Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [124]
She had the sense of plunging down a long tunnel into a huge black vastness. An inky darkness fell across the amulet. Vangerdahast's face vanished, replaced by the gaunt visage she had first glimpsed when she had tried to contact her husband. The stranger's brow was heavy and sinister, the eyes white as pearls, the chin square and strong with a hint of cleft. This time, Tanalasta did not call out, and the pearly eyes stared at her for a moment, brimming with joy and sorrow and some unspeakable craving a thousand times more powerful than even the longing she felt for Rowen.
The air grew gray with rain, and the face vanished. An instant later Vangerdahast was there, scowling and impatient as ever.
It's about time.
"I have him," Tanalasta reported to Owden. To Vangerdahast, she said, "Do you have the scepter, Old Snoop?"
Vangerdahast frowned in confusion, but nodded and brought the amethyst pommel into view. I do.
"Good," Tanalasta said. "Owden, we're ready."
The harvestmaster rattled off a long string of mystic syllables. The distance between Tanalasta and Vangerdahast seemed to vanish. The wizard's eyes grew round. He let out a startled cry and seemed to fall toward the princess, arms windmilling and legs kicking. Behind him, she glimpsed an iron throne and a crescent of little green goblins, the flashing bolts of a thunderstorm and a dark figure scrambling back from the portal.
Then Vangerdahast was there on top of her, sprawled across her and hugging her like a mother, laughing, weeping, and screaming all at once, cold and clammy and wet, stinking like he had not bathed in months.
He kissed her full on the lips, then scrambled off her and stooped down to kiss her swollen belly, then planted the tip of the golden Scepter of Lords beside her chair and leaned down to kiss her on the mouth again.
Tanalasta pushed him off. "Vangerdahast!"
The wizard gave her a waggish grin. "Don't tell me you're not happy to see me!"
"I am." Tanalasta wiped her face, less to rub off the dampness left by the wizard's rain-soaked beard than to freshen her nostrils with the perfume on her cuff, "But we have work-"
Tanalasta was interrupted by the knelling of an alarm bell, and the map room broke into a tumult of voices and clattering boots. Vangerdahast turned slowly on his heel, watching in amazement as the nobles rushed off to join their companies.
"Are they running toward battle?"
"You might say that, old friend," said Owden. He clapped a hand on Vangerdahast's shoulder. "Or you might say they are fleeing what Tanalasta would do to them if they hesitated."
"Is that so?" Vangerdahast cocked his brow at the princess. "I'll be interested to hear how you did that."
"And I have a few questions for you as well," Tanalasta said. "But they will have to wait. We have a ghazneth coming."
Vangerdahast's brow rose in shock, then he looked around the map room as though confirming he was where he thought he was. "Coming here? To the Royal Castle?"
"So it seems." Tanalasta struggled out of her chair and started for the door. "And let us pray it is not King Boldovar."
36
"Is this all that's left of us?" Kortyl Rowanmantle almost squeaked, looking around at the grim gaggle of men crowded among the trees. "Two hundred men, maybe less?"
At their center rose a great, gnarl-rooted stump, taller in its ruin than the tallest man there-and atop it stood the Steel Princess, her hands on her dragonfire-blackened hips, and most of her once-magnificent, unruly mane of hair now a scorched ruin.
"Evidently so, Kortyl," she replied almost cheerfully. "All the more goblins for the rest of us."
An uneasy silence greeted her words. Squalling earfangs were neither glamorous nor all that easy to slay, when they came rushing in their swarms-and come in swarms they did, endless streaming tides that overwhelmed weary sword arms and butchered all too well… leaving too few survivors here, panting, in the forest.
On