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.
3
Thazalhar, in eastern Thay Midnight, between the thirteenth and fourteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)
In a silent crypt beneath an isolated estate of Thazalhar, two men, both of them necromancers, neither of them alive, awaited the arrival of a third. They waited patiently because patience was all they had, bound as they were in bandages and seated in ebony chairs that flickered with the turquoise light of unbreakable warding. The pair was also bound by ties of blood and ambition that went deeper than the misunderstandings that had led Gweltaz to slay Chazsinal who sat on his right.
The blood was between fathers and sons. It reached beyond the crypt to a third living man whose footfalls echoed outside. The ambition, cherished by all three, was nothing less than the destruction of Szass Tam, Zulkir of Necromancy.
A century ago, when Gweltaz had been an aspiring necromancer, he'd caught the zulkir's undead eye. For a while, he'd been Szass Tam's favorite. In the time-honored tradition of Thayan treachery, Gweltaz had coveted Tam's place atop the necromancers' hierarchy. He plotted against his mentor. His plots failed, spectacularly. Gweltaz paid for that failure with his mortal life and a final lesson: Tam, who understood tradition without respecting it, did not teach any pupil, however favored, enough to threaten his own position.
Chazsinal, by then a novice necromancer himself, had rescued Gweltaz's charred bones from a demon- guarded midden on the heights of Thaymount. For the next ten years Chazsinal abandoned his own studies to collect the rare unguents necessary to restore his father to a semblance of life. He cast the spells successfully, at no small risk to himself. Then, heeding Gweltaz's demands for filial loyalty, he surrendered what little remained of his own ambitions to his father's need for revenge.
Seven times, they'd risked everything in schemes to bring Tam down, and seven times they'd failed so miserably, so early, and so completely that the zulkir never became aware of their plots. Gweltaz came to believe that his son was a half-wit, a fool incapable of executing the simplest plan. Badgered by his father, Chazsinal came to believe the same thing. Succumbing to vice and debauchery, he sired a son on a green-eyed Eltabbaran slave and, watching the infant take its first wobbly steps, suffered a chilling revelation:
Chazsinal was proud of the part he'd played in creating a new human life. He loved his son, as he understood loving, as Gweltaz had, perhaps, loved him so many years ago. But-with an honesty uncommon in the back alleys of Eltabbar-Chazsinal realized paternal pride, even paternal love, would doom the boy as surely as it had doomed him. No man or woman of Thay, no Red Wizard worth his robes, would ever teach a child enough to threaten his own place in the treacherous world. This would be especially damning for little Lauzoril because, with his father and grandfather in hiding and cut off from all other necromancers, he'd have no other teachers: He'd learn less than Chazsinal knew, which was less than Gweltaz knew, which everyone knew wasn't enough.
Chazsinal could have lived with his revelation; he lived comfortably with the greater shame of his own failings. But Gweltaz, using spellcraft he hadn't shared with his only son, had discovered Lauzoril and had demanded that the boy be brought to the moldering mausoleum they called home.
Gweltaz wanted a new and presumably more able pupil. Gweltaz wanted a new son, and that was something Chazsinal could not permit.
So before his son was weaned, Chazsinal took Lauzoril from his mother and placed him with the Eltabbaran enchanters, where, the boy's innate charm along with a sackful of gold secured him a place on the student roster. Then Chazsinal worked his best magic on his own memory to convince himself that his son was dead.
Chazsinal's best was never good enough. Gweltaz saw through his son's deception. He struck swiftly and precisely; Chazsinal's flesh began to putrefy between one breath and the next. Gweltaz regretted his rage immediately, but once done, the magic could not be undone and the best that Gweltaz could do was clutch his son's spirit to his undead heart.
They remained together, out of sight and forgotten, caught in the crack between life and death, aware of Lauzoril's progress through the enchanters' ranks and aware of Szass Tam as their great enemy's influence grew to unprecedented heights. Convinced that Tam would move against them the moment he became aware of their continued existence, they denied themselves every opportunity to contact Lauzoril. Then, some thirty years after Chazsinal died, Lauzoril found them.
Their son and grandson had become a zulkir, albeit of enchantment, a discipline opposed to necromancy and, in their considered opinion, decidedly inferior as well. They restrained their prejudice when Lauzoril transferred Gweltaz's fragile remains to the Thazalhar estate and, more importantly, saw his father restored with the same spells that preserved Gweltaz. Lauzoril even took up their cause against Szass Tam. But there was no controlling the Zulkir of Enchantment, not as Gweltaz had controlled Chazsinal.
'My son brings us supper,' Chazsinal said, amber light seeping through his linen bandages. 'I can smell the blood.'
Gweltaz snorted. 'Control yourself. He starves us, treats us like beggars and slaves while you fawn at his feet. He brings us farmyard beasts, strangled with a dainty cord. His hands are always clean; he has no taste for death.'
'Haven't I?' the zulkir inquired mildly, his voice entering the crypt while his body continued its descent down the spiral stairs. 'Then why do I keep you around, Grandfather? Not for the company, I assure you-or the smell.'
'For my advice, young fool, and my wisdom. I know things you cannot imagine.'
'Of course, how could I forget? You know everything about death-especially your own.'
Blue-green light outlined the door, as Lauzoril released wards meant to protect the living members of his household. He had no fear of his ancestors. One word from him and they would be consumed within their bandages.
'I know Szass Tam! I know how his mind works, how he thinks, the way he plans. Without my warnings, you'd have died ten times over.'
There was a measure of truth in Gweltaz's claims, which Lauzoril acknowledged by throwing him the larger of the two strangled piglets he'd brought. He threw the smaller to his father, whose hollow-eyed, pleading glance he did not acknowledge at all.
Lauzoril understood Gweltaz. There were a hundred men and women just like him in his own discipline. Treacherous and greedy, they were unaware of their mediocrity. Their conversation was shaped by centuries of tradition, ritual, and rehearsed invective. Living or undead, Lauzoril used them in the great game he played with his peers and disposed of them when their ambitions exceeded their usefulness.
Gweltaz trod the fine line between utility and arrogance; he was very careful never to cross it.
That line blurred when Lauzoril considered Chazsinal, who was not as useful to any scheme but who had-for whatever reason-delivered Lauzoril to the enchanters. Lauzoril had only to look at Chazsinal to see the fate he had avoided: A man could stand against Gweltaz, who was almost as good as he thought he was, but a boy in leading strings would have been broken utterly.
By that measure, Lauzoril owed Chazsinal everything, but everything else about Chazsinal grated on his nerves. He paid his debt with spite and contempt.
Silence hung in the crypt while the undead necromancers consumed the flesh he'd brought them. When damp gristle was all that remained of their meal and the two necromancers were suffused with a fresh, bloody glow, Lauzoril opened the conversation.
'The matter with Druxus Rhym is finished. He'll be watching his back too closely to make trouble for a while.'
Neither Chazsinal nor Gweltaz cared about Rhym. Alteration, like enchantment, was inferior magic in necromancers' eyes. But the Zulkir of Alteration had allied himself with Szass Tam: A strike against him was a strike against their enemy, and that they approved. Besides, the pair was starved for more than blood. Lauzoril's visits were their only direct contact with the world beyond the crypt. They hungered for his voice. Gweltaz
