The Simbul's Gift Read online

  Apparently, it was. Elminster, whose affection and good opinion Alassra valued above all else and whose other qualifications were superb, refused her request to come to Velprintalar. They gamboled in Shadowdale, Evermeet, and another score of places but not once, since she’d broached the subject last year, in Velprintalar.

  “I told you what I wanted because I didn’t want to trick you. I won’t hold you responsible!” she shouted—at absent Elminster, not Mystra, though she absolved the goddess, too.

  Mystra had deliberately created Alassra and her sisters. First, the goddess had selected Dornal to be the father of her Chosen Ones, then she’d possessed Elué Shundar and married them together. They produced seven daughters in as many years. In the six centuries since then, the goddess had welcomed only thirteen grandchildren—and all but one of them were Alustriel’s half-elf sons, the Aerasumé.

  Alassra had considered herself unalterably barren. It was only recently, when her sister Dove gave birth to a healthy, human son that her hopes had been reborn. Even so, they remained slim: she’d used too much magic, visited too many uncanny places to believe that simply wanting a child would ever be enough.

  “I won’t hold you responsible,” Alassra repeated, more softly this time, “no matter what.”

  She began retrieving the parchments her outburst had scattered. When she’d collected them into an almost-tidy pile, her mind was calm enough to face the mirror again and continue her investigations. Quicksilver was creeping up the crystal when a bronze chime sounded in the palace’s audience chamber and, by associated magic, in the back of Alassra’s mind. The quicksilver flew away from the dome. Most of it fell back into the shining pool, but a few poisonous drops struck her skin where they clung and burned.

  “What now?” she demanded.

  Her voice scattered the parchment again and stunned whichever palace servant had stuck the chime. With a curse that made the parchment sheets fall like stones, Alassra reached for a gnarled staff. She spoke three simple words and a heartbeat later was standing in front of the Verdigris Throne. It was her usual way of answering a summons, but it never failed to leave her household retainers flat-footed and gaping.

  “Happy birthday, Honored Aunt,” her guest, whose arrival had caused the summons, said with a smile.

  He was tall, hearty, and wondrously pale; one of the Aerasumé, Alustriel’s sons who’d dedicated their lives to their mother. He wore a red signet ring on the third finger of his left hand; that meant his name was Boésild, or possibly Tarthilmor. Alassra could do almost anything except keep the names of her sister’s twelve sons straight. Perhaps if she’d known them better, she could have told them apart. But she hadn’t known them or their mother until after she’d lost Lailomun, after Mystra confronted her with her heritage.

  There was no polite way to ask his name, and Alassra Shentrantra, the storm queen who’d face a basilisk with nerves of steel, had a phobic fear of being impolite to her still-unfamiliar family.

  She said, “Thank you, Honored Nephew,” and hoped he’d think she was following his example. Then she took the gift he offered, a bouquet of fragile snow-flowers.

  “From my mother,” he added, unnecessarily: Where else but in Silverymoon could anyone grow snow-flowers, and who but Alustriel could grow them in high summer? “I sent my gift directly to the palace kitchen: a fresh-caught string of bluefish. I remember you said they were your favorites. I’d hoped I could share supper with you this evening, Honored Aunt.”

  He was Tarthilmor then; Alassra was nearly certain she’d been talking to Tarthilmor when she mentioned her appetite for razor-toothed bluefish. They schooled off the Fang this time of year, which might tell her something about why he’d come calling—certainly not to wish his storm-tempered aunt a happy birthday. Alustriel must have told him to bring gifts.

  Alustriel was five years older than Alassra; she remembered family traditions and kept them alive. After Lailomun and Mystra, it was Alustriel who told her the family history, including the exact date of her birth.

  And had the ever-efficient Alustriel also told her tall son to come calling because the private commemoration that Aglarond’s queen had planned—a candlelit supper with Elminster—wasn’t going to happen? Alassra suspected Tarthilmor knew, but proving her suspicions might start a family war.

  “I’d be delighted. At sundown? This storm will have cleared by then. I’ll have a supper laid on the balcony overlooking the harbor. It will be very private.”

  For the briefest moment his eyes narrowed and a satisfied smile tugged his lips: Privacy was important and birthdays had nothing to do with this visit. Then he was Alustriel’s son again, with impeccable manners and all the charm of—well, not Elminster or the Zulkir of Enchantment, but very charming all the same.

  “It will be a supper to remember,”

  “I’m sure it will,” Alassra replied, ending with an awkward pause where she should have spoken his name. Bluefish notwithstanding, that fleeting smile reminded her more of Boésild than Tarthilmor.

  “May I retire to a chamber until then? Between the storm and the fish, I could use a bath before dining with a queen—unless we want to attract flies as we eat.”

  Flies. For all her serenity, Alustriel had a keen sense of the absurd and she’d passed it along to the Aerasumé.

  “Of course.”

  Alassra clapped her hands and a retainer approached. “Show my nephew to the guest quarters and see to his needs.”

  The pair departed and Alassra departed as well, using her staff as before to transport her back to her privy chamber where the mirror answered her most desperate inquiry: Tarthilmor was riding in the forest north of Silverymoon; Boésild was the man flirting courteously with the Velprintalar servants. That mystery solved, the Simbul directed her attention to other matters. She studied the inky signatures of Zhentarim lords and the smoky plotting of barbarians far to the east of Rashemen, none of which had grown more dangerous since she last used the mirror. Closer to home, Alassra watched a handful of perennially discontent Fangers talk vague treason amongst themselves, each of them a recognized portrait on the quicksilver: Within Aglarond, the mirror’s vision was as sharp as her own, at least along the human-dominated coast. If there’d been a Red Wizard with them, the Thayan’s presence would have glowed like a beacon.

  When Alassra directed her attention to the Yuirwood the quicksilver surface seethed with fast-changing colors. The ancient trees cast their own protection and, though it galled the Simbul’s pride, her magic couldn’t penetrate the forest canopy. Hot spots flickered then vanished. The Fang wasn’t the only part of Aglarond where discontent flourished, but the most intractable of the Cha’Tel’Quessir tribes were, thankfully, those least likely to look beyond the forest for allies.

  She let the forest fade and framed her final inquiry—

  Zandilar’s Dancer?

  It was an oft-repeated and, therefore, quickly answered question. The mirror showed her a sturdy, blue-dun colt, still growing into his black-stockinged legs. There was a human man standing at his head and a half-elf perched upon his back. All three were sweat-soaked and wearied.

  “Success at last!”

  It had taken father and stepson the whole summer to break the two-year-old colt. She’d grown impatient with them. Another week and she’d have sent one of her Rashemaar horsemen to the village: They could break a horse in a morning. She’d send a horse-trader instead. Once the Simbul had Zandilar’s Dancer in her stables, Elminster’s curiosity would get the better of him. He’d come to see the colt and once here … She could be very charming herself, when charm was useful.

  In the meantime, the storm had torn itself apart and the sun glowed orange through the tattered clouds. Alassra reached for her staff.

  Boésild was waiting for her on the balcony. Scrubbed and shaved, he looked quite the prince in linen breeches and an embroidered shirt that hadn’t come from the palace wardrobe. By contrast, Alassra wore her customary storm-cloud gown, a b
it worse in the bodice for quicksilver burns it had taken earlier in the day.

  “You look … enchanting,” her guest said with a diplomatic smile.

  “Nonsense, I look like a street-waif.

  His smile turned genuine. “A street-waif who sunders Thayan armies with a wooden staff.”

  “Not tonight, I hope,” Alassra replied, leaning said staff against the table as she sat in the chair he held for her. “A little company on my birthday is pleasant; an army would be too much.”

  He was wrong about the staff. It wasn’t a weapon; she never took it into battle. The wood had a memory for places, though, and could take her almost anywhere she’d ever been. It was the easiest way in and out of her tower workroom.

  Alassra’s nephew spoke entertainingly while they ate, savoring the excellent fish and the culinary talents of the Simbul’s underworked cooks until there was only a bowl of iced fruit beside the melting snow-flowers on the table between them.

  “So tell me, Boésild, why have you come to Velprintalar?”

  “Not for your birthday, Honored Aunt. I didn’t think you’d be fooled.”

  “I’d have dined alone without you.”

  A silent moment passed. The first star appeared in the violet sky. And Boésild dug into a suede belt pouch. He produced two small disks, which, after examination, he laid on the table.

  “I found these yesterday in Nethra.”

  Supper soured in the Simbul’s stomach. Nethra was one of the port cities south of the Yuirwood. Like all the cities of Aglarond and Thay, Nethra had started out as a Mulhorandi outpost. The Nethrans fought for and won their independence as the Mulhorand Empire faded, but their freedom was a chancy thing, balanced between Thayan greed and the price of Aglarondan protection. These days Nethra paid a handsome tithe into the Velprintalar treasury, and Alassra paid a reward for any Red Wizard tokens taken within its territory.

  The Aerasumé weren’t bounty hunters.

  “How did you acquire them?” she asked.

  “I was out late in a quarter where respectable folk lock their doors at sunset and stay inside, no matter what, until the sun’s up again. I heard a cry for help—”

  Alassra’s eyebrows rose to a dramatic height.

  “A full-throated cry, I assure you. Naturally, I investigated.”

  “Naturally,” she agreed.

  Boésild pushed one of the disks closer to his aunt. “I was too late. This one was already dead and the other, fool that she was, attacked me.”

  “Foolishness is part of Red Wizard training.”

  “Indeed, though I didn’t guess she was a wizard until after I’d broken her neck. They have a kind of scent, you know. That one,” Boésild indicated the disk he’d pushed, “had cloaked himself well. Still, I’d have known him for what he was if we’d come in sight of each other, but the woman—oh, my Honored Aunt—she could have deceived you.”

  “Never.”

  Pale hair swayed in the twilight as Boésild shook his head. “There was nothing, nothing, about her while she lived and only the faintest trace after she’d died. I wouldn’t have found the token—wouldn’t even have looked for one—if my suspicions hadn’t already been aroused.”

  Alassra took the nearest disk in her sensitive fingers. Red Wizards carried such disks as proof of their place in the hierarchies of their various disciplines and as means to summon protection from their superiors.

  “Had he called for help?”

  Boésild shook his head. “Another interesting thing: She’d slain him without magic, smashed his skull in with a cobblestone. She fought me the same way. As I said, I’d no notion what she was until after I’d killed her.”

  Reluctantly, the Simbul picked up the second disk. It was, as her nephew promised, lifeless. Wrapped in cloth, as it surely had been, she would not have been aware of its owner’s true identity unless they touched. Her quicksilver mirror would never discern it. The implications of that were dire.

  “I don’t suppose there was anything else? No codes or messages? No tattoos? She didn’t say anything before she died?”

  “Nothing at all. They’d both peeled their skin. My guess is she’d recognized the man in passing and hunted him down. Mystra knows that’s common enough among the Red Wizards. Is there one man or woman among them who truly knows the meaning of the word trust, given or taken? It wouldn’t be the first time one of their little wars has claimed victims in another realm, but Red Wizards slaying each other with stones? I don’t like it, Honored Aunt.”

  “You don’t like it!” Alassra let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t know the meaning of your words. I’ll keep these.” She closed her fist over the tokens.

  “Of course. I’m sorry—they’re a poor birthday present.”

  “No, a valued one. You’ll understand if I leave you to your own devices now? I’ve lost my taste for fruit and company.” She reached for the staff.

  The Simbul’s mirror shone with its own light when she returned to her privy chamber.

  Show me Nethra! she demanded before the echo of her entrance faded. What’s loose in Nethra?

  Nothing untoward, according to the mirror with a mix of Aglarondan clarity and foreign fuzziness.

  Nothing other than what she’d expected, based on Boésild’s tale and the tokens clutched in her hand.

  Alassra took the noisier of the disks, the one that had belonged to the dead man, and balanced it carefully on the cap of the crystal dome. The quicksilver flowed up to cover it. The image of Nethra blurred, then reconstructed itself exactly as before. It was the same with the dead woman’s token.

  “Cold tea and crumpets!” the queen grumbled, resorting to the harmless curse the Rashemaar Witches had taught her a long time ago and a measure of the foreboding she felt.

  Red Wizards rarely traveled alone; as Boésild pointed out, they didn’t trust one another and the zulkirs trusted least of all. At best, Boésild had stumbled across a pair that had lost the little trust that held it together. At worst, he’d interrupted a skirmish between rival groups, which remained invisible if they remained in Nethra.

  And if they’d left Nethra?

  The quicksilver trembled in rhythm with Alassra’s frustration: If they’d left Nethra, they could be anywhere. She didn’t worry too much about Red Wizards infiltrating the Yuirwood. Little as the wilder Cha’Tel’Quessir might love Aglarond’s queen, they preferred her to anyone from Thay. A Red Wizard falling afoul of them might well wish he’d crossed the Simbul’s path instead. The Fangers were a different problem; they should know better—their parents and grandparents had formed the core of Halacar’s defeated army. But their discontent was rooted in nostalgia for a time that had never been, and their ears were fertile ground for sedition.

  Alassra could, and would, keep a closer watch on the Fang. She had the resources: trusted men and women, and magic, too. Keeping watch wouldn’t solve the greater problem. Taking the dead woman’s token from the quicksilver, Alassra polished it between her fingers and studied it by the light of a spell-dissolving lamp. Foul smells poisoned the air: blood pearl and dragon’s wing foremost among them; not the Simbul’s favorite reagents, but common enough in Thay. Probing deeper, she heated the token in the lamp’s flame. It melted into a mottled lump while she learned nothing about the Red Wizard who’d cast the spell.

  She had better luck, in a sense, with the dead man’s token, which had been protected by a familiar spell cast by a familiar mage: Lauzoril. His green-eyed grinning face was harder and colder in her mind’s eye than it had been earlier on the quicksilver. The world would be a better place when he was gone—at least until the new zulkir learned his predecessor’s tricks.

  “Somebody’s stalking your spies, Lauzoril,” she said to the man who wasn’t there. “Someone’s turned on you. You’d best look carefully among your allies.” She thought of the zulkirs together and shook the thought from her head. “Let me look upon something peaceful instead: Zandilar’s Dancer. Show me Zandilar’s Dancer a
nd the boy. Take me to Sulalk.”

  The mirror obliged, showing them both bedded down for the night, the colt in a pasture, Ember stripped down to his breeches and smiling as he dreamt in his narrow bed. Alassra envied them a moment—Mystra’s Chosen didn’t need to sleep; their dreams were mostly daydreams, pale imitations of the real thing—then, without prompting, the quicksilver roiled. The Simbul, expecting the unimaginable, readied a potent barrage of spells.

  The mirror’s image resolved into four men hunched around a plank table in a dirt-floor room. Alassra recognized the room. Sulalk was too small to have an inn or tavern. When folk gathered or strangers visited, they gathered and visited in the sacking room behind the mill. The four men were strangers, travel-stained traders with gamblers’ eyes. Town merchants sent such men into the countryside each summer to measure the coming harvest. The traders drove hard bargains and weren’t beloved by the farmers, but they’d been part of Aglarondan life longer than the Simbul.

  Alassra saw no reason for alarm. Though she’d constructed the mirror, she didn’t always understand its workings: It had shown her scenes both unexpected and trivial before. She was releasing her uncast spells when she read a word as it formed on one man’s lips.

  Horse, he’d said—in what tone Alassra couldn’t say because the mirror didn’t reflect sound. She thought she saw him add the word tomorrow. She was no lip-reader; she couldn’t be sure, but a grain trader could easily become a horse trader for a day. He’d have no trouble finding a buyer for Ember’s colt. She’d have to buy it from him herself, if she didn’t get to the boy first.

  The Simbul had advantages—powers of persuasion—no trader could match. Alassra needed a bit of time to assemble her traveling gear and to remind herself of the spells no traveling wizard should be without, but after that she’d would be off to Sulalk to purchase a birthday present Elminster would have to visit Aglarond to claim.

  She planned to reach the village in the late morning hours. Judging by the amount of ale the four men had already drunk, she’d arrive with time to spare.