Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [24]
"Time to learn what we can of the fate of Vangerdahast," Azoun muttered, taking care to turn his shoulder between his lips and the watching ghazneth.
"Do you still have the tracing dust Vangey gave you to find wayward, rebellious princesses?" Alusair asked, arching an eyebrow.
Azoun nodded and said, "I'd not forgotten it. I yet retain the firefending magic he laid upon me, too."
Alusair's eyes fell to the wands hanging from her father's belt, and settled on a certain one marked with a red rune. "Bait?" she asked simply, and the king nodded again.
"Let's be about it," he said tersely, and beckoned a lancelord to his side, to deliver the orders for everyone to stand back-a good twenty paces back-from the cage.
The ghazneth laughed harshly as the Cormyreans backed warily away, not sheathing their blades or taking their eyes off it for long. The deep, rumbling laughter grew as the two Obarskyrs strode forward to approach it.
"Made bold by your iron bars, paltry excuse for a king?"
"Well met, Luthax," Azoun replied evenly. "Found your way out yet?"
The ghazneth who had once been the second most powerful-and in a brief, dark moment, perhaps the most powerful-war wizard in Cormyr hissed and rattled long talons along the bars. He could draw those talons right back into his fingers, Alusair noted, taking care to keep just out of reach of those corded black arms.
"Seeking to supplant the rightful royal magician of today?" the king continued, almost playfully.
Luthax threw back his bald head and laughed, the broken fringe of beard around his jaw giving him a truly bestial appearance. "Is that fool's fate your most pressing concern? O blind King, you've far worse troubles to worry about right now. There's the survival of your throne and kingdom, for instance."
The ghazneth leered at Alusair through the bars, and asked, "How much for this she-wolf, Azoun? I have need of a spirited apprentice-or a breeding wench for the steed I plan to birth wrapped in truly powerful spells. Care to try your best mages against me?"
"Not particularly," Azoun said, strolling around the cage with a humorless half-smile flickering at the edges of his mouth. "My duty is to preserve the lives and well being of my subjects as much as I can-even subjects such as you-not throw them away in pointless spell hurlings."
"I'm not your subject!" Luthax spat. "Go find Vangerdahast, if it's the fawning kisses of tame, groveling wizards you want."
"And just where would I find him?"
"Oh, no," Luthax taunted. "You must be used to crossing verbal swords with very dull-witted courtiers, Azoun. Think you to worm one word out of me that I don't care to let fall? I'm Luthax, a mage the likes of whom you've never seen and can't, brute-wits that you are, even hope to understand. Cormyr seems infested with ghazneths just now, doesn't it? Enough of us-more than enough of us-to hold one feeble old Vangerdahast where neither you nor any other man will ever find him."
"Think you so?" the king replied softly. "The royal magician's magic has already told me otherwise."
"'Otherwise'?"
"The hold of a ghazneth," Azoun said casually, "seems far less sure than at least one ghazneth presumes it to be. Certainly less powerful than these crude iron bars. I wonder, now, just how much more of the vaunted powers of ghazneths are mere bluff and arrogance?"
The dark creature in the cage roared in fury and laid hold of the bars, shoulders rippling. The cage shook with its straining, but the bars held fast, and the creature hissed and snatched its hands away, holding them curled and trembling as if it had been burned.
"Starved for magic?" the King of Cormyr murmured. Azoun waited until the ghazneth's angry eyes were fixed on his, then brought into view the wand he'd drawn from his belt and held hidden behind his back as the ghazneth vainly tried to tear apart its prison. "I am prepared to make a little trade."
He stepped back, and watched the ghazneth that had been Luthax struggle with rage, then several other emotions in turn, before he wheeled