by James Lowder
Finally the steward, still bowed, presented the king’s scepter. Like a vine, a slender, scaled dragon curled around the two-foot-long staff from tip to crown. A glittering, golden head, like that of a mace, topped the scepter. The king grasped the staff firmly and held it outstretched toward the hall. The crowning was complete.
“Arise, subjects,” Azoun said formally, repeating the ancient rite. “Look upon your king.”
That said, he glanced around the throne room and found that the procession was ready, filed neatly into rows that would fall in line behind him and Filfaeril as they left the hall. All that remained now was for the king to lead the nobles to the Royal Gardens, where the speech was to occur. Taking a deep breath, Azoun turned to his wife and smiled, then started through the room.
Drums rattled softly, marking a slow cadence for the parade. Azoun and Filfaeril reached the center of the room, and Vangerdahast, accompanied by a few other mages, moved into place behind the king and queen. Next came the nobles, then a contingent of the king’s guard, then a few musicians. In all, forty people walked through the castle’s halls. A few servants and guards stood in the corridors, bowing as their king passed by, but most of the keep’s staff was assembled outside, in the castle’s inner bailey.
The king moved quickly through the bailey, the large open courtyard inside the castle’s high stone wall. Occasionally Azoun nodded to a familiar servant or knight as he made his way out of the southern gate. The trumpets called almost continually once the procession reached the open air outside the walls. The music of expertly played instruments mixed with the loud roar of the drums in the blue sky.
Animateci by nervous excitement, the crowd milled restlessly outside the keep, waiting for their king and queen to walk slowly past. The procession, almost mindless of the masses, kept the castle’s sun-bleached walls on their right and made their way through the cheering throng to the gardens at the rear of the keep. The trumpets blared more loudly as Azoun and his entourage approached the castle’s western corner.
Even that pompous heralding couldn’t completely drown out a louder, more insistent noise.
“Can you hear that?” Filfaeril whispered in Azoun’s ear. Turning his head slightly, he listened. High, gray stone walls still stood between the king and the Royal Gardens, the location of his speech. Despite this barrier, the blaring trumpets, and rumbling drums, he could hear the Cormyrians gathered there. By the time the procession reached the westernmost tip of the wall, the murmuring crowd collected outside the walls drowned out even the musicians.
As the king rounded the corner into the gardens, Vangerdahast gave a signal. On the battlements, the line of trumpeters snapped to attention. The brightly colored pennants hanging from their instruments flapped in the breeze. The crowd grew louder, more anxious.
With almost military precision, the royal wizard glanced toward the handful of mages who stood with him. At his nod, a fat, balding wizard started to weave a spell. He was joined by a stooped old woman and a pock-faced young boy. The three sorcerers mumbled incantations and traced obscure patterns in the air. Suddenly, simultaneously, they stopped and nodded at Vangerdahast.
The paunchy wizard winked at Azoun, then signaled the trumpeters along the wall again. They, in turn, lifted their polished brass to their lips and blew. A single high, clear note rang out over the gardens. Thanks to the spells cast by the wizards, the trumpeters’ call didn’t stop there. All over Suzail, no matter where he was, each Cormyrian citizen heard the note as if he were standing at the foot of the wall, before Azoun’s keep.
“Good luck, Your Highness,” Queen Filfaeril said softly. She reached down and squeezed Azoun’s hand for an instant.
The king smiled at his wife warmly, then strode through the garden. The procession followed behind Azoun as he climbed briskly onto the large wooden platform that had been built at the garden’s edge especially for the speech. When he reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto the broad, polished deck, King Azoun looked out over hundreds and hundreds of people.
He glanced back quickly at Vangerdahast, who was only then clearing the last step onto the platform. The gray-bearded old man bent over, winded after chasing the king up the stairs. Finally he took a deep breath and stood. The other wizards had joined him by now, and together they softly repeated their incantation, this time directing the spell at their monarch.
Azoun thought he saw a small, intense spark of blue-white light form in the air in front of the wizards, but before he could focus on the spark, the spell was complete and the ember disappeared. He felt a sharp, burning prickle in his throat as he turned back to the milling throng.
“My people,” the king said, and his words called through the entire city.
A thousand eyes looked up at Azoun from the Royal Gardens. Nobles with spyglasses lined the roofs of their homes to the north of the keep and watched the king. He, in turn, looked out on the sea of faces and smiled. He saw respect and awe and, perhaps, a little fear there. Those looks, the wide-eyed faces, momentarily eclipsed the speech Azoun had prepared in his mind. A warmth, a feeling of paternal duty and love, now filled the king’s thoughts.
“My friends and countrymen,” King Azoun said, correcting himself. “Faerun is in great danger, and I need your help.” He paused then, and let his subjects realize that he was asking them for assistance, that he needed them.
That fact alone would have shocked most of the throng into silence, but the intensity and emotion in Azoun’s voice fell upon the crowd and riveted them in place. Throughout the city, smiths put down their hammers and shipwrights lay down their awls, clerics put aside their holy books and tutors let their students set down their grammars and writing tablets.
From where he stood, near the garden’s edge, John the Fletcher couldn’t see Azoun’s face, but he imagined it was dark with passion. He’d never been closer to the king than he was that day, not even when Azoun had opened the previous year’s spring fair, only a few hundred feet from his shop. John’s proximity to the monarch made him happy, and the craftsman listened intently as Azoun described the Tuigan menace and the plight of Thesk and Rashemen.
“I’m not in this to help witches or foreigners,” Mal grumbled. A jowl-heavy baker held up a flour-covered finger and shushed the warrior. Mal scowled, but held his tongue. Silently John said a prayer of thanks that the warrior hadn’t started a fight with the fat man.
On the platform, Azoun was warming to the topic, falling into the same impassioned argument he’d used on some of his nobles to gain their support. “But the horsewarriors threaten more than our neighbors to the east,” the king said, waving an open hand toward the horizon. “No. The Tuigan will not be content with that end of the Inner Sea, nor will they be happy if they conquer the Dales or Sembia.”
Azoun ran his gaze slowly over the crowd, letting their expectation of his next words build for a moment. He could sense in their expressions that he’d won many of his subjects over already. “Do you know what else they want?” the king asked softly.
A ripple of hesitant answers rolled over the crowd. Azoun heard a few of these replies, and they revealed the names of his people’s fears. He singled out some and used them as rallying cries.
“Will we let the horsewarriors take our land?” the king asked.
The crowd shouted a ragged reply of “No!” and “Never!”
Azoun balled his hands into tight, quivering fists and held them in front of him. “Will we let the horsewarriors take our homes?”
“No!” the people screamed. Men and women mirrored the king’s stance, holding their own fists clenched before them. Out of the corner of his eye, Azoun saw that a few of the guards that lined the platform to either side of him were shouting with the crowd.
At the garden’s edge, Razor John felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he screamed his reply to Azoun’s challenge. He glanced at Mal and Kiri, and saw that they, too, were caught up in the king’s speech. In fact, almost everyone around the fle
tcher seemed to be shouting his or her defiance to the Tuigan threat.
Everyone, John realized, except a lone man, who stood next to the fat baker. He was tight-lipped and rigid, as if immobilized. Thin, almost emaciated, the man stood silently, his hard gaze locked on the stage.
The fletcher stared at the man for a moment, mesmerized by the contradiction he presented in the wildly screaming crowd. The rigid, green-clad man didn’t notice John’s gaze, though, as he stiffly pulled his tattered forest-green cloak a little tighter around his shoulders. He narrowed his eyes and glared at the king on the stage.
“Will we let the horsewarriors take our lives?” Razor John heard Azoun cry. A unified reply went up, and people raised their fists into the air. The fletcher glanced back at the platform and saw that the crowd again mirrored the king’s stance. When John returned his gaze to who seemed to be the one silent person in the gardens, he saw that the ragged man had pulled a rolled, yellowing piece of parchment from under his tattered cloak.
He held the scroll up quickly, and his lips began to move. Because of the shouting, John couldn’t tell if he was actually speaking. No one else seemed to be paying attention to the tight-lipped man, so John was the only one who saw the parchment he held in his bony fingers begin to glow with a pale red luminescence.
For a moment, the light puzzled the fletcher. Then the realization dawned on him: The man was casting a spell.
“I challenge every able-bodied citizen of Suzail,” Azoun continued from the stage. “Citizens from any part of Cormyr. Be prepared to help me to defend our country.”
The crowd roared, and John looked quickly from the glowing paper to the platform. “No!” he cried.
Shoving Mal out of his way, the fletcher lunged toward the assassin. He was too late. A second before Razor John touched the man’s torn and threadbare surcoat, the parchment disappeared in a gout of red-orange flame.
Three things happened at once.
Azoun had just told the crowd that they should report to the city watch to sign up for the crusade. The king was about to inform them that several churches devoted to gods of Good were ready to enlist volunteers, too. He never got the chance.
A pinpoint of red light arched from the crowd and sped toward the stage. As it got closer to the king, it grew larger and larger, until, at last, it resembled nothing less than a miniature sun, blazing toward the platform. The ball of fire singed the hair of those it passed over and blinded those foolish enough to look directly at it. It left a trail of smoke and the smell of burned skin in its wake.
Razor John saw none of this as he slammed into the assassin, knocking him to the ground. The fletcher rolled on top of the man and grabbed him by the shoulders. Only after the assassin’s elbow smashed into John’s ribs did he realize that the ragged man was far stronger than he looked. That blow was the only one struck, as the fletcher’s work-hardened muscles were enough to pin the man until help arrived.
“The city’ll thank me,” the man rasped over and over.
After the incident earlier that morning, the fletcher was only slightly surprised when the man’s tattered green cloak flew back and revealed the bear trap badge of the Trappers’ Guild bound to his thin arm.
On the platform, Azoun had only a second to react to the fireball rushing at him. Turning toward his wife, the king made what he knew was a futile effort to shield her from the blast. A few guards stepped toward the king and queen, but no one was fast enough to block the doom that hurtled toward the stage.
For his part, Vangerdahast seemed riveted with fear. In truth, he was reciting a brief but sincere prayer to the Goddess of Magic that the wards he’d placed on the stage held.
The fireball struck the front of the platform. All the king, the queen, or the others on the stage could see was a splash of brilliant red, though they could faintly feel the heat from the blast. Still, the flames never touched them. The magical attack struck the invisible wall Vangerdahast’s wards created in front of the stage and exploded.
Guards and nobles hustled Azoun and Filfaeril off the stage, back through the gates and into the keep. Once he was sure that the king was safe, Vangerdahast returned to the platform to assess the damage. Though his vision was slightly blurred from observing the fireball too closely, the royal magician could hear the screams and smell the burned flesh quite clearly.
The wards had kept the king safe, but hadn’t protected the people standing close to the stage.
4
Allies and Enemies
Vangerdahast paced around the barren, chilly cell for a moment, then spun about sharply and slammed his fist on the dark wooden table. “Are you mad?”
Laying a restraining hand on the wizard’s shoulder, Dimswart the Sage tried to repeat the question more neutrally. “Please, Bors, try to explain to me again why you thought you needed to kill King Azoun.”
The thin man pulled his tattered cloak tight around his shoulders and glared up at the sage. A spiteful look pulled his features into a squint on his narrow face. “I’ll tell ye no more than this: I did it for the good of the city. The crusade’ll ruin us all.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” Vangerdahast grumbled. He turned to Bors and shook a pudgy finger at him. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell us where you got the scroll and who put you up to this.”
The trapper closed his eyes and ran his hand over the leather guild patch tied around his arm. It was an action he’d repeated many times during the long night’s interrogation. For a moment, the close, stone-walled cell grew quiet.
Dimswart rubbed his red, puffy eyes and looked down at the notes he’d compiled. Bors—that was the only name the man had as far as they could learn—claimed to have acted out of public spirit in his attempt on Azoun’s life. A down-and-out trapper, barely making enough to pay his guild dues, the would-be assassin was sure that the expedition against the Tuigan would ruin the meager life he still had. Killing Azoun was the only way he knew to stop that disaster.
“What about guild members buying weapons, arrows and the like?” Dimswart asked, turning his gaze to the only other item in his notes. The fletcher who had captured Bors in the Royal Gardens had also told the king’s guard about another trapper, one who had tried to purchase a large number of arrows the morning of the attack.
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Bors grumbled. “This ain’t guild business. I meant only to harm Azoun.”
Vangerdahast cursed bitterly. “Well, you certainly did more damage than that, didn’t you? Fifteen dead. Twenty more horribly burned.” The wizard leaned close to the man and added, “The gods will not look kindly on this, and I’m sure you’ll be visiting the Realm of the Dead very soon.”
For the first time during the long hours of questioning Bors’s face betrayed something other than rigid anger. The flickering light from the single tallow candle that burned in the cell revealed the fear on the thin man’s hateful face. That expression lasted only an instant.
“I’ve told ye that I’m sorry for harming those poor folk unfortunate enough to be standing near the stage,” Bors said, his voice low and even. “But I can’t show ye my soul, so don’t second guess the gods as to my punishment … if they see fit to punish me at all for trying to save innocent Cormyrian lives from a needless fight.”
Dimswart rolled up his parchment, put away his ink and stylus, and abruptly rose to his feet. “Come on, Vangy. Let him rest. We’ve learned all he’s going to tell.”
The royal wizard glanced once at Bors, then called for the guard. A helmeted man appeared, wearing the purple dragon, symbol of King Azoun, emblazoned on his tunic. The long sword he wore at his side hung down past his woolen breeches and almost to the heels of his high, soft leather boots. The guard quickly opened the iron-braced door and let Dimswart and Vangerdahast out. “Make sure the prisoner doesn’t kill himself,” the wizard noted as he left.
Vangerdahast walked stiffly down the tower’s broad stone steps. Through the arrow loops cut into th
e thick walls every ten feet or so on the stairs, he could see the first feeble rays of the morning sun. The light cast flowing ghostly images before Vangerdahast’s eyes. The wizard staggered for a moment, but leaned against the cold gray wall before he could fall.
Dimswart patted the paunchy old man lightly on the back. “Not used to staying up all night anymore, eh, Vangy?”
The wizard shook his head and frowned. “These are strange days, Dimswart,” he said, continuing down the steps, this time at a slower pace. “At the moment, I wonder if I shall ever sleep again.”
The sage moved to Vangerdahast’s side. “I believe him, you know—about not serving the guild.”
“Eh?”
“Bors,” Dimswart began again. “I think he’s telling the truth. You can see it in his eyes.” He paused for a moment, then added with a slight smile, “Besides, my sources tell me that the guilds would plan something far more elaborate than one man reading a spell from a scroll.”
Again Vangerdahast steadied himself with a hand against the wall. After four or five stairs, he stopped and turned to the gray-haired sage. “I find it hard to believe that he actually had enough money to purchase a scroll of that power.”
Shaking his head, Dimswart folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think the fool who sold the scroll to him realized what he had. Or perhaps it was stolen and some wandering thief wanted to be rid of it. There’s a thriving black market for magic in any city the size of Suzail.”
“And the money?” the wizard asked impatiently.
The sage smiled, this time a broad, self-assured grin. “He had to have a little money from winter trapping. He probably spent all of it on the scroll. Did Bors look like he’d eaten recently to you?”