Ed Greenwood: Death of the Dragon

That time she’d thrown back her head and laughed so heartily that she’d spilled her tallglass of flamekiss or when she’d slapped Alusair, and had her wrist grabbed and held, and they’d stared into each other’s eyes as slow fear over Alusair’s strength mounted in Tanalasta’s eyes. Or…

Nothing. Emptiness, darkness-not even the confused, dim dream images of someone sleeping. The clasp tingled as she drew on it. Abruptly Alusair turned her thoughts away, calling up the face of one of the few men who’d attracted her for more than a few nights-the turret-merchant Glarasteer Rhauligan. Twice her age, and iron calm, with hair going gray and wrists as strong as steel. She wondered if the court spies had ever informed Vangerdahast or her father of those acrobatic liaisons among the shadows of the armory, or what they’d thought.

The contact was almost instant. Rhauligan was in an alleyway somewhere-Suzail, by the look of it-holding a man none too gently against a wall.

The next time you think armsmen off to war means their wives are yours for the taking… Rhauligan was snarling, the words echoing in Alusair’s distant mind.

Even as he felt her presence, she breathed the words, “We’ll speak later, I promise,” and broke the contact.

So the clasp’s enchantment was working, all too well.

She bent all of her will to capturing and holding as vivid a collection of remembered Tanalasta’s as she could, but met only with darkness, an empty sensation, and ominous silence.

Alusair threw back her head, her mouth suddenly dry, gulped in a deep breath, and rose to her feet. Owden and Rowen were waiting on either side of her, well away but obviously standing guard, and the procession carrying Cormyr’s king and court wizard was just disappearing from view down the hill.

The Steel Princess ignored their anxious glances and stared at the royal tent on the distant hilltop. From her lips, after a moment, came a long, shuddering sigh. She shivered as a sudden chill washed along her shoulders and arms.

There could be only one reason why Tanalasta did not answer.

The fire of surging, thudding pain-a roiling that only comes from being struck hard and deep by magic seeking to slay-lashed the royal magician back to wakefulness. There was an iron tang of blood in his mouth, and his fingers were tingling as if they held huge, rushing spell energies overdue to burst forth. The world was lurching.

Vangerdahast was being carried across uneven ground, the sky storm-riven smoke above him. He was still on the battlefield, with the dark peak of Azoun’s tent looming above him. The bloodstreaked faces of the knights who bore him were turned toward it, and he thought he knew why.

Long ago, Baerauble had said it was the curse of the magely protectors of Cormyr to be right, all too often. The weak, bubbling voice that came to the royal magician’s ears now told him he’d been right again.

Vangerdahast found that he could turn his head, as they laid him down, and see the king.

Azoun lay on a broad, creaking bed of shields set over rolled blankets to raise them from the trampled ground. The cloaks and sleeping furs atop those shields had been dragged into wildness by the king’s clawing hands, and the king of all fair Cormyr was still moving in the restlessness of ravaging pain, threads of smoke rising from his groaning mouth as knights bent as near to him as they dared.

More smoke was rising from the hacked and torn rents in Azoun’s armor, the places where the once bright plates had been torn away in the dragon’s fury, and the cloaks beneath the king were drenched with dark blood.

More blood was coming from the king’s mouth as he turned his head, fixing eyes that were bright with pain on Vangerdahast’s face. For a moment Azoun’s gaze roved, as if he did not see what lay around him but beheld something else, then the king’s eyes grew sharp again. His lips twisted in what might have been cynical amusement, or might have been just the pain.

“It seems I still live,” he said.

“Great lord?” Lionstone led a general rush of Cormyr’s war captains to their king.

Unhelmed now, they were so many anxious hulks in scarred and scorched armor, sweat-soaked hair plastered to their faces or matted with blood, gauntlets gone to reveal bloodied fingers that reached for their king with anxious haste, and even more frantic gentleness.

“Help me rise,” Vangerdahast snarled, never taking his eyes from his king. He had to repeat himself thrice before someone plucked him from the ground like an old sack and swung him upright. His legs felt curiously weak as they steadied him by the shoulders, but the royal magician found that he could stand on his own and that his body obeyed him. Gods, it even seemed whole. He thrust one hand into the neck of his robe, through the white and gray hair that curled across his chest. The wizard drew out certain things on chains, only to find just what he’d expected.

The handful of chased and worked silver talismans had been old when Cormyr was young, healing things made on the floating cities of Netheril and other elder lands. Mighty was their magic, lasting down the centuries, or, well, it had been. He was holding crumbling ashes now, lumps on the ends of fine chains that had dragged him back from the ravages of the dragon as he lay senseless and broken.

They’d made him whole by becoming themselves broken things, their ages-old magic exhausted. As he regarded them, even the chains started to crumble. Vangerdahast tossed them to the ground and murmured, “Step not there. Let no one tread there.”

Azoun’s head turned abruptly. “Is that my wizard?” the king snapped, struggling to sit up. Knights leaned and reached to help him, then recoiled, stumbling in their weariness.

Azoun’s movement had awakened to full fury the dragon’s blood that was eating him. A small ball of flame snarled up from his limbs to burst in the air head-high above him. Even as it faded into rising, drifting smoke, fresh lightning raged up and down the king and across his bed of shields, spitting sparks.

Ravaged armor shrank before the watching eyes on the hilltop, curling and darkening like leaves in a fire, and fell away from Azoun’s arms and thighs. The gleam of bared bone shone forth from at least one ashen tangle beneath the tortured metal.

Vangerdahast took one unsteady stride, then another. Cormyr reeled under his boots, but did not heave itself over to smite him, and after another step, he was all right. The Forest Kingdom would have its royal magician a little while longer, at least.

“My king,” he said gravely to the twisting figure atop the shields, as fresh lightning washed over that bed of pain and faded away into dancing sparks, “I am here.”

“Vangey!”Azoun shouted-or tried to. The voice was like a distant cry, but the pleasure in it was unmistakable.

As the king drew himself up onto one elbow, the pauldron fell away from that shoulder, trailing fresh smoke. Paying the crashes of collapsing armor no heed, Azoun thrust himself properly upright and fixed his pain-bright eyes on Vangerdahast.

“Despite,” the king gasped through lips that dripped black, oily blood in a constant stream now, “much provocation to the contrary-” he coughed, shoulders shuddering in a spasm of agony that forced his head down for one choking moment before he shook off the pain and looked grimly up again, “-you have always been my friend. More than that, the greatest friend Cormyr has had. Better than us all.” His voice faded, and he murmured faintly, head sinking again, “Better than us all…”

Vangerdahast stepped forward, a frown of concern preceding him, and drew something from beneath his beard-the last of his hidden magical somethings. With a sudden wrench, he broke the fine chain that had held it hidden there against his throat. The eyes of many of the watching knights narrowed. The dancing ends of chain were green with age.