“Open them!” Xanthon hissed.
Tanalasta croaked out something she meant to be What?, then was struck by the irony of Xanthon’s vengeance. Bitter laughter began to boil up from deep within her, racking her battered body and grating at the ends of her broken jaw. The pain flowed through her like water. Her mouth fell open, and she laughed in Xanthon’s face, fully and hysterically. His grasp tightened until Tanalasta thought her neck would snap, but still she laughed. She could not stop.
“No!” Xanthon shook her, and the pain meant nothing to Tanalasta. “Stop!”
“How can I?” she mumbled. “You’re killing a Cormaeril!”
“Liar!” Xanthon squeezed so hard that his fingers broke her skin. “You’re no Cormaeril.”
Tanalasta shook her head. “I’m not, but Rowen is.” She managed to stop laughing, then added, “I’m carrying his baby.”
“Never!” Despite his reaction, Xanthon’s jaw fell, and his gaze dropped to her stomach. “He’s a low-born dog, hardly worthy of the Cormaeril name.”
“Still my husband-still your cousin.” Tanalasta mumbled only the words she needed to. Now that her hysterics were passing, she saw a slim hope of forestalling her death, and with that hope came pain. “A Cormaeril could sit on the throne… could have not only your lands, but all of Cormyr.”
The gamble failed. Xanthon’s eyes flashed crimson, and the sinews of his dark arms rippled as he jerked on Tanalasta’s jaw. A terrible aching pain filled her head, but she fought to stay conscious, determined to defy her enemy until the end.
But her head did not come free. Despite the pain it caused, her neck remained solidly intact, and Tanalasta found herself staggering from one side of the room to another as the ghazneth tried to pull her head off her shoulders.
Xanthon’s ovoid eyes grew wide and scarlet. “Liar!”
He forced her to kneel and tried again. Tanalasta’s hearing faded and her vision narrowed to a mere tunnel, but the ghazneth’s doubt seemed to have sapped his strength. To keep from losing consciousness, she opened her mangled mouth and screamed.
The pounding at the door stopped, and a muffled voice began a spell. Xanthon glanced over his shoulder. For a moment his fading humanity was visible in the profile of his heavy brow and long nose, then he looked back to Tanalasta with a hatred more human than ghazneth burning in his eyes.
Tanalasta tried to say it was true, that if he killed her he would be robbing the Cormaerils of the first Cormyrean monarch to bear their blood, but she was too weak-and in too much pain.
All she could manage was a pompous smile and a short nod.
That was enough. In Tanalasta’s delirium, the shadow seemed to leave Xanthon’s body. Suddenly, he began to resemble little more than a naked man with hate-filled eyes and a bitter soul.
“Harlot!” Xanthon spat, and reached down for the sword of a dead guard.
Before he could pull it, Sarmon’s muffled voice fell silent. A loud boom reverberated through the tiny room, and the tower door came apart in a spray of shattered planks and twisted hinges. The explosion caught Xanthon full in the back, hurling him across the chamber but shielding Tanalasta from the worst of the blast. Armored soldiers came clanging through the door instantly, coughing and choking on sulfurous fumes.
Xanthon rolled to his feet and hurled himself down the stairs, disappearing into the musty depths beneath the tower before the dragoneers had taken two steps. A moment later, Alaphondar rushed through the door, Sarmon the Spectacular close on his heels.
“Tanalasta!” cried Alaphondar. “In the name of the Binder! No!”
The old sage collapsed to his knees and cradled her head in his lap. He started weep and rock to and fro, causing the ends of Tanalasta’s broken jaw to rub against each other. She moaned and reached up, clamping her fingers onto his arm to make him stop.
“By the quill! She’s alive!” Alaphondar pulled her higher into his lap, wrenching her broken arm around painfully, and waved Sarmon over. “Teleport us to Arabel-now!”
2
“No,” the oldest tracker said flatly, “no horse willingly gallops along bare rock when there’s soft turf to be had, unless the rider it’s obeying guides it so. If Cadimus went along here-as he must have done, to leave no trace for so long, and not having wings-then you can be sure someone was riding him.”
“His master?”
The tracker shrugged. “Who else?” Suddenly mindful that he was answering an anxious king and not an ignorant recruit, he added awkwardly, “Mind, Majesty, riders don’t exactly leave tracks of their own that we can follow, if ye take my meaning, but…”
“I understand,” Azoun said, lifting a reassuring hand. “You do good work, Paerdival-continue. The fortunes of the realm may depend on the trail you find for us.”
In reply, the tracker silently lifted a bushy pair of eyebrows for a moment, then bent over again to study the southern end of the bare shoulder of rock. In a matter of moments he’d given the impatient wave of his hand that meant he’d found signs left by the passage of the royal magician’s warhorse, and the army moved on.
The brief horn call that blared a breath or two later brought the army to an abrupt halt, and hundreds of heads turned in haste. A man was running from the rear guard, waving his hands as he came.
“To arms!” he cried. “Orcs behind us-thousands of them!”
The king did not hesitate. “Up this hill-everyone!” he bellowed. “Form a ring, spears to the fore, all with bows within and readying them. Move!”
The swordlords and lancelords around him began relaying the orders as Purple Dragons surged into motion, rolling up the hill in a vast, gleaming wave.
“I’ll be needing a foray force,” Azoun called to the lords Braerwinter and Tolon. “Gather forty men at most-men who can move swiftly and have good eyes, but none of the scouts. They deserve a rest.”
As he spoke, the horns that would call in the far-flung scouts sounded, and the first men reached the crest of the hill. In involuntary unison they turned and peered in the direction the rear guard had indicated for the orcs.
“Move, Tempus-damned sheep!” a swordcaptain bellowed at them. “Time for sightseeing later-there’s a war on, and we’re in it!”
Several mock bleats came as a reply as dragoneers moved hastily into a ring, grounding their spears and looking for their accustomed officers.
“Move, I said!” the swordcaptain growled at a lone, motionless figure, then fell silent, realizing he’d just bawled an order at the king.
Azoun spun around and clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly. “Keep right on doing that,” he murmured. “You never know when you might save a royal life. Just be assured that most of the time, I’ll ignore you.”
They traded grins-albeit a rather sickly one on the swordcaptain’s part-and took their own places. The officer stepped into the ring, and the king stood beside the two nobles who’d wisely selected some veteran officers to lead the force rather than trying to claim glory for themselves. They were standing with about twenty men. The king nodded approvingly.
“I’ll be needing some swift swords to seek out the enemy,” he told them. “If anyone is footsore or slowed for any reason, say so now. Your lives will almost certainly depend on being fleet in the field.”
He looked again at the hill from where the rear guard’s warning had come and stiffened.
A lone figure was running toward them, stumbling with weariness. It was a warrior, armor covered with dust, but seeming somehow familiar-a Cormyrean, to be sure.
Orcs were streaming up over that hill now, close behind the running knight. They were going to catch him and slay him right under the king’s nose, in full view of all the royal army.
Azoun’s mouth tightened. It would be foolish to abandon a strong defensive position to go down there to swing blades with so many orcs, but the last thing he wanted was to stand idle and watch a man he might have saved get hacked apart while he did nothing.