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recalled, you will return. The interests and the future of Thay in each of these places rests in your hands, so should you fail that is the first part of you that will be taken by me in payment.”
    Without bothering to field questions or even hear confirmation that he was heard and understood, the tharchion stepped forward into a dimension door that opened the instant his foot came off the ground and disappeared the moment his other foot passed its threshold.
    The air in the room was heavy with shock, and for a long time the assembled Red Wizards stood silently considering the life-altering assignments that had been forced upon them as if from nowhere. Then one by one the still-reeling wizards cleared the room.
    Marek drew in a deep breath and Insithryllax once more leaned in close to attend him
    “Well,” the Red Wizard said, “it appears we’re moving to Innarlith.”
    “Where is Innarlith?”
    Marek almost answered the question but stopped himself short.
    “Innarlith?” he replied instead. “It’s nowhere. It’s nothing.”
    Insithryllax’s eyes narrowed and Marek could tell that the dragon didn’t quite understand but knew well enough that that was all the answer he was going to get.
    Just to surprise the dragon, Marek added, “Not yet, anyway.”

8
    lMirtul, the Year of Shadows (1358DR) The City of Marsember, Cormyr
    Korvan watched his mother sift through the stack of drawings, growing increasingly agitated with each glimpse of the contents of one sheet of parchment after another. Had they been drawn in her son’s precise, delicate hand, she would have felt quite differently. Instead, the drawings showed the unrestrained, almost careless, loose style of Ivar Devorast.
    Willem knew she didn’t understand the contents of the drawings. She lingered over one that even she could see was reminiscent of a crossbow, though if the hastily sketched figure of a person standing next to it was drawn to scale, it would have to be a crossbow of mammoth proportions.
    “Monstrous,” she whispered as she turned that one drawing to get a better look at it
    “Mother?” he said, startling her. “What… um … What are you doing there?”
    She let the papers fall back into place on the table and turned to the open door, plastering a false smile on her face.
    “Just cleaning up in Master Devorast’s room, my dear.”
    “It’s not necessary for you to call him that, Mother,” he said.
    She shrugged.
    “He’s twenty-two years old, for goodness sake. If anything it would be… it would be Mister Devorast by now,” he said, leaning1 against the doorjamb. He looked at her without a trace of suspicion, though he should have noted that she held no rag or duster, no sign that she was cleaning the room. “I’m sure you can call him Ivar.”
    Thurene nodded, reached out her hands to her son, and said, “Come, my dear.”
    Smiling, he stepped forward into her embrace. Thurene kissed her son on the cheek, though she had to stand on her tiptoes, and he had to bend considerably at the waist to make that possible.
    They pulled away from each other at the same time and Thurene said, “Old habits die hard, my dear. It was the appropriate form of address when we were first introduced, and well, I guess it just stuck. Besides, Mas—Mister Devorast never seemed to mind.”
    Willem shrugged, his eyes drawn to the stack of drawings.
    “Ivar doesn’t listen, anyway,” he said. “He probably hasn’t heard a word you’ve said since he moved in.”
    Thurene’s smile faded, but Willem couldn’t help the look of undisguised admiration on his face as his eyes played over Devorast’s wild imaginings.
    “They’re quite a mess, aren’t they?” she said, twisting her neck around in an severe way in hopes of drawing her son’s eyes from the paper. It didn’t work. “Nothing like the way he keeps his room. So clean, so… featureless. He’s the only boarder we’ve ever had who hasn’t put a moment’s thought into his