Crusade (8 page)

The king looked down at his ceremonial uniform. The purple surcoat was embroidered with thread spun from platinum and gold, and the hose were woven from the finest imported silk from Shou Lung. Azoun didn’t like the outfit much; he considered it gaudy. It was, however, necessary for him to wear it in the formal crowning ceremony that was to precede his public address.

Straightening an epaulet, Azoun said, “I suppose I’m ready to begin. I just wish we didn’t have to make such a production out of this.”

“If you wish to—”

Azoun quickly held up a hand. “I know, Vangy. An emphasis on pageant today will help to convey the crusade’s importance.” He moved to the window and looked out on the inner bailey. Servants and messengers rushed from the castle to the gate, their hurried pace an indication of the day’s importance.

“We should go, Your Highness.”

Azoun watched a page, who wore the royal purple, rush from the keep and hurry past the gatehouses. The sight reminded him of an errand he had assigned to the royal wizard earlier that morning. “Any news from Zhentil Keep?” the king asked as he turned to his advisor.

The wizard spun about abruptly and headed through the door in an effort to move Azoun toward the throne room.

“Actually, I did receive a message from the Zhentish hierarchy just before I came to get you,” the wizard noted quietly. He bowed in response to a guard’s salute as he and the king entered the drafty stone corridor, then added, “They’re sending someone to talk to you about the Tuigan tomorrow.”

Azoun stopped short. The wizard took a step or two past the king, then wheeled about. “So soon?” Azoun exclaimed. “That doesn’t give us much time to prepare.”

Vangerdahast hooked an arm around the king’s elbow and started walking again. “I believe that’s the whole idea, Your Highness.”

Queen Filfaeril was waiting in the throne room when Azoun and Vangerdahast got there. Crowds of musicians and nobles filled the long, sumptuously appointed hall, waiting for the king to arrive. Handmaidens straightened the queen’s long dress of lavender silk as the royal steward ran to the king and announced that his crown, scepter, and medallion—the trappings of his heritage—were ready. Vangerdahast left the king’s side without any leave-taking and went to find the other royal wizards who were to participate in the ceremony.

Azoun soon joined his wife near the large, ornately carved wooden thrones that dominated the front of the hall. The queen already wore the symbol of her office—a small but beautiful silver crown. The white metal seemed to glow around Filfaeril’s golden hair and catch the blue in her eyes. After nodding a silent greeting to his wife, the king took his chain of state from the spot on his throne where it traditionally rested. The thick gold chain felt reassuring in Azoun’s hands as he lifted it over his head. The gold medallion had a skillfully wrought dragon, guardant and statant, covering its entire face.

Next, the steward solemnly presented the king’s crown, couched on a pillow of pure purple silk. Everyone in the room bowed as Azoun reached for the bejeweled crown and lifted it.

Gold, silver, and gems twinkled in the sunlight streaming in from the stained glass windows lining the throne room as Azoun studied the crown. The sinewy, lithe form of a dragon curled around its rim, and the monster’s head reared, openmouthed, at the headpiece’s front. A priceless wine-red ruby stood captured in the dragon’s open jaws, throwing off tiny, enthralling beams of light. This crown—the most ancient of three possessed by the king—was only used for very special occasions. Azoun wondered how many Cormyrians had ever seen this particular artifact as he placed it on his head.

Finally the steward, still bowed, presented the king’s scepter. Like a vine, a slender, scaled dragon curled around the two-foot-long staff from tip to crown. A glittering, golden head, like that of a mace, topped the scepter. The king grasped the staff firmly and held it outstretched toward the hall. The crowning was complete.

“Arise, subjects,” Azoun said formally, repeating the ancient rite. “Look upon your king.”

That said, he glanced around the throne room and found that the procession was ready, filed neatly into rows that would fall in line behind him and Filfaeril as they left the hall. All that remained now was for the king to lead the nobles to the Royal Gardens, where the speech was to occur. Taking a deep breath, Azoun turned to his wife and smiled, then started through the room.

Drums rattled softly, marking a slow cadence for the parade. Azoun and Filfaeril reached the center of the room, and Vangerdahast, accompanied by a few other mages, moved into place behind the king and queen. Next came the nobles, then a contingent of the king’s guard, then a few musicians. In all, forty people walked through the castle’s halls. A few servants and guards stood in the corridors, bowing as their king passed by, but most of the keep’s staff was assembled outside, in the castle’s inner bailey.

The king moved quickly through the bailey, the large open courtyard inside the castle’s high stone wall. Occasionally Azoun nodded to a familiar servant or knight as he made his way out of the southern gate. The trumpets called almost continually once the procession reached the open air outside the walls. The music of expertly played instruments mixed with the loud roar of the drums in the blue sky.

Animated by nervous excitement, the crowd milled restlessly outside the keep, waiting for their king and queen to walk slowly past. The procession, almost mindless of the masses, kept the castle’s sun-bleached walls on their right and made their way through the cheering throng to the gardens at the rear of the keep. The trumpets blared more loudly as Azoun and his entourage approached the castle’s western corner.

Even that pompous heralding couldn’t completely drown out a louder, more insistent noise.

“Can you hear that?” Filfaeril whispered in Azoun’s ear. Turning his head slightly, he listened. High, gray stone walls still stood between the king and the Royal Gardens, the location of his speech. Despite this barrier, the blaring trumpets, and rumbling drums, he could hear the Cormyrians gathered there. By the time the procession reached the westernmost tip of the wall, the murmuring crowd collected outside the walls drowned out even the musicians.

As the king rounded the corner into the gardens, Vangerdahast gave a signal. On the battlements, the line of trumpeters snapped to attention. The brightly colored pennants hanging from their instruments flapped in the breeze. The crowd grew louder, more anxious.

With almost military precision, the royal wizard glanced toward the handful of mages who stood with him. At his nod, a fat, balding wizard started to weave a spell. He was joined by a stooped old woman and a pock-faced young boy. The three sorcerers mumbled incantations and traced obscure patterns in the air. Suddenly, simultaneously, they stopped and nodded at Vangerdahast.

The paunchy wizard winked at Azoun, then signaled the trumpeters along the wall again. They, in turn, lifted their polished brass to their lips and blew. A single high, clear note rang out over the gardens. Thanks to the spells cast by the wizards, the trumpeters’ call didn’t stop there. All over Suzail, no matter where he was, each Cormyrian citizen heard the note as if he were standing at the foot of the wall, before Azoun’s keep.

“Good luck, Your Highness,” Queen Filfaeril said softly. She reached down and squeezed Azoun’s hand for an instant.

The king smiled at his wife warmly, then strode through the garden. The procession followed behind Azoun as he climbed briskly onto the large wooden platform that had been built at the garden’s edge especially for the speech. When he reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto the broad, polished deck, King Azoun looked out over hundreds and hundreds of people.

He glanced back quickly at Vangerdahast, who was only then clearing the last step onto the platform. The gray-bearded old man bent over, winded after chasing the king up the stairs. Finally he took a deep breath and stood. The other wizards had joined him by now, and together they softly repeated their incantation, this time directing the spell at their monarch.

Azoun thought he saw a small, intense spark of blue-white light form in the air in front of the wizards, but before he could focus on the spark, the spell was complete and the ember disappeared. He felt a sharp, burning prickle in his throat as he turned back to the milling throng.

“My people,” the king said, and his words called through the entire city.

A thousand eyes looked up at Azoun from the Royal Gardens. Nobles with spyglasses lined the roofs of their homes to the north of the keep and watched the king. He, in turn, looked out on the sea of faces and smiled. He saw respect and awe and, perhaps, a little fear there. Those looks, the wide-eyed faces, momentarily eclipsed the speech Azoun had prepared in his mind. A warmth, a feeling of paternal duty and love, now filled the king’s thoughts.

“My friends and countrymen,” King Azoun said, correcting himself. “Faerun is in great danger, and I need your help.” He paused then, and let his subjects realize that he was asking them for assistance, that he needed them.

That fact alone would have shocked most of the throng into silence, but the intensity and emotion in Azoun’s voice fell upon the crowd and riveted them in place. Throughout the city, smiths put down their hammers and shipwrights lay down their awls, clerics put aside their holy books and tutors let their students set down their grammars and writing tablets.

From where he stood, near the garden’s edge, John the Fletcher couldn’t see Azoun’s face, but he imagined it was dark with passion. He’d never been closer to the king than he was that day, not even when Azoun had opened the previous year’s spring fair, only a few hundred feet from his shop. John’s proximity to the monarch made him happy, and the craftsman listened intently as Azoun described the Tuigan menace and the plight of Thesk and Rashemen.

“I’m not in this to help witches or foreigners,” Mal grumbled. A jowl-heavy baker held up a flour-covered finger and shushed the warrior. Mal scowled, but held his tongue. Silently John said a prayer of thanks that the warrior hadn’t started a fight with the fat man.

On the platform, Azoun was warming to the topic, falling into the same impassioned argument he’d used on some of his nobles to gain their support. “But the horsewarriors threaten more than our neighbors to the east,” the king said, waving an open hand toward the horizon. “No. The Tuigan will not be content with that end of the Inner Sea, nor will they be happy if they conquer the Dales or Sembia.”

Azoun ran his gaze slowly over the crowd, letting their expectation of his next words build for a moment. He could sense in their expressions that he’d won many of his subjects over already. “Do you know what else they want?” the king asked softly.

A ripple of hesitant answers rolled over the crowd. Azoun heard a few of these replies, and they revealed the names of his people’s fears. He singled out some and used them as rallying cries.

“Will we let the horsewarriors take our land?” the king asked.

The crowd shouted a ragged reply of “No!” and “Never!”

Azoun balled his hands into tight, quivering fists and held them in front of him. “Will we let the horsewarriors take our homes?”

“No!” the people screamed. Men and women mirrored the king’s stance, holding their own fists clenched before them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Azoun saw that a few of the guards that lined the platform to either side of him were shouting with the crowd.

At the garden’s edge, Razor John felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he screamed his reply to Azoun’s challenge. He glanced at Mal and Kiri, and saw that they, too, were caught up in the king’s speech. In fact, almost everyone around the fletcher seemed to be shouting his or her defiance to the Tuigan threat.

Everyone, John realized, except a lone man, who stood next to the fat baker. He was tight-lipped and rigid, as if immobilized. Thin, almost emaciated, the man stood silently, his hard gaze locked on the stage.

The fletcher stared at the man for a moment, mesmerized by the contradiction he presented in the wildly screaming crowd. The rigid, green-clad man didn’t notice John’s gaze, though, as he stiffly pulled his tattered forest-green cloak a little tighter around his shoulders. He narrowed his eyes and glared at the king on the stage.

“Will we let the horsewarriors take our lives?” Razor John heard Azoun cry. A unified reply went up, and people raised their fists into the air. The fletcher glanced back at the platform and saw that the crowd again mirrored the king’s stance. When John returned his gaze to who seemed to be the one silent person in the gardens, he saw that the ragged man had pulled a rolled, yellowing piece of parchment from under his tattered cloak.

He held the scroll up quickly, and his lips began to move. Because of the shouting, John couldn’t tell if he was actually speaking. No one else seemed to be paying attention to the tight-lipped man, so John was the only one who saw the parchment he held in his bony fingers begin to glow with a pale red luminescence.

For a moment, the light puzzled the fletcher. Then the realization dawned on him: The man was casting a spell.

“I challenge every able-bodied citizen of Suzail,” Azoun continued from the stage. “Citizens from any part of Cormyr. Be prepared to help me to defend our country.”

The crowd roared, and John looked quickly from the glowing paper to the platform. “No!” he cried.

Shoving Mal out of his way, the fletcher lunged toward the assassin. He was too late. A second before Razor John touched the man’s torn and threadbare surcoat, the parchment disappeared in a gout of red-orange flame.

Three things happened at once.

Azoun had just told the crowd that they should report to the city watch to sign up for the crusade. The king was about to inform them that several churches devoted to gods of Good were ready to enlist volunteers, too. He never got the chance.

A pinpoint of red light arched from the crowd and sped toward the stage. As it got closer to the king, it grew larger and larger, until, at last, it resembled nothing less than a miniature sun, blazing toward the platform. The ball of fire singed the hair of those it passed over and blinded those foolish enough to look directly at it. It left a trail of smoke and the smell of burned skin in its wake.