by Troy Denning
To the wizard’s left stood Azoun IV, arm hanging in a sling and his shoulder wrapped in a fresh bandage.
Vangerdahast did not recall how he had come to be the prisoner of the realm’s enemies. He did not recall anything, save for a faint odor that faded from his memory even as he tried to hold onto it. The only thing that looked vaguely familiar were the log joists and rough hewn planks above his head-the ceiling of his prison, or the floor of the chamber above. It depended on one’s perspective, really, and it seemed to him that there ought to be an escape in that, if he could just recall the right spell.
“Vangerdahast?” asked the rat-faced priest. “Do you know where you are?”
Vangerdahast knew exactly where he was-in a prisoner’s tower-but he would not give his captors the pleasure of hearing him admit it. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see the king grasping his shoulder.
“Old friend, do you remember me?”
“Of course.” Vangerdahast decided to stall for time and hope he could recall the spell he needed. “How could I Forget the usur-er, the king?”
Azoun relaxed visibly. “Thank the All Mother!” he gasped. “Do you remember my daughter? Can you tell me what happened to Tanalasta?”
The battle in the canyon returned to him in a flood, the first ghazneth knocking him from his horse with the dismembered body of an orc, the steel gate suddenly appearing with the second ghazneth behind it naked and wild-eyed, reaching for Tanalasta and the ranger, the ranger leaping from his grasp, that harlot of a princess flinging herself after him…
“It’s… it’s all so fuzzy.” Vangerdahast shook his head, then tried to sit up. When his bindings prevented it, he lifted his left arm and looked to the king. “Do you think I could-“
“Of course.”
Azoun started to pull his dagger to cut the bindings, but Owden leaned across the bed to restrain him. “Not yet, Majesty.”
“Not yet?” Vangerdahast yelled. He whirled on the priest and screamed, “Release me! Release me now, or I swear you will rue this day when the crown is mine!”
A weary groan escaped Azoun’s lips, and Vangerdahast saw at once that he was losing all hope of tricking his captors into releasing him. He turned to the king.
“It seems to be coming back.” He closed his eyes in concentration, though what he was concentrating on was recalling some spell that he could cast without his hands. “Perhaps if you let me have just one hand so I could tug on my beard. Yes, that’s it. Tugging on my beard always helps.”
Azoun merely shook his head and glared at Owden. “How much longer?”
The priest could only shrug. “I’m sure His Majesty cannot recall, but his own convalescence was difficult as well, and his wounds were not nearly as grievous as those of the royal magician.”
Vangerdahast blinked several times, then turned his head toward Owden. “Wait. I’m feeling much better now.”
“That’s good,” said Owden. “Can you remember what became of the princess?”
Vangerdahast nodded, and the incantation of his dimension door spell returned to him in a flash. It was a quick and simple alteration no more than half a dozen syllables long. Confident that he would soon be looking at the planks from the other side, he fixed his gaze on the ceiling and started his incantation-then smelled something familiar and strident as Owden Foley’s hand flashed into sight and flung a stream of glittering drops into his eyes.
Vangerdahast had the sudden sensation of falling, and the chamber went dark, and he woke later to find himself bound and naked, covered by a single linen, surrounded by enemies of the realm. Owden Foley stood to his right, a clammy cold cloth in one hand and a brass basin in the other. Alaphondar Emmarask and Merula the Marvelous watched from the foot of the bed, the one with eyes sunken and bloodshot from reading too much, the other dressed in a dusty robe, looking rather spectral and hollow-cheeked for a man of such robust proportions. To the wizard’s left stood Azoun IV in badly dented field armor, a new steel patch covering a jagged hole high on his breastplate.
“Azoun?” gasped Vangerdahast. “Have you been fighting?”
“Thank the gods!” The king clasped Vangerdahast’s shoulder. “You’re back among us.”
Vangerdahast glanced at the hand on his shoulder. “That’s awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?” The wizard lifted an arm to brush away the offending appendage, but found his wrist tied to the bed frame by a stout cord. He glared at the rope in disbelief, then demanded, “What’s the meaning of this? Remove it at once!”
Owden Foley leaned over the wizard and grasped his other arm. “Perhaps later,” he said. “Do you know where you are?”
Vangerdahast scowled. “Of course! I’m in my room in… We’re in the palace at…” He stared up at the familiar-looking joists and planks above his head, but for the life of him could not remember what city they were in. He pondered this for a moment, then reached the only possible conclusion. “You’ve kidnapped me!”
Azoun spewed an unspeakable curse on the goddess Chauntea, then started around the bed to leave. Owden raised a finger.
“One minute, Sire.”
The king glared at the priest. “Just one. I still have a wife to save, even if my daughter is beyond hope.”
Vangerdahast raised his head. “The queen?”
Owden nodded eagerly. “Yes, you remember the queen.”
“Filfaeril?”
“Queen Filfaeril,” Owden confirmed. “Do you remember what happened to her?”
“Of course!” Vangerdahast remembered everything: the battle in the canyon, Tanalasta flinging herself after Rowen, being attacked in the stable yard, trying to knock Filfaeril out of the ghazneth’s grasp. “Is the queen well?”
“That is impossible to say,” said Azoun. “The last time we saw her, she was definitely alive.”
Vangerdahast’s heart sank. “The last time you saw her?”
“I am afraid the ghazneth has her,” said Owden. “The king has seen her once, as he was closing in on the creature’s lair and it was forced to move her.”
“By Thauglor’s scales!” Vangerdahast started to rise, only to find himself still tied into bed. He stared at the silken bindings in confusion for a moment, then said, “Get these things off of me! We’ve got work to do.”
“Your work can wait a little longer,” said Owden. “You will not be fully cured until you have faced the demon within.”
“The demon within?” Vangerdahast demanded.
“Each of us carries our own demon inside,” Owden explained. “Most of us keep it imprisoned in the deepest, darkest part of our souls where it can do no harm. But when we undergo a terrible trauma such as you and the king suffered, these demons can escape.”
Vangerdahast turned to Azoun. “What nonsense is this?”
“Vangerdahast, maybe you’d better listen.”
“To a groundsplitter?” the wizard huffed. “Has Tanalasta finally gotten to you?”
A pained expression came to the king’s face, and he looked away without speaking.
“I’m afraid that would be impossible,” said Alaphondar, speaking for the first time. “We haven’t been able to convince you to tell us what became of the princess.”
Vangerdahast scowled. “What do you mean, ‘convince’? She’s with Rowen Cormaeril. They pulled away from me when I teleported back here.” He looked from Alaphondar to Azoun to Merula. “Is somebody going to tell me what’s happening here?”
“Of course,” said Owden. “Your inner demon escaped, and you need to recapture it.”
“Recapture it?”
“Before it consumes you entirely,” confirmed the priest. “You must look deep within yourself and face it, here before these witnesses. You must tell us what the demon wants, then you will have the strength to control it.”
Vangerdahast grew instantly suspicious. They were trying to extract a confession from him, but why? After all he had done for the realm, could Azoun actually be frightened of him? Or j
ealous of his power? The wizard turned to berate the king for his pettiness-and realized that was exactly what Owden wanted. Rebuking the king would only feed Azoun’s suspicion and breed resentment, while confessing to a secret envy of the royal birthright-as farfetched as that might be-would make it all but impossible for Azoun to trust him completely again. In either case, Owden would be standing by, ready to replace Vangerdahast’s counsel with his own-and to replace the war wizards with his Royal Temple of Chauntea.
Vangerdahast whirled on the priest. “You dirt-grubbing worm! You fork-tongued, scaly-bellied, lying snake. Do you really think you can meddle in royal affairs? I’ll see you growing mushrooms in the dungeon cesspits before I name my demons in front of you!”
Vangerdahast summoned to mind a spell he could cast with voice alone and began to utter his incantation. Owden reached for something, but the king raised his hand and waved him off.
“I’d say Vangerdahast is back to normal.”
Vangerdahast finished his spell, and in the next second was lying on his bed in the form of a small mink. He rolled to all four feet and dashed out from beneath the sheet, darting between Alaphondar and Merula into a nearby corner. There he stopped and changed back to his normal form, then turned to face his nervous-looking companions.
“Are you going to stand there and stare, or hand me a robe?” he demanded. “We’ve got work to do.”
Owden started around the bed. “You can’t do this,” he said. “You’re not ready.”
“Harvestmaster Foley, if you mention my inner demon one more time, I swear you’ll spend the rest of your life dodging thrushes in the palace gardens.”
Owden stopped at the foot of the bed and looked to Azoun.
The king only smiled and shrugged. “What can I say? Vangerdahast has always had a bit of the demon in him.” He looked to Merula, then added, “You heard the royal magician. Find the man his robe.”
As Merula scrambled to obey, Vangerdahast bowed to the king and said, “Thank you, Sire. It’s good to see that someone around here has returned to his senses.”
The wizard smoothed his beard, then ran a hand through what remained of his hair and noticed the slashes across the top of his head. He ran his fingers along the scars, noting that they had already sealed themselves.
“By Thauglor!” he cursed. “How long did you let me sleep?”
Azoun looked uncomfortable. “You’ve been… asleep for five days.”
“And you couldn’t wake me?” Vangerdahast whirled on Owden. “Aren’t you priests good for anything?”
Owden’s expression turned stormy, but before the priest could say anything, Azoun took Vangerdahast by the elbow and guided him toward a table and chairs.
“We’d better sit down and have a talk, old friend,” he said. “We’ve got some planning to do, and there are a lot of things we both don’t know.”
13
The swarm hung low in the northern sky, a whirling flock of dark specks almost invisible against the looming wall of Anauroch’s golden sand dunes, spiraling down toward the jagged vestige of a lonely keep tower.
Alusair’s trail ran toward the ruin as straight as an arrow.
Tanalasta did not have the courage to voice her thoughts, but there was little need. After four days of dodging gnolls and ghazneths in the dusty vastness that separated the Stonelands from the Goblin Marches, she and Rowen had developed an uncanny instinct for what the other was thinking. The ranger removed the saddlebags from his shoulder and opened the flap, then passed the princess her weathercloak and bracers.
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Rowen. “If Alusair thought she was in more trouble than she could handle, she’d put on her signet and call Vangerdahast.”
“And how many times have you seen her do that?” It was a rhetorical question, and Tanalasta did not wait for an answer. “Besides, what good would Vangerdahast be? With so many ghazneths, his magic would be useless.”
Rowen regarded the distant specks for a moment. “I still think there is good reason to hope. If the matter were decided, why would they still be in the sky?”
He closed the saddlebags again and picked up his makeshift pike, which Tanalasta had fashioned by binding the iron dagger to the end of a sturdy elm branch. Though the weapon was more cumbersome to carry and use than a knife, it would also allow Rowen to strike with more power-and perhaps help keep him out of his foe’s reach. The princess draped the weathercloak over her shoulders, then followed the ranger’s lead and crouched down behind a waist-high clump of silvery smokebush. It would be a long crawl to the ruined keep, but the dusty plain was as level as a lake and cover was scant.
They moved in short bursts, running from bush to bush in a low crouch or crawling across open areas on hands and knees. They were careful to keep one eye fixed on the distant swarm of ghazneths and the other on the underbrush, since the plain’s deadly assortment of snakes, arachnids, and chilopods all liked to hide in the relative safety of the spindly thorn bushes. Several times, Tanalasta found herself backing away from the widespread mandibles of a charging centipede or the upraised stinger of an angry scorpion, and once Rowen had to catch the fangs of a striking wyv snake on the butt of his pike.
As they drew nearer to the keep, they began to notice individual specks swooping down into the ruins or rising up from behind the bailey wall to rejoin the main swarm. Tanalasta’s stomach grew hollow with dread, and she chafed at the delay of their stealthy approach. She and Alusair were not the closest of sisters, but they were sisters, and she kept having gruesome visions of ghazneths quarreling over Alusair’s lifeless body.
Rowen seemed to sense Tanalasta’s growing disquiet. He ran faster and for longer periods, paying less attention to concealment as they went. The princess appreciated his concern, but she also knew they would be no help at all if the ghazneths saw them coming. Already, she could see the distinctive shape of the creatures’ outstretched wings, and it would not be long before they drew close enough for the things to spy them rushing through the brush. Tanalasta was about to remark on her concerns when the ranger suddenly stood up straight.
“Rowen, what are you doing?” Thinking he might have been bitten by a lance snake or-even worse-a tiger centipede, she circled to his side and took his arm. “What is it?”
He did not move. “Those aren’t ghazneths.”
Tanalasta peered at the spiraling swarm, but it was still too distant for her to identify individual shapes. She tried again to pull him down. “You can’t be sure.”
“Can’t I?” He pointed toward the western edge of the spiral. “Watch their wingtips as they turn.”
Tanalasta did so, and she noticed a ragged, rounded fringe-almost like tiny fingers-silhouetted against the looming sand dunes. “Feathers?”
“So it would seem,” Rowen replied.
Tanalasta’s heart sank. “They’re vultures.”
“We don’t know what it means.” He squeezed her arm. “Perhaps one of Alusair’s horses died.”
“That’s too many vultures for one horse,” Tanalasta replied.
The princess started forward at a near run, struggling to hold her imagination in check. Tanalasta kept telling herself that Alusair had outwitted a dozen creatures as terrible as any ghazneth, that she was an experienced leader with a full company of warriors, a pair of clerics, and plenty of magic at her disposal. But those assurances rang hollow in the face of so many swarming vultures. There had to be a lot of carrion-and the most obvious source of that carrion was a patrol of Cormyrean knights.
As they drew nearer, Tanalasta saw that the keep was one of those strange, lopsided towers described in Artur Shurtmin’s tome, The Golden Age of Goblins. Constructed of slab sandstone and dark mortar, the spire had a conspicuous bulge near the top of one side and leaned noticeably in that direction, as though being dragged down by a great weight. Its girth was ringed by cockeyed bands of tiny windows, suggesting the presence of at least eight interior floors in a height of only forty feet.
Tanalasta tried to take some comfort from the presence of the goblin tower. Typically, such places were merely the entrance to decaying tunnel warrens now occupied by all manner of sinister creatures. Perhaps the vultures were feasting upon a tribe of kobolds or barbarian goblins that had been foolish enough to attack as Alusair’s company passed through.
Tanalasta and Rowen were still a hundred paces from the bailey when they began to smell hints of death-the fetor of rotting meat, acrid whiffs of charred flesh, the musty odor of newly-opened earth. Knowing from Artur’s tome that the goblins of the golden age always aligned their gates with the setting sun, Tanalasta guided them toward the west side of the bailey. The crowns of several large buckeye trees grew visible, protruding just far enough above the wall to reveal the starlike shape of their drought-yellowed leaves. The sickly odors grew heavier and more constant. As they drew closer, the princess heard the flapping and hissing of squabbling vultures, and also a sound she could not identify, an erratic rasping punctuated at odd intervals by muffled clattering and sharp snapping sounds.
