Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [148]
"Enough!"
Boldovar's arm flashed out to block. The blow caught him across the wrist and nearly lopped it off, but the ghazneth hardly seemed to notice. He circled his forearm around as though it were a blade, forcing Tanalasta's sword back against her thumb and stripping it from her grasp. The weapon fell free and clanged off the rim of the box.
Tanalasta turned toward the stairwell door, where the sound of pounding boots had grown so loud the princess swore the warpriests had to be in the room with her. They very nearly were. The battlelord and his first three men stood at the top of the stairwell, panting for breath and running in place, apparently convinced they were still ascending the spiraling staircase into Vangerdahast's study.
"Steelhand!" Tanalasta called. "Run forward!"
"What are you calling him for?" Boldovar demanded. "You asked me to play."
The ghazneth's hand slammed into Tanalasta's head so hard that she heard half a dozen teeth clatter off the wall. Her vision narrowed and her hearing grew distant, then she felt herself being jerked out of the iron box and hurled against the stone wall. The impact moved the baby lower, and she felt its head beginning to crown.
When her eyesight returned, Boldovar was standing in front of her, holding her against the wall with his mutilated forearm and glaring at her with an insane, maniacal grin. "Good. You're back."
Something sharp and hot pierced Tanalasta's abdomen just below the navel, then her belly exploded into agonizing pain. She looked down and saw the ghazneth's arm pressed against her stomach. At first, she could not quite fathom what she was seeing-then she noticed the collar of red blood around his forearm, and felt a huge hand feeling around inside her.
"Let me see… where is that baby?" He grabbed something up near her rib cage and pulled.
Tanalasta's world became a red fiery scream. She brought her knee up more by instinct than intention and felt it connect hard. Boldovar did not groan, but the impact was enough to send him two steps back. He was holding something brownish and bloody in his hand. It wasn't a baby, and that was enough for Tanalasta.
Boldovar smiled and raised the bloody mass to his mouth-then pitched over forward as Battlelord Steelhand and his men barreled into him from behind. Their swords rose and fell in a tempest, hacking the ghazneth into a mangled black mass. It hardly mattered. The wounds closed almost as fast as they could inflict them. The Mad King pushed the bloody mass he was holding into his mouth and broke into a maniacal laugh, then began to chew and swallow.
Tanalasta felt the strength leave her legs and slumped to the floor. The pain was all gone now. There was a cold numbness up under her ribs, where Boldovar had ripped her life out, and a warmer, happier emptiness down in her womb, where she felt her baby sliding out into the world even as she faded. She reached down and felt its head, waxy and warm and tiny. It was all she would ever know of the child. The ghazneth had sealed her doom when he ate whatever it was he had eaten, for even the finest healers in the kingdom could not save her without all of her organs.
But the child would survive, and through the child, Cormyr. Tanalasta bore down with what little strength remained to her and felt the child slip completely free. It snuffled and began to cry. She tried to raise it to her breast, but could not.
"Boldovar…" she gasped. "King Boldovar the Mad. I grant you… the thing you desire most."
Boldovar threw off one of Steelhand's warpriests, then raised his head to glare, crimson-eyed, at Tanalasta. "Quiet, trollop!"
"King Boldovar the Mad, I grant you my pain."
The darkness drained from Boldovar's face. He did not stop struggling, but his efforts grew ineffectual, and little pieces of his body began to fly off beneath the impact of the warpriests' blades.
Tanalasta raised her fingers-as much as she could do to signal a stop-then