Cormyr c-1, page 3
part #1 of Cormyr Series
The royal cousins met the golden creature in a flurry of slashing steel and golden horns. One man went to either side of the snorting beast, their blades gleaming in the dappled sunlight, and as one, they slashed at the glittering flanks of the golden bull.
Such an assault would normally take down a wild ox, but the blades bit into no flesh. They sparked as if they were smiting armor and squealed harmlessly along the creature, dragging along as if scoring metal.
The two brothers scarcely had time to curse before the golden creature bellowed, turned with lightning speed, and tossed its massive head. Wickedly sharp horns tore open the belly of Bhereu’s mount, spraying hot blood over the fray. The horse had time for one horrible scream before it collapsed in a rush of steaming innards, tumbling the duke out of his saddle.
Thomdor reined in his own mount in a pounding of hooves and threw his boar spear. It struck with a ringing sound, metal on metal, and sprang away, unable to sink home. “The luck of bloody Beshaba!” he snarled, rolling hastily out of his own saddle. The horses were little more than moving targets to the creature. The bull turned and rushed after Thomdor’s mount but gave up the pursuit when the horse plunged into the river.
Thomdor cast a look back at his fellows as the golden monster turned, crashing through shrubbery and saplings, and added a few more curses at the goddess of ill fortune. Most of the royal bodyguards were off in another part of the King’s Forest, with Thundersword’s hunting party. Everyone’s armor was minimal, and each bore weapons more suited to gutting boars than battling a magical juggernaut.
The golden ox must be an enchanted machine, it clanked and squeaked as it moved. To take it down, they’d have to aim for the thing’s clockwork joints. Thomdor cast a glance back at the ruined tower, but there was no activity in the dark doorway or beyond. There was no sign of other golden creatures, nor was there any sign of someone who might be guiding this one.
Bhereu was slow to rise, and Thomdor saw that the duke’s face was pale and already streaked with sweat. We’re both getting too old for this, Thomdor thought as he raised his heavy blade and charged.
Aunadar and Azoun had split up and taken their stances, His Majesty to the creature’s right and the Bleth lad, his face still partially covered with his cape, to the left. The youth was obviously trying to make himself as small a target as possible, crouched and wary, ready to spring, but the king stood upright, chest out and feet planted firmly, bellowing a challenge.
The beast had been lumbering straight at Thomdor, but at the king’s shout, it swerved to charge at Azoun, leaving the baron with a chance to strike it as it passed. He kept his eyes on the mirror-bright beast, danced carefully in to just the right spot, and swung-hard.
The impact shook Thomdor to his very teeth, but his stout blade sheared deep into the bull’s left leg just below the knee, digging into the joint with a satisfactory thunk.
As the man spun helplessly away, struggling to keep hold of his notched and bent blade with numbed hands, the glittering monster stumbled, breaking its charge. As the baron’s world stopped whirling and turning, he saw the bull regain its footing and turn his way. It had acquired a limp.
Thomdor’s satisfaction was short-lived, however, for the beast’s great, doleful eyes were settled on him, staring steadily into the baron’s own hot gaze. The steam from the bull’s maw wreathed its face, and Thomdor smelled a bitter, acrid odor, like burnt oranges.
The smell was strong and pungent, seeming somehow oily in his mouth, and the baron stumbled back a few paces, wondering if this could be some transformed, renegade mage with a grudge against the crown.
Aunadar took advantage of the bull’s menacing advance on the baron to launch his own attack. Charging forward, he repeated the mistake the royal cousins had made earlier, trying to drive his sword into the beast’s flank. The tip of the blade skittered across the bright scales, leaving only a thin scratch. The bull thrashed its head, and young Bleth sprang back, lost his footing, and sprawled backward into the trampled ferns.
Bhereu and the king were both closing in on the beast now. Thomdor inwardly cursed Azoun for risking himself, but the king had always been like that, even as a lad. To ask him to stay out of a battle while others fought was unthinkable. The baron set his jaw, strode forward, and took another hack at a leg joint. His aim was true, but the blade dug less deeply than before.
Something was terribly wrong. The air around Thomdor felt stifling, the thick oiliness was curling and moving in his throat, and the forest seemed to close in on all sides.
The baron snarled a curse and staggered backward. His vision was collapsing into a small tunnel around the massive, steaming golden beast. Once more the creature’s doleful eyes stared tirelessly into his, and Thomdor could feel sweat pouring out of his body. He was starting to tremble and feel numb all over. This was more than the ravages of too many years spent gorging at the board, this was magic… deadly magic.
Thomdor looked at Bhereu. His brother’s face looked like a death mask and wore a look of grim realization that must mirror his own. The duke nodded in unspoken answer to Thomdor’s look as he came around the bull, hacking at its legs as vigorously as Azoun was doing on the beast’s other flank, then opened his mouth to speak.
What came out was a weak cough, and Bhereu’s eyes turned an odd green color. Then the beast lunged in their direction, and the world became a place of stabbing horns, hacking blades, and desperate dives for safety clear of plunging hooves. Both royal cousins fell and roiled, then rose to topple backward again. Thomdor struck the ground hard more than once, but the pain felt distant, as if the world were slipping away into numbing mists.
The tunnel that the world had become heaved and rolled, and Thomdor knew he was rising very slowly, pushing at the stubborn ground with his hands. Beside him, Bhereu rolled over, but did not try to rise. Somewhere the bull roared again as the Warden of the Eastern Marches staggered over to his brother, using his sword to support himself.
The duke was laboring to breathe, his face taut with pain, his eyes bright and wide.
“Poison!” Bhereu gasped. He was shaking under Thomdor’s hands, his burly body streaming with sweat. He tried to rise once, scrambling to gather himself in the baron’s firm grasp, and then collapsed, head lolling and limbs jouncing loosely.
Thomdor laid him back down. Poison, not magic. Yes, that would make sense, particularly with a clockwork creation. To have any hope of surviving, he and Bhereu would both have to get back to the Royal Chirurgeons in Suzail as soon as the battle was over.
Aye, the battle. Where was that bull, anyway?
Head buzzing from the effects of the poison, Thomdor looked around, the tunnel shifting and flowing crazily until he spotted a golden flash.
Aunadar was up and hacking ineffectually again, but the beast seemed intent on slaying Azoun, trying to smash the ever-dodging king down with its golden hooves. As Thomdor watched, Azoun danced away from a lashing hoof and struck out backhanded with his blade, sweeping his sword’s tip neatly into the beast’s right eye. There was a flash of spraying sparks, and the eyeball-a faceted gemstone!-bounced to the ground.
The bull stiffened and let out a tremendous roar. Internal bellows whined, and the burnt-orange smoke billowed from the monster’s maw and empty eye socket with renewed vigor.
Poison, Thomdor reminded himself grimly as he lumbered forward on rubbery legs. Horns slashed, but he drove them aside with his battered blade and then lifted it and drove it weakly into the gaping eye socket amid the flowing smoke.
The bull shook its head, and Thomdor’s blade was wrenched from his grasp. He stumbled again, the tunnel before him becoming smaller, the beast receding in the distance.
Azoun struck at the monster’s other eye, and the clockwork golden head swung around again. The bull stamped once and then charged, trying to impale the king on its wicked horns. Its maw was open, and the acrid smoke wreathed its head, trailing behind it in oily wisps.
To dodge left or right was to be gored on those glittering horns. Azoun dropped to one knee, raising his blade in front of him. As the creature bore down on him, the king made a desperate lunge, striking into the bull’s open maw, driving his blade in to the hilt.
Sparks sprayed and metal skirled as the blade bounced from one unseen innard to another. There was a metallic singing and snapping, and the blade burst out the back of the bull’s skull, spraying a thick purple-black fluid.
The clockwork beast hung motionless for a moment, pinioned on the blade, its horns inches from the king’s face. Then it slowly, almost gracefully, dropped in its tracks. Whirring noises rose and clattered briefly from its collapsing form, only to die away once more.
Silence descended immediately on a battlefield wreathed in acrid-smelling fog. The king let go his blade and stood up unsteadily, shoulders trembling. Aunadar, the only man still holding a sword, poked at the glittering body a few times.
It lay still, but Thomdor could barely see it through the swimming tunnel. He staggered forward. He had to tell Azoun to summon aid for Bhereu.
The baron stopped short at the sight of His Majesty. The king’s flesh was bone-white and drawn as tightly over his skull as that of any mummy in a tomb. The royal eyes were wide, almost panicked, and Azoun’s brow and beard were beaded with dripping sweat.
The king mouthed a few words Thomdor could not catch, then collapsed in front of the golden bull’s horns.
Thomdor stared down at him, feeling his own knees going weak, but Aunadar was at his elbow in an instant, holding him up, voice shrill with fear. “What happened? What’s wrong with the king-and the duke? Are they ill? The bull didn’t strike him. What’s wrong?”
The tunnel of his vision was growing smaller, Thomdor sagged against an arm that seemed afraid to hold him. He had to get this boy to summon help, or House Obarskyr was lost.
“Right… boot,” the baron gasped. The words felt like acid in his throat, he could barely speak. “King’s right boot,” he rasped. “Wand.”
Aunadar looked at him blankly for a moment, as if trying to translate Thomdor’s wheezing words, then knelt down beside the king and peered into his right boot. His fingers closed on something, and he looked questioningly back at Thomdor as he drew it forth: a slender ivory wand, sheathed just inside the royal boot top.
Thomdor set his teeth and managed a nod, mentally snarling at the young man to get on with it. The tunnel had closed almost to nothing, and the darkness around it was crawling with dark, monstrous serpents and spiders, waiting for the Warden of the Eastern Marches to falter so they could claim all three of the royals.
Aunadar turned to the baron with the wand flat across his palms. There was a shocked, questioning look on his young face.
Thomdor licked lips that were suddenly thick and numb. “Break it,” he tried to roar, but it came out as a husking whisper.
The youth remained motionless. Either Bleth could no longer understand his words, or too little of the world was left for the baron to know what he was saying.
He repeated his command, but the young puppy remained still, the wand in his hands and that shocked, waiting look on his face.
With the last of his fading energy, Baron Thomdor of Arabel, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Royal Right Hand to King Azoun IV of Cormyr, lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s hands, forcing them to close over the wand and pressing them up and together. The wand snapped like a brittle bone.
A humming familiar to the baron filled the glade, and a small silver coin appeared in midair, tumbled once, flashed, and quickly widened to form a hoop. The hoop stretched swiftly into a great circular doorway, and out of that entry to otherwhere poured royal guards in white and purple, priests of Tymora in their blue and silver, and war wizards in their violet robes. Last came Vangerdahast, the fat old mage in his familiar red-brown robes, rolling slightly as he walked, bellowing orders right and left.
The Royal Magician knelt next to the king, then looked up sharply and yelled something. Thomdor could no longer understand what was being said, and his vision had faded to a mere pinprick of light, the russet-robed wizard kneeling in a vast void of slithering darkness.
It had been enough. They had summoned aid. Whatever was wrong, the Royal Magician would see to the matter and set things right. Vangerdahast would fix everything. The crown was saved.
And with that thought, Thomdor let go of the last of his crumbling, once iron-strong grip on life and said farewell to the tiny light…
Chapter 2: The Passing of Power
A Year of Good Hunting (-205 DR)
The elf stood on the lowest step, waiting as impassively as a statue. Behind him, the broad flagstone steps led up to the horn tower-a tower that in turn soared up above the surrounding bare trees, stabbing proudly into the cloud-studded sky. Its peak was a huge, glowing crystal carved into the shape of a leaping flame. The crystal, glowing a brilliant blue against the riot of autumn color, was lit in expectation of the guest.
The elf did not turn to look at it, he needed no reminder of the power of his people. Nor had he looked again at the words above the tower’s door since the day his spell had carved them out of the smooth stone. He knew the traditional warning to goblins well enough not to have to be reminded of it each time he passed, like some forgetful child.
Key’anna de Cormyr, read the runes: “We guard this wooded land.” Or, to put it more bluntly, “Beware: this land is ours.” Soon those words would hold truth at last.
A deep shadow passed quickly across the tower steps, followed by two more. Had he not been expecting it, the elf would have flinched or fled for the security of the tower. He did neither. He was accustomed to the manner of his guests by now, and for once welcomed it. Red and ocher leaves whirled and danced in the great wind that followed the shadow, scuttenng around the elf’s ankles. He did not spare them a glance.
The three guests made a low, banking turn over the forest and pulled up sharply, beating their wings and tails to bring them to a halt. More dead leaves swirled up as all three alit gracefully and in unison, on coiled hind legs. The largest of the elf lord’s guests, his ancient black scales fading to a violet shade, swept his wings back once to steady himself, in the process blowing the elf lord’s cassock and cope about with a sharp snap.
The elf permitted himself a small half-smile. It was just like the dragon to use even his entrance as a display of dominance and power. The intent was to make the elf flinch, step back, or raise an arm to ward off the swirling leaves and buffeting wings.
A game for children, he reflected. Neither of them were children any longer.
With slow, deliberate grace, the elf came down from the step, raising his arms in welcome. His face remained impassive as he strode forward. His green garments billowed out behind him like a sail, the soft cassock and the long, slightly darker cope, flared so that it was almost a full cape. Threads of spun gold entwined and circled along the cope’s front and hem, and here and there among their warm splendor gleamed delicate carvings of amber. Long, silver-blond hair drifted behind the elf in the false wind the dragon had wrought. The hair was held from wild and tangled ruin by a thin circlet marked by three spikes in the front and a purple amethyst at the center of his brow.
In one hand the elf bore a golden staff, its haft twisted to resemble a heavy rope, its tip adorned with another purple stone, this often carved into the shape of a soaring bird. The sash that gathered in the cassock at his slim waist bristled with wands along one hip, each wand in its own sheath. These battle wands had made the warrior mage famous among elves even before he rose to power. On his other hip the mage wore a thin elven sword, a long, narrow blade with a graceful haft and pommel.
Faint glowing auras surrounded some of the wands, seeping through their sheaths. They were the reason the best warriors of the elven House of Amaratharr bowed to this slender, still young wearer of green. His was the power that had brought them victory in battle after battle with the strongest foe they’d ever faced, the dragonkin of dread Thauglor, and his fellow warriors all knew it. That was why he’d been chosen for this meeting, as well as for his fearless demeanor and quick wit.
The dragon, for his part, was well aware of the elf’s lack of fear, but dignity demanded a fitting entrance. He had met this one before, and it would not do for the lord and master of the forest to come crawling like a lizard to any humanoid, regardless of what power the small creature might wield. Even-or especially-this small one, so mighty in his magic. The dragon towered over the one who strode to meet him, the elf appearing like nothing more than a small green dot against a living wall of black and purple.
The two smaller dragons, one red, one blue, flanked the great blackscaled beast a respectable few yards behind their liege. They were younglings, newly out of their shell, their colors as bright as the forest around them. That, too, was a sign of power from the dragon. He confidently chose inexperienced youths as his seconds.
“Iliphar Nelnueve,” said the largest dragon in a booming voice, “who is called Lord of the Scepters.”
“Thauglorimorgorus,” replied the elf, bowing slightly, “who is called Thauglor the Mighty and Thauglor the Black Doom.”
The dragon beckoned with one wing, then the other. “Gloriankithsanus.” The blue made a solemn bob of his neck. “Mistinarperadnacles.” The red made a jerky, coltish nod as well, her eyes already scouting the surrounding woods for elven ambushers. “Did you bring your witnesses?”
Not seconds, thought the elf lord, but witnesses. “They are within the tower and await my command.”
“You have good cause to summon me to this parley?” asked Thauglor, a warning rumble behind his precise and polite words.
“Ask, not summon,” Iliphar returned calmly. “I appreciate your coming, for we have need to discuss matters of our two peoples. I trust you are well.”
