Beyond the High Road

15

The air reeked of rank meat and mildewed earth, and in the cramped staleness of the tomb, Tanalasta felt feverish and dizzy. She had a queasy stomach, fogged vision, and goosebumps rising along her spine, and on the floor ahead lay something she did not really want to see. It was armored in tarnished plate and sprawled on its back, a sullied sword and battered shield lying on the stones to either side of it. An opulent growth of white mold had sprouted from the troughs of several clawlike rents across the breastplate, and the crown of the thing’s great helm had been staved in. The face and limbs were lost beneath a thick blanket of the same white mold sprouting from the splits in the armor, and only the crumpled, striking-hawk crest over its heart identified the corpse as that of Emperel Ruousk, Guardian of the Sleeping Sword.

Holding the smoky torch before her, Tanalasta slipped out of the entrance passage into the tomb itself. Like the last one she had visited, this grave was surrounded by a fine-meshed net of black roots, many of which had been cut away during the battle that killed Emperel. Tangled among the roots, she could see the same web of gossamer filaments she had noticed in the first tomb. The floor was littered with tatters of rotted leather, buttons, buckles, and the mineralized soles of a large pair of boots.

Tanalasta pocketed a handful of the detritus to examine later, then removed the rope from her waist and stepped over to Emperel’s body. Her queasy stomach revolted at the horrid fetor of the decaying corpse, and she barely managed to spin away before her belly emptied itself. When the retching ended, her temples were throbbing and her knees were trembling. The princess chided herself for being so qualmish, decay was as much a part of the life circle as growth, and it was an affront to the All Mother to treat it with aversion.

Tanalasta took a deep breath and returned to the body. Despite her determination, she felt weak and lightheaded and feared she would pass out if she touched the moldy thing. She briefly considered retreating and leaving Emperel lie, but it would have been an insult to the memory of a brave knight to bury him in a place of such evil. The princess jammed the butt of her torch into a crevice between two floor stones and picked up the warrior’s sword. She slid the flat of the blade under his back and, with a weary grunt, rolled him up on his side, then held him there with one arm while she fed the rope under his back.

By the time the princess finished, her joints were aching and she was out of breath. She trudged around the body and slipped the sword under the opposite side and felt something block it. She noticed the dark line of a satchel strap hidden beneath the white mold. Tanalasta used the sword tip to scrape the mold away, then took hold of the slimy strap and pulled the satchel from under Emperel’s body.

It was a small courier’s pouch, with a waterproof wax finish and a weather flap. Though the satchel was not closed tight, the flap was at least folded over the opening, and Tanalasta could think of only one reason Emperel would have been carrying an open pouch when he died.

“May the Great Mother bless you, Emperel Ruousk.”

The princess laid the slime-smeared satchel aside, then used the sword to roll Emperel’s body onto its side and pull the rope the rest of the way under his back. She tugged the line up under his arms, then tied a secure bowline knot and gave the rope three quick tugs. The line went taut, swinging Emperel around and dragging him toward the exit. When he came to the dirt wall below the passage, his head caught on the wall and tipped back, causing a muffled crack someplace in his neck.

Without thinking, Tanalasta reached behind his head and tipped it forward, sticking her hand into a fibrous mass of putrefying scalp and mold-coated hair. She fought back the urge to retch long enough to guide the body into the passage, then immediately grabbed a fistful of dirt and scoured the slime from her hand. Affront to the goddess or not, the princess simply felt too weak to abide having the stuff on her flesh.

Once her hand was relatively clean, Tanalasta returned to the pouch and opened the weather flap. Inside, she found a piece of charcoal, a pencil, a small leather-bound journal, some magic rings similar to her own-save for a striking-hawk signet, all standard issue for an officer of the Purple Dragons-and several small rolls of folded silk in relatively good condition. In the light of the flickering torch, Tanalasta unfurled the first of the silk rolls. It was about a foot wide, with two rough-cut edges that suggested it had been taken from a much larger bolt of cloth. The princess rolled it back up, then unfurled another.

This one had been rubbed with charcoal along the center, recording the smooth, erratically-fissured pattern of the bark of a white alder tree-and, in negative image, the familiar serpentine characters of ancient elven glyphs. The rubbing was rather fuzzy and difficult to read, but Tanalasta could make out the characters well enough to realize they were almost identical to the ones she had read in the moorlands several days ago. There was the peculiar epitaph enjoining a dead person’s body to nourish the tree, and the tree to yield that spirit back, “to them lette it return as it grewe.” Then there was the curse, condemning the “havoc bearers” to “kille the sons of their sons.” Only the last line, the summoning, was different:

Here come ye, Faithless Suzara, and lie among these rootes.

In her shock, Tanalasta cried out and let the silk slip from her fingers. Like King Boldovar, Suzara was an ancestor of hers-in fact, one of her very oldest ancestors. She had been married to Ondeth Obarskyr when be came to the wilderness and built his cabin in what would one day become the kingdom of Cormyr. In fact, the city of Suzail was named for her. It was always possible that the summons referred to some other Suzara, but Tanalasta found that unlikely. Suzara had never been a very popular name in Cormyr, carrying as it did a certain connotation of frailty and selfishness. After it had finally dawned on Suzara that she would never persuade her stubborn husband to return to the comforts of Impiltur, she had taken their youngest child and left without him.

Without bothering to reroll the silk, Tanalasta pulled another spool from the satchel and unfurled it. This one was the duplicate of the invocation she had readjust a few minutes before entering the tomb, on the buckeye tree above her head. It summoned a famous traitor, Melineth Turcasson, who had betrayed his King Duar-his trusting son-in-law-by selling the city of Suzail to a pirate band for five hundred sacks of gold.

The princess opened the rest of the silks in a flurry but found only the name of Lady Merendil, a naive fool who had thought to use an apprentice royal magician to lure the first Prince Azoun to an early grave. This name actually gave Tanalasta cause for relief, all the other traitors had been her ancestors.

Tanalasta pulled Emperel’s journal from the satchel. It was written right to left in High Halfling to foil uninvited readers, but the princess needed only a minute to recognize the trick and another minute to recall the basics of the ancient language. The first part of the journal was filled with unimportant entries detailing a two-day trip up the Moonsea Ride in preparation for investigating a series of reports claiming that the orcs were massing in the Stonelands. Matters grew more interesting once he entered the walled town of Halfhap, where a tenth of the local garrison had vanished while out searching for a murderer.

Apparently, a stranger had appeared in Halfhap one night raving drunk, boasting to anyone who would listen about how he was going to avenge his family’s unjust treatment at the king’s hands. When a tavern keeper had dared suggest that he take his business elsewhere, the stranger had used his bare hands to tear the man’s head from his shoulders, then went outside and vanished.

The local commander had sent a company of dragoneers after the murderer, but they had failed to return, and it was shortly afterward that Emperel had stopped at the garrison and learned of the strange events. After a few inquiries, Emperel had set out after the killer, tracking him to a giant, twisted fir tree where Halfhap’s missing company lay slain to a man. He had tracked the killer into a strange tomb beneath the tree and fought him there. During the battle, he had recognized the man as Gaspar Cormaeril, one of Aunadar Bleth’s collaborators who died during the Abraxus Affair, somehow returned to life. There was a note in the margin noting that later, after making a few inquiries when he returned to Halfhap for a new horse, he had decided the fellow was most likely Gaspar’s look-alike cousin, Xanthon.

Tanalasta stopped reading for a moment. Xanthon was familiar to her as one of Rowen’s more “adventurous” cousins, who-along with Thaerilon, Boront, Cheidrin, Flaram, and Horontar-journeyed the Heartlands in search of wealth and excitement. From what she recalled, they were generally less successful in their pursuit of the former than the latter, often finding it necessary to ask King Azoun to convince some foreign mayor or monarch that executing them was not worth the trouble it might cause between the two countries. Azoun had always been happy to oblige, at least until Gaspar had taken part in the Abraxus Affair, since the Cormaerils never failed to repay the crown’s expenses in quadruple. Now that the family was no longer in the royal graces, Tanalasta had heard that Boront and Cheldrin had met unhappy fates, while Horontar made his livelihood cleaning the cesspits of Darkhold.

She returned to the journal. To Emperel’s dismay, capturing his quarry had proven more difficult than expected. Xanthon had proven unbelievably quick and strong, and he seemed to drain the magic from any enchanted weapon that was used against him. By the time the battle ended, Emperel had lost most of his magic items, including his dagger, weathercloak, and the signet ring he used to contact Vangerdahast-Tanalasta could not help wondering how many others secretly carried the wizard’s special rings.

In the end, Emperel had wounded his quarry severely enough that Xanthon killed his pursuer’s horse and fled. Emperel returned to Halfhap for a new horse and a bolt of silk, then returned to take a rubbing from the fir tree and resume his hunt. Tanalasta examined the silk rolls again, ascertaining from the bark pattern that the fir had been Suzara’s tree.

It had taken Emperel a few days to find Xanthon’s trail again, but eventually he had crossed paths with an orc tribe that had seen a shadowy figure racing toward a “devil tree” near the Battle of Broken Bones. Emperel had quickly found the place and discovered a gnarled elm with the same glyphs as the giant fir.

Tanalasta studied the rubbings and quickly determined that this had been Lady Merendil’s tomb. She skimmed the rest of the entries and quickly connected Emperel’s next stops to the two tombs she had visited, Boldovar’s sycamore tree in the moorlands and Melineth’s buckeye in the goblin keep.

The journal’s last entry was a cryptic, almost illegible reference to finally capturing Xanthon, followed by the inexplicable exclamation: Helm save us! Their pride is our doom!

When the princess closed the book, she discovered that her concentration had given her a pounding headache. Her hands were trembling, and she could feel trails of sweat running down her body. She returned the journal to Emperel’s satchel and began to reroll the rubbings. It did not occur to her to wonder how long she had been sitting in the tomb until Alusair’s voice sounded from the entrance passage.

“Shave my bones!” It was a favourite curse among knucklebone gamblers whose luck had run out. “What are you doing? I thought the fever had taken you!”

“I feel fine.” Tanalasta looked up and noticed, for the first time, the guttering flame atop her torch. It did not occur to her that her aching and nausea were due to anything but the strain of reading by such dim light, or the awful stench of the place. “I’ve been reading Emperel’s account of his death.”

“He recorded it for posterity?” Alusair dropped unsteadily into the tomb, looking little better than Tanalasta felt. “That doesn’t sound like Emperel.”

“I never met the man, so I wouldn’t know.” Tanalasta motioned at Emperel’s message pouch, then said, “But I assure you, he was very thorough. This account will save us a tenday’s of investigation.”

“Investigation?” Alusair scoffed. “There isn’t going to be an investigation. With all these ghazneths flying around, I’m not taking any chances with your life. We’re going home.”

Tanalasta shoved a silk roll into the pouch. “It’s not me we should be concerned with.”

“Not on your life!” Alusair shook her head vehemently. Tanalasta had already given her sister their father’s message, only to be laughed at and roundly rebuked. “I told you not to drag me into this. It’s between you and the king.”

“It is between the king and whoever he says it is.”

“What’s he going to do? Order me to be queen?” Alusair staggered over and kneeled down beside Tanalasta. “The next thing you know, he’ll be telling me to marry some buffoon with a long title and a short… sword.”

The long crawl through the entrance passage had left Alusair coated with mold and slime from Emperel’s body, but she did not seem to notice. She grabbed the torch and looked into her sister’s eyes, then placed a palm to Tanalasta’s brow.

“You’re on fire!” She grabbed Tanalasta and pulled her roughly to her feet, leaving more than a dozen silks unfurled on the floor. “I should never have let you come in here.”

“Someone had to do it, Princess.” Rowen slid out of the entrance, crowding the little tomb to the point of bursting, “Tanalasta is the most knowledgeable about what all is means.”

“She is also the crown princess.” Alusair pushed Tanalasta past Rowen toward the exit. “Help me get out of here so Gaborl can see to her.”

“Wait!” Tanalasta stretched her hand toward the silks. “We need those rubbings.”

“Not as much as we need to get out of here. Come along.”

Alusair pushed her sister’s head down and tried to shove her into the exit, but Tanalasta countered by grabbing hold of the sides of the wall. “You don’t understand. They are our ancestors.”

“She must be delirious,” Rowen said. He picked up one the blank silks and inspected it. “There’s nothing on him.”

Tanalasta still refused to enter the passage. “I’m not delirious. Some of the silks have rubbings of the tree glyphs, they name the ghazneths-Suzara Obarskyr, King Boldovar, Mirabelle Merendil, Melineth Turcasson.”

“Mirabelle Merendil is no ancestor of ours.” Alusair tabbed Tanalasta’s arm and wrenched it around behind her back. “I don’t have time for this. The ghazneths will be back soon.”

She pulled the other arm free, then shoved Tanalasta headlong into the passage.

Tanalasta craned her neck around and shouted, “And Xanthon Cormaeril is the one setting them free!”

“We don’t have time for this.” Alusair stopped nonetheless, then pulled Tanalasta out of the hole and eyed her warily. “You’re sure?”

Tanalasta nodded, then dropped to her knees and rifled through the silks until she found one with a rubbing. She showed it Rowen. “You recognize the glyphs?”

He nodded. “But what does Xanthon have to do with them?”

“Unless I miss my guess, he is the one digging the ghazneths out of their tombs,” Tanalasta explained.

She went on to recount the story of Xanthon’s appearance in Halfhap and Emperel’s subsequent efforts to track him down, then completed the story by reading the journal’s final cryptic entry.

“Their pride is our doom?” Alusair repeated. “What’s that mean?”

“And who etched the glyphs in the first place?” Rowen added. “Certainly not Xanthon.”

Tanalasta could only shake her head. “We won’t know that until we catch Xanthon-or find the rest of the trees.”

“Or until we let Vangerdahast sort it out,” Alusair said. “Which is exactly what we’ll do. We’ll head over Marshview Pass to Goblin Mountain Outpost. Then, the instant we have a few dragoneers to hold off the ghazneths, well do a sending and tell him to come get us.”

Tanalasta and Rowen glanced at each other nervously-a gesture that was not lost on Alusair.

“What?”

It was Rowen who answered. “During your uh, discussion about who’s really the crown princess, there was one thing we had no chance to mention.”

Alusair frowned. “Are you going to tell me now?”

“We probably shouldn’t count on Vangerdahast,” said Tanalasta. “It might not be safe to contact him.”

Alusair narrowed her eyes. “You said he had returned to Arabel.”

“He did.” Tanalasta summoned enough of her fading energies to raise her chin. “But we didn’t want to go with him.”

“And we pulled away at the last second,” said Rowen. “It was more by accident than-“

“You what?” Alusair whirled on Rowen like a lionar on an insolent underling. “You took it upon yourself to endanger the life of the crown princess in defiance of the royal magician?”

“It was my decision.” Tanalasta interposed herself between Alusair and the ranger. “I was the one-“

Alusair shoved Tanalasta aside, then continued to berate Rowen. “Are you just stupid, or are you conniving with Xanthon?”

Rowen’s face grew stormy, but he merely clenched his jaw.

“You have no right to talk to Rowen that way!” Tanalasta shoved Alusair away, then stepped forward to stand toe to toe with her sister. “Vangerdahast was the one who was out of line. He has no right to teleport me anywhere against my wishes.”

Alusair studied her sister for a moment, then raised a brow and looked to Rowen. “Don’t tell me you two-“

“Oh no!” Rowen said. “Nothing like that.”

“Not that it’s fitting for you to ask,” Tanalasta said. “Anymore than it is for Vangerdahast to pop me about the realm like some sort of pet blink dog.”

Alusair studied Rowen a moment longer, then looked back to Tanalasta. “So when did you desert poor Vangerdahast?”

“Seven days ago,” said Tanalasta. “In the canyons below Boldovar’s tomb.”

“The sycamore,” Rowen clarified.

Alusair frowned. “You’ve been on foot. He should have teleported back and caught up to you by now.”

“Unless…” Tanalasta could not bring herself to say it.

“Unless what?” demanded Alusair.

“Unless he followed our horse,” said Rowen. “There were two ghazneths hunting for us. We had to set up a decoy, and Vangerdahast may have followed it instead.”

Alusair closed her eyes. “Which way?”

“South through the Mule Ears,” said Rowen. “I believe that would bring him out somewhere just west of Redspring.”

Alusair could only shake her head in disbelief. “What were you two trying to do-elope?” She glanced in Tanalasta’s direction, then added, “That’s not a suggestion.”

“I wouldn’t need one,” said Tanalasta.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Alusair. She thought for a moment, then turned to Rowen. “The Mule Ears must be two days out of our way.”

Rowen nodded grimly. “I understand.”

“What?” Tanalasta demanded, sensing something had just happened she did not comprehend. “What do you understand?”

The ranger took her by the arms. “It’s all right. I’ll split off tomorrow morning, then meet you at Goblin Mountain in a tenday or so.” He cast a weak smile in Alusair’s direction, then added, “The way your sister dawdles about, I’m sure I’ll be waiting there when you arrive-if Vangerdahast doesn’t leave me strung up by my thumbs someplace.”

Tanalasta shook her head. “No. I won’t let you go.”

“That’s not your choice,” said Alusair.

“It is. You said yourself I’m still the crown princess.”

“But this is my company.” Alusair responded with surprising gentleness. “And I give the orders here.”