Beyond the High Road c-2

by Troy Denning

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean-“

  “And now we have lost Ryban’s entire company.”

  “How can you call that my fault?” Tanalasta was genuinely hurt. “They were supposed to loose a few arrows and flee!”

  “That does not change what happened,” Vangerdahast insisted. “You have been playing with men’s lives, and I will have no more of it.”

  Tanalasta narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry for the loss of Ryban and his men, Vangerdahast, but I am not playing at anything. If you and the king are, tell me now.”

  “The king is quite serious, I assure you. He will not have an order of spell-beggars placed in such a position of influence.”

  “He won’t, Vangerdahast?” Tanalasta demanded. “Or you won’t?”

  “Our thoughts are the same on this matter,” insisted Vangerdahast. “But that has nothing to do with your imminent return to Arabel. It’s treason for you to blackmail the crown by placing yourself-and others-in this kind of danger.”

  “It’s only blackmail if the king is bluffing,” Tanalasta said. “And if he is, the treason lies on your head, not mine. I have done nothing but take him at his word.”

  “The king does not bluff his own daughter.”

  “Then our duty is clear,” said Tanalasta. “The king sent us to find the crown princess, and this ghazneth creature only makes it that much more urgent for us to do so.”

  Vangerdahast exhaled loudly, clearly frustrated by the dilemma in which he found himself. Tanalasta turned back to her duties as a watchman, scanning the stonemurk for the first dark hint of wings on the horizon.

  “Princess, be reasonable,” said Vangerdahast. “While everything you say is true, even you must admit your father hardly had something like this in mind when he sent you-“

  “I can’t know what the king had in mind,” Tanalasta said. “What I do know is that I am here, and that the king himself charged me with finding Alusair.”

  Silently, the princess added that she needed to complete her mission precisely because the king had not expected the mission to be dangerous. Allowing the phantom to force her back to Arabel would only confirm his belief that she needed to be protected. But if she actually located Alusair and discovered what was happening in the Stonelands, perhaps he would begin to have confidence in the decisions she would one day make as queen.

  After a moment, Vangerdahast sighed. “Very well. If you must pretend not to understand what this trip is really about, I shall explain it to you.”

  Tanalasta held up her hand. “That won’t be necessary, Vangerdahast. What you don’t seem to understand is that I do know what this is about. The war wizards are afraid the royal priests will take their place, you’re afraid you’ll soon have a high harvestmaster competing for the monarch’s ear, and the king is afraid of making you both angry.”

  “Our reservations are hardly of such a petty nature,” Vangerdahast replied. “I am concerned about the jealousy of the other religions, while the question of divided loyalties is entirely insurmountable-“

  “Yes, yes. I know the arguments, and I know you’re only thinking of the realm. You think of nothing else.” Tanalasta paused, then added in an acid voice, “I would never question your loyalty, only your belief that no one else can possibly know what is good for Cormyr.”

  Vangerdahast actually flinched. “Milady! That is unfair.”

  “It is also true. Maybe you are the only one who knows what is good for Cormyr. Even I must admit that you’re usually right about everything else.” Tanalasta paused to gather her courage, then continued, “What you don’t seem to understand is me. If I can’t be queen in my own way, then I will not be queen at all.”

  Vangerdahast regarded the princess as though meeting her for the first time. “By the Weave! You would refuse the throne on account of a handful of priests?”

  “I would refuse it on many accounts,” said Tanalasta. “Which is why it falls to me to find Alusair. I seem to be the only one who takes this situation seriously.”

  Vangerdahast turned and gazed into the stonemurk.

  Tanalasta left him to his thoughts, content to believe she had won the argument. They remained that way, each plotting the next maneuver in their battle of wills, until a blurry black V appeared to the east. The thing was so tiny that had the princess not been looking for it in that very section of sky, she would not have seen it at all.

  The distant shape grew larger at an alarming pace, and soon Tanalasta could see the thing’s leathery wings rising and falling as it streaked through the stonemurk. It came parallel to their hiding place on the mountain and continued past without turning, and the princess hoped for their sake the caravan drivers and any survivors from Ryban’s company were long gone.

  Once it had disappeared around the shoulder of the mountain, Vangerdahast turned in the approximate direction of the outcropping and stacked three stones on the rim of the little gully. “It will be coming from there.”

  “Coming?” Tanalasta asked.

  “If you’re right about it hearing our ring-talk,” the wizard explained. He plucked a wand from inside his weathercloak, then added, “Strictly speaking, I will be using a sending, though I doubt it makes any difference. If the thing can hear one form of telepathy, I suspect it will hear another.”

  Tanalasta frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Finding Alusair, of course,” said the wizard. “You did say that was what you wanted to do.”

  “I meant by looking for her, not inviting the ghazneth to come after us.”

  “And where, exactly, do you intend to look?” Vangerdahast asked.

  “You don’t know?” Tanalasta asked, disbelieving. “You haven’t even tried to locate her?”

  “What’s the use? When she doesn’t want to be found, she takes off her signet and puts on her Hider.” The wizard was referring to the magic ring of privacy Alusair had prevailed upon Azoun to have made. By slipping it on, she could prevent even Vangerdahast’s magic from locating her. “Even if she isn’t wearing the Hider, Alusair moves quickly. There’s no use trying to locate her until you’re in a position to start the chase.”

  “And until you’ve had time enough to talk her sister out of her inconvenient ideas,” Tanalasta added dryly.

  Vangerdahast shrugged. “Perhaps. It still leaves us with the same dilemma: where to look.”

  “Since she was looking for Emperel, sooner or later she would check the Cavern of the Sleeping Sword,” said Tanalasta. The cavern was the secret resting place of the Lords Who Sleep, the company of slumbering warriors whom Emperel was charged with safeguarding. “I thought we could start there.”

  “And lead the ghazneth there?” Vangerdahast countered. “That doesn’t strike me as very wise. We are trying to keep the company’s location secret from our enemies, you know.”

  Tanalasta narrowed her eyes at his condescension. “So where would you start?”

  “Why not by asking Alusair herself?” Vangey replied.

  “Because Alusair isn’t wearing her signet,” Tanalasta said, exasperated. “And because we have grounds to believe she has a good reason not to be.”

  “True, but that reason is over there looking for us.” Vangerdahast pointed toward the unseen outcropping. “This is probably the only chance we’ll have to contact Alusair without putting her life in danger. Besides, we can test your theory about the ghazneth eavesdropping on our mind talk.”

  The wizard did not point out that if Tanalasta was right, they would have to move quickly to avoid a fight with the ghazneth. Judging by Vangerdahast’s preparations, though, he did not really intend to avoid the fight.

  “Before I agree, tell me what you’re planning.” Tanalasta gestured at the hodgepodge of knickknacks arrayed on the boulder. There was a clove of garlic, a sprig of rosemary, a vial of holy water, and several other strange items. ‘What’s all that for?”

  “Just a small experiment.” Vangerdahast gave her one of those innocent smiles tha
t had been making Tanalasta nervous since she grew old enough to speak, then he picked up a dove’s feather. “Without knowing exactly what a ghazneth is, it’s hard to guess what it despises, but I bet this will work. I haven’t met a demon yet who likes feather of the dove.”

  “You’re going to banish it?”

  “If you’re right about this mind-speak business, yes.” Vangerdahast picked up a rock, then began to trace a pentagram on top of the boulder. “I’ll send it straight back to the hell it came from-wherever that is.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  Vangerdahast waved a gnarled finger toward ridge, gesturing at the spirelike stone he had pointed out earlier. “That’s what escape plans are for. Are you going to help me or not?”

  Tanalasta nodded. “I just hope you’re doing this for more than your pride.” After lecturing the wizard earlier about their duty, she could hardly decline to aid him now. “What do you want me to do?”

  Vangerdahast outlined her part in his plan, then turned to continue his preparations while she untethered the horses. By the time she returned with the beasts, the wizard had completed his protective pattern and was ready to proceed. He climbed onto the boulder and stepped into the center of the star, the strange assortment of spell components grasped securely in one hand.

  “You can watch from the ridge,” he said. “If this works, you’ll see a portal open and suck the ghazneth back to its home hell.”

  “And if the ghazneth doesn’t go?” Tanalasta asked.

  “Then I’ll join you on the ridge-and don’t waste any time getting us out of there.” He nodded to her, then turned to face the three stones he piled on the edge of the gully. “I’m ready”

  Tanalasta turned toward the ridge and pictured Alusair’s ash-blonde hair and dark-eyed visage in her mind, then touched the throat clasp of her weathercloak. The metal tingled under her fingers, and her sister’s head suddenly cocked to one side.

  Vangey is with me on Stonebolt Trail, at the edge of the Storm Horns. Phantom after us. Need to find you.

  Tanalasta? Alusair’s weathered face betrayed her irritation. Orc’s Pool-Vangey knows it. And no more magic, or you’ll never make it!

  Alusair’s visage faded with that. Tanalasta shook her head clear, then glanced back at Vangerdahast. “You know some place called Orc’s Pool?”

  “I’ve been there many times.” The wizard continued to study the sky above the stones he had piled on the gully edge. “Now off with you.”

  Tanalasta did not reach for the escape pocket. “She said no more magic.”

  “What?” Vangerdahast glanced down aghast. “How does she expect us to find Orc’s Pool?”

  Tanalasta had a sinking feeling. “I was more concerned about our plan. She said no more magic or we’d never make it.”

  It was difficult to say whether Vangerdahast’s expression was more puzzled or irritated, but it was definitely not alarmed. “It’s too late to change plans now.” He glanced back toward the outcropping, then made a shooing motion. “Off with you. Here it comes already.”

  Tanalasta’s gaze rose involuntarily, and she glimpsed a dark figure streaking over the mountain’s shoulder. She spun in her saddle, looking toward the spire on the next ridge and thrusting her hand into the weathercloak’s escape pocket. Her arm went numb, then there was a sharp crack, and a door-sized rectangle of blackness hissed into existence in front of her.

  Cadimus whinnied in alarm and tried to shy back, threatening to pull his reins free of the princess’s grasp.

  “Not now, you coward!” Tanalasta jerked the stallion forward and urged her own mount through the doorway.

  The world went black, and the princess experienced a strange, timeless sense of falling she thought would last forever. She grew queasy and weak, and a sudden chill bit at her fingers and nose. Her ears filled with a hushed roaring, at once overpowering as a waterfall and as soft as a whisper, and her stomach reverberated as though to the roll of a thousand drums. Then, in less than the instant it had taken her to blink, she was back in the light, her head spinning and the wind whistling around her ears.

  Cadimus nickered behind her, sounding as confused as he was alarmed, and Tanalasta recalled with a rush where she was and what she was doing. She kicked her own mount’s flanks urgently, and the poor horse stumbled forward blindly, as dazed and reeling as her rider. The princess let the mare continue on until she felt the ground sloping away beneath them, then dismounted and tethered both glassy-eyed horses to a scraggly hackberry bush.

  By the time Tanalasta returned to the ridge, her head had stopped spinning. She lay down beneath the tall spire of granite and peered over the crest. Across the way, the ghazneth was already swooping down the gully toward Vangerdahast.

  As the phantom neared him, it suddenly veered and pulled up. For one awful instant, she thought it was coming for her, then it wheeled on a huge black wing and extended its talons to attack the wizard from behind. Vangerdahast whirled, wand in. hand, but the ghazneth was already on him. Tanalasta knew the wizard’s spell would never go off before the creature’s talons tore him gullet to groin. She was on her feet before she knew what she was doing, one hand disappearing into her weathercloak’s escape pocket and the other reaching for her peacemaker’s rod.

  Fortunately for both the princess and the royal magician, Tanalasta remained where she was. Like the message-sending throat clasp, her weathercloak’s escape pocket could only be used once a day. She dropped back to the ground, then watched in amazement as the ghazneth ricocheted away from the wizard’s protective star and slammed into the mountainside.

  Vangerdahast’s shoulders slumped with relief, then his voice began to echo off the rocky slopes as he bellowed his incantation and tossed his strange assortment of knickknacks into the air. The ghazneth circled the boulder where he stood, hurling itself at him time and again, only to bounce away and crash into the mountain with stone-splitting force. A shimmering spiral of light appeared in the air behind the creature and began to shadow its movements like some strange tail it did not know it had.

  When the ghazneth finally grew tired of slamming into the mountainside, it alighted in the gully next to Vangerdahast. It seemed to say something, then squatted down and wrapped its arms around the boulder. The stone began to tremble, and Tanalasta could tell by the sudden tension in the wizard’s shoulders that he had not anticipated the possibility of having his perch ripped out of the very ground.

  Vangerdahast’s echoing voice rumbled off the mountains more urgently, and he stooped down to fling his knickknacks directly onto the shoulders of his attacker. The tornado at the ghazneth’s back grew larger and faster, sucking the thing’s leathery wings backward toward the whirlpool’s spiraling depths. The creature glanced nervously over its shoulder, then a small eye appeared in the heart of the tornado. From Vangerdahast’s description, Tanalasta expected to see some sort of flaming hell or blood-drenched wasteland, but the small circle resembled nothing quite so much as the Stonelands themselves.

  The ghazneth let out a great roar and gave a tremendous twist. A sharp crack reverberated off the mountainside, then the boulder rose out of the ground and Vangerdahast’s legs went out from under him.

  Tanalasta was on her feet again, yelling for the wizard to use his escape pocket, though she knew he would never hear her over the rumble of the cracking stone. As Vangerdahast tumbled from the boulder, he reached out with the dove’s feather and struck the creature on the head.

  A terrible shriek reverberated across the slope. The ghazneth vanished into the whirlpool, dragging Vangerdahast’s boulder along with it. The wizard landed facedown in the gully and lay there trembling, then the spell whooshed in on itself and there was silence.

  Tanalasta let out a joyful whoop, then saw a familiar shape in the sky and dropped to her belly. Vangerdahast raised his head, and she rose to her knees to point behind him. The wizard stood and turned to face the shoulder of the mountain, where the ghazneth was already streaking down
out of the stonemurk.

  Vangerdahast stood there looking for what seemed an eternity, but in fact may have been less than a second. Tanalasta started to rise and yell, but she did not even make it to a crouch before the wizard turned and was suddenly beside her, swaying and blinking with teleport daze and blindly reaching out to catch hold of her sleeve.

  “Get us out of here!”

  7

  They were lost in a sea of brown. The sun was hiding behind an overcast of dirty-pearl clouds, and a stiff northerly wind had draped the horizon behind a curtain of tannish stonemurk. The plain was paved in jagged slabs of red-brown basalt, set unevenly into a bed of yellow-brown sand, and the few scraggly salt bushes hardy enough to grow in such a wasteland were a sickly shade of hazel. Even Tanalasta’s riding breeches and Vangerdahast’s glorious beard had turned olive-brown beneath a thick coating of Stonelands dust.

  As uncomfortable as the stonemurk made travel, the princess was glad for its foglike veil. After Vangerdahast’s futile attempt to banish the ghazneth, anything that helped conceal them was a great comfort to her. They had glimpsed the thing twice since fleeing the Storm Horns. The first time had been two evenings ago, when its dark form streaked across the horizon between them and the mountains. The second time had been only a few hours ago, when it had appeared in the far north, circling like a hawk searching for its next meal.

  The banishment’s failure seemed to have sapped Vangerdahast’s confidence. He would spend long hours deep in silent thought, then suddenly subject Tanalasta to a lengthy hypothesis about why he had failed to exile the ghazneth to its home plane. Having read-some said memorized-every volume in the palace library, the princess was able to debunk most of his theories with a little careful consideration. So far the only notion to stand the test of her scrutiny was that the banishment had not failed at all, that the ghazneth had been sucked back to its home plane. Unfortunately, that plane happened to be Toril.