by Ed Greenwood
Three women hung in the heart of this little refuge. Two of them had been jolted awake into trembling terror, to find themselves floating in the air amidst an inferno that had only touched them enough to leave wisps of smoke from their scorched hair drifting about their shoulders. Speechless in amazement and fear, they stared dumbly at the third woman.
She was a tall, slender figure in a long, close-fitting gown that descended to her ankles and rose into a high collar. Her boots were of gleaming black leather, capped at heel and toe with gold. The sleeves of her gown flared from the elbow, and they rippled as she lifted a hand that bore several rings to shape an almost careless ges shy;ture in the air. She had long, wild silver hair that curled around her in endless, restless streams, like waves breaking on a beach, and here and there among its silken sweep, rings gleamed, securely entwined in the tresses. The wild disorder of her hair was echoed in the careless gape of her gown, that laid bare her front from throat down to where the garment drew in to hold her breasts. She.wore, it could be seen, nothing under the gown.
Her eyes were two dancing flames of fearless, reck shy;less amusement. They held the gazes of both Nalam shy;bra and Karlae at once, and though neither maid could have said then or later what color those eyes were, they knew somehow that this woman would hurl danger all about them and all the world without warn shy;ing-and often did so-but that they were safe from her.
They stared at her in wonder as the flames roared on around them all, consuming the house of Blandras Nuin. From somewhere nearby came the crash of a falling beam, the hissing of a cistern boiling away, then more crashes. The sorceress in the dark gown wove another spell, her body moving in the air with wild, sensuous grace, and smiled at Nalambra and Karlae.
They hung trembling, not daring to think what might now befall-then, of course, it did. Flames smote them with a deafening bellow, and the maids were hurled helplessly up through the air, soaring high in the star-strewn night sky as the house exploded in a huge fire shy;ball beneath them.
Nalambra and Karlae found breath enough for fresh shrieks of terror as they tumbled into an ever-quickening descent, realizing numbly that they were going to die.
That cold and terrifying knowing froze their hearts and minds throughout their whirling descent down, down to soft, seated landings on the stone bench at the far end of the ember-strewn garden. As its cold stone shocked their bare thighs, and heaps of their own clothing spun out of nowhere to fill their laps, they had a brief glimpse of a dark-gowned figure standing in front of them, tiny lightning coiling and darting around her slender, uplifted arms. The lightning filled the cupped palms of the sorceress, there was a flash, and Nalambra and Karlae were blinking at the empty night in front of them.
The woman with the smile like a wolf was gone.
The palace that crowns the hill above Velprintalar is a slender-towered castle of green stone, beautiful to look upon. Most citizens of Aglarond gaze upon it from a safe distance, and take comfort in its reminder of the mighty magic that shields them against the dark and greedy grasp of Thay. A few have the boldness or business needs to venture into it, and most such penetrate only so far as a particular, memorable chamber.
It can be found not far beyond the darkly soaring forechamber of the palace, an audience chamber, one of nearly a dozen rooms in several buildings in the vicinity of Velprintalar that can be described as a throne room. This one was to the smaller, plainer end of Aglarond's array of throne rooms. Its walls were flame-gleaming sheets of burnished copper, and its floor a smooth expanse of scarlet tile broken only by the dark needle of an obsidian and cast metal throne that rose in dark, many-curved, irregular splendor like a watchful open hand, facing the distant entry door. A few chairs floated about this chamber, and a few plants also hung from nothing within its walls, their fronds trailing down gently as they drifted idly about. Something had caused them to cluster near the front right corner of the room this day, as the duty sorceress and the door steward sat in gently-wandering chairs and chatted, keeping within easy hearing of each other by the mage keeping one slip shy;pered foot hooked on the hilt of the steward's extended, scabbarded sword.
A dark and familiar figure appeared in the air nearby, descending to the tiles with a thump. The sorceress and the steward rose hastily to attention, but the Simbul paid them no heed. She was staring into nothingness and nodding slightly. After a moment she smiled and said, "Thank you, sister. May your city and the realm rising around it both prosper. Hesitate not to call on me if you have need."
She brought her gaze down to focus on them both, and murmured, "Roeblen, Azmyrandyr, and Thaltar. Three scores to settle, and time to teach Thay the lesson once more that a little mastery of magic and a lot of arrogance do not give one any right, divine or otherwise, to rule all Toril-or even a small corner of Faerun."
She opened her clenched hand, and the sorceress and the steward saw a tiny chip of stone riding in her palm. The queen of Aglarond looked down at it and chuckled. "Well of course I'm different. Gentle prudence governs my every imperial act."
She turned and set the chip of stone carefully on the seat cushions of her throne. "Undignified," she told it, "but I need you to be where they'll sit on you from time to time-and always when there feeling most regal and headstrong. Help them only if you feel they need it. You can be most useful to us all if they don't suspect your presence for as long as possible."
The stone under her fingers hummed, and her smile broadened. "Why, with pleasure, sister dear, and I’ll tell Elminster you charged me to do it, too!"
The Simbul gave the stone a gentle pat and turned away to face the sorceress and the steward. Her boots moved with uncanny silence, their soles walking on air a finger's width or so above the tile.
"Well met this fair evening," she greeted the two, a customarily imperious tone returning to her voice. "I need haste in this, so both of you go, and escort Evenyl, Thorneira, Phaeldara, and the Masked One hence. I've already mindspoken them to spare embarrassments, delays for dressing, and the like. Evenyl is down in the city, the Masked One will appear shortly in the Twilight Chamber, and the other two are in their apartments here. Go."
She gave them a gentle smile of dismissal and turned back to her throne, which began to wriggle and shake. Curved doors popped open and trays thrust forth. Hum shy;ming, the queen of Aglarond selected several wands and scepters from the compartments, but the duty sorceress and the steward did not tarry to watch. They exchanged grim glances and a hug that failed to confer the reas shy;surance it was meant to before they parted. The uncom shy;fortable fear was growing in them both that this was one of those times when there was a real risk that fair Aglarond would soon be left undefended against the enraged survivors of a ravaged Thay. That jaunty hum shy;ming of sad old ballads meant only one thing. In earnest, and uncaring of her own safety, the Simbul was truly going to war.
The fiery-haired, impish sorceress that some in Velprintalar call "the Small Fury"-the queen, of course, being the larger one-was the first to enter the audience chamber, striding in without ceremony. She was barefoot and tousle-haired, more or less wearing the first gown she'd had at hand to pull on, which happened to be the same rumpled one the captain of the palace guard had laughingly helped her to remove not long before. She'd curtly ordered away his hairy, fumbling hands as he tried to help her lace up and adjust this and shake out that, and told him that finding his own uniform, in all haste, might be a wise act. Roused and unsatisfied, she was not in the best of humors. This had better not be just another of the Simbul's wild whims….
Thorneira Thalance tossed her head back as her determined march along the warm tile brought her near the throne. As she slowed, she lifted her eyes for the first time, nostrils flaring in fresh irritation. Three dawn-to-lastcandle days of spell weaving, three days, and now the queen had to pull th-
Thorneira saw what loomed before her, and screamed. Her cry was echoed from the door behind her. Phael shy;dara, too, was staring at the thing in front of the thr
one. It stood ten feet tall or more, a toadlike, glimmer-eyed mass of loose, billowing gray- and pink-streaked flesh. Five or six eel-like limbs were plunging busily among its folds, stuffing wands and scepters and small, hovering pouches of spell components-which it snatched in curv shy;ing tentacles, like an octopus-out of sight inside itself, or rather, inside pouches of flesh that were opening like obscenely gaping wounds all over its wriggling body.
Thorneira raised her hands, not quite knowing what spell to hurl, and one large, dark toad eye expanded and split at the same time, receding like an opening iris to reveal the familiar face of the Simbul inside, her hair writhing around her in all directions in a dark, fleshy tent within the monstrous mass, as the silvery tresses manipulated the rippling movements of the sagging, toadlike body.
"Oh, you'll do fine," the Witch-Queen of Aglarond said sarcastically. "I call you here to take the throne while I flit away on a brief pleasure excursion, and you scream at the very sight of me then hesitate-hesitate, when Red Wizards could be slashing at the very heart of the realm with their spells-as to which spell you should use to trash my throne room!"
"I-ah-Great Lady-" Thorneira stammered, face flaming.
The Simbul winked, laughed heartily, and shot forth a tentacle to give the Small Fury an affectionate slap. "I'm sorry I startled you. I'll be done in a moment. Phaeldara, put away that wand."
The two summoned sorceresses relaxed, sinking into seats with identical sighs of mingled relief and exasper shy;ation, as the misshapen mound of flesh before them dwindled, roiled, tightened, then faded down to a more familiar form. The Witch-Queen of Aglarond stood before them, in a dark, bulging garment that looked like a second skin-that is, like the skin of some leathery beast that carried things about in a series of bulging pouches made of its own hide, and had decided to mate its flesh with the head and upright bipedal shape of the Simbul. She grinned at them, and struck a pose with a hand on her hip.
"Going hunting?" Phaeldara asked with a smile, the gems in her dark purple hair gleaming in the glow from the ceiling. The Simbul winked.
"Red Wizards, of course," Thorneira put in. Her queen pouted.
"Am I so predictable?" she cried, in mock sorrow. "Does Aglarond offer such limited opportunities?"
"For magical mayhem to the point of spellstorms, yes," came a dry voice from the doorway. The Masked One had arrived, her face hidden as always behind a fantastical mask. This one was long, narrow, and curved, resembling the mandibled head of a giant beetle. Its metal shone with a glass-green hue, and the silver runes that mounted its center caught and held all eyes that strayed to them; a useful thing if those eyes should belong to an armed foe. A magic of clinging mists eddied teasingly around the full, floor-sweeping dark blue state gown the sorceress wore beneath the helmlike mask. The bodice of the gown was unseen beneath a pectoral of polished metal plates attached to the bottom of the mask; similar tongues of flexible metal cloaked the Masked One's shoulders and upper back.
"By Mystra's vigilance, don't you get hot under all that?" Thorneira murmured.
"Yes," the Masked One replied cheerfully, as a small commotion at the door behind her announced the breathless arrival of the last of the four summoned sor shy;ceresses. Evenyl gave them all a little smile and a wave as she gasped. The Simbul nodded and stepped forward.
"I'm off to hunt Red Wizards-particular and not very exalted ones, so a few zulkirs may find unmolested time and personal stupidity enough to strike out at Aglarond while I'm away. I don't plan to be long, but for me plans always fall before whims, of course. Try not to lose the realm while I'm gone." The queen gave them all a wolflike smile, and lifted her hands to begin a spell.
"What should we do?" Phaeldara asked quickly. "I mean.." she gestured toward the throne.
The Simbul shrugged. "Take turns sitting on it. Pull each other's hair, have spitting contests, try jumping over more prone courtiers than each other-determine who rules however you please, or just take it in shifts. You're all capable enough. See how you take to com shy;manding without any warning. I'm off!"
Those last two words were almost a shout of glee. In silence the four sorceresses watched their queen become a whirlwind of darkness, a spinning net of golden sparks that quickened into a high-singing blur, then a puff of fading, drifting purple cloud that rolled past Thorneira's shoulder before it was entirely gone.
The last of the sorceresses to arrive looked at the empty throne and shivered. "Sometimes I wonder just how strong her sanity really is," Evenyl said softly. "She scares me."
"Thankfully for us all," the Masked One said gravely. "She scares the Red Wizards far more."
They all nodded soberly, then, one by one, looked at the waiting, beckoning throne. None of them made a move to go and sit on it.
The man seated at the black table wore garments of black and silver. One of his arms seemed to be more a thing of bladed metal below his elbow than an arm grasping the hilt of a blade whose upper works coiled around and caged his arm.
Spread out on the table in a careful array were cards, large, long and narrow plaques that seemed to be sheets of thin, polished quartz or some sort of ice hued, translu shy;cent stone, each one different. Their varicolored faces glowed and pulsed, seeming to respond in a quickening, dancing white fire as the man reached across them to touch one of the slender, spirelike pieces that stood here and there about the table. He moved it with all the care of a chess player, setting it down with a slow frown of consideration. In response, a line of flashing fire rippled across the cards.
It looked like a game of solitaire using enchanted cards and tokens, but at least one of those watching knew it to be magic as old as Netheril. "Table magic," some called it, but that was akin to a tutor one of the watchers had once overheard at Bonskil's Academy in Telflamm describing swordplay as "hitting sharpened sticks of metal together in opposition."
The man at the table moved another piece. It's some shy;thing he'd never have done if he'd known anyone-anyone at all-was watching.
If he'd known just who was watching, and why, he'd have fled screaming from the room.
Irlmarren watched the cards flash as fingers gloved in black and silver moved another piece, and felt fresh excitement stir within him. If only he could obtain some of those plaques, somehow, and the vedarren-he knew, now, that the pieces that glowed were "vedarren." The "gult," the ones that were always dark, were simply pieces of particular sorts of stone that dampened and bent magical flows to serve as anchors for the spells being built. He could make his own gult, but each vedar shy;ren, it seemed, needed an imprisoned life-of a creature that could work magic-within it, to awaken its glow. Learning how to make those might take a lifetime, might even be something forgotten by the spellcasters of today. He must seize some vedarren, somehow. It would be best if no one knew he'd taken them, and came howl shy;ing at his heels for their return. He would need time to master them, time undisturbed and in hiding, as this adventurer so foolishly assumed he was.
Irlmarren itched to touch, hold, and handle those plaques. If only he could work with them, experimenting alone as this man in the depths of his crystal ball was doing, long enough to learn to build many-layered enchantments.
He understood, now, why Halruaa had never fallen. Even all eight zulkirs standing together-and he could not think of anything beyond the rage of a revealed god that could make any eight zulkirs stand together-would hesitate in the face of spells built like this. A single table magic, if it was intricate enough and unflawed, could lash out like the spells of a dozen arch-wizards acting at once. Some would even outlast their first awakening, and respond to what had aroused them to lash out anew in specific, aimed ways. As many as seven of these could be hung on the edge of being unleashed, carried unseen and untouchable-so long as their tables, hidden elsewhere, remained undisturbed-as single words or symbols in a caster's mind, or in an innocent-looking bone token or earring.
If he could build enough of these, a zulkirate could be his. He could rule in Tha
y, he could build an empire, he could send mountains marching west to roll over Aglarond and fill in long reaches of sea and make Thay itself larger. Why, he could … wait for the treachery that was sure to unseat him.
Fresh fear stirred cold fingers along Irlmarren's spine. He'd found this man, a minor mage rumbling with things stolen from a tower in Halruaa, but still too well guarded for Irhnarren of Tyraturos to hope to reach, let alone overcome.
There must be scores-could well be hundreds-of mages in Halruaa who could work table magics as swiftly and deftly as a marketplace juggler. Hadn't he seen bone necklaces and pectorals and earrings in plenty in the depths of his crystal ball on the bodies of alert and ruthless Rashemaar witches? Who was to say the Witch-Queen of Aglarond herself didn't play with vedarren and plaques in hidden chambers?
Hmmm. That might well help to explain why the zulkirs never sent more than ambitious underlings, beasts, and sword-swinging armies against Aglarond. Irlmarren of Tyraturos sat back and sighed, letting his eyes wander from the glowing scene in the depths of his crystal. He was going to have to think about this. The world had suddenly become a darker, more complicated place.
"Go right ahead and ponder, idiot," murmured a man in another darkened room with a crystal ball.
He smiled a mirthless smile, then turned and grinned at himself in a nearby mirror. It reflected back a man in robes of purple, whose hair and beard were oiled and cut to razor sharp edges, a man whose thick, powerful fin shy;gers made a rude gesture to his reflection and grinned more broadly when it did the same to him.
Roeblen of Bezantur looked back at the crystal ball glowing before him, and smiled again at the thought of just how useful his trapped crystal balls were turning out to be. Whether looking in at what their user was spying on, or looking out to spy on that user, just two had brought him hours of entertainment and enlightenment in but a handful of days.