Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [156]
"What did you say, human?"
Azoun spread wide his arms, allowing her a clear path to his breast, clad only in sweat-soaked leather where the transformed and sacrificed breastplate had gone. He looked old, his hair white and his face weathered and careworn, but he also seemed almost contented.
"Will my own life atone for what you have lost?" he asked again. "If so, I yield it gladly. Take it, so long as you restore peace to Cormyr and, by your honor, Lorelei Alavara, all who dwell in it."
For a moment the red dragon's scales wavered, and he was seeing the sleek bare body of an elf maiden, her red hair cascading around her in a long and glorious cloak, her large, dark eyes almost pleading, her mouth trembling on the edge of a smile.
Then it was gone, and he faced the dragon once more-a smaller wyrm, it seemed, but bright-eyed in its renewed fury.
"No!" Nalavara snarled, "Your trickery comes too late. Too long has my hatred carried me, human, until it is all I have left. Nothing you can say or do will bring back my Thatoryl. As he crumbled, so shall you all. The peace you seek will fall upon 'fair Cormyr' only when the rotting corpse of every last human feeds the forest that has been so defiled!"
"Time changes Faerun, as the dragons gave way to the elves, and your kin to mine," Azoun said gravely. "I can't bring Thatoryl Elian back, but I can raise a stone-or plant a grove-in his memory. My huntmasters tend the land even now, and leave some stretches untouched. I can make Cormyr far more a forest again… but the paradise you hunted in is gone, I fear, forever. Can we not work together to plant its echo? Must this end in more blood?"
Nalavarauthatoryl the Red reared up again, beating her wings despite the pain her broken one caused her, and snarled, "Of course it must, human! How else, whatever our 'civilized' pretensions, do elves and humans and dragons settle their disputes? No better than the goblins are we-and I cannot be something I am not. Die!"
Her jaws swept squarely down on Azoun this time, heedless of his warsword cutting into them and the scepter striking home-even when its golden radiance burst inside her head and her eyes blew out in twin balls of flame.
Ribs broke and the organs within burst before those jaws parted, sagging open again in death. Torn, Azoun gasped aloud at the pain, barely noticing as the Scepter of Lords caught fire in his trembling hands.
Yet its fury revived him from sinking into oblivion. He stood his ground, holding it deep in the dragon's jaws, and snarled, "For Cormyr!"
Let those ladies on the walls of Suzail change their wagers, damn them. He had a realm to save, whatever the cost, and this self-damned dragon was taking far too long to die.
Hot black blood boiled out of Nalavara's gullet then, washing over his chest and arms, drenching his wounds and raging through him wherever it touched his own blood. Azoun growled in pain and staggered as his foe shivered once, from end to end, then slowly gurgled into eternal silence.
As the Devil Dragon fell away, smoke rising from her empty, staring eye sockets, Azoun went to his knees atop the familiar form of Vangerdahast. It was done, his strength was spent, and it was time. Time for even a king to leave his throne behind in favor of a calmer place.
44
The Steel Princess peered through fog that was streaming across heaped bodies like smoke in a hurry to be elsewhere. The dead were everywhere, piled and sprawled across the rolling fields like a grotesque crop. Vultures and crows were already circling and gliding, looming out of the mist like lazy black arrows as they descended. The goblins were like a gory, countless carpet, but among them too many a brave knight or dragoneer lay stiff and staring. Even if this was the realm's last battle for a season or more, there'd be few Purple Dragons to watch the borders and patrol the roads. The Stonelands would just have to go unwatched for a year or three-and if Sembia or another eager reaver decided to reach out into the Forest Kingdom, little valor and fewer