Beyond the High Road c-2 Read online

  Less commonly known was that the king had lingered on for several days while Baerauble Etharr, the first Royal Magician of Cormyr, was summoned from abroad. Fortunately for the people of the realm, however, Boldovar “wandered off” alone before the royal wizard could return. When a badly bloated body dressed in the king’s purple was found floating in the Immerflow a tenday later, Baerauble announced his liege’s death and ordered the corpse burnt at once. Until now, there had never been reason to believe the wizard’s hasty order due to anything but the sensibilities of his nose, but Tanalasta could not help thinking Baerauble had used the incident to solve a terrible dilemma he must have been facing. As the Royal Magician sworn to protect the crown of Cormyr at all costs, he could hardly have condoned the overthrow even of a mad king-but neither could he have believed that Boldovar’s reign benefited the realm. Perhaps he substituted another body for Boldovar’s and spirited the mad king off to live out his days someplace where he could do no harm.

  Rowen came around the tree behind Tanalasta. “Is something wrong, milady? You look… uneasy.”

  “I’m frightened, actually-frightened and puzzled.” Tanalasta did not take her eyes from the tree as she spoke. “Were the glyphs on all the other trees the same as these?”

  Rowen answered without studying the characters. “They looked the same.”

  “Yes, but were they exactly the same?” Tanalasta pointed at the three characters that stood for Mad Kang Boldovar. “Especially here?”

  “I think so, Princess,” Rowen said, sounding slightly embarrassed. “To be honest, I can’t even see the difference between the glyphs you’re pointing at and the ones next to them. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Tanalasta turned to him. “I should have realized how difficult it would be to learn High Wealdan without the Royal Library at your disposal.”

  “Or even with it,” said Rowen. “I fear I’ve never been a student of the old tongues.”

  Tanalasta smiled at the ranger’s candor. “High Wealdan isn’t really a tongue. It’s closer to music. Listen.”

  The princess went around to the front of the tree and ran her finger along the initial glyph. A melodic rasp instantly filled the air, intoning the epitaph’s first line in a haunting female voice as anguished as it was menacing. Of course, Tanalasta understood the words no better than Rowen, for no human ear could comprehend the full timbre of an elven weald poem.

  Rowen’s eyes grew wide. “I’ve never heard anything like it!”

  “Nor have I.” Tanalasta shuddered at the pain of the music. ‘That was an elven spirit-voice, if you can believe it.”

  She led the ranger around the tree, translating each glyph aloud both for his benefit and to assure herself that she was reading it correctly. By the time she finished, Rowen’s face had grown as pale as alabaster.

  “An elf made them?” the ranger asked, clearly referring to the ghazneths. “Why?”

  ‘We won’t know that until we discover who that elf was,” said Tanalasta. “First, we need to be sure the ghazneths are related to these trees. That’s why I want to know if this glyph looked the same on the other trees.”

  Rowen shrugged. “I just can’t say. If I’d known what to look for…”

  “How could you have?” asked Tanalasta. “I’m sure I can figure it out from Alusair’s notes.”

  “Notes?”

  Tanalasta sighed. “I suppose Alusair isn’t really the note-taking kind, is she?”

  “She was trying to catch Emperel.”

  “I’m sure she was in a hurry.” Tanalasta started around the tree toward the musty hole. “Alusair always is. Did she at least look inside the tombs?”

  “That’s where we found this.” Rowen pulled the iron dagger from his belt and handed it to Tanalasta. “In the second tomb.”

  Tanalasta stopped beside the hole and examined the weapon, noting its stone-scraped cutting edge and the hammer marks on the face of its blade.

  “Cold-forged iron,” she said. “I’m astonished this survived. It was made in Suzail over thirteen hundred years ago.”

  “How can you tell?” Rowen frowned at the blade. “I didn’t see any markings.”

  “That’s how I know. Suzail built its first steel works in the year seventy-five, the Year of the Clinging Death. Before that, people smelted their own iron in ground ovens and beat the weapon into shape on a communal anvil.” Tanalasta returned the knife to the ranger. “While this is a good piece of handiwork, no merchant bound for Cormyr would burden himself with iron when he knew the market wanted steel.”

  “I see.” Rowen shook his head in amazement, then asked, “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “Of course,” Tanalasta said lightly. “To listen to Vangerdahast, he could fill volumes with the things I don’t know.”

  Rowen chuckled lightly, then glanced back toward where the royal magician had disappeared. Tanalasta followed his gaze. The ghazneth could be seen circling over the labyrinth of canyons, its head still engulfed in a glowing gold orb. Though Vangerdahast had cast the spell less than thirty minutes earlier, the magical glow was already beginning to fade. Determined to finish her investigations quickly, the princess removed the Purple Dragon commander’s ring from her cloak pocket and slipped it onto her finger.

  “Keep watch,” she ordered, stooping down at the rim of the hole.

  Rowen caught her by the arm. “Where are you going?”

  Though the gesture would have seemed condescending coming from anyone else, from Rowen it seemed merely an expression of concern. Tanalasta patted his hand.

  “I need to look inside myself,” she said gently. “We both know I’ll see what others have missed.”

  Rowen gritted his teeth, but nodded. “It would be best to make it fast, Princess.”

  Tanalasta glanced in the direction of the ghazneth. “I won’t be slow.” The princess activated her ring’s light magic and started into the hole, then glanced back and smiled. “And didn’t I tell you to call me Tanalasta?”

  Rowen stooped down to give her a stubborn smile. “As you command, Princess.”

  Tanalasta kicked a clump of dirt at him, then turned and started forward. The musty smell grew stronger and more rancid as she crawled, and her skin began to prickle with the wispy breath of evil. When she reached the end of the passage ten paces later, she had goosebumps the size of rose thorns, and her jaws ached from the strain of holding back her gorge. Ahead of her lay a body-shaped hollow, surrounded on all sides by a fine-meshed net of broken black roots. The tree had no taproot, at least that she could see. The tiny chamber was empty, save for a simple floor of flat stones littered with scraps of rotten cloth and an odd assortment of tarnished buckles, buttons, and clasps.

  Tanalasta pulled herself into the foul-smelling chamber and nearly cried out when something soft and diaphanous clung to her cheek. She quickly brushed it off and found a transparent web of gossamer filaments stuck to her fingers. It took her a moment to recognize the stuff as raw silk, and she began to notice it everywhere-tangled among the roots above her head, hanging down around her to form the walls of the tomb, and clinging to the debris scattered across the floor.

  The princess’s first impulse was to leave, as the filmy stuff reminded her of nothing quite so much as the web of a black widow spider, but she clenched her jaw and forced herself to begin scraping the filament away from the walls. To her surprise, the silk came away in thick gobs, and she actually found herself digging a small tunnel that did not end for nearly ten paces-about the distance it would be to the sycamore’s dripline.

  Tanalasta suppressed the urge to shudder, realizing that the tree-or the corpse beneath it-had so corrupted the ground that the normal process of soil replacement had been halted. She returned to the center of the tree and examined a handful of buttons. The gold plating was so tarnished that she could barely make out the shape of a dragon rampant, its wings spread and its tail curled over its back. Any doubts she had about the ghazneth’s identit
y vanished at once. It was the emblem of King Boldovar. Fearful of being tainted by the palpable evil she sensed in the place, the princess tossed the buttons aside and crawled out of the tomb.

  Rowen was waiting at the mouth of the hole, holding the mare’s reins and staring back toward the canyon lands. He did not even let her leave the hole before he asked, “How long before Vangerdahast returns?”

  Tanalasta looked up to find an uneasy expression on his face. “We may be on our own until tomorrow. I doubt Vangerdahast had two teleport spells ready, and even he might need time to prepare another.”

  Rowen’s uneasy expression changed to one of true distress. “We’d better hurry.”

  He reached down, and Tanalasta gave him her hand. Instead of helping her out of the hole, however, he slipped the commander’s ring off her finger.

  “Untie the saddle packs.” He turned back to the mare. “We’ll use the ring as a decoy.”

  “Don’t you think that trick’s getting old?” Tanalasta asked, climbing from the hole. “It barely worked last time.”

  “It’s a new trick to this one.”

  Rowen was using both hands to tie the ring into the mare’s mane, so he simply nodded northward. The first ghazneth was still circling over the maze of canyons, the golden halo around its head now faded to the point that she could make out the outline of a haggish head, but that was not the cause of his concern. A second dark speck was coming out of the north, growing larger even as she watched. The princess scrambled to the mare’s flank and began to undo the saddle packs.

  “Tie a loose knot,” she said. “I know a decoy is our best escape, but this horse has been good to me. I’d like to give her a chance.”

  “Done.” Rowen stepped back, leaving the glowing commander’s ring fastened to the mare’s mane by a loose but complicated knot. “Without a load to carry, I give her a better chance than us of getting home.”

  “That only seems fair,” said Tanalasta.

  The princess pulled the saddle packs free, then raised her hand high and slapped the mare hard on the flank. The beast bolted south, heading for the deep canyon that separated the two Mule Ear peaks. Tanalasta quickly pulled her bracers off and slipped them into the saddlebags, then unclasped her weathercloak and checked herself for any other magic that might give them away.

  Once she felt satisfied she was radiating no magic, she asked, “Which way?”

  Rowen nodded southwest past the face of the Mule Ears. “Go ahead. You’ll see the hoof prints in about twenty paces. I’ll cover our trail.”

  Though she did not like being separated from the ranger with the ghazneth so near, the princess saw the wisdom of his plan and set off at a steady run. As Rowen had promised, she soon came to a narrow trail of hoof prints left by Alusair’s company. She pulled her cloak from her shoulders and began to sweep the dusty ground as she ran, cursing Alusair’s sloppiness and doing what she could to help the ranger obliterate the tracks.

  The hoof prints all but vanished twenty paces later, and Tanalasta realized that her sister had intentionally left an obvious trail to help Rowen determine the direction she had gone, but was now taking precautions. The princess continued to sweep away any tracks she noticed, but now the prints were few and far between. She shifted her own tactics, trying to stay on rocks or hard ground whenever possible and avoiding any bushes that might snap or snag as she dashed past.

  The tiny speck grew steadily larger, becoming first a barely distinguishable V, then a tiny cross. Tanalasta found a series of four hoof prints turning slightly southward. She swept them away and adjusted her own course and found herself climbing a small ridge. The princess glanced back. Seeing Rowen less than fifty paces behind her, she decided to risk crossing the crest and dashed up the slope at her best sprint.

  By the time Tanalasta neared the top, the approaching ghazneth appeared nearly as large as her thumb. She dropped to her hands and scrambled the rest of the way on all fours, taking care to step only on stones, and to keep the sparse brush between her and the approaching phantom. She crossed the summit itself on her belly, then ducked behind a bush and turned to watch the phantom.

  Rowen was still ten paces from the hilltop when the thing grew large enough that she could make out the shape of its wings. She hissed a quiet warning to the ranger, then motioned him down. He fell to his belly and rolled beneath a bush, covering himself with his mottled cloak and growing almost invisible, even to Tanalasta.

  They waited, exhausted and huffing, as the ghazneth flew past less than half a mile from the crest of the ridge.

  It started to swerve toward the withered sycamore, then veered off over the canyons toward its golden-haloed fellow.

  Tanalasta rose from her hiding place and motioned the ranger over the ridge. “Now, Rowen-and hurry!”

  Rowen rolled from beneath his bush and swept his cloak across the ground quickly, then scrambled over the ridge beside Tanalasta. “You are quite… a runner,” he gasped. “I didn’t… know if I could catch up.”

  “Fear will do that to you.” Tanalasta turned to angle down the ridge in the direction of Alusair’s trail. “You’d have no trouble keeping up if you were as terrified as I am.”

  Rowen came up beside her. “If I’m not frightened, it’s only because I have nothing to lose. You… you’ll be queen some day. Why did you pull away from Vangerdahast?”

  “The king commanded me to find Alusair,” she said. “There is something he wanted me to tell her.”

  “No,” said Rowen. “That is an excuse, not a reason. Even if you and Vangerdahast were not so open about your disputes, the air between you is as taut as a plow lead.”

  They reached the bottom of the ridge and dropped into a broad trough, with the craggy face of the Storm Horns soaring up on the south and the ridge rising more gently to the north. Rowen used his cape to sweep away four hoof prints leading directly up the furrow. Tanalasta glanced over her shoulder and found the sky mercifully free of ghazneths-at least for the moment.

  “You’re trying to coerce him… into something,” huffed Rowen. “What?”

  Tanalasta flashed a scowl in his direction-then stumbled on a rock and nearly fell. “Even if you were… right,” she said, now starting to gasp herself. “It is not for you to question a royal princess.”

  “It is now, Princess.” Rowen emphasized her title. “When you did not go with Vangerdahast, you made it my duty to ask.”

  “Very well.” The princess was finding it more difficult to maintain the pace, though Rowen only seemed to be growing stronger. “I know you’re familiar with how Aunadar Bleth embarrassed me. If I am to

  … rule well, I must win the respect of my subjects back. I won’t do that by teleporting to safety every time there is the slightest danger.”

  “No.” Rowen stopped running.

  Tanalasta halted two paces later and turned around to face him. “What are you doing, Rowen?”

  “You do not earn people’s respect by lying to them,” said the ranger. “That is how you lose it.”

  Tanalasta glanced at the sky behind him and saw two dark specks weaving back and forth through the air. “We have no time for this.”

  “You do not need to win my respect, Princess,” said Rowen. “You have already done that with your bravery and your intelligence. Now, please show me that you respect me.”

  Tanalasta rolled her eyes. “Then can we go?”

  Rowen nodded.

  “Very well.” Her gaze dropped, and she found it impossible to raise it again. “If you must know, I stayed because of you.”

  “Me?”

  Tanalasta nodded. “You are certainly aware of the royal magician’s concerns that I may be growing too old to provide an heir for the realm.”

  “Those concerns are shared by many,” said Rowen. “But I hardly see-“

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” Tanalasta snapped. She waved a hand toward the two ghazneths. “We don’t have much time.”

  Rowen swallowed. “
Please.”

  “My father’s birthday celebration was a thinly disguised effort to prod me into marrying Dauneth Marliir. Everyone knows this.” Tanalasta paused to grind her teeth, then continued, “What they don’t know is that when the invitation arrived at Huthduth, I told the High Harvestmaster I would be returning to Cormyr to wed him.”

  “And what did the High Harvestmaster say to change your mind?”

  “That he wished me well and knew Dauneth to be a good man.” Tanalasta’s reply was sharp. “My doubts arose later, when I was out alone, taking my leave of the mountains.”

  Rowen nodded and said nothing, as though he did not see anything alarming in the crown princess wandering orc-infested mountains alone.

  Tanalasta continued, “When I reached the headwaters of the Orcen River, the air filled with the sound of song-birds and the light turned the color of gold. A magnificent gray stallion came out of the forest bearing an old crone with eyes of pearl and armor of silver lace, and when I called to her, the woman guided her mount down to the water across from me. She would not speak, but when the horse drank, an inky darkness passed from its nostrils into the stream. The grass along the shore withered before my eyes. On the hillside above me, the pine trees browned and lost their needles.”

  “And this was not a dream?” Rowen asked.

  “I was as awake as we are now,” Tanalasta replied. “A single tear ran down the crone’s cheek, and she shook her head at me.”

  “And you think-“

  “I did not think at all,” Tanalasta said, cutting him off. “I was so frightened that I fled without regard for how far I ran or what direction. Before I knew it, I was lost and the day was nearly gone. After a time, I came to a copse of willow and choke-cherry so thick I could barely pass. I would have turned back, save that I heard a woman giggling and thought she might tell me how to return to the monastery.”