Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [161]
Vangerdahast found that he could turn his head, as they laid him down, and see the king.
Azoun lay on a broad, creaking bed of shields set over rolled blankets to raise them from the trampled ground. The cloaks and sleeping furs atop those shields had been dragged into wildness by the king's clawing hands, and the king of all fair Cormyr was still moving in the restlessness of ravaging pain, threads of smoke rising from his groaning mouth as knights bent as near to him as they dared.
More smoke was rising from the hacked and torn rents in Azoun's armor, the places where the once bright plates had been torn away in the dragon's fury, and the cloaks beneath the king were drenched with dark blood.
More blood was coming from the king's mouth as he turned his head, fixing eyes that were bright with pain on Vangerdahast's face. For a moment Azoun's gaze roved, as if he did not see what lay around him but beheld something else, then the king's eyes grew sharp again. His lips twisted in what might have been cynical amusement, or might have been just the pain.
"It seems I still live," he said.
"Great lord?" Lionstone led a general rush of Cormyr's war captains to their king.
Unhelmed now, they were so many anxious hulks in scarred and scorched armor, sweat-soaked hair plastered to their faces or matted with blood, gauntlets gone to reveal bloodied fingers that reached for their king with anxious haste, and even more frantic gentleness.
"Help me rise," Vangerdahast snarled, never taking his eyes from his king. He had to repeat himself thrice before someone plucked him from the ground like an old sack and swung him upright. His legs felt curiously weak as they steadied him by the shoulders, but the royal magician found that he could stand on his own and that his body obeyed him. Gods, it even seemed whole. He thrust one hand into the neck of his robe, through the white and gray hair that curled across his chest. The wizard drew out certain things on chains, only to find just what he'd expected.
The handful of chased and worked silver talismans had been old when Cormyr was young, healing things made on the floating cities of Netheril and other elder lands. Mighty was their magic, lasting down the centuries, or, well, it had been. He was holding crumbling ashes now, lumps on the ends of fine chains that had dragged him back from the ravages of the dragon as he lay senseless and broken.
They'd made him whole by becoming themselves broken things, their ages-old magic exhausted. As he regarded them, even the chains started to crumble. Vangerdahast tossed them to the ground and murmured, "Step not there. Let no one tread there."
Azoun's head turned abruptly. "Is that my wizard?" the king snapped, struggling to sit up. Knights leaned and reached to help him, then recoiled, stumbling in their weariness.
Azoun's movement had awakened to full fury the dragon's blood that was eating him. A small ball of flame snarled up from his limbs to burst in the air head-high above him. Even as it faded into rising, drifting smoke, fresh lightning raged up and down the king and across his bed of shields, spitting sparks.
Ravaged armor shrank before the watching eyes on the hilltop, curling and darkening like leaves in a fire, and fell away from Azoun's arms and thighs. The gleam of bared bone shone forth from at least one ashen tangle beneath the tortured metal.
Vangerdahast took one unsteady stride, then another. Cormyr reeled under his boots, but did not heave itself over to smite him, and after another step, he was all right. The Forest Kingdom would have its royal magician a little while longer, at least.
"My king," he said gravely to the twisting figure atop the shields, as fresh lightning washed over that bed of pain and faded away into dancing sparks, "I am here."
"Vangey!"Azoun shouted-or tried to. The voice was like a distant cry, but the pleasure in it was unmistakable.
As the king drew himself up onto one elbow, the pauldron fell away from that shoulder, trailing fresh smoke.