by Ed Greenwood
“Your concern for and your devoted service to the king are both noted and appreciated,” Vangerdahast told the priests gravely, the iron crown on his brows giving him the look of an old and mighty monarch. “Stand you back, now, and bear witness. Your gods would desire you to be present and to pray, but the time for healing, I fear, is past.” He allowed a frown to cross his face as he lifted an imperious hand and added, “The king fades swiftly. Rob him not of his last moments.”
The priests hesitated, several mouths opening to launch uncertain protests, and glanced at the angry warriors.
The royal magician looked at Owden Foley, then at Battlelord Steelhand, giving them both a nod that mingled unspoken thanks and a request. The two priests returned the nod, turned, and began to shoo their fellow clerics away, raising and spreading their arms in unison to form a moving fence that swept all the holiness a little down the hill.
Vangerdahast nodded again, satisfaction in his face, and turned back to where Azoun lay. Alusair and her fellow war captains gathered around the king, eyes darting from the face of the wizard to that of their king, and back again at Vangerdahast.
“My liege,” said the royal magician, in a voice that for a brief, fleeting moment held the hint of a sob, “I have obeyed and in so doing learned bright news. The Princess Tanalasta has been delivered of a son, whom I understand is to be known as Azoun the Fifth. Cormyr’s new prince will bear a worthy name onto the throne, when the time is right.”
“That-is good,” the king gasped, and panted for a moment in the aftermath of a sudden spasm of pain. For a moment he sagged back, face going gray, and his war captains threw out cradling hands like so many bloody, sweat-drenched, armored nursemaids, to hold him nearly in a sitting position. Ilberd Crownsilver choked back what could only be a sob as the king struggled to clutch at his balance and find the strength to sit upright.
After a few terrible, convulsed breaths, Azoun found it, somewhere deep within, and looked up to give them all a savage smile-almost a sneer-of contempt for his own weakness. The smile softened into genuine, gentle warmth as he looked around from familiar face to familiar face. Alusair glided forward, eyes dark and face as white as polished bone. Her lips were parted as if to speak, but she said nothing, her sword forgotten in her hand.
Her father looked at her, then up at the sky, and offered his next words to it. “It’s been a good ride,” he remarked conversationally to the scudding gray clouds, “but if my striving counts for anything, let my son have a better one, O you watching gods.”
The king threw off the gentle hands that held him, and surged to his feet, a lion once more. Swaying, as hands reached out to steady him then fell away in uncertainty, not wanting to insult Azoun in his last moments, he stared around at his realm for one last time, his eyes already going dull. His gaze wandered from one face to another, and his lips trembled on the edge of a smile. Azoun’s hand slipped twice on the hilt of his sword before he drew it forth with the grace of long-won skill, and raised it. If he noticed that it shivered like a blade of grass in a high wind, he gave no sign of doing so.
“I will not say farewell,” the fourth Azoun to rule the Forest Kingdom told those standing around him almost fiercely, “because I’ll be here, in the night wind, watching over the land I love, with cold steel for her foes, and whispered comfort for her defenders.”
The sword fell from his trembling fingers, but Alusair was as quick as a snake, plucking it from the air to hold it up, and raising it into his grasp again.
Azoun’s body shook and shuddered as he put failing arms around her. “Take this to your mother,” he said, as he turned to kiss her cheek.
His lips brushed her skin, then he gasped in ragged pain and sagged, his full weight on her. Alusair turned to hold him up, and their lips touched.
Azoun’s breath was hot and sweet, and tasted like blood and flame. A last tiny lightning played about their joined lips, but Alusair never flinched, even as dragonfire shook her like a leaf in a storm.
Her father moaned in pain, whispered “Filfaeril” in the heart of it, sagged again, then pulled back his head with a lion’s roar of exultation.
For a moment Azoun clutched his daughter fiercely, strength returning in a rush until his embrace was almost bruising, then he thrust himself free from her, whirled around on his heels to look at all of those watching him grimly, and cast his sword into the air.
It caught fire as it whirled up. Blue flames flashed, then faded to a deep, roiling purple as it spun. As it slowed at the height of its journey it became-just for an instant, but long enough that all men there on that hill swore the rest of their days that they’d seen it look down at them, talons wrapped around the fading sword-the ghostly outline of a dragon.
Alusair saw Vangerdahast’s fingers crook in two subtle gestures just as the sword swept up, and their eyes met for a moment, but she merely nodded, almost imperceptibly, and said no word, as men gasped in wonder all around them at the apparition.
Azoun regarded it with an almost sad smile, as if knowing it as one last mage’s trick, as it flashed into a burst of bright purple and silver fire, and was gone. He turned away and strode-a walk that in two paces turned into a last, doomed stagger-into his tent. Alusair and Vangerdahast moved at his heels, but the others stood staring into the sky.
Men blinked at the emptiness that had held sword and dragon, a gulf of air that even the clouds were drawing back from to lay bare deep, clear blue, and let their long-held breaths out in a chorus of faint regret.
Into the silence that followed, Azoun said his last words as he sank to his knees, like a tired tree deciding to slowly meet the earth.
“For fair Cormyr,” he gasped, his voice almost a whisper now. “Forever!”
“Forever, father,” Alusair said, her voice trembling on the edge of tears. “Be remembered-forever!”
The king of all Cormyr was smiling as his face struck the turf, and the long silence descended. When his war captains and his daughter and even the priests began to weep, Azoun did not hear them. His ears were full of echoing trumpets, a sound he’d almost forgotten, down all the years, the triumphant horns that had sounded over the castle to mark his birth, so long ago. High, bright, and clear. Gods, but it was good to hear them again.
46
Vangerdahast knelt at Azoun’s side a long time after the breath stopped coming, rubbing the ring of wishes he still wore on his finger and wondering if he dared. A simple gesture, a few little words, and Thatoryl Elian would not have been in those woods when Andar Obarskyr passed by. Lorelei Alavara would have lived and died a happy elven wife, Nalavarauthatoryl the Red would never have risen, and Alaundo the Seer would never have uttered his dire prophecy.
What then? Had Thatoryl Elian not been in those woods when Andar wandered by, Andar would never have had reason to flee the Wolf Woods and tell Ondeth about them, and there would never have been a Cormyr-at least not the Cormyr he served and loved. Vangerdahast had wished Nalavarauthatoryl out of existence once before, and it had cost him Azoun and Tanalasta and very nearly the realm itself. That was the temptation of magic. Like any power, sooner or later those who commanded it always abused it.
Vangerdahast took Azoun’s hands and folded them across the king’s chest. As he did so, he quickly slipped the ring of wishes off his own finger and onto his friend’s. Kings died and so did their daughters, but the realm lived on. It was better to leave it that way.
He uttered a quiet spell to hide the ring from sight, then said, “Guard it well, my friend.”
Only then did the tears start to come, pouring down Vangerdahast’s cheeks in long runnels. He slipped the golden tricrown off Azoun’s head, then stood and faced the others.
“The king is dead,” he said.
That was all he could think of, for Tanalasta was dead as well. The new king was an infant, not yet a tenday old, but the others did not yet know that, of course. He had kept Tanalasta’s death from them just as he had kept it from Azoun, and so t
hey stood there watching, waiting for him to say what should have followed, their eyes frightened and sad and curious-but also hard and suspicious and calculating.
There would be scheming nobles who seized on the child’s paternity to challenge his throne, and there would be Sembia and the Darkhold Zhentarim and others who hoped to seize on Cormyr’s troubles to nibble off little pieces for themselves. There would be a long, cold winter ahead with few crops to feed the people, and no roofs to shelter them from the snow and rain, and there were sure to be the ordinary hordes of orcs and bugbears and even a few garden variety dragons sweeping south out of the wilderness in search of easy plunder. Cormyr would need a strong monarch in the days to come, and Vangerdahast knew Alusair well enough to know she would not want to be sitting in Suzail while her generals were fighting battles in every corner of the realm.
“Vangerdahast, what is it?” asked Owden Foley.
“There is something…”
The words caught in Vangerdahast’s throat, and all he managed was a rasping sob. He closed his eyes, then raised his hand to request time to compose himself and find the words he needed.
They did not come easily, and for a moment all he could do was stand and weep. Alusair and a few of the others also began to cry, and he realized he was not setting a very strong example. He reached up to the iron goblin crown on his own head, discovering much to his relief that he could finally slip a finger under it now that Nalavara was dead. He slipped it off and stood in the center of the crowded pavilion, holding one crown in each hand, and a gentle murmur began to rustle through the tent.
Vangerdahast stepped forward and was just about to ask for silence when a hard rain began to fall inside the tent. A cold hand clamped onto the arm holding Azoun’s crown.
“What are you doing, old man?”
Vangerdahast looked down and saw Rowen Cormaeril’s strong hand wrapped around his wrist. The ghazneth’s flesh was black and cold against his own white, wrinkled skin, a stark reminder of the price for betraying Cormyr.
The wizard met Rowen’s burning white eyes, then slowly raised Cormyr’s golden crown. “I was taking this to Alusair.”
“To me?” Alusair’s face paled, and she shook her head. “Oh no, Vangerdahast, I’m not-“
“It is your burden to bear, Alusair Obarskyr, not mine.” Vangerdahast pulled his arm free of Rowen’s grasp, then pressed the crown into Alusair’s hands. “I am afraid you must be regent until Azoun the Fifth is old enough to assume the throne.”
“What?” It was Rowen who gasped this question. “But Tanalasta-“
“Destroyed Boldovar,” he said sadly, “and died valiantly in the process.”
Rowen stumbled back, his face withering into a mask of grief. “No! Why would you… you must be lying!”
Vangerdahast closed Alusair’s fingers around the crown, then reached out to clasp Rowen’s arm. “I fear not. I hadn’t the heart to tell the king, but it is so. Tanalasta has gone to stand with her father.”
A terrible sob escaped the ghazneth’s lips, then there was no sound in the tent but pounding rain. Vangerdahast spread his arms and reached out to comfort Rowen.
“My friend, I…”
Vangerdahast could not finish, for the ghazneth pushed him away and retreated deep into the shadows. A beam of fading sunlight spilled across the floor as the door flap opened, then the rain stopped and Rowen was gone.
Epilogue
Though her new dress plate had been made by the same smith to the same specifications as her old battered field armor, Alusair felt clumsy, vain, and somehow naked in it. Made of the finest dwarven steel, it was fluted, etched, and trimmed in gold damascening. The Royal Dragon of Cormyr was embossed in purple relief on its abdomen, and it had been perfectly cast and joined by the royal armorers. The royal artists had decorated it beautifully, the royal pages had polished it to a mirror sheen, and the royal squires had hung it on her glove tight-and Alusair would rather have ridden nude into battle than in such elaborate harness. Not for the first time, the Steel Regent cursed Vangerdahast for foisting the crown off on her instead of having the courage to set it on his own head.
Alusair was standing between her mother and Vangerdahast on the Review Balcony, holding her ridiculous dragon’s head helm in one arm and King Azoun Obarskyr V of Cormyr in the other, nodding numbly and smiling stupidly as noble after noble paraded past her with his company of knights. Half the lords were so fat that even a full-sized shire could not have charged more than a hundred paces with so much blubber and steel, while the other half did not seem to know which side of the sword to hold outward as they raised it in salute. It was all she could do not to go down and start barking weapon drills.
Young Baron Ebonhawk led his lancers through the Presentation Arch and nearly put an eye out when he snapped the wrong side of his curved falchion against his face. The bronze bill of his garish helm caught the worst of the blow, but did not prevent the keen edge-no doubt honed razor-sharp by some beleaguered squire-from opening a bloody line down his cheek. The whimper that followed drew a chortle even from baby Azoun, but the young lord managed to avoid further embarrassment by riding on without stopping to call for a healer.
Alusair smiled and nodded as though she had not noticed, then muttered under her breath, “If this is the best that remains, the realm is lost already.”
“They’re only border garrisons.” Vangerdahast smiled and waved enthusiastically to the young baron. “And each company will have a lionar and a war wizard along to advise it-and to take command at the first sign of an engagement.”
“And the lords agreed to that?”
“Not exactly,” said Filfaeril. The queen looked strong and supple and somehow younger than she had seemed in years, though also much harder and infinitely sadder. “But what they don’t know will kill them, should it prove necessary.”
Alusair cocked her brow. “That should inspire loyalty.”
Filfaeril gave her a patronizing smile and said, “My dear Alusair, you have much to learn.” She patted the arm cradling young Azoun. “On this battlefield, all that matters is power-who has it and who doesn’t. At the moment, you are holding it in your arms, and we must all do everything we can to make certain it stays that way.”
Alusair glanced down at the chubby-cheeked baby and wondered if she were truly up to the job Tanalasta had left her. To be a queen and a mother and who knew what else in Cormyr’s darkest hour…
At least she would not be alone. Filfaeril would be there beside her, pointing out which nobles to trust, which to watch, and which to execute at the first sign of disobedience. There would also be Owden Foley, who had agreed at her insistence to stay as the child’s spiritual educator and do what he could to help Tanalasta’s legacy live in her son.
And, of course, there would be Vangerdahast, who was even now nudging her with his elbow and murmuring quiet guidance.
“Give Earl Silverhorn a big smile. The poor fellow has spent his entire fortune outfitting his cavalry, and we wouldn’t want him to think you unappreciative.”
Alusair did as Vangerdahast suggested, even going so far as to raise her nephew and wave one of his tiny hands at the passing company. This drew a roaring cheer from the spectators, which immediately caused the young king to break into a round of gurgling.
“Now you’ve done it,” growled Vangerdahast. “Now every lord will want a wave from the king.”
“I suppose I’ll have the strength to manage that,” Alusair growled back. “I am holding him in my sword arm.”
“Sword arm?” harrumphed Vangerdahast. “It’s about time you put that limb to a proper use.”
“What?” Alusair thundered.
She turned to blast the wizard with one of her vilest cavalryman’s curses and found him grinning at her. It was one of his old, kindly, sardonic smiles telling her that save for whatever annoyances she happened to be causing him at the moment, soon all would be well again in Cormyr-but Alusair had never seen the old wizard l
ooking quite so dark, or thin, or tired.
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