“Love?” The word did not feel as hollow as Tanalasta had expected-in fact, it felt all too comfortable. She eyed him warily. “You are the one who has been worried about the effect on the crown. What are we going to do about that?”
Rowen shrugged and shook his head. “I truly don’t know, and I can’t honestly say I care-as long as you protect me from Vangerdahast.” His tone was only half-joking. “I don’t fancy living out my life as a toad.”
Tanalasta looked at him a long time, giving her mind time to come to the same conclusion her heart had already reached. The princess knew him too well to believe the ranger had suddenly forgotten his oath to the crown. He had simply come to the same conclusion she had reached a long time ago.
Tanalasta smiled. “If you think I can protect you from Vangerdahast, you must be love-stricken!” She grabbed Rowen by the front of his cloak and pulled his face close to hers. “But I have read that a princess may kiss any toad she wishes.”
She licked the blood off his lip, then slipped her tongue into his mouth and gave him a long, burning kiss. He responded in kind, dipping her over backward and gently lowering her to the ground. Tanalasta pressed herself against him, reveling in the waves of desire shuddering through her body. His hands roamed over her shoulders and breasts at will, igniting little blossoms of heat wherever they went, and the last shadow of doubt vanished from her mind. Rowen was the man of her vision. She could tell by the way her flesh came alive at his touch, and she wanted never to be apart from him.
She pulled her lips away from his long enough to run a fevered line of kisses up his neck, then whispered, “Rowen
” She had to stop to catch her breath. “We need a plan.”
“I have one.”
He loosened her belt, then ran a hand up the bare skin beneath her tunic. She shivered in delight and let her eyes roll back, feeling as though she would black out from sheer pleasure.
“No…”
When Rowen’s hand hesitated, she grabbed his wrist through her tunic and guided his palm to her naked breast.
“I mean yes,” she gasped. “But what about the future?”
Rowen’s fingers grew still. “I still can’t take you with me.” He started to withdraw his hand-then stopped when Tanalasta clamped her elbow across his arm. A wanton smile came to his lips, but-somehow-he managed to keep his mind off his desire long enough to say, “There’s no telling how long it will take to find Vangerdahast, and-“
“And I must show the king what I’ve found as soon as possible-I know.” Tanalasta reached for his belt and began to fumble with the buckle. She was so nervous-or was it excited?-that her hands were trembling. “How do you get this thing off?”
“Just like yours.”
Rowen arched his back to give her a better angle, and the prong finally came out of the hole. Tanalasta grabbed the hem of his tunic and lifted it to his shoulders. Her stomach filled with butterflies, and she decided she was the luckiest princess in Faeriin. She leaned over and kissed her way up toward his neck.
Rowen moaned softly, then fell silent and still. For a moment, Tanalasta feared she had done something wrong-or, recalling her own trembling hands, thought perhaps he’d grown too excited too quickly (having read in Miriam Buttercake’s Treatise on Good Wifery that men sometimes suffered such disappointments), but that turned out not to be the case. As suddenly as he had fallen quiet, Rowen pulled her mouth to his and gave her a long, lingering kiss.
When he finished, he looked deeply into her eyes and said, “There is one thing that even kings and queens may not dictate, that only we may control.”
Tanalasta nodded eagerly. “I know.”
She started to pull her tunic off over her head, but Rowen caught her arm.
“No. I mean there is a way to stop them from keeping us apart-but only if you are sure about risking your crown.”
Tanalasta did not even hesitate. “I’m thirty-six years old. If I can’t make a decision by now, what kind of queen would I be anyway?”
Rowen smiled, then rolled to his knees and picked up the seed bag that lay beside the plot of ground she had been preparing. He pulled a single columbine seed from inside and placed it in his open palm. Tanalasta stared at the kernel for a long time. She was more nervous than ever, with her pulse rushing in her ears and her heart fluttering up into her throat.
Finally, she gathered her wits and asked, “The Seed Ceremony?”
Rowen nodded. “If you will have me.”
Tanalasta rose to her own knees. “Are you doing this for me-or for the realm?”
“Neither.” Rowen continued to hold the seed in his palm. “I am doing it for me.”
The rushing sound vanished from Tanalasta’s ears, and her heart settled back down into her chest where it belonged. “Good answer.”
She placed her palm over the seed in Rowen’s hand, and they began the invocation. “Bless us, O Chauntea, as we bless this seed, that all we nurture may grow healthy and strong.”
With their free hands, Tanalasta and Rowen dug a single small hole in the plot she had prepared, then the princess grabbed her waterskin and dampened the soil.
“We prepare this bed with love and joy,” Rowen said.
Together, they placed the seed in the hole and covered it with dirt.
Tanalasta began the next part. “In the name of Chauntea, let the roots of what we plant today grow deep…”
“And the stalk stand strong…”
“And the flower bloom in brilliance…”
“And the fruit prove abundant.”
They finished together, then poured more water the planting and kissed. This time, it was Rowen who pulled Tanalasta’s tunic over her head.
18
The royal wizard’s bones were acting their age. After more than a tenday of ghazneth-chasing, his hips throbbed, his back hurt, and the last thing he wanted to do was crawl up a rocky hillside on his hands and knees to spy on a tribe of swiners. That was what Royal Scouts were for… but Vangerdahast was fresh out of Royal Scouts. Owden Foley had found the last one earlier that morning-a bloated, blotchy red corpse blanketed in stinging ants. There had been no question of touching the thing. They had simply poured a flask of torch oil over the body, commended the man’s soul to Helm, and set him alight. Now the royal magician had to do his own spying.
Vangerdahast crested the hill and found himself looking across the vast, fog-laced expanse of the Farsea Marsh. Stretching to the horizon, it was a sweep of golden-green tallgrass with channels of bronze water meandering past scattered copses of swamp poplar and bog spruce. The place teemed with cormorants and black egrets, all as raucous as a band of goblins, and swarms of black insects glided through the grass in hazy amorphous clouds.
On the near shore, several orc tribes were camped together on a rocky spur of land that jutted out into the marsh perhaps a thousand paces. The males had broken into four large companies and retreated to separate corners of the little peninsula for formation drills and weapons training. The females and children were clustered around tribal fires working, or wading through the shallows in search of fish and crustaceans. A two-story keep of dried mud stood at the end of the promontory, overlooking the marsh on three sides and guarded landward by a timber drawbridge. Its blocky construction and rounded arrow loops were evocative of ancient Cormyrean architecture. From the second-story windows oozed a strange aura of darkness that clung to the place like a death shroud.
The water around the keep gleamed silver with floating fish. Clouds of insects swirled through the orc camps,
