“No!” He clambered to his feet, at once raising a hand to wave off his friends and whirling around to face the ghazneth. “Defend your-“
A black hand swept down to catch Vangerdahast in the side of the head, launching him end-over-end across the stable. He crashed down a dozen paces in front of Cadimus and tumbled onto his stomach, ears ringing and blood pouring from his opened scalp. His vision narrowed. He shook his head clear and thrust his hand into his cloak.
A dozen dragoneers managed to spur their mounts out to intercept the ghazneth. The dark creature streaked through them like an eagle through a field of gophers, then slapped the sword from Azoun’s hand and settled into the saddle facing the horrified king.
“Usurper!”
The ghazneth snatched the crown from Azoun’s head, then sank its filthy claws through his armor and hurled him from the saddle like a child’s rag doll. Vangerdahast felt a sudden wave of nausea, and the darkness began to close around him. He gritted his teeth and grabbed his favorite wand, willing the darkness to stay away.
A flurry of Purple Dragons whirled on the ghazneth, hacking and slashing. It beat them off with a few strokes of its dark wings, then the war wizards cut loose with bolt and flame. The ghazneth furled its wings and roared with laughter as the spells languished against its defenses, then leaped over a wall of guards to land atop Filfaeril.
The barrage of war spells ceased as suddenly as it had started. The queen shrieked in terror, and the creature hid her behind its wings.
Vangerdahast’s vision continued to narrow. He pulled the wand from his cloak.
“No need to be frightened, my dear,” said the ghazneth. A mad cackle sounded from the other side of the leathery curtain. “I wouldn’t harm my queen-would I?”
The creature sprang into the air, Filfaeril clasped securely in its claws. Vangerdahast’s vision narrowed to a keyhole. He whipped his wand toward the queen’s flailing figure and shouted his command word as the keyhole closed.
11
The glyphs ringed the sycamore in an elegant spiral, as sinuous as a snake and as clearly defined as the day they were engraved. Though Tanalasta could not identify the era of the carving, she had studied enough elven literature to recognize the style as an archaic one. The letters flowed gracefully one to another, with long sweeping stems and cross arms that undulated so gently they appeared almost straight. While the language was definitely High Wealdan, the inscription itself seemed archaic and stilted, even by the standards of the Early Age of Orthorion.
This childe of men, lette his bodie nourishe this tree. The tree of this bodie, lette it growe as it nourishe. The spirit of this tree, to them lette it return as it grewe.
Tanalasta stopped reading after the first stanza and stepped back. Aside from its peculiar spellings and the reference to men, the inscription was the standard epitaph for a Tree of the Body, a sort of memorial created by the ancient elves of the Forest Kingdom. When an esteemed elf died, his fellows sometimes inscribed the epitaph in the trunk of a small sapling and buried the body beneath the tree’s roots. The princess did not understand all the details of the commemoration, but she had read a treatise suggesting only elves who had been a special blessing to their communities were honored in this way. In any event, she had visited several of these memorials during her short-lived travels with Vangerdahast and never failed to be impressed by the majesty of the trees bearing such inscriptions.
The sycamore before her was a marked contrast to those ancient monuments. The tree was a warped and gnarled thing with a split trunk and a lopsided crown of crooked branches straying off into the sky at peculiar angles. Its yellow leaves looked like withered little hands dangling down to grasp at anything unlucky enough to pass beneath its boughs, and the bark changed from smooth and white on the branches to a mottled, scaly gray at eye level. The greatest difference of all lay at the base of the trunk, where a recently dug hole wormed down into the musty depths beneath the roots.
Tanalasta returned to the inscription and read the next stanza.
Thus the havoc bearers sleepe, the sleepe of no rests. Thus the sorrow bringers sow, the seeds of their ruins. Thus the deathe makers kille, the sons of their sons.
Tanalasta’s stomach began to feel hollow and uneasy. Curses were rare things in elven literature, even in the relatively angry era of King Orthorion’s early reign. Of course, the Royal Library did not contain works predating Orthorion-apparently, early Cormyreans had lacked either the time or interest to learn High Wealdan-but the princess found it difficult to believe that such curses had been any more common to pre-Orthorion poetry. Aside from a single famous massacre and a few lesser incidents, elves in the Age of Iliphar had been standoffish but peaceful.
Tanalasta followed the inscription around the tree and read the last stanza, which consisted of only a single line of summoning:
Here come ye, Mad Kang Boldovar, and lie among these rootes.
Tanalasta thought instantly of the crowned ghazneth that had disappeared with Vangerdahast, then stumbled back from the tree, hand pressed to her mouth, heart hammering in her chest. Boldovar the Mad was one of her own ancestors, a king of Cormyr more than eleven centuries before. According to the histories, he had slain a long succession of palace courtesans before being dragged off the battlements of Faerlthann’s Keep with one of his victims. The unfortunate woman had died on the spot, less because of the fall than the horrible wounds inflicted by the insane Boldovar.
Less commonly known was that the king had lingered on for several days while Baerauble Etharr, the first Royal Magician of Cormyr, was summoned from abroad. Fortunately for the people of the realm, however, Boldovar “wandered off” alone before the royal wizard could return. When a badly bloated body dressed in the king’s purple was found floating in the Immerflow a tenday later, Baerauble announced his liege’s death and ordered the corpse burnt at once. Until now, there had never been reason to believe the wizard’s hasty order due to anything but the sensibilities of his nose, but Tanalasta could not help thinking Baerauble had used the incident to solve a terrible dilemma he must have been facing. As the Royal Magician sworn to protect the crown of Cormyr at all costs, he could hardly have condoned the overthrow even of a mad king-but neither could he have believed that Boldovar’s reign benefited the realm. Perhaps he substituted another body for Boldovar’s and spirited the mad king off to live out his days someplace where he could do no harm.
Rowen came around the tree behind Tanalasta. “Is something wrong, milady? You look… uneasy.”
“I’m frightened, actually-frightened and puzzled.” Tanalasta did not take her eyes from the tree as she spoke. “Were the glyphs on all the other trees the same as these?”
Rowen answered without studying the characters. “They looked the same.”
“Yes, but were they exactly the same?” Tanalasta pointed at the three characters that stood for Mad Kang Boldovar. “Especially here?”
“I think so, Princess,” Rowen said, sounding slightly embarrassed. “To be honest, I can’t even see the difference between the glyphs you’re pointing at and the ones next to them. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Tanalasta turned to him. “I should have realized how difficult it would be to learn High Wealdan without the Royal Library at your disposal.”
“Or even with it,” said Rowen. “I fear I’ve never been a student of the old tongues.”
Tanalasta smiled at the ranger’s candor. “High Wealdan isn’t really a tongue. It’s closer to music. Listen.”
The princess went around to the front of the tree and ran her finger along the initial glyph. A melodic rasp instantly filled the air, intoning the epitaph’s first line in a haunting female voice as anguished as it was menacing. Of course, Tanalasta understood the words no better than Rowen, for no human ear could comprehend the full timbre of an elven weald poem.