Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [107]
Owden began to swing Rowen's holy symbol back and forth, and Tanalasta's eyes followed it. She had begun to run her hands over Rowen's body, and he had done the same to her, sliding his palm up to cup the softness of her breast..
His face returned her, handsome and swarthy and chiseled, with a gentle smile and brown eyes as deep as the forest. A rush of relief rose up inside her, and Tanalasta said, "I have him."
"Good. Now keep watching his holy symbol. It is the trail that will lead you to him. Keep watching…
Owden broke into the deep chant of his spell, calling upon Chauntea's godly power to reforge the mystical link between Rowen and what Luthax had taken from him. Tanalasta continued to watch the swinging symbol, holding her husband's face in mind and praying to the goddess to answer Owden's plea. Rowen's image melded into the silver bud and became one with it, and there was just her husband's head, sweeping back and forth in front of her. The room vanished around Tanalasta. She had the sense of plunging down a dark tunnel into a blackness as vast as the Abyss itself.
An inky shadow fell across the face before her, and its features became gaunt and harsh. The brow grew heavy and sinister, hanging over a pair of luminous white eyes as round and lustrous as pearls, and the nose swelled into a brutish, hooked thing as sharp as a hawk's beak. Only the chin remained the same, square, strong, and cleft.
"Rowen?" Tanalasta gasped.
The white eyes brightened and looked away, vanishing into a misty gray cloud. For a moment, Tanalasta did not understand what she was seeing, then a fork of lightning danced across her view and she realized it was rain.
"Rowen?" she called again.
A different face appeared, just as gaunt but bushybrowed and cob-nosed, with sunken gray eyes and a bushy black beard that covered it from the hollow cheeks down. An iron circlet ringed the figure's filthy mop of hair, with bare patches of scalp and red scratches along the temples where the wearer had tried to tear off his crude crown.
There was something vaguely familiar in the impatient furrow of his brow and the harshness in his eyes, but Tanalasta could not think of how she might know the haggard old man.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What happened to Rowen?"
What happened to Rowen? mocked an all-too-familiar voice, the sound of it echoing in her mind. Is that all you want to know? No "how are you, Old Snoop?" "Where have you been?" Not even "Are you dead or alive?"
"Vangerdahast?" Tanalasta gasped. "Are you dead?"
The wizard looked insulted. No!
"Then where are you?" Tanalasta grew faintly aware of warm bodies pressing close around in the Crownsilver dining room. She ignored them and kept her concentration focused on the swinging face before her eyes. "What happened to Rowen?"
The City of the Grodd, in answer to your first question, replied the wizard. And in reply to the one that will surely follow my answer, I have no idea. Suffice it to say I've been trying to get out for… well, a very long time.
"But you're younger," Tanalasta observed.
Vangerdahast cringed and touched the crown on his head. The benefits of rank, I suppose. How long will this spell last?
"Longer than we have. A ghazneth will be arriving any moment," said Tanalasta. "I was looking for Rowen-"
Yes, so you've said, but that'll have to wait. A giant red dragon appeared in Cormyr.
It was a statement, not a question, but Tanalasta confirmed it anyway.
"Yes-a dragon, and whole armies of orcs, and goblins, too," she said. "The nobles and I are fighting the ghazneths in the south."
The nobles? Vangerdahast raised an astonished brow.
"It's too long a story to tell," said Tanalasta. "I've figured