has dried her to a trickle. But after ten years in the desert, a man will weep with gratitude at any taste of water.'
Pyras Autorian, tharchion of the Thaymount, had a meadow outside his castle walls. Working under Szass Tam's supervision, twenty necromancers drew a broad and intricate pattern in yellow powder on the flat, grassy field, then set the stuff on fire to burn the design into the ground.
Long-necked and weak-chinned, Pyras watched the process from a chair his slaves had fetched. An awning protected his pasty skin from the feeble sunlight leaking through the cloud cover. He plainly wanted to ask what was going on, but couldn't quite muster the nerve.
His restlessness amused Szass Tam, but that wasn't the reason he opted not to explain. Though timid and dull-witted, Pyras had served him to the best of his ability for a long while. It would be shabby to repay him with an explanation that would only make him more uncomfortable.
The necromancers positioned and consecrated the altar stones inside the pattern with meticulous care. By the time they finished, the sun had set.
Szass Tam turned to Pyras. 'Now,' he said, 'we need the slaves.'
He focused his will, and after a moment, dread warriors marched a score of naked slaves out of the castle gate and over the drawbridge. The zombies' amber eyes shone in the gloom.
When the thralls beheld the pentacle and altar stones, and realized what lay in store, some tried to run. Dread warriors clubbed them senseless and dragged them onward.
Pyras cleared his throat. 'You know, Master, slaves are valuable.'
Szass Tam wished he could offer a reassuring smile, but he was still lacking a face capable of such nuances. 'I promise that in days to come, you won't regret the loss. Now I must ask you to excuse me. It's time for me to take a more active role.'
He rose and walked to the center of the mystic figure, while dread warriors shackled weeping slaves on top of stones, and the necromancers took up their ritual daggers. When the zombies finished their task, they cleared out. The wizards looked to Szass Tam like a choir awaiting a downbeat from its conductor.
He called a staff of frigid petrified shadow into his bony hands, raised it high, and spoke the initial words of the lengthy incantation. Chanting in unison, the lesser Red Wizards supplied the counterpoint and made the first cuts.
The slaves screamed louder. Szass Tam amplified his voice to keep it audible above the din. His followers needed to synchronize their declarations with him. If the timing was off, the ritual could escape his control, with fatal consequences.
In fact, that could happen anyway. His powers were diminished, wizardry itself had become slippery and undependable, and he was undertaking something he'd never attempted before.
If even a zulkir felt a hint of apprehension, he could only imagine how nervous the lesser wizards must be. Since the ritual had nothing to do with necromancy, they must truly feel they were treading on alien, treacherous ground. Yet no one could have read it in their demeanors, and he was proud of their discipline.
Gradually, shadow flowed, and a sickly green shimmer danced in the air. Disembodied voices whispered and sniggered, and a vile metallic taste filled Szass Tam's mouth. Invisible but perceptible to the wise, a metaphysical structure took form, a little at a time, like a stone hall constructed without mortar. Szass Tam could feel that the slightest misstep would bring it crashing down. But it didn't fall-the elements were in perfect balance.
Perceiving what he perceived, his assistants smiled. Then triumph turned to puzzlement when the slaves expired, their killers recited the last lines they'd been schooled to say, and nothing happened. The power they'd raised was like a bow, bent but not released.
'Don't worry,' Szass Tam said. 'We simply haven't finished. Unlock the fetters and push the corpses off the altars.'
The Red Wizards did as instructed, and when they were done, he concentrated fiercely, focusing every iota of his willpower. 'Now, shackle yourselves to the stones and lie quietly. I'll come around to lock down the hand you can't secure for yourselves.'
He'd long ago laid enchantments of obedience on these particular followers. Yet the disorder arising from Mystra's death could conceivably break those bonds, and if even one of the necromancers tried to fight or flee, his exertions would spoil the ritual.
Fortunately, it didn't come to that. Some of the mages made choking sounds or flailed, others shuddered as if in the throes of a seizure as they tried to resist. But in the end, they all shackled themselves to the gory stones. Szass Tam completed the task of restraining them, then drew an athame into his hand and commenced butchering them.
By the time he finished, he had blood all over the front of his robe. He turned to Pyras, who looked on with goggling eyes.
'Come into the circle,' Szass Tam said.
Pyras stood and advanced, trembling and stumbling. He too was mind-bound, and had no choice.
Szass Tam met him halfway, took his arm, and conducted him to the center of the circle. 'We won't bother with fetters,' he said, because Pyras was no Red Wizard, just a weak-willed wretch who had no hope of squirming free of his master's psychic grip.
'Please,' Pyras whispered, tears sliding from his eyes, 'I'm loyal. I always have been.'
'I know,' Szass Tam said. 'I'm grateful for your fidelity, and I apologize. If it's any consolation, your sacrifice will serve the best of causes, and I'll make it go as quickly as I can.' He slit open Pyras's gold-buttoned velvet doublet and silk shirt.
Szass Tam sensed it when the tharchion's heart stopped beating, and felt the man's anguished spirit fleeing his ruined body. The magic he'd worked so assiduously to create finally discharged an instant later.
A sudden sense of overwhelming wrongness and malice impressed itself on his mystical awareness and bashed his mind into momentary confusion.
Then the moon and stars disappeared, and Pyras's castle, too. Darkness sealed the pentacle away from the rest of the world like a black fist closing around it.
And then Bane appeared. His form was murky, but Szass Tam could make out dark armor, the infamous jeweled gauntlet, and the glint of eyes.
On first inspection, the Lord of Darkness appeared no more terrible than some of the spectres Szass Tam had commanded in his time. Yet an aura of vast power and cruel intelligence emanated from him, and the lich felt a sudden urge to abase himself.
Annoyed, he quashed the impulse. Bane is simply a spirit, he told himself. I've trafficked with hundreds and this is just one more.
'How dare you summon me?' said the god. His bass voice was soft and mellifluous, but some hidden undertone pained the ears.
'I invited you,' Szass Tam replied, 'by sacrificing twenty men and women in the prime of their lives, twenty accomplished necromancers I can ill spare, and one of Thay's wealthiest and most powerful nobles.'
Bane sneered, although how Szass Tam knew that, he couldn't say, for he couldn't make out a twist of lip in the smudge of shadow that was the deity's face. 'Say, rather, twenty slaves, twenty charlatans whose magic had largely forsaken them, and a half-witted, cowardly toady.'
'That is another way of looking at it, but my perspective is as valid as yours. I tendered the gift at a moment when I had every reason to fear the magic would wriggle out of my grip and destroy me. I hoped that even a god would appreciate such a compliment.'
'I might,' said Bane, 'if it came from one of my worshipers, but that you have never been.'
'Yet I've always supported the church of the Black Hand.'
'But no more than you've supported the churches of Kossuth, Mask, Umberlee, and even Cyric. You played each against the other, making sure that none ever achieved preeminence in Thay, and thus, that none will ever undermine the rule of the Red Wizards.'
'I concede the point. That is how it used to be. But now Thay is a different place, and I have more urgent concerns.'
'As do I. Far more urgent than chatting with an impudent magus with no claim on my consideration. With Mystra slain, the higher worlds are in turmoil. My place is there. Open the door to the Barrens.'
