what he would do to her-and her unborn child-if he caught her alive. With Sarmon still lying in a heap where Xanthon had knocked him, she would have to climb up to the rampart and flee to the gatehouse, where there would be no shortage of war wizards ready to teleport her back to Arabel.
As Tanalasta stepped through the door, she was greeted by the same squeaking sound that had distracted Sarmon earlier. Something scratchy brushed past her ankle, and she looked down to see a blanket of rats pouring across the floor beneath her. One stopped to sniff at her leg.
Tanalasta bit back a scream and started up the stairs, then heard a pair of feet whispering across the stony floor behind her. A powerful hand grabbed her by the hair, snapping her head back and jerking her off her feet. She landed flat on her back, still clutching her battle bracers in one hand. When she raised her hand to slip the bands on, she found a beady-eyed rat clinging to the cuff of her cloak. This time she did scream.
A naked black foot swung across her body, pinning her arm to the floor and trapping the bracers in her hand.
“I think not, Princess.”
Above Tanalasta appeared a black, chitinous face that seemed more insect than human. The brow was broad and smooth, the nose long and slender, the mouth lined by a ridge of jagged cartilage. Though Sarmon’s spell had left a fist-sized crater in the side of the thing’s head, the edges of the wound were already closing.
Little clawed feet started to tug at Tanalasta’s weathercloak, and the rats swarmed over her body, gnawing her clothes, hair, and flesh. Xanthon reached out with a spindly arm and slammed the tower door shut, then slipped the heavy lock bar into place as though it were a mere stick.
“Sentries!” Tanalasta yelled. “Down here!”
The ghazneth smiled. “So it is you, Highness.” With his northern accent and dry huskiness, Xanthon sounded so much like Rowen that Tanalasta could have sworn it was her husband talking. The ghazneth chuckled brutally, then said, “I fear your face is so swollen that you are no longer recognizable to your loyal subjects.”
“Swollen as it is, at least it remains human,” Tanalasta said. “Whatever you have made of yourself, it was a poor trade.”
A metallic clamor began to echo down the stairs. Xanthon glanced toward the sound, and the rat swarm poured up the stone steps. The men started to curse and yell, then one screamed and a tremendous crash reverberated down the spiraling passage.
Hoping to take advantage of the distraction, Tanalasta screamed for help, then shot her free hand across her body and slipped a bracer onto her wrist.
Before she could put on the second, Xanthon caught her arm and plucked the bracer from her grasp. “You are too kind, Princess.”
The luster of the metal faded at once, and the gruesome wound in Xanthon’s head healed before Tanalasta’s eyes. He discarded the band and grabbed the other one. As he pulled it off, he gave Tanalasta’s arm a vicious twist. She felt the bone snap, but heard only the briefest crack before her scream drowned out the sound.
A pair of guards stumbled out of the stairwell cursing and trying to kick the rats off their legs. The first lowered his halberd and drove it into Xanthon’s ribs, pushing the ghazneth off Tanalasta and pinning him against the wall. The blade did not penetrate, however, for it was made of steel and only weapons of cold-forged iron could wound a ghazneth.
Xanthon slapped the halberd aside, then grabbed the dragoneer by the back of the helmet and smashed his unarmored forehead into the tower’s stone wall. There was a sickening crack, and the man went limp. Xanthon finished the second soldier with even less trouble, blocking the attack with one arm, then catching the man beneath the chin and simply tearing his jaw off.
Tanalasta’s gorge rose with pain and revulsion. Clutching her broken arm to her chest, she pushed her way through the rat swarm and braced herself against the wall. A series of deep thumps reverberated through the tower as warriors outside began to hammer at the door, but Tanalasta knew better than to think they would break through the thick oak. She thrust her good hand into her cloak, trying desperately to slip her shaking finger into her commander’s ring.
Xanthon ignored the hammering at the door and stepped across the room. He squatted and pulled her hand from her pocket, then plucked the ring from her grasp. The wound in his head was almost completely healed now, and the scalp grew back as he drained the magic from her ring.
“Do you know who is doing this to you?” he asked. “It is important that you know who is killing you.”
Tanalasta nodded. “Xanthon Cormaeril.” She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. Whether or not she was going to die, she did not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her terror. “I know. Your cousin was a traitor, and you are too. May the both of you rot in the nine-hundredth pit of the Abyss.”
Xanthon grabbed her jaw. “I was no traitor until your father stole our lands.” He squeezed until a bone snapped, and Tanalasta nearly fainted from the pain. “But we Cormaerils have never been ones to hold grudges. Vengeance is so much sweeter.”
Something cracked in the door, and the hammering began to intensify. Xanthon glanced over his shoulder, then pulled Tanalasta up by her broken jaw. He reached around to grab the back of her neck with his free hand, and she realized he meant to rip her head from her shoulders.
A loud crack reverberated through the room, and the hammering at the door grew louder and faster. Xanthon’s fingers dug into Tanalasta’s neck, and she knew she would never survive until the thick oak splintered. A sudden calm came over her. She closed her eyes and began to pray, begging the Great Mother to watch over her soul and that of her unborn child.
“Open them!” Xanthon hissed.
Tanalasta croaked out something she meant to be What?, then was struck by the irony of Xanthon’s vengeance. Bitter laughter began to boil up from deep within her, racking her battered body and grating at the ends of her broken jaw. The pain flowed through her like water. Her mouth fell open, and she laughed in Xanthon’s face, fully and hysterically. His grasp tightened until Tanalasta thought her neck would snap, but still she laughed. She could not stop.
“No!” Xanthon shook her, and the pain meant nothing to Tanalasta. “Stop!”
“How can I?” she mumbled. “You’re killing a Cormaeril!”
“Liar!” Xanthon squeezed so hard that his fingers broke her skin. “You’re no Cormaeril.”
Tanalasta shook her head. “I’m not, but Rowen is.” She managed to stop laughing, then added, “I’m carrying his baby.”
“Never!” Despite his reaction, Xanthon’s jaw fell, and his gaze dropped to her stomach. “He’s a low-born dog, hardly worthy of the Cormaeril name.”
“Still my husband-still your cousin.” Tanalasta mumbled only the words she needed to. Now that her hysterics were passing, she saw a slim hope of forestalling her death, and with that hope came pain. “A Cormaeril could sit on the throne… could have not only your lands, but all of Cormyr.”
The gamble failed. Xanthon’s eyes flashed crimson, and the sinews of his dark arms rippled as he jerked on Tanalasta’s jaw. A terrible aching pain filled her head, but she fought to stay conscious, determined to defy her enemy until the end.
But her head did not come free. Despite the pain it caused, her neck remained solidly intact, and Tanalasta found herself staggering from one side of the room to another as the ghazneth tried to pull her head off her shoulders.
Xanthon’s ovoid eyes grew wide and scarlet. “Liar!”
He forced her to kneel and tried again. Tanalasta’s hearing faded and her vision narrowed to a mere tunnel, but the ghazneth’s doubt seemed to have sapped his strength. To keep from losing consciousness, she opened her mangled mouth and screamed.
The pounding at the door stopped, and a muffled voice began a spell. Xanthon glanced over his shoulder. For a moment his fading humanity was visible in the profile of his heavy brow and long nose, then he looked back to Tanalasta with a hatred more human than ghazneth burning in his eyes.
Tanalasta tried to say it was true, that if he killed her he would be robbing the Cormaerils of the first Cormyrean monarch to bear their blood, but she was too weak-and in too much pain.
All she could manage was a pompous smile and a short nod.
That was enough. In Tanalasta’s delirium, the shadow seemed to leave Xanthon’s body. Suddenly, he began to resemble little more than a naked man with hate-filled eyes and a bitter soul.
