You what?
“It’s been harassing us-and Alusair, too.” As Vangerdahast approached the camp, he heard a soft splashing in the water. “It may have something to do with Emperel’s disappearance, but I don’t know. We haven’t been able to catch up with Alusair.”
This shouldn’t be taking so long. What’s going on up there?
“It seems the ghazneth is attracted to magic,” Vangerdahast said, “which is why Alusair took off her ring when I tried to contact her from House Marliir. I’m afraid we won’t be able to talk like this for a while, old friend.”
Wait. Azoun sounded worried. I’ll send Merula and some Purple Dragons-and Owden is here.
“That would only make it harder to talk Tanalasta out of this mess,” Vangerdahast said. “If things get dangerous again-“
Again?
“Have no fear, Sire, she handled herself quite well.” Vangerdahast stopped outside the boulders and lowered his voice. “As I was saying, I can always teleport us back to Arabel.”
Vangerdahast, I hope you know what you’re doing.
“Of course!” Vangerdahast was genuinely hurt. “We can’t give up now… unless you fancy turning your royal parade ground into a vegetable plot.”
Azoun’s only reply was a groan. The wizard smiled to himself, then stepped into the boulder circle to find Rowen sitting at water’s edge, staring out into the steam toward a shapely white blur that could only be Princess Tanalasta floating on the surface of the dark pool. Jaw set, Vangerdahast strode through camp and planted a boot square in the ranger’s back, shoving him headlong into the steaming water.
Rowen vanished under the surface for a moment, then emerged three paces to the left with a raised sword.
When he saw Vangerdahast standing in the moonlight, he lowered his weapon. “It was you?”
“It was,” Vangerdahast growled. “And you may consider yourself lucky to escape with a dunking. Spying on a royal princess’s bath could be deemed a crime against the crown.”
Rowen’s jaw fell. “I wasn’t spying!”
“No? Just peeping?”
“Vangerdahast!” Tanalasta swam over and stood, crossing her arms in front of her breasts. “You owe Rowen an apology. I asked him to keep watch while I bathed.”
“I doubt you asked him to watch you,” growled Vangerdahast, though he suspected the possibility had at least occurred to Tanalasta. The wizard glowered in Rowen’s direction. “Had you been guarding the princess instead of leering at her, you would have heard me coming.”
“I was watching the horizon,” Rowen protested. Though Tanalasta was still covering herself with her arms, he took care to avert his eyes as he spoke. “Milady, you must believe me. Why I didn’t hear him-“
“Pay him no heed, Rowen,” said Tanalasta, still covering herself with her arms. “Old Snoop is famous for skulking about the palace halls. One does not dare hold a personal conversation without first examining every garderobe and alcove within twenty paces.”
Though twenty paces was actually something of an underestimate, Vangerdahast feigned hurt. “Even were that true, Princess, I was not skulking this time.” He stepped to the edge of the water and opened Tanalasta’s weathercloak. “I was speaking with your father.”
Rowen’s face grew as pale as the moonlight, then he glanced across the circle of boulders. “The king is with you?”
“Hardly.” Vangerdahast motioned the ranger out of the water, then averted his own eyes so Tanalasta could slip into the cloak. “Will you hurry? We may not have much time.”
“Time?” Rowen climbed out of the pool, being very careful not to look back. “Why not?”
“The king is in Mabel,” Tanalasta explained, slipping into the weathercloak. “They were far-speaking.”
Rowen spun on Vangerdahast. “Magic? Alusair warned you!”
“It was the king she didn’t warn, young man,” Vangerdahast bristled. “Now, be a good lad and fetch the horses.”
“Of course.” Rowen’s expression changed from anger to chagrin. “You’re right, we don’t have much time.”
The ranger sheathed his sword, then snatched up his saddle and rushed off in the direction of the horses. Tanalasta started to follow, but Vangerdahast caught her by the arm.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Princess?” He pointed toward her neatly folded tunic and trousers. “You really shouldn’t tempt poor Rowen. It’s unfair to vaunt a prize he has no chance of winning.”
“Who says he doesn’t?” The princess snatched up her clothes and stepped behind a boulder.
Vangerdahast groaned inwardly. He pulled a gold coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air, then spoke an incantation as it started to fall. The coin stopped at about eye level.
“Vangerdahast, have you lost your mind?” Tanalasta peered out from behind her rock. “That’s what attracts it!”
“So I’ve been told.”
Vangerdahast plucked the coin out of the air and began to rub it between his palms. A faint green aura appeared around the coin, barely brighter than the moonlight illuminating it against his palm.
“Now, watch and learn, my dear, watch and learn.” Vangerdahast waited until Rowen returned with the horses, then asked, “Which way will we be traveling, young man?”
When Rowen pointed into the hills, Vangerdahast turned and flicked the coin in the opposite direction. It whistled down the gulch and sailed out over the flatlands, vanishing from sight like a shooting star.
“A false trail?” Rowen asked.
Vangerdahast nodded. “It should buy us an hour or two.”
“You may be underestimating the ghazneth’s speed.”
Rowen crouched behind a boulder, then pointed toward the mouth of the gully, where the distant silhouette of a moonlit ghazneth was wheeling out over the plain.
“How long will your coin stay in the air?” Tanalasta asked.
“About as long as it takes the ghazneth to catch it,” Vangerdahast continued to stare out over the empty plain, astonished at how quickly the dark creature had faded from sight. “How long that will be, who can say?”
“But sooner than we’d like,” concluded Tanalasta.
The princess stepped from behind her boulder, now fully clothed, both bracers clasped on one arm and the weathercloak thrown unclasped over her shoulders. The bracers would not radiate magic until she transferred one to her bare wrist, but closing the cloak’s clasp would automatically activate several magics sure to draw the ghazneth’s attention. Vangerdahast pulled his own weathercloak over his shoulders, leaving it unclasped, then they mounted and quietly left Orc’s Pool behind.
9
The slope lay blanketed in shadow as thick as ink. Vangerdahast rode in silence, keeping a careful watch on the dark sky behind them, cringing inwardly at the constant clatter of horse hooves on shifting stone. He expected to see the ghazneth come streaking out of the mists above Orc’s Pool at any moment, but his greatest fear was that he would not see it at all, that it would swoop in from some unwatched corner of the sky and disembowel them all before he could cast a single spell. His fingers kept tracing patterns of protection. Only the knowledge that the magic would draw the phantom like a signal fire kept him from uttering the incantations to activate the enchantments.
Finally, the companions crested the top of the hummock and began to traverse a barren, moonlit clearing lacking so much as a boulder to hide behind. They did not have even the stonemurk to conceal them, for the rolling hill lands made the wind too erratic and scattered to sustain its load of sand and loess. The trio urged their mounts across the clearing at a trot.
Vangerdahast finally began to relax when they reached the other side of the hillock and descended into the
