Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [145]
They came to a rest against the opposite wall, resting upside down and at an angle, so that they were lying headdown on their backs. The pain in the princess's womb had grown crushing, and she had to scream or burst. Something was wrong. Her water had barely broken, and labor was not supposed to come until hours later.
"Princess?" Clagi shook her arm. "What's wrong?"
Tanalasta managed to wrest a scream into a word, "Baby!"
Clagi's response was lost in the boom of Boldovar's foot striking iron up near their feet. The box spun off the wall and crashed to the floor, then twirled across the room and smashed the legs from under a table. An eerie stillness followed, and Tanalasta felt as if someone had dropped a door on her stomach. There were no contractions, none of the rhythmic tightening her midwife had told her to expect. There was only steady, horrid pain growing worse each passing moment and a strange feeling of slackening everywhere below her waist.
Clagi laid a hand over her womb and began to gently feel around the underside of her belly. Tanalasta's scream faded to a grunt, not because her pain had dwindled, but because she had run out of air. She heard her breath coming fast and shallow and knew she was starting to panic, and that knowledge only made her breathe faster.
A distant cacophony of muffled voices grew audible over Tanalasta's low groans, and she knew Battlelord Steelhand's men were in the street below the tower. Boldovar remained ominously silent, perhaps because he had gone to the window to investigate the noise. The princess certainly hoped that was what he was doing, and not thinking up some way to pry up the lid off her hiding place. Now, when she most needed to be strong for Cormyr and herself, she felt more vulnerable and helpless than she had at any time since the start of the crisis.
Finally, Clagi pulled his hand away. "I know it hurts, but there's no need to be frightened. You're only giving birth. Everything will be fine."
"Don't lie to me!" Tanalasta screamed the words, more to express her fear than her disbelief. "This isn't labor. My midwife told me what to expect!"
"I'm sure she also told you every birth is different." Clagi laid a reassuring hand on her arm. "The ghazneth seems to have hurried yours along a bit."
"Then stop it!" How could her body do this to her? How could it pick this moment to betray her? "The baby can't come now."
"I'm afraid we have no choice in the matter," whispered Clagi. "I'll stay here and decoy the ghazneth. Perhaps you should use your escape pocket-"
The priest's suggestion was interrupted by an anguished scream. This time it was not Tanalasta's.
"Tanalasta… don't lift the door." The voice was husky and familiar, with a dry northern accent that the princess would recognize anywhere. "Whatever you do, stay-"
The muffled snap of a breaking bone brought the sentence to a screeching end.
"What say you, girl?" Boldovar cackled above them. "A husband for a couple of rings and a weathercloak?"
Another crack sounded above the box, and shot through Tanalasta's heart.
Boldovar spoke again. "Decide quickly. You know how easily I grow bored."
Tanalasta's thoughts whirled in pain-addled confusion. Boldovar's prisoner certainly sounded like Rowen, but that could not be. Rowen was a ghazneth, imprisoned in the same wet hell where Vangerdahast had been trapped-or was he? Owden had told her how Xanthon had impersonated her at the Battle of the Farsea Marsh. Perhaps the ghazneth in the cavern had not been Rowen after all. Perhaps Vangerdahast had been telling the truth all along.
Terrified at how events were slipping out of her control, Tanalasta unclasped her weathercloak and slipped off her commander's ring. "You have… a bargain." She forced the words out between clenched teeth. "Let him go."
"Tanalasta, n-"
Rowen's cry was cut short by the sharp clap of a hand striking flesh. A heavy body slammed into a set of bookshelves