by Ed Greenwood
A weak sputter of amusement and mock indignation told him that Azoun retained, at least, his senses.
“So you have served the realm as capably as ever, and we have the grand plan,” the king gasped when he was strong enough to speak again. “We also have this… small problem of my being unable to stand. Somewhat of a handicap in facing down… dragons, you’ll agree…”
“Your wounds are this bad,” Vangerdahast replied gravely, “because some of the dragon’s blood is in you-gnawing at your innards, melting away all of Azoun it can reach. Nalavara exists to destroy all of Obarskyr blood and is doing so all too well. I can purge you of the blood just as I delivered you from the Abraxus venom, but it will take magic, powerful magic.”
“Which my darkwinged ancestor out there is waiting to pounce upon and drink… leaving me unhealed,” Azoun concluded grimly.
“Indeed,” Vangerdahast said, and shut his mouth like a slamming portcullis as the word left his lips.
Azoun regarded him in silence for a moment, then almost whispered, “I know you too well, old friend. You do see a solution and don’t want to offer it. I know enough not to command you to speak… so I’ll just lie here and wait as, eventually, the battle sweeps over us.”
The royal magician gave him a dark look, then said, “There’s no chance of healing you with Boldovar circling, just waiting for magic to be awakened. He must be lured elsewhere, with other magic, and held or trapped for long enough to restore you. It won’t take me long, but it will take me much too long to manage if he’s just soaring after a spell hurled from atop another hill, or a war wizard firing a wand-even a dozen war wizards, one after another.”
The old wizard drew in a deep breath, then let it out in an unhappy sigh. “And I know of only one person in Cormyr skilled and experienced in the baiting and destruction of ghazneths.”
“My daughter, Tanalasta,” Azoun said quietly. “To save the king, we imperil his heir and the hope of the kingdom to come.”
Vangerdahast nodded, his face dark with apprehension. “She has faced them and prevailed,” he murmured, “but Boldovar is the strongest of them all-and no prince or princess, whatever their resolve or prowess, can be confident of handling such a madman. We may well be dooming her just as surely as we’re thrusting you to the edge of your grave.”
Azoun looked up at him, then lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Cormyr has never been a carefree garden, ours by right and without striving. My daughters both know that now-and both are defenders of the realm every bit as worthy and as capable as their father. What service do we do to the next Obarskyrs, if we fight all their battles for them, and rob them of the chance-nay, the right, the privilege-of rescuing Cormyr for themselves?”
Vangerdahast nodded. “Yet, you’re her father…” he murmured.
“And her king,” Azoun said, staring into the darkness. “They take turns being harder roles, Vangey. They always have.”
39
R hundred forks of lightning lanced upward from the palace ramparts, brightening the sky even in broad daylight. A long string of noisy crackles echoed across the city roofs. The still waters of Lake Azoun turned the color of a flashing silver mirror, and the air filled with a smell like fresh rain. The display was followed by an endless chain of fireballs. They arced out from the walls one after the other, trailing stubby tails of black smoke and roaring like dragons, then plummeting into the water to a sizzling, hissing end.
“That will attract his attention, don’t you think?” asked Tanalasta. She was standing beside Owden Foley, watching the display from Vangerdahast’s private tower outside the palace. “Even the Mad King cannot be so distracted he fails to notice that.”
“Or misses its purpose,” Owden added darkly.
“I think the ghazneths have known what we’re doing for some time now.” Tanalasta winced as the baby kicked her kidney, then continued, “Suzara didn’t come down until we made her think she could snatch Vangerdahast and run. We’ll use a different gambit on Boldovar.”
As Tanalasta spoke, a green aura of visible magic began to glow above the palace. Despite its appearance, it was actually a minor spell Sarmon the Spectacular had developed, designed to create a powerful ambience of magic with a minimum of mystic energy. Even if Boldovar absorbed the spell, he would find it about as satisfying as Vangerdahast would a glass of water, but of course Tanalasta did not expect the Mad King to fall for such an obvious ploy. Like every Cormyrean monarch since Embrus the Old, he had been a student of chess and would recognize a diversion when he saw it.
And when he saw the diversion, he would start looking for the thing they were trying to hide. Tanalasta stepped away from the window.
“Shall we get started, Harvestmaster?”
“If you insist,” Owden said, “but I still think you should take Vangerdahast at his word.”
“Only because you do not know him as well as I do.” Tanalasta crossed to the far side of Vangerdahast’s study, slipping through a dozen of Owden’s Chauntean priests, and dropped into a comfortable reading chair. “He knew Rowen and I were married.”
“Perhaps he knows you better than you think,” Owden said. “After you met Rowen, one of his first concerns was that you would end up marrying ‘a ground-splitting Cormaeril.’”
“Even if he were that perceptive, there is still the matter of Rowen’s holy symbol and the dark face.” Tanalasta propped her feet on a stool. Her legs ached almost constantly now, and she was looking forward to the day when there would be a little less weight for them to carry. “Instead of explaining, Vangerdahast shifted the onus to you. He’s a master of such tactics.”
“That doesn’t mean he was hiding something,” said Owden. “Perhaps he really thought I could explain.”
“Can you?”
When Owden shook his head, Tanalasta removed Rowen’s holy symbol from her neck and held it out. “Then let’s bring my husband home.”
Owden did not take the symbol. “And what if that wasn’t Rowen you saw? Why would Vangerdahast lie about a thing like that?”
Tanalasta gave a scornful look. “Why do you think?”
Owden shook his head. “He wouldn’t. Not even the old Vangerdahast would leave a man trapped alone back there.”
“I love Vangerdahast dearly, but he’s done far worse to ‘protect’ Cormyr,” Tanalasta said. “What better way to handle Rowen? If a Cormaeril must be Royal Husband, then at least let him be kept out of sight-permanently.”
Owden’s gaze dropped. “You can’t believe Vangerdahast would do such a thing, not after all he’s been through.”
“I find no other explanation of the facts before us,” said Tanalasta. It occurred to her that she was sidestepping Owden’s question as neatly as Vangerdahast had sidestepped hers, but it really did not matter. If the dark face was not Rowen’s, she was determined to know that as well. “When there is only one way to interpret a set of facts, then it must be the explanation-no matter how unpleasant.”
“And what if there is another explanation?” asked Owden. “Xanthon may have been telling the truth.”
“Rowen? A ghazneth?” Tanalasta rolled her eyes. “You never met Rowen. Even Vangerdahast said nothing could make him betray Cormyr.”
Owden shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with her doubts about Vangerdahast.
Tanalasta swung her feet off the stool, then leaned forward and pressed Rowen’s holy symbol into the harvestmaster’s hand. “Please, Owden. I must know.”
Owden closed his eyes and sighed, then reluctantly nodded. “You deserve at least that much.” The harvestmaster took the symbol and lifted her legs onto the stool again, then motioned his subordinates over. “Clagi, keep watch for Boldovar. You others, stand by me. It may be that this dark man is Rowen, or it may be he is some other thing we would rather not bring into Cormyr.”
The priests quickly arranged themselves as ordered. There were no dragoneers or war wizards within five hundred yards of the room, for Tanalasta’s troops ha
d learned through hard experience the power of Boldovar’s delusional tricks. Only clerics seemed able to withstand the madness he induced, and even they had to gird themselves with prayers and holy symbols.
Once all was ready, Owden began to swing the symbol before Tanalasta’s eyes. “Concentrate…”
Tanalasta followed the silver amulet with her eyes, picturing the same dark face she had glimpsed twice before-a heavy brow and pearly eyes, brutish hooked nose, the familiar cleft chin. The image melded with the symbol and began to swing back and forth, and she had the sensation of peering down a long black tunnel, then the inky face was there before her, gaunt and sinister-looking, half hidden by a gray curtain of rain.
“Rowen?” Tanalasta called.
The brow furrowed, and the eyes grew white and angry. The dark figure shook its head, then started to turn away as before.
“Rowen, no!” When the head did not stop, Tanalasta yelled, “Now, Owden! I have him.”
The harvestmaster rattled off a long string of mystic syllables, and the distance seemed to vanish between Tanalasta and the dark figure. He pivoted back toward her, and the air behind his head began to flash with silver lightning.
“No!” he cried.
The voice was deeper and raspier than Tanalasta recalled, but its dry northern accent left no doubt in her mind that it belonged to her husband. The portal through which she was viewing him seemed to grow larger, and she saw that his body was as dark as his face and as naked as the night they had conceived their child-though she no longer found it irresistible. Far from it. Everything seemed strangely out of proportion and brutish, with hulking shoulders and bulging arms and an impossibly narrow waist. His thighs were as large and round as wine casks, his groin covered by a mosslike tangle of hair that hung nearly to his knees.
Rain and thunder began to spill through the portal, soaking Tanalasta and shaking the room. Owden cried out in alarm, and his priests pressed close, moving to interpose themselves in the narrow gap between the princess and whatever was coming out of the gate. The dark figure spun away, turning a small pair of leathery ghazneth wings toward the portal.
“No!” Tanalasta screamed.
Her eyes had to be deceiving her, or perhaps it been her ears, when she thought the creature sounded like Rowen then she hit on the only possible explanation. Boldovar was there. Somehow, he had snuck into the chamber and begun to deceive them, and it was one of his mad illusions she was seeing.
“Rowen, don’t go!” she yelled. “I know you’re not-“
It was too late. The ghazneth’s wings had already begun to absorb Owden’s magic, and the portal was shrinking before her eyes. One of the priests screamed in terror and slipped over the edge, then two more went. Tanalasta felt it sucking at her feet.
“Close it!” she yelled.
Owden’s only response was a pained yell. Tanalasta swung her feet off the stool and drew them up into the chair with her, curling into the seat as well as her swollen bulk would allow. The portal shrank to the size of a window, pulling the rest of the priests in after it and leaving the princess staring over the top at Owden’s straining face.
“Owden, close it!”
“Ca
“
That was as much as the harvestmaster could say before he tumbled forward and pitched headlong into the portal. The hole closed with a sharp hiss, leaving Tanalasta alone on her side of the room and only Clagi standing on the other.
The palace’s ghazneth bell started to ring through the window.
40
“Gods above watch over us,” Lareth Gulur murmured, watching the huge red dragon settle on a hilltop four miles or so away. The farm fields between it and a wandering brook not far below where they stood were covered in a cloak of moving goblins. “Earfangs, the scourge of men’s knees. I never thought they’d get this far.”
“If we don’t stop them,” his superior grunted, “they’ll be at the gates of Suzail tomorrow-and yon Devil Dragon’ll be coiled around the towers of the palace.”
Gulur shuddered. He had a new and better-fitting breastplate because a valiant Purple Dragon had died fighting the dragon the night before, but his helm was the same old dented one that had cradled his brains for a decade. It’s hard to salvage a helm when a dragon’s swallowed the head wearing it whole, but gore can readily be washed off a breastplate if it’s fresh enough. The thought made him glance down, involuntarily. When he looked up, Hathian Talar was regarding him with a grim smile.
“Just try and stay out of its jaws until Vangerdahast does his work,” Talar said. “Then you’ll see what a red dragon looks like falling ready-cooked out of the sky.”
Gulur looked up at the gathering gray clouds, and shuddered. “Like something to stay out from under?” he joked weakly.
Talar gave him a hollow laugh, clapped him on the shoulder, and strode off down the tense line of waiting men, all on foot. Goblins meant no horses. Their hooves might claim half a dozen or more, but the animals always fell, and fell hard, losing the lives of their riders to swarming goblin blades. Goblins ate horses and, for that matter, men. Fingers and toes, he’d heard, were delicacies. Along with other things.
Goblins he could handle, given swords enough, though he’d never seen this many goblins before, and knew from the tales of the older soldiers that so many had never before swarmed into Cormyr to take the field against any army. It was the dragon, though, that none could stand against. With flame, claw, and spell it-no, she, they said-smote the most valiant knights and the shrewdest battlemasters, sniffing out war wizards whatever their disguise and rending them to pieces.
She seemed to know Cormyr better than the oldest veteran Purple Dragon scouts and know magic better than any war wizard. She was a very “devil among dragons,” as one mage had choked, viewing the dismembered bodies of his three apprentices. The Devil Dragon it had been to the realm from that moment on, the name spreading across farms and barracks like sunlight in the morning. And there she was, only a few lazy wing beats away.
As Gulur squinted across the fields at her, the red dragon suddenly raised her head and looked, he thought, right back at him. He could see the glitter of one of her eyes.
“Gods defend me!” Gulur gasped, turning his head away with an effort. Even as he drew a sword that didn’t need to be drawn and looked along its length in an entirely unneeded examination-a length that trembled more than he cared to admit-he could feel the fell, cold weight of the dragon’s gaze upon him.
A trumpet blared, calling each man to arms. Gulur lowered his visor and saw to his lacing. Hathian came down the line again offering murmured courage and warnings. A small gap in the lowering clouds fell across the field, and the sun shone warm and bright upon the hill where they stood. Gulur looked around at this small corner of fair Cormyr for what might be his last time, and drew in a deep breath. The goblins were across the brook and toiling up the hill. It wouldn’t be long before the call to charge came.
“Is this wise, my liege? We’re so few!” Durmeth Eldroon called, spurring his black stallion over to the king. Even from the height of his saddle, he found himself staring up into the stolid face of a mountain of a man in plate armor. This was Kolmin Stagblade, Bannerguard to the King. Stagblade held a fearsome battle-axe in his hands, its blade turned out to keep even excitable Marsembian nobles at bay.
“You see another choice?” Azoun asked calmly in return. “If we retreat to Suzail or Marsember, we abandon our farmers-and their crops-to the goblins. We’d be left to fight the dragon on our own rooftops, with all the war-ruin on the heads of our wives and children. If we retreat beyond our cities, Cormyr is lost. If we cannot stand against these foes here, let us fall as dearly as we can, so those who come to the gates of Suzail and Marsember are as few and as wounded as we can leave them.”
“That’s all that’s left to us?”
Azoun shrugged. “A ruler does what he can and tries to find or make new roads, new chances… but my time for that is past. Now I mus
t bar and guard the gate on the road I’ve built. It’s the task left to me.”
Eldroon’s reply was a wordless snarl as he spurred his stallion back along the ridge to where his troops stood in a knot, still not fallen into formation.
“There’s trouble waiting to happen,” Battlemaster Ilnbright growled, glaring after the dwindling noble. The veteran Purple Dragon commander looked like the hewn and hardened warrior he was-a chopping block as wide as he was tall, as massive as a cask in his deliberately dulled armor.
Azoun shrugged. “No time to right it now. If any man here sees aught amiss with our friend Eldroon’s deeds on this field, and lives to see the end of it, take word to either of these two men.”
Men looked where he pointed. The king’s gauntlet was extended at a grim-looking Dauneth Marliir, High Warden of the Eastern Marches, and a nervous-looking Lord Giogi Wyvernspur. They sat on horses-swift errand-mounts, not warhorses-behind the crest of the hill.
” ‘Take word’?” Haliver Ilnbright growled. “Where’re they going, then?”
“To Jester’s Green, to command the last hope of the realm,” the king said, loudly enough for all of the war captains gathered around him to hear. “If we fall, and our foe goes on to threaten Suzail, these two lords have the duty to lead our eldest veterans and youngest reserves in the field. Their task will be to guard the walls of Suzail as long as possible, and get as many Cormyreans-your wives and children-away safe from our shores if need be. There are already coins from our vaults, hidden away safe, in certain cities elsewhere. If Cormyr falls, its royal treasury goes to its citizens, a hundred gold each, and thrice that for heads of families.”
A lone voice cut through the general murmur that followed. “Gods bless you, my liege,” one of the older war captains growled, bowing his head. “That’s one care gone from me, right there. If I fall, I’d not want my king to go unthanked for such service to me and mine.”