drive the poor beast into a battle frenzy.
His curiosity vanished a moment later, when a ghazneth rose from the water behind Cadimus. The phantom spread its wings and raised an arm to point in the stallion’s direction, then slipped and nearly fell as another horse ran into one of its wings. The ghazneth spun around, spraying a long arc of crimson fire from its fingertip, and pointed into the oncoming stampede. A dark rift opened down the center, swallowing half a dozen beasts in the blink of an eye. A moment later, their smoking carcasses reappeared atop a blinding curtain of crimson fire.
A second ghazneth shot out of the water, then launched itself into the air with nebulous ribbons of darkness trailing from its wings. It began to circle back and forth over the stampede, dragging the black streamers across the heads of the charging horses. The beasts went wild, turning to bite at the others around them, or stopping to buck and kick at the beasts pressing them from behind.
The charge began to falter. A third ghazneth rose from the water and launched itself over the orcs, yelling and gesturing wildly into the stampede. To a warrior, the swiners turned and flung themselves against the charge, hacking and slashing with their primitive weapons and paying no heed to their own lives. The horses responded in a like manner, stopping in the middle of the horde to bite and kick, or even wheeling around after they had cleared the fighting to wade back into the fray. Only Cadimus and a handful of sturdy beasts in the front part of the charge escaped the ghazneth’s influence and continued forward.
The fourth and fifth ghazneths rose together from a spreading circle of browning marsh grass. One launched itself after the escaping horses, swooping in from behind to sprinkle them with brown droplets from its wet wings. The beasts slowed almost at once, flecks of white foam spewing from their nostrils. Only Cadimus escaped, hurling himself into the marsh on his side and disappearing beneath the water.
Not waiting to see whether the stallion surfaced again, Alaphondar swung his spyglass back to the last ghazneth. The creature had alighted on a powerful bay that was rearing up in the middle of the battle, jaws clamped around one foe’s neck and forefeet slashing at two more. The ferocious beast split one orc’s skull, pinned the second beneath the water, bit through the third one’s spine, and went to work on its unwelcome rider, bucking and whirling and biting in a mad effort to tear the phantom from its back.
The horse tired only a moment later. Its coat suddenly grew dull and grizzled, its face became gaunt, and the muscle melted from its body. The beast dropped to its side and rolled, trying one last trick to unseat its rider. The ghazneth merely leaped to another mount, leaving the bay to drown in the marsh.
Alaphondar lowered the spyglass and sank behind the boulder, his veins running cold at what he was seeing: fire and fury, darkness, disease and decay-five primal forces wielded by five dark phantoms Emperel had been chasing when he disappeared. The implications were manifest. Emperel guarded the Lords Who Sleep, a secret company of Cormyrean knights hibernating against the day when a prophesy uttered by the great sage of Candlekeep, Alaundo the Seer, came true:
Seven scourges-five long gone, one of the day, and one soon to come-open the door no man can close. Out come the armies of the dead and the legions of the devil made by itself to sweep all Cormyr away in ruin, unless those long dead rise to stand against them.
Boldovar was a scourge long gone, now returned bearing darkness and lunacy. Alaphondar did not know the names of the other ghazneths, but it seemed reasonable to assume they might also be scourges from Cormyr’s past. He could list a dozen eligible names off the top of his head, and those were just kings.
That left only two scourges, “one of the day” and “one soon to come,” to open the “door no man can close.” Alaphondar’s next thought made his chest tighten. Tanalasta might well be one of those scourges. Certainly, Vangerdahast had predicted dire consequences for the realm if the princess proceeded with her plan to establish a royal temple, and the Royal Sage Most Learned knew enough history to realize that royal magicians were seldom mistaken about such things.
Alaphondar forced himself to stand. Cadimus was creeping toward the shore, having eluded the orcs and ghazneths by circling into the marsh and ducking into a thicket of high grass. The rest of the horses lay near the peninsula, floating in the shallows or piled high along the shore, thwarting the orcs’ progress as they clambered ashore. The ghazneths seemed to be hanging back to urge the horde onward, apparently unconcerned that Vangerdahast had entered their keep. Of course, they had little reason to worry, since every spell the wizard cast transformed another few inches of mud into hard marble.
Alaphondar raised the spyglass to his eye. The tower was already black to three-quarters of its height, with the marsh’s brown haze swirling around it in tight spirals. Close to the ground, the cloud was so thick he could no longer see the wall itself only the silver flicker of Vangerdahast’s battle spells flashing through the gaping breach. Alaphondar was disheartened to see his friend had made so little progress. By the time he reached Tanalasta, the tower would be solid marble and completely swaddled in brown fog.
What remained of the Royal Excursionary Company had gathered about twenty paces in front of the keep. Incredibly, the small force was trying to ready itself for a charge. The dragoneers were holding their iron swords and pushing and shoving each other into a rough semblance of a double rank. The two surviving war wizards stood together in the center of the second line, facing each other and gesturing angrily. Alaphondar could not imagine what the dragoneers expected to accomplish, but their jerky motions and comical efforts at organizing themselves suggested they had fallen prey to Boldovar’s dark madness.
The sage was about to lower the spyglass and start down the hill when a cloud of insects rolled over the company from behind. The men flew into a frenzy, breaking ranks to slap wildly at themselves and each other- sometimes with the flats of their iron blades. The two wizards pulled spell components from their pockets and spun around, gesturing toward the top of the keep. Neither managed to complete his spell. One suddenly covered his eyes and fell writhing, and the other dropped when an errant sword caught him across the back of the neck.
Alaphondar turned his spyglass toward the keep, tracing the black cloud to a second story arrow loop. Though the tower interior remained dark and impenetrable, he had little doubt what he would have found inside, had he been able to see: the sixth ghazneth, master of swarms and Scourge of the Day.
Leaving his spyglass where it lay, Alaphondar stepped from behind the boulder and started down the front of the hill, then thought better of rushing into danger with no backup plan. He took his note journal from his weathercloak pocket and fished out a writing lead, then scrawled a message on a blank page.
You who read this, I pray you be loyal to the Purple Dragon and perform a vital service to your king. If you be one of the few who know the Sleeping
Sword, then go and awaken it at once-the scourges have come, and the door is opening. If this be nonsense to you, then I pray you carry this note to the king in all haste and present it to him at once. May wise Oghma watch over this message and see it delivered to the right hand,
Alaphondar Emmarask,
Sage Most Learned to the Royal Court of Cormyr
Alaphondar tore the page from its book and did a quick signet rubbing, then opened his spyglass and slipped the message inside. If all went well, he would retrieve the note himself. If not, then whoever the king sent to investigate his absence would see the message when he found the device and looked inside. The sage slipped the spyglass down between two boulders, leaving enough exposed to attract the attention of someone searching the area for hints as to the fate of the Royal Excursionary Company, and started down toward the marsh.
Judging by the location of Vangerdahast’s prismatic wall, he needed to reach the bottom of the hill before he used his weathercloak’s escape pocket, and that would give him the time to do a quick sending. He closed his throat clasp and pictured Tanalasta’s face in his mind.
When Tanalasta noticed the trail, Alusair’s company was stumbling down into one of those narrow, steep canyons that meandered aimlessly through the Storm Horns, making any journey through the mountains a maddening exercise sweat, and so when she looked down through the pines and glimpsed a swath of churned earth running up the center of the marshy valley, she at first took the dark stripe to be a product of delirium. It had been six days since her last healing spell, and she knew from experience that such hallucinations became common as a person grew sicker. Five days after her wedding-it seemed like she had married Rowen years ago, though she thought the actual time was something little more than a tenday-they had dared to cast a round of healing spells and lost three men to a ghazneth attack. Since then they had resorted to magic only when they grew too ill to continue moving, and the ghazneths never failed to extract a heavy toll.
Finally, Tanalasta staggered out of the trees onto a grassy ribbon of valley floor and heard the lilting trickle of running water. A dozen paces ahead stood a tall stand of willows, screening the creek from view. Thirty paces beyond the creek rose the canyon’s southern wall, blanketed in pines and as steep as a rampart stairway. Drawn on
