Death of the Dragon

41

The knelling of the ghazneth bell barely registered in Tanalasta’s mind. She sat crouched on the comfortable reading chair in Vangerdahast’s study, staring at the empty space into which Owden and his priests had just vanished. Her head was whirling and her stomach churning, and she felt numb with shock. What had happened seemed unthinkable. It seemed unimaginable that her husband had become a ghazneth. It seemed impossible that Owden and the others had been drawn through the gate into Rowen’s dark world.

Clagi turned from the window where he was standing watch and said, “Your plan worked, Princess. Boldovar ignored the palace and came here. He’s circling the tower now.”

The young priest paused for a response. When there was none, he asked, “Princess? What are we to do?”

Tanalasta felt hollow and sick inside. Had she listened to Owden, he and the others would be there now. Instead, she had chosen to ignore his warning, to trust her own selfish emotions and Vangerdahast’s gentle lies and declare that Rowen could never become a ghazneth. What a fool she had been. Vangerdahast might be harsh and manipulative, but he did what was right for Cormyr. In second-guessing him, she had condemned Owden and his priests to some wet hell she could only imagine. Worse, she had lost a dozen loyal men and women when Cormyr needed them most.

“He’s circling lower,” Clagi reported diligently. He stepped back from the window and came to take Tanalasta’s arm. “We must get you out of here.”

Tanalasta jerked away. “No, I’m going to destroy that ghazneth.” She pulled an iron short sword from its scabbard inside her hiding box, then snatched a pair of silver manacles from Vangerdahast’s study table. “I won’t run-not after what I did.”

“This isn’t about you, Highness.” Clagi’s tone was stern. Like most of Owden’s priests, he spoke even to Tanalasta with no fear of recrimination. He pointed at her huge belly. “It’s about your baby. You mustn’t risk it so foolishly.”

“This baby is hardly the most important thing in the realm,” Tanalasta shot back, growing more furious by the moment. “No traitor’s child will ever sit…”

Tanalasta let the sentence trail off when she saw the shock in Clagi’s face and realized what she was saying. Her anger was at Rowen and herself, not the baby. It was not the child’s doing that its father had betrayed her and Cormyr, and even if it never would sit on the Dragon Throne (Vangerdahast would see to that), she was still its mother. She still loved it. She still had to keep it safe and healthy.

The chamber grew dark. Tanalasta looked over to see Boldovar’s black silhouette sweeping past the window, his fiery eyes shining crimson in a wild halo of black hair. A gaping crescent opened in the center of his unkempt beard, and a long red tongue shot past a pair of yellow fangs to wag at Tanalasta.

Clagi pulled the lapels of her weathercloak closed. “Use your escape pocket. I’ll hold him.”

The chamber brightened again as Boldovar cleared the window. He dipped a wing and banked out over Lake Azoun, wheeling around for a direct approach to the window. Clagi turned to go and block the window, but Tanalasta caught him by the sleeve.

“No.” She pulled him toward her iron hiding box, which was standing open in the corner. “The child must be protected-but so must Cormyr.”

The priest looked confused. “But we are only two. How can we-“

“By stalling,” Tanalasta interrupted. She stepped into the box, pulling the priest in after her and returning her short sword to its place. “Until we know what is happening in the battle against Nalavara, we must hold Boldovar here.”

Clagi swallowed. “Very well.”

He slipped the iron locking bar into place, plunging them into darkness, then a loud puffing sounded outside the box as Boldovar streaked into the room and spread his wings to halt.

Tanalasta closed the throat clasp of her weathercloak and pictured the hard-bitten face of Battlelord Steelhand in her mind. She felt a surge of warm magic rushing into her head, then the battlelord’s thin eyebrows rose in surprise.

Bring a dozen warpriests to Vangerdahast’s tower-no one else! Tanalasta commanded, speaking to him in her thoughts. We are alone and Boldovar is upon us.

Two minutes, came the reply.

The princess would have liked to know how the battlelord intended to reach Vangerdahast’s tower in only two minutes, since it was at least a ten minute run out the gate and over the nearest bridge. Probably, he intended to have a band of war wizards teleport his party into a nearby street, then run the rest of the way. That meant Tanalasta would have to work hard to keep Boldovar’s attention focused on the magic inside the room.

Outside her hiding place, Boldovar’s clawed feet began to tick across the floor. Tanalasta removed her commander’s ring from her pocket and slipped it on, then whispered, “King’s light.”

An eerie, blue-white light filled the box, illuminating Clagi’s frightened face beside her. The young priest was holding one hand on the iron locking mechanism, as though his grasp would keep the door secure where a full inch of iron could not. With the other hand, he clutched his iron mace close to his chest. The ticking of Boldovar’s feet grew louder, and loud snuffling sounds began to hiss through the seams of the iron box.

“Magic!” he rasped. “Magic I smell… and magic I’ll have!”

He ran his claws down the face of the iron door, and a deafening screech reverberated inside the box. Tanalasta heard Clagi hissing through his teeth, then felt him grasp her arm in reassurance, and she realized she was the one making the sound. Boldovar let out an angry grunt and tried to rip the door open. The box tipped forward, then teetered on the edge of falling and rocked back to clang into the wall behind it. Tanalasta’s head slammed into the leather padding and began to ache.

She felt a sudden tightness low in her abdomen, then noticed something warm and fluid inside her legs.

“No.” It couldn’t be happening now.

Boldovar tried again to rip the door open, then grew frustrated and simply slammed the iron box down on its face. Tanalasta took the impact entirely on her belly and felt her womb cramp in reaction. The spasm did not subside. A heavy thump sounded above their backs as Boldovar jumped on top of the box. He began to scratch his claws down the seams, looking for a weak point.

“You can hide, but you can’t hide,” chuckled Boldovar, making no sense at all. “I smell your magic… I smell you, and I’ll have both I will!”

The screeching sharpened to an abrupt ping and ceased, only to be replaced by a childish tempest of striking hands and feet. So thunderous was the pounding that Tanalasta thought the thick iron might split beneath the ghazneth’s blows. The cramping in her womb sharpened, growing so acute she wailed in shock.

“Princess? What’s…”

The rest of Clagi’s question was lost beneath the roar of Boldovar’s hammering fists, for the sound of Tanalasta’s pain seemed to have driven him into a frenzy. The pounding moved down toward their feet, then the box began to tip up on its head. The princess had just enough time to work her hands up above her shoulders before the box tumbled across the room, clanging and crashing.

They came to a rest against the opposite wall, resting upside down and at an angle, so that they were lying headdown on their backs. The pain in the princess’s womb had grown crushing, and she had to scream or burst. Something was wrong. Her water had barely broken, and labor was not supposed to come until hours later.

“Princess?” Clagi shook her arm. “What’s wrong?”

Tanalasta managed to wrest a scream into a word, “Baby!”

Clagi’s response was lost in the boom of Boldovar’s foot striking iron up near their feet. The box spun off the wall and crashed to the floor, then twirled across the room and smashed the legs from under a table. An eerie stillness followed, and Tanalasta felt as if someone had dropped a door on her stomach. There were no contractions, none of the rhythmic tightening her midwife had told her to expect. There was only steady, horrid pain growing worse each passing moment and a strange feeling of slackening everywhere below her waist.

Clagi laid a hand over her womb and began to gently feel around the underside of her belly. Tanalasta’s scream faded to a grunt, not because her pain had dwindled, but because she had run out of air. She heard her breath coming fast and shallow and knew she was starting to panic, and that knowledge only made her breathe faster.

A distant cacophony of muffled voices grew audible over Tanalasta’s low groans, and she knew Battlelord Steelhand’s men were in the street below the tower. Boldovar remained ominously silent, perhaps because he had gone to the window to investigate the noise. The princess certainly hoped that was what he was doing, and not thinking up some way to pry up the lid off her hiding place. Now, when she most needed to be strong for Cormyr and herself, she felt more vulnerable and helpless than she had at any time since the start of the crisis.

Finally, Clagi pulled his hand away. “I know it hurts, but there’s no need to be frightened. You’re only giving birth. Everything will be fine.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Tanalasta screamed the words, more to express her fear than her disbelief. “This isn’t labor. My midwife told me what to expect!”

“I’m sure she also told you every birth is different.” Clagi laid a reassuring hand on her arm. “The ghazneth seems to have hurried yours along a bit.”

“Then stop it!” How could her body do this to her? How could it pick this moment to betray her? “The baby can’t come now.”

“I’m afraid we have no choice in the matter,” whispered Clagi. “I’ll stay here and decoy the ghazneth. Perhaps you should use your escape pocket-“

The priest’s suggestion was interrupted by an anguished scream. This time it was not Tanalasta’s.

“Tanalasta… don’t lift the door.” The voice was husky and familiar, with a dry northern accent that the princess would recognize anywhere. “Whatever you do, stay-“

The muffled snap of a breaking bone brought the sentence to a screeching end.

“What say you, girl?” Boldovar cackled above them. “A husband for a couple of rings and a weathercloak?”

Another crack sounded above the box, and shot through Tanalasta’s heart.

Boldovar spoke again. “Decide quickly. You know how easily I grow bored.”

Tanalasta’s thoughts whirled in pain-addled confusion. Boldovar’s prisoner certainly sounded like Rowen, but that could not be. Rowen was a ghazneth, imprisoned in the same wet hell where Vangerdahast had been trapped-or was he? Owden had told her how Xanthon had impersonated her at the Battle of the Farsea Marsh. Perhaps the ghazneth in the cavern had not been Rowen after all. Perhaps Vangerdahast had been telling the truth all along.

Terrified at how events were slipping out of her control, Tanalasta unclasped her weathercloak and slipped off her commander’s ring. “You have… a bargain.” She forced the words out between clenched teeth. “Let him go.”

“Tanalasta, n-“

Rowen’s cry was cut short by the sharp clap of a hand striking flesh. A heavy body slammed into a set of bookshelves and thudded to the floor, then lay groaning on the floor behind them.

“He’s free,” said Boldovar. “Now throw out the magic, or I’ll finish what I started.”

Tanalasta reached over Clagi to undo the locking bar, but he caught her hand. “What are you doing?”

“I need Rowen!” she answered. If she had Rowen, she would be strong again, in control. “I can’t let him… kill Rowen.”

“You won’t.” Clagi pushed her hand toward the holy symbol hanging around her neck. “Say a prayer.”

“But he’ll-“

“Don’t let Boldovar trick you,” whispered Clagi. “Say a prayer, and you will see-or open the door and see your child killed.”

The priest released Tanalasta’s hand, and her hand hovered below the locking bar for a long moment.

“What is this?” called Boldovar. There was a loud thump and a pained groan, then he asked, “Am I growing bored?”

Tanalasta touched the holy symbol and whispered, “Chauntea, watch over me.”

And she instantly recognized the next thud as something more like a wing slapping the wall than a man being hurled into it. “Aaagggh!” The voice was mocking and snide and did not resemble Rowen’s at all. “Tanalasta, don’t! Stay in where you are safe!”

“I will!” Tanalasta called. She was still terrified, but she felt as though she had regained some measure of command over the situation… if only her body would cooperate. The belt of agony tightened around her middle, and she could feel the baby slipping out toward the world. Fighting to maintain control of her own emotions-if nothing else-she yelled, “I know who you are… you… sick… worm!”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Boldovar broke into a mad cackle. “Ah, well I see that Rowen loved you more than you did him. He would rather have died himself than listen to you beg for death.”

“What?” Though her thoughts remained addled by pain and fear, the little control Tanalasta now had over the situation gave her the strength to grasp the ghazneth’s implication. “What did you do to him?”

“Oh, now you’re interested,” sneered Boldovar. “Throw me the rings, and I’ll tell.”

There was no need, for even without knowing the details, Tanalasta understood all too well how Boldovar had baited her husband into becoming a ghazneth-and why the ranger had been too ashamed to come through the gate. Only one thing that could cause Rowen to betray his duty to Cormyr: the fear of betraying Tanalasta.

The muffled drumming of boots began to rumble up the stairway, and the princess heard Boldovar’s claws clacking across the floor toward the window. She summoned to mind the incantation of her magic bolt spell and pointed her finger toward the seam of the door. She was not going to let the ghazneth escape, not after what he had done to Rowen.

“Clagi, give me a crack to fire through.” Knowing the priest would argue, she quickly added, “Now!”

Clagi gulped down a deep breath but pulled the locking bar back and pushed the door up. Boldovar stood across the room gathering himself up to spring out the window, his drink-bloated face pivoting around at the sound of the iron door being unbarred.

“Where you going, lady killer?” Tanalasta’s voice was as snide as she could make it. She uttered her spell and sent a single bolt of golden magic streaking high between his legs. It struck the window sill in front of his groin, and the casing erupted into a spray of stone shards. “Afraid the little pregnant princess will make a eunuch of you?”

Boldovar glanced at the fading magic in the shattered window sill, then raised his lip in a yellow-fanged sneer and spun toward the box. Clagi let the door drop and had it barred before Tanalasta could give the order, but even so he was very nearly not fast enough. A loud squeal rang through the box as the ghazneth’s claws raked at the seam, then the princess’s stomach sank as the iron box rose into the air.

Tanalasta began to feel helpless and panicked again. This was not something she had expected. The box clanged and spun as it banged out the window casement, then the princess lost contact with the padding behind her shoulders as they plummeted groundward. Boldovar’s wings pounded the air like a bellows, and still they sank. Tanalasta grabbed Clagi’s arm and reached for her escape pocket, then pitched sideways and cracked heads with the priest as they splashed into Lake Azoun.

She blacked out, but awoke a few moments later coughing and choking. Lake Azoun’s muddy water was already filling her mouth and lapping at her nostrils. Clagi lay completely submerged beneath her, facing the side of the box and not moving.

Thanking the goddess she had returned to consciousness before drowning, Tanalasta gulped down a last breath. She pushed her hand down into her weathercloak, fighting through a floating morass of heavy wool. By the time her fingers located the escape pocket’s leather-lined mouth, the box was completely filled with water. Clagi had begun to convulse and did not respond to any of Tanalasta’s prodding and poking. Even if the princess managed to turn herself so the dimension door did not appear between them, he would be incapable of following her through on his own. She would have to pull him, which meant she would have to squeeze her swollen, aching stomach back around toward the front of the box. There was no time for that. She slipped her free arm around Clagi’s neck, then removed her other hand from her escape pocket, reached past him, and pulled the locking bar back.

The door flew open. The light and the air came flooding in, and Tanalasta found herself staring up into Boldovar’s mad red eyes, gasping for breath and struggling to understand how the ghazneth could be standing upright in the depths of Lake Azoun, shaking his fat belly at her and cackling in laughter.

Before the answer came to her, he stepped into the iron box, grinding his heel down on Clagi’s neck and crushing it with an audible crunch.

“For me? How kind.” As Boldovar spoke, his dark hand flashed down and grabbed the collar of Tanalasta’s weathercloak. “Thank you very much.”

The ghazneth ripped the heavy cloak off over her head, taking with it the simple smock underneath and leaving the princess in nothing but her breast bindings and loins girdle. He hardly seemed to notice. Boldovar simply buried his face in the black cloth and let out a long, satisfied groan as he began to absorb its magic.

The watery depths changed to Vangerdahast’s study, and grotesque and lascivious carvings began to appear on the walls. Finally coming to understand how she had been tricked, Tanalasta screamed in anger.

“No!”

Boldovar looked up and smiled, the remains of her shredded smock draped over his head. “Oh, yes.”

Battlelord Steelhand’s voice boomed up the stairs. “We’re coming, Princess! A few moments more…”

But they did not have a few moments more. The depth of color was already fading from Tanalasta’s weathercloak, and the chamber now looked more like a ghastly festhall devoted to unnatural cravings and monstrous delights than Vangerdahast’s study. If she allowed the ghazneth to absorb any more of her magic, Steelhand and his men would have no chance at all of destroying the thing.

Gritting her teeth against the crushing pain in her abdomen, Tanalasta propped herself up and drew the iron sword secreted in the door of her hiding box. Every day, her self-defense instructors drilled one simple lesson into her: strike to cripple, then strike to kill. But how to cripple a ghazneth?

To stop Boldovar, she knew she had to do more than crush a knee or slash a hamstring. She had to assault him in the very heart of his sick existence. The answer came to the princess easily. She pushed herself to her knees and brought the short blade across Boldovar’s loins in a vicious backhand slash.

“Coward!” she cried.

Boldovar’s crimson eyes grew as wide as coins, then he let out a surprised little whimper and allowed the weathercloak to slip from his grasp. Tanalasta brought the sword back in the opposite direction, opening another dark gash in the underside of his belly. Her own pain seemed to vanish-or rather, her fear seemed to vanish. She was still aware of her labor, of the crushing feeling around her waist and the baby moving steadily closer to the world, but now she was in control. She brought the blade around for an overhand hack at the center of his big belly.

“Enough!”

Boldovar’s arm flashed out to block. The blow caught him across the wrist and nearly lopped it off, but the ghazneth hardly seemed to notice. He circled his forearm around as though it were a blade, forcing Tanalasta’s sword back against her thumb and stripping it from her grasp. The weapon fell free and clanged off the rim of the box.

Tanalasta turned toward the stairwell door, where the sound of pounding boots had grown so loud the princess swore the warpriests had to be in the room with her. They very nearly were. The battlelord and his first three men stood at the top of the stairwell, panting for breath and running in place, apparently convinced they were still ascending the spiraling staircase into Vangerdahast’s study.

“Steelhand!” Tanalasta called. “Run forward!”

“What are you calling him for?” Boldovar demanded. “You asked me to play.”

The ghazneth’s hand slammed into Tanalasta’s head so hard that she heard half a dozen teeth clatter off the wall. Her vision narrowed and her hearing grew distant, then she felt herself being jerked out of the iron box and hurled against the stone wall. The impact moved the baby lower, and she felt its head beginning to crown.

When her eyesight returned, Boldovar was standing in front of her, holding her against the wall with his mutilated forearm and glaring at her with an insane, maniacal grin. “Good. You’re back.”

Something sharp and hot pierced Tanalasta’s abdomen just below the navel, then her belly exploded into agonizing pain. She looked down and saw the ghazneth’s arm pressed against her stomach. At first, she could not quite fathom what she was seeing-then she noticed the collar of red blood around his forearm, and felt a huge hand feeling around inside her.

“Let me see… where is that baby?” He grabbed something up near her rib cage and pulled.

Tanalasta’s world became a red fiery scream. She brought her knee up more by instinct than intention and felt it connect hard. Boldovar did not groan, but the impact was enough to send him two steps back. He was holding something brownish and bloody in his hand. It wasn’t a baby, and that was enough for Tanalasta.

Boldovar smiled and raised the bloody mass to his mouth-then pitched over forward as Battlelord Steelhand and his men barreled into him from behind. Their swords rose and fell in a tempest, hacking the ghazneth into a mangled black mass. It hardly mattered. The wounds closed almost as fast as they could inflict them. The Mad King pushed the bloody mass he was holding into his mouth and broke into a maniacal laugh, then began to chew and swallow.

Tanalasta felt the strength leave her legs and slumped to the floor. The pain was all gone now. There was a cold numbness up under her ribs, where Boldovar had ripped her life out, and a warmer, happier emptiness down in her womb, where she felt her baby sliding out into the world even as she faded. She reached down and felt its head, waxy and warm and tiny. It was all she would ever know of the child. The ghazneth had sealed her doom when he ate whatever it was he had eaten, for even the finest healers in the kingdom could not save her without all of her organs.

But the child would survive, and through the child, Cormyr. Tanalasta bore down with what little strength remained to her and felt the child slip completely free. It snuffled and began to cry. She tried to raise it to her breast, but could not.

“Boldovar…” she gasped. “King Boldovar the Mad. I grant you… the thing you desire most.”

Boldovar threw off one of Steelhand’s warpriests, then raised his head to glare, crimson-eyed, at Tanalasta. “Quiet, trollop!”

“King Boldovar the Mad, I grant you my pain.”

The darkness drained from Boldovar’s face. He did not stop struggling, but his efforts grew ineffectual, and little pieces of his body began to fly off beneath the impact of the warpriests’ blades.

Tanalasta raised her fingers-as much as she could do to signal a stop-then said, “Enough. Just hold him.”

The blows stopped, and the warpriests stamped their hobnailed boots down on his arms and legs to hold him in place.

When Tanalasta did not speak again, Battlelord Steelhand looked over and seemed to realize there remained one thing he could do for his princess. Leaving Boldovar to his subordinates, he kneeled at Tanalasta’s side, then took the infant from between her legs and laid it on her breast.

“Thank you,” Tanalasta said. She looked back to Boldovar and, to her surprise, found that the next words were not difficult to say at all. “King Boldovar, as an heir to the Obarskyr crown and a direct descendant of your sister’s line, I forgive your betrayal and absolve you of all crime against Cormyr.”

Boldovar’s eyes flashed their old crimson. He opened his mouth as though to speak, then simply crumbled into black dust.

Steelhand looked back to Tanalasta. “You’ve done well, Princess.”

Tanalasta tried to nod, but made it only as far as lowering her eyes before the last of her strength left.

Steelhand smiled, for as a High Priest of the War God Tempus, he had seen a thousand warriors die and knew a good death when he saw it. He placed a mailed hand under the infant’s naked bottom and boosted it higher on the princess’s chest and guided her nipple into its mouth.

“Well met, little one,” he said. “And long live the prince.”