The Simbul’s Gift

Lauzoril's peers weren't entirely wrong. Their lives were rooted in Thay's stifling cities with their dark pleasures and illicit markets. When deceit and intrigue were called for, Lauzoril rose to the challenge, but between acts in the zulkirs' endless drama, he escaped to the countryside, proving—he supposed as he reined the stallion to a halt—that enchanters were romantics at heart and that their zulkir was the greatest romantic of all.

Once, long before Lauzoril was born, all that would become Thay had been farmland where every valley was under plow and every ridge supported a flock of sheep. The farmers had been as poor as their land was rich. Everything they produced went to Mulhorand to please the god-emperor. In those days the Red Wizards were persecuted revolutionaries, firebrands for liberty in all its seductive guises. Driven from the Mulhorandi heartland, they fled north, past Thazalhar, to Delhumide, where they found themselves surrounded by unlikely, but stalwart, allies. Together, the wizards and farmers declared their independence from imperial laws and taxes ... with predictable results.

Mulhorand sent its armies north to destroy the rebels and replant their feet on the farmers' necks. Facing certain death or slavery if they lost, the wizards and farmers waged a desperate war for freedom that culminated on the rolling hills of Thazalhar.

They won the battle of Thazalhar, but at tremendous cost. The Red Wizards fought with magic and minions from the elemental plains; the farmers fought with steel. Fighting was fierce—a score of Mulhorandi soldiers went down for every wizard or farmer who died. Mulhorand lost half of all its armies in that one battle; two-thirds of Thazalhar, women and children in addition to fighters, lay dead as well. Yet the land had suffered most. Scorched by spell-craft and soured with blood, Thazalhar's bountiful farms became blackened ruins where nothing grew or could be grown for generations.

Even now, four centuries later, though Thazalhar was fertile again, it remained largely uninhabited. Each spring thaw raised a crop of grisly relics from their ancient graves. The boundary walls of Lord Tavai's estate were built from moldered bones and rusted armaments; they discouraged intruders. Visitors thought Thazalhar was haunted; residents knew.

Lauzoril dismounted. He exchanged his Red Wizard robes for a gentleman farmer's comfortable leather and linen. Then the Zulkir of Enchantment and Charm dug a small hole beside the road and filled it with scraps from his Tyraturos dinner: crumbs of bread, a slice of roast pheasant, two green grapes, and a bit of cloth stained with wine.

"For the dead," he said, tamping the loosened soil back into the hole. "For Thazalhar and the dreams we've all forgotten."

It was customary for Red Wizards to pay lip service to some god in Faerun's pantheon. In his youth, Lauzoril had divided his infrequent prayers equally between Beshaba, Maid of Misfortune, and her sister, Lady Luck. The strategy served him well until he became Zulkir of Enchantment—more importantly, until he took possession of his predecessor's Thazalhar estate. Then Lauzoril's view of life and death began to change. Though he'd publicly continued his dual devotions, the private man sought a worship more appropriate to the scarred land he'd come to love.

In those days, The Reaper had been the deity most often seen, most often invoked in Thazalhar, but Lauzoril never warmed to him, perhaps because Myrkul was his father and grandfather's god-ofchoice. Bhaal and Moander had appealed even less to his romantic temperament. Recently Kelemvor had appeared as the new Lord of the Dead. Lord Tavai approved of the new god's notion that death was the natural end of life. He began performing his private rituals in Kelemvor's honor.

Whether Kelemvor appreciated or approved of the offerings meant nothing. Like any Red Wizard who'd survived his education and gone on to acquire power in the Thayan hierarchy, Lauzoril believed in himself above all else—zulkirs couldn't afford the slightest doubt in that regard.

Lord Tavai remounted. He guided the stone horse off the road. They were on his land now, where a score of enchantments hung in the air, guaranteeing that even if he were seen riding across the ridges, neither he nor his unusual stallion would be remembered.

A small woods, framed with graveyard walls, abutted the fields where the lord's men and women tended his grain. Lauzoril's shadow, long and dark in the sunset light, preceded him into the trees where a marble statue awaited his return. The statue was identical in all ways to the stallion the zulkir rode—except that it was pure glamor and dissipated as the real stone horse planted its hooves on the dais.