Beyond the High Road

13

The swarm hung low in the northern sky, a whirling flock of dark specks almost invisible against the looming wall of Anauroch’s golden sand dunes, spiraling down toward the jagged vestige of a lonely keep tower.

Alusair’s trail ran toward the ruin as straight as an arrow.

Tanalasta did not have the courage to voice her thoughts, but there was little need. After four days of dodging gnolls and ghazneths in the dusty vastness that separated the Stonelands from the Goblin Marches, she and Rowen had developed an uncanny instinct for what the other was thinking. The ranger removed the saddlebags from his shoulder and opened the flap, then passed the princess her weathercloak and bracers.

“I wouldn’t worry,” said Rowen. “If Alusair thought she was in more trouble than she could handle, she’d put on her signet and call Vangerdahast.”

“And how many times have you seen her do that?” It was a rhetorical question, and Tanalasta did not wait for an answer. “Besides, what good would Vangerdahast be? With so many ghazneths, his magic would be useless.”

Rowen regarded the distant specks for a moment. “I still think there is good reason to hope. If the matter were decided, why would they still be in the sky?”

He closed the saddlebags again and picked up his makeshift pike, which Tanalasta had fashioned by binding the iron dagger to the end of a sturdy elm branch. Though the weapon was more cumbersome to carry and use than a knife, it would also allow Rowen to strike with more power-and perhaps help keep him out of his foe’s reach. The princess draped the weathercloak over her shoulders, then followed the ranger’s lead and crouched down behind a waist-high clump of silvery smokebush. It would be a long crawl to the ruined keep, but the dusty plain was as level as a lake and cover was scant.

They moved in short bursts, running from bush to bush in a low crouch or crawling across open areas on hands and knees. They were careful to keep one eye fixed on the distant swarm of ghazneths and the other on the underbrush, since the plain’s deadly assortment of snakes, arachnids, and chilopods all liked to hide in the relative safety of the spindly thorn bushes. Several times, Tanalasta found herself backing away from the widespread mandibles of a charging centipede or the upraised stinger of an angry scorpion, and once Rowen had to catch the fangs of a striking wyv snake on the butt of his pike.

As they drew nearer to the keep, they began to notice individual specks swooping down into the ruins or rising up from behind the bailey wall to rejoin the main swarm. Tanalasta’s stomach grew hollow with dread, and she chafed at the delay of their stealthy approach. She and Alusair were not the closest of sisters, but they were sisters, and she kept having gruesome visions of ghazneths quarreling over Alusair’s lifeless body.

Rowen seemed to sense Tanalasta’s growing disquiet. He ran faster and for longer periods, paying less attention to concealment as they went. The princess appreciated his concern, but she also knew they would be no help at all if the ghazneths saw them coming. Already, she could see the distinctive shape of the creatures’ outstretched wings, and it would not be long before they drew close enough for the things to spy them rushing through the brush. Tanalasta was about to remark on her concerns when the ranger suddenly stood up straight.

“Rowen, what are you doing?” Thinking he might have been bitten by a lance snake or-even worse-a tiger centipede, she circled to his side and took his arm. “What is it?”

He did not move. “Those aren’t ghazneths.”

Tanalasta peered at the spiraling swarm, but it was still too distant for her to identify individual shapes. She tried again to pull him down. “You can’t be sure.”

“Can’t I?” He pointed toward the western edge of the spiral. “Watch their wingtips as they turn.”

Tanalasta did so, and she noticed a ragged, rounded fringe-almost like tiny fingers-silhouetted against the looming sand dunes. “Feathers?”

“So it would seem,” Rowen replied.

Tanalasta’s heart sank. “They’re vultures.”

“We don’t know what it means.” He squeezed her arm. “Perhaps one of Alusair’s horses died.”

“That’s too many vultures for one horse,” Tanalasta replied.

The princess started forward at a near run, struggling to hold her imagination in check. Tanalasta kept telling herself that Alusair had outwitted a dozen creatures as terrible as any ghazneth, that she was an experienced leader with a full company of warriors, a pair of clerics, and plenty of magic at her disposal. But those assurances rang hollow in the face of so many swarming vultures. There had to be a lot of carrion-and the most obvious source of that carrion was a patrol of Cormyrean knights.

As they drew nearer, Tanalasta saw that the keep was one of those strange, lopsided towers described in Artur Shurtmin’s tome, The Golden Age of Goblins. Constructed of slab sandstone and dark mortar, the spire had a conspicuous bulge near the top of one side and leaned noticeably in that direction, as though being dragged down by a great weight. Its girth was ringed by cockeyed bands of tiny windows, suggesting the presence of at least eight interior floors in a height of only forty feet.

The outer walls were streaked by long stains of scarlet and orange. Common myth held the stripes to be proof that the builders had used the blood of captives in their mortar, but Artur-whose love of the subject was perhaps too great for an impartial assessment of the evidence-maintained the streaks were merely evidence that ancient goblins often employed vertical stripes to make short things seem tall. Though Tanalasta had her doubts about both beliefs, the truth of the matter would never be known. The Goblin Kingdom had vanished long before history began, and it was known today only by the ruins it had left scattered across the wild lands between Anauroch and the Storm Horns.

Tanalasta tried to take some comfort from the presence of the goblin tower. Typically, such places were merely the entrance to decaying tunnel warrens now occupied by all manner of sinister creatures. Perhaps the vultures were feasting upon a tribe of kobolds or barbarian goblins that had been foolish enough to attack as Alusair’s company passed through.

Tanalasta and Rowen were still a hundred paces from the bailey when they began to smell hints of death-the fetor of rotting meat, acrid whiffs of charred flesh, the musty odor of newly-opened earth. Knowing from Artur’s tome that the goblins of the golden age always aligned their gates with the setting sun, Tanalasta guided them toward the west side of the bailey. The crowns of several large buckeye trees grew visible, protruding just far enough above the wall to reveal the starlike shape of their drought-yellowed leaves. The sickly odors grew heavier and more constant. As they drew closer, the princess heard the flapping and hissing of squabbling vultures, and also a sound she could not identify, an erratic rasping punctuated at odd intervals by muffled clattering and sharp snapping sounds.

Tanalasta stopped beside the gate and peered around the corner. She had been wrong about the number of buckeye trees. There was only one, with a twisted silver trunk as thick as a giant’s waist and a tangled umbrella of yellowed boughs that covered the entire bailey. In the shadows beneath the tree’s limbs, two dozen starving horses stood fastened to a tether line, so devitalized and weary they could hardly move to flick the vultures off. Several beasts already lay motionless beneath a cloud of droning flies and thrashing black feathers, while a tangle of scorched armor and charred bone lay piled against the base of the keep, directly beneath a tiny third-story window. Nearby, a dozen hissing birds played tug-of-war with the bones of a Cormyrean knight. Beside the corpse rested a primitive sword, its cold-forged blade covered with a layer of dusty red rust. Scattered across the bailey were dozens of huge dirt piles, each resting next to the dark cavity of a recently excavated hole.

A muffled clatter sounded from the far side of the bailey, and Tanalasta’s attention was caught by the motion of several small stones rolling down a dirt pile. She saw something black and vaguely arrow-shaped dancing atop the mound. In the shadowy light beneath the buckeye, she took the shape for a vulture-until a cloud of dirt came flying over the pile and momentarily obscured it.

Tanalasta felt Rowen’s hand close around her arm, then she finally recognized the dark shape as the top of a folded wing. She pulled back and turned to face the ranger.

“We’ll have to lure it away,” she whispered.

Rowen shook his head. “I’ll take it from behind. With a little luck, it’ll never hear me coming.”

“And I’ll be kept safely out of the way,” said Tanalasta, voicing the unspoken reason for his suggestion. She shook her head. “If I thought it would work, maybe, but those things are too quick and too tough. Even if you could take it by surprise-and that’s a big if-you’d never kill it with a single stroke. We have to do this together.”

Rowen peered around the corner again, then returned with a clenched jaw. “Forgive me for saying so, Princess, but we must consider the possibility that you are the only remaining heir. It would be treason to risk your life.”

“They’re alive,” said Tanalasta. “And so is Alusair.”

“You can’t know that,” he said. “They’ve been burning their own, which means they’ve had disease, and-“

“And they have two clerics, a war wizard, and a whole saddlebag full of magic potions.”

“No potions,” said Rowen. “The wizard died the first time we met the ghazneth, and even if the clerics are still alive, they have certainly run out of water by now. You saw the condition of the horses, a human would not last half as long.”

“There is water in the bottom of the warren-that’s what the keeps were built to protect.” Tanalasta hoped Artur Shurtmin had based this observation more solidly on fact than his fanciful explanation for the goblins’ love of crimson streaks. “Even if Alusair is dead, we may assume by the ghazneth’s digging that part of the company survives. Do you really think I would abandon them to the creature-whether or not they were alive?”

“I suppose not.” Rowen thrust the pike toward her. “Take this, and I’ll see if I can get Fogger’s sword.”

Tanalasta refused to accept the weapon. “I’m not strong enough to do much good with a pike, and I don’t want to take the chance that the ghazneth would notice the missing sword. It would ruin my plan.”

Rowen raised his brow. “Plan?”

“The Queen Feints.” Tanalasta smiled confidently. “Boreas Kaspes used it to win the King’s Challenge in 978 DR.”

Rowen looked doubtful until Tanalasta explained her plan, then gave a grudging nod and admitted that it could work. He offered a few refinements and showed her how to roll over her shoulder so she would not be hurt when she hurled herself to the ground, then the princess kept watch while he used his heel to kick a shallow trench across the near side of the gateway. Once that was done, he clasped her shoulder and pulled her back behind the wall.

“Remember, this isn’t chess,” he whispered. “If the ghazneth does something unexpected, you won’t have time to think about your next move.”

Tanalasta nodded. “I’ll just do it.”

The princess started to step into the gateway, then thought better of it and pulled the ranger close and kissed him on the lips long and hard. She did not stop until long after he had gotten over his surprise, and even then she continued until her mind began to wander to matters other than the ghazneth.

Tanalasta drew back far enough to look into Rowen’s dark eyes, then gasped, “For luck!”

“Indeed, I’m very lucky.”

The ranger wrapped her in his arms and swung her deftly around to press her back against the bailey wall. The sandstone slabs felt jagged and hard against her spine, which was all the excuse Tanalasta needed to crush her body against his, and within moments the princess was filled with a joyous, godsent hunger it would have been a sin to deny. She ran her hands along his torso and felt his running along hers, and she ached for him to touch her in all her sacred places-and that was when she knew she had definitely picked the wrong time for their first kiss.

Through a force of will, Tanalasta managed to slip her hands between their torsos and press against Rowen’s chest. The ranger did not seem to realize she was trying to push him away-perhaps because she was not trying very hard. He slipped one hand around to caress the small of her back-actually it was a little lower-and brought the other up to touch the softness of her breast, and the princess’s knees nearly buckled. She let herself go limp for the space of one very long breath, then summoned her resolve and broke off the kiss.

“Wait…”

When she pushed against his chest this time, a horrified look came to Rowen’s face. He stumbled back, his cheeks as crimson as blood.

“Milady, forgive me! I thought…” The ranger directed his gaze to the ground, apparently unable to finish while he was looking at Tanalasta. “I thought you wanted me to.”

“I did-I do.” Tanalasta smiled and took his hand, but was careful to keep him at arm’s length. “But I think I’d better keep a clear head, don’t you?”

Rowen nodded, his expression changing from mortification to relief to anxiety. “We’d both better-it’s just that I’ve never felt anything… well, a kiss has never been quite like that.”

“What did you expect when you kissed a princess?” Tanalasta chuckled, then glimpsed the fleeting expression of guilt that flashed through Rowen’s eyes. “Or have you done that before?”

Rowen looked away and started to answer, but Tanalasta quickly raised her hand to silence him. “Never mind.”

“But-“

“I don’t want to hear it.” Tanalasta shook her head emphatically. “It might make me change my mind about rescuing the little trollop.”

“But-“

“Rowen, that was a command!”

Tanalasta slipped around the corner and stepped through the gate, holding her bracers in her hands. On the far side of the bailey, the ghazneth’s wing was still visible, protruding up from behind the dirt pile it had excavated. A cold chill crept down the princess’s spine, and she found herself wishing that Rowen hadn’t been so quick to see the wisdom of her plan. He was still taking the greatest risk by far, but Tanalasta was inexperienced at being bait and could not help fearing she would make some terrible error that would get them both killed. She checked to make sure her weathercloak remained secure on her shoulders, then angled toward the iron sword, counting the steps she had taken since coming through the gate.

When the count reached ten, Tanalasta slipped her bracers onto her wrists, then pictured her sister’s face and closed the clasp. The metal tingled beneath her fingers. Alusair’s image grew haggard and wan-looking. She had dark circles beneath her eyes and sunken cheeks, and she seemed to be lying on her back in a very dark place. When she showed no sign of feeling her sister’s mind-touch, Tanalasta experienced a moment of panic and very nearly cried out in grief.

As the princess struggled with her alarm, the ghazneth’s shadowy head appeared above the dirt pile. It turned toward the gate and stared directly at her, its beady eyes gleaming red in the murkiness beneath the tree. Tanalasta allowed her very real terror to voice itself in a scream, signaling to Rowen that she had been seen.

The vultures responded by launching themselves up through the buckeye’s gnarled umbrella, and the ghazneth scrambled over its dirt pile, springing after Tanalasta with a bone-chilling hiss. She spun on her heel and sprinted for the gate.

Inside Tanalasta’s mind, Alusair’s gaze suddenly shifted and grew a little less glassy.

Outside keep with Rowen, Tanalasta sent. Though she had rehearsed the message a dozen times after describing her plan to Rowen, the princess found it astonishingly difficult to keep her thoughts straight with a ghazneth swooping after her. Iron sword twenty paces outside portcullis on left. In this together!

Alusair’s image blinked twice. Tanalasta?

Tanalasta could not respond. The weathercloak’s magic allowed her to send only one short message to the recipient, and the recipient to respond with only a few equally short words. By the time she reached the gate, her ears were filled with the throbbing of the ghazneth’s wings beating the air. She spied the little trench Rowen had kicked into the dirt and hurled herself over the threshold, tucking her shoulder as he had taught her. A loud, sick crackle erupted behind her. Tanalasta rolled to her feet, howling in triumph.

It was a short-lived victory yell.

Rowen stood in the gateway, the butt of his pike braced in the kick-trench, his rear elbow locked over the long shaft and his forward arm braced against his hip to provide support. The ghazneth had impaled itself at the other end of the weapon as planned, but it was hardly the limp, lifeless heap Tanalasta had expected. The phantom was dragging itself down the shaft in a mad attempt to jerk the pike from its ambusher’s grasp.

Though this ghazneth was as naked as the other two the princess had seen, it was much more powerful-looking, with a broad chest, hulking shoulders, and a blocky male face. It had three goatlike horns at its scalp, a jutting brow, and a flat, porcine nose from which it spewed clouds of foul-smelling black fog every time it exhaled. So long were the thing’s arms that though it was only halfway down the pike, Rowen had to lean away when it swung at him to avoid being gouged by its curled black talons.

Tanalasta raised one hand toward the creature’s chest. “Rowen, get down!”

“What?” Rowen ducked a massive claw, then tried to swing the pike back and forth in an effort to widen the ooze-pouring wound in the creature’s chest. “I’m all that stands between you-“

“Do it!” Tanalasta commanded. Not waiting to see if he would obey, she slapped her bracers. “King’s bolts!”

A fiery tingling shot up her arm, then Rowen hurled himself to the ground just as four golden bolts shot from Tanalasta’s fingertips.

The ghazneth was as quick to furl its wings as its fellows, but the pike running through its breast prevented the leathery appendages from drawing completely closed. Tanalasta’s magic bolts shot through the tiny gap, catching the creature square in the sternum and launching it backward through the gate.

The ghazneth slammed down on its back and rolled once, snapping the pike off at both ends. Behind it, Tanalasta glimpsed half a dozen figures staggering out of the goblin keep. Then the creature was on its feet again, gathering itself to spring.

“What now?” Rowen gasped, struggling in vain to recover even half as fast as their foe.

Tanalasta reached down for him. “My hand!”

This time, Rowen did not need to be told twice. He grabbed hold even as the princess was pushing her other hand into the weathercloak’s escape pocket. There was that instant of dark timelessness, then they were inside the bailey, next to the picked-over skeleton Tanalasta had noticed from the gate, surrounded by the haggard, staggering, filthy-smelling survivors of Alusair’s company. She and Rowen were staring at the jagged shaft of the broken pike protruding from between the ghazneth’s broken wings.

“The sword!” Tanalasta urged, pointing at the ground.

Rowen cursed, and she looked down to discover that the iron sword was gone.

The ghazneth spun on them, spreading its wings wide to sweep its attackers off their feet as it turned. Alusair dropped out of the buckeye’s tangled umbrella, bringing the iron sword down toward the phantom’s skull. Her foot brushed one of its wings on the way down, and that was all the warning the thing needed. It slipped its head to one side, and the rust-coated blade slid down the side of its skull, slashing off an ear and biting deep into its collarbone.

The ghazneth roared in pain and used its good arm to slap Alusair off its back, then spun to finish her off. Tanalasta summoned her magic bolt spell to mind, but Rowen was already clutching the tip of their broken lance and hurling himself at the beast’s back.

The ranger struck at a full sprint, driving the dagger through a leathery wing and pinning it to the ghazneth’s back. The phantom roared and spun to face him, and then Alusair was behind it with the iron sword again, shredding its wings and hacking deep, oozing slashes into its legs. The ghazneth spun again, but this time it merely swatted the armored princess aside and hobbled through the gate as fast as a lightning bolt.

Tanalasta rushed to her sister’s side. Alusair lay sprawled on the face of a dirt mound, both eyes closed and breathing in quick, faint rasps.

Tanalasta kneeled and cradled her sister’s head in her lap. “Alusair! Can you hear me? Are you hurt?”

“Of course I’m hurt! You ever been hit by one of those things?” Alusair opened one brown eye and glared at Tanalasta. “And what in the Nine Hells are you doing here? This is no place for a crown princess!”

Seeing that her little sister would be fine, Tanalasta smiled and said, “No, Alusair, it’s not.”