a face as grim as it was puzzled. “So it is with my healing, too. What do you make of it, my holy lords? I cannot believe this valiant king is cursed of all our gods!”
“Perhaps,” the Loremaster of Deneir said slowly, “the wounds given him by the dragon are no ordinary hurts but something different than what the healing prayers we’ve employed are intended to treat.”
“We’ve done this before, all of us,” snapped the high huntmaster of Vaunted Malar, gesturing down at the unconscious king. “Azoun Obarskyr has hazarded much, and received much healing, down the long years. Perhaps a body-any body-can only receive so much healing ere it has tasted enough, and the magic must fail.”
Several faces turned sharply to regard the Malarite, wearing fresh frowns of their own. If there was any truth to that thought, many more folk than the king of Cormyr stood in imminent peril… not a few high priests among them.
“I have heard,” the Lord High Priest of Tymora said heavily, “of persons who desired death-husbands who’d held their slain wives in their arms, and wives who’d beheld their dead husbands-taking no benefit from even the strongest healing spells. As if they willed the magic to pass away from them, and do them no good.”
He strode a few slow paces away, then told the nearest tent pole, “The lantern of the king’s mirth, so far as I could see, went out in his face when he heard of the death of the Steel Princess.”
“Whatever the reason,” Battlemaster Ilnbright said from the entrance to the tent, “we dare not try more healing now. A ghazneth is come upon us.”
The priests looked up at him, only too ready to sneer at a mere warrior-even if he was a nobleman, and regardless of the sense of his words-but their denunciations died in their throats at the sounds that came from behind Haliver Ilnbright then.
Outside the tent-just outside the tent-they heard a startled shout, thudding footfalls, the clang of a sword ringing off a shield, and the heavy fall of a body. Then they heard a wet, grisly sound. It was a sound of rending flesh, accompanied by a rising, choked-off, disbelieving shriek.
It was the soun
d of a man being torn apart, and it was followed, after a sudden soft rain that could only be the spraying of much blood, with cold laughter. It was mad laughter, high and shrill, that faded into the distance as the throat it was issuing from ascended into the air, and flew away.
The laugh was followed by the groan of a disbelieving veteran Purple Dragon starting to be sick.
After a moment, several of the priests in the tent echoed that last sound with an enthusiasm none of them wanted to feel.
37
Keeping the ghazneth centered in Alaphondar’s new spyglass was not easy, especially not when it was circling directly overhead and kept vanishing behind the palace roof for two seconds at a time.
Vangerdahast had developed a painful crick in his neck, and his arms ached from holding the heavy brass tube over his eye. His vision had grown spotty and painful from continually swinging the lens across the midday sun. Still, the device worked well enough for him to glimpse a pair of leathery black wings, two thin arms, and two crooked legs. The thing was definitely a ghazneth.
Vangerdahast lowered the spyglass and returned it to Alaphondar. “It works better than the last one. I saw what I was looking at.”
The sage beamed at the compliment. “Not as clear as one of your spells, but it has its uses.”
“Could you tell which one it was?” asked Tanalasta.
Vangerdahast shook his head. “Alaphondar hasn’t improved it that much.”
“The priests have stopped trying to heal Azoun,” said Filfaeril, speaking from the balcony door. It was the first time in decades Vangerdahast had seen her looking less than radiant. Her eyes were swollen and rimmed in red, her face puffy and pale, her expression haggard and mad with worry. “They say the spells don’t work. They say the magic only gives them away to the dragon and draws ghazneths.”
Vangerdahast went to the door and clasped Filfaeril’s arm. “I’ll get there,” he promised.
He saw Tanalasta exchange a nervous glance with Owden.
“I have no doubt,” said the princess, “but we must decide how. When you leave the palace, that scepter will draw the ghazneth to you like a vulture to a dead man.” She nodded into the drawing room, where the Scepter of Lords rested in the grasp of a wide-eyed palace guard. “Even an escort of two full companies wouldn’t guarantee your arrival.”
“There are safer ways to travel-and faster,” said Vangerdahast.
“Not if you mean teleporting,” Tanalasta replied. “Not with Nalavara so near.”
“She takes teleporters out of the air the way hawks take sparrows,” explained Owden. “The realm has lost too many men to her already.”
“The last just this morning, I fear,” said Alaphondar. He was seated in the corner, leaning back against the balustrade with the spyglass to his eye. “No one has heard from Korvarr and his company since they left.”
Vangerdahast saw the guilty look that flashed across Tanalasta’s face and realized she was beginning to second-guess her decisions. He gave Filfaeril’s arm a last squeeze, then returned to the balcony to stand beside the princess.
“When this is over, we must remember to commend Korvarr for his sacrifice,” Vangerdahast said. “No doubt, it was his distraction that allowed Lords Tolon and Braerwinter to carry the king to safety.”
Tanalasta smiled and took his hand. “What did you do with our royal magician? The Vangey I recall would not have been so kind.” She looked past Vangerdahast, her attention returned to the distant ghazneth. “Alaphondar, any guess as to who that is?”
“I don’t think it’s Boldovar,” answered the sage. “The body appears too lanky, and there seems to be long hair blowing over its back.”
“Suzara, then.” The relief in Tanalasta’s voice was clear. “Do you think we have any chance of luring her down here?”
“She’s being very cautious,” said the sage, “but she must be desperate or she wouldn’t be circling the palace.”
“Then we must appear desperate ourselves and offer her something tempting,” said Tanalasta. She stepped past Vangerdahast and addressed the guards in the drawing room.
“Send a messenger. The Queen’s Cavalry is to prepare at once for a hard ride, and have the royal magician’s coward of a horse readied to go with them.”
“Cadimus?” Vangerdahast gasped. At least there was some good news. “He’s here? How?”
“It is a long story,” said Tanalasta. “But were I you, I would stay close to that horse. He has a talent for survival.”
As Tanalasta explained her plan and issued the necessary orders, Vangerdahast could not help swelling with pride. The princess had become as natural a leader as her father and sister, though with a harder edge than Azoun and a keener sense of human frailty than Alusair. Even Filfaeril, as distraught and frightened as she was over Alusair’s loss and the terrible wounds Azoun had suffered, seemed to take comfort in Tanalasta’s sure orders. The crown princess was going to make a fine queen someday-though preferably not too soon and preferably of something more than Cormyr’s ruins.
When Tanalasta finished her commands, Vangerdahast nodded sagely. “A sound plan, Princess, but I do have one suggestion.”
“You may suggest anything, Vangerdahast,” said Tanalasta, “but do recall that I have destroyed four of these things by now.”
“I could hardly forget, Highness,” he said, smiling. She had given him a complete account of each ghazneth’s destruction, including that of spiteful Luthax, who had mumbled curses and threats from inside his iron box even as she absolved him of his betrayal. Vangerdahast touched his iron crown, which even Owden had not been able to dislodge with his prayers. “All I ask is that you let me handle the iron. Iron I can do, and since your plan depends on impressing Suzara with the palace’s luxury, it might be wisest not to tear the place up before she sees it.”
Tanalasta nodded, then issued orders for her dragoneers to wait outside the door in case something went wrong and asked Alaphondar to the escort her mother to a safe place. Vangerdahast was surprised when Filfaeril did not protest. Matters had changed a great deal over the past eight months-a very great deal.
Once the queen was gone, the princess guided Vangerdahast into a quiet corner where they would not be overheard as dragoneers bustled about making final preparations.
“While we’re waiting, there was something I wanted to ask you about.”
Vangerdahast’s stomach filled with butterflies. He had a good idea what she intended to ask, and his promise to Rowen prevented him from giving an honest answer. Ordinarily, he would not have been troubled by the prospect of a little prevarication, but this was a different Tanalasta than the one he had left behind. She would not be easily deceived.
He folded his hands behind his back. “Of course, Highness,” he said. “Ask me anything.”
Tanalasta hesitated, then said, “When I contacted you, I was trying to reach Rowen.”
“So I gathered.”
She fingered the silver amulet that hung from her neck. “We were using Rowen’s holy symbol as a focus.”
Vangerdahast raised his brow. “How very unusual that you contacted me, then.”
“Yes, isn’t it? And both times before I saw you, there was a shadowy face first-a shadowy face that resembled Rowen, but with white eyes.”
Vangerdahast put on a concerned frown. “And what did Owden say about this face?”
“That he didn’t know what to make of it,” said Tanalasta. “Any more than why Rowen’s symbol should have led me to you.”
“And so you are asking me?” Vangerdahast shook his head sagely. “Souls are Owden’s concern, not mine.”
Tanalasta sighed. “Of course they are, but I was wondering if you might not have been there alone.”
“I was hardly alone, Highness.” Vangerdahast tapped his iron crown. “There were plenty of Grodd. They made me their king, if you’ll recall.”
“I’m not talking about goblins.”
“Then I guess I don’t know what you
’re talking about.” Vangerdahast shrugged. “I can assure you, I was the only man there. My, er, subjects would certainly have brought it to my attention if there were others.”
“The thing is, if Rowen was there, he might not have looked like a man.” Tanalasta looked at the corner, then continued with a catch in her throat. “Before I destroyed Xanthon, he said something cruel.”
“That’s hardly surprising. I hope you made him suffer for it.”
“Nothing I could have done would have been enough,” she said. “He claimed that Rowen had betrayed Cormyr.”
“Rowen?” Vangerdahast tried to sound surprised.
Tanalasta raised a hand. “He said that Rowen was one of them.”
“What? A ghazneth?” Vangerdahast shook his head in mock disappointment. “Princess, I’m surprised at you. I’d have thought you understood by now how evil feeds on doubt.”
“I know,” said Tanalasta, “but there was that face. It looked so much like Ro-“
“Because that is what you wanted to see,” Vangerdahast interrupted. He took the princess by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Rowen would never betray Cormyr, or you. I know that, even if you do not.”
Tanalasta’s face softened. “Thank you, Vangerdahast.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, then said, “You’re right. I do know it.”
“Good.” The sigh under Vangerdahast’s breath was not quite one of relief. The princess had given up a little too easily, perhaps because she really did not want to know the truth. He took her hand and started toward the center of the room. “We should see to our ghazneth.”