side and pulled the ceremonial sword from its scabbard. 'You've been in battles before, Azoun, but never in a war. Charging into combat by yourself to face an ogre just isn't the same as leading thousands of men onto a battlefield.'
The wizard slashed at the air angrily with the ornate weapon. 'And you've grown more accustomed to ceremonial blades than real ones, Your Highness.'
Azoun was more surprised by the anger in the wizard's voice than his actions. He gently took the saber from his friend's hands and replaced it at his side. 'I know far more about warfare than you, Vangy. I've stood against enemies who should have beaten me, creatures that might have killed me with a single, bloody swipe. Perhaps-'
'That was more than twenty years ago,' Vangerdahast interrupted. 'Look in the mirror. You're not a young man anymore.'
The silver-backed, full length mirror that stood in one corner of the room was an expensive rarity in Cormyr, but the king really wasn't concerned with the mirror's pure glass or the intricately wrought wooden frame. What caught Azoun's attention was the middle-aged man he saw reflected in the looking glass. His earth-brown eyes still gazed alertly back at him, but the king saw that the rest of his face and frame was showing the wear of his fifty- three years.
The most noticeable signs of aging visible to the king were the streaks of silver in his brown hair and beard. Azoun had been graying for much of the last twenty years, though, so that wasn't a surprise. Today, however, the creases around his eyes looked deeper, the bags under them a little darker, his cheeks more hollow and sunken. Although he exercised every day with sword and shield, the king's shoulders were bent, no doubt from the hours he spent poring over books or decrees in his study or the tower room. The king dismissed those things and decided that he was tired after the long nights of planning he'd gone through recently.
'Perhaps I am a bit worn down,' he said brightly, 'and I know that I'm no longer a young man… but I'm more experienced now than I ever was when traveling with the King's Men. Besides, I'm willing to gather strong, intelligent advisors about me.'
The wizard didn't respond to the obvious compliment. 'The dalelords will probably be waiting downstairs by now, and the others will be arriving shortly.'
'Then you should make sure that the 'frightening old woman' from Rashemen is ready to address them,' Azoun told Vangerdahast. He glanced into the mirror once more and straightened the ceremonial purple sash across his chest.
'You can joke about that woman because you haven't had to spend much time with her, listening to her tales about the Tuigan invading her land,' the wizard said, picking up his satchel and opening the door. 'I'll see you in the meeting hall in a few moments,' he added as he left the room.
The king stared at the closed wooden door for a moment, not really seeing anything. He considered what Vangerdahast had said about his inexperience, then frowned. The wizard was right: He had seen battles, but never a war. Cormyr had been at peace, apart from a few border skirmishes, for his entire life.
Spinning abruptly on the toe of one highly polished boot, Azoun turned toward the high, dark-wood bookshelf that covered an entire wall of the study. He walked briskly to the shelves, his heels thudding on the carpeted floor.
As he got close to the rows of ancient tomes he kept in the study, Azoun could smell the familiar, musty odor of old, well-read books. He ran his index finger along the spines of the mostly leather-bound volumes, searching for a particular book, a fifty-year-old family history.
Though most of the older books did not have their titles embossed on their spines, Azoun had little trouble finding the one that he wanted. It had a worn red cover and was the thickest volume in the study. The king quickly located the tome between his own treatise on the history of polearms in warfare and a collection of notes on falconry. He pulled the book from the shelf and headed for his desk.
A small, thin black tube rested on the dark oaken desk. As Azoun sat down he lifted it, and the rod of steel that the tube had covered cast a bright yellow-white light over the desk. The glowing rod, a simple piece of shaped metal with a spell cast upon it, was a product of Vangerdahast's magic; the radiance cast by the steel augmented the weak natural light in the study.
Gingerly Azoun unsnapped the chipped metal band from around the book and allowed it to fall open. A tight, neat script covered the yellowed pages, broken only by a handful of beautifully detailed illuminations, some done in ink laced with gold or silver dust. The king flipped cracked pages until he reached the section detailing the end of his grandfather's reign. Azoun III had died when his son was only six years old. The king's brother, Salember, had taken control of the kingdom as regent until young Prince Rhigaerd grew old enough to seize the throne.
Azoun knew the family history's version of what happened next almost by heart. The wear on the pages certainly attested to this particular chapter's use over the years.
Civil war, the section began, was almost inevitable from the day Salember, 'the Rebel Prince,' became regent. Salember was a shiftless, lecherous traitor to Cormyr's crown, and within a year after taking hold of the government, he began plotting the demise of Prince Rhigaerd. The details of the Rebel Prince's crimes against our fair land will not darken these pages. It is enough to note that the bloody revolt that eventually claimed Salember's life was of the regent's own making.
The king licked his dry lips and continued to read. The text on the next page, under a stylized rendition of Rhigaerd II, Azoun's father, leading troops against his uncle, contained the information for which Azoun searched.
Cormyr has been cursed-or blessed-with few wars. The War of the Regency, however, should remain a bloody reminder of what grief war can bring. In 1260 and 1261, the span of the conflict, the land was wracked with strife and famine. In the Battle of Hilp alone, three thousand men died. Corpses rested in the fields instead of crops in the fall of that year, and plague ravaged the countryside.
Few were prepared for the sacrifices the conflict demanded. However, as King Rhigaerd, ruler of Cormyr at the time this history is written, so rightly points out-
' 'War is an endeavor never entered into lightly, though there are many reasons to fight,' ' the king quoted as he closed the tome. He heard his father's voice behind those words, heard his strength and his commitment to the land.
'I've found one of those reasons, Father,' Azoun said softly as he covered the light. 'Now I must convince the others that I don't enter into this conflict lightly.'
The crowd gathered in the castle's large meeting hall that day included representatives from Sembia, the Dales, the various free city-states around the Inner Sea, and many of the most important Cormyrian nobles. Each dignitary was allowed, by Azoun's consent, one advisor or guard at the meeting. Some representatives, ever fearful of assassination attempts, brought powerful wizards or well-trained warriors with them. Others required only the company of a scribe.
All were there to hear Azoun give one final request for aid. Most did not know that the king had asked a representative of Rashemen, a country far to the east of Cormyr, a country already overrun by the Tuigan horselords, to speak to the assembly. Azoun hoped that the old woman would be able to sway the politicians who were still reluctant to commit any sizable number of troops or large sums of money to the crusade.
The king was wondering just how effective the woman would be, when a page knocked on the study door. 'The lords and ladies are all gathered, Your Highness,' the young boy said, bowing deeply. His mind racing ahead, full of speculations about the meeting's outcome, Azoun absently dismissed the youth and left the study.
The hallways the king paced through on his way to the meeting were a sharp contrast to his study. No soft carpets lined the hard stone floors, and no richly woven tapestries covered the whitewashed stone walls to prevent drafts. Where they butted against the castle's outer walls, the corridors were bordered with small windows. These cast only weak light in most places. The real light sources for the hallways, in fact much of the castle, were small metal globes that had been magically prepared to cast light continuously. Shadows hung thick in many places despite the regularly spaced magical globes.
Pages bowed and soldiers saluted as Azoun made his way to the court's central meeting hall. The king snapped automatic greetings to some of the servants and courtiers whom he passed. To others he simply nodded. By the time he reached the meeting hall, its doors guarded by a dozen well-armed soldiers, Azoun had gone over the outline of his speech three times.
