Red Magic

Red Magic, by Jean Rabe, is the third book of the loosely-related The Harpers series.

"The Red Wizards rule Thay, perhaps the most wicked and corrupt land in all the Forgotten Realms. While the evil mage, Zulkir Maligor, builds a net of treachery and deceit, the Harpers seek to uncover his vile schemes. A small band is sent by the Harpers to pose as slaves and slavers to infiltrate the malevolent land. Once inside Thay, they face the undead minions of the Red Wizards and a future far worse than death: becoming the wizards' soulless puppets!"

Summary
Thay is ruled by a council of eight specialized archmages (Zulkirs), one for each school. Maligor, the Zulkir of transmutation, plots to take control of Thay by himself and destroy his nemesis, Szass Tam.

His plan can be said to have three stages:
 * 1) Take control of Thay's gold production, using his loyal spirit naga (or Shinomen naga) assistant.
 * 2) Destroy Szass Tam.
 * 3) Invade Aglarond and conquer the world.

This power battle has raised the attention of the Harpers, who send three of their agents to find a way to stop Maligor's plan: a big city mage from the court of Aglarond, a druid who has never even been to a town, and his slightly more civilized centaur friend who is a fugitive from Thay.

Synopsis
In the Year of the Helm, 1362 DR, Maligor, the Zulkir of Alteration in Thay was plotting a grab for power, his plan was a secret. He has been accumulating and training an army of gnolls openly, making sure the other Zulkirs were aware of the amassing force. In secret from prying eyes, the other agenda Maligor had was tasking his slaves and servants to capture all the critters, small animals, they could find in the region surrounding Amruthar where his tower was located. Maligor was magically transforming the animals into an army of monstrosities called darkenbeasts. His trusted assistant, consort, and lieutenant, a spirit naga named Asp discovered a missing gnoll in the army informing Maligor of a possible defector or a spy. Not to take any chances for his clever plan to get spoiled he created a new darkenbeast and sent it to track the deserter.

The missing gnoll was Mudwort. He has been an informant for the Harpers in Thay and he was about to meet the harper druid Galvin on the shores of Lake Umber. The druid arrived in his Amnian hawk beast shape. Mudwort gave the harper agent very basic information that was common knowledge in Amruthar, the name of the Zulkir assembling the gnoll army. The informant was hesitant to disclose more fearing the druid being an agent of the Red Mage testing Mudwort's loyalty. Galvin in frustration reached out to stop gnoll from leaving and provoked a savage attack. Taking a cave bear wild shape, the druid ended up killing Mudwort, the act he deeply regretted. In the battle, Galvin was badly hurt and made his way towards the harper camp not far off. Meanwhile, the darkenbeast sent to retrieve the deserter witnessed the fight and decided to follow the wounded druid.

The druid made way to the camp and met up with a centaur friend and a fellow Harper agent - Wynter, and a city council member Brenna Graycloak of Aglarond. The harpers were contacted by the city's rulers to investigate the rumors of an amassing force in case it was targeting the peaceful city. The darkenbeast that followed Galvin attacked the camp and was destroyed by Brenna's lightning bolt. Upon its death, the creature dissolved back to its harmless original small critter form. The harpers were perplexed with the transformation never seeing anything like it before. Galvin used his druid magic to restore his health overnight, and in the morning the trio made plans to travel to Amruthar and covertly investigate the looming danger.

The harper battle with Maligor's darkenbeast alerted the mage to the unknown party with a magic user in tow, entering the play and possibly becoming an obstacle in the future.

Traveling further up the River Umber the harpers scaled the First Escarpment and entered Thay. The luscious greenery of a slave citrus plantation was located on top of the cliff. The spies ran into an orc squad led by an ex-pirate Elwin. Galvin used entangle to restrain the orcs and Brenna cast the charm spell on the leader, turning Elwin into a more than willing guide.

Back at the Maligor's Tower Willeth Lionson, the tharchion of Thaymount and the gold mines found himself in the red wizard's prison. Maligor's forced abducted the tharchion as he was on his way to Tantras to purchase new mining equipment. The mage knew that Willeth's disappearance would be unnoticed for a couple of weeks because of the travel which was the part of the red wizard's scheme. Maligor tortured Willeth and extracted the information about the Thay gold mines' defenses, and newly uncovered abundant gold veins. The dying tharchion drew a detailed map on the mines for the wizard. As the interrogation was over, Maligor fed him to his gnoll guards. The bones and rippled cloth was all that was left of the tharchion, and they were scattered around the escarpment by Maligor's apprentice Jutta, using the ring of flying that was gifted to her. To make sure no one knew of his plans, he disposed of the gnoll guards that witnessed the whole interrogation by feeding them to his darkenbeasts.

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