screeched in triumph and streaked in to attack. I thought for a moment they had deceived me again and tricked me into dispelling the grove’s magic protection-which I am sure now was their entire purpose in luring me north in the first place-but if so, the last trick was on them. An army of elf ghosts rose from beneath their trees to meet the ghazneths, and the trees wove their branches into an impenetrable net of protection. The ghazneths tore into the limbs with fire and blight, and the ghosts tore into them with sword and club. I concentrated on my digging, and it was not long before I had wormed my way well down among the roots.
“But even the elves could not hold on forever, and it seemed the deeper I dug, the weaker they grew. By the time I finally broke into Iliphar’s treasure chamber, the great tree branches behind me were cracking and snapping as the ghazneths tore through. I pulled my commander’s ring and activated the light spell, then cried out at all the treasure I saw heaped beneath the tree. There were hills of it, glowing with magic and crusted with enough gems to dazzle the eyes of old Thauglor himself.
“A loud rumble rolled down the tunnel from outside, then all the trees started to sing at once. I rushed into the chamber and began tearing through the treasure heaps. There were wands and staves and rods of every ilk. Any one of them and none of them could have been the Scepter of Lords, and I despaired of ever finding the right one.
“Then a terrible rasping broke out in the tunnel behind me. Thinking to bring the roof down on my pursuer, I grabbed a silver sword and rushed toward the mouth-and that is when I saw it, resting in the crooks of two roots, with a thin circlet of gold hanging from its haft.”
“The Scepter of Lords?” Vangerdahast asked.
Rowen’s pearly eyes rose and fell in the darkness. “It was a golden scepter fashioned in the shape of sapling oak, with finely wrought branches sprouting off at odd angles and a huge pommel of amethyst carved in the figure of an acorn. It was the most beautiful treasure in the chamber, and there was no mistaking its power.
“I snatched the scepter off its hooks and stepped off to the side of the tunnel, still fumbling with the crown on its haft as I cocked the thing back. The crimson eyes of a ghazneth appeared in the tunnel mouth, and I threw my weight into a mighty strike.
“But as I brought the head down, a hellish curse came from the tunnel and spilled out into the room in billowing black fumes. The ground shook and cracked beneath me. The floor gave way, and I fell into this horrid abyss, and I have been no more able to leave than you have.”
“What of the scepter?” Vangerdahast’s heart was pounding so ferociously he could barely hear his own question. “Tell me you didn’t lose the scepter!”
“Of course not.” Rowen’s fingertips crackled with tiny balls of lightning, illuminating the ledge in twinkling bursts of silver. He reached behind him and produced a small, triple-spiked circlet with a pale amethyst set in the center. “Nor the crown that went with it.”
Vangerdahast snatched the crown from the ghazneth’s hand. It was as dull as lead, all the golden magic gone from it.
“You didn’t!”
“I’m afraid I did, before I realized what I was turning into,” said Rowen. “On the other hand, it was a useful lesson. The Scepter of Lords is still full of magic and hidden safely away-someplace where Nalavara’s goblins will never find it, and where it hasn’t been a constant temptation to me.”
“That’s something.” Vangerdahast flipped the leaden crown in his fingers, silently bemoaning the loss of such ancient magic. He could have learned much by examining it-almost as much as he had by listening to the tale of its recovery. He patted Rowen warmly on the knee-then instantly regretted the gesture when it elicited a shudder of revulsion from the ghazneth. “You’ve done well, Rowen. We can make this work for Cormyr.”
“How?” The ghazneth waved his crackling fingers around the cavern in despair. “How can we make this work for anyone?”
Vangerdahast smiled. “Nalavara went to a lot of trouble to trick you into breaking the power of Iliphar’s burial ground. She wouldn’t have done that unless she was worried about the scepter-a weapon you’ve kept out of her hands.”
Rowen’s expression brightened considerably. “We’re going to kill her?”
“Not us,” said Vangerdahast. He was thinking of the ancient secret that he and the other royal magicians had helped their kings keep for so many centuries. “Azoun will do it. If the scepter is to work, I fear it must be wielded by a king.”
15
“Tears of Chauntea!”Azoun swore. “Even if they raid so savagely and so unopposed as to strip the land bare, fair Cormyr’s northern reaches can’t feed this many goblins! Where are they all coming from?”
The grim, weary officers around him didn’t bother to answer. After hacking a bloody way through two walls of goblins already this day, the king’s army had crested another hill to find the rolling country ahead awash in hooting, chittering goblins. The little humanoids waved their banners tauntingly at the sight of the royal standard, but held their positions as if they were the claws of a well-disciplined foe, rather than charging in their usual wild flood. The way south, it seemed, was blocked by several thousand sharp and waiting goblin blades.
“Hold ranks!” a swordlord snapped, as some of the men ahead surged forward, armor clanking.
“To Talos with orders and ordered formations now!” a nobleman roared, raising his blade. “In at them, and slay-for Azoun and for me!”
Others took up the cry. “For Azoun and for me!”
The king watched them charge to their deaths with frustration and pleasure warring behind a tightly expressionless face. He couldn’t afford swift-tempered, disobedient idiots of nobles here in the field-or, for that matter, flourishing anywhere in the realm-but it did feel good to hear that battle cry, and see the excitement around him as men joined in, waving their blades but holding their positions under the watchful gazes of growling swordcaptains and cold-eyed lancelords.
“Let no true Cormyrean leave this height without orders to do so!” a swordlord roared, and Azoun doffed his helm to let the eyes he knew would be turning his way clearly see him nodding in agreement. He needed capable swords, not glory-seeking corpses. He also needed a way south to Suzail that would be swifter and less bloody than carving his way through all of these waiting goblins.
The war wizards had already agreed grimly that wild nursery tales notwithstanding, the army was much too large to teleport. Not even by draining all their magic items and trying a combined spell, even without ghazneths racing to pounce on any significant use of magic, could they guarantee to pluck more than a few hundred men south. Their best efforts, therefore, could only serve to scatter the army and even slay a few men with the roiling energies of the translocational magic. Even that was assuming nothing at all went wrong, and something would, they all knew. On battlefields, something always did.
There had to be another way. Even if he’d had time and men enough to march wide to the east, his Purple Dragons couldn’t outrun eager goblins, or avoid running into the barrier of the Wyvernwater. That left only the forest. It would be something of a shield against spying eyes and a deadly maze for both his men and any goblins who plunged into it in search of them.
Unless, of course, he had a guide as expert as the foresters who accompanied him on his rarer and rarer stag hunts. That meant finding Duskroon’s, or one of the other dozens of foresters’ cottages, along the edge of the forest. Feldon was a local man…
He turned to the lancelord standing nearest and said crisply, “Swordcaptain Feldon to me, at once!”
The man scurried to obey, and it seemed like the space of only two long, goblin-surveying breaths before Feldon’s familiar ragged mustache was bobbing before him. “Your Majesty?”
“Good Feldon,” he said, “I need the nearest royal forester of skill brought before me, well guarded and in a trice.”
The swordcaptain’s weathered face split in a broad smile. “Would the Warden of the King’s Forest do, my liege? He’s staying at Ilduiph’s stead, not three bow shots west.”
“With all his family? In the very teeth of all these goblins?”
Feldon’s smile disappeared. “Well the way of it’s like this, your majesty,” he muttered. “Lord Huntsilver and
