Death of the Dragon

38

A fellowship of gloom crowded together in the dim depths of the royal tent, close around the silent king.

At the head of the bed where Azoun lay wounded, two bodyguards stood in stolid, watchful silence, their large and callused hands never far from the hilts of their swords.

The men they faced, down at the foot of the bed-half a dozen priests and a war wizard-brooded in a more restless silence, born of futility and mounting fear. Their most modest healing spells had failed, and they dared not try more powerful magics. Not with the ghazneth circling the hilltop like a vengeful hawk, casually diving down from time to time to rake and rend Purple Dragons at will.

At each shout and skin of blades outside the tent, the men sitting around the bed tensed and threw up their heads, peering vainly at the tapestry-hung tent walls as if some helpful, lurking enchantment might pluck the canvas aside to reveal the fray without, but the unhelpful canvas never moved.

Always, after a few moments, a scream of pain would rise close outside-sometimes brief, more often a long howl of agony that sank into the wet gurgling of a bloody death-and cold laughter would begin, fading as the eerie slayer took wing again into the sky.

The king never dozed through these brief battles. His eyes would snap open, anger sharpening his features, and his fingers would close like claws on the linen. Twice he made as if to rise, but each time pain too fierce to conceal flashed across his face, and he fell back to lie listening with fury in his eyes. Azoun was a king as impotent as the men he shared his tent with.

“This can’t go on forever,” the war wizard muttered, after a seeming eternity measured by twenty-seven separate death screams. “The battle could sweep right up to us, and find us no more ready than so many helpless children.”

As if his words had been a cue, the door hangings suddenly swirled and parted, held aside by the spears of two guards, who stepped into the tent and moved apart to allow someone to pass between them. The slightly stooped, stout figure in robes, who wore an iron crown on his head none of them had seen before, was otherwise familiar to all as Vangerdahast, the Royal Magician of Cormyr.

Azoun struggled to thrust himself up on his elbows and failed. The faintest of groans escaped from between set royal teeth.

The court wizard frowned and hastened forward. The sweat-streaked, working face before him opened pain-misted eyes for a moment, blinked, then stared. The king’s mouth twisted into a crooked grin.

“Vangey!”

The court wizard winced-his love for that nickname had never been great-but replied with a smooth bow, “My liege. I live to serve you still, and am come with words you must hear without delay.”

“Of course,” Azoun replied airily, for all the world as if he was gesturing with a wine goblet at a revel and not lying on his back bleeding his life away. “I expected no less. How came you by yon crown?”

“That reply must wait,” Vangerdahast said with a smile. He looked at the gathered priests, then gestured at the entrance.

No one moved, so he repeated the slow sweep of his pointing hand, clearing his throat and lowering his brows. The war wizard rose hastily, and the royal magician gave him an appreciative nod-which brought Eregar Abanther, Ready Hand of Tempus, a man known for neither slow wits nor pomposity, to his feet. Eregar made a low bow to the king, and departed.

Slowly the other clergy followed, their glacial responses tempered by their various desires to demonstrate the exaltitude of their rank or their lack of any need to obey a mere mage. When all others had risen, the war wizard almost had to thrust the high priest of Tymora out of his seat, but he settled for looming so close over him that Manarech Eskwuin clucked and sighed loudly-it was closer to a snarlin disgust, before he shifted.

“Keep them ready, just outside,” Vangerdahast commanded and barely waited for the mage to nod and leave before he leaned forward over the bed and murmured, “I’ve-“

The point of a sword swept in from beside the bed to hang, glittering-sharp, under the royal magician’s nose. Vangerdahast straightened and favored the bodyguard holding it with a withering look, but the blade did not move.

“You may leave,” he snapped, but the warrior’s only move was to advance a step-as did his fellow Purple Dragon, on the other side of the royal bed, their weapons rising in unison to menace the royal magician.

Kings’ Blades take orders only from their king. Not from a wizard wearing a crown they did not recognize, who might just be any mage using a spell to look like an old court wizard-the old court wizard they’d never liked much anyway-the wizard whose fingers, many said, had itched for years to take the crown of Cormyr onto his own head.

Their blades did not waver. Neither did Vangerdahast’s glare.

Azoun tried to hide a smile, and failed. “Step outside, my loyal blades,” he murmured, “but remain close and ready for my call.”

The swords swept down. Their owners bowed to the king and shouldered past Vangerdahast-in the case of the Bannerguard to the King, Kolmin Stagblade, it was as if a moving mountain had brushed the wizard aside, sending him staggering helplessly back a pace or two. The ruler of all Cormyr and his old tutor were finally alone.

Vangerdahast cast a suspicious glance all around the tent, as if expecting to find another dozen or so defiant guards skulking in the shadows. Finding none, he drew something out of his robe and thrust it into Azoun’s hands.

The king cradled it curiously on his palms, looking up and down its beauty. The thing looked elven, and old-and yet alive, almost glowing with power. It was a scepter of bright golden hue, longer than most, and fashioned into the likeness of a sapling oak with a small and delicate array of branches set seemingly at random. Its pommel was a giant amethyst cut into the shape of an acorn.

Azoun did not bother to utter his question but merely looked up at the old wizard.

“As far as I know,” Vangerdahast told him gravely, “you hold in your hands the most powerful creation of the elf Iliphar, Lord of Scepters. You’ll need it.”

He straightened-only to feel something tugging at his robes, holding him half bent. It was one of Azoun’s hands, clutching a fistful of material firmly, and its owner growled up at him, “To save the realm, no doubt. How?”

The Royal Magician sighed. “It has far more powers than either of us has years left to unravel or master, and it’s the key to defeating the dragon and ending this war-if used correctly.”

“And what, 0 most mighty of wizards, is ‘correctly’?”

Vangerdahast’s brows drew down. “I’m hardly as knowledgeable as you seem to think,” he said reprovingly. “Misjudgements as to our own competence are a large part of this…”

“ dark tangle that presently imperils the realm,” Azoun finished the hanging sentence smoothly, then drew down his own brows and growled, “Wizard, get on with it.”

Vangerdahast was silent for long moments before the tiniest trace of what might have been a smile crawled along his lips and was gone.

“My king,” he said at last, “the touch of this Scepter of Lords, in your hands, can wound the dragon more than any spellbolt or blade-but you must first atone aloud for the murder of Lorelei Alavara’s betrothed, then strike with this, in heartfelt compassion for what she and all elves have lost with the rise of the realm of Cormyr.”

Azoun’s smile faded. “The murder of Lorelei Alavara’s betrothed?” he echoed, raising an eyebrow.

It was hard for Vangerdahast to avoid lecturing the man he’d taught for so many years. “The dragon, known among dragonkind as Nalavarauthatoryl the Red-though the goblins she commands more often use the shorter form she herself employs, ‘Nalavara’-was once Lorelei Alavara, a young elf maiden. Red-haired, skilled at magic, and prouder than most, I gather. She was betrothed to Thatoryl Elian…”

“The first elf to be slain by a human in what is now Cormyr-Andar Obarskyr,” Azoun murmured. “I’ve not forgotten.”

“Vengeance has kept her alive these fourteen centuries and more,” Vangerdahast murmured, something akin to awe in his voice. “Satisfying that hunger may cost the fourth ruling Azoun his very life. To break what drives her on may mean willingly surrendering to her and offering her your life-perhaps even letting her take it.”

Azoun looked up, a fire in his eyes that Vangerdahast had not seen there since the birth of Foril, dead now these many years. “Can you promise me, Vangey, that such a sacrifice will destroy the dragon and deliver Cormyr from all this ruin?”

“In matters of magic, nothing is ever certain,” his old friend and tutor said quietly. “To claim otherwise would be wildest falsehood. Yet I believe this to be so. I know something of how elven oaths and blood-magic work-a very little, actually, but enough to say this: the Obarskyr ruler or heir alone can end the power of the dragon by such an offer. Your doom is not certain, but very likely. Likewise, the deliverance of the realm is uncertain, but very likely.”

“Certain enough,” Azoun said firmly. “If one must go into the darkness that awaits us all, let my road there be the high one. Let it be in one last service to Cormyr.”

His last words seemed to echo, as if they rolled out across vast distances beyond the dark corners of the tent, and for just an instant, Vangerdahast thought he heard the distant toll of a great bell-a god, marking a fateful decision? The ghazneth bell in Suzail, which after all lay not all that far off? Or could it be… but no matter. It was gone, and might have only been a trick of his mind supplying him with something he hoped to hear. Some reassurance that he wasn’t urging one of Cormyr’s greatest kings to throw his life away in a possibly mistaken, empty scheme.

“More than that,” Azoun added, a few moments later, sounding more than ever like the young prince Vangerdahast had once despaired of, “let it be done now. I’m ready-as ready as I’ll ever be!”

With that, the King of Cormyr flung back the bedcovers and stood up, brandishing the Scepter of Lords like a long sword.

The royal magician was old and feeling older by the hour, yet he wasn’t quite so decrepit as to be unable to move in great haste when he had to. Moreover, his hands were deft-and proved quite capable of plucking reeling rulers of the realm out of the air as they started to topple, and lowering both them and ancient elven scepters gently to resting places on handy beds.

“If this is your idea of ready,” he muttered, as he took the gasping king under the arms and heaved him back up onto his pillows, “I tremble for the future of the realm.”

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.”