the wizard’s limp arm. “But it was not the orcs I was thinking of. Did you not feel that lunatic bloodlust?”
Vangerdahast looked at the priest. “You felt it too?”
“Of course-I still do.” Owden lifted one foot and braced it against Vangerdahast’s ribs, then began hauling on the wizard’s arm. “It was caused by this ghazneth-just as the last one caused your insanity.”
Vangerdahast screamed until his arm popped into its socket, then dropped to his knees and tried not to groan.
“Battle-lust can make men foolish,” said Owden. “What do you suppose will happen when the ghazneths are ready for us?”
“I suppose you know the answer,” Vangerdahast growled. He struggled to his feet and tried to raise his arm. He could not lift it more than a few inches, and the effort made him hiss with pain. “I imagine you have a solution?”
“Chauntea does.” Owden laid a healing hand on the wizard’s aching shoulder. “Here, the goddess will help you with that.”
Vangerdahast jerked his arm away. “I don’t need her help.” The wizard fished a healing potion from inside his own cloak and downed it, then said, “And the Royal Excursionary Company does not need her protection.”
Owden pointed at the empty vial in Vangerdahast’s hand. “That elixir was blessed by aged. There is no difference between drinking it and accepting the All Mother’s help.”
“The difference is that the Royal Treasury paid good gold for this.” Vangerdahast could already feel the potion’s fiery magic driving the ache from his strained shoulder. He used his injured arm to hurl the empty vial into a rock. “And that is all Tempus expects of us in return.”
Owden shook his head. “I am not your adversary, Vangerdahast.”
“Then why did you persuade the king to send you along?”
“Because you may need my help.” Owden’s eyes betrayed the anger he was struggling to contain. “I’m not trying to take your place. I’m only thinking of Tanalasta.”
“You are not thinking of Tanalasta.” Vangerdahast snatched Cadimus’s reins from Owden’s assistant, then swung into his saddle. “If you were thinking of Tanalasta, you would be back in Huthduth by now.”
The wizard jerked Cadimus around toward the warped sycamore tree, leaving the priest to glare at his back. Despite the harsh words, Vangerdahast knew the harvestmaster to be a good and capable man-and that was the heart of the problem. Having cured both the king and the royal magician of insanity, Owden had risen high in the opinions of many influential people-including the Royal Sage Alaphondar Emmarask, many of the nobles who had at first opposed creating a Royal Temple, and most importantly Azoun himself. Not only had the king insisted on sending Owden along to help find his daughters, he had asked the rest of the harvestmaster’s priests to help him and Merula rescue the queen.
Given Azoun’s inherent decency, the king would certainly feel obliged to express his gratitude to the monks, perhaps by establishing Tanalasta’s Royal Temple-and that Vangerdahast simply could not allow. As trustworthy and capable as Owden might be, there could be no guarantee that his successor would prove as valuable to the realm, or that Chauntea would not use him to impose her own will on the kingdom. It had been more than thirteen hundred years since the ancient elves had charged Baerauble Etharr with serving the first Cormyrean king as advisor and Royal Wizard. Since then, it had been the sole duty of every Royal Magician to protect both the king and his realm by steering them down the safest path. Vangerdahast was not about to let that tradition end under his watch-not when it had proven the wisest and most effective guarantee of the realm’s safety for thirteen-and-a-half centuries.
When Vangerdahast reached the gnarled sycamore tree, he found old Alaphondar exactly where he had expected: stumbling absentmindedly around the trunk, squinting at the glyphs and painstakingly copying them into his journal. So absorbed was the Royal Sage Most Learned that he did not notice the wizard’s presence until Cadimus nuzzled his neck-then he hurled his pencil and journal into the air, letting out such a shriek that half the company started up the hill to see what was wrong.
Vangerdahast signaled the riders to stop, then asked, “Well, old friend? Was it worth the trip?”
Alaphondar pushed his spectacles up his nose, then lifted his chin to regard the royal magician. “It’s curious, Vangerdahast-really quite strange.”
If the sage was irritated at being startled, his voice did not betray it. He simply retrieved his journal and pencil off the ground, then turned back to the tree and continued to work.
“These glyphs are First Kingate,” he said. “In fact, they are quite possibly Post Thaugloraneous.”
Vangerdahast had no idea what the sage was talking about. “First Kingate?” he echoed. “As in, from Faerlthann’s time?”
“That would be Faerlthannish, would it not?” Alaphondar peered over his spectacles, regarding Vangerdahast as though the royal magician were the under-educated scion of a minor family. “I mean First Kingate, as in Iliphar of the Elves.”
“The Lord of Scepters?” Vangerdahast gasped. “The first king of the elves?”
Alaphondar nodded wearily. “That would be First Kingate,” he said. “Approximately fourteen and a half centuries ago-a hundred years before Faerlthann was crowned. More than fifty years before the Obarskyrs settled in the wilderness, in fact.”
Vangerdahast glanced at the barren moors around them, trying to envision some unimaginably ancient time when they were covered with lush forest and home to a lost kingdom of elves.
“But the glyphs aren’t the interesting part,” said Alaphondar.
“They aren’t?”
The sage shook his head, then said, “This tree isn’t that old. In fact, it’s three hundred years too young.”
Vangerdahast knew better than to doubt the sage. “And you know this because…”
“Because of this.”
Alaphondar turned and ran his hand over the glyphs. Instantly, the raspy voice of an anguished elven maid filled the air, and the sound of nervous horses and astonished men rose behind Vangerdahast.
Alaphondar translated the song:
This childe of men, lette his bodie nourishe this tree. The tree of this bodie, lette it growe as it nourishe. The spirit of this tree, to them lette it return as it grewe. Thus the havoc bearers sleepe, the sleepe of no reste. Thus the sorrow bringers sow, the seeds of their ruine. Thus the deathe makers kille, the sons of their sons. Here come ye, Mad Kang Boldovar, and lie among these rootes.
When the song was finished, Vangerdahast gasped, “Boldovar?”
Alaphondar nodded excitedly. “You see?” The sage ran his finger along a set of curls that looked identical to every other set of curls. “He died three hundred years after these serpentine beaks passed out of vogue.”
“I’ll have to trust your judgment, old friend,” said Vangerdahast. He knew how to make the glyphs sing, but he could not read them-much less identify the era in which they had been inscribed. “What does it mean?’
“Mean?” Alaphondar looked confused. “Why, I couldn’t begin to tell you.”
“But we can conclude that the elf who inscribed these glyphs was over three hundred years old,” Vangerdahast prodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the Royal Scouts returning from their search for Tanalasta’s trail. Their lionar was riding up the hill to report.
“Oh yes,” Alaphondar prodded, “and more importantly, that she had been living away from her people for at least that long. Do you have any idea what that kind of loneliness would do to an elf?”
Vangerdahast eyed the glyphs, recalling their bitter words and the anguished tone of the song. “Yes. I’m afraid I do.”
Alaphondar started down the hill toward the hole that led beneath the roots. “Perhaps I’ll learn more in the burial chamber.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be time for that.” Vangerdahast turned to face the scouts’ lionar, who was reining his horse to a stop in front of the wizard. “We’ll be leaving directly.”
Alaphondar stopped in his tracks. “Leave?” he gasped, spinning around. “We can’t leave yet. It will take at least a day to sketch the site properly, and another day just to start the preliminary excavations.”
“We don’t have a day.” Vangerdahast looked into the sky and found no sign of the ghazneth. “We may not have even an hour.”
“But-“
