Crusade - James Lowder [9]
"Perhaps I am a bit worn down," he said brightly, "and I know that I'm no longer a young man… but I'm more experienced now than I ever was when traveling with the King's Men. Besides, I'm willing to gather strong, intelligent advisors about me."
The wizard didn't respond to the obvious compliment. "The dalelords will probably be waiting downstairs by now, and the others will be arriving shortly."
"Then you should make sure that the 'frightening old woman' from Rashemen is ready to address them," Azoun told Vangerdahast. He glanced into the mirror once more and straightened the ceremonial purple sash across his chest.
"You can joke about that woman because you haven't had to spend much time with her, listening to her tales about the Tuigan invading her land," the wizard said, picking up his satchel and opening the door. "I'll see you in the meeting hall in a few moments," he added as he left the room.
The king stared at the closed wooden door for a moment, not really seeing anything. He considered what Vangerdahast had said about his inexperience, then frowned. The wizard was right: He had seen battles, but never a war.
Cormyr had been at peace, apart from a few border skirmishes, for his entire life.
Spinning abruptly on the toe of one highly polished boot, Azoun turned toward the high, dark-wood bookshelf that covered an entire wall of the study.
He walked briskly to the shelves, his heels thudding on the carpeted floor.
As he got close to the rows of ancient tomes he kept in the study, Azoun could smell the familiar, musty odor of old, well-read books. He ran his index finger along the spines of the mostly leather-bound volumes, searching for a particular book, a fifty-year-old family history.
Though most of the older books did not have their titles embossed on their spines, Azoun had little trouble finding the one that he wanted. It had a worn red cover and was the thickest volume in the study. The king quickly located the tome between his own treatise on the history of polearms in warfare and a collection of notes on falconry. He pulled the book from the shelf and headed for his desk.
A small, thin black tube rested on the dark oaken desk. As Azoun sat down he lifted it, and the rod of steel that the tube had covered cast a bright yellowwhite light over the desk. The glowing rod, a simple piece of shaped metal with a spell cast upon it, was a product of Vangerdahast's magic; the radiance cast by the steel augmented the weak natural light in the study.
Gingerly Azoun unsnapped the chipped metal band from around the book and allowed it to fall open. A tight, neat script covered the yellowed pages, broken only by a handful of beautifully detailed illuminations, some done in ink laced with gold or silver dust. The king flipped cracked pages until he reached the section detailing the end of his grandfather's reign. Azoun III had died when his son was only six years old. The king's brother, Salember, had taken control of the kingdom as regent until young Prince Rhigaerd grew old enough to seize the throne.
Azoun knew the family history's version of what happened next almost by heart. The wear on the pages certainly attested to this particular chapter's use over the years.
Civil war, the section began, was almost inevitable from the day Salember,
"the Rebel Prince," became regent. Salember was a shiftless, lecherous traitor to Cormyr's crown, and within a year after taking hold of the government, he began plotting the demise of Prince Rhigaerd. The details of the Rebel Prince's crimes against our fair land will not darken these pages. It is enough to note that the bloody