Tanalasta let out a joyful whoop, then saw a familiar shape in the sky and dropped to her belly. Vangerdahast raised his head, and she rose to her knees to point behind him. The wizard stood and turned to face the shoulder of the mountain, where the ghazneth was already streaking down out of the stonemurk.
Vangerdahast stood there looking for what seemed an eternity, but in fact may have been less than a second. Tanalasta started to rise and yell, but she did not even make it to a crouch before the wizard turned and was suddenly beside her, swaying and blinking with teleport daze and blindly reaching out to catch hold of her sleeve.
“Get us out of here!”
7
They were lost in a sea of brown. The sun was hiding behind an overcast of dirty-pearl clouds, and a stiff northerly wind had draped the horizon behind a curtain of tannish stonemurk. The plain was paved in jagged slabs of red-brown basalt, set unevenly into a bed of yellow-brown sand, and the few scraggly salt bushes hardy enough to grow in such a wasteland were a sickly shade of hazel. Even Tanalasta’s riding breeches and Vangerdahast’s glorious beard had turned olive-brown beneath a thick coating of Stonelands dust.
As uncomfortable as the stonemurk made travel, the princess was glad for its foglike veil. After Vangerdahast’s futile attempt to banish the ghazneth, anything that helped conceal them was a great comfort to her. They had glimpsed the thing twice since fleeing the Storm Horns. The first time had been two evenings ago, when its dark form streaked across the horizon between them and the mountains. The second time had been only a few hours ago, when it had appeared in the far north, circling like a hawk searching for its next meal.
The banishment’s failure seemed to have sapped Vangerdahast’s confidence. He would spend long hours deep in silent thought, then suddenly subject Tanalasta to a lengthy hypothesis about why he had failed to exile the ghazneth to its home plane. Having read-some said memorized-every volume in the palace library, the princess was able to debunk most of his theories with a little careful consideration. So far the only notion to stand the test of her scrutiny was that the banishment had not failed at all, that the ghazneth had been sucked back to its home plane. Unfortunately, that plane happened to be Toril.
Vangerdahast dismissed the possibility as a contradiction of itself, simply proclaiming that a demon could not be from Toril, and something from Toril could not be a demon. Tanalasta considered the argument pure semantics. To her mind, anything that looked, acted, and killed like a demon was a demon. Moreover, when she pointed out that the thing had been affected by two spells that affected only demons-the protective star and the banishment itself-Vangerdahast had been unable to refute her argument. Maybe the creature wasn’t a demon by war wizard definitions, but it was close enough for a princess.
Tanalasta wished she had not let Vangerdahast trick her into parting ways with Owden Foley. She had read in the Imaskari Book of War (Alaphondar’s translation, of course) that priests were better suited to dealing with demons than wizards. Priests tended not to let their pride get them killed as often.
For the second time in a quarter hour, Tanalasta found her vision obscured by brown grime. She wiped the gobs from her eyes, then opened her waterskin and washed the grit from her teeth. Either they had drifted off their westerly course or the wind had shifted, and if she remembered one thing from Gaspaeril Gofar’s little Treatise on the Flora of the Barren Wastes, it was that the wind seldom shifted in the Stonelands.
Tanalasta glanced over at the lodestone dangling from the wrist of Vangerdahast’s rein hand. They were still traveling at a right angle to the tiny rod, which meant they should have been facing west. So why was a northerly wind blowing in their faces? And if it was not northerly, why was it still full of Anauroch sand? When the wind shifted, the stonemurk vanished. Gaspaeril’s treatise had been clear about that.
Tanalasta reined her horse to a stop. “Something’s wrong.”
Vangerdahast continued forward, lost in thought and oblivious to the princess’s absence. She waited until Cadimus had carried the wizard several paces, then shook her head at the inattentiveness of her ‘protector.’
“Vangerdahast!”
The wizard’s back straightened and his gaze snapped to the side. When he did not see the princess in her customary place, he cursed foully and looked skyward, reaching for a wand.
“Vangerdahast, no magic!” Tanalasta yelled.
Since escaping the ghazneth, they had taken Alusair’s advice and avoided magic like the plague. They had banished their rings, bracers, and weathercloaks to their saddlebags and buried their peacemaker’s rods, enchanted daggers, and everything else that radiated a constant aura of magic. So far, they had every reason to be happy with the results.
When the wizard still did not see her, Tanalasta waved her hand in the air. “I’m right here.”
Vangerdahast reined his mount around, his rheumy eyes betraying his relief. “What is it?” He continued to scan the horizon. “Did you see something?”
“It’s what I haven’t seen that concerns me,” Tanalasta said. “Shouldn’t we have reached Crimson Creek by now?”
Vangerdahast finally pulled his hand from his weathercloak. “Apparently not, since we haven’t. Have patience. The Stonelands are a big place.”
“If you consider four thousand square miles big, then yes, they are,” said Tanalasta, “but that’s not the point. You said we would reach Crimson Creek in a day. We’re now going on two.”
“How am I to know how long it takes?” Vangerdahast shrugged. “I’ve never ridden there, you know.”
“I suppose not,” Tanalasta sighed. As busy as he was, the wizard was hardly likely to waste his time riding when he could teleport. “How far is it from the Stonebolt Trail?”
The wizard only shook his head. “It hardly matters, does it?” He waved his hand at the rocky plain around them and added, “It’s not like we can miss it.”
“We can if we never cross it.” Tanalasta pointed at the lodestone hanging from Vangerdahast’s wrist. “You’re sure that thing’s accurate?”
Vangerdahast extended his arm at an angle. The lodestone swung briefly from side-to-side, then pivoted back to its original position-perpendicular to the wind. “You see? It always returns to north.”
“Then how come we’re riding into a northerly wind?” Tanalasta asked.
Vangerdahast’s answer was as quick as it was certain. “It is not a northerly wind, it’s a westerly one.”
“Full of Anauroch sand?” Tanalasta asked.
The wizard frowned and fell silent for a moment, then pointed at the ground. “The sand comes from the Stonelands themselves.”
“Not according to Gaspaeril Gofar.” Tanalasta extended her hand. “Let me see the map. Unless Crimson Creek is more than forty miles from the trail, we’ve gone too far.”
Vangerdahast made no move to do as she asked. “I would say that the creek is just about forty miles from the Stonebolt Trail.”
Tanalasta continued to hold her hand out. “You do have a map, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Vangerdahast tapped a saddlebag. “A magic one.”
“Wonderful,” said Tanalasta. “I suppose we should be thankful. This is teaching us a valuable lesson.”
“Us?” Vangerdahast frowned. ‘What do you mean, ‘us?’”
“We can’t even open a map without magic. You don’t think that’s a little over-reliant?” Tanalasta asked. “What if we needed that map to win a battle?”
“If this were a battle, we would not be here,” said Vangerdahast stiffly. “And if you are trying to intimate that your spell-beggars would do better, do recall that they also speak their incantations one syllable at a time.”
“Vangey, that’s not what I mean at all.” Tanalasta reached across to touch the wizard’s arm. “I’m only trying to say that magic has its own vulnerabilities, like anything else.”