contact her husband. The stranger’s brow was heavy and sinister, the eyes white as pearls, the chin square and strong with a hint of cleft. This time, Tanalasta did not call out, and the pearly eyes stared at her for a moment, brimming with joy and sorrow and some unspeakable craving a thousand times more powerful than even the longing she felt for Rowen.
The air grew gray with rain, and the face vanished. An instant later Vangerdahast was there, scowling and impatient as ever.
It’s about time.
“I have him,” Tanalasta reported to Owden. To Vangerdahast, she said, “Do you have the scepter, Old Snoop?”
Vangerdahast frowned in confusion, but nodded and brought the amethyst pommel into view. I do.
“Good,” Tanalasta said. “Owden, we’re ready.”
The harvestmaster rattled off a long string of mystic syllables. The distance between Tanalasta and Vangerdahast seemed to vanish. The wizard’s eyes grew round. He let out a startled cry and seemed to fall toward the princess, arms windmilling and legs kicking. Behind him, she glimpsed an iron throne and a crescent of little green goblins, the flashing bolts of a thunderstorm and a dark figure scrambling back from the portal.
Then Vangerdahast was there on top of her, sprawled across her and hugging her like a mother, laughing, weeping, and screaming all at once, cold and clammy and wet, stinking like he had not bathed in months.
He kissed her full on the lips, then scrambled off her and stooped down to kiss her swollen belly, then planted the tip of the golden Scepter of Lords beside her chair and leaned down to kiss her on the mouth again.
Tanalasta pushed him off. “Vangerdahast!”
The wizard gave her a waggish grin. “Don’t tell me you’re not happy to see me!”
“I am.” Tanalasta wiped her face, less to rub off the dampness left by the wizard’s rain-soaked beard than to freshen her nostrils with the perfume on her cuff, “But we have work-“
Tanalasta was interrupted by the knelling of an alarm bell, and the map room broke into a tumult of voices and clattering boots. Vangerdahast turned slowly on his heel, watching in amazement as the nobles rushed off to join their companies.
“Are they running toward battle?”
“You might say that, old friend,” said Owden. He clapped a hand on Vangerdahast’s shoulder. “Or you might say they are fleeing what Tanalasta would do to them if they hesitated.”
“Is that so?” Vangerdahast cocked his brow at the princess. “I’ll be interested to hear how you did that.”
“And I have a few questions for you as well,” Tanalasta said. “But they will have to wait. We have a ghazneth coming.”
Vangerdahast’s brow rose in shock, then he looked around the map room as though confirming he was where he thought he was. “Coming here? To the Royal Castle?”
“So it seems.” Tanalasta struggled out of her chair and started for the door. “And let us pray it is not King Boldovar.”
36
“Is this all that’s left of us?” Kortyl Rowanmantle almost squeaked, looking around at the grim gaggle of men crowded among the trees. “Two hundred men, maybe less?”
At their center rose a great, gnarl-rooted stump, taller in its ruin than the tallest man there-and atop it stood the Steel Princess, her hands on her dragonfire-blackened hips, and most of her once-magnificent, unruly mane of hair now a scorched ruin.
“Evidently so, Kortyl,” she replied almost cheerfully. “All the more goblins for the rest of us.”
An uneasy silence greeted her words. Squalling earfangs were neither glamorous nor all that easy to slay, when they came rushing in their swarms-and come in swarms they did, endless streaming tides that overwhelmed weary sword arms and butchered all too well… leaving too few survivors here, panting, in the forest.
On the other hand, goblins weren’t nearly as glamorous-or as deadly-as the Devil Dragon. More than a few of the Cormyreans glanced up through the green gloom at the branches overhead, seeking a gap large enough for a huge red dragon-gliding along just above the treetops, as she’d met with them not so long ago-to see them through.
The wyrm had burst upon the nobles with such sudden fury that many had been scorched to ash before they’d had time to do more than see their doom, and scream. The trees around them had burned like torches, and not a few had toppled, crushing those beneath them and showering everyone else with sparks. The forest had been their cloak and salvation, though, the crackling topfires hiding the terrified men in their smoke. The deeper, unburnt green depths gave them a vast lair to scatter in and hide.
It had taken a grim Steel Princess, sword drawn and so much soot caking her that more than one man thought her some sort of black-hided monster at first glance, to find and gather them. Sword drawn and only her eyes and teeth bright, she looked like something out of a horror-tale whispered to scare children. Her doffed helm had been lost in that first burst of dragonfire, its hiphook-straps burnt away as she twisted and rolled, and her shield was gone too-hurled down in half-melted, red-hot ruin after it had saved her from the direct stream of dragonfire that had been the wyrm’s attempt to cook a princess.
A frown crept back onto Alusair’s face as she came back to that thought, for perhaps the tenth time. The dragon had seemed to be looking for her…
Enough reflection. “This is the harshest test Cormyr has faced in centuries,” Alusair said abruptly, looking around to meet the eyes of man after man, “and the lives of those you hold dear, whether they be within the walls of Suzail or in manors all over this realm, now depend on your swords. We are the realm’s best… and now it’s time to prove it. I’m going back to find that dragon, and hack it down. If I die, I’ll go down knowing I did what I could for Cormyr and did not cower and hide, waiting for goblin blades to find me in the night. Whatever happens, I stood forth to defend the people of Cormyr.”
She looked around, in a silence as sharp as a sword point. They were listening hard, their burning eyes on her, seeking hope. She gave it to them.
The Steel Princess calmly unbuckled her breastplate and swung it open. Her bodice beneath was a sweat- soaked mess of fresh bloodstains and shredded quilting, and fresh blood was glistening among the older, darker gore. More than one man murmured as he guessed at the wounds that must lie beneath, but Alusair unconcernedly thumped her breasts with a fist and announced matter-of-factly, “This still beats. As long as it does, I shall be hunting that dragon. So much is my duty.”
She turned slowly, pointing at man after man with her drawn sword, and added softly, “As nobles of the realm, only you can determine your own duty. Your families have always been the backbone of the realm-because your mothers and fathers and grandsires knew their duty, and did it. You know your duty too. When I leave this place, I’ll not look back to see who skulks away into the trees, and who strides with me. I won’t have to, because I know who-and what-you are. You are the very best and the bright hope of Cormyr’s future.”
She smiled, slid her sword into the crook of her arm, and buckled up her breastplate again. “We just have a little task before us, that’s all. We must ensure that Cormyr has a future.”
There were some grim chuckles at that.
The Steel Princess looked up from her buckles with that wry, lopsided, come-hither grin that her men knew so well, and asked softly, “Are you with me, men of Cormyr?”
“Aye!” Kortyl Rowanmantle shouted. “Aye!”
“Aye!” three men said together, raising their swords. “For the Steel Princess!”
“For Alusair, and Cormyr!”
Alusair sprang down from the stump and raised her own blade. “Then follow me-but save your shouts for when our blades cut deep into the dragon. No war cries!”
She turned and sprang away, to begin her usual swift lope-only to stagger, wince, and almost fall as one leg failed her. Swift hands shot out for her to grasp, and she leaned on them gratefully for a moment, stamped her injured leg down hard, winced again, then set off at a limping run, her men following.
