“Not yet,” the Steel Princess snapped, “but I’m watching. Look there.” A dozen orcs-no more-came up the hill to join the few survivors along the ridge. “If there are many more ahead, they want us to advance. I see no messengers hastening away to call any others.”
The king nodded. “So into the waiting jaws we’ll go,” he said. “I’m tired of wandering around these hills waiting to be attacked by a foe who seems to dwell or rest nowhere. It’s time, and past time, to lash out.”
Heads nodded agreement as the Steel Princess raised her hand and looked around. “Ready all?” she asked.
A breath or two later, she brought her hand chopping down. “Then forward!”
The orcs seemed to melt away like smoke before the wind of their charge. The Cormyreans broke through a small thicket onto a ridge that overlooked a small, deep bowl valley. Its depths held a mud castle akin to the ones many in the force had seen before.
“Gods!” one of them swore. “How is it that these things can be built in our own marches, and us not know?”
“A fortress!” another growled in disbelief. “A bloody tusker castle!”
Orcs in plenty could be seen on the slopes of the valley and on the spiraling ramparts of the mud tower, which was gray wherever it wasn’t a sickly fresh dung color. It rose untidily out of a muddy moat, rock rubble strewn around it. The tower might have been raised the day before, or might have been older than the king.
“Has anyone among us traveled these hills before?” Azoun asked, almost absently.
He was answered only by uneasy silence, until his daughter growled, “What does it matter? We know what we have to do.”
As if her words had been a signal, the ghazneth that Luthax the War Wizard had become circled the mud tower almost lazily, slipping out of one of the structure’s many gaping, arched windows to plunge back into another. It was almost a taunt.
“I’ve no love for these mud fortresses,” the king said flatly, “but a lair we came seeking, and a lair we’ve found. Let our swords strike for Cormyr!”
“For Cormyr!” came a ragged shout in reply.
The small force trotted down into the valley, steel rang on steel, and again the slaughter began.
9
It was what had become a typical morning in the courtyard of the Arabellan Palace. Walls rumbled to the sound of passing plague wagons, the air was laced with smoke from the wildfires outside the city, and cobblestones rang to the bark-and-clang of drill sergeants training recruits to meet the orc menace in the north. Beyond the lowered portcullis women begged gruel for hungry children, madmen trumpeted the world’s end, and clouds of flies droned over carts of food spoiling faster than it could be shared. The scene was much the same across all of northern Cormyr. If the ghazneths ran free much longer, Tanalasta felt sure, the entire kingdom north of the High Road would be reduced to a scorched, diseased wasteland.
With some difficulty, the princess turned from the gate and looked to her small entourage. Save for herself and the queen, all of the guards, wizards, and companions carried only one small satchel of personal effects. Even Filfaeril and Tanalasta had packed their belongings into a single trunk each.
“Is everyone ready?” When no one reported otherwise, Tanalasta nodded to Korvarr Rallyhorn. “You may proceed.”
“As you command, Princess.” The steely-eyed lionar bowed stiffly-almost resentfully, Tanalasta thought-then turned toward the front of the group. There, two war wizards stood, each one linking arms with four burly dragoneers. In their hands, the dragoneers held bare iron swords. “You may proceed. We will follow in a hundred- count.”
The wizards spoke a magic command word and vanished with a distinct blat, taking their eight dragoneer escorts along. Korvarr began to count aloud, slowly and audibly so everyone in the remaining half of the party could hear and understand.
Tanalasta’s mother leaned close. “You know what this looks like, dear.”
“That can’t be helped,” Tanalasta replied. “The research I need is in Suzail.”
“People will think we’re fleeing to safety,” Filfaeril continued. “It hardly inspires confidence.”
“I am not confident,” Tanalasta replied. “We understand Xanthon, but what about the other ghazneths? The Arabellan library doesn’t have the answers. If we want to stop them, I must return to the Royal Archives.”
“And knowing why these traitors forsook Cormyr will help us how?” Filfaeril asked pointedly.
“You know how. I’ve already explained what happened to Xanthon when he learned that I had married Rowen.” Tanalasta spoke even more quietly than before. Together, she and Filfaeril had decided it would be wisest to let Azoun announce her marriage so it would appear the king approved. “Learning the reasons the other ghazneths betrayed the realm is just a matter of enough study-and studying is what I’m best at.”
“You are also an emblem of Cormyr,” Filfaeril reminded her. “If the people think we are fleeing, they will lose hope.”
“Then you may stay to reassure them, Mother,” Tanalasta said. “But I will do what I think best for Cormyr.”
Korvarr’s count reached ninety, and Sarmon the Spectacular stepped up and offered them his arms. Tanalasta slipped her hand through the crook of the wizard’s elbow, then cocked a querying eyebrow at her mother.
“I am coming,” Filfaeril sighed. “For me to appear braver than you would undercut your station-and I am done costing you prestige.”
“One hundred,” Korvarr announced.
Sarmon uttered his spell, and Tanalasta’s stomach rose into her chest. There was that timeless interval of numb, colorless falling in which she knew only the wizard’s fingers around her wrist and the roar of silence in her ears. Now she was somewhere else, standing in a different courtyard, attempting to blink away the teleport afterdaze and recall where she was.
The dull clamor of clanging iron rang off the bailey walls, and the air reeked of battle gore. The stones beneath her feet reverberated to the erratic thud of tramping feet and falling bodies, and there were armored men and black shapes flashing past in every direction. Sarmon had teleported them into a battle, and for the life of her, the princess could not recall why.
A dark silhouette whirled back toward her, and Tanalasta glimpsed an eerily familiar shape streaking toward her on black wings. The thing had gangling arms and hands with ebony talons, a skeletal torso with naked female breasts, coarse black hair that framed smoldering scarlet eyes.
“Ambush!” cried Korvarr Rallyhorn.
The lionar’s armored body struck Tanalasta sidelong, slamming her into Sarmon and Filfaeril and driving all three to the ground. Suddenly, Tanalasta recalled where they were supposed to be. They were supposed to be in the inner bailey of the Suzail Palace, but Sarmon seemed to have bungled his spell and teleported them into one of the terrible battles raging in the north.
A loud clunk sounded above Tanalasta as the ghazneth’s talons struck Korvarr’s armor and tore him off her. Trying to fathom how the lionar’s escort had bungled a teleport spell in exactly the same way as Sarmon the Spectacular, the princess rolled off the pile. She pulled the wizard off her mother and shoved him toward Korvarr.
“Help the lionar!” she ordered.
Even as the ghazneth dragged Korvarr bouncing and skipping across the cobblestone pavement, the lionar somehow managed to pull his iron sword and start hacking at the creature.
“And Sarmon-try not to bungle your spell this time,” Tanalasta added, not bothering to conceal her anger at the wizard’s incredible mistake.
Brow rising at her sharp tone, Sarmon pulled something from his weathercloak and tossed it in the lionar’s direction. As he started his incantation, a familiar drone rose behind Tanalasta. She spun around to find herself looking through a swirling fog of wasps and flies at the looming spires of the Dragon Keep, which stood well inside Suzail Palace.
