Lynn Abbey: The Simbul's gift

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 no-longer-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.

When her thoughts were calmer, Alassra invoked other zulkirs: Aznar Thrul of Invocation-the mirror marked him with an ebony spider web-and the conjuror Nevron, a weeping smear who blamed himself for his misfortunes because he lacked the courage to blame Szass Tam or his ally, Aznar Thrul. There were other names, too, each with an abstract, sometimes beautiful, always revealing quicksilver signature, but Alassra's mirror wasn't treasured because it could track her known enemies. Its true worth lay in its unique ability to capture and reflect the unsuspected. Focused in Aglarond, the quicksilver shimmered gently with guilty fears and desperate pleas for royal intervention or justice. Focused on Thay, the crystal dome fairly bubbled with grudges and curses.

A lesser person might have been daunted by the sheer mass of enmity. Alassra simply sorted through the Thayan onslaught, weaving her hands over the roiled quicksilver until she was convinced that the mirror reflected nothing new or significantly different. Then, as was her custom in these interrogations, she let her mind grow blank and asked-

What else?

The image of a bird in flight swept across the quicksilver. Like the fleeting touch she'd felt as she approached the mirror, Alassra couldn't capture its meaning before it vanished. Failure brought a grimace to her face, but, given the danger-laced life she chose to live, two inexplicable incidents in a single day-even a single hour-weren't at all uncommon.

For several moments after the bird flew past, the mirror reflected her own face, nothing more. It was summertime, hot and lazy in Aglarond and Thay alike. She wasn't surprised that nothing conspiratorial or otherwise was brewing in Thay. She ended the interrogation with the ritual question-

Show me Enchantment.

Waves rippled the quicksilver. When they cleared, a familiar face met her eyes: Lauzoril. Zulkir of Enchantment, the only Thayan face her mirror ever revealed.

She'd never met Lauzoril in person. For years, until the Thayan pall lifted, she'd known the Zulkir of Enchantment only by his mirror-signature: a green flame that flickered whenever she inquired who in Thay had been thinking ill thoughts about her. She'd slain no few of his minions and he'd slain a few of hers. Whenever she'd thought about the mage behind the signature she'd imagined a sour, ugly and ancient creature hiding within layers of magical deception, which was true enough for the zulkirs she had met face to face, but not for Lauzoril.

He was young for a zulkir. Whatever else Alassra thought about the Red Wizards-and little of it was complimentary-she conceded that they trained their students thoroughly. It was a rare novice who donned a red robe before the age of twenty-five, after which there were usually several decades of grueling apprenticeship-such as Lailomun had been serving when she met him-before the wizard could start climbing through the treacherous hierarchy.

It was generally safe to assume that all the zulkirs had to be older than they claimed to be: it should take more than a lifetime to murder one's way to the pinnacles of Thayan power. But Lauzoril revealed none of the signs of life-enhancing spellcraft. He appeared to be a man a few years short of his fiftieth birthday-an adolescent as Alassra measured lives. Remarkably, he'd been Zulkir of Enchantment for fifteen years. He was handsome, with frost-streaked blonde hair and rugged-rogue features as befitted a ruling enchanter, but enchantments had no effect on Alassra Shentrantra. It seemed quite likely that the face on the quicksilver surface was the zulkir's face as nature had shaped it.

Most Red Wizards shaved themselves hairless and covered their flesh with intricate tattoos. Lauzoril would not have been half so attractive among his tradition-conscious peers as he was to Aglarond's queen.

Which, in itself, raised intriguing questions:

Did Lauzoril know about the Simbul's mirror? Did he know that she spied on him? The glint in his cold green eyes, staring straight at her, and the smile crinkling the corners of his mouth seemed to say that he knew and that he enjoyed the experience. But, suspicions notwithstanding, Alassra's considerable research since his face first appeared, said no, the Zulkir of Enchantment was simply a man who smiled frequently and inscrutably as he went about his business.

One day she'd interrogate her mirror and there'd be no green-eyed man grinning back at her. After fifteen years, Enchantment was overdue for a new zulkir. It had happened before; save for the necromancer Szass Tam, zulkirs came and went frequently in Thay-and the very last thing Aglarond needed was another Szass Tam.

She told herself Faerun would be a better place when Lauzoril was gone; she told herself a lie.

Time was-before Lailomun and Aglarond-when those eyes would have drawn Alassra Shentrantra like a magnet. For centuries, rogues had been her favorite companions. Her past was pleasantly littered with memories of men who took advantage of every opportunity that crossed-or simply neared-their twisted paths. Those had been the days-and nights-of fine adventuring.