The Simbul's Gift

15

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Mid-afternoon, the seventeenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

When he was a boy, Bro couldn't imagine an empty horizon. Then his father had died, and his mother led him away from MightyTree. Two days' walking and the Yuirwood had been behind them.

Had she known the one, fast path out of the forest? he'd demanded, unwilling to take another step in a treeless world. Shali had taken his hand; she hadn't known where the Yuirwood ended, only that if they walked north from MightyTree it would end before the second sunset. Bro remembered that her hand had been cold and shaking and that neither of them had slept that night, huddled beneath countless hungry stars.

By now, Bro had gotten used to fields of grass around him and fields of stars overhead. It was trees that made him nervous halfway through the third day following Rizcarn. They'd traveled through a Yuirwood so dissimilar from the forest he remembered that he wondered if they weren't somewhere altogether different. He'd considered that they were traveling east or west-the Yuirwood was much longer than it was wide-but whenever he sighted sun and shadow, it seemed they were walking north, the same way he and Shali had walked seven years ago.

Seemed, because Bro hadn't made many sightings. The sky had stormed or threatened rain since the morning after he'd met Rizcarn. Rizcarn might be leading him and the colt in circles, though that seemed unlikely. They'd been places that he hoped were unique and would certainly stir his memory if he saw them again.

The first day they'd scaled a ridge of shattering slate, made doubly treacherous by a blinding rain. He'd pled with Rizcarn to wait until the rain eased or look for a way around. Hooves, he'd shouted through the wind and thunder, weren't meant for slick rocks. Rizcarn didn't answer, didn't even slow down. Bro got Dancer across. They both fell a few times, getting bruised and scraped in the process. Rizcarn said it was Bro's fault for not trusting Relkath Many-limbed.

Bro hadn't raised any objections last night, at twilight, when Rizcarn led them into a quaking bog where the rising mists had malevolent eyes. He whispered Relkath's name at every step and kept a firm grip on Dancer's lead rope. Now they were in a swamp, surrounded by dead trees, looking for all the world like bony hands rising out of the murk. The dark water was mirror smooth-except for the V-shaped ripples that matched their pace for a little while, then disappeared.

Bro swore he'd add the swamp to the places he never wanted to revisit. Foul-smelling muck surrounded his feet with every heavy step, ruining the Simbul's fine boots. Yet neither the muck nor the trolling predators were the worst part of the swamp.

He'd never given much thought to insects, except when hunting honey trees with his cousins. Today, every step stirred up a new horde to join the dark clouds already hovering around his heads. The stinging, buzzing, crawling, itching, scratching creatures pushed him and Dancer to the edge of madness. Resting, though, was the worst of all. The moment Bro sank down on a damp, rotting tree trunk, there were ten bugs for every one there'd been before. They swarmed in his ears, followed sweat tracks down his back, and attacked his flesh as if it were the Midwinter feast.

If Bro had been a year or three younger, he'd have done something foolish: refused to take another mucky step, walked off on his own, or hung his head and bawled. But he was a man. He sat, suffered, and tried very hard not to think about anything at all.

Zandilar's Dancer wasn't a man. A colt couldn't reason his way through misery. He'd been fractious when they'd first entered the swamp. He'd kicked and snapped at everything, including Bro, who'd held his lead rope. Now, his twilight coat was streaky black with sweat and swamp water. His head hung and his tail was the only part of him that moved constantly.

Bro abandoned his rotted log and stood at Dancer's flank where swishing horsehair protected him as well. Rizcarn took Bro's movement as a sign that he was rested and, without a word, started walking again. Wearily, Bro untied the rope.

A light rain fell, sluicing sweat from Bro's skin and driving the bugs away. But the relief was short-lived: The air warmed when the rain ended; the bugs were worse than ever. Wisps rose from stagnant water, larger and more menacing than the ones in the bog. Bro no longer wanted to rest and feared nothing more than the chance that Rizcarn would call a halt for the night before the swamp was behind them.

"Relkath protects, son," Rizcarn said with a laugh after Bro succumbed to a spate of furious slaps at his sodden trousers. "Have faith."

It was Rizcarn's friendliest statement since they'd started walking.

"I'm trying." Bro took a chance, adding, "It might help, though, if I knew where we're going or why."

"Relkath protects. What more is necessary?"

Bro stopped walking. "I'm hungry," he said evenly. "Bugs or no bugs, Dancer and I need food. More than that, I need to know where we're going and when we'll get out of this swamp. I need answers, Rizcarn, or I'm turning around while there's still light to leave."

"As you will, son."

Rizcarn held out his hand, not for a parting handshake, but for the lead rope. Bro refused to surrender it.

"Answers, Father."

Rizcarn turned away; he stared at the stagnant water. Bro put his shoulder against Zandilar, ready to turn the colt on the narrow high-ground path they'd been following.

"There's an island rise beyond that." Rizcarn pointed to a line of skeletal trees shrouded in hanging vines. "You want food, son, you'll find it there. Rest, too, though not as long as you or Zandilar's Dancer would like. We've got to move smartly. This is no place to be after sundown."

Bro couldn't argue that, but he needed more before he'd lead Dancer across the flooded mire.

"Where are we going, Father? How long until we get there?"

Rizcarn reverted to his most inscrutable. "Zandilar waits. Relkath protects." He waded into the dark water.

Bro looked back the way they'd come. Their tracks were easy enough to follow in the soft ground, but swamps weren't as still as they first appeared. Water seeped into Dancer's hoofprints even as he watched. The tracks they'd made this morning entering the swamp were almost certainly gone, and Relkath's protection wasn't likely to follow him if he walked away from Rizcarn.

He tightened his grip on the lead rope. Muck closed over his ankles at every step, but the water itself never rose above his waist and Dancer's only thought was to stay close. The largest snake Bro had ever seen lurked in the vines overhanging the island's banks. As thick as Bro's thigh and unknowably long, it watched them approach with malevolent ruby eyes and dropped into the water as they passed.

"We're too big for it," Rizcarn laughed. "That makes it angry. It thinks of its grandfather, who could squeeze the life from the colt, and wishes it were full-grown. Just like you, son. Just like you. Eat your enemies, son, before they eat you."

Do I have enemies now? The question popped, unwelcome, into Bro's mind. Are you my enemy, Rizcarn?

Then it was time to start swimming. The water deepened near the island and they had to fight an unexpected current. Bro let Dancer pull him. He held onto the lead rope as the colt surged out of the water and was a half-breath too late letting go once Dancer had solid ground beneath his hooves. After adding new bruises to his old ones, Bro crawled to the verge, where he offered Rizcarn a boost.

Arm against arm and so close that Bro could smell the other man's breath, they stared into each other's eyes. Bro had thrown up a mighty wall between present and past when he started walking behind Rizcarn. He hadn't thought about Sulalk or his mother in nearly three days. Suddenly, the wall crumbled. He wanted this man to be his father; he didn't want to be an orphan.

Rizcarn pulled away before he found the right words.

"Over there." Rizcarn pointed at a toppled tree. "Food's there."

Despite the summer heat, Bro felt bone cold as he followed Rizcarn, wondering how Rizcarn had known the island was here, much less the tree.

The food was a mottled fungus called tree ears that grew in thick ridges along the trunk. Rizcarn swore it was wholesome. He broke off an ear the size of his forearm and bit in. Bro's mouth was sour and pasty. What else, he asked himself, had he expected? From the start Rizcarn's caches had been rotting carrion. At least tree ears were wholesome. Shali floated them in his favorite stews. He'd never eaten one raw…

There had to be a first time for everything.

Snapping off a more modest piece than Rizcarn, Bro sniffed it-it had no odor-touched it to his tongue-it had no noticeable taste-then, when Rizcarn began to laugh, shoved it into his mouth. The texture wasn't as bad as he'd feared, and the taste, after he'd chewed it a while, was almost pleasant. Sitting beside his dinner, he pulled off a chunk the size of his fist. He'd gnawed through two larger chunks before he was finished.

Bro finished his meal with a drink of the fast-flowing water around the island's edge. For the first time since that last night in Sulalk, his stomach was full.

"How long before we have to start walking again?" Bro asked when he rejoined Rizcarn.

Rizcarn looked at the sky where a bright spot marked the sun's place behind the clouds.

"Rest, son. Sleep, if you need to. I'll watch the colt and wake you when it's time."

The thought occurred to Bro, as he stretched out in the grass, that Rizcarn might head off with the colt while he napped. Zandilar's Dancer was more important to Rizcarn than he was. But Dancer wouldn't go quietly without him holding the rope. Confident that the colt would awaken him, if Rizcarn didn't, Bro closed his eyes.

It seemed that no time had passed when Rizcarn shook him awake.

"Time to go, son."

Rizcarn offered his hand, which Bro took, bounding to his feet and regretting it immediately. The island swayed and Bro swayed with it, barely keeping his balance. His gut rebelled. He lurched toward the water, clutching his sides. He didn't make it, but fell, retching, in the grass. His joints ached, as if there was a knife wedged in every one.

When Rizcarn appeared at his side, Bro blurted out one word, "Poison," and retched again.

With the few clear thoughts left in his skull, Bro doubted his own judgment: Rizcarn wasn't ill. Of course, seven years ago, Rizcarn had been rotting dead, just like the tree. Bro stopped thinking. He sipped water his father brought him, then closed his eyes and waited to die.

"Are you well yet?" Rizcarn asked.

Bro opened his eyes. The sky was noticeably dimmer than he remembered it and streaked with red and orange, blue and purple.

"Can you walk? We must start walking. I told you, this is no place to be after sundown."

Walk? Bro couldn't raise his head without pain, but his thoughts were clear: If he wasn't dead, then he didn't want to be in the swamp. With Rizcarn's help, he got to his feet. Clinging to his father, he took a few steps, then a few more, but walking proved impossible.

"I can't, Father. Sorry. Dying. Can't eat what you eat."

Rizcarn's eyes were dancing flames in a face that blurred and seemed less man-like the longer Bro looked at it.

"A few tree ears?" Rizcarn scoffed, sounding more like the father Bro remembered than he had earlier. "More than a few. You've eaten yourself sick, son, but you're not dying. You can walk it off."

He leaned on his father a few more steps, then his legs gave out. Rizcarn caught him as he fell.

"Ride, then. Zandilar's Dancer can carry you."

Bro wasn't too far gone to miss the concession, but the true meaning-if it were more than Rizcarn's belated concern-escaped him. The grass had turned as orange as the sky. Dancer was brilliant blue, except for his eyes, which shone like the sun at sunrise. After Bro tried to explain that everything looked very different, very strange and colorful, Rizcarn brought him more water.

If he weren't already poisoned, Bro was certain he would be if he let the black ooze in Rizcarn's hands touch his lips. Then a luminous green worm wound itself around Rizcarn's thumb. The worm extended its head and opened a single, blood-streaked eye. Bro staggered backward.

But things got better once Bro was astride Dancer. With his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around the colt's neck, he could let his overheated imagination wander to pleasanter places: springtime meadows around Sulalk, autumn in the Yuirwood he remembered, all the places he'd ever wanted to see from Dancer's back.

Bro heard the sucking mud, as Rizcarn guided Dancer through the swamp, but the sound was distant, easily excluded from the visions swirling behind his closed eyes. He could hear the ever-present insects, too, but the swarms were clever enough not to feast on a doomed Cha'Tel'Quessir. Once-just once-Bro opened his eyes. The bones in his arms, the bones in Dancer's neck were shining jewels visible through translucent flesh. Looking down, he could see Dancer's heart, a pulsing ruby, and his own, which seemed smaller… darker… dying. He closed his eyes more tightly than before but the bones were etched behind his eyes, and the pleasanter visions wouldn't return.

Dancer stopped beneath him. Rizcarn grasped his arm and shook it.

"We've come to the river."

Aglarond had streams aplenty but only one river, the River Umber, flowing out of Thay to the Sea of Dlurg on the northern coast. Bro had never seen the Umber. He opened his eyes. The sky was purple, the evening stars were green and the ribbon of water before them was the color of milk.

"Zandilar's Dancer must swim again." Rizcarn took Bro's wrist and knotted the lead rope around it. "And you'll have to tell him."

The swamp was a step or two behind them. Bro suggested they could camp on the river bank.

"On the other side, son."

"I can't see right," he protested, not adding that he could still see his bones and Dancer's, but that Rizcarn had none. Rizcarn was a voice and a shadow. Another time, that might have disturbed Bro. Confronted with his own skeleton, though, his father's featureless shape was oddly reassuring. "I can't ride-not like lord or knight. What if I fall off? I won't know which way to swim."

Rizcarn tugged on the rope. "That's what this is for: to keep you and Zandilar's Dancer together. I'll find you, son, wherever the colt fetches up, but it would be better if you stay astride."

"If I can-"

"No ifs, Ebroin," Rizcarn said as he whacked the colt's rump hard.

Dancer leapt into the water. The river wasn't wide, if Bro could believe anything his addled eyes perceived, but it proved deep and swift. The colt was swimming from the start, his legs churning steadily, powerfully. He tried to return to the bank where they'd started.

"Tell him where to go!" Rizcarn shouted.

Zandilar's Dancer was an even-tempered, but untrained colt. Bro was a panicked Cha'Tel'Quessir who knew no more about riding a horse than Dancer knew about being ridden. On land, trust and luck kept them together. In the river, they needed more than either knew how to give. Shouting and throwing clots of mud, Rizcarn kept them from returning to the near bank, but convincing Dancer not to turn around wasn't the same as convincing him to swim for the far bank. Without firm guidance, he wanted nothing to do with either bank and, once in the current, headed downstream.

"Tell him, Ebroin!"

Dancer wasn't listening to anything except himself. He'd decided where he was going, and his neck was stronger than Bro's arms. Rizcarn's shouts had faded; the milk-colored water had turned a bloody red under an equally bloody sky. In last-ditch desperation, Bro wriggled forward until his legs clamped around Dancer's shoulders and his free hand grabbed the halter.

"Over there!" he screamed as he pulled with all his strength. "To the land!"

The colt's body followed his head. Bro released the halter when the far bank was directly in front of them. A heartbeat later he realized he should have turned Dancer upstream, but at least the colt was swimming crosscurrent, and when the bank didn't shout or throw things at him, Dancer decided land was the place he wanted to be. After that, there was nothing Bro could have done to keep the colt in the river.

The riverbank was higher than the swamp island had been. Dancer tried twice before his hooves found solid ground, then he shook like a wet dog, from nose to tail. With neither saddle nor reins to help him, Bro lost his never-secure perch and tumbled to the ground, twisting his tied-up arm in the process.

The best horse in the world was a skittish creature, apt to shy at anything, friend or foe. After all he'd been through, Zandilar's Dancer shied mightily when Bro yelped. He took off at a trot, dragging Bro beside him. Soaked and swollen, the serpent knot at Bro's translucent wrist wouldn't yield to his frantic fingers until he remembered the Simbul's knife, secure in its sheath. Its blade-ordinary steel in Bro's otherwise addled vision-cut the rope cleanly, though he nicked himself before he got free.

Dancer took off, an apparition of glowing bones and barely visible flesh galloping across blue-green grass. Bro gave up the chase before it started. He was nauseous again, and the cuts on his forearm stung. When the stinging spread up his arm, Bro suspected magic and, remembering the seelie, kept hold of the hilt as he dropped to the ground.

He blacked out when the stinging reached his heart. When he recovered consciousness, the land around him was night-dark, as it should have been. The nausea had passed. Hard, itching scabs sealed the cut he'd given himself. Without thinking, Bro scratched the itch. The scab fell away; his skin was smooth.

A crescent moon had cut through the clouds. It shed enough light to distinguish shape from shadow. Bro was out of the swamp, out of the Yuirwood, maybe out of Aglarond altogether. He had to find the colt and Rizcarn or else he was going to have to find his way home alone.

After wringing out his hair, clothes, and boots, Bro stood up. He felt refreshed and more confident than he'd been since the witch-queen vanished with Tay-Fay. He could think of his sister now, think of Shali, Dent, and all the horrors of that morning, without fighting tears. Bro still blamed the Simbul for all that had happened, but if he met her again-which he hoped he never would-he'd thank her for the knife.

With a hand on the studded hilt protruding from its sheath, Bro started walking upstream. He had no fear and wasn't unstrung when Rizcarn, leading Dancer, separated from the darkness.

"You're better now, son."

Bro shrugged. No reason to tell Rizcarn about his knife. "Grandfather always said terror could cure anything from hiccoughs to fevers. I'm so cured I could walk until dawn, if that's what you want."

"Not so far or long, son. We're almost there."

Rizcarn started walking away from the river. Bro followed, leading the colt by the rope.

"This was forest once, long before the Cha'Tel'Quessir were born," Rizcarn explained, more talkative than he'd been before. "See… over there. That's where Zandilar danced with the hunters."

Bro sighted along his father's arm and saw the stones, a score of them at least, heaved into the night. He touched the knife; his fingers tingled.

"Is she there, Father? Am I-? Is she going to dance with me, as she promised?" After today, Bro didn't want to dance with anything magical.

"Zandilar keeps her promises." There was, unexpectedly, a hint of concern and caution in Rizcarn's voice. "But not tonight, I think. Later. Best it were later, son. Relkath protects."

The stones rose haphazardly from the ground, no two the same height or angle, completely unlike the measured stone circles of the Yuirwood. Bro worried that they were no part of his heritage, until he stood close to one and studied its markings. He couldn't read the runes his elven ancestors carved on trees and stones alike, but he recognized them and was reassured.

"Magnar." He touched one of the more common carvings. That last summer, when he'd followed his father through the forest, they'd carved Relkath's name into the trees, but they'd carved Magnar's name whenever they'd found a moss-covered boulder. "The stones remember."

"No time to awaken the stones, son. We're here for Zandilar."

Bro wasn't terribly surprised when Rizcarn produced a pair of silver pipes. He'd never heard his father play, but it was a rare Cha'Tel'Quessir who couldn't coax a melody from the pipes. He wasn't terribly concerned that the melody was unfamiliar and grew less disciplined as Rizcarn wove from one stone to the next. Though he'd been a child when he left the Yuirwood, he'd heard about moonlight revels where everyone danced themselves to exhaustion. If Zandilar were going to dance, he imagined she'd prefer wild music. Just so long as she didn't expect him to dance with her.

His trust vanished when they reached the center of the ancient stones. A large stone lay flat, its visible surface covered with swirling marks that weren't like any runes Bro had ever seen. When he stared at them, his body began to weave in rhythm with Rizcarn's music. He walked forward, toward the stone until he tripped and, aware that there was magic in the air, wrapped his hand firmly around the hilt of his knife.

Immune to both his father's music and the meandering swirls, Bro noticed the hole at the stone's center. No bigger around than a circle made by the thumb and fingers of both hands, it was unnaturally dark and cold in his night vision. He'd opened his mouth, to call it to Rizcarn's attention, when he noticed a pale, thin mist rising from its depths. Bro's hand tingled, then the hilt itself seemed to freeze in his hand, a warning, he supposed, that Zandilar's magic was stronger. He tried to turn around and found that, though his thoughts remained his own, his feet did not. It was stand still or move toward the stone and the mist.

Bro kept a grip on Dancer's halter while the mist thickened into the goddess herself. The lithe figure had a woman's arms and legs, but it was taller than him and its body was shimmering, featureless light.

"My servant," Zandilar said in a voice so resonant that Bro couldn't guess whether it came from a god or a goddess.

Rizcarn lowered the pipes from his lips and sank to his knees. "Your servant."

Then Zandilar looked at Bro. The knife burned in his hand. He could neither speak nor breathe until Zandilar turned away.

"We thought you would never return, but you have, and you have done well. The beast is worthy."

Bro gasped. The hilt had gone cold again; his heart was colder. He didn't like the implications of her words, the beast is worthy; Dancer wasn't a beast. He recognized the voice that had spoken to him the day the colt was born, though it no longer seemed lighthearted or flirtatious.

"Is it enough, Zandilar? Will you dance in the Sunglade? Will you choose your consort?"

"In the 'Glade, when the moon is full."

The mist extended its arms, which wrapped, cloudlike and glowing softly with their own light, around Rizcarn's neck. His face vanished. There was a sound like a deeply passionate kiss. Modesty proved stronger than curiosity; Bro stared at his toes.

"I will know." The voice was that of a man locked in a dream.

Bro ground his teeth together to keep from screaming. Then he felt a hand-a soft, warm woman's hand-caress his neck and jaw, relaxing each muscle it touched, lifting his chin as if it were a feather. She was beautiful. Her skin was as blue as a clear, autumn sky. Her eyes were sunshine. He was young and utterly inexperienced, but all her lovers had been inexperienced at first.

Zandilar's face drew so close that Bro closed his eyes. He felt her lips against his and, scared for reasons that had nothing to do with magic or gods, squeezed his knife's hilt until it cut his palm. Suddenly, he was alone. The mist was formless and Rizcarn was angry.

"Surrender him! The horse is not yours. The horse has always belonged to Zandilar. Has living among dirt-eaters made you forget what you owe to our gods, Ebroin?"

Bro remembered Zandilar riding into the mist the day Dancer was born. That much was true: Dancer had never belonged to him.

"What will you do with him?" he asked, his voice steadier than he'd dared hope.

"Dance in the Sunglade when the moon is full. Dance with another, instead of you, silly young man."

For a heartbeat, Bro believed he'd lost something more precious than his mother's love. Then, with the knife hilt stinging his palm, he saw danger for him and the colt he'd raised. He saw, as well, that no matter what he did, the colt was doomed: Zandilar would have Dancer, had always had him. Bro found the strength to release the knife and wrap his arms around a trusting neck, to hide his face in a coarse, black mane.

"Good-bye," he whispered, not a word he'd trained the colt to understand.

Then, with a last pat, he offered the rope to Zandilar who had no use for it. Her mist-made form dissolved around the colt, obscuring him, consuming him, drawing him back into the small, dark hole.

Bro had expected her to ride away on Dancer's back, as she had in his vision. He hadn't expected the colt to completely disappear. A macabre progression formed in his thoughts: Shali's corpse had been whole, Dent's had been half-gone, Dancer was wholly gone. It meant nothing; nothing had meaning any more. Bro was back where he'd been in the stable: deaf and numb but without Dancer, without even his human sister to keep him moving.

"It's time to leave," Rizcarn said. Bro hadn't noticed him approaching or felt his hand on his arm. "You angered her. Disappointed her."

Bro shook his head.

"The moon's waning, Ebroin. There's much to do between now and when it's full again. We'll meet Zandilar in the Sunglade. Maybe you'll get another chance, son. Maybe. I can't say, but you're still with me, and I've got much to do."

Bro shook his head again. Rizcarn's hand was warm on his arm, but there was no way he could pretend that it was his father's hand, no way to pretend that he wasn't an orphan. Worse than an orphan. He was a man in a world of trouble with no where to go but forward, following the man who had once been his father back across the river.