(1368DR)
The first indication that Aznar Thrul's traitorous spy master had of the burgeoning problems in Aglarond had come during the night, when frantic spellbound thoughts awoke her from a fitful sleep. The arcane messages were the same: Something dire and deadly had struck the chattel-kessir mongrels while they marched beneath a hanging storm, and something equally potent had risen up to defend them with lightning.
The spy master had reminded her minions that they remained safe because they were following their orders to lay low, to attract no attention whatsoever until they spied a horse among the mongrels.
After they saw the horse, their orders were different. The vanguard was to act for the glory of Thay. Her second group followed orders for her personal glory and that of their old master, Deaizul. The spy master had tried to pick up the threads of Deaizul's thoughts. He was with the chattel-kessir, within the mind of their leader. There had been problems earlier, problems that she didn't learn about until the damage was done. She tried to imagine her lover and mentor with a half-breed's pointed ears and mottled skin. It would be difficult, but if they brought Aznar Thrul down, then all things would become possible.
Deaizul, though, had been deep in his chattel-kessir identity and hadn't responded to her spell-sent pleas throughout the night. He would, she thought, have been accessible, if the problems were serious and when she couldn't rouse him, she'd gone about her affairs, blithely convinced that nothing truly significant had occurred.
Other matters occupied the spy master's mind this morning: an assassination in Amruthar, a reminder to a local magistrate that the city's independence depended entirely on the city's willingness to do what it was told. She was in the bolt-hole, updating her encoded notebooks, when the first essence egg exploded within the locked wooden chest. Three more had shattered by the time she opened it. All the broken eggs were bound to her personal minions in the Yuirwood.
She knew the eggs could break, but never in the ten years since Deaizul gave her the box had an egg exploded. Minions died and the powdered essence with their eggs grew dark; they didn't explode.
Frantic, almost beyond rational thought, the spy master dodged flying bits of glass, trying to protect the remaining eggs. To no avail. Within a handful of moments, every egg belonging to a Yuirwood spy was a splintered ruin and every spy-there was no other interpretation-was dead.
The dire beast from last night? The Aglarondan forest harbored creatures unknown in Thay. The Yuirwood itself was magical, so said Deaizul. Could it have killed with such force that death had echoed all the way back to Bezantur? Could there be another explanation? The Simbul had wrecked havoc in the farming village, but the eggs had survived. Mythrell'aa had headed west and disappeared, but swift mass murder wasn't Lady Illusion's style.
The spy master went to the separate cabinet where she kept her own egg and Deaizul's. His was intact and glowing. She held it in her hands. They were bleeding; she hadn't dodged all the glass. She pressed the egg between her breasts. She called Deaizul's name with her heart.
No answer. He was alive-trapped in a mongrel's body, but alive. And not listening to her pleas.
The spy master poured herself a glass of clear liquid. She drained the glass in two gulps, then swallowed another time directly from the decanter. Her heart no longer raced.
Why should Deaizul risk his place among the chattel-kessir by turning his attention toward her when she called? The mongrels were canny, like animals. They'd tear him apart, like animals, if they thought he was not one of them. He was alive. In Bezantur, nothing more mattered.
She poured another glass. Calmer now, she could see that events had gone for the best. She could tell the zulkir that the Yuirwood had unmasked her spies and their plans had come to naught. He'd be angry… until Deaizul had the power of the forest in his grasp. After that, the zulkir's anger would be too little, too late.
The carnelian token the spy master kept pinned to her robe grew warm, then hot. She unclasped it and dropped it on the table where it shimmered with its own heat. The blood-red stone bulged, became a pair of lips that opened to shape one word, 'Now.' It was Aznar Thrul's voice.
The summons couldn't be a coincidence, yet it had to be. The zulkir couldn't already know what she herself had just learned. The spy master assembled her old woman's disguise and hurried out of the bolt-hole. The chamberlain expected her; another first, like the exploding eggs. Even more disconcerting, he didn't wheedle or harass her, didn't want coins before opening the proper doors, didn't insist that she change into a flimsy gauze robe.
'The Mighty Tharchion, Mightier Zulkir awaits you in the smaller audience chamber,' he said, tall and stiff and going out of his way not to touch her.
The spy master swallowed hard. Her mouth was pasty and sour. She wished she had something to drink, something potent. Failing that, she calmed herself with the knowledge that Deaizul was alive. His essence egg was secure in her bolt-hole cabinet, safe beside her own.
Her calm melted when she entered the small audience chamber where the zulkir sat, in robes of darkest crimson, behind a table and an opened box identical in every way to the one in which she kept the essence eggs. Nearly a score of the padded compartments were empty, dusted with glass shards and rust-colored powder. But the worst was in the upper right corner. Where her box had two completely empty compartments, corresponding to the places where her own egg and Deaizul's had once rested, Aznar Thrul's held two glowing, fragile essence eggs.
'I see you recognize this,' the zulkir said. His words were winter ice, stinging the spy master's flesh.
'My lord, it is remarkably similar to a box Deaizul once showed me.'
'Do not imagine you can deceive me any longer with misdirection and half-truths, woman. It is the twin-the precise double-of the box you keep in your private chamber behind the Sahuagin Tavern, in a locked cabinet. The doors are painted red.'
'I meant only that Deaizul once showed me a second box, my lord.'
'More lies! Deaizul thought there was but one box, and so did you! So careful, weren't you, collecting just enough flesh and blood to decoct a few drops of mortal essence to mix with the dragon wing and blood pearl? And buying your own reagents with plain coins. Oh so careful, and oh so clever. Do you think I became zulkir because I am a mooncalf fool, woman? I knew where you traded! You bargain so hard for my dragon wing, my blood pearl, and-for good measure-a few grains of red iron and cinnabar mixed with the dragon wing and mustard oil smeared ever-so-lightly over the pearls. Can you guess what I did?'
She could. The iron could attract another spell, the cinnabar-converted to minute quantities of quicksilver by the mustard oil-would reflect the essence to another location: the inside of Aznar Thrul's duplicate eggs. She felt ill. It wouldn't last. The dead didn't vomit.
'You sent two teams into the Yuirwood. Two. You only mentioned one. You said the other one was from Mythrell'aa. What were you thinking of?'
'One team failed in the village, my lord.' Her doom sat in the open box. Even so, she wouldn't concede, wouldn't beg for mercy that wouldn't be forthcoming, not from Aznar Thrul. 'I sent a second, to be certain mistakes were not repeated. I didn't want you to worry-'
'Worry? No, indeed, I'm not worried. Certain mistakes will never be repeated.'
Thrul picked up a glowing egg: hers, unless he'd switched them. The eggs were identical. The essences they contained were indistinguishable, hence the carefully labeled compartments.
'Where is your lover, Deaizul?' the zulkir asked.
'I have not seen him in over a year.'
'Then you do not know that he's in the Yuirwood? You do not know that his body was destroyed when he possessed a certain half-breed who-it turned out-was not quite the innocent he'd seemed.'
'My lord, Deaizul often possessed those he spied upon. He lived their lives and served Thay until the Salamander Wars. His nerves broke.'
Thrul took the second egg from the upper right corner. He juggled them from one hand to the other, he feigned clumsiness, but never lost control. It was however, impossible to guess which was which. 'And you, woman, how are your nerves today?'
'My nerves are as they always have been. I have nothing to hide, my lord.'
'Nothing but a plan hatched between you, your lover, and Mythrell'aa to lure me out of Bezantur with illusions of Aglarondan treasure. No, woman-mistakes will not be repeated.'
He smashed the eggs together. The spy master's last thought, as her essence escaped, was that Aznar Thrul was a greater fool than she'd imagined possible.
