There was a little silence as Hultailen stared at the Purple Dragon who’d spoken, then back up at the writings to read and re-read them.
The older man turned away first, to spit thoughtfully and growl, “Aye, ‘twill be a hard winter ahead and more after it, to be sure. We’ve seen the glory days, lads—and they died with our Azoun, on that hilltop with the Devil Dragon.”
Then he stopped in his tavern-toward trudging to wheel around so suddenly that men starting to shuffle in his wake almost crashed noses with him, and hissed fiercely, “But he slew it ere he died, lads, he did! Remember that. He did his duty by us, like a true blade o’ Cormyr!”
“Aye,” someone agreed, unhappily.
“Aye,” someone else echoed, even less enthusiastically. And the slow trudge toward the tavern resumed, leaving the six riders almost alone again.
They exchanged glances, then in unspoken accord turned their horses’ heads toward the dark and sagging Sixcandles Inn, giving it the same narrow-eyed glares they might have given a known foe across a battlefield.
A Hultailen who was slower of foot than most stared after them curiously, then drew her shawl more closely around her shoulders and peered up at the signs they’d affixed. As she struggled along the lines of script, tackling each word in turn, her lips moved, murmuring syllables.
“I shall never see Cormyr so bright again…”
* * * * *
As Glarasteer Rhauligan led the three Purple Dragons and the two War Wizards who were only pretending to be warriors into the dimly-lit forechamber of the Sixcandles, a traveling merchant from Suzail was grandly describing Azoun’s funeral to a dozen wealthy Hultailen over steaming platters of boar.
“Nay, nay, the funeral befell on the eleventh of Kythorn— hah! Dispute it, dare ye? I was there, mark ye!”
“Yes, yes,” a little pudding-faced man whom Rhauligan knew to be the best baker in Hultail said hastily, waving his hands as if he could soothe all disagreements away, ” ‘twas just as you say, of course—how could it not be? But say on, I pray thee! Tell us more!”
“Well, now,” said the Suzailan, drawing himself upright in his chair and patting his ample belly with every air of preening satisfaction, “I’ll do that—I will. Hearken ye, then.”
And he bent forward like a dog thrusting a questing head under a bed, and whispered in a raw voice that carried to every corner of the forechamber like a war horn, “They paraded ‘em through the streets, the king and the fallen princess both—and strike me down before the altars of all the gods if they weren’t smiling. Dead, white as bone, and grinning like they’d learned some great secret at the last. I’m told the War Wizards had spells ready to ward off anything hurled at the royal remains.”
“Hey?” a Hultailen tailor asked, frowning. “Like what? Flowers?”
Baerlothur of Suzail smiled a little smugly and replied, “Incendiaries. Thrown by those who serve some of our exiled nobles. I might add that such were expected, but not seen.”
“Huh,” a tall, long-nosed smith said dismissively. “A lot of weeping and wailing and Purple Dragons shoving folk back out of the way—glad I missed it.”
“Oh, no,” the Suzailan said softly, glaring around at his audience with sudden fire in his eyes, “that’s where ye’re very wrong, goodmen. ‘Twas eerie.”
“Eerie?”
“Aye. All silent but for the sobbing and footfalls, with Princess Alusair and Queen Filfaeril walking at the front of the coffins. The folk of the city all along the route did the same thing, as precise as if they’d been drilled for a tenday by the Dragons: without an order from anyone, a-following their station in life, they all knelt or saluted. Then they got up and tried to touch the coffin-bearers, gentle-like, barehanded. Then, like silent soldiers, they fell in behind the dead, joining the procession. Most of Suzail, walking. I don’t mind telling ye I was scared, right down to my boots.”
“Scared?”
“Some idiot out of Westgate made the mistake of laughing at a friend’s smart remark—and the goodwives swarmed him! Tore him apart with their bare hands, they did, shrieking out the names of their battle-dead! Why, I’d’ve backed the women of Cormyr that afternoon, barehanded as they were, ‘gainst all the mercenary blades all Sembia can afford to whelm—aye, even reinforced by the Flaming Fist and the massed Tuigan Horde both. So full of tears and rage were they that they feared nothing, and would’ve challenged Tempus, Lord of Battles, himself! I saw a warrior of Westgate draw sword in desperate frenzy, and an old matron smashed aside that blade as if it were a child’s twig, heedless of the cuts it gave her, to get at the man behind it. Hear me: I’ll never sneer at any goodwife of this land, ever again.”
The smith waved his hand and growled, “Ah, but for all that they’re dead. Dead and gone, Azoun and his daughter both, an’ we have a babe as king.”
“Azoun Rhigaerd Palaghard Duar Obarskyr, Dragon Prince of Cormyr, Right Royal Duke of Suzail, and King Ascendant of the Dragon Throne, Stagmaster of the Realm and Lord Admiral of the Western Fallen Star Waves,” the baker chanted happily, barely pausing for breath. Then he looked eagerly at the Suzailan and asked, “Have you seen him?”
Baerlothur snorted. “Since the Anointing, no one outside the Royal Court has seen him. Vangerdahast sees charm spells and kidnappings and child-swappings everywhere, so not only does the brat have Purple Dragons all around him in a ring while he gurgles, coos, and wets himself, but he has a handcount of War Wizards spell-scrying him, them, and the rooms around, every last breath of every day. ‘Tis going to be a long twenty years for that lad.”
“Is he—healthy? Like to grow up to wear armor as heavy as his father?”
“Well, I’ve heard this much: our fifth Azoun is much given to gurgling, chortling, and imitating the lowest-pitched speech he hears—mens’ snorts, growls, and muttered curses.”
There were chuckles all around the table.
Then the smith said, “Well, if summat takes him to the grave—marsh fever, not just poison or a blade—I’m sure as I know my own name that our Royal Magician has the lad’s blood and all else he needs to enspell him back to life, even—”
“Hist!” the Suzailan snapped hastily, waving an urgent hand. “Not one word more on this! To talk of this is manacles in a cell and War Wizard probings—an’ if they find any treason in thy thoughts—thy thoughts, mind—then ‘tis death, after. Otherwise, exile for outlanders, and a fine for the likes of us.”
“Holy Throne!” the smith swore, slamming down his tankard. “What madness is that? Harm a man of Cormyr for speaking of the safety of the succession? This smacks of the highhandedness of the Steel Bitch to me!”
The baker reeled as if the smith had slapped him and asked faintly, “Speak you of the Princess Alusair?”
“Aye, Madam High Steel Regent or whatever she’s calling herself these days! Why, I—”
Cold steel flashed in the gloom as it appeared across the smith’s throat from behind, causing him to fall silent in mid-snarl. His fearful eyes widened above that warsword as its owner smoothly finished the smith’s aborted sentence for him: “—have come suddenly to my senses and realize the utter folly of cursing the ruler of our fair realm merely because of my unfounded judgment of her character.”
Then the steel was gone and the smith was reeling in his seat from a solid cuff to one ear, as one might give a disobedient boy.
The men at the table stared up at the Purple Dragon standing behind the smith’s chair, suddenly and uncomfortably aware that other Dragons were standing behind their own seats.
“Apologize,” the man with the warsword in his hand added quietly. “Not to me, but to the Princess Alusair. Now.”
“I… who are y—”
“Apologize!”
The smith eyed the sword tip that had been thrust over his shoulder to glitter in his gaze once more, and muttered hastily, “I’m sorry. I—I apologize for what I said about the princess.”