“What he said about Rowen does not matter.” Owden tapped her over the heart, pushing his finger into the soft swell of her upper breast. “How you react does.”
Tanalasta considered the priest’s words, then kneeled at Xanthon’s side. “I will give one more chance to clear your conscience, cousin. Tell me what became of Rowen.”
“I… told… you,” Xanthon gasped. “He’s one of… us.”
“Liar!” Tanalasta took a deep breath, then reluctantly clasped the ghazneth’s wrist. “As an heir to the Obarskyr throne and daughter to King Azoun IV, I… absolve you of your crime.”
“And forgive your betrayal,” added Owden.
Tanalasta waited to see if Xanthon would perish. When he did not, she added, “And forgive your betrayal.”
The pain seemed to leave Xanthon’s face. “Now it is you who are lying.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “Cousin.”
34
“The last of the snortsnouts are down, my liege,” the battlemaster growled through the protesting squeal of his visor being pushed up and open. “We’ve lost some good men, but fewer than I’d feared.”
King Azoun nodded grimly, his eyes still fixed on the line of trees where the forest began, not far to the west. His mouth was set in a tight line, and a lone muscle twitched beside his mouth. It was a sign that few men there had ever had the misfortune to see before.
Battlemaster Ilnbright, however, was one of them, and knew well that it meant fear warred with anger in Azoun’s thoughts. He did not need to follow the dark fire of the king’s gaze to know the source of the royal fury. Every man gathered on the hill, and the many now cleaning their blades and finding places to rest weary backsides on the slopes below, knew the same dark truth. As Purple Dragons and growling orc warriors had met and the ringing din of blades had risen, Azoun had given the signal that should have brought the Steel Princess and her noblemen charging out of the trees to strike the orcs from the rear, long swords flashing. The blare of the signal horns had been as loud as any Haliver Ilnbright had heard, in tens of summers of riding under the Purple Dragon banner… but no one had come out of the forest.
Not a single blade. Outnumbered and exposed to the foe on three flanks, Azoun’s warriors had fought hard and well, and hacked every last tusker into the dirt. Without Alusair’s forces, the choice had been simple: win victory, or welcome death.
The king had long since sent scouts to find Princess Alusair and order her to rally her men back to the royal standard. Three veteran rangers-each alone so one at least should escape ill-Randaeron, Pauldimun, and Yarvel, good men all, had gone out. Either they had found ill or not found the princess. How long must it take to travel a mile or two? Less long than they’d already taken, surely.
“Back to the river, or make camp here?” the battlemaster asked gently, mindful of the royal mood.
“Here,” Azoun said, the word clear and cold. A long breath of silence passed before he added, “I’d not welcome fighting my way back across the bridge next morn, just to reach this height again.”
Ilnbright turned and gestured. Men who’d been watching for it reached with swift, practiced speed for the first poles that would soon become the royal tent.
The guards standing close around the king were weather-beaten, eagle-eyed veterans. Gaerymm and Teithluddree had the better sight, still able to outshoot many of the arrowmasters, but the hulking bannerguard, Kolmin Stagblade (no one ever seemed to use just one of his names, perhaps because of his mountainous, inexorable bulk) stood a good two heads taller than either, so it was he who said suddenly, “Randaeron Farlokkeir returns. Alone, but laden.”
In silence the other men stepped aside to allow Azoun to stride forward and peer along the bannerguard’s pointing arm.
After a moment, Azoun turned away. His voice was almost gentle as he said to the nearest messenger, “Wine. Flamekiss. Just the flask.”
That flask was empty by the time the scout trotted around the men driving home the last lines of the royal tent. He went to his knees before Azoun, stretching his arms forth in silence to place a scorched helm and a half-melted, twisted shield on the trampled turf. A sharp burnt smell came to the hilltop with him-the smell of cooked flesh.
The helm might have belonged to any Purple Dragon but for the battered cheek guard. All of the men standing on the hill knew a certain scar and bend in it. The shield, too, might have belonged to a hundred hundred soldiers of Cormyr-but its unblemished upper corner bore a device that was Alusair’s alone, a steel-gray falcon leaping up from the palm of a war gauntlet.
“Majesty,” Randaeron murmured, “these were all I could find that I could be sure were the princess’s, in a place of many bones and bodies.” He spread his hands helplessly, and added, “The dragon…”
“Everyone slain?” Azoun asked, in apparent calm. “Torn apart or… cooked?”
“There were signs of many men in boots fleeing into the forest, each by his own path rather than together or along a trail. I searched the remains a long time, while Paulder and Yar followed the signs into the forest, but I cannot say that I found her highness… or know that I did not. So many were… bones.”
The ranger’s voice broke, then, and it seemed for a moment that the hands of the king trembled. When he reached down to put a hand on the scout’s shoulder and to take up the ashen helm, however, they seemed steady enough.
“My thanks, Randaeron,”Azoun said quietly. “Tarry here in camp, at least until your fellow scouts return. I am sure no man could find more among the dead than you did.”
Without another word to anyone the king walked away. Down the hillside he went, his steps slow and aimless, looking at the helm in his hands as if it held his daughter’s face.
Not a man moved to follow, though all of his bodyguards shifted to where they could clearly see where Azoun went, and the hillside below him. They saw the Old Blade of the Obarskyrs walk ever more slowly, until he entered a little hollow where he sat down as wearily as any overweight pike-dragoneer.
“Is she dead, d’you think?” a lancelord standing by the tent muttered to his superior. Keldyn Raddlesar was too young to know when to keep quiet.
“Lad,” Ethin Glammerhand growled back, “how could she not be? I doubt w-“
A shadow fell across the lowering sun, and both men fell silent, staring up into the sky in mounting terror as the Devil Dragon plunged down upon them.
Nalavarauthatoryl the Red was huge, as large across as the main turrets of High Horn, with jaws broad enough to swallow half a dozen horses-and their riders-at a single bite. They were gaping wide now, revealing the dark, vibrating throat from whence the flames would come. Eager fire burned in the dragon’s eyes, and its cruelly curved talons were spread wide to strike. In places the wyrm’s body was a deep, angry purple, almost black, and men were screaming as its racing shadow fell across them-screams echoed in the raw, mounting roar of fear and defiance that burst from the throats of the warriors on the hilltop, as they scrambled to stand apart from one another and raise their tiny weapons.
The dragon’s talons were aimed for the royal tent, but it must have noticed that no one rushed into that pavilion to warn anyone, or hastened forth-and that no bodyguards stood watchfully by its entrance. It veered aside at the last moment to pounce on one man whose raised and ready blade seemed to glow as if alive with magic.
Randaeron Farlokkeir screamed as he died, torn open from belly to chin by a talon an instant before his hands were bitten off, his enchanted sword vanishing with them into a mouth as large as his cottage.
“As large-as-” he managed to gasp, before a sudden tide from within him choked his words-and the world-away.