The Simbul's gift зк-6

by Lynn Abbey

  "Leave him alone!" Bro shouted.

  His spell-driven dancing made it difficult to move closer to the colt without frightening him. But Bro judged that the lesser of two evils-Zandilar notwithstanding, horses weren't made for dancing. He'd sooner turn Dancer loose in the Yuirwood than see him go down with a broken leg. His greatest problem was keeping still long enough to untie the rope one-handed; he solved that by dropping to his knees and using his teeth.

  His ears began popping before he got the knot undone. He began to sing loudly a song that made him blush, but he got the rope loose just in time for Zandilar's Dancer to rear up, trumpeting like a stallion, and beat the air with his front hooves. Bro threw himself backward, legs still dancing. The seelie laughed, but not loud enough to drown Bro's bawdy song.

  Bro hoped laughter meant the seelie were satisfied. He hoped in vain. Misty light in rainbow colors spiraled up Dancer's hind quarters, transforming horse legs into bear legs. The colt reared again and fell over, hard and screaming.

  Dancer's agony was more than Bro could endure. He stood on his hopping feet, shouted a challenge between the words of his song, and charged. Magic and weapons pelted him. He was blind and surrounded by rainbow light, floating and falling, on fire and freezing cold at the same time. At the end, he was shrinking and growing a bushy tail.

  Bro emerged from the top of the Simbul's boot, chittering his song rather than singing it, hopping from one foot to the next, and next, and next. He saw the forest clearly and all around him, but without color. There was room in his shrunken head for his name, the broadest outlines of his history, and the natural instincts of a squirrel; nothing else fit or mattered. When he saw the laughing seelie, he fluffed his tail and flicked it once, then bounded over his abandoned trousers. He dug his claws into the tree bark and escaped into a lofty tangle of branches.

  9

  The city of Bezantur, in Thay Afternoon, the fifteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

  Thrul's spy master had discarded her disguise and, wearing a gown as sheer as any she wore in the zulkir's presence, worked her craft in a windowless bolt-hole. The gown was her own-that made all the difference in the world. The glass eggs in the chest in front of her had been devised by her mentor, Deaizul, when he was in his prime. They belonged to her now, and if that made them less reliable, then she was doomed and Aznar Thrul with her.

  The two-score eggs, blown from the finest glass a zulkir's gold could buy and sealed with a dollop of lead, sat in padded compartments in a shallow, wooden chest. Each was about the size of the spy master's nose and empty except for strands of hair-eyelashes, mostly-fingernail parings, and a powder composed of blood pearls, dragon wing, and bits of human skin. When the spy master sprinkled alegar over an egg and held it in the light of a particular lamp, the powder rose like mist. When she added of yellow gossypol to the alegar, the mist became a face and the egg became a short-lived conduit between the spy master and her spy.

  Or it did, while the spy lived.

  The egg the spy master held was inert, as had been the previous three. The four represented those Deaizul had sent after Mythrell'aa's minions in the Aglarondan village. It wasn't hard to imagine what had happened to them; it wasn't pleasant either.

  She blew out the lamp and carried the inert eggs to the table that dominated her bolt-hole. She returned to close and lock the chest: her mentor had been adamant: the key to effective spy mastering was unrelenting attention to details. Beneath the deliberate disorder of their lives lay careful pattern and precision.

  The spy master never stinted. She replaced the lamp, the alegar, and the gossypol, each in its preformed compartment. Her gaze lingered over the empty compartments, six of them: four for the men and women who would have to be replaced, one that had contained her egg when Deaizul owned the chest, and the last that had contained his. Minions from the lower ranks of her web would replace the four she'd lost, making donations of hide and hair as preconditions for promotion. The last two would remain empty while she owned the chest. The eggs that held her essence and her lover's were sealed in a different chest, in a different time and place, where no harm could come to them.

  She filled a goblet from a decanter no different from others on the table. After emptying it in three gulps, the spy master took up a steel scriber and began the tedious process of opening the eggs without damaging their contents. Half a decanter later, the eggs had star-shaped holes in their narrow ends and a small mound of mortal remains sat on a silver plate. The spy master sipped another goblet while studying her spellbook and grinding powder in an iron mortar: moonstone, porphyry, a knuckle bone from an undead elf. After the reagents and remains had been thoroughly mixed, she added the dregs from her goblet and whispered words passed down through generations of Thayan spy masters.

  The silver plate was crusted and streaked with tarnish when the scrying was complete; the spy master's skin was pale beneath its tattoos. She dressed quickly in her wig and rags, cleared the table into a sack, and headed for Thrul's citadel. The reagents disappeared into a midden hole where the next high tide would suck them out to sea, but the silver plate was still with her, hidden in a more ornate sack, when she left her second bolt-hole in the flame-patterned robes of a Kossuthan priest.

  Thrul's chamberlain made his usual protests, demanded his usual bribes, when she entered the forecourt of the Black Citadel. Pocketing her coins, he accepted the carnelian token of her position as if he'd never seen it before. Lord Thrul's chamberlain was either an expert dissembler or not quite the man he once had been.

  "The Mighty Tharchion, Mightier Zulkir has a full schedule today. Return tomorrow, Or the next day."

  "I'll wait."

  "But-"

  "Take my token to my lord, Aznar Thrul. I'll wait here."

  Though it countered her training to leave a memorable impression in any mind, however inadequate, the spy master got the chamberlain moving toward the audience chamber. There was a danger that he'd get distracted or deliberately confound her, but the danger was all his. The spy master had other ways of contacting her employer.

  Deep in the possibilities, she was almost disappointed when he returned with the gauze gown draped over one arm.

  "The Mighty Tharchion, Mightier Zulkir will spare a moment for you."

  He offered her the gown and with the same hand prepared to take the sack. The spy master shook her head.

  "It goes with me."

  "Unthinkable! No one carries in his presence. I'll keep it safe until you're finished."

  "Unthinkable!" the spy master replied, though the man spoke the truth. She'd never before needed to bring an object to a meeting.

  They argued without possibility of compromise. In the end she persuaded him with another handful of coins and entered the changing room with the sack still in her possession.

  Thrul flattened her the instant he saw it. She lay helpless, convinced he'd broken every bone in her body, while the sack floated away. After an eternity, a familiar voice told her to rise. Slowly, she obeyed. Her pride had taken most of the damage; the rest of her was intact, though bruised and bleeding.

  "A horse, woman!" Thrul snarled. "You come here, harassing my servants, disturbing my peace. I weary myself with spellcasting-and for what? A horse? Is this what I pay you for?"

  "Permit me to explain, my lord. The horse is neither an end or a beginning; it's-"

  "Explain away, woman. By all means, explain the horse. My curiosity knows no bounds."

  The spy master hated him. Perhaps she'd always hated him, Aznar Thrul, zulkir and tharchion, with his acid tongue. But, having avoided the brunt of his scorn before this, she had been unwilling to acknowledge that her employer was a small-minded man whose spite was greater than his ambition. She'd overlooked his failings because his power supported her web of intrigue. But that was past: once she saw a pattern-truly saw it-she saw its implications, too, and they became part of her.

  Thrul toyed with the plate, flicking it toward h
er, then holding it close again, catching sunlight on the horse's untarnished outline and flashing it into her eyes. His every move proclaimed he wanted her to ask-to beg-for its return. She guessed he wouldn't surrender it without some additional humiliation.

  "Mythrell'aa's minions found what they were looking for in Aglarond."

  "A horse?"

  Thrul laughed at a private joke. Light from the plate flashed in the spy master's eyes again and lingered long enough that she had to blink. From its birth a moment earlier, the spy master's hatred had grown into a consuming passion.

  A good spy lived without passion; it interfered with finding and analyzing patterns. Even with Deaizul, the spy master had felt only the pattern of love, not the passion. For one heartbeat, passion was interesting, by the second, it was inconvenient, and with the third she understood how Deaizul had lost his nerve. She pitied him: He'd chosen passion over pattern. Her mentor had made the wrong choice, a mistake she did not intend to make.

  She'd take her hatred, seal it in a glass egg, and make it work for her. If Aznar Thrul wasn't worthy of her web, she'd use it for herself, for the glory of Thay, and bring him down slowly, piece by miserable piece.

  "Say something, woman!"

  "Yesterday, the bitch-queen came to that village where Mythrell'aa's minions waited. They had neither the wit to recognize her before she recognized them, nor the strength to stop her after that."

  "Mythrell'aa's a fool."

  The spy master nodded. All the zulkirs were fools, squandering Thay's wealth and energy in endless rivalries while the real enemy got away. "A fool who knew the silver-eyed queen was coming to that village, looking for a horse-that horse-and the mongrel who bred and raised him."

  Too late, Aznar Thrul heard what she was saying. He looked at the plate without laughter or mockery. "Final sight?" he asked, naming one of the spells that forged the image. "Did anyone survive?"

  "No, my lord." The spy master gave her employer the customary form of respect, but not the content. Never again the content. They were enemies now, though he didn't know it. She would bring him down. "The silver-eyed bitch slew everyone, hers and ours alike. She wanted no witnesses to her thievery."

  Thrul offered her the plate as if nothing had happened between them. "Show me."

  Once the spy master would have been pleased to cast the variation of Deaizul's final sight that would animate the tarnish. It wouldn't have bothered her that Thrul needed to invade her mind to see what she saw. Once it had seemed reasonable that a zulkir should have the means to possess another wizard's mind; reasonable that he never committed the final sight spells-of which he had a complete set, written on parchment, embellished with gold leaf and the tattoos of the Invoker whose duplicity had inspired Deaizul to create them-to his memory.

  Now, with hatred souring her judgment, the request and its consequential invasion of her consciousness flooded the spy master with another passion: contempt. She bowed her head anyway, invoking the spell with precise gestures and a single word, submerging her passions into the needs of the moment. No one knew better than a spy master that vengeance required time.

  Thrul's thoughts mingled with the spy master's as the spell played out the last moment of four lives. Three had died suddenly, blindly, in a skirmish of lightning and fire, but the fourth had survived the initial carnage. Laying low, he'd watched the witch-queen search each ramshackle barn until she found one that held her attention. He was creeping closer when his attention swung to one side: two more survivors, a village youth-a mongrel from the forest-and one of Mythrell'aa's minions, fought each other. The wizard was exhausted; the mongrel, lucky. Another Thayan died and the mongrel, carrying a small human girl, headed into the barn the witch-queen hadn't left. Using the youth as his stalking-horse, the spy followed.

  The last image the spy's mind had held was a frozen scene: the queen and the gray horse, the mongrel and the little girl. The queen and the mongrel argued-the tone was unmistakable, though the words were garbled-until the silver-eyed queen noticed the spy. His life ended in flame and terror.

  "Is there more?" the zulkir asked.

  The spy master nodded, triggering the darkest spell of Deaizul's devising. After-death vision was deeply shadowed and without color. It saw the living world through a narrow slit in a floating sphere: a mangled corpse, an empty stall, footprints in the dirt, all pointing in the same direction. The trail led outside, to a large blackened circle. There was no trace of the witch-queen, the horse, the mongrel, or the human girl.

  Thrul sucked his teeth pensively as the necromantic vision ended.

  The spy master spoke first, to break the silence. "Something went wrong. Wherever she was headed, it's likely she didn't arrive."

  "Rest assured that she did, woman. The silver-eyed bitch has Beshaba's luck: her misfortune never falls on her head. Those others paid the price."

  The spy master shrugged. "Our spies along the coast will send word when she reappears, or if she doesn't."

  "Good, woman. Why a horse, though? If she saved anything, she saved that horse: it's what she went after in the first place. Find out what was special about it… or that boy. He wasn't human-one of those forest mongrels."

  "Yes, my lord."

  She needed no instructions in her craft from Aznar Thrul. The zulkir's arrogance propelled her to a decision not to reveal the true reason for her visit: There had to be a connection between that gray horse and the gods-brewing mystery that had lured Deaizul into the Yuirwood, a connection that now involved the witch-queen herself. Deaizul wasn't a particularly potent wizard, no match for the witch-queen. The spy master feared that he might need help and had hoped that the Mighty Tharchion, Mightier Zulkir of the Priador would agree to provide that help.

  Now she wouldn't bother to ask, but she needed some explanation, some quick excuse to account for her unscheduled visit. One that had already crossed her mind and might even cross Aznar Thrul's mind. "I wonder, my lord, how Mythrell'aa knew where to place her minions, how she knew that one particular horse in that one particular village would draw the bitch-queen's attention."

  Thrul stroked his beardless chin. "Yes," he said slowly. "How, indeed. Better spies, woman?"

  "Unlikely, my lord. These were the first minions she's sent into Aglarond since you came to Bezantur, and half were castoffs from other schools. She had help, my lord, of one kind or another."

  "Help inside Aglarond or inside Thay?"

  The spy master nodded. "One kind or the other," she repeated. "To find out which, there must be pressure here in Bezantur."

  "That can be arranged, woman. Easily arranged. I've waited for this day! I warned her when I took the Priador tharchionate that her time was up. Two zulkirs cannot live in the same city. She swore no interest in politics and broke her oath last winter. She thought Szass Tam had me on the rocks, but he's the one who foundered in the spring. He's not the lich he was! I'll tighten the noose; you watch who runs where, and then we'll call everyone in to account." Thrul straightened in his chair. "Well done, woman. I expect nothing less of you." He returned her carnelian token. "No hard feelings?"

  She fastened the token to her gauze gown, pointedly ignoring the stains where she'd bled after the fall. "None at all, my lord."

  10

  The city of Velprintalar, in Aglarond Afternoon, the fifteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

  Alassra's chambers were in chaos. Artifacts were strewn everywhere, as if a restless child had played with each for a moment, then discarded it. Spellbooks, some of them older than she and written in languages unknown in the realms, were heaped haphazardly in the middle of her work chamber. Every table top was clear for the first time since she created this bolt-hole. The walls were bare, the shelves emptied of all but her most fragile mementoes, none of them magically useful-gifts from her sisters, a lock of her mother's hair, the thorn branch she'd taken from Lailomun's pillow.

  She'd learned the domestic cantrips for cleaning centuries ago, but
simple magic never intrigued her. The storm queen had always been better at whipping up the weather than containing the dust that burst from an ancient tome. She sneezed-which didn't help her or the spellbook she held-and got to her feet, a feral growl rumbling in her throat.

  "Where did all this come from? Who brought it here?"

  The most rhetorical of rhetorical questions: No one else was in the room. No one else had ever been in the room. Even her sisters and Elminster, back when the Old Mage accepted her invitations, went no further than the antechamber where the little Sulalk girl was now sleeping on a gilded daybed that had once belonged to a queen of Chondath. (Alassra hadn't wanted to disturb the palace with her return when she expected-or had expected-to be leaving quickly. When she had everything back under control, when she could spare a thought for the little girl's care, then would be soon enough to throw the royal household into an uproar.)

  Alassra had accumulated, abandoned, and forgotten the entire mess herself. She'd never had a permanent home before Velprintalar. She'd cached her few possessions throughout Faerun in warded boxes, none of them larger than a seaman's chest. Her life had been the pursuit of knowledge and adventure, not things, not until she became a queen.

  Royalty acquired and accumulated. From her deathbed, Queen Ilione had warned her apprentice and heir: Clean out the past. Don't let it pull you under. Alassra had taken the words metaphorically, ignoring many of Aglarond's dearly held traditions as she established her reign, but Ilione had intended a more literal interpretation.

  If dust had market value, the queen of Aglarond was the richest woman in Faerun.

  She muttered another cantrip at the opened tome. Parchment sheets broke loose from the brittle binding. Two fluttered out the window, the spells written upon them lost for eternity, if Alassra didn't catch them before they vanished in the ether.