Death of the Dragon

9

It was what had become a typical morning in the courtyard of the Arabellan Palace. Walls rumbled to the sound of passing plague wagons, the air was laced with smoke from the wildfires outside the city, and cobblestones rang to the bark-and-clang of drill sergeants training recruits to meet the orc menace in the north. Beyond the lowered portcullis women begged gruel for hungry children, madmen trumpeted the world’s end, and clouds of flies droned over carts of food spoiling faster than it could be shared. The scene was much the same across all of northern Cormyr. If the ghazneths ran free much longer, Tanalasta felt sure, the entire kingdom north of the High Road would be reduced to a scorched, diseased wasteland.

With some difficulty, the princess turned from the gate and looked to her small entourage. Save for herself and the queen, all of the guards, wizards, and companions carried only one small satchel of personal effects. Even Filfaeril and Tanalasta had packed their belongings into a single trunk each.

“Is everyone ready?” When no one reported otherwise, Tanalasta nodded to Korvarr Rallyhorn. “You may proceed.”

“As you command, Princess.” The steely-eyed lionar bowed stiffly-almost resentfully, Tanalasta thought-then turned toward the front of the group. There, two war wizards stood, each one linking arms with four burly dragoneers. In their hands, the dragoneers held bare iron swords. “You may proceed. We will follow in a hundred-count.”

The wizards spoke a magic command word and vanished with a distinct blat, taking their eight dragoneer escorts along. Korvarr began to count aloud, slowly and audibly so everyone in the remaining half of the party could hear and understand.

Tanalasta’s mother leaned close. “You know what this looks like, dear.”

“That can’t be helped,” Tanalasta replied. “The research I need is in Suzail.”

“People will think we’re fleeing to safety,” Filfaeril continued. “It hardly inspires confidence.”

“I am not confident,” Tanalasta replied. “We understand Xanthon, but what about the other ghazneths? The Arabellan library doesn’t have the answers. If we want to stop them, I must return to the Royal Archives.”

“And knowing why these traitors forsook Cormyr will help us how?” Filfaeril asked pointedly.

“You know how. I’ve already explained what happened to Xanthon when he learned that I had married Rowen.” Tanalasta spoke even more quietly than before. Together, she and Filfaeril had decided it would be wisest to let Azoun announce her marriage so it would appear the king approved. “Learning the reasons the other ghazneths betrayed the realm is just a matter of enough study-and studying is what I’m best at.”

“You are also an emblem of Cormyr,” Filfaeril reminded her. “If the people think we are fleeing, they will lose hope.”

“Then you may stay to reassure them, Mother,” Tanalasta said. “But I will do what I think best for Cormyr.”

Korvarr’s count reached ninety, and Sarmon the Spectacular stepped up and offered them his arms. Tanalasta slipped her hand through the crook of the wizard’s elbow, then cocked a querying eyebrow at her mother.

“I am coming,” Filfaeril sighed. “For me to appear braver than you would undercut your station-and I am done costing you prestige.”

“One hundred,” Korvarr announced.

Sarmon uttered his spell, and Tanalasta’s stomach rose into her chest. There was that timeless interval of numb, colorless falling in which she knew only the wizard’s fingers around her wrist and the roar of silence in her ears. Now she was somewhere else, standing in a different courtyard, attempting to blink away the teleport afterdaze and recall where she was.

The dull clamor of clanging iron rang off the bailey walls, and the air reeked of battle gore. The stones beneath her feet reverberated to the erratic thud of tramping feet and falling bodies, and there were armored men and black shapes flashing past in every direction. Sarmon had teleported them into a battle, and for the life of her, the princess could not recall why.

A dark silhouette whirled back toward her, and Tanalasta glimpsed an eerily familiar shape streaking toward her on black wings. The thing had gangling arms and hands with ebony talons, a skeletal torso with naked female breasts, coarse black hair that framed smoldering scarlet eyes.

“Ambush!” cried Korvarr Rallyhorn.

The lionar’s armored body struck Tanalasta sidelong, slamming her into Sarmon and Filfaeril and driving all three to the ground. Suddenly, Tanalasta recalled where they were supposed to be. They were supposed to be in the inner bailey of the Suzail Palace, but Sarmon seemed to have bungled his spell and teleported them into one of the terrible battles raging in the north.

A loud clunk sounded above Tanalasta as the ghazneth’s talons struck Korvarr’s armor and tore him off her. Trying to fathom how the lionar’s escort had bungled a teleport spell in exactly the same way as Sarmon the Spectacular, the princess rolled off the pile. She pulled the wizard off her mother and shoved him toward Korvarr.

“Help the lionar!” she ordered.

Even as the ghazneth dragged Korvarr bouncing and skipping across the cobblestone pavement, the lionar somehow managed to pull his iron sword and start hacking at the creature.

“And Sarmon-try not to bungle your spell this time,” Tanalasta added, not bothering to conceal her anger at the wizard’s incredible mistake.

Brow rising at her sharp tone, Sarmon pulled something from his weathercloak and tossed it in the lionar’s direction. As he started his incantation, a familiar drone rose behind Tanalasta. She spun around to find herself looking through a swirling fog of wasps and flies at the looming spires of the Dragon Keep, which stood well inside Suzail Palace.

As Tanalasta struggled to digest the fact that they had teleported on destination, the lanky figure of Xanthon Cormaeril emerged from the droning haze and started to fight his way through the royal bodyguards. He was carrying a ten-foot halberd in each hand, leaping and spinning and whirling the ungainly polearms like a pair of windmills. The dragoneers countered bravely, charging in behind their purple bucklers to hack at his legs or thrust iron-headed spears at his heart, but they were no match for the ghazneth’s speed. He batted their attacks aside one after the other and continued toward the crown princess.

Filfaeril grasped Tanalasta’s arm and pulled her in the opposite direction, following Alaphondar, Owden, and half a dozen dragoneers toward the Purple Barracks. Their escape came to a sudden halt when a squat little ghazneth with a pot belly and a filthy black beard dropped out of the sky and blocked their way. He fixed his crimson eyes on Queen Filfaeril and started forward, using his powerful wings to bat aside fully armored soldiers as though they were little children.

“Boldovar.” Filfaeril gasped the name so softly that Tanalasta barely heard it. “No!”

“Faithless harlot!” Boldovar hissed, wagging his red tongue at the queen. “I love that in a woman.”

Filfaeril shrank back, then turned and would have run, had Tanalasta not caught hold of her arm. Owden stepped forward, placing himself squarely between the queen and her tormenter. Boldovar sneered and spread his wings in readiness. Instead of raising his iron mace, the harvestmaster pulled the sacred flower amulet off his neck and thrust it toward the ghazneth.

“In the name of the Great Mother, return thee to the grave and surrender thy body to the good soil.”

Boldovar’s eyes grew as hot as flames. He began to curse and gnash his teeth so furiously that a bloody froth spilled from his mouth, but he veered away from the holy symbol and tried to circle around-not to Filfaeril’s side but to Tanalasta’s. Owden cut the ghazneth off and stepped forward, pushing the amulet to little more than an arm’s reach of the ghazneth.

“Owden, don’t be a fool!”

Tanalasta caught the priest by the back of the cloak, then glanced in the direction of the first ghazneth. The creature was knee-deep in mangled dragoneers and also struggling to reach her. It was hindered by a trio of warriors whose armor and iron halberds had suddenly turned flaky and orange with rust, and by a short chain of golden magic wrapped around both legs. At the other end of the chain lay a feeble old wizard bearing a fatherly semblance to Sarmon the Spectacular. One arm was buried to the shoulder beneath the cobblestones, and he was screaming in anguish as the ghazneth struggled to pull free.

There was no sign of Korvarr, unless he was the green hummingbird darting in and out to plunge his pointed beak into the ghazneth’s scarlet eyes. The bird seemed to be having more effect than any other attacker. Every time it struck, the ghazneth screeched and used its powers to heal the injured eye, then flailed about madly trying to knock the tiny creature from the sky. As quick as the dark fiend was, however, the hummingbird was quicker. It dodged, darted, then zipped in to strike again.

A cloud of wasps and flies arrived in a boiling, stinging swarm. Tanalasta looked back to see Xanthon less than five paces away, tearing into her last two bodyguards. Behind him, the palace garrison was streaming into the bailey from all directions, but the princess had noticed the pattern of the ghazneths’ attacks and knew the guards would never arrive in time to save her. Even Boldovar, who had held Filfaeril captive for nearly a tenday, and in his madness still considered her to be his queen, was circling toward Tanalasta instead of her mother. Clearly, the time had come to reach for her escape pocket and count herself lucky.

Instead, Tanalasta turned to face Xanthon. It alarmed her to find him here, as powerful as ever, and perhaps even more so. His wings were now large enough that the tips rose above his shoulders. Had her theory about how to defeat the ghazneths been correct, he would be no more than the sniveling traitor who had fled Sarmon at Goblin Mountain, but the princess was not about to give up her idea so easily. If her theory was wrong, she would at least understand why.

Xanthon trapped one dragoneer’s iron sword in the head of a halberd and began a tight loop, preparing to fling the weapon out of the warrior’s grasp. Tanalasta raised her chin haughtily and stepped toward the battle, dragging her mother along and ignoring the wasps and flies descending to attack their faces.

“How now, Cousin?” Tanalasta called. “Is a Cormaeril on the throne no longer vindication enough?”

The loop of Xanthon’s halberd stopped short, and the dragoneer managed to free his sword from the trap.

“Don’t talk of thrones to me, shrew! You are no more married to Rowen than you were to Aunadar.”

“She’s not?” Filfaeril cried. She pulled free of Tanalasta’s grasp and placed a hand over her breast. “By the Lady’s Fiery Tresses, that’s good news! I didn’t know how I was going to explain it to the king. Imagine! A Cormaeril as the royal husband. What would the Silverswords do?”

Xanthon’s eyes flashed crimson, and he gasped, “She told you?” He grew so distracted that he was barely quick enough to deflect the next few attacks. “Then it’s true?”

“I should hope not!” Filfaeril stepped toward the ghazneth. “If it is, take me now and end my shame.”

The shadow seemed to fade from Xanthon’s face, and the hatred in his eyes took on the more human aspect Tanalasta had witnessed at Goblin Mountain. She caught her mother’s arm and jerked her back, beginning to fear that perhaps the queen’s reaction was not really an act.

“That’s quite enough, Mother.” Tanalasta had learned all she needed-perhaps even more than she would have liked. She nudged Alaphonder toward Owden, who was still facing off Boldovar, then spun away from Xanthon and reached for her weathercloak’s escape pocket. “We’ll discuss this further in my chambers.”

A dark door opened before Tanalasta and she stepped through, dragging her mother along behind her. There was that timeless moment of falling, then she was back in the familiar confines of her own chamber, not quite sure why she felt so disoriented or why she was holding hands with the queen. In the next instant, Alaphondar arrived with Owden Foley in tow, then Tanalasta heard the battle clamor out in the bailey, and it all came rushing back to her.

She opened the door to her anteroom and shouted, “Sentries! Alarm!”

“And bring your irons!” added the queen. “We have ghazneths.”

Tanalasta could not help smiling as she heard the startled cries echoing down the halls. Though she had not been home in well over a year, she was glad to see some things never changed. She listened for a moment to the astonished guards relaying the news of her return, then turned back to her mother.

“I hope that act was for Xanthon’s benefit,” she said.

Filfaeril smiled too sweetly. “Of course, my dear. I couldn’t be happier for you.”

Without awaiting a reply, the queen crossed the bed-chamber and peered out between the draperies. Tanalasta followed close behind and took the other side. Out in the bailey, Boldovar and the other winged ghazneth-it had to be either Suzara Obarskyr or Ryndala Merendil, since they were the only two female ghazneths-were little more than specks in the sky. Still lacking wings large enough to lift him, Xanthon Cormaeril was clambering up the outer wall like a huge spider, now fully reverted to his full ghazneth self.

Shaking her head in frustration, Tanalasta stepped away from the curtain and turned to her mother. “It’s my turn to apologize. Apparently, I was wrong.”

“You-wrong?” Filfaeril let the curtain drop and gave her daughter a doubtful look. “Why do I have a hard time believing that?”

“Because she wasn’t.” Alaphondar stepped between the two women and cautiously peered out between the draperies. “Had Tanalasta been wrong, I doubt the ghazneths would have set this trap for her.”

“A trap?” echoed Owden. He and Alaphondar exchanged meaningful glances, then he looked away and did the same with Tanalasta. “You don’t suppose they could have been worried about something else?”

“I don’t see what,” Tanalasta said quickly. Though enough time had passed for the princess to be certain she remained with child, she had not yet told her mother-partly because she feared the queen’s reaction, and partly because of her own irrational desire to shelter the child by keeping the pregnancy secret as long as possible. “But we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves yet. We’ve been able to weaken Xanthon twice now, but he has also recovered-and in fairly short order. I don’t think my theory is going to destroy the ghazneths.”

“Not yet, but it is a start,” insisted Alaphondar. “If not, why would the ghazneths be worried?”

The sage’s question caused Filfaeril to cock her brow. “A much more interesting question, I think, is why they were worried at all.”

Owden and Alaphondar frowned, but Tanalasta, who was more accustomed to her mother’s shrewd political thinking, was quicker to understand her meaning. “And how they happened to be waiting when we arrived.”

Alaphondar’s old chin dropped. “By Oghma’s eternal quill!”

Only Owden, unfamiliar with the duplicitous life at court, did not understand. “I can’t believe they’re that smart. To surmise that we might come to Suzail is one thing, but to guess when

Tanalasta laid a silencing hand on the harvestmaster’s thigh. “It wasn’t a guess, Owden. They have a spy.”