Cormyr

Chapter 3: A Death in Suzail

Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

They lost Duke Bhereu, Lord High Marshal of Cormyr, in the first few moments after the hunting party had been brought to the palace. Before they could even move him to a sickbed, he lapsed into convulsions, vomiting streams of thick, black blood. High Priest Manarech Eskwuin of Tymora was bent over the duke, in midword of a powerful curative spell, when this befell, and was coated over face, chest, arms, and hands with the warm, viscous bile.

The priest’s nerve broke at that point, and he gasped out some very unholy words and fled from Satharwood Hall, abandoning his lesser curates and bishops and leaving them to deal with the disaster. Behind him, the duke twisted, shook, and with a final, rattling breath, died.

Vangerdahast cursed, in part because of the duke’s ignoble passing and in part because of the priest’s flight. A blood-covered Lord High Priest Most Favored of the Luck Goddess, running through the palace halls, frightening the staff, and spreading this day’s ill tidings further was just what he needed right now.

A few other clergy, wearing frightened, pale faces, scuttled from the room. The Royal Magician scowled at them, and a few visibly flinched from his gaze as they bolted. He spared them no more attention than that, right now the realm had even less time than usual to spare for overweening fools. Most of the remaining priests were all staring back at him like so many cornered rabbits.

Vangerdahast could almost read their thoughts as they regarded him. The wizard was not an imposing man physically, being of average height and greater than normal girth, but because of carefully placed spells, the very air crackled around him. His eyes could be as sharp as any sword, and his glare as piercing as any spear. The wizard used his glare to keep the remaining priests at their tasks. He took care not to let his eyes fall to the sprawled bulk of Bhereu on the floor and thus spawn another exodus.

The ranking cleric remaining in the chamber ignored the wizard. She was an adventuress, a young bishop of Tymora, bedecked in sapphire-shaded robes, whose flaxen hair was wrapped in a severe bun. She wore a severe expression as well. While Vangerdahast was regarding the other priests, she had dropped to her knees beside Bhereu, determinedly pulling a scroll from her satchel. Vangerdahast laid two restraining fingers on her ann.

“I have an incantation here that can raise the dead,” she said, her voice low with urgency. Her face was calm, but her eyes were wide and nervous.

“Concentrate on the living now,” said the wizard, indicating the other two recumbent forms. The king was lying as still and serene as a tomb effigy, but a murmuring Thomdor was thrashing, hands clenching and clutching at imaginary foes, just as his brother had done a few breaths ago when Bhereu had yet lived. Expressionlessly Vangerdahast watched three guards struggle to hold the baron down.

“But, Lord Wizard,” the young priestess protested, “I can bring his lordship back with this single spell!”

“And two more lords may die while you’re about it,” Vangerdahast said sternly. “Your duty is to the king and the baron, who still live-at least for now. The duke won’t leap anywhere to elude your ministrations, he’ll keep for the moment.”

The young woman opened her mouth to protest, brows darkening, then swallowed and shut it quickly. It opened again, like a trap in a dungeon door, to snap, “Yes, sir.” There was a swirl of sapphire-hued robes as their owner turned to where Thomdor was thrashing.

Reaching in over the struggling guards, she laid her palm on the baron’s forehead and muttered a few words. Instantly his thrashing subsided to mere twitchings. Vangerdahast dismissed the soldiers, telling them to bear the remains of the clockwork monster to the castle. The present crisis was a matter for priests and wizards.

Both of the living royals were then lifted from the floor and gently laid on makeshift biers. They looked like wax statues of their former selves. Their skin was translucent, and seemed to be melting. Their eyes were opened wide but clouded, staring at nothing through milky orbs. Thomdor twitched and spasmed slightly, even under the effects of the bishop’s spell. Azoun lay still but taut. Vangerdahast could see that every sinew in his body was tensed.

With no more bodies being carried here and there or expiring spectacularly, a babble of voices arose in the room. An argument had broken out between a priest of Deneir and one of the Tymorans over whether or not the bodies should be moved immediately to “a more suitable resting place for men of their station.” Other men, including the two belarjacks, or door butlers, assigned to the room, looked to the Royal Magician to still the wrangling, but he said nothing, standing statuelike, face grim.

The dispute ended with the arrival of Loremaster Thaun Khelbor of Deneir, who curtly agreed with the Tymoran priest. For her part, the adventuring priestess of Tymora offered no argument to the decision, nor to the high priest of the rune-god assuming ministrations over the king while she worked on Thomdor.

Vangerdahast was still standing with his best scowl on his face, thinking furiously, but as fine-robed shoulders pushed past him and cultured voices lazily demanded to know “what was befalling, by the Purple Dragon,” he roused himself enough to note that there were twice as many people in the room as needed to be. His hand went to his belt pouches, which carried a variety of magical baubles, spell ingredients, flash stones and light stones, and other sundry devices. He fished out a small silver whistle.

A high-pitched blast of the whistle gained everyone’s immediate attention. The Royal Magician issued orders in cold tones that meant instant obedience for those who desired a few further moments of life. Unless, perhaps, they favored a long, damp career as a toadstool…

He spoke, and half a dozen minor priests and more than twice that number of peering courtiers were ushered out by hard-faced men-at-arms. From among the best guards in the room, Vangerdahast dispatched a runner to find Queen Filfaeril and ordered all but two of the others to clear the entire floor. The last thing they needed was gawkers and kitchen staff crammed in every doorway of Satharwood Hall trying to snare a look at the grievously injured royals. Vangerdahast bade the last guard stay by him in case something else was needed and sent the only other guard out to find Eskwuin and hose the terrified priest off before he fled into the city and started a full-fledged panic.

At about that time, the shoulders of the guards streaming out the door parted to disclose Alaphondar and Dimswart, the leading sages of Suzail. They were rivals of sorts, but at the moment, brushing shoulders as they peered across the chaos of moving people looking back over their shoulders at the king, they more closely resembled two weary prisoners caught in the same cell.

Alaphondar looked as if he’d been up the entire previous night researching some genealogical question in the library. He was followed by an argil, a page boy in palace livery. The young lad was frowning under the weight of a large box of tomes. Dimswart seemed to have been interrupted in midmeal and was servantless, bearing his own oversized black satchel with silver latches in one hand and a dripping leg of roast sarn fowl in the other. Both sages nodded to the Royal Magician and immediately asked the priests for a full report on “the stricken.”

Thaun Khelbor spoke first. “No change here. I’ve thrown every curative I know of to drive the toxin out, tried every preventive against disease, even used a charm against possession by tanar’ri. Nothing seems to catch hold.” He spread his hands in a gesture of frustrated futility. Khelbor was a balding man with patches of thick gray hair above his ears. He usually looked kindly and slightly comical, but right now his face was as white and tightly drawn as those of the two men who lay beside him on the trestle tables.

“Dispel magic?” asked Dimswart, gesturing with his leg of fowl.

“When I first arrived on the scene,” Vangerdahast replied, “and a spell to slow the spread of poison. Neither had any effect.”

“No improvement here, either,” said the young bishop of Tymora, “though I did calm him with a spell to remove fear.”

Vangerdahast stroked his beard. “That may just be a symptom, like night sweats or palsy.”

“If you can’t halt the disease,” quoted Alaphondar, “at least arrest the symptoms.”

Vangerdahast nodded. “We don’t know if it is a disease, or a poison, or a combination of curses, or what. But you are correct, at any rate.”

He turned to the priests and ordered, “Concentrate on lowering their temperatures, and perform a remove fear spell on His Majesty as well. That may ease the rictus in his frame. Make sure their breathing passages are unblocked and their hearts remain beating. Leech them if you have to-but only if you have to.” He looked around. “Where’s the one who was with them? Where’s Aunadar Bleth?”

The priests and sages ignored the question as they bent over their charges. Azoun’s breathing had become ragged and short, but as the calming spell took hold, Vangerdahast watched it lengthen and deepen, becoming more regular and measured. For the moment, at least, it seemed unlikely that the king and the baron would find their gods and leave Faerun behind this day.

Vangerdahast looked around the temporary sickroom. The two sages passed from one stricken man to the other, pausing only to confer and compare notes. Khelbor of Deneir and the young bishop tended to their individual charges. Lesser priests bustled back and forth, bringing clean cloths and ewers of fresh water. The page boy had sat down on his master’s box of tomes, excitement sharp on his young face.

Of Aunadar Bleth, there was no sign.

The Royal Magician looked to the guard beside him and the door butlers, including them all in his question. “Where did young Bleth go? Did you see him?” he asked both the guard and the belarjacks.

When mute, reluctant head shakings came as the only reply, Vangerdahast frowned again and sent one of the belarjacks to find out what had happened to the young noble, with instructions to contact the Royal Magician in his private library when the noble youth had been found. He then gave the lone guard orders to let no noble of the realm or stranger come near the two royals, then left the impromptu sickroom.

His private library-the one the folk of the court knew about, at least-was little more than a large anteroom whose three full walls were covered by bookcases. Vangerdahast skirted the pedestal with its guardian watchskull and pulled down three volumes from the shelves: one on toxins, one on diseases, and a treatise on mechanical creatures.

He sat in his favorite chair, the one upholstered in sahuagin flesh, and set the books on the small duskwood table next it, placing the topmost tome in a book holder fashioned to resemble a silvery human hand. The hand immediately shifted to open the book to the title page and held it there, propping the pages open with its smallest finger and thumb.

Vangerdahast thanked the magical contrivance gravely-the book bobbed a trifle in reply-and reached out to touch the helm of a staring knight carved into the decorative column of one bookcase. The helm slid inward with the faintest of clicks, and the spines of three massive, immovable tomes on a nearby shelf folded outward, revealing a small-and almost full-hiding place.

The wizard pulled a flat plate from a stack in the hiding place, a circular, mirrored disk with runes around its periphery, and tapped his finger on the door of the secret place, which rose smoothly to conceal the storage niche again. Vangerdahast paid it no attention, he was muttering a spell over the message plate, quickly committing words to it for later retrieval.

A chime only he could hear sounded. Vangerdahast laid one hand on the little sylph statuette that could spit lightning if need be and said sharply, an instant before a cautious knock fell upon the door, “Come!”

The door opened to reveal the anxious face and shoulders of the door guardian, with the news that Lord Bleth the Younger was in Princess Tanalasta’s quarters. Vangerdahast delivered a mild curse to the ceiling and gave the message plate to the page, with instructions as to whom to deliver it to among the war wizards and what he was to do about it. The young boy nodded and scampered off, his face stern and serious.

Vangerdahast’s features were equally stern and serious as he stalked through the halls of the royal wing of the palace. His grim face and stride, and the half-heard curses he was muttering under his breath as he trod the purple carpets, confirmed to the servants he passed that something terrible had happened to the king.

The Royal Magician put a hand to his lips for silence, swept past the belairjacks and the knights of the chamber, and walked into Princess Tanalasta’s sitting room unannounced. The room had been young Azoun’s when Rhigaerd was on the throne, but the princess had brought her own delicate hand to its furnishings since then. Gone were the heavy stained oak armchairs and tables, and the maps of the realm that had looked down on them. Vangerdahast threaded his way through filigreed chairs of white-painted bow wood and gilded lounges covered with floral print cushions. The maps were gone, too. The old wizard thought, as he always did, that there were too many mirrors in these chambers now. As a mage, he thought of mirrors as things from which unbidden horrors could emerge, not as something to admire oneself in.

Princess Tanalasta was seated on her favorite divan, wearing a dark blue high-throated, swept-shouldered gown that made her look like a mature, no-nonsense priestess instead of a high-ranking noble. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a half-coil, from which it flowed freely down her back-and inevitably strayed over her face when she was distraught. Now, for instance.

Aunadar Bleth was on one knee before her, stroking her hand. Tanalasta looked as white as a ghost and much older than her thirty-six summers. Tears glistened on her cheeks and chin. A damp and crumpled anathlace in her hand told the tale that these were not the first tears she’d shed this morn. Bleth looked up, then hastily stood as Vangerdahast strode up to them.

“His Majesty and the others…?” began the young noble.

“Duke Bhereu is dead,” said Vangerdahast without preamble, his eyes on the princess. She gasped and flinched away, as if his words were blows, but she seemed in no imminent danger of swooning. “His Majesty and the baron are out of immediate peril, but still lie senseless under the effects of whatever killed the duke.” Without a pause, his gaze turned to Bleth and sharpened. “Why did you leave us?”

Aunadar looked at Vangerdahast and blinked, as if he did not understand the question. The Royal Magician seemed to exude crisp, commanding power, but the slender noble stood like a stone that ignores the wind of a raging storm. Bewilderment flickered across his face for a moment before he said hesitantly, “I’m sorry. Was I needed?”

“You are the only conscious survivor of an attack on the king,” said Vangerdahast flatly, only barely concealing his irritation. “Furthermore, all of you may have been touched by some malady, which might be poison, or spell, or a virulent and contagious disease. And the first thing you do upon returning to the palace is spread that potential disease to the heir apparent.”

Bleth’s face went dark red, and he sputtered, his eyes beginning to blaze. One of Tanalasta’s slim hands reached up to squeeze his own. He looked down at it, put his other hand over her soft fingers, and seemed to remember both his own station and who he was addressing. He shook his head as if to clear it and said with dignity, “I’m sorry, Lord Wizard. I felt my place and duty was near my beloved. I wanted to be the one to tell her-“

“Tell me, then,” said Vangerdahast, lowering his bulk into one of the thin-legged chairs that usually held the more petite derrieres of one of the princess’s ladies-of-chamber. It creaked alarmingly. “And tell me everything.”

Aunadar sat down next to the princess, pressed his hands together in his lap, frowned, and haltingly began to relate the tale he’d just told Tanalasta. Vangerdahast leapt on every other sentence or so, distressing the young noble and making him flush and stammer. Twice the old wizard demanded Aunadar recount once more the sequence of who attacked the golden beast when, and in what order it struck at them.

“Bhereu went down first, then His Majesty, then the baron,” Bleth said at last, exasperation sharp and shrill in his voice.

“But if what you say is true, Baron Thomdor attacked the beast first,” Vangerdahast said heavily.

“Both cousins did-one from each side!” Aunadar said, almost protesting. He looked to Tanalasta, as if hoping that she might end this interrogation by decree, but she was looking sadly from wizard to noble and back again, eyes wide and red-rimmed, lips set in a silent line. Aunadar sighed unhappily and added, “It was Bhereu who seemed affected first by the beast’s breath.”

The Royal Magician nodded as if he didn’t believe a word and asked, “When the baron returned to the fray, did he seem affected?”

“Yes, I suppose he was… that is, he was pale and perspiring.”

“You say you attacked with your cape held up over your face. Why did you do this?”

Aunadar blinked. “I thought it was a gorgon-a metallic beast with steaming breath that turns one to stone…”

“It wasn’t,” the wizard said flatly, “and it doesn’t. It was an abraxus, a magical creation similar to a golem or automaton.”

The younger noble started, eyes flaring in shock-and then narrowing to slits of suspicion. “So you’ve seen one of these before?”

“I have, or rather, my mentor told me of them,” Vangerdahast said simply, and shut his mouth, letting the noble’s unspoken question hang unanswered in the air between them. They stared at each other in silence, gazes locked in mute challenge, for two long breaths as the princess looked from one face to the other. Then, eyes still locked with Aunadar’s, the Royal Magician whispered, “And after the royals fell, you snapped the wand and summoned the rescue party.”

“I-” The noble tore his gaze free from the old wizard’s and looked at Tanalasta, eyes almost pleading. Then he dragged his gaze reluctantly back to the wizard. “I pulled the wand out, but… I didn’t know how to activate it. Baron Thomdor showed me how.”

“Fortunate,” said the Royal Magician, “that the good baron remained coherent long enough to give instruction.”

“Fortunate indeed,” said the young Bleth almost tonelessly, slumping his shoulders in exhaustion. Tanalasta put a comforting arm around him.

Vangerdahast nodded. No doubt the youth had glossed over this last detail when he’d told the princess his tale.

“I’m-I’m very sorry for all of this,” Aunadar offered wearily to the room in general, slowly bowing his head.

The three sat in silence for a long moment. Tanalasta kept her arm around Bleth, who looked at the floor. Her hand tightened on his shoulders and shook him a little, he looked up at his beloved then and managed a weak smile.

His elbows resting on the arms of the chair, fingers steepled in front of him, the wizard studied the pair on the divan. His eyes never left the face of the young noble.

At length, Vangerdahast spoke. “In the future, young Bleth, when you are involved in any serious matter involving peril to a member of the royal family, you will remain around long enough to inform others who need to know what befell. I think you know who those others are.”

Aunadar raised his head and their eyes locked, noble and wizard, brief fire passing between them. The youth nodded slowly. “Of course. I thought the others were in your capable hands.” His words held no hint of bitterness.

Tanalasta leaned forward and captured Vangerdahast’s gaze with her own reddened, pleading eyes. “My father… will he be…?” Her voice trailed away into silence.

The Royal Magician inclined his head to her. “I know only what I told you earlier, Lady Highness,” he said carefully. “The tremors he and the baron experienced have subsided. However, neither has roused nor responded to any curative power we have brought to bear.”

The eldest princess of Cormyr went even paler at his words, her skin becoming almost as pale as milk. Now it was Bleth’s turn to put his arm about her. He whispered soft words in her ear, but his eyes, flaring the sharp light of an unmistakable challenge, never left those of the High Wizard.

“Your Majesty,” said Vangerdahast to the princess, returning Bleth’s look with a steady, steely gaze of his own as he spoke. “I am sure this matter will be swiftly resolved. The Lords Alaphondar and Dimswart are already in attendance on… the stricken, and I will be returning to them to render whatever aid I can. However, if the worst comes to pass…”

Tanalasta raised her hands in front of her and spread her fingers, as if warding off a blow. “No,” she said quietly.

“Your Majesty,” Vangerdahast pressed, his voice softening, “it would be most wise to prepare for every possibility…”

“No,” she said again, louder, and raised her head to regard the Royal Magician. She was crying again, but fire burned in those sapphire eyes.

“Even so,” the wizard began softly, “the realm-“

“I said no,” she said, steel creeping into her voice for the first time. “I refuse to even consider that until until all other possibilities have been excluded. Am I clear?”

“But, Your Majesty…” Vangerdahast said mildly, raising his brows.

Tanalasta stood, taller than most men and as imperious as Azoun at his most fierce. “Am… I… clear?” she repeated, biting off each word. Aunadar rose behind her and placed a supportive hand on her shoulder. He had to reach up to do it. As he looked at the Royal Magician, his other hand went slowly and deliberately to the hilt of his sword.

“As always,” the wizard replied calmly, also rising, “I will send word as we know more.”

“Do so,” said the princess coolly. “You have my faith, as my father and the baron have my prayers. You are dismissed.”

Expressionlessly Vangerdahast turned his head to regard Aunadar Bleth. The young noble treated him to a short, serious nod-a warrior’s farewell to an equal-but made no motion to depart. Nor did the princess make any motion that might have been interpreted as a dismissal of her suitor. The High Wizard bowed slightly from the waist, then strode to the door.

Before leaving, he looked back at the pair. Already Tanalasta’s moment of strength had passed, she was slowly collapsing back onto the divan, her face in her hands. Her slender shoulders were shaking. At her side, Aunadar Bleth stroked her shoulder and her hair and spoke words the wizard could not hear, his face close to hers. It was as if Vangerdahast, the palace, and all the court had become invisible, leaving the pair alone together.

Vangerdahast heard the heavy outer door of the princess’s chambers close behind him-and, ominously, the sound of a lock being thrown. The wizard raised his head as if to take in badly needed fresh air, letting his gaze stray up at the hallway’s ceiling. Warriors, witch lords, elves, and dragons battled in the yellowing plaster. Their eternal struggle ran all along the ceiling of the hall, in silent contrast to the tumult stirred up by this day’s disaster.

Vangerdahast lowered his gaze to see a figure running along the carpets toward him, a figure dressed in sapphire-hued robes. He gave her a raised hand of greeting and asked, “What are you called, lady priestess?”

She blinked at him, and then said, “Gwennath of Tymora, lord wizard, sometimes called the Bishop of the Black Blades Adventurers.” And then, without pause-a swiftness which Vangerdahast admired greatly-she plunged into what she had been going to say to him. “The convulsions have stopped for both men, and their breathing is weak but steady. Neither has roused, and both are extremely pale. They are hot to the touch, but cold compresses seem to moderate this condition somewhat. Loremaster Khelbor argued against leeching, but the sages are taking just a bit of blood for their own divinations.” She paused for breath, brushing a stray hair out her face with an impatient thumb.

The wizard nodded approvingly. “Any idea yet as to the cause?”

Gwennath shook her head. “None. They’re bringing the clockwork thing into Belnshor’s Chamber, next to the Satharw-but you know where that is. I’m sorry, lord… I assume you’ll want to look at it. Its very presence at the fray suggests poison, but whatever afflicts the king and his cousin continues to resist every purgative, curative, and medication we can call to mind.” Her confused frown deepened. “And, lord…?”

“Yes, blessed lady?”

“I tried that incantation to raise the dead on his lordship the duke. It didn’t work.”

“Given everything else, I’m not surprised,” Vangerdahast told her, the barest hint of bitter weariness in his voice.

“It’s not supposed to happen like this,” she added, shaking her head in exasperation.

“Just what is supposed to happen when a royal duke dies and your king’s life is endangered?” asked the Royal Magician in the mildest of tones, raising his eyebrows slightly.

“I’m sorry, lord wizard,” stammered the young priestess. “I was thinking aloud and meant no disrespect. It’s just that… when one of the royals falls ill, cost means naught, and no power need be spared. There are a score or more things one can do to give aid. We’ve tried them all… with no result. There’s more spell power in that banquet hall than anywhere else shy of Waterdeep and, I suppose, Shadowdale-and we cannot get either man even awake!”

“And frustration eats at us all,” the wizard murmured, eyes no longer seeing the earnest young priestess before him but looking instead at the distant room where priests and sages were fighting for the king’s life.

“Yes,” Gwennath sighed, then pursed her lips. “Lord wizard?”

“Yes?”

“Should King Azoun… I mean, if we can’t bring them back… what happens then?”

“Indeed,” Vangerdahast echoed softly, looking at the closed door of Tanalasta’s chambers. “What happens then?”