with anxious haste, and even more frantic gentleness.
“Help me rise,” Vangerdahast snarled, never taking his eyes from his king. He had to repeat himself thrice before someone plucked him from the ground like an old sack and swung him upright. His legs felt curiously weak as they steadied him by the shoulders, but the royal magician found that he could stand on his own and that his body obeyed him. Gods, it even seemed whole. He thrust one hand into the neck of his robe, through the white and gray hair that curled across his chest. The wizard drew out certain things on chains, only to find just what he’d expected.
The handful of chased and worked silver talismans had been old when Cormyr was young, healing things made on the floating cities of Netheril and other elder lands. Mighty was their magic, lasting down the centuries, or, well, it had been. He was holding crumbling ashes now, lumps on the ends of fine chains that had dragged him back from the ravages of the dragon as he lay senseless and broken.
They’d made him whole by becoming themselves broken things, their ages-old magic exhausted. As he regarded them, even the chains started to crumble. Vangerdahast tossed them to the ground and murmured, “Step not there. Let no one tread there.”
Azoun’s head turned abruptly. “Is that my wizard?” the king snapped, struggling to sit up. Knights leaned and reached to help him, then recoiled, stumbling in their weariness.
Azoun’s movement had awakened to full fury the dragon’s blood that was eating him. A small ball of flame snarled up from his limbs to burst in the air head-high above him. Even as it faded into rising, drifting smoke, fresh lightning raged up and down the king and across his bed of shields, spitting sparks.
Ravaged armor shrank before the watching eyes on the hilltop, curling and darkening like leaves in a fire, and fell away from Azoun’s arms and thighs. The gleam of bared bone shone forth from at least one ashen tangle beneath the tortured metal.
Vangerdahast took one unsteady stride, then another. Cormyr reeled under his boots, but did not heave itself over to smite him, and after another step, he was all right. The Forest Kingdom would have its royal magician a little while longer, at least.
“My king,” he said gravely to the twisting figure atop the shields, as fresh lightning washed over that bed of pain and faded away into dancing sparks, “I am here.”
“Vangey!”Azoun shouted-or tried to. The voice was like a distant cry, but the pleasure in it was unmistakable.
As the king drew himself up onto one elbow, the pauldron fell away from that shoulder, trailing fresh smoke. Paying the crashes of collapsing armor no heed, Azoun thrust himself properly upright and fixed his pain-bright eyes on Vangerdahast.
“Despite,” the king gasped through lips that dripped black, oily blood in a constant stream now, “much provocation to the contrary-” he coughed, shoulders shuddering in a spasm of agony that forced his head down for one choking moment before he shook off the pain and looked grimly up again, “-you have always been my friend. More than that, the greatest friend Cormyr has had. Better than us all.” His voice faded, and he murmured faintly, head sinking again, “Better than us all…”
Vangerdahast stepped forward, a frown of concern preceding him, and drew something from beneath his beard-the last of his hidden magical somethings. With a sudden wrench, he broke the fine chain that had held it hidden there against his throat. The eyes of many of the watching knights narrowed. The dancing ends of chain were green with age.
The royal magician stretched forth his hand with whatever it was clutched and hidden in his grasp to touch the king, but Azoun threw back his head and squared his shoulders again, almost defiantly, black blood raining down around him.
“By that friendship,” he growled, eyes like two sudden flames as he stared into the wizard’s gaze, “I charge you-stretch forth your magic and touch my daughter Tanalasta. Tell her she is to take the crown and… rule now.”
Someone among those crowded around gasped, and Azoun nodded as if answering a disbelieving question. “Oh, yes,” he said almost gently, “I’m done. The king too old and stubborn to fall is fallen at last. Not all the magic in you, Vangey-not all the magic in fair Faerun-can save me now. Tana must rule. Tell her.”
The wizard nodded slowly, his hand stretching forth once more. Azoun glared up at him and snarled,
“Tell her!”
Vangerdahast’s fingers touched the king. Azoun shivered, huddling back as if he’d been drenched with icy water, his face twisting in silent pain.
One of the war captains-a young man who bore the name Crownsilver-started forward with an oath, plucking out his dagger, only to come to a frozen halt as Azoun flung up a forbidding hand. King and warrior spoke together, the one wearily and the other furiously, “What is it you hold, wizard?”
“My greatest treasure,” Vangerdahast said in a voice that sounded for a moment like that of a small, high- voiced woman on the verge of tears. “The only bone I was able to find that was once part of the mage Amedahast. A little of her power is left in it, I think.”
Ilberd Crownsilver stepped back, tears streaming down his cheeks. Vangerdahast raised the yellowing lump from Azoun’s breast, where it seemed to fleetingly leave tiny wisps of smoke behind, and touched it to the king’s mouth. The king stiffened.
Men watched like so many silent statues.
The red, searing pain suddenly left Azoun’s eyes, melting away like shadows fleeing a bright sun. Men gasped, and there were more muttered oaths on the hilltop.
Color came back into the king’s face, and his cracked, bleeding lips grew whole. The watchers leaned forward to stare in wonder, the old wizard still standing before the king with his hand thrust forward, as if lunging with a blade, holding the bone firmly in the royal jaws.
There was wonder on Azoun Obarskyr’s face too. He drew in a slow, deep, shuddering breath, and they saw the ashes fading from his skin, leaving smooth, unburnt flesh behind. Old muscles rippled-but even as Ilberd Crownsilver drew breath for an exultant shout, the talisman crumbled, yellowed bone fading to brown dust that fell away into the air and was gone… leaving just two old men staring into each other’s eyes. The ashes and bloody ruin did not return to where they’d been banished from the king’s flesh, but neither did they fade farther.
After a moment, Vangerdahast let his empty fingers fall away.
In their wake Azoun shook his head slowly, and managed a smile. “Not this time, I’m afraid,” he said calmly.
Vangerdahast stood still and silent.
The king’s smile faded and he said, “Are you going to obey me this once, old friend? For the realm?”
The wizard’s voice, when it came, sounded like the rusting hinges of a very old gate. “Of course.”
Vangerdahast turned like a weary mountain and strode a safe dozen paces away, lifting his left palm out in front of him to cup the shimmer of the spell to come. He paid no heed to the armored giants in his path, but they melted or stumbled away in front of him as if he was the striding god of war himself.
All but one.
A single dark and slender figure stepped to meet Vangerdahast, blocking his way. A hand shot out above the wizard’s, breaking his concentration. The royal magician’s head snapped up, his eyes darkening with anger.
“Save the spell,” Alusair murmured. “I tried to reach Tanalasta earlier, and-” she dipped her head and managed to choke out the last word, as suspicious war captains drifted closer on all sides, eyes narrowing as they cocked their heads to listen for treachery. “-silence.”
Vangerdahast may have looked like an old, dirty hermit in plain rags, but as he turned very slowly to look at the approaching warriors with the magnificent Purple Dragons on their breasts, his eyes were cold. He met their gazes, and the knights fell back.
“Secrets of the realm,” the wizard said shortly, and at his words they retreated two swift paces in unison like so many trained dogs, leaving Alusair and Vangerdahast standing alone again.
“I’ll try your mother,” the royal magician muttered, not looking at her, and as Alusair threw back her head and gasped for air, she discovered that the sky was bright with tears. She realized that she was weeping, her face streaming with so many tears that her chin was dripping.
The Steel Princess brushed an impatient forearm across her face, not caring if the armor tore away skin, and shook her head as a dog coming out of a pond shakes away water. Her watery vision cleared enough to show her
