The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [95]
Szass Tam finished speaking. His chest heaved from the effort. Clots of rotten flesh flew into the air, carried by a dank, fetid draft. Mythrell'aa, seated on the lich's left, raised her hand and breathed across the wax perfume she wore on her wrist during Reeking Heat. It didn't help.
The Chairmaster cleared his throat. "Zulkir Aznar Thrul, Lord Invocation, what say you?"
"Ten years ago, I brought an end to the Salamander War and order to the Priador, which replaced Bezantur as the southwestern tharch of Thay. In the absence of others-"
Mythrell'aa seethed. He'd slain her longtime friend and companion, Mari Agneh, then stuffed the Black Citadel with orcs and gnolls before anyone could object!
–"I became tharchion of the Priador and ruled it from Bezantur, but I was already a zulkir, and there was, already, a zulkir living in Bezantur. Naturally, as I could not turn away from my obligations to Invocation-"
No zulkir would. Tharchions had only as much authority as the zulkirs allowed them. Mythrell'aa, herself, had ruled the Tharch of Bezantur through Mari Agneh before the Salamander War.
–"The Zulkir of Illusion should have left, also according to the Rule of Iphonos Cor that two zulkirs shall not establish permanent residence within the same city walls. Lady Illusion begged to remain in her Bezantur tower-"
Mythrell'aa had not begged. Bezantur had been Illusion's home since the first zulkirs were named. There were other cities in the Priador, if Aznar Thrul insisted on being both zulkir and tharchion.
–"We negotiated-"
Thrul was younger then, virile and the recent victor in a brutal war. She'd invited him to Serpent Tower for a day, then a week. He was amusing, as poor Lailomun could never be. How was she to guess he'd become such a grasping bore?
–"Lady Illusion swore to remain neutral in matters of power and policy-"
Such things had never interested her. They still didn't, but she'd been a fool to think they didn't matter.
–"She broke that oath, Lord Necromancy, when she declared her support for you, last year after Gauros-"
Gauros was a disaster for Thay; and Aznar Thrul, along with his two allies, was responsible for it. The three were censured, disgraced. Common people-slaves!-spoke their names openly and with contempt. Szass Tam had had Thay firmly in the grasp of his long, undead fingers. The choice had seemed obvious: support Necromancy or risk guilt by association with one's neighbor, Invocation. Obvious, at least, at the time, before Szass Tam committed an even greater blunder in the caverns below Thaymount.
–"Later she recanted that support, reasserting her neutrality-"
What else could she do?
–"With lies, but you already know that, Lord Necromancy-she's been doing your work in Aglarond, spying on the witch-queen, making alliances with the Yuirwood mongrels."
Mythrell'aa lowered her perfumed hand to her breast where she clutched Szass Tam's black jewel through her robe. For a heartbeat, the name on her tongue was her own.
Vazurmu had said she'd been brought down from behind, but by a Red Wizard, an invoker, not an Aglarondan peasant. Vazurmu had known, and Mythrell'aa should have listened. But Mythrell'aa's shortsightedness wasn't the worst part of her current predicament. The worst part was seated beside her, in Necromancy's chair, not across from her in Invocation's.
The Zulkir of Illusion had never told the Zulkir of Necromancy about her activities in Aglarond or the advantage she had over the silver-eyed queen. The advantage she'd once had: the rose-thorn no longer responded to her scrying spells.
When Thrul finished denouncing his neighbor and peer, Szass Tam demanded proof for the charges, though not because he believed in Mythrell'aa's innocence. Quite the contrary, although Thrul-cretin