Beyond the High Road (28 page)

When Vangerdahast reached the gnarled sycamore tree, he found old Alaphondar exactly where he had expected: stumbling absentmindedly around the trunk, squinting at the glyphs and painstakingly copying them into his journal. So absorbed was the Royal Sage Most Learned that he did not notice the wizard’s presence until Cadimus nuzzled his neck-then he hurled his pencil and journal into the air, letting out such a shriek that half the company started up the hill to see what was wrong.

Vangerdahast signaled the riders to stop, then asked, “Well, old friend? Was it worth the trip?”

Alaphondar pushed his spectacles up his nose, then lifted his chin to regard the royal magician. “It’s curious, Vangerdahast-really quite strange.”

If the sage was irritated at being startled, his voice did not betray it. He simply retrieved his journal and pencil off the ground, then turned back to the tree and continued to work.

“These glyphs are First Kingate,” he said. “In fact, they are quite possibly Post Thaugloraneous.”

Vangerdahast had no idea what the sage was talking about. “First Kingate?” he echoed. “As in, from Faerlthann’s time?”

“That would be Faerlthannish, would it not?” Alaphondar peered over his spectacles, regarding Vangerdahast as though the royal magician were the under-educated scion of a minor family. “I mean First Kingate, as in Iliphar of the Elves.”

“The Lord of Scepters?” Vangerdahast gasped. “The first king of the elves?”

Alaphondar nodded wearily. “That would be First Kingate,” he said. “Approximately fourteen and a half centuries ago-a hundred years before Faerlthann was crowned. More than fifty years before the Obarskyrs settled in the wilderness, in fact.”

Vangerdahast glanced at the barren moors around them, trying to envision some unimaginably ancient time when they were covered with lush forest and home to a lost kingdom of elves.

“But the glyphs aren’t the interesting part,” said Alaphondar.

“They aren’t?”

The sage shook his head, then said, “This tree isn’t that old. In fact, it’s three hundred years too young.”

Vangerdahast knew better than to doubt the sage. “And you know this because…”

“Because of this.”

Alaphondar turned and ran his hand over the glyphs. Instantly, the raspy voice of an anguished elven maid filled the air, and the sound of nervous horses and astonished men rose behind Vangerdahast.

Alaphondar translated the song:

This childe of men, lette his bodie nourishe this tree.

The tree of this bodie, lette it growe as it nourishe.

The spirit of this tree, to them lette it return as it grewe.

Thus the havoc bearers sleepe, the sleepe of no reste.

Thus the sorrow bringers sow, the seeds of their ruine.

Thus the deathe makers kille, the sons of their sons.

Here come ye, Mad Kang Boldovar, and lie among these rootes.

When the song was finished, Vangerdahast gasped, “Boldovar?”

Alaphondar nodded excitedly. “You see?” The sage ran his finger along a set of curls that looked identical to every other set of curls. “He died three hundred years after these serpentine beaks passed out of vogue.”

“I’ll have to trust your judgment, old friend,” said Vangerdahast. He knew how to make the glyphs sing, but he could not read them-much less identify the era in which they had been inscribed. “What does it mean?’

“Mean?” Alaphondar looked confused. “Why, I couldn’t begin to tell you.”

“But we can conclude that the elf who inscribed these glyphs was over three hundred years old,” Vangerdahast prodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the Royal Scouts returning from their search for Tanalasta’s trail. Their lionar was riding up the hill to report.

“Oh yes,” Alaphondar prodded, “and more importantly, that she had been living away from her people for at least that long. Do you have any idea what that kind of loneliness would do to an elf?”

Vangerdahast eyed the glyphs, recalling their bitter words and the anguished tone of the song. “Yes. I’m afraid I do.”

Alaphondar started down the hill toward the hole that led beneath the roots. “Perhaps I’ll learn more in the burial chamber.”

“I’m afraid there won’t be time for that.” Vangerdahast turned to face the scouts’ lionar, who was reining his horse to a stop in front of the wizard. “We’ll be leaving directly.”

Alaphondar stopped in his tracks. “Leave?” he gasped, spinning around. “We can’t leave yet. It will take at least a day to sketch the site properly, and another day just to start the preliminary excavations.”

“We don’t have a day.” Vangerdahast looked into the sky and found no sign of the ghazneth. “We may not have even an hour.”

“But-“

“This is a military expedition, Alaphondar,” Vangerdahast interrupted, motioning the scouts’ lionar forward. “Our goal is to find the princesses and return them to Arabel-quickly.”

The exhilaration vanished from Alaphondar’s eyes. “Of course-how could I forget?” He started toward his horse, then had another thought and turned back to Vangerdahast. “Maybe you could go ahead…”

“You’ve seen two ghazneths now,” Vangerdahast said. “Do you really want to face one of them alone-or even with a dozen dragoneers at your back?”

Alaphondar grimaced, then turned toward his horse. “Forget I asked.”

Vangerdahast faced the lionar. “Did you find their trail?” The scout nodded, then pointed into the valley between the Mule Ear peaks. “We found a few old hoof prints. They’re heading south into the mountains.”

“That’s welcome news indeed,” Vangerdahast said, sighing in relief. “Maybe Tanalasta has finally come to her senses and decided the time has come to return to Cormyr.”

The air reeked of rank meat and mildewed earth, and in the cramped staleness of the tomb, Tanalasta felt feverish and dizzy. She had a queasy stomach, fogged vision, and goosebumps rising along her spine, and on the floor ahead lay something she did not really want to see. It was armored in tarnished plate and sprawled on its back, a sullied sword and battered shield lying on the stones to either side of it. An opulent growth of white mold had sprouted from the troughs of several clawlike rents across the breastplate, and the crown of the thing’s great helm had been staved in. The face and limbs were lost beneath a thick blanket of the same white mold sprouting from the splits in the armor, and only the crumpled, striking-hawk crest over its heart identified the corpse as that of Emperel Ruousk, Guardian of the Sleeping Sword.

Holding the smoky torch before her, Tanalasta slipped out of the entrance passage into the tomb itself. Like the last one she had visited, this grave was surrounded by a fine-meshed net of black roots, many of which had been cut away during the battle that killed Emperel. Tangled among the roots, she could see the same web of gossamer filaments she had noticed in the first tomb. The floor was littered with tatters of rotted leather, buttons, buckles, and the mineralized soles of a large pair of boots.

Tanalasta pocketed a handful of the detritus to examine later, then removed the rope from her waist and stepped over to Emperel’s body. Her queasy stomach revolted at the horrid fetor of the decaying corpse, and she barely managed to spin away before her belly emptied itself. When the retching ended, her temples were throbbing and her knees were trembling. The princess chided herself for being so qualmish, decay was as much a part of the life circle as growth, and it was an affront to the All Mother to treat it with aversion.

Tanalasta took a deep breath and returned to the body. Despite her determination, she felt weak and lightheaded and feared she would pass out if she touched the moldy thing. She briefly considered retreating and leaving Emperel lie, but it would have been an insult to the memory of a brave knight to bury him in a place of such evil. The princess jammed the butt of her torch into a crevice between two floor stones and picked up the warrior’s sword. She slid the flat of the blade under his back and, with a weary grunt, rolled him up on his side, then held him there with one arm while she fed the rope under his back.

By the time the princess finished, her joints were aching and she was out of breath. She trudged around the body and slipped the sword under the opposite side and felt something block it. She noticed the dark line of a satchel strap hidden beneath the white mold. Tanalasta used the sword tip to scrape the mold away, then took hold of the slimy strap and pulled the satchel from under Emperel’s body.

It was a small courier’s pouch, with a waterproof wax finish and a weather flap. Though the satchel was not closed tight, the flap was at least folded over the opening, and Tanalasta could think of only one reason Emperel would have been carrying an open pouch when he died.

“May the Great Mother bless you, Emperel Ruousk.”

The princess laid the slime-smeared satchel aside, then used the sword to roll Emperel’s body onto its side and pull the rope the rest of the way under his back. She tugged the line up under his arms, then tied a secure bowline knot and gave the rope three quick tugs. The line went taut, swinging Emperel around and dragging him toward the exit. When he came to the dirt wall below the passage, his head caught on the wall and tipped back, causing a muffled crack someplace in his neck.

Without thinking, Tanalasta reached behind his head and tipped it forward, sticking her hand into a fibrous mass of putrefying scalp and mold-coated hair. She fought back the urge to retch long enough to guide the body into the passage, then immediately grabbed a fistful of dirt and scoured the slime from her hand. Affront to the goddess or not, the princess simply felt too weak to abide having the stuff on her flesh.

Once her hand was relatively clean, Tanalasta returned to the pouch and opened the weather flap. Inside, she found a piece of charcoal, a pencil, a small leather-bound journal, some magic rings similar to her own-save for a striking-hawk signet, all standard issue for an officer of the Purple Dragons-and several small rolls of folded silk in relatively good condition. In the light of the flickering torch, Tanalasta unfurled the first of the silk rolls. It was about a foot wide, with two rough-cut edges that suggested it had been taken from a much larger bolt of cloth. The princess rolled it back up, then unfurled another.

This one had been rubbed with charcoal along the center, recording the smooth, erratically-fissured pattern of the bark of a white alder tree-and, in negative image, the familiar serpentine characters of ancient elven glyphs. The rubbing was rather fuzzy and difficult to read, but Tanalasta could make out the characters well enough to realize they were almost identical to the ones she had read in the moorlands several days ago. There was the peculiar epitaph enjoining a dead person’s body to nourish the tree, and the tree to yield that spirit back, “to them lette it return as it grewe.” Then there was the curse, condemning the “havoc bearers” to “kille the sons of their sons.” Only the last line, the summoning, was different:

Here come ye, Faithless Suzara, and lie among these rootes.

In her shock, Tanalasta cried out and let the silk slip from her fingers. Like King Boldovar, Suzara was an ancestor of hers-in fact, one of her very oldest ancestors. She had been married to Ondeth Obarskyr when be came to the wilderness and built his cabin in what would one day become the kingdom of Cormyr. In fact, the city of Suzail was named for her. It was always possible that the summons referred to some other Suzara, but Tanalasta found that unlikely. Suzara had never been a very popular name in Cormyr, carrying as it did a certain connotation of frailty and selfishness. After it had finally dawned on Suzara that she would never persuade her stubborn husband to return to the comforts of Impiltur, she had taken their youngest child and left without him.

Without bothering to reroll the silk, Tanalasta pulled another spool from the satchel and unfurled it. This one was the duplicate of the invocation she had readjust a few minutes before entering the tomb, on the buckeye tree above her head. It summoned a famous traitor, Melineth Turcasson, who had betrayed his King Duar-his trusting son-in-law-by selling the city of Suzail to a pirate band for five hundred sacks of gold.

The princess opened the rest of the silks in a flurry but found only the name of Lady Merendil, a naive fool who had thought to use an apprentice royal magician to lure the first Prince Azoun to an early grave. This name actually gave Tanalasta cause for relief, all the other traitors had been her ancestors.

Tanalasta pulled Emperel’s journal from the satchel. It was written right to left in High Halfling to foil uninvited readers, but the princess needed only a minute to recognize the trick and another minute to recall the basics of the ancient language. The first part of the journal was filled with unimportant entries detailing a two-day trip up the Moonsea Ride in preparation for investigating a series of reports claiming that the orcs were massing in the Stonelands. Matters grew more interesting once he entered the walled town of Halfhap, where a tenth of the local garrison had vanished while out searching for a murderer.

Apparently, a stranger had appeared in Halfhap one night raving drunk, boasting to anyone who would listen about how he was going to avenge his family’s unjust treatment at the king’s hands. When a tavern keeper had dared suggest that he take his business elsewhere, the stranger had used his bare hands to tear the man’s head from his shoulders, then went outside and vanished.

The local commander had sent a company of dragoneers after the murderer, but they had failed to return, and it was shortly afterward that Emperel had stopped at the garrison and learned of the strange events. After a few inquiries, Emperel had set out after the killer, tracking him to a giant, twisted fir tree where Halfhap’s missing company lay slain to a man. He had tracked the killer into a strange tomb beneath the tree and fought him there. During the battle, he had recognized the man as Gaspar Cormaeril, one of Aunadar Bleth’s collaborators who died during the Abraxus Affair, somehow returned to life. There was a note in the margin noting that later, after making a few inquiries when he returned to Halfhap for a new horse, he had decided the fellow was most likely Gaspar’s look-alike cousin, Xanthon.