Death of the Dragon

5

The rat bites had withered to little red puckers, leaving Tanalasta’s pale breasts and belly strewn with star-shaped scars and oozing abscesses. Though her head throbbed and her joints ached with the remnant of a fever, she felt remarkably alert and rested and-finally-safe. Owden Foley, looking pale and battered but alive, sat at the edge of her bed. His eyes were closed in concentration and a healing hand was pressed over her womb. The corridors outside her chambers were guarded by an entire troop of dragoneers. Two war wizards sat in her anteroom, just a short yell away. Even her windows had been double-secured, being both barred by iron and sealed with mortar and stone.

Owden opened his eyes, but left his hand pressed to Tanalasta’s naked abdomen. She could feel the goddess’s mending heat flowing into her womb, making her loins tingle and ache in way that was not entirely unfamiliar and a little bit embarrassing. Tanalasta let the sensations wash over her and tried to accept what she felt with no shame. Such stirrings were a gift from Chauntea, and private though they were, no worshiper of the Great Mother should deny them.

By the time the High Harvestmaster’s gaze finally drifted toward Tanalasta’s face, she could bear the suspense no longer. “What of the child, Owden?” The princess found it difficult to speak. Though a healer had obviously worked his magic on her broken jaw, it was sore, stiff, and bound by a silken scarf. “Has it been injured?”

Owden’s eyes flickered away before answering. “You have had no pain or bleeding?”

Icy fingers of panic began to work up through Tanalasta’s chest. “What’s wrong?”

“We don’t know that anything is,” Owden said. He did not remove his hand from Tanalasta’s abdomen. “It’s only a question.”

“One you must know I can’t answer.” Tanalasta had awakened only a short time earlier, and the first thing she had done was send for Owden. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Half a tenday… or so they tell me.” Owden raised his free hand and absentmindedly rubbed the cloth over his own wound. “I awoke only yesterday myself.”

“And Alaphondar?”

“In the palace library. Seaburt and Othram are also here, but I’m afraid the others…” He shook his head, then said, “The orcs came in too fast.”

Tanalasta closed her eyes. “May their bodies feed the land and their souls blossom again,” she whispered.

“The goddess will tend them.” Owden clasped her arm. “They were brave men.”

“That they were.” Tanalasta glanced down between her bare breasts to the harvestmaster’s other hand, still pouring its healing warmth into her womb and asked, “Now, what of the child? I trust you are not just enjoying yourself.”

The joke drew a forced smile from the normally jovial priest. “With all those guards out there? I think not.” He glanced toward the anteroom door, then shook his head and told her, “The truth is, I have no way of knowing. I could ask the royal healers if there have been any signs, but they’d know at once my reason for asking.”

Tanalasta considered this, then shook her head. “Let’s avoid that. We need no rumors sweeping the realm, at least not until the nobles have accepted that I am married.”

“And to whom,” Owden added pointedly.

Tanalasta flashed him a frown of irritation, one of those rare glowers she reserved for the few people who would not interpret them as some subtle message by which whole families were made and unmade.

“Would knowing the signs make any difference to the child?”

Owden thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Either you are still with child or you aren’t,” he said simply. “If you are, all we can do is keep pouring Chauntea’s blessings into your womb and pray they are enough to counter the corrupting influences of your association with the ghazneth.”

“Would you please call it a fight?” Tanalasta asked dryly. “‘Association’ makes it sound like we were… trysting.”

Owden winced at her objection, but the anteroom door banged open before he could apologize. Jerking her bed gown down over her breasts, Tanalasta looked over with an angry rebuke on her tongue and found her mother striding into the room.

Queen Filfaeril was, as always, strikingly beautiful. Tresses of honey blonde hair streamed behind her, and blue eyes glared at Owden’s hand, which continued to rest over Tanalasta’s womb. If the harvestmaster felt any embarrassment, his face did not betray it.

“Mother,” Tanalasta mumbled, so surprised that she strained her aching jaw. “You might have had someone announce you.”

Filfaeril continued toward the bed, her stride growing more assertive and forceful. “I came as soon as I heard you had awakened.” She stopped at the base of the bed and continued to glare at Owden’s hand. “I’m glad to see you feeling so well.”

Tanalasta felt the heat rising to her cheeks, but took her cue from Owden and refused to take the bait. “To be truthful, I’m not quite sure how I feel.” She waved at Owden and said, “You remember Harvestmaster Foley?”

“How could I forget?”

The expression in Filfaeril’s eyes would have wilted a lesser man, but Owden merely stood and bowed without removing his hand from Tanalasta’s abdomen. “As radiant as ever, your majesty.”

Having failed to intimidate Owden, Filfaeril turned to Tanalasta and said, “A bit old for you, don’t you think?”

“That is hardly to the point, Mother,” said Tanalasta. “Harvestmaster Foley is tending to my health-as I am sure you know.”

Filfaeril’s expression remained icy. “The royal healers are not to your satisfaction?”

“I prefer Owden.” Though her feelings were fast growing as icy as her mother’s glare, Tanalasta forced herself to smile. “Surely, even a princess may choose who lays hands on her own body without the matter becoming the latest political crisis?”

A hint of shame flashed through Filfaeril’s eyes, but she quickly regained control of her expression. In a slightly warmer voice, she said, “I suppose that is hardly too much to ask, and I really did not come here to discuss the matter of your royal temple anyway.” She turned to Owden and graced him with a queenly smile. “So, how does our patient fare? I wasn’t aware that she had suffered any injuries so far… south.”

“She is a hale woman, majesty.” Owden raised a querying eyebrow at Tanalasta-ever so slightly-and received the merest shake of a head in response, then continued without missing a beat. “She had some pain in her intestines, but I’m sure it is merely a matter of lying in bed too long… nothing a long walk won’t cure.”

As subtle as the signals between Tanalasta and Owden had been, they did not escape Filfaeril’s notice. Her queenly smile grew cold enough to freeze a bonfire. “A walk, you say?” the queen asked. “Your Chauntean remedies are certainly more forward than those of our royal healers. They have warned me not to let her leave bed for the next tenday.”

“A tenday!” Tanalasta pushed herself up. “Not on their-“

Owden motioned her back down and said, “The royal healers have not had occasion to observe the princess as closely as I over the past year. Trust me, the exercise will do her more good.”

“I trust you,” said Tanalasta. “That’s all that matters.”

Thankfully, Owden’s healing hand finally cooled against her skin. He withdrew it, allowing her to lower her bed gown the rest of the way.

Filfaeril continued to glare at the priest so icily that even he began to grow uncomfortable.

He turned to Tanalasta and said, “If you are feeling well enough, perhaps I will withdraw and see to my own wounds.”

“Of course, Owden, and thank you-for everything.”

Owden bowed to her and the queen, then left. As soon as the anteroom door closed, the queen’s attitude softened. She took the priest’s place on the edge of the bed.

“I really didn’t mean to intrude, my dear.” She took Tanalasta’s hand. “It’s just that when I heard you were awake, I couldn’t wait a moment longer to apologize.”

“Apologize?” Tanalasta regarded her mother warily, as surprised now as at their parting less than two months earlier, when the queen had berated her so ferociously for wanting to establish the Royal Temple of Chauntea. “Truly?”

Tanalasta’s astonishment seemed to take Filfaeril aback. The queen looked confused for a moment, then let slip an uncharacteristic snort of laughter.

“Not about the temple, my dear! You’re still going to have to forget that idea before your father will feel comfortable dying and leaving the throne to you.” Filfaeril tried a diplomatic smile and saw it fail, but continued unabashed. “What I am sorry about is the way I handled you.”

“Handled me, Mother?”

“Yes, Tanalasta, handled you.” Filfaeril’s voice had grown stern. “We are both women of the palace, and the time has come to acknowledge that. It doesn’t mean that we don’t love each other, or Azoun and Alusair-“

“Or even Vangey,” Tanalasta added.

The queen’s eyes darkened noticeably, but she nodded. “Even Vangerdahast-and he is the worst handler of any of us. We all have our own aims that inevitably set us against each other, and the only way to stay a family is to acknowledge the fact.”

Tanalasta regarded her mother as though meeting her for the first time. “All right…”

“So what I am sorry about is misjudging you. I was frightened by the change in you after Huthduth, and I thought you weren’t ready to be queen.” Filfaeril paused to blink away the tears welling in her eyes, then continued, “I thought you never would be, and I told your father to name Alusair in your place. I did everything I could to persuade him, but Vangerdahast wouldn’t have it.”

“Vangerdahast?” Tanalasta began to wonder what her mother was playing at. Vangerdahast had made a living hell of her life over the last year, constantly trying to bully her into becoming the kind of queen he expected to sit on the throne of Cormyr. Finally, the situation had grown so bad that Tanalasta had rebelled and told him to take what she was or start bullying Alusair into shape. “You aren’t saying that just because he’s gone, are you?”

“No,” Filfaeril said. She shook her head vehemently, and now the tears did begin to spill out of her eyes. “It’s the truth. He never doubted you, but I did. I apologize.”

“Don’t,” Tanalasta said. “There’s no need to apologize. There was at least one time when you were right. When Gaspar and Aunadar tried to poison Father, I couldn’t have been less ready. I’m far from sure if I am now, but that hardly matters at the moment. With the ghazneths running loose, Cormyr is on the verge of disaster.”

“It is no longer on the verge, I fear.” Filfaeril wiped her eyes dry, then rose to her feet, assuming her familiar regal air. “The blight has destroyed every crop in the north, and it’s working its way south by the day. There are wildfires everywhere, whole villages are going mad, and others are dying of the plague, the orcs have massed in the north and…”

“And the Seven Scourges are upon us,” said Tanalasta. “Blight, Madness, War, Pestilence, Fire, Swarms.”

“That’s only six.”

“The seventh is ‘soon to come,’ and when he does…”

“‘Out come the armies of the dead and the legions of the devil made by itself,’ ” Filfaeril finished, quoting Alaundo’s ancient prophecy. “What then?”

Tanalasta could only shake her head. “We can’t let it come to that.” She threw her covers back and swung her legs out of bed, then looked toward the anteroom door and barked, “Korvarr!”

Filfaeril took Tanalasta’s arm. “What are you doing?”

“I did something in Goblin Mountain that weakened Xanthon,” she explained, all but dragging her mother to the wardrobe. “It may be that I’ve stumbled onto something.”

“What?” Filfaeril asked.

“I don’t know yet. It’s going to take some research.”

Tanalasta pulled her bed gown off and tossed it aside, then flung the wardrobe open-and discovered it to be empty.

The anteroom door slammed open, and Korvarr Rallyhorn, the lionar of her guards, burst into the room with a dozen men at his back. They all skidded to a halt, then nearly fell over each other in their rush to avert their eyes and retreat.

“I… I b-beg your forgiveness, Princess,” stammered Korvarr. “We thought you called.”

“I did.”

Filfaeril snatched the bed gown off the floor and thrust it at Tanalasta.

“Find Alaphondar and tell him to meet me in the library,” Tanalasta said, draping the bed gown more or less over her breasts. “And send me something to wear.”

“As you command, Princess.”

Korvarr did his best to escape the room without looking at Tanalasta.

As the door shut, Filfaeril turned to her daughter and said, “My, you have changed.”

Tanalasta smiled and draped her arm over her mother’s shoulder. “And you have not seen half of it-which reminds me, I have only heard half the news. What of Father?”

“And Dauneth, perhaps?”

Tanalasta rolled her eyes. “If you must, but I warn you, I have less reason than ever to interest myself in the good warden.”

“What a pity. You’d make such a handsome couple.” Though the pout Filfaeril feigned was playful, there was a serious element to it. The queen and king had yet to hear of Tanalasta’s marriage to Rowen Cormaeril-or her pregnancy. Filfaeril raised her hands as though to forestall her daughter’s ire. “I’m not goading-“

“Only ‘handling,’ perhaps?”

“Perhaps.” Filfaeril smiled briefly, then grew more serious. “The last I heard, your father and Alusair-“

“Alusair?” Tanalasta gasped. “Then she is safe?”

“Yes,” Filfaeril said. “Your father came across her in the Stonelands. As I was saying, they were to meet Dauneth and his army in Gnoll Pass-“

“Was Alusair alone?” Tanalasta demanded. After Vangerdahast’s disappearance at the battle of the Farsea Marsh, Rowen Cormaeril had somehow come into possession of the royal magician’s horse and set off to warn King Azoun about the ghazneths. Unfortunately, Tanalasta and Alusair had come across his trail a few days later, heading north into the Stonelands for some reason they could not understand. Alusair had set out alone to track Rowen down, and that had been the last Tanalasta heard of either one. “Did she find Vangerdahast’s horse?”

“As a matter of fact, Alusair did send a message for you-how silly of me to forget.” The queen’s sly smile made clear that she had not forgotten. “She said to tell you ‘the king has Cadimus, but your favorite scout is still on the prowl.’”

Tanalasta retreated to the bed and sank down, suddenly feeling weary and weak.

The queen came and pulled the cover up around her shoulders. “Tanalasta, I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea this would upset you.”

“It shouldn’t, I suppose,” Tanalasta replied. “The mountains have grown so dangerous, and I was hoping for something a little more… certain.”

Filfaeril leaned down and embraced her daughter. “I know. If I could even count the times I have wondered after your father’s safety… and often as not he was off with the daughter of some minor noble.”

Tanalasta shook her head. “Rowen wouldn’t do that-even if there were noble daughters in the Stonelands.”

“Rowen?” Filfaeril stood up again and frowned. “The only scout named Rowen I know is Rowen Cormaeril.”

Tanalasta nodded, then patted the bed beside her. “You’d better sit down, Mother. I have something to tell you.”