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."
"As soon as we finish our talk."
Bane didn't lift his fist in its shell of gems and dark metal, nor did he grow any bigger than Szass Tam himself. Yet suddenly the Black Hand gave off a sense of profound and immediate menace, even as, in some indefinable but unmistakable fashion, he loomed taller than a giant. "Do you imagine," he asked, "that your puny summoning can hold me here?"
"For a while."
"Then die a true death," said Bane. "Die and be nothing."
Darkness seethed around Szass Tam and took the form of shadowy hands with long claws. Some gripped him, seeking to immobilize him, some pummeled him, and the rest hooked their talons in his body and ripped strips of flesh away.
The pain was excruciating. He forced himself to focus past it and speak the words of command to activate the talismans of protection concealed around his person.
The grip of the dark hands grew feeble. He wrenched himself away from them, and they faded into nothingness.
His now-tattered robe flapping around him, Szass Tam brandished his staff. Tendrils of gleaming ice coiled around Bane like vines climbing a tree. Spikes sprouted from them to push against the shadowstuff that was his body.
For a moment, the god seemed surprised, perhaps even slightly disconcerted, as a grown man might be if a child slapped him. Then he jerked the hand with the gauntlet over his head, shattering his bonds.
"You see how it is," Szass Tam said. "Yes, you can break free, and quite possibly destroy me in the process. But you'll have to work at it, and I might even bloody your nose before you finish. It will be less trouble and take less of your time to grant me the parley I seek."
The Black Lord snorted. "What is it you want, dead man?"
"Help winning my war. My rivals currently hold the upper hand. I have a new aide who's doing a brilliant job of keeping them from making the most of their opportunities, but he can't turn the conflict around by himself."
"I won't lend you an army of devils. I wouldn't even give them to the Zhentarim, or any of the other folk who have already rendered me their service. With the old order shattered, I'll have my own wars to win."
"I understand. That's not what I'm asking for."
"What, then?"
"First, teach me everything you can about the nature of magic as it exists today."
"I'm not the god of wizardry, and the nature of the arcane has yet to stabilize. It continues to alter even as we speak."
"But you are a god, and I'm sure you understand things I don't. I'll take whatever you can give me."