The Simbul’s Gift

Although she'd judged the coming storm a natural event, Alassra took no chances. A handful of this, a pinch of that, gathered quickly, ground in a clear crystal mortar and triggered with a single, soft- spoken word, boosted Alassra's already uncanny sensitivity to things magical. She closed her eyes and deliberately ignored each lingering spell or potent artifact within the walls. Her mind grew quiet until there was only Mystra's magic pulsing through her veins with each beat of her heart. For an instant there was something else, a glancing touch of curiosity, too gentle, she thought, to emanate from Thay.

She immediately sent a thought after it. Nothing should penetrate her wards without her consent. Her thought came back empty. Whatever had touched her, if anything had, it had escaped.

She opened her eyes with an uneasy sigh. The reckless part of her spirit counselled pursuit, to the outermost planes, if necessary: Her enemies were legion; no breach of privacy could be overlooked. But the reckless part of her spirit was smaller than it had been before she became queen. She had Aglarond to look after and confidence in her wards. Her enemies, especially the Red Wizards of Thay, weren't renowned for their subtlety.

They were, however, known for their persistence and, acknowledging that, the place of honor in the chamber belonged not to the Simbul's eclectic library nor to the marble-topped worktable where she pursued her endless curiosity regarding all things magical, but a crystal dome as broad as her outstretched arms, half as high, and floating on a shallow, quicksilver pool. Although every Faerunian wizard worth his or her spellbook possessed a scrying artifact, the Simbul's mirror was the envy of those who knew it existed.

The mirror was exquisitely attuned to Alassra's thoughts. Before her mind had fully framed a question, the quicksilver began to move, defying nature to slide upward, over the flawless crystal.

East, to Thay, Aglarond's queen thought as the last thumbnail patch of crystal disappeared.

Quicksilver dulled and darkened to steel gray, punctuated by rusty blooms, large and small, each corresponding to a Thayan enemy. In the five years since she had completed the spellcraft controlling her mirror, Alassra had learned how to interpret the bloodstain blotches. It had been worth the effort. For most of those years, Thay had been under a pall as dense as the magical fog that shrouded Aglarond's Yuirwood. The mirror had been the Simbul's most reliable source of information about the Red Wizards—other than the men and women who risked their lives spying in Thay on her behalf.

The zulkirs, she thought, refining her interrogation. The lesser splotches began to fade.

Szass Tam—

One blotch swelled larger than the others. It didn't sharpen into the zulkir's features. The Simbul could pierce Thayan wards, but not without provoking an all-out war. The rusty stain grew more complex: a seething sprawl of angry colors covering half the dome. By its shape and position—and the constant corroboration of the spies she ran within Thay—Alassra knew that the Zulkir of Necromancy still licked his wounds in the aftermath of a spectacular failure to ensnare the fiend, Eltab, in the Year of the Shield. That failure was somehow related to lifting the pall over Thay and, since it had had such far-reaching magical effects, was almost certainly causing chaos among the always-contentious Red Wizards.

Of all her enemies, Szass Tam had been the most dangerous, and would be again when he resumed his place as first among the eight theoretically equal zulkirs of Thay. Unless one of the other seven, through accident or alliance, accomplished what Alassra herself had not: the destruction of the nolonger- human, no-longer-mortal, lich.

With that thought in mind, Alassra shaped another zulkir's name: Mythrell'aa.

Szass Tam was a cunning creature with ambitions that reached far beyond necromancy and Thay; he and Alassra were bound to be enemies. Mythrell'aa, in contrast, had no grand ambitions. Alassra could have overlooked her, as she overlooked countless others of evil disposition, so long as their paths did not directly cross. But now Alassra's enmity knew no limit: Mythrell'aa, Zulkir of Illusion, had been Lailomun's mentor.

The rose-thorn branch, sealed in glass and laid in state on a nearby shelf, was Mythrell'aa's doing. Alassra's eyes widened when thoughts of Mythrell'aa roiled her mind. Her fingers twitched toward the slow-moving coils on the quicksilver surface of her mirror, as if by seizing them she could seize Mythrell'aa as well and wring the life from her as Mythrell'aa had wrung it from Lailomun.