Death of the Dragon

6

“They’ll draw off now,” Alusair said with some satisfaction, “and wait for the dark. Just make sure we’ve gathered brush enough for a good, big ring of fires.”

The royal army stood wearily leaning on well-used swords, atop three hilltops somewhere in the northern marches of the realm. They watched orcs beyond counting growl and hiss and snarl their way down the hillsides, leaving their dead heaped in spilled gore behind them.

The fray had been long and bloody, the tuskers rightly not believing that such a paltry few humans could stand their ground-even high ground-against charge after charge of tested and eager warrior orcs. The slaughter had been frightful, awing even gray-haired veterans among the Purple Dragons. If the orcs had been able to muster just a little more boldness, they might have forced their way past tired human sword arms and cleared the hilltops of human life, reaping a king and a princess among their kills.

The ghazneth had exhorted them with harsh Orcish cries and barked orders, shaking its iron cage in its eager fury, but to no avail. The attacking orcs, so far as Alusair’s experienced eye could tell, had mounted no special effort to reach the imprisoned creature.

In the eerie silence that had fallen on the heels of the retreating orcs, the Steel Princess and her father watched the first cautious forays of dragoneers and noble blades move out to gather brush, then turned to face each other.

“Time to learn what we can of the fate of Vangerdahast,” Azoun muttered, taking care to turn his shoulder between his lips and the watching ghazneth.

“Do you still have the tracing dust Vangey gave you to find wayward, rebellious princesses?” Alusair asked, arching an eyebrow.

Azoun nodded and said, “I’d not forgotten it. I yet retain the firefending magic he laid upon me, too.”

Alusair’s eyes fell to the wands hanging from her father’s belt, and settled on a certain one marked with a red rune. “Bait?” she asked simply, and the king nodded again.

“Let’s be about it,” he said tersely, and beckoned a lancelord to his side, to deliver the orders for everyone to stand back-a good twenty paces back-from the cage.

The ghazneth laughed harshly as the Cormyreans backed warily away, not sheathing their blades or taking their eyes off it for long. The deep, rumbling laughter grew as the two Obarskyrs strode forward to approach it.

“Made bold by your iron bars, paltry excuse for a king?”

“Well met, Luthax,” Azoun replied evenly. “Found your way out yet?”

The ghazneth who had once been the second most powerful-and in a brief, dark moment, perhaps the most powerful-war wizard in Cormyr hissed and rattled long talons along the bars. He could draw those talons right back into his fingers, Alusair noted, taking care to keep just out of reach of those corded black arms.

“Seeking to supplant the rightful royal magician of today?” the king continued, almost playfully.

Luthax threw back his bald head and laughed, the broken fringe of beard around his jaw giving him a truly bestial appearance. “Is that fool’s fate your most pressing concern? O blind King, you’ve far worse troubles to worry about right now. There’s the survival of your throne and kingdom, for instance.”

The ghazneth leered at Alusair through the bars, and asked, “How much for this she-wolf, Azoun? I have need of a spirited apprentice-or a breeding wench for the steed I plan to birth wrapped in truly powerful spells. Care to try your best mages against me?”

“Not particularly,” Azoun said, strolling around the cage with a humorless half-smile flickering at the edges of his mouth. “My duty is to preserve the lives and well being of my subjects as much as I can-even subjects such as you-not throw them away in pointless spell hurlings.”

“I’m not your subject!” Luthax spat. “Go find Vangerdahast, if it’s the fawning kisses of tame, groveling wizards you want.”

“And just where would I find him?”

“Oh, no,” Luthax taunted. “You must be used to crossing verbal swords with very dull-witted courtiers, Azoun. Think you to worm one word out of me that I don’t care to let fall? I’m Luthax, a mage the likes of whom you’ve never seen and can’t, brute-wits that you are, even hope to understand. Cormyr seems infested with ghazneths just now, doesn’t it? Enough of us-more than enough of us-to hold one feeble old Vangerdahast where neither you nor any other man will ever find him.”

“Think you so?” the king replied softly. “The royal magician’s magic has already told me otherwise.”

“‘Otherwise’?”

“The hold of a ghazneth,” Azoun said casually, “seems far less sure than at least one ghazneth presumes it to be. Certainly less powerful than these crude iron bars. I wonder, now, just how much more of the vaunted powers of ghazneths are mere bluff and arrogance?”

The dark creature in the cage roared in fury and laid hold of the bars, shoulders rippling. The cage shook with its straining, but the bars held fast, and the creature hissed and snatched its hands away, holding them curled and trembling as if it had been burned.

“Starved for magic?” the King of Cormyr murmured. Azoun waited until the ghazneth’s angry eyes were fixed on his, then brought into view the wand he’d drawn from his belt and held hidden behind his back as the ghazneth vainly tried to tear apart its prison. “I am prepared to make a little trade.”

He stepped back, and watched the ghazneth that had been Luthax struggle with rage, then several other emotions in turn, before he wheeled and asked in a deep rumble that was once more calm and cunning, “A trade of what for what?”

“This untrapped, operating wand of fireballs-” Azoun paused, watching the ghazneth’s fiery eyes flicker “-for complete and accurate identification that I can understand and deem sufficient as to the wizard Vangerdahast’s whereabouts, and any traps or guardians upon him or on the way to reaching him.”

Luthax seemed to freeze, sitting hunched in silent thought for a time that stretched longer than most men would have found comfortable, but the ghazneth and the king might have been two statues, so patient and still did they both remain. The bald head in the cage suddenly stirred, and its owner rumbled, “You have a trade, King. Approach.”

Azoun took a step closer to the cage then halted with a smile, holding out the wand crosswise. Both he and it were still well outside the ghazneth’s reach.

Luthax’s eyes flickered again, but he said merely, “Some seven hills southeast of yonder ridge is an abandoned stead: a house dug into a hillside, a privy, and a collapsed barn. There is a well between the house and the barn, and your prized wizard is at the bottom of it, yoked and weighted, wet but safe. He cannot speak, see, or move his hands, and from his shoulders rise two rings that a ghazneth-or you, with rope and hooks and a little patience-can draw him up by. He is well, if you’ll excuse the pun, but probably far from amused.”

“No traps?”

“None-unless you consider the uncovered, unmarked well hole a trap. I don’t suppose a wizard would be improved by having a Purple Dragon in full battle armor crash down on top of him.”

“This is all I should know?”

“By our bargain, all. Give me the wand, if kings yet have honor.”

“Kings still do,” Azoun told him dryly, and drew out the locking pins that held the sliding hatch lock shut. He threw back the heavy hatch with surprising strength for a lone man of his age, and hurled the wand into the cage.

The ghazneth snatched it out of the air, howled in glee, and boiled up into the air like a serpent striking at the sun.

His wings beat in a ragged blur as blue lightning raged around the wand, became a burst of light, and sank back into Luthax’s now empty hands as he spat. “I’ve not forgotten all my old spells,” Luthax said. “Lose a wand, and gain a meteor swarm!”

Balls of fire raced out from the ghazneth’s mouth, followed by bellows of wild laughter, straight at the king. Azoun stood his ground, shouting, “Everyone-get back and get down!”

On the heels of Azoun’s cry, the hilltop exploded in flames.

Hooting with laughter, the ghazneth tumbled backward through the air, flapping his wings exultantly. “A little warmer than you expected, Azoun? Ha! What an idiot! What a fool! This was the best the Obarskyrs could give the realm?”

The ghazneth circled the blazing hilltop once, roaring with laughter as the warriors below cowered away from him with their vainly upthrust swords bristling like blades of grass. Luthax flew away.

There were gasps of awe from the warriors as the King of Cormyr strode out of the raging flames, apparently unharmed, and snapped at the nearest swordlord, “Waste no time searching for fictitious wells or abandoned steads-a quarry I once lost a horse in lies seven hills southeast of yonder ridge.”

“Whither then, Majesty?”

Azoun Obarskyr pointed at the ghazneth in the distance. “Clever and arrogant war wizards gone bad may be-but they aren’t quite confident enough not to check on their captives, once the seed of doubt is planted.”

He smiled a tight smile and reached for the hilt of his ready sword.