Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [136]
"And what if there is another explanation?" asked Owden. "Xanthon may have been telling the truth."
"Rowen? A ghazneth?" Tanalasta rolled her eyes. "You never met Rowen. Even Vangerdahast said nothing could make him betray Cormyr."
Owden shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with her doubts about Vangerdahast.
Tanalasta swung her feet off the stool, then leaned forward and pressed Rowen's holy symbol into the harvestmaster's hand. "Please, Owden. I must know."
Owden closed his eyes and sighed, then reluctantly nodded. "You deserve at least that much." The harvestmaster took the symbol and lifted her legs onto the stool again, then motioned his subordinates over. "Clagi, keep watch for Boldovar. You others, stand by me. It may be that this dark man is Rowen, or it may be he is some other thing we would rather not bring into Cormyr."
The priests quickly arranged themselves as ordered. There were no dragoneers or war wizards within five hundred yards of the room, for Tanalasta's troops had learned through hard experience the power of Boldovar's delusional tricks. Only clerics seemed able to withstand the madness he induced, and even they had to gird themselves with prayers and holy symbols.
Once all was ready, Owden began to swing the symbol before Tanalasta's eyes. "Concentrate…"
Tanalasta followed the silver amulet with her eyes, picturing the same dark face she had glimpsed twice before-a heavy brow and pearly eyes, brutish hooked nose, the familiar cleft chin. The image melded with the symbol and began to swing back and forth, and she had the sensation of peering down a long black tunnel, then the inky face was there before her, gaunt and sinister-looking, half hidden by a gray curtain of rain.
"Rowen?" Tanalasta called.
The brow furrowed, and the eyes grew white and angry. The dark figure shook its head, then started to turn away as before.
"Rowen, no!" When the head did not stop, Tanalasta yelled, "Now, Owden! I have him."
The harvestmaster rattled off a long string of mystic syllables, and the distance seemed to vanish between Tanalasta and the dark figure. He pivoted back toward her, and the air behind his head began to flash with silver lightning.
"No!" he cried.
The voice was deeper and raspier than Tanalasta recalled, but its dry northern accent left no doubt in her mind that it belonged to her husband. The portal through which she was viewing him seemed to grow larger, and she saw that his body was as dark as his face and as naked as the night they had conceived their child-though she no longer found it irresistible. Far from it. Everything seemed strangely out of proportion and brutish, with hulking shoulders and bulging arms and an impossibly narrow waist. His thighs were as large and round as wine casks, his groin covered by a mosslike tangle of hair that hung nearly to his knees.
Rain and thunder began to spill through the portal, soaking Tanalasta and shaking the room. Owden cried out in alarm, and his priests pressed close, moving to interpose themselves in the narrow gap between the princess and whatever was coming out of the gate. The dark figure spun away, turning a small pair of leathery ghazneth wings toward the portal.
"No!" Tanalasta screamed.
Her eyes had to be deceiving her, or perhaps it been her ears, when she thought the creature sounded like Rowen…then she hit on the only possible explanation. Boldovar was there. Somehow, he had snuck into the chamber and begun to deceive them, and it was one of his mad illusions she was seeing.
"Rowen, don't go!" she yelled. "I know you're not-"
It was too late. The ghazneth's wings had already begun to absorb Owden's magic, and the portal was shrinking before her eyes. One of the priests screamed in terror and slipped over the edge, then two more went. Tanalasta felt it sucking at her feet.
"Close it!" she yelled.
Owden's only response was a pained yell. Tanalasta swung her feet off the stool and drew them up into the chair with her, curling into the seat as well as her swollen bulk would allow.