Beyond the High Road (39 page)

“He is, and he’s not the only one,” Owden answered.

This drew a puzzled frown from Alaphondar, but the expression quickly changed to astonishment as Owden plucked him off the ground and retreated into the keep. By the time Vangerdahast took their place in the breach, the ghazneths were streaking past the remnants of the Royal Excursionary Company and angling down toward the keep. Vangerdahast turned the iron sheet edge-down and dropped it, then spoke the last word of his spell.

The peninsula vanished behind an iron wall, then a series of deafening clangs reverberated through the chamber.

Vangerdahast retreated into the room with his ears still ringing and one eye fixed on the iron wall. The barrier was illuminated inside by a few stray light rays filtering down between its dark surface and the keep wall, but the space was far too tiny for a ghazneth-or so he hoped. When no more sounds came from the other side, he withdrew his glowing wand from his pocket and turned to the others.

“Could they have broken their necks?” Owden asked. “The wall was iron.”

“Do you really believe we’d be that lucky?” Tanalasta asked. “The wall is also magic. They are only

drinking it.”

“Tanalasta?” Alaphondar gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“The idea was to rescue me.” Tanalasta’s tone was acid. “You do remember-or have you gone daft?”

Vangerdahast raised his brow. He had heard the princess address him in such a manner often enough, but never Alaphondar. The sage was like a father to her.

Alaphondar’s hurt showed even in his swollen face. His white eyebrows tilted inward, and he started to explain himself-then he hesitated.

“My mistake.” He looked around the room blindly. “I thought you were with Alusair for some reason. She just told me that she has learned the names of the ghazneths from the glyphs at the other crypts.”

“Really?” Vangerdahast asked. Being careful not to look in Tanalasta’s direction, he slipped a hand into his pocket and fished for a scrap of silk. “I didn’t know you had taught her to read elven glyphs.”

Alaphondar nodded. “Oh yes, of course. Post Thaugloraneous glyphs are a standard for well-bred princesses these days.”

Tanalasta’s red eyes flickered about the chamber, studying each man in turn. Vangerdahast was careful to keep a neutral expression. Alusair wouldn’t know a glyph from a rune, and he had a pretty good idea what Alaphondar was trying to tell him.

But Owden was not as quick to appreciate the situation. “Post-Thaugloraneous glyphs?” he asked, incredulous. “As in the dragon Thauglor?”

“A groundsplitter wouldn’t understand,” growled Vangerdahast. Continuing to look at Alaphondar, he casually drew the silk scrap from his pocket. “Did she say anything else?”

“She wanted to know the words of Alaundo’s prophecy.” The sage’s eyes shifted in Tanalasta’s direction. He hesitated a moment, giving Vangerdahast a somewhat more obvious cue than necessary, then said, “You know the one, don’t you, Xanthon? ‘Seven scourges, five that were, one of the day…’ “

“Xanthon!” Vangerdahast spun instantly, flinging the silken scrap in the direction of the ghazneth imposter.

Had he not been slowed by a pounding head and aching joints, he might have been quick enough to catch the phantom. As matters were, however, Xanthon was already gone. Vangerdahast’s magic web spattered across the floor and wall, encasing dozens of snakes and an untold number of insects.

Alaphondar shrieked in pain, and Vangerdahast swung his glowing wand around to see the imposter clinging to the sage from below, claws sunk deep into the old man’s flanks. The extra weight was slowly dragging both Alaphondar and Owden down toward the poisonous tangle on the floor, but Xanthon was not content to wait for his swarms to finish the job. He drew his head back and stretched up to bite Alaphondar’s neck.

Vangerdahast leveled his wand at Xanthon’s temple and uttered his command word. There was a deafening crack and a blinding flash, then the thud of a body slamming into a wall. Still blinking the blindness out of his eyes, the wizard reached out and caught Owden by the back of the cloak.

“Are you still flying?” he asked.

“For now,” came the reply.

As Vangerdahast’s vision cleared, he saw that his lightning bolt had knocked Xanthon into the morass of sticky filaments strewn across the far side the room. The imposter hung sideways on the wall, struggling against his bonds and spewing foul curses on Azoun’s name. He still bore a faint resemblance to Tanalasta, but the illusion was no longer strong. The ghazneth had suffered no damage, of course, and the sticky filaments of web were fast growing translucent, but he would remain trapped for at least a few moments.

Vangerdahast turned to check on Alaphondar. The old sage hung limp but breathing in Owden’s arms, the long gashes in his flank already puffy and red with purulence. The wizard laid a gentle hand on his friend’s arm.

“Tanalasta is safe?”

“For now,” Alaphondar replied. “She is with Alusair.”

“You are sure?”

When the sage nodded, Vangerdahast drew his iron dagger and looked back to Xanthon. The phantom’s eyes turned orange with fear, and he began to struggle even more fiercely than before. One arm came free, and he began to hack at the web with the sharp talons at the ends of his fingers.

“Not this time, traitor,” hissed Vangerdahast. “Now you pay.”

The royal magician uttered a quick incantation, then hurled his iron dagger across the room. The weapon took Xanthon square in the chest, splitting the sternum and sinking to the hilt. The ghazneth thrashed about madly, shrieking in anguish and trying to jerk free of the web. When the struggle continued for several moments with no sign of abating, Vangerdahast realized he would have to help matters along. Already, Xanthon had torn his back and one leg free.

The wizard passed his glowing wand to Owden, then reached for the priest’s weapon belt. “I need a hammer. Let me borrow your mace.”

That was enough for Xanthon. He plucked the iron dagger from his chest and began to slash, hacking at his own flesh in his haste to escape. Vangerdahast fumbled frantically with Owden’s mace, struggling to free the weapon and pull it past Alaphondar’s groaning form. By the time he had the head loose, Xanthon was standing upright on the floor, black blood pouring from the gaping hole in his chest.

The phantom hurled the iron dagger at Vangerdahast, then turned and fled through the door. Only the wizard’s magic shielding kept the knife from opening his skull.

Vangerdahast cursed, then caught Owden’s eye and glanced at Alaphondar. “Can you save him?”

Owden scowled, clearly insulted by the question. “Of course, but I will need a safe place to work-and for him to rest.”

“Then I will give you one.” Leaving Owden’s mace hanging half out of its belt ring, Vangerdahast reached into Alaphondar’s weathercloak. “Pardon me, my friend.”

He grabbed a pocket by the outside lining and tore it free, then held the resulting pouch in the air. Keeping one eye on the door lest Xanthon return, he spread the pocket and spoke a long incantation. When he finished, the pocket mouth expanded to the size of a trap door. Vangerdahast released the pouch, and it continued to hover in the air.

“You can take refuge in there. Pull the mouth in after you and no one can touch you-they won’t even know you’re there.” Vangerdahast drew the mace from Owden’s belt. “And don’t come out until you hear me calling-even if it seems like tendays. Time will be strange inside, so it may be that only a matter of seconds has passed out here.”

Owden glanced at his mace and cocked a brow. “And what are you going to do?”

“Avenge a betrayal,” Vangerdahast said. “And stop a scourge.”

“No!” Alaphondar’s voice was barely a whisper “The door no man can close… you’ll open it!”

“It appears Xanthon has already opened that door.”

Vangerdahast looked away, peering through the chamber’s profane darkness into the adjacent passageway.

“And I am going to slam it in his face.”

The sliver rotated in Vangerdahast’s palm, pointing around the corner into the swarming darkness of the lower keep. The wizard floated to the far wall to peer into the next section of corridor. When he found nothing lurking in ambush except more snakes and insects, he eased forward and continued down the passageway. With three different spells shielding him from harm, he was not overly concerned about being attacked-but a wise hunter treated his prey with respect.

The corridor continued past another half a dozen doors, all as rotten and slime-caked as the first. The air was warmer and more fetid than ever, though thankfully it no longer made the royal magician feel quite so ill. Before parting ways, Owden had insisted on casting a few spells of his own, calling upon Chauntea to guard the wizard against the disease, poison, and evil of the place. To Vangerdahast’s surprise, his strength had quickly returned, and even the doors seemed to swirl away from him as it passed. This small service could not make him embrace Tanalasta’s royal temple, of course-but he would not be above saying a prayer or two of thanks when everyone returned to Suzail.

As Vangerdahast approached the next corner, the sliver in his palm stood on end. This perplexed him, until he rounded the bend and the tiny piece of wood fell flat again, then swiveled around to point back into the corner. The wizard turned around and drifted lower to inspect the area. He had traded his glowing wand for Alaphondar’s commander’s ring so his hands would be free to fight, but the ring’s light was even more limited than that of his wand. He had to descend to within an arm’s length of the floor before he noticed the ribbons of yellow fume spiraling down through a tangle of red-banded snakes.

Vangerdahast pressed his borrowed mace to the floor. There was a slight shimmering and a momentary resistance, then the head of the weapon passed out of sight. Vangerdahast frowned, wondering if this was the “marsh door” Xanthon had referred to while impersonating Tanalasta. Clearly, the ghazneth had been trying to lure his “rescuers” into some sort of trap, and the royal magician suspected that had been the purpose of the entire band for some time now-at least since his return from Arabel.

But why? The reason seemed painfully obvious:

Tanalasta’s royal religion was the seventh scourge of Alaundo’s prophecy, “the one that will be,” and only Vangerdahast could stop the princess from opening the “door no man could close.” Determined to be rid of the only one who could stop them, the ghazneths had lured the wizard into an ambush. The explanation made perfect sense to the royal magician, and he was determined that the ghazneths would never have a chance to make the princess one of their own.

Vangerdahast pulled the mace out of the floor and jammed it into his belt, then plucked an apple seed from his cloak pocket and let it fall. As it dropped, he made a quick twirling motion and spoke a few words of magic. A small whirlpool formed in the shimmering floor, then abruptly opened into a dark, man-sized hole. Vangerdahast selected a wand from inside his cloak, flung a quick firebolt through the opening to discourage thoughts of a surprise attack, and followed the flames down into the darkness.

The firebolt seemed to plummet forever, growing steadily smaller as it streaked away. Though Vangerdahast never touched any walls, he had the sense of descending a narrow shaft into a hot, murky depth, an impression compounded by the yellow fume swirling so closely around him. Finally, when the firebolt had shrunk to a mere thumbnail of light, it hit bottom and fanned out into a crimson disk, briefly illuminating a lopsided plaza ringed by walls of rough-stacked stone and little square tunnel mouths.

With the sliver still standing in his palm, Vangerdahast continued his descent until the mordant odor of his own fire spell came faintly to his nostrils and the yellow fume started to swirl away into the darkness. He stopped and found himself hovering a few feet above a smoking mud flat, the plink-plink of dripping water echoing through a constant insect drone. Above his head, there seemed to be nothing but featureless darkness, with no sign of the shaft through which he had descended. He reached up and touched something spongy. When he pushed, it gave way beneath his hand, not quite water and too resilient to be mud, yet far more solid than the passage he had come down.

“There are many ways to enter, but only one way to leave,” hissed Xanthon Cormaeril, sounding as angry as he did pained, “but why worry? Surely a great wizard you can find a way home!”

Vangerdahast spun toward the voice and saw a coarse net flying into the tiny radius of his light spell. He reacted instantly, lowering his wand and speaking the command word. The fire bolt flashed through the net and exploded against the chest of a dark silhouette, hurling the figure into a wall of stacked stone. A tremendous clattering filled the chamber, then the remains of the net entangled the wizard, bouncing him off the ceiling and dragging him down to rebound off a wall.

Vangerdahast landed face down on the muddy floor, bent backward with his feet resting against a wall behind him-a rather painful position for a man of his age. He wasted no time rolling out of it, then pushed his wand through the net and swiveled around, spraying fire.

The flames missed Xanthon, but they did illuminate the entire plaza. It was a muddy circle no more than ten paces across, full of humming insects and ringed by the ramshackle houses of a long-abandoned goblin warren. The compact buildings presented a nearly solid facade of stacked stone, broken only by crooked rows of squinting windows and tilted doorways no higher than a man’s belt. In the heart of the plaza lay a shallow depression filled with stagnant water.

As the glow of Vangerdahast’s fire bolts began to fade, Xanthon rose from the rubble of a demolished building and peered over the jagged remains of a wall. All semblance to Tanalasta had vanished completely. Xanthon’s face had become a skeletal monstrosity, with an arrow-shaped nose and a slender tuft of coarse beard nearly hidden beneath his aura of flying insects. The dagger wound Vangerdahast had inflicted earlier was barely visible, a puffy-edged slit whose edges had already closed.