Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters

Wizards of Thay have been handed an opportunity this day that the gods themselves could not have bettered. An opportunity all of us here at this table share.'

'How so?'

'I speak of an opportunity to unleash magic as we never have before, against foes we know are coming. A chance to rid Faerun forever of annoyingly meddlesome women with silver hair.'

Another wizard frowned, and said in a deep voice, 'How can you be so sure that we can know these foes will come to a specific place or time?'

Thaltar Glaervar turned cool eyes to meet those of the deep-voiced wizard and replied, 'Lord Harkon, they will come to me-wherever I am, and soon, in fury unmatched. We must be ready for them, or this opportunity is squan shy;dered.'

Harkon raised his eyebrows and said, 'You presume overmuch as to your own importance, methinks. Why 'they'? Why not just the Simbul, the only one of the Seven to consistently hunt Red Wizards-the only one of the Seven to thus far act against the Red Wizards among us?'

Thaltar allowed a smile to cross his face for the first time at that meeting as he rose and replied, 'I have good reason to believe that we shall shortly be entertaining more of the Seven than we might wish to, and that the Simbul will not be among them. Perhaps I do flatter myself, Lord Harkon, but I think I am now sufficiently important to be noticed by Chosen of Mystra all over Toril. I've just come from one of my abodes, where I found it necessary to replenish my spells. That necessity arose in an incident wherein I procured this.'

From the flaring sleeve of his robe Thaltar shook out a wand, and set it gently on the table.

'Before you ask why I'm showing you a wand that to the eye resembles many another,' he continued, 'I must tell all here that bare hours ago this wand was aimed at me by the Witch-Queen of Aglarond herself.'

His gaze swept the table. Every eye was fixed on him, and the room was utterly silent. For the first time ever, he had the full attention-and respect-of the gathered cabal.

Thaltar drew in a deep breath and told them, 'Alone I contended against her, and alone I prevailed. I have slain the Simbul. Colleagues of Thay, Aglarond is ours!'

His words brought instant uproar. Thaltar permitted himself a real smile amid the din, as he saw just what he'd expected to see on the faces of his fellow Red Wiz shy;ards: wary disbelief, wonderment, and the dawning of sudden hope, even glee. The scrying globe overhead flashed as it rolled over to allow the being staring out of its depths to better examine the wand.

Thaltar had suspected that producing the wand would result in a rolling away of the mask of mists that had always cloaked the features of the man in the globe. He wasn't disappointed. Peering up through his own eye shy;brows as he tried to keep his head tilted down, he saw the globe shimmer and clear, then beheld an elderly man seated at a table. Eyes that snapped with alert intelli shy;gence peered out of the globe. Thaltar saw long white hair and a bald-crowned head, gaunt features, and hands clasped on the table in the foreground. On one finger of those hands was a long, iridescent green ring that looked like the carapace of a beetle.

It was rare for the man in the sphere to speak, but he did so now, in a voice that was cold with misgiving, and sharp with alarm. 'What magic do you awaken in the wand now, Red Wizard?'

Thaltar's gaze fell to the wand. As if mocking him, it winked once, then flashed forth a beam of soft green radiance-a beam that passed between two shouting, scrambling wizards of Thay to strike the wall of the meeting chamber, and there splash and spread out in all directions, curving along the walls and floor to cloak them in its glow with astonishing speed.

Thaltar stood frozen, a strange foreboding growing within him, but the other fifteen people in the room worked frantic magics, or made for the doors-only to find them already blocked by a glowing green field that seemed to be made of nothing at all… and yet resisted their every weapon, bodily charge, and spell.

Thaltar almost reached out to snatch up the wand, then drew his hand back. As he backed away from where it lay, the sphere above it flashed again then went dark, leaving behind only a single parting comment: 'Fool!'

The glowing field had become an unbroken sphere within the chamber, a humming presence that crowded the folk of the cabal around the table and lifted their boots from the floor with its crackling force, enclosing them.

The beam ended, and Thaltar took an uncertain step back toward the wand-only to recoil as it boiled up into an all-too-familiar shape that stood barefoot atop the table in a garment that was more black tatters than a gown, and smiled coldly at him then around at the assembled folk of the cabal.

'Thay's perennial problem,' the Simbul sighed in mock sorrow, turning with her open hand outstretched to indicate the assembled conspirators. 'Such an over shy;abundance of Red Wizards, and such a shortage of people fit to be called human.'

She shook her head and let her hands fall to her hips-only to vanish, an instant later, in the white, roil shy;ing heart of an inferno of spells.

Wizards all around the chamber hurled their most potent-slaying magics. In the instant before a ricochet shy;ing beam of slicing force took him in the chest and hurled him back into oblivion with one last scream, Thaltar saw something boiling up, like a whirling tor shy;nado, from where the queen of Aglarond had been standing. It seemed to flow up into the glowing field and merge with it, rippling outward as unleashed death raged beneath it. Fire and lighting snarled around the table, which caught fire and burst into flaming splinters in two short instants, and men screamed as they melted into skeletons and were swept away.

Then the slower spells-the fireballs and bursting spheres and gigantic, disembodied hands-took effect, their blasts raging around a glowing sphere that the few surviving eyes in the chamber saw flicker, darken, and grow holes here and there-holes that grew swiftly larger, as the sphere seemed to melt. One Red Wizard was on his feet and thrusting at the glowing field with his dagger. It seemed to darken and give way where he stabbed most energetically.

Hope rose in Speaker Amalrae and in Lord Skloon as they wove magics with hands that trembled with pain, seeking only to shatter this prison woven by the Simbul, and escape.

The holes closed again as the sphere tightened, glow shy;ing brightly once more as it swept the three people in whom life still flickered together into a huddled, snarling group.

'A prismatic wall!' Lord Harkon shouted, his voice high with fear as he flung down his dagger and gestured. 'Cast thus, to cut through this-this-'

Words failed him, and he hurled himself into frantic casting.

Skloon glanced up at his fellow lord in grim, head-shaking despair, knowing only too well what was coming. The spells he and Amalrae had woven were going to manifest, rebound from this astonishing field, and strike back at them. It wasn't anti-magic, now, so what was it? A pocket of the stuff the Weave was made of? But that was all so much bardic nonsense, fables told to apprentices as a reason for the limits to the Art that no one understood. Looking into Amalrae's eyes, he could see that she knew their doom too.

'Mystra,' he quavered, calling aloud in prayer to the Lady of Mysteries for the first time in long, long decades, 'be with us … please?'

'And have mercy,' Speaker Amalrae moaned, putting her arms around Skloon in a last embrace that overcame hatred and rivalry. It is never easy to die alone.

There came the flash and roar they'd been dreading, and the three conspirators were hurled together to tumble helplessly around the dwindling sphere as magic clawed and seared, tearing Amalrae apart and burning Skloon into a husk.

Drenched in the Speaker's blood, Lord Harkon rose grimly with his bare hands glowing a bright amber hue. 'So much for the mercy of Mystra,' he snarled. 'She helps those who help themselves!'

He moved his hands as if he were gripping a great sword. His prismatic wall flashed into existence, then, rippling in the air before him in the shape of a sword. Even if his two rivals had lived, the time for secrets was past. This was his greatest innovation, and it just might cut a way to freedom.

Lord Harkon roared his defiance and hacked at the glowing field. It darkened and withdrew a little from his conjured sword, and he slashed again with the prismatic blade.

The glowing field rippled like a sail around him, and seemed to collapse. With a wild, wordless cry of exulta shy;tion, Harkon flailed at it with his blade.

It was gone from above him, dwindling into a snake-like mass that rippled in the air, danced around his blade, and surged down the wizard's throat like a ribbon snake.

Harkon barely had time to choke before the glowing thing expanded, bursting him apart like a ripe tomato.