The lord's image strode toward the manor wall. When it had straddled the wall and begun its walk across the hills, Lauzoril withdrew his consciousness. Truly mindless, it would continue walking while he went, unobserved and unnoticed, from the stable to the family crypt's concealed entrance.

Lauzoril's face grew grim and angry as he descended the spiral stairs. Shimmering wards melted at his approach. The heavy door swung and crashed into the interior wall. He stood in the doorway, his fingers reciting an alphabet of magic, which, for the moment, he refrained from casting.

The odor of burnt linen surrounded him. Within the crypt, Chazsinal's ebony chair lay on its side, Chazsinal still bound to its seat. Gweltaz's chair hovered above the floor. Gweltaz himself was a translucent apparition beside it, in full Red Wizard robes, tattoos, and rage.

"What fool-" the elder began, and got no further.

Lauzoril released a gout of fire magic that pinned his grandfather's chair in the juncture of two walls and the ceiling. A cocoon of flame formed around him. The apparition vanished; the howls within the flames were loud and piteous, and had no effect on Lauzoril-except that he closed the crypt door.

"Lauzoril, Lauzoril-release him!" Chazsinal, ever his father's dutiful son, pleaded with his own offspring from his place facedown on the floor. "Release him! You'll regret this, Lauzoril!"

The cocoon vanished. Gweltaz, in singed and reeking linen, dropped to the floor. His chair balanced upright for a heartbeat-Lauzoril's heartbeat-then toppled sideways.

"This changes nothing," Gweltaz snarled.

"I am accustomed to disappointment, Grandfather."

"Right me."

"Can't do it yourself?" Lauzoril inquired, his silky voice laced with venom.

Gweltaz said nothing. Chazsinal had less fortitude.

"Lauzoril, there was cause."

"Tell me," the zulkir ordered, no change in his tone. His father's chair righted itself.

"We discerned a change-"

"Tell him nothing, Chaz!" Gweltaz commanded. "If he will not ask for our help, let him do without. The Mighty Zulkir of Enchantment and Charm!"

"Ask for your help? What could either of you tell me that I don't already know? That there was a standoff in Aglarond? That we destroyed a meaningless village and the Simbul destroyed twelve of us, including one of mine? Did you think I didn't know? Shall I tell you their names?"

"Aglarond!" Gweltaz shouted. "Forget Aglarond, Mighty Fool, Scry your attention closer to home, to Bezantur. Invocation and Illusion move against each other. Your ally and our enemy's."

"Not against each other, Grandfather. Lord Thrul has wards and guards around Serpent Tower. Lady Illusion has appealed to her master, Szass Tam, who hears but does not move against anything these days."

Chazsinal strained within his bandages. "See? He knows!"

The other chair rose slowly from the floor. It had almost righted itself when Lauzoril crooked his finger. "When I'm ready." He flung the chair at the wall.

The mummy groaned, gave up a cloud of dust, and said, "Such temper, boy! Will you do the same when Szass Tam comes looking for you?"

Lauzoril spun Gweltaz's chair wildly before sitting down in his own and propping his feet on the table. "Szass Tam. Szass Tam. Lady Illusion may beg, but her master will not fight for her."

"He will fight against Lord Thrul and against you, who allied yourself with Invocation."

The zulkir smiled, a gesture not lost on Gweltaz although the chair was front-down on the floor again. "Alliances fade, Grandfather. Mine with Thrul is fading fast."

Lauzoril allowed the chair to rotate a half-turn. The wrappings had loosened. Gweltaz's head flopped on his shoulder. Light seeped through gaps in his legs and torso. Repairs were needed, and soon, or the necromancer's spirit would slip into torpor and, eventually, ultimate death. Chazsinal twitched; Lauzoril asked himself if the time hadn't come to be rid of rancorous confidants.

His grasp of both wizardry and politics had improved since he'd gone searching for the father whose name he'd discovered in his predecessor's archives. At the beginning, Gweltaz's timely warnings about plots a young zulkir never sensed had kept Lauzoril alive when none of his peers believed he would survive a year. Even now, his grandfather's insight into the realm of the dead and undead was an asset no enchanter could acquire for himself.

But Chazsinal possessed the same insight albeit, untrusted and untrained. Might not Chazsinal be a less troublesome advisor-at least until his daughter matured. Mimuay had astonished-the word was scarcely strong enough-her father with the all-innocence-and-ignorance request that he teach her the arts of necromancy. He'd assumed, when she asked him to share his gift, that it was the spells of enchantment that she wanted, but she was Thazalhar bred, and death was ingrained on her life.

The dead are here in Thazalhar. They're my friends; I hear them everywhere, she'd said two mornings ago when he allowed her into his above-ground workroom and tried, with a variety of foul and slimy reagents, to discourage her from following in his footsteps.

Mimuay had turned pale and nearly fainted, but her father was the one who failed. By noon she'd cast her first cantrip: turning a white rose blue and keeping it that way while Lauzoril counted very slowly to ten.

"A smile, Mighty Zulkir?" Gweltaz's voice was weaker but not his scorn. "Does it please you so much to abandon a son's obligations to his fathers?"

Lauzoril had slouched in his chair, thinking about possibilities and his daughter. He sat bolt upright at the sound of his grandfather's question and made a decision as well. Without responding directly to Gweltaz's accusations, he unlocked a compartment beneath the tabletop.

No enchanter could cast the spells of necromancy, nor safely handle its artifacts. The prohibition didn't arise from Red Wizard tradition. If that had been the case, every Wizard would have disregarded it. The prohibition went deeper than that. Some said the goddess Mystra or her lackey, Azuth, were responsible. Others placed the blame on Ao, the god of gods. All agreed, however, that the prohibition was absolute and while there were many spells that he and his necromancer kin knew in common, the spells that preserved their consciousness weren't among them.

The spells to restore Gweltaz's bandages, however, could be learned and cast by any mage, or sealed within an object-a seed, such as the flaxseed sparkling in the table compartment, charged with the dual magic of mending and permanency. Lauzoril scooped up a thimbleful and blew them across the room. They settled on the flattened, singed bandages and immediately the tattered edges repaired themselves.

Lauzoril nodded in satisfaction. He and Gweltar squabbled and might yet kill each other, but the line between family and outside was clear, especially when an ethereal wind rattled the estate's distant boundary wards. Someone powerful-a zulkir, at least-was looking for Lauzoril. Wand in hand, the zulkir climbed partway up the stairs. His thoughts merged with the estate's subtle defenses. He watched, listened, and returned to the crypt.

"There'll be a second," Chazsinal said.

As usual, the other two wizards ignored him, but this time Chazsinal guessed correctly.

"Invocation," Lauzoril acknowledged. "Looking for me."

"Because Szass Tam is looking for you both." Gweltaz referred to the first probe, which had been particularly cold and dark. "Best think again about Bezantur. What will you do?"

"Nothing unseemly. Nothing foolish. Nothing eager. There's something afoot in the Yuirwood. No one knows its name or its power… yet. Not tanar'ri-nothing so powerful as an arch-fiend-but easier, perhaps, to control. Lord Thrul wants it for himself. Likewise Lady Illusion. We need not guess at Szass Tam's interest. But enchantment has an advantage. I have an advantage, and perhaps I will get there first to claim it. Alliances fade."