cries almost lost in the incessant ringing of steel.
“Alessa,” Azoun said, rocking her slightly in his arms, reluctant to let go of what he’d come so close to losing, “I’m looking for the man who always knows what to do, no matter how much you two have crossed swords down the years. I need his counsel now, more than ever. Vangey’s warhorse came this way. We’ve been following the trail, hoping to find him alive.”
Alusair shook her head. “Cadimus was carrying someone else on this ride. Vangerdahast was-is- missing.”
“What? Vangey wasn’t in the saddle?”
Alusair shook her head again. “I fear he is truly lost,” she whispered.
The king threw back his head as if someone had slapped him, paying no heed to the battle raging close around them now. The endless orcs were slowly driving back the men of Cormyr.
The king closed his eyes and shook his head grimly. “No,” he muttered. “Gods, no.”
He let go of her and walked away, as if alone in a fog. Alusair and the lords exchanged startled glances, then sprang to their feet and followed. The Steel Princess scooped up her father’s forgotten sword.
“I’m no good at riddling my way out of prophecies!” Azoun told the air around him despairingly.
“Father?” Alusair slapped the blade back into her father’s hand and shook his shoulder, imploring, “King Azoun-speak to me!”
“Vangey’s wisdom lost to me, when I need it most?” Azoun murmured. “After all these years…”
He whirled around and snapped, “It cannot be. The old wizard’s off on some quick work of his own. Something he hasn’t told us about, as usual.”
“And if he’s not?” Alusair almost whispered.
Her father looked at her grimly, then said almost calmly, as if he were noticing the weather out a castle window, “Then the gods have truly turned their backs on me.”
A horn call rang out, bidding the army of Cormyr to try to return to their hilltop. The sound was almost lost in the derisive roar of a new wave of orcs.
3
Vangerdahast sat atop the highest step of the grandest goblin palace in the great goblin city, holding his ring of wishes in one hand and his borrowed mace in the other, staring out over the black expanse of the central goblin plaza into the great goblin basin where a pair of scaly golden membranes lay furled along opposite rims of the pool, giving it the slitlike appearance of a giant reptilian eye watching him watch it watch him watch it and so on so on to the end of all things, like a mirror mirroring a mirror, or an echo echoing an echo, or a man pondering the depths of his empty, empty soul. A wizard could lose his mind in a place like that.
Perhaps a wizard already had. The plaza around the pool seemed to be turning scaly and red, save for a long chain of giant white triangles that bore an uncanny semblance to teeth. Vangerdahast could also make out the shape of a sail-sized ear and the curve of a bridge-length eyebrow, and even the arcs of several lengthy horns sweeping back from the crown of the head. Taken together, the features gave him the uncomfortable feeling of looking at the largest mosaic of a dragon he had ever seen.
Probably, Vangerdahast should not have worried about failing to notice it earlier. At the time, he had been fighting for his life, trying to capture Xanthon Cormaeril and force him to reveal the exit to the goblin city. There had been flashing spells and gruesome melees and hordes of droning insects, and it would have been normal for even the most observant of combatants to miss the mosaic.
But Vangerdahast was no mere combatant. He was the High Castellan of the War Wizards, the Royal Magician of Cormyr, the First Councilor to the King, and he did not overlook such things. He could not afford to. Everyday the life of the king and the strength of Cormyr depended on his powers of observation, and he kept his senses honed keener than the blade of any dragon-slaying knight. He perceived all that passed before him, heard every whisper behind his back, smelled any kind of trouble the moment it formed, and still he had not noticed the mosaic until-well, until sometime earlier. Days had no meaning in this place. The only way to mark time was by the steady shrinkage of his ample belly, and he had already taken in his belt two notches before he began to notice the mosaic. Either he was hallucinating or the thing had begun to form before his eyes. He would not have liked to wager which.
A pair of yellow membranes slid across the pool, coating the surface with a fresh layer of black sheen, and slowly retracted again. Vangerdahast had seen the pool blink before, long before the dragon appeared, so perhaps the blinking had nothing to do with the mosaic. Everyone knew mosaics could not blink.
Vangerdahast slipped his ring on, then descended the stairs, moving slowly to keep himself from blacking out. The goblin city contained nothing but stone and water, and he could not eat stone. He had long since passed the stage of hunger pangs and a growling stomach, but his dizziness was almost constant.
Near the bottom, his strength failed. He dropped to a stair, where it was all he could do to brace his hands against the cold granite and prevent himself from sliding the rest of the way down.
“A meal you need.” The words were deep and sibilant, and they rumbled through the lonely city like an earthquake. “A nice roast rothe, and a big flagon to wash it down.”
Vangerdahast leaped to his feet, his strength returning in a rush. He peered into the murk beyond the plaza, searching for a pair of glinting eyes, or a skulking black silhouette, or some other hint of the speaker. Seeing nothing but murk, he considered hurling a few light spells into the darkness but quickly realized he would find nothing. His hunger had finally gotten the best of him, and now he was hearing things as well as seeing them. There was no sense wasting his magic on hallucinations. Magic was too precious in this place, where even spells of permanent light seemed to burn out like common torches.
The pool continued to stare, and it seemed to Vangerdahast that the darkness in its heart had swung around to stay focused on him. He crept down to the bottom stair and crouched above what would be the crown of the dragon’s head. There was a definite rise where the skull swelled up out of the ground, and he could feel a rhythmic shuddering in the steps beneath his feet. Vangerdahast reached out and ran his hand down the nearest scale. It was the size of a tournament shield and as warm to his touch as his own flesh.
“I’ve lost my mind,” he gasped.
“Yes, you have lost something, but not your mind,” the voice rumbled. Ten paces beyond the eye, the row of white triangles moved in time to the words. “You’ve lost only your big belly-and soon your life, too, unless you eat.”
Vangerdahast scrambled up the stairs, but grew dizzy half a dozen steps later and had to stop. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he looked again, the dragon face remained, the eye in the basin still staring at him.
“Why have you less faith in your eyes and ears than the doubts of a spent and weary mind?” asked the dragon. “I am as real as you. Touch me and see.”
“I’d rather, uh, trust you about that.”
Vangerdahast remained where he was, his mind whirling as it tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Insanity still seemed the greatest likelihood, save that he had always heard the insane were the last to know of their illnesses-but down here, he would be the last to know. He had been trapped in the goblin city for… well, for some while. In the eternal darkness of the place, time had no meaning. The only way to mark hours was by the duration of his spells, which all seemed to fade far too quickly.
When Vangerdahast remained quiet, the dragon spoke again. “You don’t believe in me, or you would ask my name.”
The admonishment jarred Vangerdahast back to a semblance of his senses. Concluding that if he was going insane he had already lost the battle, he decided to treat the dragon as though it were real. He gathered up his courage, then sat down on the step and addressed the dragon.
“I’m interested less in who you are than what,” he said. “If you are some chimera manifested by my guilty soul to abuse me in the lonely hours before death, I’ll thank you to spare me the nonsense and get down to business. I know the evil I’ve done, and I’d do it again, fully conscious of the costs to myself and others.”
“Fully conscious?” the dragon echoed. “That is impressive.”
