Dead black eyes manifested on Gweltaz's bandages. "You're not ready. That alliance with Lord Thrul was unwise, but it would be more unwise to end it now," he insisted, then the eyes became translucent, thoughtful. "No," his ghostly, raspy voice mused. "No, you wouldn't."

Lauzoril said nothing.

"You are a fool, an utter fool. You'll destroy us all."

"You've been destroyed once, Grandfather. The experience has made you over-cautious."

"This is not about caution, it's about recklessness, foolishness, blindness."

The discussion had surpassed Chazsinal's understanding. He sputtered his confusion. "What is? What are you two talking about?"

"Him!" Gweltaz swore. "Him! He would throw revenge away for a whim. For a woman! He believes his trinket gives him an advantage in Aglarond. He believes he can charm the witch-queen!"

The dagger hadn't entered Lauzoril's calculations. Since that night when his thoughts had merged directly with hers, his contacts had been both fleeting and-to be honest-confusing. Although the impressions came more frequently, they had a very different texture. He seriously considered the possibility that she'd given the knife to someone else, someone much younger and certainly no wizard.

The dagger hadn't given him anything about the Simbul's rampage. That knowledge, in addition to sketchy notions of a new power rising in the Yuirwood itself came from an altogether different source: A message from his chancellor of Enchantment in Bezantur.

The chancellor had had a visitor, a flighty woman with too much gold and a wayward husband-the sort of client whom enchanters had drawn since the dawn of magic. Once they were alone, however, the client had shed her flighty disguise. She claimed to be a Red Wizard, an invoker by training, and a privileged member of Thrul's household: the master of his spy web.

To prove her claim, the woman, who hadn't revealed her name, offered information about Aglarond, about Zulkir and Tharchion Aznar Thrul, and about Lauzoril himself.

Thrul had humiliated his spy master, belittled her advice, demeaned the sacrifice of her spies. She wanted revenge, no different than Gweltaz and Chazsinal. Her terms were very specific: gold, manpower, an impervious bolt-hole, and whatever spellcraft not barred to enchantment that she needed for her work in exchange for the intelligence that would bring Aznar Thrul down.

Before Thrul disposed of his erstwhile ally, Lauzoril.

It could be a trap, one of the oldest gambits in the vast repertoire of Red Wizard deceit and betrayal. Lauzoril wasn't truly surprised that the contempt he directed toward Aznar Thrul was reciprocated. For almost a year, he'd suspected that Invocation, rather than Necromancy, was the ultimate employer of the assassins who crossed his path with increasing frequency. At best, theirs was an uneasy alliance: The modes of invocation were as forbidden to enchanters as those of necromancy and all the more reason to view this nameless woman with suspicion.

Yet view her Lauzoril would. Before dawn tomorrow, he'd mount his stone horse for the journey to Bezantur and a very private meeting outside the city proper. If the spy master persuaded him of her sincerity and authenticity, he'd trade one untrustworthy ally for another.

That was the way in Thay: Things changed. A week ago his daughter had been an innocent child, now she'd taken her first steps along the dangerous path of magic and mastery. A week ago, Lauzoril's alliance with Thrul had been a stalemate and the zulkir-tharchion had had a loyal spy master.

But mostly, things did not change. If Thrul fell, another invoker-possibly the spy master herself-would take his place. Zulkirs could depose one another, but never usurp them. Their number and need for alliance was constant. As was the carping Lauzoril endured from his ancestors.

"Aglarond's queen is immune to your most potent spells." Chazsinal's voice hung on the edge of hysteria. "She will annihilate you, and us, too."

Gweltaz weighed in with his opinion. "Better to be dust and memories than slaves of an imbecile. There can be but one purpose for your life, O Mighty Zulkir: Bring down Szass Tam. Anything else clutters your mind, wastes your time, and exposes you to his wrath."

The Mighty Zulkir had had enough for one afternoon. He'd quenched another of Gweltaz's periodic rebellions; that was his reason for coming to the crypt. He'd had a foretaste of the pleasure he'd have when he told them that Mimuay was learning magic and was almost pleased that he'd been interrupted. The longer he kept Mimuay's secret, the greater his ancestors' dismay, the greater his own pleasure.

Lauzoril left the crypt, ignoring their objections and pleas. There was another changeless aspect to his life, one which, like the estate itself and his daughters, cleansed his mind when he'd grown too comfortable with cruelty and power. He met himself coming through the ruins and, disposing of the straw enchantment, returned to the estate-house where he found his wife embroidering in a shaded atrium.

"My prince!"

Wenne cast aside her cloth and threads. Lauzoril glimpsed a band of heraldic griffins, each different and remarkable, before she threw herself against him.

"I did not think you'd find me before sundown."

Sheer joy sparkled in her eyes before they closed and she tightened her arms again.

"Your smile haunts my every thought, dear lady," he replied. "I had to find you or go mad."

A statement not so very far from the truth. Lauzoril freed his ribs and raised her hand to his lips for a storybook kiss. It took one kind of madness to stave off another. Wenne wrested free. She retrieved her discarded work.

"It's almost finished. You must try it on, my prince."

He took the shirt in his hands. She attacked the shirt he wore. All her considerable magic was in her fingers.

"Not here, dear lady," he insisted before she had him naked.

Still clutching the griffin shirt, Lauzoril carried his wife to their bedchamber. Secure behind a wizard-locked door, he let her strip his shirt away and made an honest effort to pull the other over his head. Wenne put a stop to that; she always did. Wanton fingers caressed his chest and flanks, fascinated by his various scars, but never-never-exploring the oldest scar of all: the swirling tattoo her grandfather had placed above his heart.

15

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Mid-afternoon, the seventeenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

When he was a boy, Bro couldn't imagine an empty horizon. Then his father had died, and his mother led him away from MightyTree. Two days' walking and the Yuirwood had been behind them.

Had she known the one, fast path out of the forest? he'd demanded, unwilling to take another step in a treeless world. Shali had taken his hand; she hadn't known where the Yuirwood ended, only that if they walked north from MightyTree it would end before the second sunset. Bro remembered that her hand had been cold and shaking and that neither of them had slept that night, huddled beneath countless hungry stars.

By now, Bro had gotten used to fields of grass around him and fields of stars overhead. It was trees that made him nervous halfway through the third day following Rizcarn. They'd traveled through a Yuirwood so dissimilar from the forest he remembered that he wondered if they weren't somewhere altogether different. He'd considered that they were traveling east or west-the Yuirwood was much longer than it was wide-but whenever he sighted sun and shadow, it seemed they were walking north, the same way he and Shali had walked seven years ago.

Seemed, because Bro hadn't made many sightings. The sky had stormed or threatened rain since the morning after he'd met Rizcarn. Rizcarn might be leading him and the colt in circles, though that seemed unlikely. They'd been places that he hoped were unique and would certainly stir his memory if he saw them again.