Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [20]
At about that time, the shoulders of the guards streaming out the door parted to disclose Alaphondar and Dimswart, the leading sages of Suzail. They were rivals of sorts, but at the moment, brushing shoulders as they peered across the chaos of moving people looking back over their shoulders at the king, they more closely resembled two weary prisoners caught in the same cell.
Alaphondar looked as if he'd been up the entire previous night researching some genealogical question in the library. He was followed by an argil, a page boy in palace livery. The young lad was frowning under the weight of a large box of tomes. Dimswart seemed to have been interrupted in midmeal and was servantless, bearing his own oversized black satchel with silver latches in one hand and a dripping leg of roast sarn fowl in the other. Both sages nodded to the Royal Magician and immediately asked the priests for a full report on "the stricken."
Thaun Khelbor spoke first. "No change here. I've thrown every curative I know of to drive the toxin out, tried every preventive against disease, even used a charm against possession by tanar'ri. Nothing seems to catch hold." He spread his hands in a gesture of frustrated futility. Khelbor was a balding man with patches of thick gray hair above his ears. He usually looked kindly and slightly comical, but right now his face was as white and tightly drawn as those of the two men who lay beside him on the trestle tables.
"Dispel magic?" asked Dimswart, gesturing with his leg of fowl.
"When I first arrived on the scene," Vangerdahast replied, "and a spell to slow the spread of poison. Neither had any effect."
"No improvement here, either," said the young bishop of Tymora, "though I did calm him with a spell to remove fear."
Vangerdahast stroked his beard. "That may just be a symptom, like night sweats or palsy."
"If you can't halt the disease," quoted Alaphondar, "at least arrest the symptoms."
Vangerdahast nodded. "We don't know if it is a disease, or a poison, or a combination of curses, or what. But you are correct, at any rate."
He turned to the priests and ordered, "Concentrate on lowering their temperatures, and perform a remove fear spell on His Majesty as well. That may ease the rictus in his frame. Make sure their breathing passages are unblocked and their hearts remain beating. Leech them if you have to-but only if you have to." He looked around. "Where's the one who was with them? Where's Aunadar Bleth?"
The priests and sages ignored the question as they bent over their charges. Azoun's breathing had become ragged and short, but as the calming spell took hold, Vangerdahast watched it lengthen and deepen, becoming more regular and measured. For the moment, at least, it seemed unlikely that the king and the baron would find their gods and leave Faerun behind this day.
Vangerdahast looked around the temporary sickroom. The two sages passed from one stricken man to the other, pausing only to confer and compare notes. Khelbor of Deneir and the young bishop tended to their individual charges. Lesser priests bustled back and forth, bringing clean cloths and ewers of fresh water. The page boy had sat down on his master's box of tomes, excitement sharp on his young face.
Of Aunadar Bleth, there was no sign.
The Royal Magician looked to the guard beside him and the door butlers, including them all in his question. "Where did young Bleth go? Did you see him?" he asked both the guard and the belarjacks.
When mute, reluctant head shakings came as the only reply, Vangerdahast frowned again and sent one of the belarjacks to find out what had happened to the young noble, with instructions to contact the Royal Magician in his private library when the noble youth had been found. He then gave the lone guard orders to let no noble