The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [54]
Alassra's gut continued to hold Mythrell'aa responsible for the carnage. Her heart knew it could have just as easily been Szass Tam, Lauzoril, or one of the many troublesome Thayans who weren't zulkirs or Red Wizards but shared their conquering ambitions. Then she came upon a corpse that made her anxious.
The man's magic tattoos became clearly visible when she cast a simple revelation spell over his charred flesh: minor protections against fire and steel, major immunity to poison, none of which had saved him from her wrath. But the palm-sized area directly over his heart where each Red Wizard bore the mark of his or her specialty revealed nothing. She cast another more complicated and powerful spell with the same result.
It would be a chore to haul the corpse back to Velprintalar and a waste of reagents once she got him there, but resurrection-which the Simbul wasn't prepared to perform on the Sulalk knoll-followed by interrogation and execution might be the only way to find out how the man had obliterated his affiliation. Others had tried, with secondary tattoos, with their own magic, with acid and fire. Nothing had ever defeated her until now.
Until a few days ago in Nethra? Boesild didn't know the revelation spell; it was one of many the Simbul kept strictly to herself. Could she have raised that woman's affiliation, or would the corpse at her feet be the second un-branded Red Wizard she'd encountered?
And which zulkir had devised the spell-nothing but magic could erase the brand-that bested a spell of hers? Szass Tam sprang immediately to mind. The lich was as far removed from his so-called peers as she and Elminster were from theirs: Where magic was concerned, immortality was an unadulterated blessing for humanity. But Tam was laired up, purging the effects of a failed attempt to enslave a tanar'ri lord. That left… who? Mythrell'aa, again? Aznar Thrul, Tam's opportunistic rival? The suddenly faceless Zulkir of Enchantment?
A twig snapped. No accident. The two pieces were in the hands of a survivor wearing a face guaranteed to make Alassra Shentrantra's blood freeze in her veins.
"Lailomun?" she whispered as she raised the little wand.
Alassra would never forget the patterns of Lailomun's tattoos. They were very different from the light-drawn lines emerging from the survivor's scorched and tattered clothes-except for the interlaced circles over the man's heart. He was, as Lailomun had been, an illusionist. Logical conclusions cascaded through the Simbul's racing thoughts:
The survivor was Mythrell'aa's confidant, not some mere journeyman.
Mythrell'aa hadn't forgotten Lailomun.
Mythrell'aa knew who Alassra Shentrantra had become after Lailomun died…
After Lailomun disappeared.
After her beloved disappeared, not after he died, because Alassra's final conclusion-tenuous, yet almost inevitable, given what stood before her-was that Mythrell'aa had taken Lailomun back to Bezantur and held him captive for the rest of his life.
The urge to kill, to dissolve herself into the pure, violent stuff of lightning that would leave a crater where the false Lailomun stood and propel her own essence into the void where she would neither think nor feel, set Alassra's body trembling. She restrained the urge with no little difficulty. The false Lailomun, sensing his mortal danger, came no closer.
"Who are you?" the Simbul demanded.
"Vazurmu," the survivor answered, a woman's name in a woman's voice. She shed Lailomun's face. Her own was bruised and bleeding. Where unmarked flesh could be seen, it was