Beyond the High Road (13 page)

An unaccustomed fury rose up inside Tanalasta, and suddenly she could think of little more than slaying her foe. She jumped to her feet and thrust a hand into her cloak pocket, in her excitement fumbling for the steel Peacemaker’s rod Vangerdahast had given her. To her amazement, she felt no fear at all, only a thrilling bloodlust that filled her with a strange euphoria and muddled her thoughts. Could this be the battle rapture Alusair was always talking about?

One of Tanalasta’s guards grabbed her collar and pushed her toward the horses. “Run!”

The dragoneer’s shove brought Tanalasta back to her senses, and she was seized by a queasy terror as she recalled how easily the phantom had slain Vangerdahast’s escorts. She stumbled back two steps, then stopped when her guards drew their swords and stepped forward to meet the phantom at the edge of the cliff

“Don’t be fools-retreat!” Tanalasta yelled. She released the steel rod and pulled her hand from her pocket, then began to fidget with one of the rings Vangerdahast had given her in Arabel. “Now!”

The guards did not obey. They merely roared their battle cries and raised their swords, and it was too late. The phantom swooped over the rim of the outcropping, impaling one man on along talon and batting the other off the cliff and continuing toward Tanalasta at lightning speed.

She pointed her ring at the ground, commanding, “Dragon’s wall!”

Tanalasta felt a sharp pain in her finger, then a shimmering wall of force sprang up between her and the phantom. A muffled whump reverberated across the outcropping, and the creature was hanging in the air before her, its night black wings spread across the horizon on the other side of the magic barrier.

The phantom gave an ear-piercing scream, and its white eyes turned human and ladylike. The darkness drained from its face, revealing the visage of a handsome noblewoman about the same age as Queen Filfaeril. Tanalasta staggered away from the inexplicable apparition, so shocked and terrified that she forgot to run.

Vangerdahast’s voice came to her. Tanalasta?

The phantom pulled its head free of the magic wall and turned toward the wizard. Tanalasta’s heart sank as she realized the implications. The creature could hear their thought-talk.

Answer me!

The phantom pulled a wing free of the barrier, and Tanalasta’s sense of danger came flooding back.

Quiet, you old fool! The princess turned toward the horses.

Then suddenly Vangerdahast was there before her, sitting on his stallion between her and her own horse, swaying and blinking with teleport after daze. Tanalasta glanced back and saw the phantom springing over the top of her magic wall, its face once again a mask of gore-dripping darkness. Tanalasta spun around, stretching an arm in its direction and slapping the opposite hand down on her wrist bracer.

“King’s bolts!”

A searing pain shot through her hand, and four bolts of golden magic streaked toward the phantom’s chest.

The creature’s wing curled around in a blur of darkness, and the bolts erupted against it in a series of dazzling yellow flashes. The appendage turned briefly translucent, revealing a fanlike network of finger-thick bones, then began to darken again.

Vangerdahast’s staff tapped Tanalasta’s shoulder. “You have proven your point, Princess,” he said. “Now why don’t you leave your old fool to have his fun with this nasty wench?”

Too tired to trade banter, Tanalasta merely nodded and sprinted to her horse, pulling herself into the saddle as the wizard’s first spell cracked across the outcropping behind her. She leaned down to free the reins of the dead guards’ mounts, then glimpsed the phantom hurling toward Vangerdahast in a blazing ball of white fury. He turned his staff horizontal and raised it in front of him. A hedge of silver-tipped thorn bushes sprang up to intercept his shrieking attacker.

Tanalasta started to turn her mount toward the rest of the company, but saw a horde of orcs streaming up the mountain and realized she would never reach them alive. Praying to the goddess that Ryban could see what was happening on the outcropping, she turned in the opposite direction and urged her mount to flee.

The terrified beast sprang up the rocky slope as though it were a mountain goat, and the last thing Tanalasta heard behind her was Vangerdahast’s astonished curse:

“What gutterspawning succubus hatched you?”

The royal wizard was frightened, of course-only a fool wouldn’t have been-but he was also mad with fury. His heart was hammering in his chest, pounding like it had not pounded in seventy years. Every beat urged him to battle, to pelt the phantom with bolt and blaze, to attack and keep attacking until he reduced the thing to a scorch mark on the cliff top.

Never before had Vangerdahast experienced such a combat rage, and he did not understand where it came from now. Vangerdahast had warned Azoun a dozen times that battles were won not through anger, but through cold, emotionless calculation, and now here the wizard was himself, fighting as hard to control his own emotions as to defeat the enemy. It was unnerving, really. The remnants of his last harmless lightning bolt were still tracing crooks of transparency across the phantom’s leathery wing, and the wizard caught himself lowering his staff to cast the same useless spell again. Damned unnerving.

Vangerdahast threw his staff down and slipped a hand into the sleeve of his robe. In the second he needed to find the tiny pocket where he stored his spider web, the phantom peered over its furled wing and sprang. Vangerdahast’s mount bolted, nearly catapulting him from the saddle. The phantom banked, herding the terrified horse toward the rim of the cliff. The wizard pulled his hand from his sleeve, flicking a ball of web in the dark thing’s direction, then yelling his incantation.

At the first sound of Vangerdahast’s voice, the phantom furled its wings and dropped to the ground. As it fell, a huge tangle of sticky fibers blossomed around it, completely engulfing the creature in an amorphous mass of white filaments.

Vangerdahast’s horse drew up short at the edge of the outcropping, pitching him forward out of the saddle. Cursing his mount for a witless coward, the wizard made a desperate grab for the beast’s mane as he tumbled over its head, then found himself plummeting toward a sandy dune a hundred feet below.

Vangerdahast experienced a fierce nettling as his weathercloak’s magic triggered itself, then the cape’s lapels spread outward to create a sort of crude sail. He fluttered to the ground not far from the guard who had been batted off the outcropping earlier. The poor fellow had landed headfirst in the sand, burying himself to the shoulders, then snapping his neck as he fell onto his back. A bloody crease angling across his breastplate marked where the phantom’s powerful wing had struck.

Vangerdahast spun away and pulled a wing feather from inside his robe. Still consumed by his strange fury he uttered a quick spell and extended his arms, then sprang into the air, telling himself that be had a good reason for returning to the battle before checking on Tanalasta. He needed to know where the phantom had come from. He needed to know why it had aided a petty tribe of orcs. He needed to kill the thing before it shredded his magical web. He needed that most of all.

The wizard rose swiftly, flying close to the outcropping so his foe would not see him. As he ascended, he heard clanging swords and whinnying horses farther up the mountainside. For some reason he could not fathom, Ryban had engaged the orcs instead of fleeing them as planned. Cursing the man for an over-brave dunce, Vangerdahast touched the throat clasp of his weathercloak. When the brass began to tingle beneath his fingers, he pictured Ryban’s face.

Unless you are defending Tanalasta already, disengage and go to her!

Can’t find the princess, and wouldn’t run if we could, came Ryban’s reply. See you in Everwatch!

The throat clasp became cold and dead beneath Vangerdahast’s fingertips, and he grew faintly aware of feeling both mournful and perplexed. It was not like the lionar to neglect his duty, nor to think he could reach Everwatch by disregarding an order. Everwatch was the celestial palace of Helm the Watcher, and only the most faithful guardians could expect to spend eternity there.

Vangerdahast circled around to come up on the opposite side of the outcropping from where he had plunged off, then stepped onto the cliff top. He found his magic web dissolving into a gummy morass of translucent gray silk, beneath which lay the form of a shapely female spine flanked by the bases of two leathery white wings. Little more could be seen of the figure. It seemed to be curled into a ball, with its neck and shoulders hunched forward, its legs drawn up in front of it, and its wings wrapped securely around its body.

Vangerdahast crept forward, fighting to regain control of his emotions before he attacked. The butt of his war staff was sticking out from beneath the gummy mess. The phantom did not seem to be struggling, but the web was dissolving far too quickly, shriveling down around the creature like some sort of cocoon. He summoned to mind the incantation of a spell as deadly as it was quick and stopped five paces away.

The white wings twitched, then a breathy voice rasped, “Well done, wizard. Not many capture a ghazneth and live to tell of it. What is it you wish?”

“Ghazneth?”

“Is that your wish?” the phantom asked. “To know what I am?”

The web continued to contract around the ghazneth-or whatever the monster was.

Vangerdahast aimed his finger at the phantom’s back. “Among other things, yes.”

“What other things?” The ghazneth’s voice was beginning to sound vaguely human-feminine, actually, with an oddly archaic Cormyrean accent. “You receive only one wish, you know.”

“I am not the one with a death finger aimed at my back,” Vangerdahast replied. “Nor do I want any wish of mine granted by the likes of you. I will ask and you will answer. If you are honest, perhaps I will send you back to the hell you came from, rather than allow your rotting corpse to pollute this land.”

The ghazneth’s wings flexed ever so slightly-just enough for Vangerdahast to notice that the thing was not as trapped as it would have him believe-then it said, “A wish for no wish. An odd thing to desire, but granted.”

“I asked for nothing,” Vangerdahast snarled, all too aware of how the phantom was trying to twist his words around. The trick angered the wizard so greatly he nearly unleashed his death spell. “I owe you nothing.”

“Not true.”

The web had contracted now to a mere glove around the ghazneth’s body. Vangerdahast stepped forward to retrieve his war staff, then quickly stepped back when he noticed the black beginning to creep along the edges of the creature’s wings.

“You owe me more than you know, Vangerdahast,” the ghazneth continued, “and you are going to pay-you and Cormyr.”

“Vangerdahast? You honor me too much, ghazneth. I’m just a simple war wizard.”

“Be careful of the lies you tell,” said the ghazneth. “Or you’ll end up like me.”

“As unnecessary as that advice is, I’ll certainly keep it in mind,” Vangerdahast said, more determined than ever to deny his name. The thing was beginning to sound like a demon, and it was never a good idea to admit one’s name to a demon. “Where did you say you knew Vangerdahast from? I’ll be glad to inform him of his debt.”

“I may speak of the matter with Vangerdahast and no other.” The ghazneth’s body began to glisten with a glossy sheen, all that remained of Vangerdahast’s dissolving web spell. “But you may tell him this much: if he doesn’t pay, Cormyr will.”

“How?” When the creature did not respond at once, Vangerdahast snarled, “Answer! My patience is wearing as thin as my web.”

“What a pity-then it is gone!” The phantom rolled toward Vangerdahast, raising one wing to shield itself and another to push against the ground.

The wizard leaped back, placing himself well out of wing’s reach. He had time to glimpse the sour, thin-nosed visage of an older woman, then the ghazneth’s eyes turned from blue to white and its face vanished into a veil of darkness. He pointed his finger at its chest and spat out the command word that unleashed his deadly spell. The ghazneth’s upper wing started to furl down to protect itself, but Vangerdahast had barely spoken before a white circle blossomed in the creature’s torso.

The phantom screeched and clutched at its chest, its long talons scratching deep furrows into its naked breast. The flesh beneath its hand grew pale and soft and began to ooze up between its fingers like hot wax.

The wizard shrugged. “So you were right. I am Vangerdahast.”

He should have known better.

The ghazneth’s hand dropped from its chest, revealing a jagged void where the breastbone had erupted from the inside out, through the hole showed a tangled snarl of veins and a lump of oozing fungus shaped vaguely like a heart. Vangerdahast stumbled back, surprised to feel a rising panic. He could not recall the last time he had experienced such a thing-certainly long before Azoun took his crown.

The ghazneth ambled forward on its waspish legs. Vangerdahast forced himself to think. So the thing’s heart had moldered away. That didn’t mean it was indestructible. It was either undead or demonic, and he had ways to deal with both. All he had to do was guess which and sneak another spell or two past those magic-absorbing wings without letting the thing slit him from groin to gullet first.

The ghazneth scuttled two steps to the side, placing itself between Vangerdahast and the battle still raging between the orcs and Ryban’s Purple Dragons. The wizard wondered whether the time had come to make use of what many war wizards considered the weathercloak’s most useful device: the escape pocket. He reached for the secret fold in the cloak’s lining, then realized fleeing was not an option. Tanalasta was still somewhere nearby, and the creature would be too likely to notice her if it took to the air again.

The ghazneth stretched its wings, cutting off every avenue of escape, save those that involved flying or leaping off the cliff. Vangerdahast’s panic became determination, and he found the peacemaker’s rod sheathed inside his weathercloak. A common tool available to every lionar in the Purple Dragons, the little club was hardly as powerful as many of the slender wands still tucked into their pockets inside his cloak, but it did have the advantage of swiftness.