take?”
The Steel Princess nodded. “Of course,” she said, then acquired the ghost of a smile and added in a voice of mock doom, “but your majesty forgets the goblins.”
Azoun grabbed her shoulders again and drew her close. He kissed her fiercely on the forehead, dealt her shoulders a roundhouse slap, and growled, “Get gone with you, and win this thing!”
Alusair knelt, murmuring in flawless mimicry of a courtier’s most fluting and insincere singsong voice, “By your command, O Lion Among Kings.”
She bounded to her feet, whirled, and was gone before the king could cuff her again. His laughter rolled out after her like a warm benediction.
31
“Concentrate.”
The silver bud began to swing back and forth, and Tanalasta’s eyes followed it.
“Picture his face.”
Tanalasta tried to recall her husband’s face and found it anguishingly difficult. She had been with him barely a month, and now it had been fully seven times that long since she last saw him. She still possessed an almost tangible sense of him, but his face had become a nebulous thing with a cleft chin and dark eyes, surrounded by an even darker mane of unruly hair. How could she lose his face? A good wife knew what her husband looked like, but so much had happened in the last seven months. Their marriage seemed a lifetime ago, and she had good reason for wondering if she were even the same person.
Tanalasta had signed the execution order for Orvendel Rallyhorn just that morning. As she had promised, the boy’s death would be both quick and honorable. He was to be smothered in his sleep, then mourned across the land as the brave soul who had shown the Purple Dragons how to capture ghazneths. As badly as she had wanted to commute the sentence, she could not-not in Time of War. The boy’s treason had cost too many people their lives and had very nearly cost her father Cormyr itself. Some acts simply could not be forgiven.
“Can you see him?” Owden asked.
Tanalasta raised a finger. “One moment.” She glanced around the spacious dining room of the Crownsilver country manor, which the family matriarch had graciously consented to lend the crown for the expected battle. “Is everyone ready?”
As during the capture of Luthax, an entire company of Purple Dragons stood in ambush, with a dozen war wizards and several priests of Tempus in ready reserve. Her “coffin” stood open nearby, as did an iron prison box for each ghazneth. The princess did not expect all five phantoms to arrive at once-at least she hoped they would not- but only the gods knew what would happen when Owden cast his spell. Her magic ban had driven the ghazneths into such a frenzy they had begun to attack noble patrols in the hope of causing a panicked war wizard to fling a spell at them. The tactic worked just often enough to make the phantoms continue, which was as Tanalasta wished. Better to keep them in southern Cormyr and control the magic they received than to let them fly off and seek it elsewhere.
“Do you want to find Rowen or not, Princess?” asked Owden. “I didn’t spend half a tenday meditating on this new spell as a leisuretime activity.”
Tanalasta returned her attention to the harvestmaster. “I know.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I’m having trouble remembering his face.”
Owden’s scowl softened. “Perhaps you’re afraid to know.”
“No.” Tanalasta shook her head harshly. “If he’s dead, I want to know. It’s better that than to think of him in some orc slave camp-or worse.”
Owden nodded, then reached across the small distance between them and tapped her brow. “You’re trying too hard. He’s still in there. Remember something you did together. Relax, and let his face come to you.”
Tanalasta thought of their first kiss. They had been in the shadow of Anauroch’s great dunes, about to distract a ghazneth that had Alusair’s company trapped in the ruins of an old goblin keep. Tanalasta started to step through the gate to attract the phantom’s attention but was seized by a sudden urge to kiss the handsome scout. She grabbed him by the lapels and pressed her lips to his, and he pressed back and wrapped her in his arms. Such a godsent hunger ran through her that she had nearly forgotten about her imperiled sister.
Owden began to swing Rowen’s holy symbol back and forth, and Tanalasta’s eyes followed it. She had begun to run her hands over Rowen’s body, and he had done the same to her, sliding his palm up to cup the softness of her breast..
His face returned her, handsome and swarthy and chiseled, with a gentle smile and brown eyes as deep as the forest. A rush of relief rose up inside her, and Tanalasta said, “I have him.”
“Good. Now keep watching his holy symbol. It is the trail that will lead you to him. Keep watching
Owden broke into the deep chant of his spell, calling upon Chauntea’s godly power to reforge the mystical link between Rowen and what Luthax had taken from him. Tanalasta continued to watch the swinging symbol, holding her husband’s face in mind and praying to the goddess to answer Owden’s plea. Rowen’s image melded into the silver bud and became one with it, and there was just her husband’s head, sweeping back and forth in front of her. The room vanished around Tanalasta. She had the sense of plunging down a dark tunnel into a blackness as vast as the Abyss itself.
An inky shadow fell across the face before her, and its features became gaunt and harsh. The brow grew heavy and sinister, hanging over a pair of luminous white eyes as round and lustrous as pearls, and the nose swelled into a brutish, hooked thing as sharp as a hawk’s beak. Only the chin remained the same, square, strong, and cleft.
“Rowen?” Tanalasta gasped.
The white eyes brightened and looked away, vanishing into a misty gray cloud. For a moment, Tanalasta did not understand what she was seeing, then a fork of lightning danced across her view and she realized it was rain.
“Rowen?” she called again.
A different face appeared, just as gaunt but bushybrowed and cob-nosed, with sunken gray eyes and a bushy black beard that covered it from the hollow cheeks down. An iron circlet ringed the figure’s filthy mop of hair, with bare patches of scalp and red scratches along the temples where the wearer had tried to tear off his crude crown.
There was something vaguely familiar in the impatient furrow of his brow and the harshness in his eyes, but Tanalasta could not think of how she might know the haggard old man.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What happened to Rowen?”
What happened to Rowen? mocked an all-too-familiar voice, the sound of it echoing in her mind. Is that all you want to know? No “how are you, Old Snoop?” “Where have you been?” Not even “Are you dead or alive?”
“Vangerdahast?” Tanalasta gasped. “Are you dead?”
The wizard looked insulted. No!
“Then where are you?” Tanalasta grew faintly aware of warm bodies pressing close around in the Crownsilver dining room. She ignored them and kept her concentration focused on the swinging face before her eyes. “What happened to Rowen?”
The City of the Grodd, in answer to your first question, replied the wizard. And in reply to the one that will surely follow my answer, I have no idea. Suffice it to say I’ve been trying to get out for… well, a very long time.
“But you’re younger,” Tanalasta observed.
Vangerdahast cringed and touched the crown on his head. The benefits of rank, I suppose. How long will this spell last?
“Longer than we have. A ghazneth will be arriving any moment,” said Tanalasta. “I was looking for Rowen-“
Yes, so you’ve said, but that’ll have to wait. A giant red dragon appeared in Cormyr.
It was a statement, not a question, but Tanalasta confirmed it anyway.
