Rowen’s eyes grew wide. “I’ve never heard anything like it!”
“Nor have I.” Tanalasta shuddered at the pain of the music. ‘That was an elven spirit-voice, if you can believe it.”
She led the ranger around the tree, translating each glyph aloud both for his benefit and to assure herself that she was reading it correctly. By the time she finished, Rowen’s face had grown as pale as alabaster.
“An elf made them?” the ranger asked, clearly referring to the ghazneths. “Why?”
‘We won’t know that until we discover who that elf was,” said Tanalasta. “First, we need to be sure the ghazneths are related to these trees. That’s why I want to know if this glyph looked the same on the other trees.”
Rowen shrugged. “I just can’t say. If I’d known what to look for…”
“How could you have?” asked Tanalasta. “I’m sure I can figure it out from Alusair’s notes.”
“Notes?”
Tanalasta sighed. “I suppose Alusair isn’t really the note-taking kind, is she?”
“She was trying to catch Emperel.”
“I’m sure she was in a hurry.” Tanalasta started around the tree toward the musty hole. “Alusair always is. Did she at least look inside the tombs?”
“That’s where we found this.” Rowen pulled the iron dagger from his belt and handed it to Tanalasta. “In the second tomb.”
Tanalasta stopped beside the hole and examined the weapon, noting its stone-scraped cutting edge and the hammer marks on the face of its blade.
“Cold-forged iron,” she said. “I’m astonished this survived. It was made in Suzail over thirteen hundred years ago.”
“How can you tell?” Rowen frowned at the blade. “I didn’t see any markings.”
“That’s how I know. Suzail built its first steel works in the year seventy-five, the Year of the Clinging Death. Before that, people smelted their own iron in ground ovens and beat the weapon into shape on a communal anvil.” Tanalasta returned the knife to the ranger. “While this is a good piece of handiwork, no merchant bound for Cormyr would burden himself with iron when he knew the market wanted steel.”
“I see.” Rowen shook his head in amazement, then asked, “Is there anything you don’t know?”
“Of course,” Tanalasta said lightly. “To listen to Vangerdahast, he could fill volumes with the things I don’t know.”
Rowen chuckled lightly, then glanced back toward where the royal magician had disappeared. Tanalasta followed his gaze. The ghazneth could be seen circling over the labyrinth of canyons, its head still engulfed in a glowing gold orb. Though Vangerdahast had cast the spell less than thirty minutes earlier, the magical glow was already beginning to fade. Determined to finish her investigations quickly, the princess removed the Purple Dragon commander’s ring from her cloak pocket and slipped it onto her finger.
“Keep watch,” she ordered, stooping down at the rim of the hole.
Rowen caught her by the arm. “Where are you going?”
Though the gesture would have seemed condescending coming from anyone else, from Rowen it seemed merely an expression of concern. Tanalasta patted his hand.
“I need to look inside myself,” she said gently. “We both know I’ll see what others have missed.”
Rowen gritted his teeth, but nodded. “It would be best to make it fast, Princess.”
Tanalasta glanced in the direction of the ghazneth. “I won’t be slow.” The princess activated her ring’s light magic and started into the hole, then glanced back and smiled. “And didn’t I tell you to call me Tanalasta?”
Rowen stooped down to give her a stubborn smile. “As you command, Princess.”
Tanalasta kicked a clump of dirt at him, then turned and started forward. The musty smell grew stronger and more rancid as she crawled, and her skin began to prickle with the wispy breath of evil. When she reached the end of the passage ten paces later, she had goosebumps the size of rose thorns, and her jaws ached from the strain of holding back her gorge. Ahead of her lay a body-shaped hollow, surrounded on all sides by a fine-meshed net of broken black roots. The tree had no taproot, at least that she could see. The tiny chamber was empty, save for a simple floor of flat stones littered with scraps of rotten cloth and an odd assortment of tarnished buckles, buttons, and clasps.
Tanalasta pulled herself into the foul-smelling chamber and nearly cried out when something soft and diaphanous clung to her cheek. She quickly brushed it off and found a transparent web of gossamer filaments stuck to her fingers. It took her a moment to recognize the stuff as raw silk, and she began to notice it everywhere-tangled among the roots above her head, hanging down around her to form the walls of the tomb, and clinging to the debris scattered across the floor.
The princess’s first impulse was to leave, as the filmy stuff reminded her of nothing quite so much as the web of a black widow spider, but she clenched her jaw and forced herself to begin scraping the filament away from the walls. To her surprise, the silk came away in thick gobs, and she actually found herself digging a small tunnel that did not end for nearly ten paces-about the distance it would be to the sycamore’s dripline.
Tanalasta suppressed the urge to shudder, realizing that the tree-or the corpse beneath it-had so corrupted the ground that the normal process of soil replacement had been halted. She returned to the center of the tree and examined a handful of buttons. The gold plating was so tarnished that she could barely make out the shape of a dragon rampant, its wings spread and its tail curled over its back. Any doubts she had about the ghazneth’s identity vanished at once. It was the emblem of King Boldovar. Fearful of being tainted by the palpable evil she sensed in the place, the princess tossed the buttons aside and crawled out of the tomb.
Rowen was waiting at the mouth of the hole, holding the mare’s reins and staring back toward the canyon lands. He did not even let her leave the hole before he asked, “How long before Vangerdahast returns?”
Tanalasta looked up to find an uneasy expression on his face. “We may be on our own until tomorrow. I doubt Vangerdahast had two teleport spells ready, and even he might need time to prepare another.”
Rowen’s uneasy expression changed to one of true distress. “We’d better hurry.”
He reached down, and Tanalasta gave him her hand. Instead of helping her out of the hole, however, he slipped the commander’s ring off her finger.
“Untie the saddle packs.” He turned back to the mare. “We’ll use the ring as a decoy.”
“Don’t you think that trick’s getting old?” Tanalasta asked, climbing from the hole. “It barely worked last time.”
“It’s a new trick to this one.”
Rowen was using both hands to tie the ring into the mare’s mane, so he simply nodded northward. The first ghazneth was still circling over the maze of canyons, the golden halo around its head now faded to the point that she could make out the outline of a haggish head, but that was not the cause of his concern. A second dark speck was coming out of the north, growing larger even as she watched. The princess scrambled to the mare’s flank and began to undo the saddle packs.
“Tie a loose knot,” she said. “I know a decoy is our best escape, but this horse has been good to me. I’d like to give her a chance.”
“Done.” Rowen stepped back, leaving the glowing commander’s ring fastened to the mare’s mane by a loose but complicated knot. “Without a load to carry, I give her a better chance than us of getting home.”
“That only seems fair,” said Tanalasta.
The princess pulled the saddle packs free, then raised her hand high and slapped the mare hard on the flank. The beast bolted south, heading for the deep canyon that separated the two Mule Ear peaks. Tanalasta quickly pulled her bracers off and slipped them into the saddlebags, then unclasped her weathercloak and checked herself for any other magic that might give them away.