by Lynn Abbey
“Go ahead. Ebroin has nothing to hide. He told me everything yesterday. He won’t be surprised that the Simbul was looking for him.”
He was, but tried to hide the reaction—unsuccessfully, to judge from the looks both Chayan and Halaern gave him.
“We found it not all that far from where she said she left you, Ebroin of MightyTree, not all that far from where you met Rizcarn.”
“Why me?” Bro asked. “I can almost understand Sulalk, because of Zandilar’s Dancer. Dancer’s important and never was mine, I understand that now. And the Simbul left Dancer with me. But I gave Dancer to Zandilar days ago. Why the arrow, too? I don’t have anything left to give.”
Halaern clapped Bro on the back, avoiding his scars. “I wondered about that, Ebroin. It’s one of many questions I have for the Simbul, when next I see her.”
“She won’t answer them if she sees you’ve still got the knife she gave to Ebroin,” Chayan said with a smile.
The forester flipped the knife, testing its balance, examining its steel, before handing it back to Bro. “Did she tell you it’s Thayan-made?”
Bro gulped and hesitated before slipping the blade into its sheath. “Should I keep it?”
Halaern nodded. “But be careful who you show it to. With wizards about, it could be easily misunderstood—at least until we get rid of the wizards. It could be done—the getting rid of them, that is—with the Simbul’s permission, of course. They’re hardly wise in the ways of the Yuirwood, especially where magic’s involved, and I don’t think they know any more than we do—probably less. None of them speak the Cha’Tel’Quessir dialect. They’re spying, but they aren’t learning anything. They’re following Rizcarn, like everyone else.”
The forester was staring at his cousin again. Bro began to understand that Halaern had sent Chayan into the camp to be his eyes and ears since Halaern, himself, would have been recognized.
“I met her once,” Chayan said. “I don’t think I’d do anything without her permission, cousin. If she wants to give those Red Wizards more rope, it’s not your decision to hang them early.”
“Of course not. I won’t do anything without her word. But I don’t like it, not one bit. Thayan wizards don’t belong here.”
Bro agreed. “It’s our forest. The Red Wizards are our enemies, too. The Simbul would never know if I told Yongour and the others—”
The forester held up his hand. “Don’t even think about it, Ebroin.”
“The Simbul doesn’t know everything. She’s not always right. Everyone’s dead in Sulalk because of her.” Bro could almost feel Chayan and Halaern wishing he would be quiet. They were looking at each other, not at him. “I’m not blaming her, not anymore, but the Simbul’s not here, we are, and so are the Red Wizards.”
“He has a point, cousin,” Trovar Halaern said; Bro felt himself grow a handspan in his own estimation. “My lady, the Simbul, is not here, is she?”
Chayan looked very uncomfortable.
Bro pressed his luck. “More Cha’Tel’Quessir could be killed, and not just me. What about Lanig? What happened to him? Chayan said that was magic, too.”
“Lanig?” the forester asked.
“Cha’Tel’Quessir,” Chayan said quickly. “Ebroin and I found his body yesterday across the camp stream. Looked as if he’d been torn apart by something large, but my best guess is magic.”
“Not Red Wizard spells, cousin. There were no wizards near the camp yesterday.”
“You’re certain? The solitaire didn’t double back?”
“There were no wizards near the camp yesterday, cousin. If a man died by speller aft yesterday, something else killed him, something far more subtle than any Thayan wizard, if neither you nor I knew about it until after it happened.”
It was Chayan’s turn to stare and the forester’s to look uncomfortable. Bro had a suggestion:
“Why don’t you come to the camp? Rizcarn’s not there and they need an elder, especially with Red Wizards and worse all around us.”
“I serve the Simbul, Ebroin, and she wants me in the forest for now. I’ll send you back with Chayan. The two of you together should be equal to an elder. I’ll take my leave of you now, cousin and friend. I’m sure your day will be more interesting than mine.”
The elder of YuirWood bowed, took two steps into the forest and simply vanished. Bro couldn’t contain his astonishment. His jaw dropped and he’d swear he heard Chayan laughing, though her lips hadn’t moved.
“You seem to have recovered fully from your misadventures.”
“The holes hurt a little, the cautery burns itch a bit. I—I want to apologize for the way I was yesterday. I think, maybe … I hope it was poison.”
“I could check: take off your shirt and the bandages, see if everything’s healed.”
She was teasing him again, seeming to say one thing while meaning another. Bro kept his shirt laces where they were. “We should go back to the camp.”
“Has something happened? Aren’t they still debating whether to walk or wait?”
“I told them to wait until tomorrow, then start walking.”
“Clever of you, Ebroin. You have another day to finish healing. You don’t like the Simbul much, do you?”
“I said I’d stopped blaming her. Maybe it wasn’t her fault or mine that everyone died. I wish it never happened. I wish a lot of things never happened.”
“Everyone does. Me, my cousin, even the Simbul herself. I could wish you hadn’t fallen asleep last night.”
Bro fought a blush and won. “There’re Red Wizards all around us, and whatever killed Lanig.”
“I’ll keep one hand on my spear, Ebroin. That way, well be evenly matched.”
If he’d had the sense Great Corellon gave a lowly ant, Bro would have started walking back to the camp, but he didn’t, not even when Chayan left her spear right where it was, leaning against a tree.
He was pleased with himself later, when they did return, hand in hand, to the camp. At least until he saw a Cha’Tel’Quessir with raven hair. Rizcarn hailed him as soon as he was inside the camp.
“This isn’t right,” Bro whispered to the woman at his side. “If he went to MightyTree, he wouldn’t be there yet. He shouldn’t be back.”
Chayan released his hand and pushed him slightly forward. “Do what you must, Ebroin. I’ve still got my hand on my spear and an eye for your back.”
A spear, Bro thought, wouldn’t be much use against his father, but he didn’t tell brash Chayan that. He tried to hold onto her confidence, instead, when he returned Rizcarn’s open-armed greeting. Rizcarn offered concern for Bro’s health and joy for his recovery—all the things that had been missing between them. They came too late. Bro suspected affection now as much as he’d suspected the lack if it earlier.
He asked about MightyTree. Rizcarn insisted he’d walked day and night.
“Urell wept when I told him about the dirt-eater village. He wishes you well, Ebroin, and says you must come to MightyTree when you’re well. He gave me this.”
Rizcarn produced a carved black bead. Bro stood still, thinking hard, trying to decide what to believe, while his father added Shali’s death-bead to the others on his talisman string and retied them around his neck.
“I sang for her at MightyTree last night, but we’ll sing again, tonight, right here, until our hearts break.”
There was a catch in Rizcarn’s voice, tears on his cheeks, but Bro flinched when Rizcarn embraced him again. Chayan caught his eye. She brandished her spear and Bro followed his father to the center of the camp where a fire burned and a jug of honey wine was waiting.
23
Thazalhar, in eastern Thay
Afternoon, the twenty-third day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)
“Watch closely,” Lauzoril told his daughter. “Bubbles have begun to form at the bottom of the bowl. The water will boil soon, just as it does in the kitchen. I rub the mustard oil on my fingertips, then I place my fingertips on the wate
r very, very carefully. Look close: the water rises up to meet my fingers. The oil spreads across the surface without breaking it.”
Mimuay scrunched down on the stool she was under strict orders not to leave. Her eyes were level with the bowl rim. “Isn’t it hot, Poppa? Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Of course. Not all spells hurt when I cast them, but many do. If you wish to be a wizard—especially if you wish to be a necromancer—you must learn to ignore discomfort. Now, I say the catalyzing word—Envision—and lift my fingers.”
Mimuay gasped as the mustard oil became a bronze sheen on the water. “It’s a mirror!”
“Not yet. It reflects nothing.” The Zulkir of Enchantment held his hand over the bowl to prove his point. “I must tell it what to reflect, and quickly, or the magic will fade. Several years ago, I sent a gift to a queen. I gave it a name. Now I want to know what’s become of it, so I call its name: Kemzali.”
The bronze oil dulled. His daughter sighed with disappointment.
“It takes time, Mimuay. Kemzali is far away.”
Usually the zulkir made contact with the knife by mental exercise, but today he was teaching his daughter the most important spell she’d ever learn: the means by which she’d be able to detect the presence of magic. He had to cast spells a rank beginner would be able to detect, which meant his old scrying bowl and burned fingers.
“When did you learn to Envision, Poppa? Were you younger than me?”
He’d given up trying to discourage his daughter and took pride in her questions, her persistence. “Much younger. I told you: I grew up among wizards, not in a home with family around me. My life was learning spells.”
“Since I’m starting older, will I ever be as good a wizard as you?”
“Casting Envision spells when I was four didn’t make me a good wizard.”
She thought hard for a moment. Scowl lines were already forming on her forehead. Lauzoril waited for the next question.
“Were you happy growing up among wizards, without a family?”
Which were never the questions he expected, but he’d committed himself to answering them all, and honestly. “I never thought about it. The wizards taught me. I did what they told me to do.” Until he was knowledgeable enough to rebel; then they’d thrown him out of the academy, as every other Red Wizard got thrown out at the end of his education.
“I’m glad you’re teaching me, Poppa; not someone else.”
“So am I, Mimuay. Now watch the bowl.”
Since the Convocation, Lauzoril had kept closer track of the knife that he’d sent to Aglarond’s queen. He was certain it was no longer in her possession. Even allowing for the confounded Yuirwood, it had become too easy to trigger its scrying properties without arousing any opposition. The zulkir assumed the Simbul had given it to someone not a wizard. He was disappointed, of course. Although it had never provided him with special insights into the witch-queen’s character, he’d enjoyed spying on her and the periodic sense that she returned the favor. It was a sense he had not had in recent days.
No zulkir wasted his time worrying about Aglarond’s witch-queen, though Lauzoril had asked himself whether his lack of subtle contact with her had played a part in his decision not to race off to the Yuirwood after the Convocation. Mythrell’aa had gone west, or so Thrul’s spy master informed him: by herself, with only a body servant beside her. And Aznar Thrul supported two bands of wizards in the Aglarond forest—also according to the spy master: One that Thrul knew about and another one that he thought belonged to Lady Illusion.
The spy master then asked Lauzoril to pay for rare reagents that would, she assured him, insure that the plums fell in Enchantment’s basket, not Illusion nor Invocation’s. Lauzoril had balked and ended his never-firm association with the nameless spy master.
Within Thay, Lauzoril had no qualms about pursuing his rivalries with Thrul and the other zulkirs, but if the debacle at Gauros Gorge had accomplished nothing else, it had convinced him that personal rivalries should never stretch across Thay’s borders. If the zulkirs couldn’t work together to conquer Aglarond and Rashemen, then they should stay home until they could. His conscience, however, did not compel him to alert Aznar Thrul to the traitor coiled close to his heart.
In the depths of his mind Lauzoril knew the spy master’s revelations were only part of his reasoning: He didn’t have the stomach for all-out bloody war whether in Thay or Aglarond, and he didn’t have the steel ambition to grind his rivals into dust. He’d learned the first at Gauros Gorge and the second at the recent Convocation. When the balance of Thayan power slewed between Aznar Thrul and Szass Tam, Lauzoril had seen the way, with the spy master’s help, to set himself above his peers. If he’d taken that first step, though, he could never rest again in Thazalhar or teach his daughter the ways of magic.
Were you happy? Mimuay had asked. Lauzoril had the power of wealth, the power of enchantment, but she made him happy, Thazalhar made him happy. He’d come home after the Convocation and left Aglarond for those who didn’t know better.
Mimuay interrupted her father’s introspection: “Look, Poppa, it’s gone all black.”
“Kemzali is a knife in a sheath. We can’t see anything unless we can persuade someone to take it out.”
Someone whose mind Lauzoril touched with a powerful, subtle spell, implanting a desire to be alone, a desire to examine the knife closely. He would have resorted to the scrying bowl eventually; there was no other way to see the knife’s new owner.
After several moments, smears of color stretched across the bowl’s oily surface.
“Is that all, Poppa? What can anyone learn from that?”
“That Kemzali’s owner is alive and has dark hair,” the zulkir informed her sharply, but he held his hands over the bowl. Scrying inside Aglarond was always chancy; the Yuirwood, between Thay and the coastal cities, threw a pall of interference in the path of every spell. But sometimes a wizard got lucky. Lauzoril closed his eyes and shaped the air above the bowl.
“Poppa! Poppa, look! What kind of person is that?”
Lauzoril looked. The mustard oil’s bronze sheen colored the images it reflected, but Lauzoril knew the Yuirwood type and knew the knife’s new owner looked very much the way he and Mimuay saw him, with golden-green skin and eyes, and hair that was black, or very nearly so.
“Is he a man?”
“A man, yes. A young man, but not human.”
There were goblins, gnolls, and orcs aplenty in Thay. Lauzoril kept a few such slaves himself to do the meanest estate work. Elves, however, were rare, a few drow kept hidden in the cities. As a race—an inferior race—they’d sooner die than serve a Thayan master. The only elves his daughters had ever seen were painted in the picture books he brought home for their mother. Those painted elves were full-blooded; the youth to whom the Simbul had given Lauzoril’s enchanted knife was neither human, nor elf. In Thay, such mongrels were not kept, not even for slavery.
“What is he, then, Poppa? Not an elf?”
“A half-elf, Mimuay. Kemzali is in Aglarond and Aglarond is full of half-elves. They call themselves the chattel-kessir.”
Of necessity, Red Wizards learned the more common goblin-kin languages. Lauzoril could speak fluently with his goblin slaves. Some wizards learned elvish, too; Lauzoril refused, on principle. He mispronounced the few words he did know, turning them, without second thought, into slurs. A mistake. Mimuay, who knew nothing of elven arrogance or condescension, sat back on her stool, blinking. She never heard coarse, cursing language, not from her father.
“They’re all thieves and blackhearts,” Lauzoril continued clumsily. “This one probably stole Kemzali from the—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The Simbul had to have given the knife to this mongrel or the youth wouldn’t be alive with it in his hands. He wondered why.
“If he’s a half-elf, Poppa, what’s his other half? Did he have half-elves for his parents, or is he like a mule with a horse and a donkey for his momma and poppa?”
“Such questions!”
Half-breeds occurred whenever humans consorted with elves, a living badge of shame. Mules didn’t breed, but human-elf mongrels did. Lauzoril had heard that the Aglarondan mongrels bred true in the Yuirwood, but elsewhere in Faerûn, the mongrels reverted to ancestral type. By rumor, every human Aglarondan had a mongrel lurking in his pedigree.
Including Aglarond’s queen? Aglarond had been ruled by mongrels before Thay was founded. Humans—suspect humans—had claimed its throne only within the last few generations. The Simbul appeared human, but in a hundred years, her appearance never changed. Red Wizards cribbed a sort of immortality with spells and potions. The Simbul, a mighty wizard, could have done the same—or, perhaps, she wasn’t quite human.
And the mongrel to whom she’d given his knife? What was the youth to her? He stood in the Yuirwood—there were trees visible behind him—yet he wore a well-made shirt. Not the sort of garment Lauzoril expected to see in the middle of a forest, though, in truth, this was the first time he’d successfully envisioned the Yuirwood. He had only his prejudices to guide his assumptions.
The scrying image blurred. The mongrel youth had examined his knife and, finding nothing unusual about it, was returning it to its sheath. Lauzoril could have intervened, pricked the youth’s thoughts and kept him staring at the blade, but sooner or later even a kobold would guess that something affected his thoughts.
“I think his momma was an elf,” Mimuay announced.
The zulkir disagreed, but asked: “Why do you think that?”
“I could feel his thoughts. They were tangled around his momma and very sad. He’s alone. He’s frightened, too. Someone’s tried to kill him, Poppa. A wizard. A Red Wizard.”
Lauzoril had punched his compulsions into the mongrel’s mind, but he hadn’t perceived anything in return—blame the damned Yuirwood. It was inconceivable that his daughter, a mere witness to his spellcasting had perceived what he could not. Mimuay’s imagination, fired by Wenne’s picture books and his own admissions, had taken over. A little imagination was useful for a wizard; too much was dangerous. His mentors had beaten his into submission; he’d have to find another way to curb his daughter’s.
