Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [68]
It was then that Faerlthann realized that the elves were disappearing. One at a time, they were turning translucent and fading from view like fog on a sunny summer morning. The elven court held some powerful magic, it seemed. As the men gaped around, knuckles white on the hilts of their blades, the elves simply vanished, in ones and twos, like wisps of smoke. As Iliphar spoke, more disappeared, until at last all that remained were the humans and the three elves who had sat on the thrones.
The warrior-elf Othorion nodded grimly to the humans as he faded away, and as he did so, the voluminous tent began to fade as well.
Alea Dahast rose and gently descended the steps, standing at last before Baerauble. Under her feet, the steps melted away into smoke, and as the throne dwindled into drifting shadows, the elf lady parted the human wizard's reaching hands and reached up her hands to his face.
The mage looked devastated as she took his head in her hands and kissed him, gently and yet deeply almost hungrily. For two breaths and more, the kiss went on, and everyone heard Jaquor Silver shift and swallow at the sight. And then suddenly Alea was gone, leaving Baerauble staring at nothing, with tears running down his cheeks, holding only empty air.
Iliphar placed a hand on Faerlthann's shoulder. "Rule well, child," he said gently.
And then he, too, was gone, and with him the great pavilion. King Faerlthann and the nobles of Cormyr were alone in the smoky dawn of their first day.
Chapter 11: In the Shadow of the
King
Year of the Gauntlet
(1369 DR)
"If you should… ever cross into Sembia there's a little place called Yuthgalaunt, on the road from Ordulin to Yhaunn," Baron Thomdor whispered, gasping with effort. Eyes bright with sudden resolve, the stout noble was lying on his curtained, guarded bed trying to grip Vangerdahast's arm firmly, but lacking the strength. "There's a lady in a cottage by the well there-over forty winters old, she'd be now, and a beauty…
Vangerdahast looked across the sickbed at Gwennath. The Tymoran priestess had remained by the baron's bedside since the first day. She had gotten some badly needed sleep, but she still looked haggard and red-eyed. The old wizard did not quite manage to suppress a sigh.
The baron ignored the wizard's glance and added fiercely, "Hear me! I wronged her years ago, said I'd come back to wed her when I had made something of myself… and I… never have. Will you take her coin enough to see her through her shadowed years? And send my apology? It's… one of my few regrets…"
"Of course I will, Thom," the Royal Magician said, "if ever I have to. But you need not worry yourself about things undone before death yet-you've years left. You can ride over and marry the wench yourself!"
The tired gray-blue eyes of the Warden of the Eastern Marches blazed up into his. "Don't toss courtiers' lies at me, wizard! I know what happened to Bhereu. This gaudy tent here is my deathbed. Azoun's lying near death somewhere that way-"
He waved one large and hairy hand eastward, toward the next chamber. The hand trembled and quickly fell back to the bed furs. He growled, "And so here I am, with none of my men clanking in to tell me jokes. No pretty lasses coming to bring me flowers and wish me better-"
"Huh!" Gwennath, the Bishop of the Black Blades, said indignantly from across the bed. "What am I if not a pretty lass?"
Thomdor turned his head to face her with visible effort and said, "Oh, gods, don't start! Ye're an honest sword maid, not a perfumed court wench!"
Gwennath winked at Vangerdahast, and the wizard hid a smile, watching the baron rouse himself in embarrassment. "I meant no slight!" the old warrior protested, and then the color went out of his face and he fell back onto the pillows and gasped. "So here I am… waiting in the king's shadow to die… just as I've been waiting, come to think of it, all my life."
He managed a wry smile as he turned to look at the