"Is everything ready for my guests, Neera? Bedchambers freshened, clean linens?" he prodded the red-haired girl. "You know I would hate for them to be lacking any comfort, don't you?" With that last question, he eyed her meaningfully. Szass Tarn knew full well that her left arm was still healing from the burn he had inflicted there not too long ago when Neera had neglected a few pieces of cutlery at a place setting for one of his "special" dinner gatherings.

"Yes, m-my lord," she answered meekly.

"And the meeting hall?" he nudged her along, tired of the game already.

Perhaps sensing her master's growing impatience, she stood a little straighter and replied more confidently, "Everything has been made ready. You won't find anything lacking, I assure you." Szass Tarn smiled a bit and thought to himself that the woman might have promise after all.

"Is that all then?" he asked her, looking pointedly at her bundle.

"No, my lord," she replied. "I have word from one of your patrols." He simply stared at her, no longer willing to cue her any more this evening.

"One of the ghoul brigades returned from the lower depths of the Citadel," Neera explained, her voice growing stronger. "They described seeing increasing collections of magma, and one even reported a river of lava flowing through a former passageway, now impassable."

The lich lowered his head and nodded to himself. It was as he expected, though the news did not please him.

"And," she added, "they found this." She held out the wrapped bundle, uncertain if she should approach the Red Wizard.

Szass Tarn drew himself up to his full, however false, height and approached the chambermaid. He could see her tremble at his approach, and that pleased him.

"Let's see what they discovered." He took the bundle from her unresisting arms. He smiled charmingly at her. Even though she feared him, she could not stop the stain of red on her cheeks. "You may go for now," he dismissed her. S^e dropped her eyes and curtsied briefly before slipping out of the library.

Szass Tarn carried the carefully wrapped bundle over to his desk. He laid it to one side and prudently replaced the pages of his folio and stored it in a special location of his library. He made a mental note to himself that he would need to bring it with him for the gathering a tenday hence and deposit it in a very guarded location.

Considering the company he was drawing together, the lich was grimly aware that it would not do to have the collection end up in any one of their hands.

Having satisfied himself that the pages were secure for the moment, he turned his attention to the cloth-covered package. Szass Tam unwrapped the parcel and tilted his head. Lying in the center of the cloak were several bones, picked clean of all flesh. He lifted one up toward a candelabrum and sighted down the length of it like a carpenter with a level.

"Dwarven," he whispered and caught a whiff of the remains. "Duergar," he deduced.

Caught up in his ponderings of the rare discovery, Szass Tam relaxed his appearance spell and reverted back to the thin skeletal body he truly possessed. His red robe pooled at his feet like a puddle of blood as he shrunk a few inches. He ran a thin claw along the leg, pausing to finger a few deep gouges in the bone. As he absently rubbed the marks, the lich grew thoughtful. In his two hundred years of experience, he had never seen bite marks quite like these.

"This will require some investigating," he murmured to himself. After a moment more of silence, however, his thin, cruel lips parted in a grin.

"But what a delightful addition to my collection," he added, always able to put leftovers to good use. Still smiling, he covered the bones and prepared for his next move.

20 Mirtul, 1373 DR he dream was always the same. Naglatha found herself on a windswept plain with fertile farming lands as far as the eye could see in every direction. The air was charged with an electric energy that was palpable. Not far from her, atop a slight knoll, stood a small but powerful enclave of men clothed in crimson cloaks. She recognized their leader, Ythazz Buvaar, by his fiery eyes and vigorous manner. She moved closer to the group of men to hear him better.

"The time has come," she heard him shout, "to shake off the chains of the pharaohs. Their days are over."

Naglatha moved a strand of her midnight-black hair away from her eyes and mingled with the group of red-robed men. None of them saw her, and she was free to step about and study them all without changing the events of the vision. Na-glatha could see some were moved by the words of the man who would be the first leader of the Red Wizards. Before this time, they were simply a group of renegade spellcasters that hid themselves from the watching eyes of the god-kings of Mulhorand. Their numbers were scattered throughout the kingdom, but a core group of the sect, that called themselves by the title of Red Wizards, demanded freedom from the theocracy of the old empire. They wanted the right to study and learn about every form of magic that existed in Faerun and discover that which did not. And the god-kings would not give them their freedom willingly.

Concentrated mostly in the northern provinces, these men did not have the backward, inbred worship for the pharaohs that most of their society possessed. And Ythazz Buvaar had stepped forward from that consortium. He foresaw a kingdom without the phar-ohs, where anyone could attain the same position of power as the god-kings, but through magic instead of worship. He rallied the others to his vision. They had caught his enthusiasm enough to raise an army and sack the capital city of Delhumide. But now, the rulers of Mulhorand had sent an army to crush the rebellion, and Ythazz Buvaar had gathered the most powerful wizards here on the hills above Thazalhar to stop them. Naglatha could feel her heart quicken its tempo in expectation of what she knew was to follow. She could have recited the words herself, she knew them so well.

"Now is the time," Ythazz Buvaar told the others.

"Now is when we show those god-kings just how powerful our magic is and why it is like the sea. Whether they choose to believe in it or not," he said with a slight smile, "they have entered the water. And they are about to get wet."

Naglatha watched as the select men joined hands, almost as if in prayer. She longed to enter the circle herself, but she was never able to do that. Each time she had tried in the past, the dream simply faded away. So now she made herself content by studying the proceedings as they unfolded. But it chaffed her to sit along the sides and not be a part of the glory of the birth of Thay, even though the events occurred four and a half centuries ago and these men had long since turned to dust, their time come and gone.

Ythazz Buvaar led the chants. Most of the words were lost on Naglatha, though she always woke with them ringing in her ears, and they haunted her waking thoughts. The spells were lost to time as well, though she never gave up hope that she would one day rediscover them. She worked tirelessly in her search, and no price was ever too great to pay for even the slightest scrap of information. She approached all her tasks with the greatest of zeal, and her ruthlessness set her apart from гйапу of the other Red Wizards. She had garnered a reputation as an individual who would do anything to further their cause, no matter the cost. But, in her heart, she wished they were more like the men of her recurring dreams; men who seized glory without hesitation.

Ythazz Buvaar raised his head to the sky and said,

"We call you, Lord of the Hidden Layers. We beseech you for aid, and we bind you to us. We call you by your true name. Come, Eltab, for we have great need!"