“And not with you either,” he called back. “Whatever you want, Nalavara, it isn’t to be free of this place. Red dragons are not so trusting.”
To Vangerdahast’s great surprise, Nalavara did not explode into a fit of anger. Instead, she began to chuckle, shaking the plaza so violently he lost his footing and had to sit.
“Come now, Elminster,” she rumbled. “You know I am more than a dragon, and I know you are not who you claim to be.”
Seeing that the virtues of deception had long exhausted themselves, Vangerdahast also began to laugh, a deep, mad laugh begot more of weariness and despair than humor-but a laugh nonetheless. He was one of only two men living who knew the name Alavara and what it meant to Cormyr, and it struck him as absurdly funny to find himself trapped alone with her in a deserted goblin city.
Lorelei Alavara was an elf maiden, quite beautiful by all accounts, who had lived in the Wolf Woods when the first humans began to intrude. She had been betrothed to Thatoryl Elian, a handsome young hunter foolish enough to argue with a band of human poachers over whose arrow had killed a bear. The argument ended only when Thatoryl became the first Wolf Woods elf to be murdered by human hands. Lorelei Alavara’s grief knew no bounds, and she plotted constantly with King Iliphar to make war on the humans and drive them from the land. It was she who organized the slaughter of Mondar Bleth in the days before Cormyr was a kingdom, and who slew a thousand humans more before her own kind grew weary of her obsession with vengeance and, a century after the first murder, finally banished her to the Stonelands.
That much of the story was told to every member of the royal family as soon as they reached the age of majority, but there was more, passed only from royal magician to royal magician and told only to the ruling monarch since the founding of the kingdom. Thatoryl Elian’s murderer had been Andar Obarskyr, brother to the founder of Cormyr, Ondeth Obarskyr, and uncle to the first king, Ondeth’s son Faerlthann.
According to the story passed down to Vangerdahast, Andar had escaped retribution by virtue of good luck, having been tending to nature’s call deep in the woods when the elves came to avenge their kinsman’s death. Though the massacre had left Andar too frightened to ever again set foot in elven territories himself, he had told his brother many times of the bounty of the Wolf Woods, and those descriptions were what convinced Ondeth to build a new home beyond the frontier. That Cormyr’s birth had resulted from such a miscarriage of justice had been the kingdom’s most jealously guarded secret for more than fourteen centuries now, and Vangerdahast could not help chuckling at the thought that the dragon had actually hoped to make him the instrument of its divulgence.
“Alavara the Red,” he said. “I should have thought even your thirst for vengeance long quenched.”
“It is not vengeance I seek, only justice,” answered Nalavara. “Though I know a different appetite sustains the mighty Vangerdahast.”
As Nalavara spoke, the sphere of magic light floating above her head grew dim. A black circle appeared on the dark ground between Vangerdahast’s feet. He cried out in astonishment and scrambled away, then began to feel cowardly and foolish when he saw that the thing was not moving.
“Take it,” urged Nalavara. “There is no reason to be afraid.”
Vangerdahast exchanged his ring of wishes for a simple commander’s ring from the royal armory, then whispered, “King’s Light.”
A halo of golden radiance rose from his hand and illuminated the ground in front of him, revealing a simple crown of iron.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“You know,” answered Nalavara. “Your whole life have you craved it, and now it is yours. All you need do is wish.”
“Wish?” Vangerdahast kicked the crown away, then stood and began to hobble off into the darkness. “If I were to wish for anything, it would be that you never existed.”
“By all means,” Nalavara chuckled. “Any wish will do.”
4
The horn call rang out a second time, and Alusair glanced over at her father. To her astonishment, the king was smiling.
He caught sight of her and said, almost exultantly, “Magic still serves the crown in some things, lass!”
The Steel Princess lifted an eyebrow, overjoyed to see the King of Cormyr out of his dark mood but somewhat puzzled as to why.
“You didn’t expect Dauneth to meet us here?” she asked, glancing around at the familiar cliffs and crags of Gnoll Pass. “You told me yesterday how sorely we needed the reinforcements he’d bring, and now his obedience seems to be a cause of… Are things in Arabel worse than I’d heard?”
“No, no, lass!” Azoun chuckled.” ‘Tis what he’s brought with him that’s a cause of… I’ll tell all later. For now, let us claim yonder hilltop and there raise the tent I hope young Marliir’s also brought along.”
“Tent? Father, are your wits addled at last?”
“Have a care for treason of the tongue,” a lancelord snapped from behind the Steel Princess. “You speak ill of the king!”
She whirled around with sparks fairly spewing from her eyes and snarled, “Dare less with your own speech, soldier! Obarskyrs speak freely and thereby keep the realm strong. Learn that well, if you learn nothing else about fighting under the Purple Dragon banner.”
“You chided the Steel Princess?” someone muttered, just loudly enough for Alusair to hear as she turned to stride after her father. “Man, are your wits addled at last?”
A smile almost rose to the lips of the princess at that, as she hastened down loose rocks and slippery tussocks of clingvine and grass to where Dauneth Marliir was kneeling before his king.
“All is as you requested, Your Majesty,” the High Warden of the Eastern Marches was saying earnestly. “The poles-crew await your orders. The mages stand there, with the cage. As you can see it is wrapped to hide its true nature, just as you instructed.”
“Wrapped to hide-?” Alusair murmured, coming up to stand beside her father’s shoulder. “What by all the unslain orcs of the Stonelands is..
“Tell me now,” Azoun was asking, “what was the look on Elemander’s face when you brought him my orders, and showed him the royal ring?”
“Total astonishment,” Dauneth said with a smile, “but it soon slipped into disgust about the time I began describing the massive cold iron bars. ‘Beneath my skills,’ he sniffed, and snatched the ring from my fingers to make sure I wasn’t playing him false. He cursed-I can’t remember all the words even if Your Majesty cared to hear such foulness, and I doubt there even is such a thing as the ‘blind-flying spawn of a love-slave-slapped, dung-sucking donkey’-then he took the suit of armor he’d been working on from its stand and hurled it the length of his shop.”
The king exploded in laughter, slapping his thighs then dealing Dauneth a blow across the back that sent the young warden staggering. “Wonderful!”
“Will someone,” Alusair asked with silken politeness, “kindly tell me what this matter of royal armorers fashioning crude cold iron cages is all about?”
“Lass,” her father said jovially, indicating the hilltop and giving Dauneth a nod to tell him to send the poles- crew on its way, “we’re going to catch ourselves a ghazneth-and if need be, trade its freedom in exchange for our lost royal magician!”
“Oh,” Alusair replied with deceptive mildness, “Just like that? Well, now that you’ve told me, I’m sure everything’s going to go off without a hitch. It certainly sounds plausible enough, hmm?”
Azoun lifted an eyebrow at her tone, murmured something under his breath that might have been, “Just like your mother,” and swung around to point back behind them. “Surely you’ve had enough of fleeing from floods of orcs?”
“Gods, yes,” Alusair growled as fervently as any Purple Dragon veteran sick of long marches and given a chance at sitting idle instead might.
“Well, with Dauneth’s reinforcements guarding our flanks, we’re going to turn around and strike right back at
