Still, no reply came, and abruptly Bareris felt ridiculous, babbling to what was, in all likelihood, an empty space.
'To the Abyss with you, then,' he said. 'I don't care what's become of you. I don't need you.' He wheeled and tramped up the groaning stairs.
The conjuration chamber shook. Grimoires fell from their shelves, racks of jars and bottles clattered, and the piece of red chalk that was attempting to inscribe an intricate magic circle on the floor hitched sideways, spoiling the geometric precision the sigil demanded.
Szass Tam sighed. The earth tremors jolting all Faerыn had turned out to be particularly potent and persistent in High Thay with its volcanic peaks. The entire castle had been rocking and shuddering ever since his return from the Keep of Sorrows, and although the inconvenience was the least of the ills Mystra's death had engendered, it vexed him nonetheless.
He waved a skeletal hand, and the half-completed figure vanished as if it had never been. He animated a different stick of chalk and set it to recreating the drawing.
This time, the chalk managed to complete the circle without the earth playing pranks. Szass Tam took his place in the center, summoned one of his favorite staves into his hand, and recited a lengthy incantation.
A magical structure, invisible to normal sight but manifest to an archmage, took shape before him, then started to slump and deform. He froze it in its proper shape by speaking certain words of power with extra emphasis, and through the sheer insistence of his will.
At the end, his construct wavered into overt existence as a murky oval suspended in midair. Szass Tam said, 'You are my window. Show me the Weave.'
Had he given the same command before the advent of the blue fires, the oval would have revealed an endless iridescent web reflective of the magic that infused and connected all things, and the interplay of forces that held it all in equilibrium. Now he beheld scraps of burning crystal tumbling through an endless void. Even for a lich, the sight was nauseating, although Szass Tam couldn't define exactly why.
What he did know was that the Weave showed no sign of reforming. Perhaps it would eventually, if a new deity of magic arose, but since Szass Tam had no idea how or when such an ascension might occur, the possibility failed to ease his mind.
'You are my window,' he said. 'Show me the Shadow Weave.'
As its name suggested, the Shadow Weave was the dark reflection and antithesis of its counterpart. It hadn't partaken of Mystra's life in the same way the Weave had, and Szass Tam had conjectured that it might reconstitute more quickly in the wake of her passing.
If so, it could serve as a source of power. For certain practitioners of an alternative form of sorcery called shadow magic, it always had. Despite his erudition and curiosity, Szass Tam had never learned a great deal about the mysteries of shadow. Conventional thaumaturgy had proved such an inexhaustible well of precious and fascinating secrets that he simply hadn't gotten around to it. But he was willing to learn now if it would ameliorate the current crisis.
But it didn't appear that there was anything left to learn. The Shadow Weave, too, remained in pieces, the fragments falling endlessly through darkness and burning with a dim flame whose radiance was somehow a mockery of true light.
He grimaced. With both structures annihilated, it was no wonder wizardry was crippled.
Yet it was hardly useless. It could still evoke and transform, summon and bind-some of the time. If he could figure out why it worked when it did, and why it failed on other occasions, perhaps he'd know how to make it reliable again.
'You are my window,' rasped an unfamiliar voice, startling him from his musings. 'Show me the one peeping at magic's corpse. I wish to know if he laughs or weeps.'
The interior of the oval rippled and flowed, and an entity appeared. In certain respects, Szass Tam might almost have been gazing at his own reflection, for the creature, too, possessed a grinning skull face and naked bones for hands. But instead of a handsome red velvet robe, it wore dark, rotting cerements, and in place of a staff, it carried a scythe.
The weapon enabled Szass Tam to identify the creature, for its blade was blacker than anything made of matter-a long, curved, movable wound in the fabric of reality. Only entropic reapers, undead destroyers in the service of primordial chaos, carried scythes like that.
Formidable as they were, no reaper should have sensed Szass Tam's ritual in progress, let alone been able to subvert the magic to its own ends. It was another disquieting indication of just how diminished his powers actually were.
But diminished or not, he needed to reestablish control. 'You are my window,' he said, 'and I now close you.'
Nothing happened.
'Do you see the beauty?' the reaper asked, and even though it was speaking from another universe, Szass Tam caught a whiff of its cold, stinking breath. 'It's the beginning of the end of all structure, all limitation, or so we pray.'
Ironically, Szass Tam did see, but he wasn't inclined to chat about it. 'I am Szass Tam, whose name inspires fear in every world, and I don't tolerate interlopers in my sanctum. Will you leave, or must I punish you?'
'I see you're a great wizard,' said the reaper, 'but are you great on behalf of chaos, or great in the service of order?'
'It isn't your place to try to take my measure.'
'You're mistaken. It's exactly my place, although I admit, the task is difficult. You sow chaos with every move you make, and yet I sense the goal of all your scheming is law transcendent.'
Szass Tam felt an unaccustomed pang of genuine alarm. Exactly how much did the reaper perceive? Too much, he feared, for him to rest easy if he merely drove it from his presence. 'You are my window,' Szass Tam said, 'and you will open wide. Wide enough to pass my enemy through.'
The reaper took a stride and entered the mortal realm. Having made up its mind that Szass Tam was a considerable force for order, it had no choice but to try to slay him.
But now that Szass Tam had drawn it within range of his most potent magic, he had no intention of giving it a fair chance to do so. He flourished his staff and spoke a word of command.
A form like an eagle made of dazzling white light leaped from the end of the staff, the visible manifestation of a spell crafted specifically to annihilate undead. The blazing raptor plunged its talons into the reaper's naked rib cage and disappeared, leaving the skeletal assassin unharmed. Like so many spells that Szass Tam had attempted of late, the magic had twisted awry.
Its ragged black cerements swirling around it, the reaper swung its scythe. Szass Tam leaped out of range and the dark blade streaked by him, leaving ripples of distortion in its wake.
Szass Tam spun his staff through another pass. Eight orbs of blue-white light flew from the weapon, accompanied by the smell of thunderstorms. The spheres struck the reaper in quick succession, each discharging its power with a blinding flash and a crackle.
The servant of chaos stumbled backward, and portions of its filthy cerements caught fire. But the barrage didn't blast it to splinters as it should have. As soon as it ended, the thing rushed in for another strike.
Szass Tam attempted another retreat and backed into a worktable. The scythe spun at him and he hurled himself to the side. The black blade sheared through a bronze statuette of Set, a serpent-headed Mulhorandi god of magic. The stroke liquefied it, and it splashed into droplets and spatters.
As he scrambled backward, distancing himself from the reaper, Szass Tam could only infer that the random fluctuations in mystical forces had rendered his staff and its stored magic useless. He had no way of knowing if any of his other spells would work any better, or even if he'd have the chance of find out. Evoking an effect from the ether required more time and precision than releasing one already stored, and an aggressive attacker like the reaper could make it impossible for a wizard to conjure successfully.
As the creature rounded on him, he focused his thoughts on the red chalk. It was still enchanted, and still responsive to his unspoken will. He bade it hurtle at the reaper to scribble on its bony face and crown.
With luck, the unexpected harassment would distract the reaper for a precious moment, until it decided that the chalk was insignificant. Without waiting to see if the trick would work, Szass Tam reached for one of his many
