The Simbul's Gift

6

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Night, out of time, out of place

"Are you finished?" the Simbul demanded. "Are you ready to behave like an intelligent man?" She thumped her staff on the ground beside Bro's head. "Or, are you going to continue behaving like a complete fool?"

Bro tried to sit but fell back with a groan, clutching his flanks, hiding his face. His shoulders shook and something like a sob slipped into the night.

Alassra prodded his ankle. He curled into a tight ball of misery. Alassra craned her neck to see if he was bleeding. She'd hit him harder than she meant to. Possibly-probably-she'd broken a few ribs.

"Answer me, Ebroin."

It hadn't been an even fight: Bro's anger was no match for her skill, even with the unfamiliar staff she passed to her off-weapon hand. He needed healing again. She'd healed him once, back in his village. When she'd shot lightning at the Red Wizard sneaking toward them, the half-elf had gotten a flash burn. It hadn't been a serious injury, but the queen of Aglarond took some pride that she didn't harm her subjects-when they gave her a choice.

Which Bro hadn't.

The troublesome youth had attacked her four times, not counting his initial plunge into the Simbul's spellcasting periphery as she prepared to whisk the colt to safety in Velprintalar, fully intending to return for him and his sister. She'd gone to Sulalk prepared for spell-flinging wizards, not grief-maddened Cha'Tel'Quessir. Alassra knew three-score variations on the simple spells for sleep and tranquillity, but she hadn't foreseen a need for such gentle magic and, notwithstanding the shelves of worn spellbooks in her workroom, there was an absolute limit to the number of spells she could retain in her mind.

The first two times he'd attacked, she'd quenched his rage with paralysis, the least of the wizardly arsenal she'd brought to the village. After that, Alassra had cast her last paralysis spells on the little girl and the colt-lest they compound her problems-and beaten him into submission with her staff.

She could-and feared she might have to-pound the youth to death's threshold with her staff, then heal him back to health several times more.

"Ebroin, this grows tiresome. I have more important concerns."

He got one arm braced and levered himself into a weary, bleeding crouch. His eyes were narrow when he raised his head, but Alassra thought he'd learned his lesson. She took a step backward, to show she meant no further harm.

"Your gods' curse on you, Queen of Aglarond," the youth swore-the precise, formal oath of a deep forest Cha'Tel'Quessir and language Aglarond's human queen didn't want to hear when she was standing in the Yuirwood in a time other than her own. "Your gods' curse on you," Bro repeated, "for a murderer and a thief."

Alassra could hear the trees growing eyes and ears. She'd slain many men for lesser insults but this time she remained calm… relatively calm for a woman who'd been nicknamed the storm queen long before she took possession of Aglarond's throne.

"Murderer? Murderer! The Red Wizards are murderers, Ebroin. They murdered your mother and stepfather." She'd pieced that much of his history together from his other curses. "If I hadn't been there, you'd be dead, and your little sister as well."

"If you hadn't been there to steal Zandilar's Dancer, neither would they."

"I had-I have no intention of stealing your colt, Ebroin. You'll be handsomely paid, in gold."

"He's not for sale! I was going to-" Bro stopped in mid-thought. Anger drained from his bruised face, leaving grief behind.

"You were going to what?" Alassra asked, sensing that she might not have to strike him again. "What were you going to do?"

Bro had collapsed while she asked her questions. His forehead rested in his fingers and his knuckles rested on the leaf-covered ground. Alassra knelt beside him. Compassion was not the Simbul's greatest strength. The Rashemaar witches who'd raised her considered it a luxury. Her own temperament regarded it with suspicion-as the youth might. They certainly shared a tendency toward stubbornness.

"Did you have an argument with your parents?" she asked.

He shook his head; whatever haunted him, it was worse-in his conscience-than a quarrel-opened breach that could never be repaired.

"The past is past, Ebroin, There's no going back to this morning."

Never mind that they were displaced backward in the world's time, it was the mind and body's time that mattered. The spells locked in Alassra's staff could take them almost anywhere, but they'd arrive there the exact same number of moments after her miscast Sulalk spell as they'd lived out of time in the Yuirwood. There'd be no detours to another morning, no second chances. The gods were very strict about such things, and Mystra's Chosen- especially her Chosen-were bound by the gods' rules.

"You have to face the future, Ebroin. We all do, regardless of our mistakes. Your parents and village will be avenged, I promise you. Ten Red Wizards will die for every villager-twice ten for your parents. They will not be forgotten. And neither will you. You and your sister may come to Velprintalar, to the Verdigris Palace."

Bro raised his head. Alassra thought they were making progress.

"Never!"

"There's nothing left for you in Sulalk. A village needs more than one farmer."

"I'm not a farmer!"

Bro's voice was raw and sharp enough to cut rope. Through sheer luck, Alassra had found the key. Silent tears rinsed dirt from the youth's face.

"I'm not a farmer. I wasn't going to stay with them. I was going to run away, back to the Yuirwood. I didn't want to hurt my mother; I knew I would when I left, but I didn't want to. She was happy with Dent; happy in a different way than she'd been in the Yuirwood. Rizcarn… My father… I wanted another way. I prayed… I prayed to Zandilar for a way out of Sulalk that wouldn't break her heart, but not like this. Not with her being dead. I didn't pray for this to happen."

It was natural to want to comfort him and natural for him to pull away. The Simbul got to her feet, scowling at the trees. So, the youth had prayed to Zandilar, the name she'd heard the night the colt was foaled.

Zandilar was mentioned only a handful of times in Elminster's vast library and not once in the Aglarondan archives. Alassra had checked every scroll and tome. All she knew for certain was that Zandilar was a Yuirwood goddess-possibly elven, possibly not-and that she hadn't been worshiped since the Cha'Tel'Quessir began to be born.

A breeze rustled through the treetops without touching the ground. Apart from the breeze, the forest was quiet-uncommonly, uncannily quiet. Alassra gave a thought for each of the spells she held in her mind, assuring herself that she was as prepared as she could be. She said her own prayer to her own goddess, Mystra.

Give me strength and wisdom… and safe passage to my own time and place!

The breeze died; not likely a coincidence. Alassra switched her staff to her weapon hand.

"If Zandilar is a goddess worthy of your worship," she said to Bro and any other ears that happened to listen, "then she did not answer your prayers with the death of your mother." Alassra left other possibilities unspoken, though her thoughts, which a goddess might overhear, warned that gods who tormented their worshipers were not welcome in her Aglarond.

Bro's tense, silent body spoke eloquently. He wanted to be free from unbearable guilt but he couldn't accept comfort from his queen. Alassra shook her head. The youth was stubborn; give him another six hundred years and he might be as stubborn as her.

"Try to understand, Ebroin," Alassra said coldly, because cold sometimes worked best with difficult people-or so Elminster claimed.

She bent down to touch his arm. He flinched, but the Simbul's reflexes were lightning fast, and she'd spilled a vial of healing unguent on his skin before he got away. With a pale aura shimmering around him, the time was ripe for brutal honesty.

"Your life has been seized by forces beyond your control, Ebroin. It will never be the same as it was or would have been. Blame me, if you must, though the true fault lies in Thay's malice. They will feel my wrath for this, I promise you. But above all, don't blame yourself. You hadn't the power to shape this day, and you haven't the strength to bear responsibility for it."

The spell's aura faded. Bro's bones and flesh were whole again. His mind and spirit were another matter. Alassra's grimoires contained spells to lift a man's emotional burdens though a hundred years had passed since she'd cast even one of them. Magic couldn't salve a guilty conscience, not without leaving something much worse in its place.

"Are you ready to get on with your life?"

Bro planted one foot beside the other and pushed himself cautiously upright, as if he didn't trust the power of magic to restore him. His fingers probed his flank; then he brushed the back of his hand across his mouth. Flakes of dried blood fell away. The lips beneath were whole and unswollen.

"I hate you," Bro swore softly, but stayed where he was. He swept tangled hair away from his eyes and studied their surroundings as if he hadn't noticed them before. His hands shriveled into fists when he saw the horse and his sister both sprawled on the moonlit ground. "What-?"

The Simbul spun her staff, aiming the metal-wrapped butt squarely at his heart before he could take a stride toward them or her. "They're resting-until we settle matters between us. Have we settled matters between us?"

Bro shook his head. "I can't. Don't hurt them, please? It's not their fault."

Alassra lowered her staff. "I won't-"

But before she could finish her assurances an angry yowl broke through the trees to her right. Alassra couldn't match the sound to any creature she knew, in itself a cause for concern. Gut instinct advised that it was large, predatory, and on the prowl.

"Behind me!" the Simbul ordered as she quenched the light spell.

Bro came to Alassra's side and would have gotten in front of her if she hadn't grabbed his arm.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"I don't know. Be quiet, and get behind me!"

He stayed put and Alassra let him be, lest he do something more foolish. Fingerlike clouds reached across the Yuirwood, making shadows with the moonlight. The breeze had returned, stirring treetops, adding shadows to shadows and making it difficult to hear the small sounds Alassra needed to hear. The purely human senses she'd inherited from her father were strained to their utmost and failing.

Alassra withdrew a delicate knife from a sheath strapped above her wrist. She kissed the blade once then squeezed it within her fist.

The knife was a gift from her younger sister, Qilue Eresseae, who'd been born drow, not human, and who was Chosen by both Mystra and the drow goddess, Eilistraee. The elven metal with its swirling patterns was a marvel that never required sharpening. Its edge, however, was the least of its virtues. Awakened by a sister's kiss and a taste of her blood, the knife bestowed elven senses until the wound closed.

In a heartbeat, Alassra saw the Yuirwood with the fire-etched sight of those who dwelt in the Underdark. Shadows gave way to glowing tree trunks and flickering leaves. Bro, when she glanced toward him, was the image of his milk-name, Ember. The knife's effect on Alassra's other senses was less profound. Human ears might have heard twigs snapping in the distance, but not as clearly as an elf's… or half-elf's. Bro surged forward. Alassra dropped the knife. She seized his sleeve with her bleeding hand.

"Don't be a fool!"

His eyes widened and disappeared-a trick of elven sight where warmth was brightness and eyes were both cool and dark-but he held his ground until the creature yowled again. It was closer now and there was no mistaking its size or intent: something resembling a tall torch flickered in the trees. A spark of sense finally kindled in Bro's thoughts: He went to ground behind his queen.

Alassra allowed herself a smile then turned her attention back to the forest. The creature concealed its shape among the trees, either the natural canniness of a predatory animal or the far-more-dangerous mark of true intelligence. As before, Alassra touched her memorized spells and the gifts Mystra gave her Chosen.

The Chosen weren't indestructible-Alassra's eldest sister had died defending Shadowdale from a maddened dragon only a few years ago. Sylune willingly sacrificed her life; she'd had the power to save herself. Her choice had saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of Shadowdale-men's lives when there was no other way to save them, and Sylune hadn't died an ordinary death: She'd become a spectral harper, learning to make new kinds of music. Even so, Alassra hadn't made peace with her sister's sacrifice. She wasn't about to make a similar choice, not for two children, however good and innocent, and an odd-colored horse.

"Just go away," she whispered to the creature in the trees. There was magic in her voice, a simple cantrip, effective with animals and small children. "There's nothing here for you."

Another yowl confirmed Alassra's worst fears: the creature had the wit to perceive magic. For a moment she saw it striding manlike among the trees with a broad, powerful trunk, long, rooty fingers, and burning eyes. She couldn't yet give it a name, but it had roused a memory. Rashemaar witches, each with a masked face, crowded Alassra's thoughts.

The forest is not ours, they reminded her. The forest was here before us and must be here when we are gone. The forest has had its own protector from the beginning. Woe betide us, if we fail to protect the forest.

Every day, then and now, the witches left offerings for the Old Man, the forest's first and most powerful protector. Alassra's guardians had never seen the Old Man and prayed they never would, but they described him as a giant, both manlike and treelike. Aside from size-the creature before her was no giant-it and the Old Man seemed the same.

As a child Alassra had pestered her guardians: Did the Old Man protect every forest in Faerun, or only theirs? If he protected every forest, how did he get from one forest to another? If he protected only theirs, was every other forest unprotected? The witches had an answer for her questions: hours and hours of tedious labor carding wool or churning butter until she'd learned to keep her curiosity to herself.

Old questions returned. The Cha'Tel'Quessir were the Yuirwood's living protectors, but the half-elves weren't the first. Full-blooded elves had dwelt in the forest before them and the elves' own mythology held that another world, far removed from Abeir-toril, was their birth-home.

The creature yowled again. He circled their clearing. Every few steps he swung his arms and a tree shattered as if lightning-struck. According to the stories Alassra remembered, when the Old Man appeared, uprooting and shattering the trees he otherwise protected, the witches brewed special offerings of herbs and honey, then the eldest witch, the wisest and most revered of their never-large number, would take the offering into the forest, a journey from which she never returned.

"Nonsense," the Simbul muttered. She'd concede that offerings and sacrifices had their place, but only after a more direct approach had been tried and failed. "We mean no harm to you or your forest," she shouted, and kindled her own lightning.

"It's not listening," Bro advised from last year's crumbled leaves.

"You know what it is?"

He might. He was Cha'Tel'Quessir, and even those who served her loyally kept secrets from humans.

"No. I just… I just know it's not listening. I hear it not listening."

A talent for misdirecting teleport spells and hearing a silence. Ebroin would bear closer examination when this was over. Until then…

"If it's not listening, then we'll have to get its attention."

The Simbul extended her arm. The air burned with a sour smell. Her hair whipped around her, although there was no wind. In the lull between two heartbeats, lightning unfurled from her fingertips, loud enough to deafen, bright enough to blind her drow-gift senses.

Alassra recovered quickly. She watched the creature beat its breast, heard it shake the forest with a roar. Then it raised its arms in a gesture she knew all too well. Without hesitation, she loosed another spell: not lightning, but a gout of storm-tossed water that swerved between the trees. In other times, other places, Alassra had destroyed a stone fortress with a similar spell. She expected less in the Yuirwood, where the forest's own magic dampened great spells, and was satisfied when the watery fist pelted the creature solidly in the chest, fizzling its spell, and driving it into the night.

Bro expressed his admiration with an awestruck gasp.

"Can I trust you now, Ebroin?" she asked. "It will come back, maybe with its friends and relations. We don't have much time."

Suddenly they had much less time, or much more. The creature had been part of the mischance that had brought them to this wayward time. Its departure untied a magical mooring rope, and now they were adrift in currents between past and future.

It was a new experience for the Simbul: travel spells lifted a person above the temporal stream and blocked awareness of time's passage. If she'd been alone, she would have savored the novelty, even the danger. But she wasn't alone. Kneeling down, Alassra got one hand on Bro's arm and laid her other arm across the colt's neck.

"Grab your sister! Don't let go!" she commanded, and this time Bro obeyed.

The colt and the little girl both shed her spells when the hand-to-hand link was complete. The girl shrieked and the colt lurched awkwardly to its feet. The Simbul dropped her staff-it was bound to her by a score of spells and would stay with her through any errant magic-and seized the colt's halter.

Zandilar's Dancer had Alassra outweighed and out-muscled. She bitterly regretted that she'd used the last of her mild magic dealing with Bro's temper. With the colt awake and panicked and her without the spells to quiet him, the best Alassra could do was keep his head level as he dragged them all through an eerie, changing forest.

"I can hold him," Bro insisted after they narrowly avoided a tree that began as a shadow and grew to maturity in half a step. "He'll trust me."

It went against the Simbul's judgment, but her way wasn't working. Alassra exchanged her firm grip on Bro's sleeve for a gentler hold on his sister's hand. Zandilar's Dancer was too spooked to trust anyone, but a second strong hand on his halter convinced him to stand still.

"What happened?" Bro asked when several moments passed without changes in the trees around them.

Zandilar's Dancer had pulled them a hundred paces from the clearing and who-knew-how-many years. More than she wanted to count. It was still night, still the Yuirwood. The forest had changed around them, but the trees had grown, not shrunk.

"We're back where we belong."

"Back?" he asked, as if he'd understood nothing.

"We were dis-"

The Yuirwood burst into flames around them. For a moment-an eternal and terrifying moment-Alassra knew she was on fire, then the moment and the fire were behind her. She was alone, blind, numbly aware of her arms or legs, but not the cloth of her gown or the leather of her boots. Her mind was clear and empty. Every spell the Simbul had studied in Velprintalar had been burned out of her memory: Another new experience that she hoped not to repeat.

Empty-headed as she was, Alassra remained far from helpless. Mystra's Chosen were never helpless: The goddess's protection flowed in their veins. Alassra's senses, except for the forgotten spells, restored themselves. She assessed her injuries and analyzed the events that had overtaken her.

She'd been wrong to tell Bro they were back where they belonged. They'd merely arrived in a time and place where the Yuirwood had seemed changeless-until a forest fire swept through it. The flames had stunned her, but whatever magic had carried them through time, had carried them too rapidly for the fire to harm them.

To harm her.

Alassra opened her eyes, hoping that her more fragile companions had survived.

They had.

The half-elf, his half-sister, and the colt lay on the nearby ground, lit by stars and moonlight that seemed-Alassra narrowed her eyes to study their positions-where they should be a few hours before dawn on the second day after her six hundred and second birthday. Smoke and soot clung to their clothes, but they were alive and, like her, unhurt. Her staff lay beside the colt. She picked it up and with a fingertip gesture brought a globe of cool light to its gnarled head. Wood, thanks be to Mystra, couldn't be stunned, couldn't forget the spells bound within it.

Propping the staff against a tree-trunk, Alassra made a closer examination of her companions. When she was satisfied that her initial assumptions were accurate, she touched Bro's arm lightly.

He came awake with a jolt. "Fire! Fire! The cottage-"

"Not here. Not now."

Wide-eyed and not breathing, Bro stared at her, stared beyond her, seeing things Alassra wished he could forget. Finally his ribs heaved.

"Tay-Fay?"

"Behind you. Zandilar's Dancer, too. They've had a shock-too many shocks for one day and night-but they're safe."

Bro started to say something, thought better of it, and shook his head instead.

"Try to rest. I'm going to hie myself back to Velprintalar for a little while-just a little while. Do you understand how magic works, Ebroin? Even storm queens have their limits. I've got a spell or two left that would get us all home before the sun comes up, but it would be a rough ride for you, your sister and the horse. Easier and better if I go alone and come back when I can give you gentler passage."

He raised his head. The eyes that were so bleak and distant a moment ago, were lively now, glancing from the colt to the trees. Alassra knew, without magic's aid, exactly what the youth was thinking.

"Will you take Taefaeli with you now, please?" Bro asked.

It was the Simbul's turn to stare at the trees. The colt was a puzzle she wanted to solve, the means-the birthday gift-to lure Elminster to her privy chambers, but her wants paled beside Bro's needs. Zandilar's Dancer was the youth's only link to his past and to the Yuirwood itself. He'd said it himself: he wasn't a farmer and it was a rare Cha'Tel'Quessir who truly enjoyed city life.

"I'll come back at sunset. You'll be here, won't you, Ebroin?"

"Take Taefaeli, please."

"I don't know. It will be a strain, but I suppose I can take her now. Better she wakes up in a strange bed than a strange forest?"

If Elminster had been there, or any of her sisters, especially Alustriel, they would have warned Bro that his secrets were exposed, but as it was, the youth had no advisors and walked calmly down the path Alassra prepared for him.

"She likes honey on her porridge."

"Honey and porridge, when she wakes up. But what about you, Ebroin? Will you be all right… until sundown?"

"This is the Yuirwood and I'm Cha'Tel'Quessir."

"Cha'Tel'Quessir with no knife in his belt or boots on his feet."

The youth's attention dropped to the ground and stayed there with his mouth open and his fingers splayed in panic. Alassra thought he'd lost his shoes during their time-trek, then she remembered his bare feet in the Sulalk stable.

"I'm sorry."

Bro didn't notice the Simbul's very rare apology. "The stream," he muttered. "Oh gods, my boots are still beside the stream."

"Take mine," Alassra said quickly. "Don't worry, they'll fit: I've got huge feet." She undid the thongs and kicked free of the leather. "And a knife." She opened her belt and removed the first of several sheaths.

The sheath held a plain dagger with a brass-studded hilt and a single-edged blade. A peddler had given it to her after she rescued his donkey from a muddy ravine. Short of the donkey, it was the man's most valuable possession, so she'd kept it, as she kept many things, until she found better homes for them. It could neutralize most poisons on contact and deflect simple spells; but the Simbul could neutralize any poison and her ability to deflect magic was second to none.

She gave it to Bro along with a single strand of her silver hair, which she tied around his wrist. "I know you'll be here at sunset. I'll bring you better clothes and a more useful knife. But if you need me here before then, squeeze the knot and say my name. I'll hear you; I'll be here before you take your next breath." He looked doubtful, ready to break the strand and run for the trees immediately. "Think of your sister, Ebroin. You wouldn't want me to tell her that I'd left you here, alone, and something bad had happened to you."

Bro swallowed hard. He slid the knife onto his belt and left the hair alone. "Take care of her."

"Peace between us, Ebroin?" Alassra offered her hand.

He shook his head. "Just take good care of her. Don't let her forget that her mother was Cha'Tel'Quessir."

"I won't."

Alassra retrieved her staff and the child. She smiled at Bro, who turned away, and reached within herself. Finding the source of Mystra's blessing-the silver fire of the Chosen-she let it take her and the child back to her privy chambers.