The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [141]
The carnelian token the spy master kept pinned to her robe grew warm, then hot. She unclasped it and dropped it on the table where it shimmered with its own heat. The blood-red stone bulged, became a pair of lips that opened to shape one word, "Now." It was Aznar Thrul's voice.
The summons couldn't be a coincidence, yet it had to be. The zulkir couldn't already know what she herself had just learned. The spy master assembled her old woman's disguise and hurried out of the bolt-hole. The chamberlain expected her; another first, like the exploding eggs. Even more disconcerting, he didn't wheedle or harass her, didn't want coins before opening the proper doors, didn't insist that she change into a flimsy gauze robe.
"The Mighty Tharchion, Mightier Zulkir awaits you in the smaller audience chamber," he said, tall and stiff and going out of his way not to touch her.
The spy master swallowed hard. Her mouth was pasty and sour. She wished she had something to drink, something potent. Failing that, she calmed herself with the knowledge that Deaizul was alive. His essence egg was secure in her bolt-hole cabinet, safe beside her own.
Her calm melted when she entered the small audience chamber where the zulkir sat, in robes of darkest crimson, behind a table and an opened box identical in every way to the one in which she kept the essence eggs. Nearly a score of the padded compartments were empty, dusted with glass shards and rust-colored powder. But the worst was in the upper right corner. Where her box had two completely empty compartments, corresponding to the places where her own egg and Deaizul's had once rested, Aznar Thrul's held two glowing, fragile essence eggs.
"I see you recognize this," the zulkir said. His words were winter ice, stinging the spy master's flesh.
"My lord, it is remarkably similar to a box Deaizul once showed me."
"Do not imagine you can deceive me any longer with misdirection and half-truths, woman. It is the twin-the precise double-of the box you keep in your private chamber behind the Sahuagin Tavern, in a locked cabinet. The doors are painted red."
"I meant only that Deaizul once showed me a second box, my lord."
"More lies! Deaizul thought there was but one box, and so did you! So careful, weren't you, collecting just enough flesh and blood to decoct a few drops of mortal essence to mix with the dragon wing and blood pearl? And buying your own reagents with plain coins. Oh so careful, and oh so clever. Do you think I became zulkir because I am a mooncalf fool, woman? I knew where you traded! You bargain so hard for my dragon wing, my blood pearl, and-for good measure-a few grains of red iron and cinnabar mixed with the dragon wing and mustard oil smeared ever-so-lightly over the pearls. Can you guess what I did?"
She could. The iron could attract another spell, the cinnabar-converted to minute quantities of quicksilver by the mustard oil-would reflect the essence to another location: the inside of Aznar Thrul's duplicate eggs. She felt ill. It wouldn't last. The dead didn't vomit.
"You sent two teams into the Yuirwood. Two. You only mentioned one. You said the other one was from Mythrell'aa. What were you thinking of?"
"One team failed in the village, my lord." Her doom sat in the open box. Even so, she wouldn't concede, wouldn't beg for mercy that wouldn't be forthcoming, not from Aznar Thrul. "I sent a second, to be certain mistakes were not repeated. I didn't want you to worry-"
"Worry? No, indeed, I'm not worried. Certain mistakes will never be repeated."
Thrul picked up a glowing egg: hers, unless he'd switched them. The eggs were identical. The essences they contained were indistinguishable, hence the carefully labeled compartments.
"Where is your lover, Deaizul?" the zulkir asked.
"I have not seen him in over a year."
"Then you do not know that he's in the Yuirwood? You do not know that his body was destroyed