stamped once and then charged, trying to impale the king on its wicked horns. Its maw was open, and the acrid smoke wreathed its head, trailing behind it in oily wisps.
To dodge left or right was to be gored on those glittering horns. Azoun dropped to one knee, raising his blade in front of him. As the creature bore down on him, the king made a desperate lunge, striking into the bull’s open maw, driving his blade in to the hilt.
Sparks sprayed and metal skirled as the blade bounced from one unseen innard to another. There was a metallic singing and snapping, and the blade burst out the back of the bull’s skull, spraying a thick purple-black fluid.
The clockwork beast hung motionless for a moment, pinioned on the blade, its horns inches from the king’s face. Then it slowly, almost gracefully, dropped in its tracks. Whirring noises rose and clattered briefly from its collapsing form, only to die away once more.
Silence descended immediately on a battlefield wreathed in acrid-smelling fog. The king let go his blade and stood up unsteadily, shoulders trembling. Aunadar, the only man still holding a sword, poked at the glittering body a few times.
It lay still, but Thomdor could barely see it through the swimming tunnel. He staggered forward. He had to tell Azoun to summon aid for Bhereu.
The baron stopped short at the sight of His Majesty. The king’s flesh was bone-white and drawn as tightly over his skull as that of any mummy in a tomb. The royal eyes were wide, almost panicked, and Azoun’s brow and beard were beaded with dripping sweat.
The king mouthed a few words Thomdor could not catch, then collapsed in front of the golden bull’s horns.
Thomdor stared down at him, feeling his own knees going weak, but Aunadar was at his elbow in an instant, holding him up, voice shrill with fear. “What happened? What’s wrong with the king-and the duke? Are they ill? The bull didn’t strike him. What’s wrong?”
The tunnel of his vision was growing smaller, Thomdor sagged against an arm that seemed afraid to hold him. He had to get this boy to summon help, or House Obarskyr was lost.
“Right… boot,” the baron gasped. The words felt like acid in his throat, he could barely speak. “King’s right boot,” he rasped. “Wand.”
Aunadar looked at him blankly for a moment, as if trying to translate Thomdor’s wheezing words, then knelt down beside the king and peered into his right boot. His fingers closed on something, and he looked questioningly back at Thomdor as he drew it forth: a slender ivory wand, sheathed just inside the royal boot top.
Thomdor set his teeth and managed a nod, mentally snarling at the young man to get on with it. The tunnel had closed almost to nothing, and the darkness around it was crawling with dark, monstrous serpents and spiders, waiting for the Warden of the Eastern Marches to falter so they could claim all three of the royals.
Aunadar turned to the baron with the wand flat across his palms. There was a shocked, questioning look on his young face.
Thomdor licked lips that were suddenly thick and numb. “Break it,” he tried to roar, but it came out as a husking whisper.
The youth remained motionless. Either Bleth could no longer understand his words, or too little of the world was left for the baron to know what he was saying.
He repeated his command, but the young puppy remained still, the wand in his hands and that shocked, waiting look on his face.
With the last of his fading energy, Baron Thomdor of Arabel, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Royal Right Hand to King Azoun IV of Cormyr, lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s hands, forcing them to close over the wand and pressing them up and together. The wand snapped like a brittle bone.
A humming familiar to the baron filled the glade, and a small silver coin appeared in midair, tumbled once, flashed, and quickly widened to form a hoop. The hoop stretched swiftly into a great circular doorway, and out of that entry to otherwhere poured royal guards in white and purple, priests of Tymora in their blue and silver, and war wizards in their violet robes. Last came Vangerdahast, the fat old mage in his familiar red-brown robes, rolling slightly as he walked, bellowing orders right and left.
The Royal Magician knelt next to the king, then looked up sharply and yelled something. Thomdor could no longer understand what was being said, and his vision had faded to a mere pinprick of light, the russet-robed wizard kneeling in a vast void of slithering darkness.
It had been enough. They had summoned aid. Whatever was wrong, the Royal Magician would see to the matter and set things right. Vangerdahast would fix everything. The crown was saved.
And with that thought, Thomdor let go of the last of his crumbling, once iron-strong grip on life and said farewell to the tiny light…
Chapter 2: The Passing of Power
A Year of Good Hunting (-205 DR)
The elf stood on the lowest step, waiting as impassively as a statue. Behind him, the broad flagstone steps led up to the horn tower-a tower that in turn soared up above the surrounding bare trees, stabbing proudly into the cloud-studded sky. Its peak was a huge, glowing crystal carved into the shape of a leaping flame. The crystal, glowing a brilliant blue against the riot of autumn color, was lit in expectation of the guest.
The elf did not turn to look at it, he needed no reminder of the power of his people. Nor had he looked again at the words above the tower’s door since the day his spell had carved them out of the smooth stone. He knew the traditional warning to goblins well enough not to have to be reminded of it each time he passed, like some forgetful child.
Key’anna de Cormyr, read the runes: “We guard this wooded land.” Or, to put it more bluntly, “Beware: this land is ours.” Soon those words would hold truth at last.
A deep shadow passed quickly across the tower steps, followed by two more. Had he not been expecting it, the elf would have flinched or fled for the security of the tower. He did neither. He was accustomed to the manner of his guests by now, and for once welcomed it. Red and ocher leaves whirled and danced in the great wind that followed the shadow, scuttenng around the elf’s ankles. He did not spare them a glance.
The three guests made a low, banking turn over the forest and pulled up sharply, beating their wings and tails to bring them to a halt. More dead leaves swirled up as all three alit gracefully and in unison, on coiled hind legs. The largest of the elf lord’s guests, his ancient black scales fading to a violet shade, swept his wings back once to steady himself, in the process blowing the elf lord’s cassock and cope about with a sharp snap.
The elf permitted himself a small half-smile. It was just like the dragon to use even his entrance as a display of dominance and power. The intent was to make the elf flinch, step back, or raise an arm to ward off the swirling leaves and buffeting wings.
A game for children, he reflected. Neither of them were children any longer.
With slow, deliberate grace, the elf came down from the step, raising his arms in welcome. His face remained impassive as he strode forward. His green garments billowed out behind him like a sail, the soft cassock and the long, slightly darker cope, flared so that it was almost a full cape. Threads of spun gold entwined and circled along the cope’s front and hem, and here and there among their warm splendor gleamed delicate carvings of amber. Long, silver-blond hair drifted behind the elf in the false wind the dragon had wrought. The hair was held from wild and tangled ruin by a thin circlet marked by three spikes in the front and a purple amethyst at the center of his brow.
In one hand the elf bore a golden staff, its haft twisted to resemble a heavy rope, its tip adorned with another purple stone, this often carved into the shape of a soaring bird. The sash that gathered in the cassock at his slim waist bristled with wands along one hip, each wand in its own sheath. These battle wands had made the warrior mage famous among elves even before he rose to power. On his other hip the mage wore a thin elven sword, a long, narrow blade with a graceful haft and pommel.
Faint glowing auras surrounded some of the wands, seeping through their sheaths. They were the reason the best warriors of the elven House of Amaratharr bowed to this slender, still young wearer of green. His was the
