The Simbul's Gift

23

Thazalhar, in eastern Thay Afternoon, the twenty-third day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

"Watch closely," Lauzoril told his daughter. "Bubbles have begun to form at the bottom of the bowl. The water will boil soon, just as it does in the kitchen. I rub the mustard oil on my fingertips, then I place my fingertips on the water very, very carefully. Look close: the water rises up to meet my fingers. The oil spreads across the surface without breaking it."

Mimuay scrunched down on the stool she was under strict orders not to leave. Her eyes were level with the bowl rim. "Isn't it hot, Poppa? Doesn't it hurt?"

"Of course. Not all spells hurt when I cast them, but many do. If you wish to be a wizard-especially if you wish to be a necromancer-you must learn to ignore discomfort. Now, I say the catalyzing word-Envision-and lift my fingers."

Mimuay gasped as the mustard oil became a bronze sheen on the water. "It's a mirror!"

"Not yet. It reflects nothing." The Zulkir of Enchantment held his hand over the bowl to prove his point. "I must tell it what to reflect, and quickly, or the magic will fade. Several years ago, I sent a gift to a queen. I gave it a name. Now I want to know what's become of it, so I call its name: Kemzali."

The bronze oil dulled. His daughter sighed with disappointment.

"It takes time, Mimuay. Kemzali is far away."

Usually the zulkir made contact with the knife by mental exercise, but today he was teaching his daughter the most important spell she'd ever learn: the means by which she'd be able to detect the presence of magic. He had to cast spells a rank beginner would be able to detect, which meant his old scrying bowl and burned fingers.

"When did you learn to Envision, Poppa? Were you younger than me?"

He'd given up trying to discourage his daughter and took pride in her questions, her persistence. "Much younger. I told you: I grew up among wizards, not in a home with family around me. My life was learning spells."

"Since I'm starting older, will I ever be as good a wizard as you?"

"Casting Envision spells when I was four didn't make me a good wizard."

She thought hard for a moment. Scowl lines were already forming on her forehead. Lauzoril waited for the next question.

"Were you happy growing up among wizards, without a family?"

Which were never the questions he expected, but he'd committed himself to answering them all, and honestly. "I never thought about it. The wizards taught me. I did what they told me to do." Until he was knowledgeable enough to rebel; then they'd thrown him out of the academy, as every other Red Wizard got thrown out at the end of his education.

"I'm glad you're teaching me, Poppa; not someone else."

"So am I, Mimuay. Now watch the bowl."

Since the Convocation, Lauzoril had kept closer track of the knife that he'd sent to Aglarond's queen. He was certain it was no longer in her possession. Even allowing for the confounded Yuirwood, it had become too easy to trigger its scrying properties without arousing any opposition. The zulkir assumed the Simbul had given it to someone not a wizard. He was disappointed, of course. Although it had never provided him with special insights into the witch-queen's character, he'd enjoyed spying on her and the periodic sense that she returned the favor. It was a sense he had not had in recent days.

No zulkir wasted his time worrying about Aglarond's witch-queen, though Lauzoril had asked himself whether his lack of subtle contact with her had played a part in his decision not to race off to the Yuirwood after the Convocation. Mythrell'aa had gone west, or so Thrul's spy master informed him: by herself, with only a body servant beside her. And Aznar Thrul supported two bands of wizards in the Aglarond forest-also according to the spy master: One that Thrul knew about and another one that he thought belonged to Lady Illusion.

The spy master then asked Lauzoril to pay for rare reagents that would, she assured him, insure that the plums fell in Enchantment's basket, not Illusion nor Invocation's. Lauzoril had balked and ended his never-firm association with the nameless spy master.

Within Thay, Lauzoril had no qualms about pursuing his rivalries with Thrul and the other zulkirs, but if the debacle at Gauros Gorge had accomplished nothing else, it had convinced him that personal rivalries should never stretch across Thay's borders. If the zulkirs couldn't work together to conquer Aglarond and Rashemen, then they should stay home until they could. His conscience, however, did not compel him to alert Aznar Thrul to the traitor coiled close to his heart.

In the depths of his mind Lauzoril knew the spy master's revelations were only part of his reasoning: He didn't have the stomach for all-out bloody war whether in Thay or Aglarond, and he didn't have the steel ambition to grind his rivals into dust. He'd learned the first at Gauros Gorge and the second at the recent Convocation. When the balance of Thayan power slewed between Aznar Thrul and Szass Tam, Lauzoril had seen the way, with the spy master's help, to set himself above his peers. If he'd taken that first step, though, he could never rest again in Thazalhar or teach his daughter the ways of magic.

Were you happy? Mimuay had asked. Lauzoril had the power of wealth, the power of enchantment, but she made him happy, Thazalhar made him happy. He'd come home after the Convocation and left Aglarond for those who didn't know better.

Mimuay interrupted her father's introspection: "Look, Poppa, it's gone all black."

"Kemzali is a knife in a sheath. We can't see anything unless we can persuade someone to take it out."

Someone whose mind Lauzoril touched with a powerful, subtle spell, implanting a desire to be alone, a desire to examine the knife closely. He would have resorted to the scrying bowl eventually; there was no other way to see the knife's new owner.

After several moments, smears of color stretched across the bowl's oily surface.

"Is that all, Poppa? What can anyone learn from that?"

"That Kemzali's owner is alive and has dark hair," the zulkir informed her sharply, but he held his hands over the bowl. Scrying inside Aglarond was always chancy; the Yuirwood, between Thay and the coastal cities, threw a pall of interference in the path of every spell. But sometimes a wizard got lucky. Lauzoril closed his eyes and shaped the air above the bowl.

"Poppa! Poppa, look! What kind of person is that?"

Lauzoril looked. The mustard oil's bronze sheen colored the images it reflected, but Lauzoril knew the Yuirwood type and knew the knife's new owner looked very much the way he and Mimuay saw him, with golden-green skin and eyes, and hair that was black, or very nearly so.

"Is he a man?"

"A man, yes. A young man, but not human."

There were goblins, gnolls, and orcs aplenty in Thay. Lauzoril kept a few such slaves himself to do the meanest estate work. Elves, however, were rare, a few drow kept hidden in the cities. As a race-an inferior race-they'd sooner die than serve a Thayan master. The only elves his daughters had ever seen were painted in the picture books he brought home for their mother. Those painted elves were full-blooded; the youth to whom the Simbul had given Lauzoril's enchanted knife was neither human, nor elf. In Thay, such mongrels were not kept, not even for slavery.

"What is he, then, Poppa? Not an elf?"

"A half-elf, Mimuay. Kemzali is in Aglarond and Aglarond is full of half-elves. They call themselves the chattel-kessir."

Of necessity, Red Wizards learned the more common goblin-kin languages. Lauzoril could speak fluently with his goblin slaves. Some wizards learned elvish, too; Lauzoril refused, on principle. He mispronounced the few words he did know, turning them, without second thought, into slurs. A mistake. Mimuay, who knew nothing of elven arrogance or condescension, sat back on her stool, blinking. She never heard coarse, cursing language, not from her father.

"They're all thieves and blackhearts," Lauzoril continued clumsily. "This one probably stole Kemzali from the-" He couldn't finish the sentence. The Simbul had to have given the knife to this mongrel or the youth wouldn't be alive with it in his hands. He wondered why.

"If he's a half-elf, Poppa, what's his other half? Did he have half-elves for his parents, or is he like a mule with a horse and a donkey for his momma and poppa?"

"Such questions!"

Half-breeds occurred whenever humans consorted with elves, a living badge of shame. Mules didn't breed, but human-elf mongrels did. Lauzoril had heard that the Aglarondan mongrels bred true in the Yuirwood, but elsewhere in Faerun, the mongrels reverted to ancestral type. By rumor, every human Aglarondan had a mongrel lurking in his pedigree.

Including Aglarond's queen? Aglarond had been ruled by mongrels before Thay was founded. Humans-suspect humans-had claimed its throne only within the last few generations. The Simbul appeared human, but in a hundred years, her appearance never changed. Red Wizards cribbed a sort of immortality with spells and potions. The Simbul, a mighty wizard, could have done the same-or, perhaps, she wasn't quite human.

And the mongrel to whom she'd given his knife? What was the youth to her? He stood in the Yuirwood-there were trees visible behind him-yet he wore a well-made shirt. Not the sort of garment Lauzoril expected to see in the middle of a forest, though, in truth, this was the first time he'd successfully envisioned the Yuirwood. He had only his prejudices to guide his assumptions.

The scrying image blurred. The mongrel youth had examined his knife and, finding nothing unusual about it, was returning it to its sheath. Lauzoril could have intervened, pricked the youth's thoughts and kept him staring at the blade, but sooner or later even a kobold would guess that something affected his thoughts.

"I think his momma was an elf," Mimuay announced.

The zulkir disagreed, but asked: "Why do you think that?"

"I could feel his thoughts. They were tangled around his momma and very sad. He's alone. He's frightened, too. Someone's tried to kill him, Poppa. A wizard. A Red Wizard."

Lauzoril had punched his compulsions into the mongrel's mind, but he hadn't perceived anything in return-blame the damned Yuirwood. It was inconceivable that his daughter, a mere witness to his spellcasting had perceived what he could not. Mummy's imagination, fired by Wenne's picture books and his own admissions, had taken over. A little imagination was useful for a wizard; too much was dangerous. His mentors had beaten his into submission; he'd have to find another way to curb his daughter's.

"A Red Wizard? Are you sure, Mimuay? You began by saying his mother was an elf, now you say a Thayan wizard has tried to kill him. Are you very sure?"

She hesitated. "I couldn't understand him, Poppa, not the way I understand Ferrin-"

Her dear, dead friend Ferrin, for whom Lauzoril had searched without success.

"I had to fill in the spaces between his thoughts. He thought of his momma and her ears were pointed, like an elf's. I saw them sticking through her brown hair. She has a spear, Poppa. Do elf-mommas always carry spears? When he thinks of her, he thinks of Red Wizards-" Mimuay stared at her hands, nervous and ashamed. "There's death-ugly death-when he thinks of Red Wizards, Poppa. He's afraid and he's angry, too; he hates them… you… us."

Lauzoril measured his next words carefully. If Mimuay hadn't perceived the mongrel's thoughts, from where was she getting these notions? "Aglarond is Thay's enemy. Where there are enemies, there is hate and fear; it cannot be avoided. In western Thay, near Aglarond, little girls fear Aglarond and learn to hate the Aglarondan queen."

"The Simbul?"

He swallowed hard. "Where did you learn that name, Mimuay?"

"From the boy in the mirror, Poppa. In the space between his momma and the Red Wizards is a silver-haired woman he calls the Simbul."

"We've done enough for today, Mimuay."

"I haven't done anything, Poppa. I've just watched. You're angry with me: you don't believe me. You think I'm telling stories. I'm not, Poppa; I wouldn't lie to you, not ever."

There was fear in his daughter's voice. She was too old to become a Red Wizard. By the time he was old enough to wonder about the truth, he'd killed a fellow enchanter outright and driven two others to madness and death. His choices had been made before his eyes had opened. But if he wouldn't teach Mimuay the way he'd been taught, how would he teach her? Was there any way to keep her fear of him from becoming hate?

No way, Master, Shazzelurt, Lauzoril's enchanted knife, sensed his thoughts, offered its advice. Kill her now, Master. Give her to me.

The zulkir quenched the knife's spirit and lifted Mimuay down from the stool. He held her in his arms, rocking her gently. Her neck fit easily between the thumb and fingers of his hand. Lauzoril knew ways to kill that owed nothing to spells or magic; she wouldn't suffer. "I believe you, Mimuay." He rubbed the hard lump at the base of her neck until her shoulders relaxed. "You'll become a good wizard." A bit of irony there: What did a zulkir know about the training of a righteous wizard? "You learn quickly, and I have to think about what I'm going to teach you next."

She wriggled in his arms, stared at him with frightening trust. "Can we protect the boy in the mirror from his enemies?"

Lauzoril thought of Mythrell'aa headed for the Yuirwood and all the stories Thrul's spy master had told him about massacres and awakening powers. If even half were true… "No, my dear."

"Not even with Kemzali? His thoughts are sad, Poppa, like Ferrin's. I don't want him to die. He's not our enemy."

Ferrin again. Lauzoril stroked his daughter's hair and said nothing.

It was nearing sunset when Lauzoril went to his stable. He sent a straw man walking across the Thazalhar hills. From the stables he went to the hen-coop where he stunned two of the fattest birds and carried them to the crypt.

The peaceful world the Zulkir of Enchantment had made for himself in Thazalhar had crumbled. Mimuay's face haunted him. The mongrel haunted him. The damned witch-queen of Aglarond haunted him. His delicately balanced decision to let Mythrell'aa, Aznar Thrul, and Thrul's spy master play their bloody games without him had shattered into weak-willed excuses.

For years he'd been subject to fits of melancholy-the enchanter temperament, some called it; this was different. Lauzoril suspected his thoughts were not entirely his own-the enchanter enchanted. He suspected his beloved daughter, Mimuay; he suspected his daughter's mysterious friend: Ferrin.

Gweltaz and Chazsinal roused as Lauzoril unlocked the door at the bottom of the crypt stairs. Their bandages shimmered. Dead eyes followed the hens he held upside down.

"He brings us supper. Living supper," Chazsinal crooned.

"Ignore him. He wants something. Birds are not enough when a mighty zulkir wants. Let him bring us red meat. Living meat, dripping with blood." Gweltaz closed his eyes.

"Feed on your dreams, Grandfather," Lauzoril advised.

The hens had recovered their wits-such as hens' wits were-and struggled in his hand. The Zulkir of Enchantment could charm most lesser creatures into obedience, but not hens or sheep. He closed the door and released one hen. Unable to escape, its presence, alive and frantic, would madden Gweltaz. Lauzoril held the other above his father's linen-wrapped head and with a knife-not Shazzelurt-slit the bird's throat. Blood pulsed onto the linen and disappeared. When the bird had bled out, he dropped the carcass in Chazsinal's lap. His father began to feed, the suckling sounds obscured by the other hen's squawks.

"How important can a thing be, Grandson, if you're willing to entrust it to a fool?"

Lauzoril settled in his chair behind the table. "Important enough that I will not entrust it to one who opposes me at every turn."

"I do not oppose you, Grandson. I test you. What else can a patriarch do?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"Someone dead."

"Very dead."

"Szass Tam," Chazsinal hissed, irrelevant as always, now that Lauzoril had Gweltaz's interest.

The zulkir pursued the hen into a corner, stunned it as before, and held it above his Grandfather's chair. A luminous golden stalk rose to Lauzoril's hand. It engulfed the feebly struggling bird and drew it whole within the linen bandages. Gweltaz was the more potent, more inventive of the pair. The zulkir returned to his chair and waited.

"Who do you seek?"

"A name. Ferrin."

"One of us?"

"Possibly. He's dead, that's all I know for sure. He might have died when we fought the Mulhorandi. He has achieved influence within the estate."

Gweltaz made a sound like a purring cat. "Release me. I will find him and bring him here."

Lauzoril made a three-fingered gesture. The golden light around his grandfather's linen flickered twice and was gone.

"Send me, too, son. I know where to look for cowards."

Another three-fingered gesture and Chazsinal was gone as well. Then Lauzoril waited, alone in the dark crypt, while his hungry ancestors hounded one of their own. He thought about Mimuay, about Wenne and his second daughter, Nyasia. How much longer could he keep them safely hidden in Thazalhar? How much longer should he try? Should he go to Aglarond's Yuirwood in search of power? In his heart, Lauzoril didn't believe Mythrell'aa was the Simbul's equal. Certainly Aznar Thrul's spies and his spy master were no threat to the witch-queen. The Simbul could take care of herself, her realm, and a mongrel boy, if she chose to.

So, why did he want to go? Why did he hope his ancestors couldn't find Ferrin or, in finding Ferrin, proved that the dead spirit had nothing to do with Mimuay's vision or his own disturbed thinking? In the end, how much was his own curiosity about Aglarond's mighty, Red-Wizard-killing queen? How much was his own yearning to be the hero for his daughter as he had once been the hero for Wenne?

The zulkir had not resolved anything in his mind when a glow returned to Chazsinal's chair.

"Oh, my son," the dead necromancer moaned. "Oh, my son, it is a terrible thing that you've done."

"That I've done? To send you off in search of a haunt named Ferrin?"

"Your daughter, Lauzoril. You're teaching your daughter and you haven't set the mark on her heart!"

Before Lauzoril could extract anything further from his distraught father, light swirled around Gweltaz's linen and, with it, the pale and shrunken spirit of a man. The zulkir expected the spirit of a man his own age or older, cunning, wise, and cruel who'd sensed Mimuay's talent, then exploited it for his own purposes. What he got was an apprentice, no older than his daughter, who dropped to his insubstantial knees.

"Mercy, my lord, mercy, I beg you! I would never harm her or you."

"He lies," Gweltaz hissed. "He spies on us. He pursues your precious daughter, mighty zulkir, and fills her silly head with our secrets." He spoke a necromantic word and Ferrin's spirit writhed on the crypt floor.

"How did you find her?" Lauzoril demanded.

Locked in Gweltaz's torment, the spirit couldn't answer.

"Release him."

"He lies, Grandson. He has corrupted your innocent. What more do you need? Let me have him."

If Gweltaz had been a little less eager. If Gweltaz had not despised Mimuay as female and weak. If Gweltaz hadn't been known to lie more often than not himself. "Release him, Grandfather, or I'll do it for you."

Tiny flames sprouted from the zulkir's fingers: un-subtle reminders of the damage fire could do to linen bandages. Gweltaz retreated. Lauzoril repeated his question to Ferrin.

"My lord, in the spring, Mimuay found my bones, my skull, and called me back-"

"Lies!" Gweltaz shouted. "We scour the bones Thazalhar heaves up each spring. He is from outside, Lauzoril. He is from Szass Tam! And you teaching her wizardry, Lauzoril? And she will teach your secrets to Szass Tam!"

The necromancer surged forward, enveloping Ferrin's far weaker spirit. Again, Lauzoril called on fire to separate them.

"She has a gift, my lord," Ferrin said. "She called me, but she could call others." By which Ferrin clearly meant the likes of Gweltaz and Chazsinal. "I told her to go to you. That is all I did."

"Lies! Lies! The child is as foolish as her idiot mother."

Lauzoril considered his grandfather, the spirit Mimuay had called out of an ancient grave and the talent still trapped in Wenne's clever, crippled mind. "How long have you been able to hear her, Grandfather?"

The zulkir got his answer, but not from the dead. The wards at the top of the crypt stairway rang like bells, then fell ominously silent.

Ferrin rose from the floor. "Send her away, my lord. You can, my lord. She is still innocent, my lord. Don't let her come down here!"

Ferrin saved himself with that plea, but Lauzoril wouldn't charm his daughter. He dissolved his wards instead before they did the job they were meant to do and destroyed her.

"Mindless fool!" Gweltaz roared just before Mimuay came through the crypt door.

In the moment of confusion, Gweltaz surrounded Ferrin, subsuming the apprentice's essence. Mimuay let out a scream that began as terror and ended as rage. Lauzoril grabbed her as she started for Gweltaz. His daughter called her friend's name and fought frantically with heels, elbows, and fingernails that raised bloody welts on her father's arms.

Then she stopped and became perfectly still. "He's gone. Ferrin's gone."

Lauzoril said a single word in Mulhorandi, the language of the Red Wizards' oldest, darkest magic. He held Mimuay tight, but did not cover her eyes, letting her witness the slow gathering of pinpoint sparks in the center of the crypt. The necromancers pleaded; Lauzoril would have saved Chazsinal-he'd done nothing to deserve the final death, but futility and waste had been the hallmarks of his father's existence; it was appropriate that they were present when the sparks expanded into an ember sphere that descended on the undead necromancers, consuming every part of them before extinguishing themselves.

"I regret Ferrin," Lauzoril said when he and Mimuay were together in the dark.

His hands were shaking as he pushed his daughter away and made light. Despite the shaking, he was strangely calm. Fifteen years ago, before he brought his father and grandfather to Thazalhar, Lauzoril had memorized the ancient spell that could destroy them. He'd kept it primed all these years. The emptiness in his mind, in the crypt, didn't seem quite real.

"Who were they?" Mimuay asked, calm and dry-eyed.

"Your grandfather and great-grandfather-my father and grandfather. Necromancers. I sent them after Ferrin. He hid from me. You hid him from me."

"He was afraid of you. I kept him in my room."

Lauzoril nodded and rubbed his chin. "Do you understand what happened here? Why your friend is gone?"

"You destroyed him, Poppa."

"No, Mimuay," Lauzoril's voice was very soft, very angry. "I did not; I had decided he was no harm to you or me. Gweltaz, my grandfather, destroyed Ferrin-subsumed him because my concentration faltered and he was able to move freely. My concentration faltered because you battered at my wards and I had a choice: to send you away with magic or dissolve the wards. I'd given you my word I would never touch you with magic. You were where you should not have been, doing what you should not have done. But I kept my word to you. Now do you understand what happened?"

She said nothing, did nothing except return her father's stare. Lauzoril couldn't untangle her thoughts-not without resorting to spellcraft. He could scarcely untangle his own, strung as they were between rage and sorrow.

"It's late," he said when she had said nothing for longer than he could bear listening. He cast the light as a sphere and sent it toward the door. "We'll talk again later. Not tomorrow or the day after. I'm leaving Thazalhar, Mimuay."

"I understand, Poppa."

And she might, but Lauzoril didn't understand her. "I'll be back, Mimuay. I'm going to the Yuirwood, in Aglarond."