The Simbul's Gift

7

The city of Bezantur, in Thay Between midnight and dawn, the fifteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

Fine ash and cinders, black as the starless Bezantur sky visible through arrow slit windows, trickled through the elegant fingers of Mythrell'aa Vianul, Zulkir of Illusion, mistress of Serpent Tower. The sparkling powder fell into a crystal bowl, already knuckle-deep in darkness. When her fist was empty, Mythrell'aa scooped another handful from a smoldering brazier. She whispered two words-the name of her antagonist-Alassra Shentrantra, and began again.

Mythrell'aa's bowl filled with the residue of incense and empty visions. The sky lightened to a bruised lavender. Her time for private pleasures faded with the night.

"Where are you?" Mythrell'aa's black-enameled fingernails scraped the bottom of the brazier and brought up a handful of glowing embers. "Not beyond my reach."

A statement of faith, not fact. Every zulkir knew the Simbul had mastered spells they could only dream of. She could vanish for months and reappear in the thick of battle, radiating fire and lightning, ambushing them when they had thought they had the advantage.

Mythrell'aa had a true advantage over her Thayan peers: an older name, a private quarrel, and a thorn stem, the last token of an ill-fated love, which Alassra Shentrantra had unexpectedly preserved in her most private chamber.

"Come home, Alassra," Mythrell'aa wished as she shook the embers like dice in her loosely clenched fist. Blood-red lips parted in an eager smile. Yesterday, two years of scrying and spying had been fulfilled when Alassra came face-to-face with Mythrell'aa's minions in a no-account Aglarondan village. It was almost too much to believe that her illusionists had achieved the penultimate victory, but as the day passed and Alassra failed to appear in her private chamber…

After decades of waiting, Mythrell'aa began to hope.

The spilling embers formed a shape, like wine in a transparent glass. Mythrell'aa's smile froze. Her breath escaped in an enraged gasp.

"A child!"

The dangling lump in Alassra's arms was unmistakable to anyone who could read fire and ash. Mythrell'aa's hand was empty. Alassra's glowing shape was complete and began to move above the bowl.

"A horse! You were looking for a gods-all-be-damned horse!" The zulkir made a fist. "What else went wrong?"

She considered her imperiled illusionists by face and name. She'd taught each of them magic and more, but they were all expendable, when Alassra Shentrantra was the prey. Before they left Thay, Mythrell'aa had made certain they knew none of her secrets. They couldn't betray her if they fell into the witch-queen's hands.

Intrigue was a dangerous game and a game she hadn't played until recently. Mythrell'aa's life had been simpler before the Salamander War, before Zulkir Aznar Thrul established himself as Tharchion Aznar Thrul here in Bezantur. Before all that, Mythrell'aa had maintained cozy relationships with Bezantur's tharchions. She handled the magic and kept herself amused; they handled the intrigue.

Thrul had changed all that. He had no need of her spell-casting talents and treated her like a child. No, worse than a child, he'd treated her like a slave, expecting her-who'd been a zulkir before he was born-to cater to his whims. So she'd turned to Szass Tam and he'd taught her… for a price.

But not even Szass Tam knew about Alassra Shentrantra: he hadn't asked; she hadn't told. It was the first lesson he'd taught her, and she'd learned it well. Someday Mythrell'aa imagined she'd reveal what she knew about the witch-queen of Aglarond. Until then, Mythrell'aa kept her secret to herself. Countless Red Wizards moldered in lonely graves because they'd underestimated the witch-queen's power. Illusion's zulkir wouldn't be among them.

Mythrell'aa turned away from the animated embers, to the narrow windows where a man stood, as if in a trance, his face to the horizon. The past and the future were beyond Mythrell'aa's control, but in the present, in this room, there was nothing about Alassra Shentrantra that couldn't be used to hurt someone.

"Lailomun. Lailomun, my pretty pet, come here."

Lailomun started when she called his name. He reached for the open window, encountered the wards and fell back, nursing his numbed hands.

He hadn't changed since Mythrell'aa surprised him that night, decades past, in the trysting room Alassra Shentrantra prepared for them. His handsome face remained unmarked by time, except for a small bluish scar above his right brow, where Mythrell'aa's vengeance burrowed through his skull.

She hadn't changed him, not the way zulkirs usually changed the annoyances of their lives. Lailomun knew himself and recognized her: His thoughts, a mixture of hate and horror, were poetry written in wide eyes, flared nostrils and quivering lips. He said nothing. Lailomun hadn't spoken since Mythrell'aa brought him back to Serpent Tower, but that was his decision, an act of futile willfulness that delighted the zulkir each time she roused him.

"Come. I have something to show you."

Having failed with the window, Lailomun headed for the door. Mythrell'aa let him take a few strides, then dropped him to his knees with an effortless spell: They'd played this game countless times before.

"How many times must I tell you, my pet? You're mine. You'll never leave me again."

Lailomun froze-his will, again, not hers. He studied his surroundings with the wit that made him so attractive to experienced and mighty women. This morning, because she'd been disturbed and another experienced, mighty woman was the source, Mythrell'aa gave her one-time lover an extra heartbeat's contemplation before she tightened his chain again.

"Shall I drag you?"

He rose and came to her, proud and dignified in defeat. The zulkir could have procured his cooperation, as she did with her body servants, but she'd left Lailomun's nature intact and tampered with his memory instead. Whatever Lailomun had remembered when she extracted him from the trysting room he remembered still. After that moment, however, his memory held nothing. Each time Mythrell'aa called Lailomun, she awoke him from an open-eyed sleep that, from his crippled perspective, had begun in the trysting room. He'd remain alert for a little while, thinking his captivity had just begun, dreading what lay ahead. Then, gradually he'd fall into a trance until she roused him again.

Mythrell'aa opened her arms above the ember images. "See who I've found."

Her voice was sweet and deadly. Lailomun knew better than to trust her, but he looked at the images and recognized his ladylove.

"See, my pet, she has a child. Not yours, is it? Surely it's too big, too old to be yours. You were together, what-two years? Less? That child must have a different father."

Lailomun was surprised. More than surprised, he was shocked. Where another man might have lost his voice, Mythrell'aa hoped, when his lips parted, that Lailomun might find his. He caught himself before he spoke a word.

"Always the same decision," Mythrell'aa said softly, a trace of affection in her voice. She reached up to caress Lailomun's cheek. He held his breath as her sharpened nails moved across his flesh.

"She never loved you, Lailomun, not as I loved you. I could show you more. I could show you Alassra Shentrantra in the arms of a score of men, I could reveal her naked in the lairs of beasts and demons. She's made a fool of you, Lailomun, used you up and thrown you aside."

The zulkir, who was head and shoulders shorter than Lailomun, retreated, the better to observe his reaction. But there was no reaction. Shock had shattered the man's fragile awareness. He'd become, again, a living statue. She could awaken him. He'd have no memory of these last moments. The game could be played and replayed until Lailomun's nerves frayed and he collapsed into a stupor from which even a zulkir could not arouse him.

"Lailomun. Lailomun, my pet. Pay attention to me."

Mythrell'aa had designed the perfect punishment for a wayward lover. The incantation she'd used to cripple his memory might have made her rich, if she'd needed more wealth or written down the spells she devised. Once she'd cast the spell successfully, she'd lost interest in it. Her notes had disappeared years ago, and Lailomun's torment so amused her that while he lived-an unexpected side effect of the addling spell had given him an odd kind of immortality-she'd needed no other pets.

The brazier cooled, the ember images crumbled, but that hardly mattered as Mythrell'aa put her pet through his paces, sharpening her tongue on his wounds. Dawn had become morning before she grew bored. She left him twitching on the floor, returning her attention to the brazier.

Using a bone-and-brass poker, the zulkir stirred hot coals from the bottom to the top, feeding them incense powders. Wisps of pungent smoke arched toward her when Mythrell'aa uttered the names of her minions, but none congealed into a recognizable shape. Her fears confirmed, Mythrell'aa added a drop of green oil to the incense mix.

"Vazurmu," Mythrell'aa called the name of an illusionist of no small talent and a woman bound to her in death as well as life. "I summon you."

"I hear you, Mighty Zulkir. My eyes and ears, my heart and mind are yours."

Vazurmu's voice came faintly out of the smoke. Mythrell'aa made a sour face as she poured amber oil and more incense into the brazier. The village where her minions were supposed to ambush Alassra Shentrantra was near the Yuirwood and the Yuirwood interfered with Red Wizard magic. Mythrell'aa despised Aglarond's great forest almost as much as she despised Aglarond's queen. When the Red Wizards finally conquered that wretched realm, she'd personally cast the conflagration spells to burn all those thrice-damned trees to the ground.

"Tell me what happened," the zulkir commanded.

Smoke thickened into a woman's shape and spoke more clearly. "An old woman appeared yesterday morning. No one knew her-"

"Beshaba!" Mythrell'aa muttered the name of her patron goddess, "Did you think the bitch-queen would arrive with bugles and milk-white horses?"

Vazurmu's image quaked soot. "No, Mighty Zulkir. We were alert for all strangers, even birds and toadstools. Arnoz approached her cautiously. She saw through him before he had time to cast a spell. Then madness ruled. We followed your orders. The village is dead and burning. No witnesses survive to say what happened."

"Except for you and the Great Bitch! What happened?"

"I stayed out of the fighting, as you instructed. I kept her in front of me. I watched her. She is… she is like no other, Mighty Zulkir. She is a fiend unleashed."

"I don't need you to tell me what she is, I need to know what happened next!"

"Yes, Mighty Zulkir I was hidden-quiet-no one could have noticed me, yet I was struck down from behind-"

"By a dirt-eating peasant! Beshaba gives me fools to work with."

"Yes, Mighty Zulkir." Vazurmu knew better than to argue with her zulkir. One word from Mythrell'aa and, the Yuirwood notwithstanding, her flesh would shrivel; another word and her blood would boil. "I am a fool struck down by a peasant and I have ill-served you. But I recovered my senses before the queen left."

"And?" Mythrell'aa paced around the brazier.

"I followed her to the stable where the horse was kept. She'd led the horse outside and had drawn a circle in the grass to take it away from the village. A boy-"

"A boy? What boy? You said, no witnesses."

"Yes, Mighty Zulkir. The boy and a little girl broke into the circle as the silver-eyed queen cast her spell."

If she hadn't already known the resolution, Mythrell'aa would have chuckled in eager anticipation. The laws of spellcraft were the same on both sides of the Yuirwood. No Red Wizard-including herself-could have held the circle if two people had broken it. It made what she'd seen earlier that much more remarkable, more ominous.

"The backlash was terrible, Mighty Zulkir. A dead space opened where they'd been. Anything that wasn't already dead, died, I'm certain."

"You're certain," Mythrell'aa purred at her minion, already contemplating the woman's demise: Alassra had saved the little girl, at the very least. Vazurmu had failed on many levels; she'd pay the full price of failure. "Of course, you're certain. Where are you, Vazurmu?"

"I… in the village, Mighty Zulkir, what's left of it."

"You didn't try to follow her?"

"No, Mighty Zulkir. They're lost between here and there."

"Lost, Vazurmu? The Great Bitch lost? She's been seen everywhere. Where could she wind up and be lost? She wound up at home in Velprintalar-that's how lost she was!" Silence rose from the smoking brazier. "Vazurmu!"

More silence, then: "Mighty Zulkir, I entered the dead space. I cast my own spells. They were hurled into the Yuirwood, hurled through time, as well. I didn't dare follow. No Wizard is safe there."

Mythrell'aa raised her arms above her head. The window wards crackled with sickly green light behind her.

"I care not a whit's finger for your safety, Vazurmu. Didn't I tell you to follow the bitch? Didn't I tell you to be my eyes and ears? What good are eyes and ears in a dead village? If you'd done what I told you to do, even if you'd died in the forest, your shade would be there to tell me what had happened! What happened to the boy? Where's the horse? Am I to believe that the Great Bitch rescued a girl-child and left a damned horse behind?"

"Mighty Zul-!"

Vazurmu's plea for mercy was cut short as the serpentine wreath tattooed above Mythrell'aa's hairless brow glowed. Illusion's alliance with Szass Tam had given Mythrell'aa-among other things-an awesome and very private array of necromantic magic, ripe for casting. From the tattoo, the light leapt to Mythrell'aa's hands and from her hands it narrowed to a dagger's point within the incense image. There was a flash bright enough to blind a zulkir.

The brazier clattered across the floor, striking Lailomun, who roused from his stupor. His eyes had been shielded in the crook of his arm. He could see clearly and, for the first time in memory, he remembered more than the distant past, more than the horrifying moment when he realized the woman waiting for him was not Alassra.

This time Lailomun remembered the brazier, the room, Mythrell'aa herself, and the words she taunted him with. He was a quick-witted man with a gift for seeing the shortest path. While the zulkir blinked and rubbed her eyes, Lailomun pieced together what he could. Mythrell'aa, his master in magic and first lover, had crippled his memory. She'd left him unable to recall recent events. He lived in isolated slices of time with no ability to plan where he'd go next or remember what had gone before.

How many slices? The question elbowed into his thoughts; he shoved it out again. How long, how many didn't matter. In his current condition, he couldn't hope to thwart, much less defeat a zulkir. In another moment she'd be able to see; his torment would begin again-and knowing that he, himself, was a Red Wizard of Thay, Lailomun knew that it was mercy, not tragedy, if he could not remember what happened to him. Except…

In his one memory, Mythrell'aa had said Alassra had a child. She'd tried to make him believe the child wasn't his, because legitimacy was important to Red Wizards. A poker lay beside him. It had fallen with the brazier and remained to sear his skin when he pressed it against his forearm.

You have a child, Lailomun told himself as he made a second, curving mark and a third that curved the other way. A part of you lives free. He knew he wouldn't remember but perhaps, if Mythrell'aa didn't take away the scars, he'd look down at his arm each time he awakened and read the message there, written in a code he'd devised when he was an apprentice with many spells to learn.

"Lailomun! Stop that. You're hurting yourself." Mythrell'aa wrenched the poker from her pet's hands.

Their eyes met at close range. It seemed to Mythrell'aa that there was something more in his expression, something like hope. She seized his cheek, digging her enameled nails into his flesh.

"What are you thinking, Lailomun? What plan have you hatched? Nothing will come of it, my pet. You can't remember anything from one hour to the next. I've had you here for more than a hundred years and I'll have you for another hundred before I'll let you die. There's nothing you can do, my pet, nothing."

The light that had glimmered briefly in his eyes was extinguished.