Death of the Dragon

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 had 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.