Take the crown if you feel it best, but follow your own heart-don’t rule just because you believe I wanted it so. Know, little one, that I love you. I have always loved you, and if the gods will, I shall always love you, watching over you and the realm even if you see and hear me no more. Gods keep you, Alusair.”
Alusair swallowed, forgotten, the plate almost fell from her hands. Laspeera took it and murmured, “The luck of all the gods be upon you, Lady Highness. I fear I have other matters to attend to now.”
The war wizard kissed the princess’s forehead, became a falcon again, and soared aloft, climbing hard into the sun.
Numbly the princess watched her go. Then she drew in a deep, trembling breath and shook her head, fighting back sudden tears.
Biting her lip, she stared out over the harsh grandeur of the Stonelands. She no more wanted to be queen than shy Tanalasta. And as long as Tanalasta lived, she would be spared that responsibility. Poor Tana!
Poor Father. Gods! She’d always know this day might come, but…
The gods. Yes, it was time-past time. There would be time for grieving later, but first, driven by duty, as always.
She went to her knees on the hard rocks in prayer, pouring out a silent supplication. When she was done, she did not open her eyes but concentrated instead on calling to mind the Royal Magician of the realm. She attempted to initiate the farspeaking that allowed the wizard to converse at great distances with the Obarskyr battle maiden.
She thought of Vangerdahast. Those dark brown eyes-red when he grew testy, which was often-around jowls and a close-trimmed beard… white, and his hair, too, though both still had a few reddish-brown hairs. Kindly, stern, a paunch beginning to show through those plain robes…
Her mental picture seemed to move for a moment and acquired flickering candelabra and an impression of hurried movement along a hall. A hall in the palace? Or…
“Lady Highness?” Brace’s voice was anxious. Alusair shook her head in exasperation as she knelt amid the stones, eyes closed. The contact, brief and hurried, was broken, the vision was slipping away.
“Lady Alusair?”
It was gone. She sighed and fought down a surge of grief-driven rage. Couldn’t these men see needed to be alone? No, they couldn’t. They did not know of her father, and Bhereu-poor Uncle Bhereu! Instead, she slowly rose, tossing her hair back over her shoulder again. She replied levelly to the interruption. “Yes, gentle sirs? Or should I say ‘trail hounds’?”
“Beldred sent us,” a deeper voice said sourly. “I thought you’d not want us…” He trailed off. Alusair was fairly certain the guards had not seen Laspeera, or her using the message plate.
“Beldred Truesilver’s orders are wise, Threldryn,” the princess replied, giving them both of them a quick smile as she vaulted a rock and plucked her reins from around the dead sapling where she’d wound them.
When she looked up, two sets of concerned eyes were looking a silent question at her. Neither man was going to ask a princess of the realm if a need of nature was all that had brought her here, but they had already sensed it was something more.
Alusair sighed. They were riding into battle, this was something her men needed to know. “I had something of a… vision,” she said carefully, “from the Royal Magician. You know he laid tracing spells on both my sister and me when we were babes.”
“To prevent kidnappings,” Brace said, nodding.
“To let my mother find us when we wandered off,” she offered, quoting the official reason with derisive amusement clear in her tone.
“Aye. So we’ve heard,” Threldryn prompted.
She gave him a brief glare and continued. “Something of a link remains… unreliable, and weak, but… something. Through it, he contacted me-unintentionally, I believe.”
“And in this vision, you saw…?” Brace asked hesitantly.
“Something that might be a secret of the realm or might not. I’d know which right now if two overinquisitive noblemen hadn’t interrupted me at precisely the wrong moment!” she snapped.
“My apologies, Lady Highness,” the two men mumbled in unison, holding out her gauntlets and blades.
Their commander took them and waved a dismissive hand as she swung into her saddle. “I shan’t slap your wrists for doing your duty. You had your orders, and the one who gave them was thinking of the safety of Cormyr, no doubt. The fault’s not w-“
As she spoke they rounded the rocks, and the noise of the war cries reached them. She broke off speaking to stare, at first puzzled, then angry. Below the three riders, a small band of orcs was fleeing into a steep-valed wash, the cream of Cormyr’s young nobles pouring after them in a headlong rush, shouting enthusiastic cries. Alusair and her “trail hounds” could see movement along the sides of the vale. More orcs, waiting for the humans to come surging into their waiting and weapon-laden arms.
Alusair bellowed, “Beldred, you fool! It’s a trap!” and raked the flanks of her mount in frantic haste, screaming at it for speed.
The two noblemen, Threldryn and Brace, found themselves galloping hard after her, hearts in their throats, before they quite knew what had happened.
The trap was sprung before Alusair was halfway to the charging nobles. From the walls of valley magical lightning flashed, the thunderous boom rolling along the steep walls. Bright-armored figures danced in their saddles at the stroke of the bolt, their arms and legs jerking spasmodically, their weapons flying from hands that could no longer grip anything. Those men who survived the assault shouted in alarm and fought to control their rearing or bolting horses. The retreating orcs turned, practically under those flying hooves, and began to inflict vicious slaughter with their blades. More horses screamed and went down.
A furious Alusair snatched out her saddle horn and blew. The high, clear call rang back off the rocky heights: the retreat. Heads turned as the proud young knights of Cormyr heard their commander’s signal and pulled back on their reins in disbelief… or relief, depending on their wisdom. Those whose horses would respond turned and streamed back out of the valley, followed by the hoarse jeers of triumphant orcs.
Alusair roared like Azoun himself as she rode to meet them. “Is charging all you dolts know how to do? Beldred, couldn’t you tell the valley had all the makings of a trap?”
“I couldn’t have stopped them if I’d tried, Lady Highness,” the bloodied Beldred Truesilver replied wearily, “but I must admit, I did not try. Who could expect a few orcs to be able to hurl a lightning bolt?”
Alusair flung up her hands in exasperation. “No wonder they don’t let you handsome swashcloaks out unchaperoned! You all seem to keep your brains in your sword scabbards!”
Alusair looked at the valley mouth and muttered a curse. “I’d tell you to regroup back at those hillocks, but the orcs will slaughter anyone downed by the bolt if we do. We have to go after our fallen comrades. Form a wedge behind me, now!”
In a chaos of thudding hooves, snorting horses, and shouting men, she swiftly got the formation in place. “Is anyone known to be dead?” Alusair called, not taking her eyes from the mouth of the valley.
“Dagh Illance,” someone in scorched armor muttered. His helm was gone, and his hair was mostly ashes. He rode past her almost in a daze. “Perhaps one or two others that caught the brunt of the blast.”
“Good riddance to Illance, the idiot. Foolishness must run in the family,” Alusair replied, her voice low enough that none but she could hear. She drew a dagger from her left boot and reversed it, so that the large blue-green gem in its pommel pointed foremost, and called, “Go in fast, split up, and ride around each side of the valley, don’t trample our fallen comrades! Throw daggers and spears at orcs on the upper flanks of the vale, and knock them to our level-we can ride them down at that point! If there’s any cave or cleft at the back, keep clear of it! Ye hear? Right, then-ride!”
And with her shrill bellow echoing in their ears, the noble knights broke into a gallop. The cheerful hooting and war cries of their earlier ride were absent now. They were injured and angry at their foe, and every man rode with the fresh, chill jolt of seeing comrades fall in death. If the princess had not been the warrior she was, half of them would be riding for the lowlands now, leaving the other half dying on the battlefield. As it was, they rode grimly, wondering what would prevent another lightning bolt from snapping down their throats as they rode into the valley.
They thundered on, fear rising in their mouths. They were close enough now to see orcs, looking up with tusked snarls as they went about the grisly business of slitting the throats of their fallen friends. The humanoids
