The Simbul's Gift (37 page)

Mimuay interrupted her father's introspection: “Look, Poppa, it's gone all black.”

“Kemzali is a knife in a sheath. We can't see anything unless we can persuade someone to take it out.”

Someone whose mind Lauzoril touched with a powerful, subtle spell, implanting a desire to be alone, a desire to examine the knife closely. He would have resorted to the scrying bowl eventually; there was no other way to see
the knife's new owner.

After several moments, smears of color stretched across the bowl's oily surface.

“Is that
all
, Poppa? What can anyone learn from that?”

“That Kemzali's owner is alive and has dark hair,” the zulkir informed her sharply, but he held his hands over the bowl. Scrying inside Aglarond was always chancy; the Yuirwood, between Thay and the coastal cities, threw a pall of interference in the path of every spell. But sometimes a wizard got lucky. Lauzoril closed his eyes and shaped the air above the bowl.

“Poppa! Poppa, look! What kind of person is
that?”

Lauzoril looked. The mustard oil's bronze sheen colored the images it reflected, but Lauzoril knew the Yuirwood type and knew the knife's new owner looked very much the way he and Mimuay saw him, with golden-green skin and eyes, and hair that was black, or very nearly so.

“Is he a
man?”

“A man, yes. A young man, but not human.”

There were goblins, gnolls, and orcs aplenty in Thay. Lauzoril kept a few such slaves himself to do the meanest estate work. Elves, however, were rare, a few drow kept hidden in the cities. As a race—an inferior race—they'd sooner die than serve a Thayan master. The only elves his daughters had ever seen were painted in the picture books he brought home for their mother. Those painted elves were full-blooded; the youth to whom the Simbul had given Lauzoril's enchanted knife was neither human, nor elf. In Thay, such mongrels were not kept, not even for slavery.

“What is he, then, Poppa? Not an
elf?”

“A half-elf, Mimuay. Kemzali is in Aglarond and Aglarond is full of half-elves. They call themselves the chattel-kessir.”

Of necessity, Red Wizards learned the more common goblin-kin languages. Lauzoril could speak fluently with his goblin slaves. Some wizards learned elvish, too; Lauzoril refused, on principle. He mispronounced the few words he did know, turning them, without second thought, into slurs. A mistake. Mimuay, who knew nothing of elven arrogance or condescension, sat back on her
stool, blinking. She never heard coarse, cursing language, not from her father.

“They're all thieves and blackhearts,” Lauzoril continued clumsily. “This one probably stole Kemzali from the—” He couldn't finish the sentence. The Simbul had to have
given
the knife to this mongrel or the youth wouldn't be alive with it in his hands. He wondered why.

“If he's a half-elf, Poppa, what's his other half? Did he have half-elves for his parents, or is he like a mule with a horse and a donkey for his momma and poppa?”

“Such questions!”

Half-breeds occurred whenever humans consorted with elves, a living badge of shame. Mules didn't breed, but human-elf mongrels did. Lauzoril had heard that the Aglarondan mongrels bred true in the Yuirwood, but elsewhere in Faerûn, the mongrels reverted to ancestral type. By rumor, every human Aglarondan had a mongrel lurking in his pedigree.

Including Aglarond's queen? Aglarond had been ruled by mongrels before Thay was founded. Humans—suspect humans—had claimed its throne only within the last few generations. The Simbul
appeared
human, but in a hundred years, her appearance never changed. Red Wizards cribbed a sort of immortality with spells and potions. The Simbul, a mighty wizard, could have done the same—or, perhaps, she wasn't quite human.

And the mongrel to whom she'd given his knife? What was the youth to her? He stood in the Yuirwood—there were trees visible behind him—yet he wore a well-made shirt. Not the sort of garment Lauzoril expected to see in the middle of a forest, though, in truth, this was the first time he'd successfully envisioned the Yuirwood. He had only his prejudices to guide his assumptions.

The scrying image blurred. The mongrel youth had examined his knife and, finding nothing unusual about it, was returning it to its sheath. Lauzoril could have intervened, pricked the youth's thoughts and kept him staring at the blade, but sooner or later even a kobold would guess that something affected his thoughts.

“I think his momma was an elf,” Mimuay announced.

The zulkir disagreed, but asked: “Why do you think that?”

“I could feel his thoughts. They were tangled around his momma and very sad. He's alone. He's frightened, too. Someone's tried to kill him, Poppa. A wizard. A
Red
Wizard.”

Lauzoril had punched his compulsions into the mongrel's mind, but he hadn't perceived anything in return—blame the damned Yuirwood. It was inconceivable that his daughter, a mere witness to his spellcasting had perceived what he could not. Mimuay's imagination, fired by Wenne's picture books and his own admissions, had taken over. A little imagination was useful for a wizard; too much was dangerous. His mentors had beaten his into submission; he'd have to find another way to curb his daughter's.

“A
Red
Wizard? Are you sure, Mimuay? You began by saying his mother was an elf, now you say a Thayan wizard has tried to kill him. Are you very sure?”

She hesitated. “I couldn't understand him, Poppa, not the way I understand Ferrin—”

Her dear, dead friend Ferrin, for whom Lauzoril had searched without success.

“I had to fill in the spaces between his thoughts. He thought of his momma and her ears were pointed, like an elf s. I saw them sticking through her brown hair. She has a spear, Poppa. Do elf-mommas always carry spears? When he thinks of her, he thinks of Red Wizards—” Mimuay stared at her hands, nervous and ashamed. “There's death—ugly death—when he thinks of Red Wizards, Poppa. He's afraid and he's angry, too; he
hates
them … you … 
us.”

Lauzoril measured his next words carefully. If Mimuay hadn't perceived the mongrel's thoughts, from where was she getting these notions? “Aglarond is Thay's enemy. Where there are enemies, there is hate and fear; it cannot be avoided. In western Thay, near Aglarond, little girls fear Aglarond and learn to hate the Aglarondan queen.”

“The Simbul?”

He swallowed hard. “Where did you learn that name, Mimuay?”

“From the boy in the mirror, Poppa. In the space between his momma and the Red Wizards is a silver-haired woman he calls the Simbul.”

“We've done enough for today, Mimuay.”

“I haven't done anything, Poppa. I've just watched. You're angry with me: you don't believe me. You think I'm telling stories. I'm not, Poppa; I wouldn't lie to you, not ever.”

There was fear in his daughter's voice. She
was
too old to become a Red Wizard. By the time he was old enough to wonder about the truth, he'd killed a fellow enchanter outright and driven two others to madness and death. His choices had been made before his eyes had opened. But if he wouldn't teach Mimuay the way he'd been taught, how would he teach her? Was there any way to keep her fear of him from becoming hate?

No way, Master
, Shazzelurt, Lauzoril's enchanted knife, sensed his thoughts, offered its advice.
Kill her now, Master. Give her to me
.

The zulkir quenched the knife's spirit and lifted Mimuay down from the stool. He held her in his arms, rocking her gently. Her neck fit easily between the thumb and fingers of his hand. Lauzoril knew ways to kill that owed nothing to spells or magic; she wouldn't suffer. “I believe you, Mimuay.” He rubbed the hard lump at the base of her neck until her shoulders relaxed. “You'll become a good wizard.” A bit of irony there: What did a zulkir know about the training of a righteous wizard? “You learn quickly, and I have to think about what I'm going to teach you next.”

She wriggled in his arms, stared at him with frightening trust. “Can we protect the boy in the mirror from his enemies?”

Lauzoril thought of Mythrell'aa headed for the Yuirwood and all the stories Thrul's spy master had told him about massacres and awakening powers. If even half were true … “No, my dear.”

“Not even with Kemzali? His thoughts are sad, Poppa, like Ferrin's. I don't want him to die. He's not our enemy.”

Ferrin again. Lauzoril stroked his daughter's hair and said nothing.

It was nearing sunset when Lauzoril went to his stable. He sent a straw man walking across the Thazalhar
hills. From the stables he went to the hen-coop where he stunned two of the fattest birds and carried them to the crypt.

The peaceful world the Zulkir of Enchantment had made for himself in Thazalhar had crumbled. Mimuay's face haunted him. The mongrel haunted him. The damned witch-queen of Aglarond haunted him. His delicately balanced decision to let Mythrell'aa, Aznar Thrul, and Thrul's spy master play their bloody games without him had shattered into weak-willed excuses.

For years he'd been subject to fits of melancholy—the enchanter temperament, some called it; this was different. Lauzoril suspected his thoughts were not entirely his own—the enchanter enchanted. He suspected his beloved daughter, Mimuay; he suspected his daughter's mysterious friend: Ferrin.

Gweltaz and Chazsinal roused as Lauzoril unlocked the door at the bottom of the crypt stairs. Their bandages shimmered. Dead eyes followed the hens he held upside down.

“He brings us supper.
Living
supper,” Chazsinal crooned.

“Ignore him. He wants something. Birds are not enough when a mighty zulkir
wants
. Let him bring us red meat. Living meat, dripping with blood.” Gweltaz closed his eyes.

“Feed on your dreams, Grandfather,” Lauzoril advised.

The hens had recovered their wits—such as hens' wits were—and struggled in his hand. The Zulkir of Enchantment could charm most lesser creatures into obedience, but not hens or sheep. He closed the door and released one hen. Unable to escape, its presence, alive and frantic, would madden Gweltaz. Lauzoril held the other above his father's linen-wrapped head and with a knife—not Shazzelurt—slit the bird's throat. Blood pulsed onto the linen and disappeared. When the bird had bled out, he dropped the carcass in Chazsinal's lap. His father began to feed, the suckling sounds obscured by the other hen's squawks.

“How important can a thing be, Grandson, if you're willing to entrust it to a fool?”

Lauzoril settled in his chair behind the table. “Important enough that I will not entrust it to one who opposes
me at every turn.”

“I do not oppose you, Grandson. I test you. What else can a patriarch do?”

“I'm looking for someone.”

“Someone dead.”

“Very dead.”

“Szass Tam,” Chazsinal hissed, irrelevant as always, now that Lauzoril had Gweltaz's interest.

The zulkir pursued the hen into a corner, stunned it as before, and held it above his Grandfather's chair. A luminous golden stalk rose to Lauzoril's hand. It engulfed the feebly struggling bird and drew it whole within the linen bandages. Gweltaz
was
the more potent, more inventive of the pair. The zulkir returned to his chair and waited.

“Who do you seek?”

“A name. Ferrin.”

“One of us?”

“Possibly. He's dead, that's all I know for sure. He might have died when we fought the Mulhorandi. He has achieved influence within the estate.”

Gweltaz made a sound like a purring cat. “Release me. I will find him and bring him here.”

Lauzoril made a three-fingered gesture. The golden light around his grandfather's linen flickered twice and was gone.

“Send me, too, son. I know where to look for cowards.”

Another three-fingered gesture and Chazsinal was gone as well. Then Lauzoril waited, alone in the dark crypt, while his hungry ancestors hounded one of their own. He thought about Mimuay, about Wenne and his second daughter, Nyasia. How much longer could he keep them safely hidden in Thazalhar? How much longer should he try? Should he go to Aglarond's Yuirwood in search of power? In his heart, Lauzoril didn't believe Mythrell'aa was the Simbul's equal. Certainly Aznar Thrul's spies and his spy master were no threat to the witch-queen. The Simbul could take care of herself, her realm, and a mongrel boy, if she chose to.

So, why did he want to go? Why did he hope his ancestors couldn't find Ferrin or, in finding Ferrin, proved that the dead spirit had nothing to do with Mimuay's vision or his own disturbed thinking? In the end, how much was his
own curiosity about Aglarond's mighty, Red-Wizard-killing queen? How much was his own yearning to be the hero for his daughter as he had once been the hero for Wenne?