Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [147]
She blacked out, but awoke a few moments later coughing and choking. Lake Azoun's muddy water was already filling her mouth and lapping at her nostrils. Clagi lay completely submerged beneath her, facing the side of the box and not moving.
Thanking the goddess she had returned to consciousness before drowning, Tanalasta gulped down a last breath. She pushed her hand down into her weathercloak, fighting through a floating morass of heavy wool. By the time her fingers located the escape pocket's leather-lined mouth, the box was completely filled with water. Clagi had begun to convulse and did not respond to any of Tanalasta's prodding and poking. Even if the princess managed to turn herself so the dimension door did not appear between them, he would be incapable of following her through on his own. She would have to pull him, which meant she would have to squeeze her swollen, aching stomach back around toward the front of the box. There was no time for that. She slipped her free arm around Clagi's neck, then removed her other hand from her escape pocket, reached past him, and pulled the locking bar back.
The door flew open. The light and the air came flooding in, and Tanalasta found herself staring up into Boldovar's mad red eyes, gasping for breath and struggling to understand how the ghazneth could be standing upright in the depths of Lake Azoun, shaking his fat belly at her and cackling in laughter.
Before the answer came to her, he stepped into the iron box, grinding his heel down on Clagi's neck and crushing it with an audible crunch.
"For me? How kind." As Boldovar spoke, his dark hand flashed down and grabbed the collar of Tanalasta's weathercloak. "Thank you very much."
The ghazneth ripped the heavy cloak off over her head, taking with it the simple smock underneath and leaving the princess in nothing but her breast bindings and loins girdle. He hardly seemed to notice. Boldovar simply buried his face in the black cloth and let out a long, satisfied groan as he began to absorb its magic.
The watery depths changed to Vangerdahast's study, and grotesque and lascivious carvings began to appear on the walls. Finally coming to understand how she had been tricked, Tanalasta screamed in anger.
"No!"
Boldovar looked up and smiled, the remains of her shredded smock draped over his head. "Oh, yes."
Battlelord Steelhand's voice boomed up the stairs. "We're coming, Princess! A few moments more…"
But they did not have a few moments more. The depth of color was already fading from Tanalasta's weathercloak, and the chamber now looked more like a ghastly festhall devoted to unnatural cravings and monstrous delights than Vangerdahast's study. If she allowed the ghazneth to absorb any more of her magic, Steelhand and his men would have no chance at all of destroying the thing.
Gritting her teeth against the crushing pain in her abdomen, Tanalasta propped herself up and drew the iron sword secreted in the door of her hiding box. Every day, her self-defense instructors drilled one simple lesson into her: strike to cripple, then strike to kill. But how to cripple a ghazneth?
To stop Boldovar, she knew she had to do more than crush a knee or slash a hamstring. She had to assault him in the very heart of his sick existence. The answer came to the princess easily. She pushed herself to her knees and brought the short blade across Boldovar's loins in a vicious backhand slash.
"Coward!" she cried.
Boldovar's crimson eyes grew as wide as coins, then he let out a surprised little whimper and allowed the weathercloak to slip from his grasp. Tanalasta brought the sword back in the opposite direction, opening another dark gash in the underside of his belly. Her own pain seemed to vanish-or rather, her fear seemed to vanish. She was still aware of her labor, of the crushing feeling around her waist and the baby moving steadily