The Simbul's Gift

26

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Afternoon, the twenty-fourth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

The queen of Aglarond shed her Cha'Tel'Quessir disguise as she walked through the forest, in search of Thayan wizardry. She became herself, silver haired, blue eyed, and deadly, but still dressed in the durable leather garments Chayan SilverBranch had worn. Her shadow, cast by the sun and by magic, rustled branches as she moved beneath them. The Simbul, when she was hunting Red Wizards, scorned stealth.

A Red Wizard, especially a solitary novice sent to keep an eye on the Cha'Tel'Quessir, knew he was in trouble well before he knew what that trouble was. Alassra heard the novice break into a noisy run, headed straight for his companions. They'd be waiting for her, ready as they could be; that concerned her not at all. Fair play was a worthy notion in children's games, but when it came to squashing one's enemies, the Simbul liked to have them facing her and concentrated in a single location where lightning and fire were most effective. If Mythrell'aa had been among them, Alassra might have changed her tactics, but Mythrell'aa was surely the solitaire and the reason Alassra was exterminating lesser nuisances.

It was difficult for one wizard to judge the true might of another. Above a certain level of proficiency, all wizards were liars. The Simbul fostered notions that she was reckless-not entirely untrue-and careless with her wizardry, when in truth, she detested magical surprises and meticulously planned her spellcasting. The result, as she intended, was that her enemies both feared her and continually underestimated her.

By hard-learned habit, Alassra never underestimated her enemies. She assumed Mythrell'aa had the means to do whatever she wanted. And Illusion's means, full of shadow and guile, were particularly difficult to combat. The Simbul didn't want her concentration muddied with echoes and novices. She also didn't want to light up the afternoon sky with incendiary spells. As she approached the clump of Red Wizards, poorly concealed in trees and behind bushes, she reached into her belt pouch and retrieved a brightly painted goose egg. Walking into their woeful trap, she presented her usual array of defensive spells and a deadly surprise, encased in the goose egg.

An assortment of spells came her way as she lobbed the egg into their midst. Most of the spells, fireballs, and magic arrows fizzled when they got within three paces of her. The wizards had never learned that she was immune to their most common spells. Of course, very few of them survived long enough to share the knowledge.

One of the Red Wizards, thinking quickly but erroneously, launched a spell at the painted egg. It would have cracked and begun its work when it struck the ground, but breaking it in midair was more effective. Once released, an invisible sphere expanded until it was ten paces across. Pushing the Yuirwood air ahead, it left suffocating emptiness behind. Bug-eyed and choking, the wizards died swiftly.

The sphere wasn't impermeable. Alassra watched for escapees. Two thought they were safe until she hurled poison-dipped stars at their necks and dropped them before they'd filled their lungs with fresh air. The larger of the pair, a portly man with a thick wattle of flesh beneath his tattooed chin, was still alive when she reached him. Poison had already turned his face dark blue and stiffened his limbs. He was in agony; there had been days in Alassra's life when she would have stood back to watch him die. Being queen, however, had taught her to value efficiency, if not mercy.

She took a moment to ask a question:

"Are there others, not caught with you?"

He lied, of course, but the Simbul took the truth directly from his mind before ending his life: they'd stood united and died the same way. Alassra removed her throwing star from his flesh and, after cleaning it carefully, returned it to the leather case where she kept a score of the deadly metal bits.

By habit she stripped the wizards of anything obviously useful. Red Wizards carried the best weapons, the best gear, magical or otherwise, that their wealth could provide and most of it was neither inherently good nor evil. Two of their daggers had malignant personalities that challenged her when she touched them; the Simbul destroyed those immediately, but stowed the rest in a pouch similar to the one she wore that was larger within than without. Their gold and silver, jewelry, and their bodies she left behind for scavengers.

The other clutch of Red Wizards was harder to find. The Simbul would have liked her chief forester's help, but she didn't need it. There was a good chance that Bro needed Trovar Halaern's wisdom more than she needed his tracking skills. She continued circling around the Cha'Tel'Quessir and had cleared about two-thirds of the circumference when she came upon the wizards, surprising herself as much as she surprised them.

Alassra was just as glad Halaern was elsewhere. She'd never handled embarrassment well, and the first moments of the skirmish were nothing short of embarrassing, with frantic Red Wizards hopping about, trying to make good use of their last moments and her having to bring them down one by one. This group was larger than the first and supported with archers, who, having no spells and few choices in their memories, kept their wits better than the wizards did, although their arrows, which burst into all-consuming flames as they neared her, were no more effective than fireballs.

She slew them all and could only hope that, in the confusion, no Red Wizard had managed to slip away. Halaern could deal with that problem. He'd had enough time to solve the world's problems, let along Ebroin of MightyTree's.

Halaern-dear friend-

When there was no immediate answer, the Simbul searched her mind for the circlet's echo. It proved cold and nearly lifeless beneath her mental fingers. Carefully controlling her thoughts, Alassra took two measured steps to the right, then two more, listening to the echo. When she had Halaern's location fixed in her mind, she started running. She reassembled her Cha'Tel'Quessir disguise as she ran.

Alassra found the forester in the brush between the tree where they'd talked and the camp where the Cha'Tel'Quessir napped, oblivious to all danger. Halaern's arms were swollen to the elbow and discolored with the black-and-white patches of severe frostbite-hardly the injury she expected to see in height of summer. Bro was nowhere to be seen. As she knelt beside her unconscious friend, the Simbul had a bad feeling that she knew what had happened.

Halaern could have healed himself more easily than she could, had he been conscious. The foresters had mastered the Yuirwood's magic before they came to her. Her circlets enhanced their power, but didn't create it. However, he wasn't conscious. Alassra tried to rouse him with his name, with gentle pressure on both his shoulder, and with vaporous white crystals she carried as a purifying reagent. When nothing worked, she opened a shiny steel vial and began working ointment into the discolored flesh.

Halaern came to when she had one arm nearly restored to its natural dimensions and color. His eyes filled with comprehension, then closed with a sigh.

"I lost him, my queen."

"The solitaire?" Alassra asked, knowing the answer. She continued massaging the ointment into his arm.

The forester levered himself into a sitting position. "One moment he was there. The next there was a shadow around him. I wasn't quick enough. I wasn't where I should have been."

Alassra started on his other arm. "You did your best. It's my fault for leaving everyone unprotected. While I was here, she couldn't get close enough. Once I'd left… It would have happened anyway, Halaern. Don't blame yourself."

Halaern shook his head. "It is my fault, my lady. I wasn't beside him. He'd said something outrageous-that you were Zandilar-and I let him get ahead of me. If I'd been beside him-"

"I would have lost both of you. The solitaire is a zulkir, my friend. The Zulkir of Illusion and an old, old enemy. I've expected her since I arrived in the forest. She's a small woman. When you mentioned a small, isolated footprint, I knew which one was her, but I thought I still had time to trap her. I was wrong. My mistake. My fault."

Halaern applied internal healing to his discolored flesh and the wounds faded like frost. "My heart lies heavy to think what a zulkir will do with him."

"No heavier than mine." They began walking to the Cha'Tel'Quessir. "But don't lose hope entirely. It won't satisfy her to take him. Whatever she has in mind-and I have a few guesses on that score-she won't do it unless I witness it. We'll have a chance. Mystra's mercy, we'll have a chance."

"Did you solve your other problems?"

"Yes, for all the good it's done us."

Rizcarn was still carving runes. He set down his rock and chisel when he saw Chayan and Trovar Halaern of Yuirwood walking grim-faced toward him.

Mythrell'aa hated the Yuirwood, hated the buzzing insects, the bits of dead leaves that got into her robes and made her skin itch. She hated last night's rain and wind, even though she'd made herself a secure shelter against it. She hated today's mud that ruined her sandals and made her stumble. She hated everything about the forest, but she was deeply satisfied that she'd made the journey from Bezantur.

The mongrel-Alassra's pet-lay blind and silent on the ground, fighting futilely against the spells she'd lashed around his body and his will.

The thing Mythrell'aa hated most about the Yuirwood was its effect on her magic. Everything was more difficult, as if the very rocks and trees ranged themselves against her. But the forest hadn't withstood her shadows, especially not when Lailomun cast them and walked within them. Keeping Lailomun's attention, though, was a trial. The man's mind faded so quickly; she'd had to relax his compulsions just so he could obey her commands.

But the mongrel-Ee'bro'een, she'd plucked his name from his surface thoughts-made it all worthwhile. His corrupt elven heritage was quite noticeable: a narrow, feral face, mottled green-and-copper skin and swept-back, pointed ears. Mythrell'aa's flesh crawled when she had to touch him. There was no question of taking him back to Bezantur when she'd gotten her revenge and victory over Alassra Shentrantra. He was supremely expendable.

"Wake up," the Zulkir of Illusion commanded her helpless prisoner, and his eyes sprang open. "Stand up," she added, and he struggled fruitlessly because she hadn't loosened the bonds that held him against the ground. "Suffer," she concluded, and he did, screaming until blood trickled from his nose. "You see, I have all the power and you have none. No one can hear you scream. We are quite perfectly isolated here. Now, you can answer my questions or you can suffer. You have only begun to suffer, Ee'bro'een. The choice is yours."

His mouth worked frantically. Mythrell'aa thought, with some small regret, that he was going to cooperate, but he spat at her instead and she castigated him with a thousand insubstantial cuts. He didn't bleed, but he thought he did; that was the power of illusion and she was the most powerful illusionist in Thay.

Stubborn and deliriously foolish, Ee'bro'een yielded nothing without a struggle. He proved to have a higher tolerance for torment than the few elves that had previously fallen into her hands. She almost reconsidered his expendability.

But the knowledge Mythrell'aa extracted from his mind advised her that while elf-human mongrels might be worth the trouble of collecting and keeping, this particular mongrel had a different destiny. He didn't know why Alassra Shentrantra-the Simbul, as he called her-had taken an interest in him and his horse, and he didn't know that the woman who'd been marching beside him for the last five days was that same Simbul.

Mythrell'aa hadn't been completely certain herself until last night when the forest erupted in flame and lightning. She knew Alassra's spellcasting signature and it was all over the sky. It was interesting that Ee'bro'een thought his lover was the mongrel goddess, Zandilar, but only insofar as that created possibilities in Mythrell'aa's fertile imagination. Ee'bro'een expected himself, his horse, and his half-breed goddess to dance together at the moment of the full moon, midway through this coming night at a place he knew as the Sunglade.

Odd to worship the moon in a Sunglade, but the forest mongrels were, at best, odd.

Ee'bro'een expected some great miracle to result from this unlikely union, some rebirth of the forest powers, but mostly he expected a night of highly unimaginative passion in his lover's arms.

Ee'bro'een knew the way to the Sunglade, and, after a short deliberation, Mythrell'aa knew what she wanted to have happen there: two events, two triumphs, the first more important than the second. The first would destroy Alassra Shentrantra and the second… Mythrell'aa found the notion of impersonating a goddess, even a mongrel goddess, appealing.

To implement her first triumph, Mythrell'aa roused Lailomun from his lethargy. He, too, had become expendable. Generations ago, during Thay's struggle for independence, the transmuter, Lusaka Gur had developed a spell that made the Mulhorandi think twice before capturing a Red Wizard. To cast it was suicide, which, unsurprisingly, had made the spell difficult to perfect. Indeed, Gur's notes showed that in its early versions, he'd cast the spell on someone else: an enemy, a slave, another Red Wizard. Mythrell'aa possessed a true copy of Lusaka Gur's notes. And while she kept the final version of Gur's spell-lash memorized at all times, she'd found the early mark of Gur more useful.

In either version, it was a complicated spell, far too complicated for Lailomun's addled memory, but he wouldn't have to cast it. He would merely bear its mark until she touched his mind with the triggering words.

"Alassra," Mythrell'aa whispered to her handsome, doomed pet as she anointed him with cade oil. "Alassra Shentrantra. When next you hear those words, my pet, she will be in front of you. No matter what your poor eyes tell you, my pet, it will be her, and you will be free to go to her. Do you hear me, my pet? You will be free." She touched the blue scar on his brow, where the nerves were raw and the path to his memory was clear. "This you will remember."

Lailomun would obey. His affection for the silver-haired wizard had never faltered. He'd run to her, like a fly to fresh turds, and Alassra Shentrantra would die. The bitch-queen had kept that wretched rose-thorn branch for a hundred years. She'd be suspicious, but she wouldn't loose one of her infamous lightning bolts and Lailomun would destroy her as the mark of Gur destroyed him.

The mark of Gur would destroy the rest of the mongrels as well-she'd enlarged its destructive sphere twofold. The Sunglade would belong to Mythrell'aa and Ee'bro'een and whatever power she could wring out of the accursed Yuirwood forest. That would be the second triumph.

By this time tomorrow Mythrell'aa expected to be back in Bezantur, summoning another Convocation where she'd announce the death of Aglarond's silver-eyed queen and the coronation of Thay's first queen-zulkir. It would all happen at midnight. Until then, she'd rest and contemplate the slow, eventful torture of Aznar Thrul. Ee'bro'een had given her the Sunglade's precise location. She could transport herself there and avoid the tedium of walking.

If Rizcarn were a man who remembered his only son with any affection, then Alassra expected him to quake with horror when he learned that Bro had been seized by a Red Wizard, probably a zulkir. If Rizcarn were a man who was, in part, a Red Wizard, then she expected him to grow wary when he saw Trovar Halaern, the Simbul's chief forester striding beside her. But, by expectation, Rizcarn was neither a father nor a Thayan wizard, though he did react.

"Relkath has turned his face from me. He denies me protection. He has taken away all those who would dance with Zandilar. She will come tonight, but there will be no one there for her to dance with and she will sink back into the ground."

Alassra recalled Bro's description of mist rising from a carved stone and sinking again, taking the colt with it. "Can't you dance with her?" she asked, mostly to see his reaction.

"I have already been chosen-I was chosen. I serve Relkath. I cannot serve Zandilar. She must have another."

Mystra had chosen Elminster, the seven daughters of Elue Shundar, and a handful of others to do a goddess' work in Faerun. It was conceivable that the forgotten Yuirwood gods would do-or try to do-the same. With a glance at Halaern, Alassra pressed forward. "How do you serve Relkath? By bringing the Cha'Tel'Quessir to the Sunglade?"

Rizcarn brandished his chisel. He finished the rune he'd been working on when Alassra and Halaern interrupted him. "I wake the trees. I tell them to remember the past. That's how I serve Relkath."

"And the Sunglade?"

"Relkath came to me. He told me Zandilar's horse was in the Yuirwood and that I should be its guide. He told me where to find the horse and where to find Zandilar. I found Ebroin, who was my son. Zandilar had chosen Ebroin, but he wouldn't go with her." Rizcarn's face hardened. "My son had been among the dirt-eaters. He'd taken gifts from their queen. He shamed me."

Alassra turned to Halaern, who asked his own questions. "You used to say that Relkath Many-Limbed cherished the wild heart in a young man's breast. Has he changed so much since the last time you and I talked?"

"Halaern? Trovar Halaern of YuirWood?" Rizcarn squinted. His one eye was still swollen; the other was red where it should have been white. "They would have chosen you, Halaern, if you'd ever listened for their voices."

"All I heard was Cha'Tel'Quessir coming back from the Sunglade, year after year, always with the same story, Rizcarn, always: Next year. Next year it will be different. Next year our gods will hear us. We have no gods, Rizcarn. They were taken away from us before we were born. The Tel'Quessir took them and scattered them from one end of the Yuirwood to the other. There's nothing beneath the Sunglade. Nothing that can't be found in the roots of every tree or beneath every rock."

Rizcarn seemed to not hear any of the words the forester had spoken. "You could serve, Halaern. You're young yet. Throw away the witch-queen's gifts, come to the Sunglade and dance with Zandilar."

The Simbul exchanged another glance with her forester. There were Fangers who called her the witch-queen, and traders from other realms who were uncomfortable with a Cha'Tel'Quessir title whose significance they couldn't quite grasp, but by and large, Aglarondans called her the Simbul. Almost all the Cha'Tel'Quessir did whether they liked her or not. Like the inner circle of the Sunglade, the Simbul belonged to them, however little they understood it or her. The Thayans called her the witch-queen of Aglarond-when they were being respectful, which wasn't very often. Though, speaking to Trovar Halaern, trying to entice him to the Sunglade, might incite a Red Wizard's respect, at least until he'd gotten what he wanted.

Halaern removed the verdigrised circlet. "Will you hold this for me, cousin?"

Alassra considered the narrow band of metal as if it had become a deadly serpent. Her hands remained at her side. She directed her thoughts at his mind, knowing he would hear them so long as he held the circlet.

This is nonsense, my friend. You heard him. He's all but admitted he's a Red Wizard. There's nothing the Red Wizards would like better than to claim your life. Zandilar will dance anyway. We don't need Rizcarn; we can go ourselves.

I am elder of YuirWood, my lady; the forest will not harm me, and Relkath himself no longer trusts Rizcarn. I will be safe.

You don't believe in Relkath, Halaern!

I believe in you and the Yuirwood, my lady. Rizcarn will be content now, whatever he has become. He'll go forward without suspicion, we need that-you need that-if we're to have an opportunity to save Bro.

Halaern-Zandilar is going to keep whoever she dances with, I'm increasingly certain of that.

My lady, I have danced with a goddess all my life. I'm not afraid of Zandilar. Halaern offered the circlet again. "Please, cousin, it is my wish."

As your queen, Trovar Halaern, I command you to stop this nonsense at once.

I cannot obey. You speak not as my queen, but as my ladylove. My queen, I know, understands.

Alassra took the circlet and placed it on her own brow for safekeeping. Rizcarn gathered the remaining Cha'Tel'Quessir and led the way to the Sunglade.