Beyond the High Road (2 page)

A low moan sounded deep within the tunnel, followed by the scrape of leather on dirt. Emperel flung himself into the passage, blindly whipping his sword to and fro. He struck nothing but dirt and roots.

A moment later, his horse screamed, and the murderer was gone.

They sat swaying in unison, the four of them quietly watching each other as Princess Tanalasta’s small carriage bounced across the High Heath toward Worg Pass. The shades were drawn tight against blowing dust, and the interior of the coach was dim, dry, and warm.

The Warden of the Eastern Marches sat at an angle across from Tanalasta, square and upright in his polished field armor, his steely eyes focused curiously on the wiry priest at her side. The priest, Harvestmaster Owden Foley of Monastery Huthduth, rested well back in the shadows, his slender head turned slightly to smirk at a portly mage whose moon-spangled silks touted him as one of Cormyr’s more powerful war wizards. The mage, Merula the Marvelous, perched at the edge of his seat, bejeweled hands folded atop the silver pommel of his walking cane. He was staring at Tanalasta with a busby-browed glare that could only be described as rather too intense. Tanalasta sat studying the Warden of the Eastern Marches, a gangly, horse-faced man who was still somehow handsome in his scarlet cape and purple sash of office. She was thinking that a princess could marry worse than Dauneth Marliir.

Tanalasta did not love Dauneth, of course, but she liked him, and princesses could rarely marry for love. Even if he was five years her junior, Dauneth was loyal, brave, and good-looking enough for a noble, and that should have been enough. A year ago it would have been, but now she needed more. With her thirty-sixth year approaching and all of Cormyr waiting for her to produce an heir, suddenly she had to have bells and butterflies. Suddenly, she had to be in love.

It was enough to make her want to abdicate.

Seeming to feel the pressure of her gaze, Dauneth looked away from Owden. “My apologies, Princess. These mountain roads are difficult to keep in good repair.”

“A little bumping and jarring won’t hurt me, Dauneth.” Tanalasta narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, a face-hardening device she had spent many hours practicing in the reflection of a forest pond. “I’m hardly the porcelain doll you knew a year ago.”

Dauneth’s face reddened. “Of course not. I didn’t mean-“

“You should have seen me at Huthduth,” the princess continued, her voice now light and cheerful. “Clearing stones out of fields, leading plow oxen, harvesting squash, picking raspberries, hunting wild mushrooms…”

Tanalasta paused, thinking it better not to add “swimming naked in mountain lakes.”

Merula the Marvelous raised an eyebrow, and she felt a sudden swell of anger. Could the wizard be reading her thoughts?

“You were hunting wild mushrooms, milady?” asked Dauneth. “In the forest?”

“Of course.” Tanalasta returned her gaze to Dauneth, still struggling to decide how she would deal with the wizard’s intrusion. “Where else does one hunt for mushrooms?”

“You really shouldn’t have,” Dauneth said. “The mountains around Huthduth are orc country. If a foraging mob had come across you….”

“I wasn’t aware that protecting me was your purview, Dauneth. Has the king told you something he has yet to share with me?”

Dauneth’s eyes betrayed his surprise at the woman returning from Huthduth. “No, of course not. The king would hardly confide in me before his own daughter, but I do have a… a reason to be concerned with your safety.”

Tanalasta said nothing, allowing Dauneth a chance to make himself sound less presumptuous by adding some comment about a noble’s duty to safeguard a member of the royal family. When the Warden remained silent, she realized matters were worse than she had expected. With King Azoun turning sixty-three in two days and Tanalasta on the far side of thirty-five and still unmarried, people were starting to wonder if she would ever produce an heir. Certain individuals had even taken it on themselves to hurry things along-most notably the Royal Magician and State Pain-in-the-Princess’s Arse, Vangerdahast. The crafty old wizard had no doubt arranged to celebrate the king’s birthday at House Marliir for the purpose of advancing Dauneth’s courtship.

That would have been fine with Tanalasta, who knew better than anyone that her time to produce an heir was fast running out. In the past year, the princess had grown more conscious than ever of her duty to Cormyr and Dauneth had proven himself both a loyal noble and a worthy suitor in the Abraxus Affair fifteen months before. Nothing would have made her happier than to summon the good Warden to the altar and get started on the unpleasant business of producing an heir and the princess had made up her mind to do exactly that when she received word of the celebration in Arabel.

Then the vision had come.

Tanalasta quickly chased from her thoughts all memory of the vision itself, instead picturing Merula the Marvelous trussed naked on a spit and roasting over a slow fire. If the wizard was spying on her thoughts, she wanted him to know what awaited if he dared report any particular one to the royal magician, Vangerdahast would hear of her vision soon enough, and Tanalasta needed to be the one to tell him.

Merula merely continued to glower. “Something wrong, milady?”

“I hope not.”

Tanalasta drew back a window flap and turned to watch the High Heath glide by. It was a small plain of golden checkerboard fields divided into squares by rough stone walls and dotted with thatch-roofed huts. The simple folk who scratched their living from the place had come out to watch the royal procession trundle past, and it was not until the princess had waved at two dozen vacant-eyed children without receiving a response that she realized something was wrong.

She turned to the Harvestmaster beside her. “Owden, look out here and tell me what you think. Is there something wrong with those barley fields?”

The thin priest leaned in front of her and peered out the window. “There is, Princess. It’s too early for such a color. There must be some sort of blight.”

Tanalasta frowned. “Across the whole heath?”

“So it appears.”

Tanalasta thrust her head out the window. “Stop the carriage!”

Merula scowled and reached for his own drape to countermand the order, but Tanalasta caught his arm.

“Do you really want to challenge the command of an Obarskyr, wizard?”

The wizard knitted his bushy eyebrows indignantly. “The royal magician’s orders were clear. We are to stop for nothing until we have cleared the mountains.”

“Then proceed on your own, by all means,” Tanalasta retorted. “Vangerdahast does not command me. You may remind him of that, if he is listening.”

The carriage rumbled to a stop, and a footman opened the door. Tanalasta held out her hand to Dauneth.

“Will you join me, Warden?”

Dauneth made no move to accept her hand. “Merula is right, milady. These mountains are no place-“

“No?” Tanalasta shrugged, then reached for the footman’s hand. “If you are frightened….”

“Not at all.” Dauneth was out the door in an instant, jostling the footman aside and offering his hand to Tanalasta. “I was only thinking of your safety.”

“Yes, you did say you have reason to concern yourself with me.”

Tanalasta gave the Warden a vinegary smile, then allowed him to help her out of the coach, prompting a handful of peasants to gasp and bow so low their faces scraped ground. Outside, it was a warm mountain afternoon with a sky the color of sapphires and air as dry as sand, and the princess was disappointed to note they had already crossed most of the heath. The foot of Worg Pass lay only a hundred paces ahead, where the barley fields abruptly gave way to a stand of withering pine trees.

Tanalasta motioned the peasants to their feet, then turned to Harvestmaster Owden, who was climbing out of the carriage behind her. “Do you think your assistants could do anything to save these fields, Harvestmaster?”

Owden glanced toward a large, ox-drawn wagon following a few paces behind the princess’s carriage. A dozen monks in green woolen robes sat crammed into the cargo bed among shovels, harrows, and other implements of Chauntea’s faith. They were eyeing the blighted fields and muttering quietly among themselves, no doubt as concerned as Tanalasta by what they saw.

Owden motioned his assistants out of the wagon. “It will take a few hours, Princess.”

“A few hours!” Merula hoisted his considerable bulk through the carriage door with surprising ease. “We can’t have that! The royal magician-“

“-need not know,” Tanalasta finished for him. “Unless he is spying upon us even as we speakin which case you may inform him that the Crown Princess will spend the afternoon walking.”

Tanalasta eyed the Purple Dragons guarding her carriage, one company mounted on their snorting chargers ahead of the procession and the other bringing up the rear, lances posted and steel helmets gleaming in the sun. At the end of the official column followed a long line of merchant carts taking advantage of Tanalasta’s escorts to ensure a safe passage through the mountains. Sighing at the futility of trying to find a little privacy with her suitor, Tanalasta turned to Dauneth.

“Will you join me, Warden?”

Dauneth nodded somewhat uncomfortably. “Whatever the princess wishes.”

Trying not to grind her teeth in frustration, Tanalasta took Dauneth’s arm and led him past the long file of riders to the front of the column. Though her shoulders were draped in a silken cape of royal purple, underneath she wore a sensible traveling smock and a pair of well-worn walking boots, and it was not long before they reached the foot of Worg Pass. She sent the company captain ahead with two scouts and instructed the rest of the company to follow twenty paces behind, but she could not quite make her getaway before Merula the Marvelous came puffing up from behind.

“I trust … the princess will not object to… company,” Merula panted.

“Of course not. Why should she?” asked Owden Foley, appearing from the other side of the horse column. The weatherworn priest winked a crinkled eye at the princess, then looped his hand through Merula’s arm. “My friend, what an excellent idea to join them. We could all do with a nice, brisk walk. Nothing like a stroll to get the heart pumping and keep the fields in water, is there?”

Merula scowled and jerked his arm away. “I thought the princess asked you to attend to the peasants’ fields.”

“And so I am,” Owden replied, digging a good-natured elbow into the wizard’s well-padded ribs. “That’s why one has monks, is it not?”

“I wouldn’t know,” grumbled Merula.

Owden merely grinned and continued to prattle on about the wholesome benefits of mountain sunlight and pine-fresh air. Tanalasta smiled and silently thanked the priest for coming to her rescue. With the Harvestmaster expounding about the benefits of mountain life, Merula would find it impossible to eavesdrop on her conversation-or her thoughts.

Tanalasta led the way up the road at a lively gait. The pass climbed steeply along the flank of a lightly forested mountain, and soon enough the sound of Merula’s hulling breath faded from her hearing-though it was replaced by the somewhat lighter panting of the Warden of the Eastern Marches.

“If I may say so, Princess, you have changed much since…” Dauneth paused, no doubt as much to summon his tact as to catch his breath, then continued, “Since the last time I saw you.”

Tanalasta eyed him levelly. “It’s all right, Dauneth. You can say it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You can say, ‘since Aunadar Bleth made a fool of you,’” Tanalasta said lightly. She continued up the road. “The whole kingdom knows how he tried to marry me and steal the crown. Really, it’s insulting to behave as if I’m the only one unaware of it.”

Dauneth’s face reddened. “You were under a terrible strain. With your father poisoned and-“

“I was a damned ninny. I nearly lost the kingdom, and it was nobody’s fault but my own.” Despite the steep climb, Tanalasta betrayed no sign of fatigue as she spoke. A year at Huthduth had conditioned her to harder work than hiking. “At least I learned that much from Vangerdahast. I swear, I don’t know why he didn’t tell Father to name Alusair crown princess.”

Dauneth cocked an eyebrow. “Perhaps because he saw what you would make of the experience.” The Warden grew thoughtful, then added, “Or, since we are speaking frankly, maybe it is because he knows your sister. Can you see Alusair as queen? No noble son would be safe. If she wasn’t getting them killed in a war, she’d be entrapping them in her boudoir.”

Tanalasta let her jaw drop. “Watch your tongue, sir!” Smiling, she cuffed Dauneth lightly on the back. “That’s my baby sister you are maligning.”

“So the crown princess wishes to acknowledge her own weaknesses and remain blind to those of everyone else?” Dauneth shook his head sagely. “This will never do. It runs contrary to the whole spirit of sovereign tradition. Perhaps I should have a talk with old Vangerdahast after all.”

“That will hardly be necessary,” Tanalasta lowered her voice and leaned closer. “All you need do is mention it in front of our companions. I’ve no doubt Vangey knows everything the moment Merula hears it.”

“Really? Dauneth glanced back at the pudgy wizard, who looked almost as weary of climbing as he did of Owden’s nature lecture. “I didn’t realize the royal magician was such a voyeur.”

“That’s just one thing you’d need to accustom yourself to, if…”

Tanalasta let the sentence hang, as reluctant to reveal her condition for giving her hand to Dauneth as she was to commit herself to giving it.

The Warden was too good a military man not to press for an advantage when he saw the opportunity. “If what, milady?”

Tanalasta stopped climbing and turned to face Dauneth, bringing the whole procession of guards and merchants to a clamorous halt. Only Merula and Owden continued to climb, the wizard more eager than ever to eavesdrop, and the priest just as determined to fill his ear with valuable nature lore.

Trying to ignore the fact that she was being watched by a thousand eyes, Tanalasta took Dauneth’s hand and answered his question. “If we are to do what my father and Vangerdahast want us to, but first we must trust each other enough to speak honestly and openly.”