Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [131]
Finally, the balustrade loomed before Vangerdahast. He scraped over it screaming in terror-it was only an act to distract the ghazneth, of course-then shot through the open doors and across the entire drawing room before a deafening clang sounded behind him.
His flying spell expired an instant later, a dozen steps into the long hallway outside the drawing room. Though only traveling at a quarter speed, he hit hard and tumbled headlong down the floor. A pair of dragoneers managed to grab hold and prevented him from plunging down a sweeping staircase.
"Lord wizard, are you all right?"
"What do you think?" Vangerdahast allowed the guards to pull him to his feet, then shook them off and stumbled back into the drawing room.
By the time he arrived, the battered balcony doors were already open. The ghazneth was surrounded by a handful of dragoneers, all hacking and chopping at her while Tanalasta kneeled at her side, struggling to pull a glittering necklace of diamonds over her broken skull.
"Suzara Obarskyr, wife to Ondeth the Founder and mother to Faerlthann the First King, as a true Obarskyr and heir to the Dragon Throne, I grant you the thing you most desire, the thing for which you abandoned your husband and son-I grant you the luxury and wealth of the Suzail Palace."
Vangerdahast arrived to see the darkness drain from Suzara's face, leaving behind the careworn visage of a brown-haired woman who did not look so different from Tanalasta herself. The woman's eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she began to groan and froth at the mouth and jerk about spasmodically, as the victims of head wounds were sometimes prone to do.
Tanalasta touched her hand to Suzara's trembling brow. "And as a direct descendent of your line and heir to the crown, I forgive your betrayal and absolve you, Suzara Obarskyr, of all crimes against Cormyr."
When the princess removed her hand, Suzara simply continued to thrash about and foam at the mouth. Tanalasta frowned and looked to Owden, who could only scowl and shake his head in bewilderment. Vangerdahast kneeled beside Tanalasta and pressed her hand back to Suzara's shattered skull.
"And in the name of Cormyr and its royal line through thirteen centuries, and its strong and loyal people, we thank you," the royal magician said. "We thank you for the sacrifices you did make, and we pledge to honor your memory even as we honor Ondeth's."
Tanalasta nodded. "So it will be," she said. "As Crown Princess Tanalasta Obarskyr and a daughter of your line, I pledge it so."
Suzara's eyes opened again, then she fell still and silent and sank, at last, into a peaceful rest.
38
A fellowship of gloom crowded together in the dim depths of the royal tent, close around the silent king.
At the head of the bed where Azoun lay wounded, two bodyguards stood in stolid, watchful silence, their large and callused hands never far from the hilts of their swords.
The men they faced, down at the foot of the bed-half a dozen priests and a war wizard-brooded in a more restless silence, born of futility and mounting fear. Their most modest healing spells had failed, and they dared not try more powerful magics. Not with the ghazneth circling the hilltop like a vengeful hawk, casually diving down from time to time to rake and rend Purple Dragons at will.
At each shout and skin of blades outside the tent, the men sitting around the bed tensed and threw up their heads, peering vainly at the tapestry-hung tent walls as if some helpful, lurking enchantment might pluck the canvas aside to reveal the fray without, but the unhelpful canvas never moved.
Always, after a few moments, a scream of pain would rise close outside-sometimes brief, more often a long howl of agony that sank into the wet gurgling of a bloody death-and cold laughter would begin, fading as the eerie slayer took wing again into the sky.
The king never dozed through these brief battles.