The Simbul's Gift

by Lynn Abbey

  “We’d better get to the camp. You should do the talking, Ebroin, if you’re up to it. With or without a sword, you are Rizcarn’s son. I just got here today.”

  Bro couldn’t replace Rizcarn in the camp, but the Cha’Tel’Quessir listened as he described what they’d find on the far side of the stream and what it meant.

  Yongour called three other names; the four of them headed for the stream. Bro moved to follow. Alassra held him back.

  “You’ve done enough,” she assured him. “With two holes in your side, no one expects you to carry Lanig’s body uphill.”

  “Before you were telling me to use my arm more. Lanig was no one to me, but he was there when they pulled the arrow out of me; I owe him. He must’ve died sometime today. Before or after you got here, I wonder. You who’ve fought everyone, everywhere. You know about Thayan arrows, maybe you know Thayan spells, too. You’ve been staring at me since you got here, Chayan. Why? Because I’m still alive?”

  “Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk about this, Ebroin.” She reached for his right arm; he wrested away.

  “I don’t think I should go anywhere with you, alone.”

  Alassra tried again and caught his wrist. “I didn’t put an arrow in you, Ebroin, and I didn’t pop Lanig’s heart out of his chest. I’ll prove it to you, if I have to, but I’d rather you took my word.”

  “I want proof.”

  “Not here. Somewhere private.”

  She led Bro out of the camp, wondering, as she walked, if he’d be any more convinced of her innocence once he did know who she was. Perhaps the best course would be to summon Trovar Halaern, whose thoughts she could catch through the circlet and who could say, with absolute honesty, that they’d been together last night and this morning and nowhere near the camp.

  “We’ll start with the simple things.” Alassra began, still holding Bro’s wrist. “I didn’t put an arrow in you because I don’t have any reason to. I came to this camp because I’d heard about Rizcarn, your father, and what he planned to do in the Sunglade. When I got here, Lanig told me Rizcarn was gone and Rizcarn’s son was injured. So I made myself useful, making sure you didn’t die—I know you, Ebroin, I know you better than you imagine and I rather like—”

  Alassra got no further in her explanation. Bro’s right arm—the one she’d been telling him he could move with confidence—slipped around her waist. Any other time, she would have bounced him off the ten nearest trees for impertinence, but sometimes even the queen of Aglarond took the easy way, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him gently before saying:

  “You’re a handsome young man, Ebroin. It’s very easy to stare.”

  My lady?

  Halaern answering her summons.

  Never mind. I thought there was a problem, but I’ve got it under control.

  As you wish, my lady.

  He was attractive and his wounds were healing. If she were careful … but, no, she’d break his heart as she’d broken others, or he’d break hers by growing old. Alassra risked a little magic; Bro found himself yawning and interested only in a nap. Next time she came to the Yuirwood, Alassra swore, there’d definitely be warts on her face, a lot of them, plus crossed eyes, and crooked teeth, with great, dirty gaps between them

  22

  The Yuirwood, in Aglarond

  Morning, the twenty-third day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

  Bro awoke early, wrapped in a woolen blanket. He remembered little of the previous evening, except that he couldn’t stop yawning while Lanig’s grave was dug and had fallen asleep shortly after sunset.

  His wounds didn’t hurt, not the cautery burns nor the puncture passage between his ribs. Bro considered the possibility that the Simbul’s knife had healed him overnight. The queen hadn’t told him it would protect him against poison; he’d had to learn that for himself. Maybe it had healing powers as well.

  Perhaps he should have been more careful with her boots. Perhaps he shouldn’t have blamed her for Sulalk. Perhaps he wasn’t healed at all. Perhaps the lack of pain was proof that the wound had festered, deadening the flesh around it. Perhaps each beat of his heart was pushing fatal poison closer to his brain. Perhaps he should take off his borrowed shirt, unwind the bandages and see for himself.

  Bro decided against all of that.

  He looked around quickly. His nearest neighbor, still asleep, was a head of long brown hair, half-braided, half-loose, spilling onto another trade blanket. Not Rizcarn, whose hair was raven black. There wasn’t a raven hair to be seen in pale light. Rizcarn hadn’t returned.

  The watch had retired and the camp was stirring. Cha’Tel’Quessir rekindled their fires for breakfast cooking, shook out their clothes, wandered in and out of the bushes, tending their private needs. Bro counted a handful of new faces among them; they numbered forty now, give or take a few. Chayan hadn’t been yesterday’s only new arrival, though she was the only one he’d noticed.

  Thinking of her, Bro pounded his fist against his forehead. Healed or poisoned, he was clearer-headed this morning, and the memories … What had he been thinking of when she led him out of the camp? Had he truly put his arm around her? Tried to kiss her on the lips?

  “Gods curse me for a fool,” he muttered, knotting his shirt within his fist, until he remembered it was hers and smoothed it out again. “They were digging Lanig’s grave and I was thinking …”

  Bro didn’t want to say what he’d been thinking, not even in a whisper. The very morning that she died, his mother had chided him for being too shy and awkward around the Sulalk human girls. Time enough, he’d told himself, when he got back to the Yuirwood.

  But barely enough: Chayan was practically the first unspoken-for woman he’d met, and he’d made a fool of himself. Cha’Tel’Quessir grew up as fast as their human cousins, then settled into an almost-elven maturity. Bro recalled how shocked he’d been when Shali once told him she was old enough to be Dent’s mother. Chayan, who’d fought everywhere with everyone and whose tree-family, SilverBranch, Bro didn’t recognize, was almost certainly older than Shali. Age wasn’t supposed to be important between men and women in the Yuirwood, but the longer Bro thought about it, the younger and more foolish he felt.

  He grabbed the blanket and began folding it, using both arms: he’d sooner die of poison than have Chayan taking care of him a moment longer. It wasn’t his blanket anyway; he’d been borrowing blankets or furs each night, as he’d been borrowing everything else since he met up with his father. Two nights ago, he’d borrowed a fur from Lanig …

  Bro’s hands stopped moving. He hadn’t known Lanig well. More than the memory of Lanig’s corpse and Dent’s and Shali’s, it was the number of people who were simply gone that set his hands shaking. His world had turned over so many times, and what was he doing? Folding a blanket, as if it mattered whether blankets got folded, whether he was warm and dry when the dew fell.

  Rizcarn went around the Yuirwood carving runes into trees and stones so they wouldn’t forget. Bro thought it would have been more useful to carve runes into the Cha’Tel’Quessir themselves so he wouldn’t forget who he was, where he’d come from, and what he’d left behind. Shali had a tiny scar on her cheek; for his life, Bro couldn’t remember if it had been her right cheek or her left.

  He took a deep breath that hurt his right-side ribs and the place he called his heart. Then he put another fold in the blanket, because he was alive, not dead, and he’d have to return the blanket with proper gratefulness. When the blanket was neatly folded in eighths, Bro started to stand, and stopped. The blanket in his hands matched the blanket wrapped around his neighbor, and his nighttime neighbor with the long, brown hair was Chayan.

  Chayan, wrapping him in her own blankets, taking care of him because he was too young and foolish to take care of himself.

  At least she was still asleep. Carefully, quietly, Bro laid the blanket beside her and tiptoed away. Yongour hailed him as he trudged up from the stream. Had he slept well? Was he f
eeling better? Would he breakfast at Yongour’s fire?

  Lanig’s death and Rizcarn’s continued absence had revitalized the Cha’Tel’Quessir. They gathered like tree-family elders at Yongour’s fire, sipping tea and gnawing chunks of yesterday’s bread. Bro greeted them all by name; they greeted him as Rizcarn’s son and asked him when his father would return.

  “The question is, should we wait here, or make our way to the Sunglade,” Yongour explained. “I measure that the ’Glade’s three days from here, walking fast and alone. We’re thirty-eight now, and we can only walk as fast as our slowest legs. Some have to forage as well. If we leave now, all of us will get there. If we wait a day, some won’t. If we wait more than a day, like as not, Zandilar will dance without us. Did your father tell you which we should do? Walk or wait?”

  Bro wanted to laugh. His father hadn’t told him anything. Rizcarn didn’t trust his son much more than that son trusted him, but Rizcarn had—unintentionally?—left him with the power to bring thirty-eight Cha’Tel’Quessir to the Sunglade or keep them in this camp until it was too late to dance with Zandilar.

  “Wait,” one of the women said. “Rizcarn’s our guide. I’ve been to the ’Glade a hundred times, and nothing’s come of it. If there’s to be change in the Yuirwood, Rizcarn must lead us to the Sunglade, no one else.”

  Another woman spoke up. “Rizcarn called us together. He told us where to go and when to be there. Now he’s gone to do other things. If we fail him, we fail the Yuirwood, we fail the Cha’Tel’Quessir. It’s time to start walking.”

  “You see our problem,” Yongour advised Bro. “We were evenly divided until we agreed to listen to you. You’re his son. The gods’ arrow struck you. Another man would have died, but we see you walking. You have their favor, Rizcarn’s son. You could lead us.”

  Bro assumed that Yongour was one of those in favor of marching toward the Sunglade. “There are other things to consider,” he began. “Whoever—whatever—killed Lanig is still out there.”

  “Lanig lost faith after Rizcarn left,” the first woman said.

  “He was ready to leave. He abandoned Rizcarn; Rizcarn abandoned him.” That from the second woman.

  Yongour added his opinion: “Lanig’s death is another reason to move on. Rizcarn won’t come back to a place where he was betrayed.”

  Bro started to say My father’s not a god, but the words stuck in his throat. To the men and women waiting for him to speak, he was no more than a coin tossed to break a tie in a game of odds or evens. Yongour expected him to break it in his favor. And Bro would have, if he’d thought there was something to be gained for the Yuirwood and the Cha’Tel’Quessir in the Sunglade at full moon. After Lanig’s death, Bro didn’t believe anything.

  All eyes were on Bro, waiting for his decision. Half of them were certain to be disappointed. All of them seemed to feel Lanig had gotten what he deserved. Bro wrapped his hand around the Simbul’s knife, but there wasn’t any magic involved here.

  “What do you think, Rizcarn’s son?” Yongour prodded. “Decide for us.”

  “Wait—” Faces darkened immediately. “Wait for another day, then start walking as fast as we can.”

  They were satisfied. They were as foolish as he had been with Chayan outside of the camp yesterday, but they were satisfied. Bro walked away by himself.

  Chayan was gone. The place where she’d slept, where he’d left the folded blanket, was empty. Bro should have been relieved that he wouldn’t have to face her again; he wasn’t. He spun around, looking for her distinctive wine-colored shirt and found it striding out of the camp. She had her pack and weapons.

  Bro started after her.

  The camp, scattered beneath a score of trees, wasn’t more than two hundred paces across. Near Sulalk, Bro wouldn’t have lost sight of Chayan, but in the Yuirwood she’d vanished well before he’d walked past the last hearth. Chayan was armed to the teeth and gave the impression that she could fight anyone who challenged her. If they came to trouble, Bro knew he’d rely on her, the same as he’d relied on the Simbul. Maybe that was why, despite his shame, he kept looking for footprints, broken twigs, or any other sign that he’d found her trail.

  It wasn’t long before Bro was as far from the camp as he was from Chayan, and equally lost. He climbed a tree and spotted smoke rising from the camp fires. Climbing down, an errant breeze carried the sounds of what might be conversation.

  The forest skills his MightyTree uncles had taught him were coming back. Bro spotted the faint trail in a few dislodged pebbles and fallen leaves, followed it, and was rewarded when he heard the voices again, clear enough to make out the words.

  “There are two main groups, both shadowing the Cha’Tel’Quessir camp. They use magic to conceal themselves. It’s not working well, but the camp doesn’t suspect they’re out there, so it hasn’t been a problem for them. The one group thinks it’s the only group; the other shadows them and the camp. And there’s a third, a solitaire, I think, maybe a companion of some sort. Very hard to track, but I think she went east with Rizcarn. I sent two foresters after her.”

  A man’s voice, speaking the Cha’Tel’Quessir dialect with its proper accent. Not someone from the camp. Bro crept closer, listening for a second voice.

  “She? What exactly makes you think the solitaire is a woman? And do you mean with Rizcarn, or pursuing him?”

  Bro’s heart beat in his throat: the second voice belonged to the woman who’d taken care of him, slept beside him, and assured him she could prove she’d had nothing to do with the arrow. He drew his knife and waited for more, but the voices were silent. A moment passed, ten, then a hundred. Bro hunched closer, aware of the sound dead leaves made beneath his feet no matter how careful he was, and of his pulse pounding in his ears, which was surely the loudest sound in the forest.

  From the corner of his right eye, Bro caught a shadow moving in the tree above him. He looked up, saw nothing; heard a sound and before he could ask himself what he’d heard, there was another man’s arm locked around his jaw, brutally twisting his neck, and an edge of sharp steel laid against his exposed throat.

  “Let it go.”

  The voice was the voice he’d heard first. Bro let the Simbul’s knife fall from his hands. He gasped as he was kneed in the kidneys. The knife at his neck slid as he fell forward. Bro was sure his throat had been slit. He tried to get a look at his captor before he died.

  “Face down, youngster,” the man said, planting his foot on Bro’s neck.

  At least he wasn’t bleeding to death, though Bro thought his neck would break when the man bent down to retrieve the Simbul’s knife.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  There was no time to think of a clever lie. “The Simbul gave it to me.”

  “Did she now?” A firm hand replaced the foot on his neck, then the hand was pressing his wrist into the small of his back. “On your feet.” He wrenched the wrist he held and hauled Bro upright.

  They started forward with Bro stumbling and certain his arm would snap with every awkward step.

  “He says the Simbul gave him a knife,” his captor shouted.

  They cleared a pine tree and were face to face with Chayan, who scowled when she saw him.

  “Oh, Ebroin. I should have guessed you’d follow me. Let him go, Halaern.”

  Bro was crushed, but smart enough not to argue when Halaern released him. He’d heard the name Halaern before: Trovar Halaern, the Simbul’s forester. Turning around to face his captor, he saw the green metal circlet on the man’s brow. Bro didn’t want to believe that Trovar Halaern, elder of YuirWood as well as the Simbul’s forester, was in league with Red Wizards, but he couldn’t think of another explanation.

  And he couldn’t look at Chayan.

  “Ebroin,” she said gently. “Ebroin, meet my cousin, Trovar Halaern. Halaern, meet Ebroin of MightyTree.”

  “The Ebroin of MightyTree—Rizcarn’s son?”

  Bro nodded glumly, still not looking at either of t
hem.

  “Shali’s son?” the forester persisted. Bro nodded again. “Urell’s daughter? And Laseli’s? Sister of Mirran and Cresil?”

  “Yes. Daughter and sister.” It wasn’t mockery. When Cha’Tel’Quessir met, they exchanged personal names, but when the meeting was important—when a man met an elder for the first time—Cha’Tel’Quessir exchanged lineages until they found a common ancestor. Bro wracked his memory for the proper lineages. So much time had passed since he’d recited them and he wanted so badly not to embarrass himself—again—that the names slipped through his mind’s fingers. All but one:

  “Eshtrelan’s son?” Bro raised his eyes and held his breath.

  The forester grinned. “Grandson. Her brother, Strael, went to MightyTree with Dassa.”

  Dassa had died long before Bro was born. He counted the generations and degrees on his knuckles, the way he’d been taught. “My twice-great-uncle’s sister’s daughter.” He held out his hand.

  Halaern seized it. “Well met, cousin. Don’t go sneaking up on people when they’re having a private conversation.”

  “He wasn’t sneaking, Halaern. Bears make less noise.”

  Bro could have done without the backhand defense. “I’ll leave now.”

  “No, stay. You’re here now,” Chayan insisted. “This concerns you.”

  He stayed and learned that the Thayan wizards had been following him and Rizcarn since the morning they’d picked up Lanig. He learned, too, that the forester and his cousin suspected that Rizcarn was the Cha’Tel’Quessir who’d turned traitor with Thay.

  “He’s strange,” Bro protested. “He’s not truly my father, but he’d never work with the Red Wizards. Never.”

  “It wouldn’t be something he chose to do,” Chayan explained. “The Red Wizards have a score of spells that can transform a good man into an evil one.”

  Bro felt sick and dizzy. “We—I’ve got to find him.” He couldn’t catch his breath; the trees were turning gray. “Got to stop him.”

  Halaern caught Bro’s arm before he collapsed. “No one’s saying that Rizcarn’s been turned by the Red Wizards, I only think there’s a chance that he’s been. We found a corpse a few days ago, a Red Wizard corpse.” The forester glanced at Chayan.