Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [10]
"No!" Xanthon shook her, and the pain meant nothing to Tanalasta. "Stop!"
"How can I?" she mumbled. "You're killing a Cormaeril!"
"Liar!" Xanthon squeezed so hard that his fingers broke her skin. "You're no Cormaeril."
Tanalasta shook her head. "I'm not, but Rowen is." She managed to stop laughing, then added, "I'm carrying his baby."
"Never!" Despite his reaction, Xanthon's jaw fell, and his gaze dropped to her stomach. "He's a low-born dog, hardly worthy of the Cormaeril name."
"Still my husband-still your cousin." Tanalasta mumbled only the words she needed to. Now that her hysterics were passing, she saw a slim hope of forestalling her death, and with that hope came pain. "A Cormaeril could sit on the throne… could have not only your lands, but all of Cormyr."
The gamble failed. Xanthon's eyes flashed crimson, and the sinews of his dark arms rippled as he jerked on Tanalasta's jaw. A terrible aching pain filled her head, but she fought to stay conscious, determined to defy her enemy until the end.
But her head did not come free. Despite the pain it caused, her neck remained solidly intact, and Tanalasta found herself staggering from one side of the room to another as the ghazneth tried to pull her head off her shoulders.
Xanthon's ovoid eyes grew wide and scarlet. "Liar!"
He forced her to kneel and tried again. Tanalasta's hearing faded and her vision narrowed to a mere tunnel, but the ghazneth's doubt seemed to have sapped his strength. To keep from losing consciousness, she opened her mangled mouth and screamed.
The pounding at the door stopped, and a muffled voice began a spell. Xanthon glanced over his shoulder. For a moment his fading humanity was visible in the profile of his heavy brow and long nose, then he looked back to Tanalasta with a hatred more human than ghazneth burning in his eyes.
Tanalasta tried to say it was true, that if he killed her he would be robbing the Cormaerils of the first Cormyrean monarch to bear their blood, but she was too weak-and in too much pain.
All she could manage was a pompous smile and a short nod.
That was enough. In Tanalasta's delirium, the shadow seemed to leave Xanthon's body. Suddenly, he began to resemble little more than a naked man with hate-filled eyes and a bitter soul.
"Harlot!" Xanthon spat, and reached down for the sword of a dead guard.
Before he could pull it, Sarmon's muffled voice fell silent. A loud boom reverberated through the tiny room, and the tower door came apart in a spray of shattered planks and twisted hinges. The explosion caught Xanthon full in the back, hurling him across the chamber but shielding Tanalasta from the worst of the blast. Armored soldiers came clanging through the door instantly, coughing and choking on sulfurous fumes.
Xanthon rolled to his feet and hurled himself down the stairs, disappearing into the musty depths beneath the tower before the dragoneers had taken two steps. A moment later, Alaphondar rushed through the door, Sarmon the Spectacular close on his heels.
"Tanalasta!" cried Alaphondar. "In the name of the Binder! No!"
The old sage collapsed to his knees and cradled her head in his lap. He started weep and rock to and fro, causing the ends of Tanalasta's broken jaw to rub against each other. She moaned and reached up, clamping her fingers onto his arm to make him stop.
"By the quill! She's alive!" Alaphondar pulled her higher into his lap, wrenching her broken arm around painfully, and waved Sarmon over. "Teleport us to Arabel-now!"
2
"No," the oldest tracker said flatly, "no horse willingly gallops along bare rock when there's soft turf to be had, unless the rider it's obeying guides it so. If Cadimus went along here-as he must have done, to leave no trace for so long, and not having wings-then you can be sure someone was riding him."
"His master?"
The tracker shrugged.