Messy Chambers, Missing Kids, and Sisterly Advice
Chapters 9 through 11 are where the book shifts gears in a really satisfying way. We jump between three very different settings: Thayan spy games, the Simbul’s disastrous private chambers, and Lauzoril’s complicated home life. And honestly, these chapters are some of the most character-revealing in the whole book.
Chapter 9: Thrul’s Spy Master Has a Bad Day
We open in Bezantur with Thrul’s spy master, who is having the kind of day that makes you reconsider your career choices. She’s working through her glass eggs, magical scrying devices inherited from her mentor Deaizul, trying to contact her agents. Four eggs come up inert. Four dead spies, the ones who were sent to watch Mythrell’aa’s minions in Sulalk.
She pieces together what happened using a necromantic “final sight” spell on the remains of her dead agents. The last spy’s dying vision captured the key scene: the Simbul in the barn with the gray horse, Bro carrying Tay-Fay, the argument between queen and half-elf boy. Then the spy got noticed and died in flame and terror. An after-death vision shows the aftermath: a mangled corpse, empty stall, a blackened circle where the teleportation spell went wrong.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The spy master takes this information to Thrul, and he’s an absolute jerk about it. He flattens her with magic the second she walks in with her sack. He mocks her about the horse. He flashes light from the scrying plate into her eyes like a bully with a laser pointer.
And in that moment, something breaks. The spy master develops a genuine hatred for Thrul. Not professional disagreement. Hatred. She decides right there that she will bring him down, piece by miserable piece. She seals the hatred away like she’d seal it in one of her glass eggs. Pattern over passion. But the pattern now includes his destruction.
She still does her job. She shows him the final sight visions, lets him invade her mind to see what she saw. But when he gets excited about pressuring Mythrell’aa, she makes a calculated choice. She was going to ask for help finding Deaizul in the Yuirwood. Instead, she keeps that information to herself. Thrul is no longer worthy of her web. She’ll use it for herself.
This is such a good spy chapter. The spy master is smart, disciplined, and patient. And Thrul just made an enemy he doesn’t even know about yet.
Chapter 10: The Simbul Can’t Clean Her Room
Now we get to the genuinely funny part of these chapters.
The Simbul’s private chambers in Velprintalar are in absolute chaos. Artifacts everywhere. Spellbooks older than she is, heaped in the middle of her work chamber. Dust. So much dust. Every table cleared for the first time ever, shelves emptied of everything but her most fragile mementos: gifts from her sisters, a lock of her mother’s hair, the thorn branch she took from Lailomun’s pillow.
She’s searching for how the Red Wizards found out about her interest in the colt. Someone spied on her, in her own private chambers, and she needs to figure out how.
But here’s the thing. The Simbul learned domestic cleaning cantrips centuries ago. She just never cared about them. She’s better at commanding storms than containing dust. She sneezes. Pages break loose from a brittle spellbook and flutter out the window, spells lost for eternity. She doesn’t even chase them.
“Cold tea and crumpets! Where does the dust come from?”
That’s her actual exclamation. Cold tea and crumpets. The most powerful wizard in the region swears like a grandmother.
And then she gets distracted. She’s supposed to be checking her spellbooks for enemy tampering. Instead she finds a spell for transmuting sand into mottled glass, thinks about how she could tinker with it to make stained glass panels, and has to physically pull herself back to the task. After the dust, distraction is the worst part of cleaning. That line is so relatable it hurts.
She checks her scrying mirror. Salt and rainwater patterns across the dome. She looks at the Thayan power players. Thrul and Mythrell’aa are probing each other, which is interesting. But when she tries to see Lauzoril, she gets only a green spiral where his face should be. His reflection has gone abstract. She’s not sure what that means, and it worries her.
Then she asks the mirror to show everyone who wishes her harm. The mirror goes black and starts vibrating. Bad question.
She tries a narrower search: people in Aglarond who speak ill of her. The number of faces is genuinely depressing. Not traitors or enemies. Just ordinary people who blame their queen for bad weather, high taxes, escaped eels, teething babies, bad yeast. Their queen can destroy armies with a single spell, so why can’t she fix everything? Why is she always somewhere else?
It’s a quietly sad moment. The Simbul knows she’s not loved the way her sisters are. Even Qilue is beloved by drow who worship Eilistraee. But seeing the sheer volume of everyday resentment still hits her.
She talks to Elminster through the mirror. Talks to his image, really, since she doesn’t actually call him. She rambles about needing an heir, about being older than some of the gods, about how she can’t do what her sister Laeral did and pretend to be her own descendant. Then Elminster’s nephew Azalar shows up in the mirror’s image and she gives up on that line of thinking.
Back to the dusty spellbooks. Three bone-rattling sneezes and a torn sleeve later, she goes to check on Tay-Fay, who is still sleeping on the gilded daybed. She sings a lullaby cantrip to keep the child asleep, then teleports to Sulalk to deal with the corpses.
The village is a reeking, smoldering ruin. She gathers the dead, villager by villager, to a grassy knoll for a memorial. She finds Red Wizard corpses too, and uses her special wand to identify them. Illusionist, abjurer, conjuror. A mixed party. Could mean the zulkirs are cooperating, which would be terrifying for all of Faerun.
Then she finds a corpse whose specialty marking has been magically erased. Nobody has ever defeated her revelation spell before. This is new and concerning. And she finds something worse: a survivor wearing Lailomun’s face.
The survivor is Vazurmu, one of Mythrell’aa’s illusionists. The face was a trick, designed by Mythrell’aa herself. She told Vazurmu that if she ever faced the Simbul, showing Lailomun’s face would buy her time to escape. Which means Mythrell’aa knew about Lailomun and the Simbul. Knew about Alassra Shentrantra’s deepest secret.
Vazurmu is dying. Mythrell’aa shredded her insides. She’s kept herself alive with healing potions and pure spite. She wants revenge and offers to go back to Bezantur to find out who sent the other, unbranded Red Wizards. But before the Simbul can decide what to do, a sister’s voice explodes in her mind:
“Nethreene, come home. NOW!”
That’s the Simbul’s private name. Only her sisters and a few others know it. Something is wrong in Velprintalar. The Simbul makes a quick, brutal decision: she kills Vazurmu with a word of power (more mercy than execution), places her with the villagers, and transforms all the dead into a permanent statue of Chauntea, goddess of grain and summer. Then she teleports home.
She hasn’t dealt with Bro. She knows Mythrell’aa knows about him. She won’t leave him unprotected. But that problem will have to wait.
Chapter 11: Lauzoril’s Two Lives
The last chapter in this set shifts to Lauzoril, and it’s one of the best character chapters in the book.
He’s riding home to his Thazalhar estate on a horse carved from green and black marble, brought to life by a previous Zulkir of Enchantment. The horse is tireless and unbreakable. The rider is not. Lauzoril has a splitting headache from enchanting the road so his half-day journey covers impossible distances.
Lynn Abbey uses his ride home to fill in Thazalhar’s history. This empty, haunted province was the site of the great battle for Thayan independence from Mulhorand. Farmers and Red Wizards fought together for freedom. Two-thirds of Thazalhar’s population died. The land was scorched so badly that nothing grew for generations. Four centuries later, boundary walls are still built from ancient bones and rusted weapons.
Lauzoril arrives, changes from his Red Wizard robes into a gentleman farmer’s clothes, and buries food scraps beside the road. “For the dead. For Thazalhar and the dreams we’ve all forgotten.” He privately worships Kelemvor, the new Lord of the Dead, believing that death is the natural end of life. For a Red Wizard, that’s practically radical philosophy.
He keeps his zulkir identity completely separate from his life as Lord Tavai. His children, slaves, and household have no idea who he really is. It works because enchantment is the perfect school for living a double life.
Then his daughter Mimuay steps out of the shadows. She’s been hiding in the grove where he keeps his stone horse, waiting for him, even though he explicitly forbade her from going there. He almost kills her with a combat spell before he recognizes her voice.
The conversation that follows is one of the best scenes in the book. Mimuay has a “ghost friend” named Ferrin who told her to wait in the grove. She’s thirteen and asking hard questions. About her mother Wenne. About why Wenne is the way she is, like a child who never grew up. About whether her great-grandfather was the previous Zulkir of Enchantment.
Lauzoril almost strikes her. He catches his hand just before it connects. And then, because he’s fundamentally honest with the people he loves, he tells her the truth: he killed Wenne’s grandfather in a duel. He became zulkir. The old zulkir had enchanted Wenne’s mind so she could never learn magic, never become a rival or a hostage. She lives in storybooks because her grandfather broke her brain trying to protect her.
“When will you put that magic on me, Poppa?”
That question nearly destroys him. He can see his own death in his daughter’s eyes. He knows she will eventually learn what he does outside Thazalhar. She will hate him. She will probably destroy him. The killing spell is in his mind. One word, one gesture.
He won’t do it. He’d sooner die himself.
Instead, he agrees to teach her magic. She asked specifically about necromancy, about sharing his “gift.” In Thazalhar, the dead are everywhere. She hears them. They’re her friends. The Zulkir of Enchantment is going to teach his thirteen-year-old daughter the arts of death.
The chapter ends with the most romantic and saddest scene in the book. Lauzoril goes to his wife Wenne, who thinks she’s a princess and he’s her prince. She’s embroidering griffins, each one different and remarkable. She attacks his shirt, wanting to dress him in her new creation. He carries her to their bedchamber. She caresses his scars but never touches the oldest one: the swirling tattoo her grandfather placed above his heart.
He loves her the only way he can: by playing the role she needs him to play. He doesn’t love her the way a man wants to love his wife. But he’ll never stop performing that love, because it’s the kindest thing he knows how to do.
My Take
These chapters work so well because of the contrasts. The Simbul can command storms but can’t clean her room. She can destroy armies but can’t connect with ordinary people. She talks to Elminster’s image through a mirror instead of actually calling him.
And Lauzoril is the “villain” who buries food for the dead, worships the natural end of life, and refuses to harm his daughter even though he knows she’ll be his destruction. The scene where he almost hits Mimuay and then tells her the absolute truth instead is one of the most human moments in any Forgotten Realms novel.
Lynn Abbey is doing something really subtle here. Both the Simbul and Lauzoril are brilliant, powerful people who are bad at the personal stuff. They hoard things (her, literally; him, secrets). They live double lives. They love imperfectly but genuinely. And they’re both terrible at asking for help.
The Simbul’s dusty, cluttered chambers are the perfect metaphor for her entire life. She’s accumulated centuries of power and possessions and never dealt with any of it. The dust keeps building. The spellbooks keep piling up. And somewhere in all that mess, an enemy planted a spy-eye that she missed for years.
That contrast between supreme power and basic human messiness is genuinely funny. And genuinely true.
Previous: The Storm Queen Throws Hands in the Yuirwood
Next: Mythrell’aa’s Long Game and the Thayan Web
Book Details
- Title: The Simbul’s Gift
- Author: Lynn Abbey
- Series: The Nobles, Book 6
- Setting: Forgotten Realms (D&D)
- ISBN: 0-7869-0763-0