“I find this inspiring,” Alusair said bitterly, gripping the stone balcony rail as if it was a squalling orc’s throat. “It makes me want to get down there and kill!” She flung her head around to regard her father so sharply that her hair cascaded down over the rail, making her look momentarily like a young lass trying to be seductive, and asked, “So why exactly are we standing up here when we could be of more use down there?”
“Steady,” Azoun said reprovingly, then threw back his head and drew in a deep breath. “Dauneth,” he said to the dark, dripping ceiling formed by the balcony above, “do you concede that Arabel is lost?”
The High Warden of the Eastern Marches cast a regretful look down over the rail, then said firmly, “Majesty, I do.”
“Then we must think on how to get our people out as safely as we can. That means south, one way or another, and I hate the thought of long columns of trudging folk going down the Way. Even if we could spare the men to guide, feed, shelter, and guard them, all my mind shows me is the dragon swooping down at will to pounce and rend and roll and… play, forcing us to fare forth and fight her in ones and twos… and die in ones and twos.”
Dauneth nodded grimly. “And so?” he almost whispered.
“I’ve some measure now of just who we’re defending,” the king said, waving his hand at the floor to indicate the families who’d been gathered into the citadel all the day before and this morning, “and I think we can house them in the Citadel of the Purple Dragons in Suzail, and in the palace, if need be. The women and children, at least, each with a carry-chest of family valuables and our oldest warriors to guard them. The men and boys hungry for blood and glory can stay here and fight alongside the rest of us.”
“You’re thinking of some sort of magic, to whisk folk from here to there,” Alusair murmured. “Might I remind you that any sorcery will swiftly bring down these magic-drinking ghazneths?”
Azoun’s jaw set in a line like the blade of a drawn sword. “I’m thinking of the war wizards of the realm working their mightiest magic ever, because the realm has great need of it,” he said curtly. “Standing in the face of charging foes like any warrior without a hope of ever casting a spell does leaping in to keep the magic working when a fellow mage falls on his face in exhaustion… there is no difference. A portal like the mages of old spun, a door in one citadel that opens into a door in the other, so that all of Arabel can step through it, is what we need. A single step that takes them from here to Suzail, spanning all the miles between, is all that might save them.”
Dauneth’s eyes widened, but the king’s gaze never left the carnage below and his hand never unclenched from its ready grip on the hilt of his sword. “And if the ghazneths come,” he added grimly, “we’ll just have to deal with them. We’ll crush them under iron ingots, dice them with iron blades… whatever it takes.”
Dauneth’s heart leaped at the king’s resolve and stirring words, but he felt moved to ask, albeit tentatively, “What if we can’t stop them?”
“Then,” Azoun said softly, looking at him with something like fire leaping in his eyes, “the strongest Purple Dragons will stand in a human shield around the gate to keep ghazneths away while we get the women out. They are the future of the realm. Our war wizards will scatter, heading to Waterdeep and Shadowdale and Silverymoon and Berdusk-and, by the gods, Halruaa!-and wherever else we can find powerful mages who’ll agree to help in return for a good share of our treasury. After all, if the ghazneths aren’t stopped, no wizard will be safe, anywhere in Faerun.”
Dauneth shivered. “You would really do that?”
Azoun spread his hands. “You can see another choice?”
He let the silence stretch-a silence in which the warden opened his mouth thrice to speak, then frowned and shut it again. A silence broken by a long, despairing scream from the streets below, and a horrific crashing sound as flames ate away support beams, and three floors above a shop collapsed and fell into the street in front of it with a roar.
All three of the people on the balcony turned their heads and watched the first of the flames lick up from the tall, arched windows of the nearby palace, creeping like dark tongues up the ornately carved stone.
Azoun watched the first of its painted glass windows explode into the street in molten tears before he added bleakly, “This is what it is to be a king, Dauneth. You might tell your more rebellious kin that.”
A thin smile crossed the king’s face, and he added almost playfully, “Someday, that is, when we all have time for such things.”
“Now!” a bristle-mustached lancelord shouted, his eyes on the dark form of the dragon gliding through the smoke.
The catapults let go with deep thumps, their rocking making the rampart shudder underfoot as they let go their stony loads. Most sailed short to plummet down into the ruined western city, but a few thudded home. Nalavara the Red wheeled away in anger and vanished behind the smoke.
“Work those wheels!” the lancelord bawled. “She’ll be back, and we’ll look pretty silly if she can just glide down here and tear us to dog meat. Leap to it, lads!”
The sweating crews swarmed over the catapults, sweat-drenched muscles rippling in their bared arms and backs, but Alusair turned away. “Those won’t touch the ghazneths,” she snarled. “Too slow-and probably no harm to them if they do take a load right in the face.”
“We’re ready for them, Highness,” a stern-faced war wizard assured her. “All of us are ready.”
“Oh?” the Steel Princess said, whirling around to face him with one gauntleted hand on her hip and the other holding a warsword it appeared she was itching to use. “And just how do you intend to deal with them, sir wizard? They’ll eat your spells like a wolf biting down a rabbit.”
“If Your Highness pleases to see,” an older wizard said calmly, “the gate is opening right about now. The ghazneths’ll be here soon enough.”
Alusair looked at him, lifting an eyebrow at his confident tone… then her eyes fell to the end of his graying beard. His fingers were locked in it, twisting nervously, already so badly tangled in the locks that most of them would have to be cut out of it.
“I’ll stay,” she said softly, “and be of what use I can.”
An unearthly shriek rose up the nearest vent shaft, from somewhere in the citadel below, and the Steel Princess whirled around to face it. “What by all the waiting hells was that?”
“That,” said the older war wizard, with something that might almost have been satisfaction in his voice, “would be the lady mage’s pain as she opens the spell gate.”
“They’re starting,” the swordcaptain muttered unnecessarily, licking his lips.
“Just stay back against the wall,” the old swordlord growled, “where she told us to stand-no matter what you see. Watch, and be still. Pass the word.”
That was a clear order, so the word was passed, redundant though it was. If the wizards could be believed, a magical door was to open here in Suzail-in the open space right in front of them-and the folk of Arabel would flee from that beleaguered city, flooding into this hall. The warriors waiting here would then step through the gate to Arabel and ply their blades as needed to get every last citizen out.
Every man’s eyes were fixed on the two women standing alone in the center of the cavernous main hall, as they had been since the Lady Laspeera and the sorceress Valantha Shimmerstar had first calmly begun removing their clothing.
Bare and slender, now, they stood on either side of a glowing, pulsing oval of spell light, a blue-white radiance that seemed to throb around their calves as they each raised an open hand. With the small silver daggers they held, they calmly slit open their own palms.
Both sorceresses threw the knives away as violently as a man in fury hurls a goblet, and turned to face each other. From the falling blood, white fire roared into life.