Halaern removed the verdigrised circlet. "Will you hold this for me, cousin?"

Alassra considered the narrow band of metal as if it had become a deadly serpent. Her hands remained at her side. She directed her thoughts at his mind, knowing he would hear them so long as he held the circlet.

This is nonsense, my friend. You heard him. He's all but admitted he's a Red Wizard. There's nothing the Red Wizards would like better than to claim your life. Zandilar will dance anyway. We don't need Rizcarn; we can go ourselves.

I am elder of YuirWood, my lady; the forest will not harm me, and Relkath himself no longer trusts Rizcarn. I will be safe.

You don't believe in Relkath, Halaern!

I believe in you and the Yuirwood, my lady. Rizcarn will be content now, whatever he has become. He'll go forward without suspicion, we need that-you need that-if we're to have an opportunity to save Bro.

Halaern-Zandilar is going to keep whoever she dances with, I'm increasingly certain of that.

My lady, I have danced with a goddess all my life. I'm not afraid of Zandilar. Halaern offered the circlet again. "Please, cousin, it is my wish."

As your queen, Trovar Halaern, I command you to stop this nonsense at once.

I cannot obey. You speak not as my queen, but as my ladylove. My queen, I know, understands.

Alassra took the circlet and placed it on her own brow for safekeeping. Rizcarn gathered the remaining Cha'Tel'Quessir and led the way to the Sunglade.

27

The city of Bezantur, in Thay Late afternoon, the twenty-fourth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

The first indication that Aznar Thrul's traitorous spy master had of the burgeoning problems in Aglarond had come during the night, when frantic spellbound thoughts awoke her from a fitful sleep. The arcane messages were the same: Something dire and deadly had struck the chattel-kessir mongrels while they marched beneath a hanging storm, and something equally potent had risen up to defend them with lightning.

The spy master had reminded her minions that they remained safe because they were following their orders to lay low, to attract no attention whatsoever until they spied a horse among the mongrels.

After they saw the horse, their orders were different. The vanguard was to act for the glory of Thay. Her second group followed orders for her personal glory and that of their old master, Deaizul. The spy master had tried to pick up the threads of Deaizul's thoughts. He was with the chattel-kessir, within the mind of their leader. There had been problems earlier, problems that she didn't learn about until the damage was done. She tried to imagine her lover and mentor with a half-breed's pointed ears and mottled skin. It would be difficult, but if they brought Aznar Thrul down, then all things would become possible.

Deaizul, though, had been deep in his chattel-kessir identity and hadn't responded to her spell-sent pleas throughout the night. He would, she thought, have been accessible, if the problems were serious and when she couldn't rouse him, she'd gone about her affairs, blithely convinced that nothing truly significant had occurred.

Other matters occupied the spy master's mind this morning: an assassination in Amruthar, a reminder to a local magistrate that the city's independence depended entirely on the city's willingness to do what it was told. She was in the bolt-hole, updating her encoded notebooks, when the first essence egg exploded within the locked wooden chest. Three more had shattered by the time she opened it. All the broken eggs were bound to her personal minions in the Yuirwood.

She knew the eggs could break, but never in the ten years since Deaizul gave her the box had an egg exploded. Minions died and the powdered essence with their eggs grew dark; they didn't explode.

Frantic, almost beyond rational thought, the spy master dodged flying bits of glass, trying to protect the remaining eggs. To no avail. Within a handful of moments, every egg belonging to a Yuirwood spy was a splintered ruin and every spy-there was no other interpretation-was dead.

The dire beast from last night? The Aglarondan forest harbored creatures unknown in Thay. The Yuirwood itself was magical, so said Deaizul. Could it have killed with such force that death had echoed all the way back to Bezantur? Could there be another explanation? The Simbul had wrecked havoc in the farming village, but the eggs had survived. Mythrell'aa had headed west and disappeared, but swift mass murder wasn't Lady Illusion's style.

The spy master went to the separate cabinet where she kept her own egg and Deaizul's. His was intact and glowing. She held it in her hands. They were bleeding; she hadn't dodged all the glass. She pressed the egg between her breasts. She called Deaizul's name with her heart.

No answer. He was alive-trapped in a mongrel's body, but alive. And not listening to her pleas.

The spy master poured herself a glass of clear liquid. She drained the glass in two gulps, then swallowed another time directly from the decanter. Her heart no longer raced.

Why should Deaizul risk his place among the chattel-kessir by turning his attention toward her when she called? The mongrels were canny, like animals. They'd tear him apart, like animals, if they thought he was not one of them. He was alive. In Bezantur, nothing more mattered.

She poured another glass. Calmer now, she could see that events had gone for the best. She could tell the zulkir that the Yuirwood had unmasked her spies and their plans had come to naught. He'd be angry… until Deaizul had the power of the forest in his grasp. After that, the zulkir's anger would be too little, too late.

The carnelian token the spy master kept pinned to her robe grew warm, then hot. She unclasped it and dropped it on the table where it shimmered with its own heat. The blood-red stone bulged, became a pair of lips that opened to shape one word, "Now." It was Aznar Thrul's voice.

The summons couldn't be a coincidence, yet it had to be. The zulkir couldn't already know what she herself had just learned. The spy master assembled her old woman's disguise and hurried out of the bolt-hole. The chamberlain expected her; another first, like the exploding eggs. Even more disconcerting, he didn't wheedle or harass her, didn't want coins before opening the proper doors, didn't insist that she change into a flimsy gauze robe.

"The Mighty Tharchion, Mightier Zulkir awaits you in the smaller audience chamber," he said, tall and stiff and going out of his way not to touch her.

The spy master swallowed hard. Her mouth was pasty and sour. She wished she had something to drink, something potent. Failing that, she calmed herself with the knowledge that Deaizul was alive. His essence egg was secure in her bolt-hole cabinet, safe beside her own.

Her calm melted when she entered the small audience chamber where the zulkir sat, in robes of darkest crimson, behind a table and an opened box identical in every way to the one in which she kept the essence eggs. Nearly a score of the padded compartments were empty, dusted with glass shards and rust-colored powder. But the worst was in the upper right corner. Where her box had two completely empty compartments, corresponding to the places where her own egg and Deaizul's had once rested, Aznar Thrul's held two glowing, fragile essence eggs.

"I see you recognize this," the zulkir said. His words were winter ice, stinging the spy master's flesh.

"My lord, it is remarkably similar to a box Deaizul once showed me."

"Do not imagine you can deceive me any longer with misdirection and half-truths, woman. It is the twin-the precise double-of the box you keep in your private chamber behind the Sahuagin Tavern, in a locked cabinet. The doors are painted red."