The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [94]
"Zulkir Szass Tam, Lord Necromancy," the Chairmaster called the last name, the name they'd all been waiting to hear. "Your name is called. Step into the light."
A square of sunshine appeared on the sand. Despite himself, Thrul held his breath. A moment passed, and another. He started counting in his head: three, four, five…
"Zulkir Szass Tam, Lord Necromancy. Your name is called. Step into the light."
Eight, nine, ten.
Thrul looked up. He caught Mythrell'aa's eye by mistake. They both looked away. Rhym's lips moved as he counted the moments. Nevron's eyes were closed. Lauzoril leaned in the corner of his chair. His eyes were hooded; he looked like a cat about to pounce.
"Zulkir Szass Tam, Lord-"
Tam appeared on the sand, facing his chair, his back to his peers. He wore a red robe so dark it seemed black. It was covered with patterns that shifted and could have lured an unsuspecting mind toward madness, if Larloch's chairs had not negated the effect, or if there'd been an unsuspecting mind anywhere in the circle. The lich seemed a bit slump-shouldered and the scents of death surrounded him.
Aznar Thrul settled back in his chair to get a good view of Szass Tam's face as he turned. Then, belatedly conscious that he'd assumed Enchantment's stance, he leaned forward. The undead Zulkir of Necromancy had turned around.
"Love of Loviatar…"
Lallara, naturally, broke the silence, though Thrul needed a strong jaw to keep his own gasping reaction deep down in his throat. A lich was nothing a sane man-a sane zulkir-ever wanted to see, even with Larloch's chair beneath him.
It wasn't death or undeath; those were commonplace in Thay. A lich was something worse, a nightmare from which you woke up screaming, but couldn't quite remember why. One look at Szass Tam and every living zulkir remembered that nightmare.
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.