It was true, of course, that the zulkirs saw their undead peer as he was at each Convocation, but just as Rhym and Nevron were ragged, so, too, was Szass Tam. His face was chalk white and constantly in motion, rotting and reforming itself. The zulkir's eyes were empty sockets seething with a luminous green vapor, and his neck had become a serpent whose head had replaced the tongue in his gaping mouth.
At the head of an army marching against Aglarond or Rashemen, Szass Tam's lich form would have been an ideal battle standard, but in the Bezantur slave market, it only demonstrated how far Szass Tam had fallen and how far he still had to climb before he was his old self again.
"Lord Necromancy," the Chairmaster intoned from his safe place behind Larloch's chair. "It was you who sealed the writ of Convocation, you who must begin the proceedings."
"Zulkir Aznar Thrul, Lord Invocation-"
Thrul sat erect in his chair. In his wildest dreams he hadn't hoped for this: a whispering Szass Tam, a Szass Tam whose quavering voice truly came from beyond the grave. He tried to catch Mythrell'aa's eye: surely she was having second thoughts.
"Lord Invocation, you have trespassed against another zulkir. You have confined her and denied her the support and consultation of her school. By the Rule of Iphonos Cor, this is forbidden and must be undone. No zulkir can be denied the free access to her school-"
Mythrell'aa contained her shock and anger. All spring, after Tam's humiliation and her own awkward retreat into Serpent Tower, she had secretly funneled support to her overlord: rare and precious reagents for spells whose purposes she did not want to know; living minions to replace the undead servants he'd lost when his schemes to enslave the tanar'ri lord, Eltab, came crashing down around him; gold and gems in great quantities, no questions asked.
He was Szass Tam. He'd come back stronger than ever from other setbacks, worse setbacks. Mythrell'aa remembered; she was much older than she looked, but she couldn't remember a time when Szass Tam hadn't dominated Thay.
Earlier this summer, she'd asked to meet with him-to see him with her own eyes that were immune to all illusion, enchantment and disguise. They met at an inn near Eltab, unheralded, unnoticed. The lich had seemed himself and properly grateful for the sacrifices she'd made on his behalf. He'd given her a black jewel with the power to kill. Mythrell'aa wore it now, beneath her robes, between her breasts. It was useless against the already dead.
Szass Tam finished speaking. His chest heaved from the effort. Clots of rotten flesh flew into the air, carried by a dank, fetid draft. Mythrell'aa, seated on the lich's left, raised her hand and breathed across the wax perfume she wore on her wrist during Reeking Heat. It didn't help.
The Chairmaster cleared his throat. "Zulkir Aznar Thrul, Lord Invocation, what say you?"
"Ten years ago, I brought an end to the Salamander War and order to the Priador, which replaced Bezantur as the southwestern tharch of Thay. In the absence of others-"
Mythrell'aa seethed. He'd slain her longtime friend and companion, Mari Agneh, then stuffed the Black Citadel with orcs and gnolls before anyone could object!
— "I became tharchion of the Priador and ruled it from Bezantur, but I was already a zulkir, and there was, already, a zulkir living in Bezantur. Naturally, as I could not turn away from my obligations to Invocation-"
No zulkir would. Tharchions had only as much authority as the zulkirs allowed them. Mythrell'aa, herself, had ruled the Tharch of Bezantur through Mari Agneh before the Salamander War.
— "The Zulkir of Illusion should have left, also according to the Rule of Iphonos Cor that two zulkirs shall not establish permanent residence within the same city walls. Lady Illusion begged to remain in her Bezantur tower-"
Mythrell'aa had not begged. Bezantur had been Illusion's home since the first zulkirs were named. There were other cities in the Priador, if Aznar Thrul insisted on being both zulkir and tharchion.
— "We negotiated-"
Thrul was younger then, virile and the recent victor in a brutal war. She'd invited him to Serpent Tower for a day, then a week. He was amusing, as poor Lailomun could never be. How was she to guess he'd become such a grasping bore?
— "Lady Illusion swore to remain neutral in matters of power and policy-"
Such things had never interested her. They still didn't, but she'd been a fool to think they didn't matter.
— "She broke that oath, Lord Necromancy, when she declared her support for you, last year after Gauros-"
Gauros was a disaster for Thay; and Aznar Thrul, along with his two allies, was responsible for it. The three were censured, disgraced. Common people-slaves! — spoke their names openly and with contempt. Szass Tam had had Thay firmly in the grasp of his long, undead fingers. The choice had seemed obvious: support Necromancy or risk guilt by association with one's neighbor, Invocation. Obvious, at least, at the time, before Szass Tam committed an even greater blunder in the caverns below Thaymount.
— "Later she recanted that support, reasserting her neutrality-"
What else could she do?
— "With lies, but you already know that, Lord Necromancy-she's been doing your work in Aglarond, spying on the witch-queen, making alliances with the Yuirwood mongrels."
Mythrell'aa lowered her perfumed hand to her breast where she clutched Szass Tam's black jewel through her robe. For a heartbeat, the name on her tongue was her own.
Vazurmu had said she'd been brought down from behind, but by a Red Wizard, an invoker, not an Aglarondan peasant. Vazurmu had known, and Mythrell'aa should have listened. But Mythrell'aa's shortsightedness wasn't the worst part of her current predicament. The worst part was seated beside her, in Necromancy's chair, not across from her in Invocation's.
The Zulkir of Illusion had never told the Zulkir of Necromancy about her activities in Aglarond or the advantage she had over the silver-eyed queen. The advantage she'd once had: the rose-thorn no longer responded to her scrying spells.
When Thrul finished denouncing his neighbor and peer, Szass Tam demanded proof for the charges, though not because he believed in Mythrell'aa's innocence. Quite the contrary, although Thrul-cretin that he was-couldn't see that he'd won. The Mighty Tharchion of the Priador, Mightier Zulkir of Invocation wouldn't give anything to his long-standing enemy. Beshaba's mercy! If he kept it up, he might succeed in convincing Tam that the charges were trumped up.
Even Nevron could see victory slipping through his faction's hands. The weary weasel seemed to be in physical agony the longer Aznar Thrul prevaricated with Szass Tam. Mythrell'aa wouldn't chance a sidelong peek at the man on her left. If Lauzoril weren't zulkir of an unimportant school and lazy as a frostbitten snake, he'd be the man to challenge Szass Tam.
The man…
Mythrell'aa had assumed it would take a man to break Szass Tam.
The school…
She'd assumed it would take a man with a potent school behind him. She'd locked herself up in Serpent Tower waiting for a miracle to happen. But women had dominated Thay in the past, zulkirs from minor schools, also.
By the time Mythrell'aa stood to endure her humiliation and disgrace, she'd come to see herself in a new and different light. It was time to leave Serpent Tower, time to take Lailomun to Aglarond-and when that was done, it would be time to return.
19
The city of Velprintalar, in Aglarond Approaching dawn, the twentieth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)
Leaving Velprintalar had taken the Simbul longer than it should have. She'd wasted an entire day, agonizing over which spells to inscribe in a deer-hide spellbook-which reagents to stuff into an enchanted pouch that was larger within than without but couldn't hold everything on her workroom shelves. She'd sent a message ahead to her chief forester in the Yuirwood, a man whose trust and cooperation was essential if she were going to sort out this many-layered mess.