Crusade - James Lowder [27]
Azoun thought he saw a small, intense spark of blue-white light form in the air in front of the wizards, but before he could focus on the spark, the spell was complete and the ember disappeared. He felt a sharp, burning prickle in his throat as he turned back to the milling throng.
"My people," the king said, and his words called through the entire city.
A thousand eyes looked up at Azoun from the Royal Gardens. Nobles with spyglasses lined the roofs of their homes to the north of the keep and watched the king. He, in turn, looked out on the sea of faces and smiled. He saw respect and awe and, perhaps, a little fear there. Those looks, the wideeyed faces, momentarily eclipsed the speech Azoun had prepared in his mind. A warmth, a feeling of paternal duty and love, now filled the king's thoughts.
"My friends and countrymen," King Azoun said, correcting himself. "Faerun is in great danger, and I need your help." He paused then, and let his subjects realize that he was asking them for assistance, that he needed them.
That fact alone would have shocked most of the throng into silence, but the intensity and emotion in Azoun's voice fell upon the crowd and riveted them in place. Throughout the city, smiths put down their hammers and shipwrights lay down their awls, clerics put aside their holy books and tutors let their students set down their grammars and writing tablets.
From where he stood, near the garden's edge, John the Fletcher couldn't see Azoun's face, but he imagined it was dark with passion. He'd never been closer to the king than he was that day, not even when Azoun had opened the previous year's spring fair, only a few hundred feet from his shop. John's proximity to the monarch made him happy, and the craftsman listened intently as Azoun described the Tuigan menace and the plight of Thesk and Rashemen.
"I'm not in this to help witches or foreigners," Mal grumbled. A jowl-heavy baker held up a flour-covered finger and shushed the warrior. Mal scowled, but held his tongue. Silently John said a prayer of thanks that the warrior hadn't started a fight with the fat man.
On the platform, Azoun was warming to the topic, falling into the same impassioned argument he'd used on some of his nobles to gain their support.
"But the horsewarriors threaten more than our neighbors to the east," the king said, waving an open hand toward the horizon. "No. The Tuigan will not be content with that end of the Inner Sea, nor will they be happy if they conquer the Dales or Sembia."
Azoun ran his gaze slowly over the crowd, letting their expectation of his next words build for a moment. He could sense in their expressions that he'd won many of his subjects over already. "Do you know what else they want?" the king asked softly.
A ripple of hesitant answers rolled over the crowd. Azoun heard a few of these replies, and they revealed the names of his people's fears. He singled out some and used them as rallying cries.
"Will we let the horsewarriors take our land?" the king asked.
The crowd shouted a ragged reply of "No!" and "Never!"
Azoun balled his hands into tight, quivering fists and held them in front of him. "Will we let the horsewarriors take our homes?"
"No!" the people screamed. Men and women mirrored the king's stance, holding their own fists clenched before them.
Out of the corner of his eye, Azoun saw that a few of the guards that lined the platform to either side of him were shouting with the crowd.
At the garden's edge, Razor John felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he screamed his reply to Azoun's challenge. He glanced at Mal and Kiri, and saw that they, too, were caught up in the king's speech. In fact, almost everyone around the fletcher seemed to