[bright images flying]
"Rumor, Lord Elminster, runs like a yapping dog; the truth creeps like a silent snail in its wake."
Elminster sighed and nodded. "A nice phrase, Thauntar. Yet the wizards are dead-and an impressive heap of them, too."
The one-eyed warrior shrugged in his mismatched old armor and replied, "1 try to see truth, as the Lady we both serve taught me to, and I apprehend you may have heard far more than what is true. The treaty is not a war alliance, but a non-aggression pact. Aglarond achieves its own survival-for a few years, at least-and Thay wins an unopposed chance to infiltrate and influence.... In the longer term, they will absorb Ilione's realm with a minimum of cost and effort."
Elminster shrugged.
Thauntar raised one rusty gauntlet and added, "Moreover, this agreement was won only after the one called the Simbul slaughtered three sets of visiting Thayan emissaries."
"Aye, and why would she do that? Were they all rude to her?"
"What Thayan isn't rude to nigh everyone outside Thay? But there's more, Lord: All of those envoys turned out to be wizards eager to spell-slay everyone in the palace, once they were settled inside it."
"I heard this Simbul blasts almost every mage she meets with-and yet I can scarce believe the sum of her harvest, in so short a time!"
"The Simbul, Lord... and mark my words: she destroys only those who strike against Aglarond."
"Oh, come-mages from Cormyr?'
"An embassy arrives from a city in Chessenta this very night, Lord. Yet Thayan agents lurk within its ranks. So, too, did Cormyr unwittingly harbor serpents of Thay."
Elminster frowned. "I thank thee for thy counsel, wise Thauntar. I will go and see this Thay-slayer for myself."
"That's always best," the warrior agreed. They nodded and then embraced, clapping each other's shoulders. Waving their hands in salutes, they parted-the one in a whirl of spell sparks, and the other trudging on up over the hill in worn boots.
I suppose you loved him too, this brawny warrior?
No, but Mystra did.
And?
And nothing. He died.
Hah! Her time and attention wasted!
Not so. She does not regard humans as tools, to be measured by their usefulness to her ends of the moment, but rather as flowers to be nurtured in a garden. Each passing year holds a better display, and affords grander possibilities.
[diabolic snort, clawing aside of memories like cobweb curtains, pain visited on gasping wizard]
Stop wasting my time, elminster.
The Mouth of Moreyeus shuddered in open fear as the slender, wild-haired woman in the simple mauve gown languidly made the hand sign for peaceful parley. Her waist was girt about with a sash, not a belt, and she bore no weapon. Even her feet were bare on the grass of the courtyard.
"Aglarond bids you welcome," she said with a smile that held sly amusement. Her hair was a fall of white splendor, but her eyes were dark mysteries. "All who would be our true friends are welcome here."
Behind the gold-bedecked, many-ringed Mouth, in his gold-woven garments and spade beard, the other envoys and factors regarded her in silence. Some trembled openly. Others clenched white hands on weapons or talismans. Not a few were drenched with sweat.
She gave them all a warm, almost motherly smile and turned to lead them up the last bends of the path. Gracious and regal she seemed, more a ruler than an apprentice. Only a few stray motes of light, drifting like restless stars in her wake, revealed the might of her risen Art-a spell shield that would turn any treachery striking at her back. Not a man present thought that those little stars were visible by accident. Twas said that leaves did not dare drop in Aglarond without the Simbul's expressly granted will.
The path wound amid pools of lily pads. Tiny bright fish called sunsilver leaped to snatch gnats from the air. The trail led up across shaded garden slopes to a side entrance of the palace. Warmed by the Simbul's smile as she ushered them across the threshold, the embassy filed within. The seneschal stepped into their wake-and casually blasted certain of the men ahead of her to ash with a bright arc of ravening spells.
The untouched survivors screamed.
Behind a nearby tree, Elminster snarled a soft incantation. It spun an image of himself and set it in midair outside the door.
"Murderess!" he snapped. "Turn and behold thy doom! Thy slaughter has gone on long enough! I challenge thee!"
The bright silver lance of the spell that would have blasted him, had he been a living man, lashed out even before she spun around, eyes flashing. "Begone, minion of Thay."
"I am no friend to Thay," the bearded, floating man in black told her.
"If you do their work, you are a Thayan to me. All enemies of Aglarond are Thayans at heart, whatever allegiance they profess," she snapped back.
Elminster raised an eyebrow. "Come forth and fight," he said softly, "Slayer-from-behind,"
"I invited possible spies and vipers into this, the palace of the great queen," the Simbul replied, darting a look behind her at coughing, staggering men. Lost in the smoke of her spells, they were blindly swinging swords. "They are thus my responsibility. I choose when and where to fight, man-and have no interest in petty duels. Get you gone."
Elminster gave her a crooked smile in reply. He turned, eyes never leaving hers, and aimed his arm like crossbow. Bright bolts lashed out from his fingers. A palace turret flew apart and collapsed into the gardens with a roar.
That made her mouth gape open. His smile tightening, Elminster lifted his other hand and toppled a slender trio of spires.
Eyes blazing, the Simbul raised both hands over her head. From linked fingers, she smote him with a hungry flood of lightning.
The titanic bolt roared forth, shredding his spell-spun image in an instant. It bounced and screamed its way through the gardens and out of sight, quite drowning out Elminster's brief gasp of pain as he shuddered behind his tree.
"Ha!" the Simbul cried in triumph.
In reply, the turret beside the doorway where she stood blazed from top to bottom with sudden ruby flames-slumped into a hot river of rock.
"Fight me, or lose your palace," a door gong beside her explained calmly. With a shriek of rage the Simbul turned and blasted it.
Another turret crashed down, and a sentry's helm rolled out of its ruin past the Simbul's feet. "Oh, is this a race to bury Ilione's throne?" it asked.
The Simbul's eyes burst into flames. Her hair writhed around her in a tempest as she rose into the air, arms as swift as speeding arrows. "Reveal my foe!" she howled. The air around her crackled with gathered power. "Show me this snake.1"
Abruptly the sky filled with curving trails of force, a great web of crisscrossing paths... and there, behind a tree, a man who even now was weaving another spell.
The Simbul hurled tears of death at him, a magic whose slowly descending curtains of force would block any translocation. She snapped the word that would bring her girdle of scepters from her chambers to her.
Even as she buckled it around her waist, bright blades of force sheared away her deadly curtains, sending their energies spinning through the air. One whirling fragment became a snarling ball of flame and crashed among cottages downhill. It shook the ground, and fires rose there with greedy speed.
The Simbul turned from that destruction and tearfully screamed out her rage. Two of her scepters tore open the ground under her foe's feet, spilling him end over end clown the garden.