Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [105]
It all had begun with Baerauble's death, of course. Everything was always traced to the death of the original High Mage. Without his steadying hand, every wobble of fate seemed to bring the realm closer to its destruction. He seemed to be eternal, Cormyr's protector forever… and then he was gone. Amedahast, his student, was the best mage Crownsilver knew, but she was a mere shadow of her mentor.
And how could they have known that their proud, prosperous kingdom was a merest soap bubble, which must be constantly protected from the harsh realities of the outside world lest it collapse and swallow them all?
A plague came first, borne by merchants from Marsember, decimating the folk of the countryside and turning bright Suzail into a charnel house where the dead lay in heaps on the streets. At first the priests fought it as best as they could, but when the sickness spread so fast and they had only so many healing spells and so many prayers left, the holy folk chose to keep their healings for themselves. A bad decision, since the city dwellers had more swords. When the dust cleared, there were no priests to be found save those of Talona, who spread the plague further.
Then dragons descended on Suzail and Arabel and every small encampment from the mountains to the sea. Great blues settled upon the fields and tore apart houses, and massive reds laid fiery waste to entire regions. Greens raided the few ships and caravans that sought to reach Cormyr. Even the mythical Purple Dragon was reported in an attack on the western settlements.
Arabel was gone in a night, this latest rebellion championed by a "Merchants' Revolutionary Committee." But now other holds and homesteads had risen and rebelled as well. It was hard to send men to aid the beleaguered crown when half the population was dying and the other half fighting dragons in the fields. Crown agents were killed, and government coffers looted.
Then the orcs arrived, driven south by some nasty battle in the Stonelands. Normally such a threat would bring Arabel back into the kingdom, but now there was little in the way of a Cormyrean army to send aid. The goblin-kin seized the heart of the King's Forest.
And when King Duar set out to defeat the orcish army, his own father-in-law, Melineth Turcassan, sold the city of Suzail to the pirates for five hundred sacks of gold.
His Majesty destroyed the largest of the orcish armies, but returned to find his throne stolen and the gates of his city barred against him. Worse, the pirate lord, Magrath the Minotaur, kept the crippled city as his prize and plundered the treasury for mercenaries to expand his reach into the rest of Cormyr.
That was three years ago, and in three years, those loyal to the crown had seen their numbers ebb-from battle losses, from treachery, and from raw despair. Many of the nobles, Crownsilver included, had shipped their families north to the Dales or west to Waterdeep. The loyal nobles broke into smaller groups, and still smaller bands. Duar's present band numbered only twenty.
Elvarin looked about the glade in the full moonlight. She and her cousin Glorin Truesilver. Jotor Turcassan, who had broken with the rest of his treacherous family, Omalra Dracohorn, and Dintheron Bleth. The men were the last of the Purple Dragons, their adventuring group from before everything collapsed. The rest of their ragged band were non-noble swordsmen and retainers. And King Duar, of course, and Amedahast.
Duar waited in the darkness, looking more like a funereal statue than a living soul. He was a giant even among Obarskyrs, but his great, muscular shoulders seemed weighed down by more than the crown he still wore. The betrayal of Melineth had almost broken him, and it would take a long time for him to truly recover. The death of the Turcassans later that year, at the hands of their treacherous allies, eased the pain only a little. He slept in his armor, and his tabard and robes were tattered and grimy. The only new item on his person was the sword