Beyond the High Road (23 page)

Rowen’s uneasy expression changed to one of true distress. “We’d better hurry.”

He reached down, and Tanalasta gave him her hand. Instead of helping her out of the hole, however, he slipped the commander’s ring off her finger.

“Untie the saddle packs.” He turned back to the mare. “We’ll use the ring as a decoy.”

“Don’t you think that trick’s getting old?” Tanalasta asked, climbing from the hole. “It barely worked last time.”

“It’s a new trick to this one.”

Rowen was using both hands to tie the ring into the mare’s mane, so he simply nodded northward. The first ghazneth was still circling over the maze of canyons, the golden halo around its head now faded to the point that she could make out the outline of a haggish head, but that was not the cause of his concern. A second dark speck was coming out of the north, growing larger even as she watched. The princess scrambled to the mare’s flank and began to undo the saddle packs.

“Tie a loose knot,” she said. “I know a decoy is our best escape, but this horse has been good to me. I’d like to give her a chance.”

“Done.” Rowen stepped back, leaving the glowing commander’s ring fastened to the mare’s mane by a loose but complicated knot. “Without a load to carry, I give her a better chance than us of getting home.”

“That only seems fair,” said Tanalasta.

The princess pulled the saddle packs free, then raised her hand high and slapped the mare hard on the flank. The beast bolted south, heading for the deep canyon that separated the two Mule Ear peaks. Tanalasta quickly pulled her bracers off and slipped them into the saddlebags, then unclasped her weathercloak and checked herself for any other magic that might give them away.

Once she felt satisfied she was radiating no magic, she asked, “Which way?”

Rowen nodded southwest past the face of the Mule Ears. “Go ahead. You’ll see the hoof prints in about twenty paces. I’ll cover our trail.”

Though she did not like being separated from the ranger with the ghazneth so near, the princess saw the wisdom of his plan and set off at a steady run. As Rowen had promised, she soon came to a narrow trail of hoof prints left by Alusair’s company. She pulled her cloak from her shoulders and began to sweep the dusty ground as she ran, cursing Alusair’s sloppiness and doing what she could to help the ranger obliterate the tracks.

The hoof prints all but vanished twenty paces later, and Tanalasta realized that her sister had intentionally left an obvious trail to help Rowen determine the direction she had gone, but was now taking precautions. The princess continued to sweep away any tracks she noticed, but now the prints were few and far between. She shifted her own tactics, trying to stay on rocks or hard ground whenever possible and avoiding any bushes that might snap or snag as she dashed past.

The tiny speck grew steadily larger, becoming first a barely distinguishable V, then a tiny cross. Tanalasta found a series of four hoof prints turning slightly southward. She swept them away and adjusted her own course and found herself climbing a small ridge. The princess glanced back. Seeing Rowen less than fifty paces behind her, she decided to risk crossing the crest and dashed up the slope at her best sprint.

By the time Tanalasta neared the top, the approaching ghazneth appeared nearly as large as her thumb. She dropped to her hands and scrambled the rest of the way on all fours, taking care to step only on stones, and to keep the sparse brush between her and the approaching phantom. She crossed the summit itself on her belly, then ducked behind a bush and turned to watch the phantom.

Rowen was still ten paces from the hilltop when the thing grew large enough that she could make out the shape of its wings. She hissed a quiet warning to the ranger, then motioned him down. He fell to his belly and rolled beneath a bush, covering himself with his mottled cloak and growing almost invisible, even to Tanalasta.

They waited, exhausted and huffing, as the ghazneth flew past less than half a mile from the crest of the ridge.

It started to swerve toward the withered sycamore, then veered off over the canyons toward its golden-haloed fellow.

Tanalasta rose from her hiding place and motioned the ranger over the ridge. “Now, Rowen-and hurry!”

Rowen rolled from beneath his bush and swept his cloak across the ground quickly, then scrambled over the ridge beside Tanalasta. “You are quite… a runner,” he gasped. “I didn’t… know if I could catch up.”

“Fear will do that to you.” Tanalasta turned to angle down the ridge in the direction of Alusair’s trail. “You’d have no trouble keeping up if you were as terrified as I am.”

Rowen came up beside her. “If I’m not frightened, it’s only because I have nothing to lose. You … you’ll be queen some day. Why did you pull away from Vangerdahast?”

“The king commanded me to find Alusair,” she said. “There is something he wanted me to tell her.”

“No,” said Rowen. “That is an excuse, not a reason. Even if you and Vangerdahast were not so open about your disputes, the air between you is as taut as a plow lead.”

They reached the bottom of the ridge and dropped into a broad trough, with the craggy face of the Storm Horns soaring up on the south and the ridge rising more gently to the north. Rowen used his cape to sweep away four hoof prints leading directly up the furrow. Tanalasta glanced over her shoulder and found the sky mercifully free of ghazneths-at least for the moment.

“You’re trying to coerce him… into something,” huffed Rowen. “What?”

Tanalasta flashed a scowl in his direction-then stumbled on a rock and nearly fell. “Even if you were… right,” she said, now starting to gasp herself. “It is not for you to question a royal princess.”

“It is now, Princess.” Rowen emphasized her title. “When you did not go with Vangerdahast, you made it my duty to ask.”

“Very well.” The princess was finding it more difficult to maintain the pace, though Rowen only seemed to be growing stronger. “I know you’re familiar with how Aunadar Bleth embarrassed me. If I am to … rule well, I must win the respect of my subjects back. I won’t do that by teleporting to safety every time there is the slightest danger.”

“No.” Rowen stopped running.

Tanalasta halted two paces later and turned around to face him. “What are you doing, Rowen?”

“You do not earn people’s respect by lying to them,” said the ranger. “That is how you lose it.”

Tanalasta glanced at the sky behind him and saw two dark specks weaving back and forth through the air. “We have no time for this.”

“You do not need to win my respect, Princess,” said Rowen. “You have already done that with your bravery and your intelligence. Now, please show me that you respect me.”

Tanalasta rolled her eyes. “Then can we go?”

Rowen nodded.

“Very well.” Her gaze dropped, and she found it impossible to raise it again. “If you must know, I stayed because of you.”

“Me?”

Tanalasta nodded. “You are certainly aware of the royal magician’s concerns that I may be growing too old to provide an heir for the realm.”

“Those concerns are shared by many,” said Rowen. “But I hardly see-“

“Do you want to hear this or not?” Tanalasta snapped. She waved a hand toward the two ghazneths. “We don’t have much time.”

Rowen swallowed. “Please.”

“My father’s birthday celebration was a thinly disguised effort to prod me into marrying Dauneth Marliir. Everyone knows this.” Tanalasta paused to grind her teeth, then continued, “What they don’t know is that when the invitation arrived at Huthduth, I told the High Harvestmaster I would be returning to Cormyr to wed him.”

“And what did the High Harvestmaster say to change your mind?”

“That he wished me well and knew Dauneth to be a good man.” Tanalasta’s reply was sharp. “My doubts arose later, when I was out alone, taking my leave of the mountains.”

Rowen nodded and said nothing, as though he did not see anything alarming in the crown princess wandering orc-infested mountains alone.

Tanalasta continued, “When I reached the headwaters of the Orcen River, the air filled with the sound of song-birds and the light turned the color of gold. A magnificent gray stallion came out of the forest bearing an old crone with eyes of pearl and armor of silver lace, and when I called to her, the woman guided her mount down to the water across from me. She would not speak, but when the horse drank, an inky darkness passed from its nostrils into the stream. The grass along the shore withered before my eyes. On the hillside above me, the pine trees browned and lost their needles.”

“And this was not a dream?” Rowen asked.

“I was as awake as we are now,” Tanalasta replied. “A single tear ran down the crone’s cheek, and she shook her head at me.”

“And you think-“

“I did not think at all,” Tanalasta said, cutting him off. “I was so frightened that I fled without regard for how far I ran or what direction. Before I knew it, I was lost and the day was nearly gone. After a time, I came to a copse of willow and choke-cherry so thick I could barely pass. I would have turned back, save that I heard a woman giggling and thought she might tell me how to return to the monastery.”

Rowen’s expression grew apprehensive. “And?”

“I fought my way through the thicket to the shores of a small pond, where the young woman I had heard was watering her mount from the pool. The beast was as white and luminous as a diamond, but even then I did not realize what it was until I called out to ask the way to the monastery and the creature raised its head.”

“It was a unicorn.” It was not a question.

“The golden born, the cloven hooves, everything,” Tanalasta confirmed. “Instead of answering me, the woman leaped laughing onto the unicorn’s back and vanished into the forest. Flowers and shrubs rose to blossom in its hoof prints.”

Rowen stood without speaking for a long time, then finally asked, “And when it was gone, you found you had been at the monastery all along?”

“Almost,” Tanalasta said, surprised. “I was at my favorite lake. How did you know?”

“Had you stiff been lost, it would not have been much of a vision.” Rowen’s expression changed from apprehensive to dazed. “And you think I am this unicorn?”

Tanalasta shrugged. “You’re the best candidate so far-and I doubt it was a coincidence that I found your Faith Planting at Orc’s Pool.”

Rowen shook his head. “But my family…”

“Now who is being dishonest?” Tanalasta asked. In the sky behind Rowen, one of the ghazneths peeled off and started south after her mare. “You know as well as I do that the vision wasn’t about politics. It was about love.”

Rowen paled visibly and seemed too stunned to speak.

Tanalasta took his hand and turned to continue their flight. “Now can we go?”

Filfaeril sat alone in the apse of a silent throne room, staring down a long ambulatory bounded by double-stacked arches and tall columns of fluted marble. Though the chamber smelled of mildew and rot, it had been immaculately adorned in broad, vertical bands of brown and gold. The pattern was a simple one favored by Cormyrean royalty more than a thousand years earlier, when the kingdom had barely extended past the Starwater, and Arabel had been little more than a cluster of crossroad inns. The queen could not imagine any family of Arabellan nobles building such an archaic reception hall-nor, having gone to the expense of building it, allowing the place to grow as dank and musty-smelling as this one. It just did not make sense.

Then again, nothing made sense since Vangerdahast’s return. She did not understand why he had brought the phantom with him, or why the lurid creature had abducted her only to abandon her here and wander off. Was the thing that confident of its prison, or had it simply forgotten her-and what was it, anyway?

As important as the answers to these questions were, they were not the ones to which Filfaeril’s mind kept returning. More than anything, she wanted to know what had happened to Azoun and Tanalasta-and to Vangerdahast. And those answers she would not find in this throne room.

The queen forced herself to remain seated for a while longer, using the time to study her environs and look for any hint of her captor’s presence. In the event of an abduction, Vangerdahast’s instructions were quite clear. First, do as little as possible and wait for the war wizards to show up. Second, avoid giving a captor any excuse to harm her. Third, fight or flee only if death looked imminent. Vangerdahast had told her many times that once the war wizards were alerted to a royal’s danger, a rescue company would arrive within minutes. But Filfaeril had been sitting on the throne for hours, and she had seen even less of the rescue company than of her captor. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the royal magician’s plan.

Filfaeril stood and descended the dais. She paused to see if the phantom would show itself. When it did not, she walked down the ambulatory to the bronze grillwork gates at the end. Her captor had not bothered to shut them, so she stepped through… and found herself looking up the ambulatory toward the dais, as though she had merely turned around.

Filfaeril spun on her heel and found the gates hanging ajar between the same two pillars, looking out on the same gloomy foyer and huge oaken doors as before. She pushed the gate open and walked through. Again, she found herself looking up the ambulatory toward the two wooden thrones on the dais. Frowning, the queen pulled the gate closed, then opened it and stepped through-to the same result.

The queen slammed the bronze gate behind her, then started up the ambulatory. She had suspected all along that the phantom had not simply flown off and forgotten about her, but leaving the gate open was a hint of the creature’s true cruelty. As every good torturer knew, the secret to breaking a victim’s will lay in controlling her mind. Leaving the gate ajar had been a deliberate attempt to rob Filfaeril of hope. It had worked better than she cared to admit.

On her way back to the dais, she took the time to step through each of the arches along the ambulatory, but the result was always the same. She found herself standing on the opposite side of the room, facing the same arch through which she had come.