The rose-thorn branch, sealed in glass and laid in state on a nearby shelf, was Mythrell'aa's doing. Alassra's eyes widened when thoughts of Mythrell'aa roiled her mind. Her fingers twitched toward the slow-moving coils on the quicksilver surface of her mirror, as if by seizing them she could seize Mythrell'aa as well and wring the life from her as Mythrell'aa had wrung it from Lailomun.

When her thoughts were calmer, Alassra invoked other zulkirs: Aznar Thrul of Invocation—the mirror marked him with an ebony spider web—and the conjuror Nevron, a weeping smear who blamed himself for his misfortunes because he lacked the courage to blame Szass Tam or his ally, Aznar Thrul. There were other names, too, each with an abstract, sometimes beautiful, always revealing quicksilver signature, but Alassra's mirror wasn't treasured because it could track her known enemies. Its true worth lay in its unique ability to capture and reflect the unsuspected. Focused in Aglarond, the quicksilver shimmered gently with guilty fears and desperate pleas for royal intervention or justice. Focused on Thay, the crystal dome fairly bubbled with grudges and curses.

A lesser person might have been daunted by the sheer mass of enmity. Alassra simply sorted through the Thayan onslaught, weaving her hands over the roiled quicksilver until she was convinced that the mirror reflected nothing new or significantly different. Then, as was her custom in these interrogations, she let her mind grow blank and asked—

What else?

The image of a bird in flight swept across the quicksilver. Like the fleeting touch she'd felt as she approached the mirror, Alassra couldn't capture its meaning before it vanished. Failure brought a grimace to her face, but, given the danger-laced life she chose to live, two inexplicable incidents in a single day—even a single hour—weren't at all uncommon.

For several moments after the bird flew past, the mirror reflected her own face, nothing more. It was summertime, hot and lazy in Aglarond and Thay alike. She wasn't surprised that nothing conspiratorial or otherwise was brewing in Thay. She ended the interrogation with the ritual question—

Show me Enchantment.

Waves rippled the quicksilver. When they cleared, a familiar face met her eyes: Lauzoril. Zulkir of Enchantment, the only Thayan face her mirror ever revealed.

She'd never met Lauzoril in person. For years, until the Thayan pall lifted, she'd known the Zulkir of Enchantment only by his mirror-signature: a green flame that flickered whenever she inquired who in Thay had been thinking ill thoughts about her. She'd slain no few of his minions and he'd slain a few of hers. Whenever she'd thought about the mage behind the signature she'd imagined a sour, ugly and ancient creature hiding within layers of magical deception, which was true enough for the zulkirs she had met face to face, but not for Lauzoril.

He was young for a zulkir. Whatever else Alassra thought about the Red Wizards—and little of it was complimentary—she conceded that they trained their students thoroughly. It was a rare novice who donned a red robe before the age of twenty-five, after which there were usually several decades of grueling apprenticeship—such as Lailomun had been serving when she met him—before the wizard could start climbing through the treacherous hierarchy.

It was generally safe to assume that all the zulkirs had to be older than they claimed to be: it should take more than a lifetime to murder one's way to the pinnacles of Thayan power. But Lauzoril revealed none of the signs of life-enhancing spellcraft. He appeared to be a man a few years short of his fiftieth birthday—an adolescent as Alassra measured lives. Remarkably, he'd been Zulkir of Enchantment for fifteen years. He was handsome, with frost-streaked blonde hair and rugged-rogue features as befitted a ruling enchanter, but enchantments had no effect on Alassra Shentrantra. It seemed quite likely that the face on the quicksilver surface was the zulkir's face as nature had shaped it.

Most Red Wizards shaved themselves hairless and covered their flesh with intricate tattoos. Lauzoril would not have been half so attractive among his tradition-conscious peers as he was to Aglarond's queen.

Which, in itself, raised intriguing questions:

Did Lauzoril know about the Simbul's mirror? Did he know that she spied on him? The glint in his cold green eyes, staring straight at her, and the smile crinkling the corners of his mouth seemed to say that he knew and that he enjoyed the experience. But, suspicions notwithstanding, Alassra's considerable research since his face first appeared, said no, the Zulkir of Enchantment was simply a man who smiled frequently and inscrutably as he went about his business.

One day she'd interrogate her mirror and there'd be no green-eyed man grinning back at her. After fifteen years, Enchantment was overdue for a new zulkir. It had happened before; save for the necromancer Szass Tam, zulkirs came and went frequently in Thay—and the very last thing Aglarond needed was another Szass Tam.

She told herself Faerun would be a better place when Lauzoril was gone; she told herself a lie.

Time was—before Lailomun and Aglarond—when those eyes would have drawn Alassra Shentrantra like a magnet. For centuries, rogues had been her favorite companions. Her past was pleasantly littered with memories of men who took advantage of every opportunity that crossed—or simply neared—their twisted paths. Those had been the days—and nights—of fine adventuring.

If he'd been around two hundred years ago, she and Lauzoril might not be enemies. At least, they wouldn't have begun as enemies.

But the year was 1368, not 1168, and the Simbul ruled in Aglarond because Aglarond's enemies had become her enemies, without question or respite. Alassra banished the zulkir's reflection with a casual gesture. She had other curiosities to sate, other enemies to spy upon.

Their signatures should have appeared on the dome's surface, but the quicksilver cast her own face back, nothing more.

She pursed her lips. "A wry jest," Alassra muttered, though the mirror lacked all sentience. It was not the first time she'd seen her own reflection. "I've always been my own worst enemy." She raised her hand a second time, then paused.

Alassra was a proud woman, but not a vain one. Her reflected face, with its prominent bones and piercing blue eyes, inspired respect, not affection. The men who'd called her beautiful felt the same way about a storm-whipped ocean. Not the sort of face that appealed to the romantic temperament of an enchanter. Not the face she'd wear, if she'd ever intended to attract one.

As a shapeshifter, the queen of Aglarond acknowledged no peer. She could transform herself into any living creature and assume inanimate shapes besides. She could become whatever her audience expected to see. No beauty or monstrosity was beyond her, nothing at all—except a glimpse of her face as nature had intended it.

"After six hundred and two years," Alassra complained aloud. "What would I look like? What should I look like?"

The quicksilver reflection blurred, reformed, and blurred again. She snapped her fingers and the liquid metal drained into the pool below the dome. Naked crystal reflected a familiar, but not accurate, image.

"It's because it is today and because today's my birthday," she groused as she spun on her heel. Other mages kept familiars or companions for company, Alassra Shentrantra took the high road of solitude and wound up talking to herself. "Any other day and this wouldn't be a problem ... I wouldn't be thinking of rogues or wondering what my own face looks like these days ... Damn you, Elminster!" She shook a fist in Shadowdale's general direction.

The Old Mage knew what day it was. He'd sent her a priceless gift: a pair of Mulhorandi scrolls, each more than three thousand years old. and she was properly grateful, but nowhere near as grateful as she would have been if he'd given her the gift she wanted: his presence, in the next room where the silk-covered bed waited.

A gust of wind scattered parchment and powder. The storm had arrived, and it had nothing to do with the charcoal clouds hanging over Velprintalar's harbor.

"A child, El. Is that so much?"

Alassra's mouth was still open when she shook her head with dismay. Of course it was a lot to ask of any man, to stand paternity for her child. It was, all things considered, a lot to ask of any child, especially if that child inherited anything of her temperament... or Elminster's.

"Mystra," Alassra whispered softly, but, she didn't need a goddess to tell her why she wanted a child. "Is it so wrong to want to see myself reflected in my child's eyes? Is it so wrong to want to see the world again the way it was when I was a child?"

Apparently, it was. Elminster, whose affection and good opinion Alassra valued above all else and whose other qualifications were superb, refused her request to come to Velprintalar. They gamboled in Shadowdale, Evermeet, and another score of places but not once, since she'd broached the subject last year, in Velprintalar.

"I told you what I wanted because I didn't want to trick you. I won't hold you responsible!" she shouted—at absent Elminster, not Mystra, though she absolved the goddess, too.

Mystra had deliberately created Alassra and her sisters. First, the goddess had selected Dornal to be the father of her Chosen Ones, then she'd possessed Elue Shundar and married them together. They produced seven daughters in as many years. In the six centuries since then, the goddess had welcomed only thirteen grandchildren—and all but one of them were Alustriel's half-elf sons, the Aerasume.

Alassra had considered herself unalterably barren. It was only recently, when her sister Dove gave birth to a healthy, human son that her hopes had been reborn. Even so, they remained slim: she'd used too much magic, visited too many uncanny places to believe that simply wanting a child would ever be enough.

"I won't hold you responsible," Alassra repeated, more softly this time, "no matter what."

She began retrieving the parchments her outburst had scattered. When she'd collected them into an almost-tidy pile, her mind was calm enough to face the mirror again and continue her investigations. Quicksilver was creeping up the crystal when a bronze chime sounded in the palace's audience chamber and, by associated magic, in the back of Alassra's mind. The quicksilver flew away from the dome. Most of it fell back into the shining pool, but a few poisonous drops struck her skin where they clung and burned.