The Simbul's Gift Read online

Alassra arched an eyebrow many shades darker than her hair. “And horses? I suppose you’re going to tell me that herds of horses ran freely in this primal forest.”

  “As freely as any creature that size can run between the trees. As freely, at least, as a great hart.”

  “And herds, El—were there herds of forest horses in the time before you and I?”

  Elminster shrugged, knowing that Alassra was baiting him. “Small herds, I should think. Narrow, certainly. Easier to fit between the trees and the hunters.”

  “Oh—hunters? Bears, wolves and panthers, or creatures more exotic?”

  “Men, Alassra,” the bearded mage said, growing suddenly serious. “There were men in Faerûn’s forest.”

  “And women?”

  She’d missed his change in tone, a rare mistake and a certain sign that the midnight image disturbed her more than she wished to admit.

  “Men and women, yes. Living their lives, worshiping their gods—none of whom are remembered.”

  Alassra poured herself another cup of tea. “Except by you?” She’d sensed the change now, but resisted it. Her baiting turned brittle, bitter.

  “I know nothing about them, dear friend, except that they—the hunters and their gods—existed in that part of the primal Faerûn forest that the Yuir elves would eventually claim for themselves. There those elves would erect two stone circles, one inside the other, one inscribed with Seldarine names and the other with names that are, as you, yourself said, at best, half-forgotten.”

  “The Cha’Tel’Quessir? Say it outright, El: There are Cha’Tel’Quessir who’ve never reconciled to human rule in Aglarond. They wish to see every human man, woman, and child put in boats and sailed toward the sunset. They’d like to raise the ancient Yuir powers toward that aim, but they won’t act on their wish, not while the zulkirs and tharchions of Thay lick their chops just across Aglarond’s border.”

  “If they’ve only got one wish, Alassra. I doubt that they do. Oh, maybe some of them, the Cha’Tel’Quessir are no more immune to short sight than the rest of us …”

  Alassra scowled. Her eyes began to glow with sapphire light. Elminster ignored the warning. In all of Faerûn, but especially in his privy chambers, he was the best equipped to weather the storm queen’s tantrums.

  “But the Cha’Tel’Quessir aren’t like any other race—”

  “They aren’t a race! They’re half-elves!”

  “Precisely, but tell that to them. Nowhere in Faerûn, nowhere on all Toril, is there a place where half-elves look at both their children and their parents and see folk like themselves. Nowhere … except in the Yuirwood.”

  The deep blue fire faded from Alassra’s eyes. “My mother,” she whispered. Elué Shundar had been a half-elf, the child of an elf and human pairing. Alassra and her sisters, of course, took after their human father. “She never saw herself in the ones she loved.”

  Elminster set down his pipe. In his determination to enlighten his friend, he’d forgotten Elué Shundar, who’d faced the very fate the Cha’Tel’Quessir sought to avoid. He stood behind Alassra’s chair, gently kneading her shoulders, offering solace without looking at her troubled face.

  Many long moments later, Alassra began to speak softly. “The Cha’Tel’Quessir are looking beyond the Seldarine, back to that primal forest, for gods that they can make them their own.” She sighed; the tension drained from her. “Can they? Can Zandilar the Dancer be a horse-hunter’s goddess?”

  “Someone thinks so,” Elminster replied, returning to his chair and his pipe. “Your Ember, maybe. Maybe Zandilar herself. Not the horse, I should think, but Zandilar’s Dancer bears close watching. Let me know what you learn. My books are ever at your disposal, my memory and my company as well.”

  “I mean to take advantage of all three.”

  “Good … Excellent. Now, breakfast, dear friend, or back to bed?”

  2

  The royal city of Velprintalar, in Aglarond

  The thirteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

  Alassra Shentrantra, the queen of Aglarond surveyed her royal city and its busy harbor from an open window in the uppermost room of the highest tower of her copper-green palace. Morning light on her silver hair lent it a blonde, mortal hue. Her eyes, like the room behind her, were hidden in shadows dark as midnight.

  The kingdom had prospered during Alassra’s rule. Her window overlooked a harbor where trade ships waited at anchor for a chance to tie up at sturdy wharves. She could hear the occasional voice raised in warning or argument as dock crews and ship crews hurried their work.

  There was a storm driving across the Inner Sea. Charcoal clouds already masked the northwestern horizon. Alassra leaned over the sill and drew the changing wind deep into her lungs. With senses honed more by experience than magic, she measured the storm, judging it natural, not wizard, weather. A few shingles might blow loose and a carelessly tied boat might drift free before the storm played itself out, but overall it posed no threat to the city and failed to hold her attention.

  Alassra filled her lungs a second time, a great, yawning breath with outstretched arms, then she turned her back on the open window. A breeze, tangy with salt, followed Aglarond’s queen into the shadows. It ruffled the parchment and feathers scattered atop a narrow worktable. Another woman at another window might have spared a thought for the rainy gusts that would follow the breeze, but not Alassra Shentrantra. Breezes entered because she willed them to; when the storm arrived, it would be forbidden.

  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 Faerûnian 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 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 Faerûn 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.

  If he’d been around two hundred years ago, she and Lauzoril might not be enemies. At least, they wouldn’t have begun as enemies.

  But the year was 1368, not 1168, and the Simbul ruled in Aglarond because Aglarond’s enemies had become her enemies, without question or respite. Alassra banished the zulkir’s reflection with a casual gesture. She had other curiosities to sate, other enemies to spy upon.

  Their signatures should have appeared on the dome’s surface, but the quicksilver cast her own face back, nothing more.

  She pursed her lips. “A wry jest,” Alassra muttered, though the mirror lacked all sentience. It was not the first time she’d seen her own reflection. “I’ve always been my own worst enemy.” She raised her hand a second time, then paused.

  Alassra was a proud woman, but not a vain one. Her reflected face, with its prominent bones and piercing blue eyes, inspired respect, not affection. The men who’d called her beautiful felt the same way about a storm-whipped ocean. Not the sort of face that appealed to the romantic temperament of an enchanter. Not the face she’d wear, if she’d ever intended to attract one.

 
; As a shapeshifter, the queen of Aglarond acknowledged no peer. She could transform herself into any living creature and assume inanimate shapes besides. She could become whatever her audience expected to see. No beauty or monstrosity was beyond her, nothing at all—except a glimpse of her face as nature had intended it.

  “After six hundred and two years,” Alassra complained aloud. “What would I look like? What should I look like?”

  The quicksilver reflection blurred, reformed, and blurred again. She snapped her fingers and the liquid metal drained into the pool below the dome. Naked crystal reflected a familiar, but not accurate, image.

  “It’s because it is today and because today’s my birthday,” she groused as she spun on her heel. Other mages kept familiars or companions for company, Alassra Shentrantra took the high road of solitude and wound up talking to herself. “Any other day and this wouldn’t be a problem … I wouldn’t be thinking of rogues or wondering what my own face looks like these days … Damn you, Elminster!” She shook a fist in Shadowdale’s general direction.

  The Old Mage knew what day it was. He’d sent her a priceless gift: a pair of Mulhorandi scrolls, each more than three thousand years old. and she was properly grateful, but nowhere near as grateful as she would have been if he’d given her the gift she wanted: his presence, in the next room where the silk-covered bed waited.

  A gust of wind scattered parchment and powder. The storm had arrived, and it had nothing to do with the charcoal clouds hanging over Velprintalar’s harbor.

  “A child, El. Is that so much?”

  Alassra’s mouth was still open when she shook her head with dismay. Of course it was a lot to ask of any man, to stand paternity for her child. It was, all things considered, a lot to ask of any child, especially if that child inherited anything of her temperament … or Elminster’s.

  “Mystra,” Alassra whispered softly, but, she didn’t need a goddess to tell her why she wanted a child. “Is it so wrong to want to see myself reflected in my child’s eyes? Is it so wrong to want to see the world again the way it was when I was a child?”