The Simbul's Gift

8

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Near dawn, the fifteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

The moon set into the Yuirwood treetops, leaving Bro in deep shadows with only Zandilar's Dancer for company. The colt nibbled forest grass contentedly from the end of the lead rope. Bro had anchored the rope beneath his heel as he sat with his back against a tree trunk, too weary to sleep, too numbed to think.

A great owl roosted in the branches above him. Bro greeted the night hunter with proper Cha'Tel'Quessir deference. It examined him with gold-glowing eyes, hooted sharply, and fluffed its feathers until it seemed twice as large as before.

"Don't leave," Bro whispered when it batted its wings.

He heard the hollow ache in his voice. Ashamed by what he took for weakness in a man's character-he couldn't imagine his father or stepfather on the verge of the childish tears that threatened his eyes-Bro hung his head, hiding from the owl's judgment. He closed his eyes when he heard the soft whump of its wings. Long moments passed, each bitter and burning, before he found the courage to look up again.

The owl had moved to another branch, closer to the trunk, closer to the ground and him. Relief freed more tears. Bro wiped his eyes until both sleeves were damp and useless, then he stared up at the lightening sky and let his tears flow unhindered.

Zandilar's Dancer folded his legs for a nap as the lavenders of dawn yielded to the brighter colors of sunrise. Bro tried to follow the colt's example but each time he closed his eyes, he found flames and death. Think of pleasant things before you close your eyes, Shali had said in the days after Rizcarn's death. Fawns and flowers for springtime, summer berries, autumn leaves, and a warm hearth in winter. Bro thought of his mother, not her advice. Sleep was farther away than ever.

Dawn became a gray-clouded morning, unseasonably cool but damp and clinging. Dent would call it a day when he worked twice as hard to do half as much…

More numb tears for a man he hadn't loved. Disgusted, Bro threw his shoulders back, cracking his head on the tree trunk. The collision distracted him; he repeated the act until its sheer stupidity made him stop.

His stomach growled; he hadn't eaten since supper a day ago. Shali had made bread soup and simmered it beneath a thick cheese crust. Her son's mouth watered, then his eyes: There'd be no more bread soup, with or without cheese. No more Midwinter puddings laced with nuts and bits of dried fruit. No more dumplings. No more sausage. No more of any of his favorite meals, nor any of the lumpy vegetable porridges in their various shades of green, tan, and orange that he'd never liked.

He felt like a fool, because he was. He felt alone, because he was, as he hadn't been after his father's death. Rizcarn had roamed the forest alone, leaving his wife and son behind. Bro's Yuirwood was a tiny cottage on the edge of the MightyTree community, but still very much a part of it, with a steady stream of aunts, uncles, cousins, and lesser kin looking out for Shali and him whenever his father was gone. He wouldn't have been alone if Shali hadn't taken him out of the Yuirwood.

In Sulalk, Bro had dreamed of returning to the Yuirwood, imagining that he'd follow his father's restless footsteps, when what he truly remembered, truly missed was the company of MightyTree.

"I want to go home," Bro said aloud, because sound broke the isolation.

Home is gone, his thoughts answered.

"I want what I had."

It's gone, forever.

Bro sobbed loudly, waking Dancer. The colt stood over him, licking the salt from his cheeks. Bro knotted his fingers behind Dancer's ears and let the colt help him to his feet. There were twigs and leaves in the colt's mane. For a few tearless moments Bro busied himself with grooming, until he found a tangle that wouldn't yield to finger pressure. He wished for the curry-comb he'd made last winter and Dent's shears, both of which were kept in the barn…

Bro struggled to put anger in front of grief. He trained his thoughts on the Simbul. "All gods curse on her. This is her fault!"

But neither the curse nor the anger were strong enough to stanch his tears. He blamed Aglarond's queen and wanted her, too: The Simbul had said she would return and of everyone, she was the only one who could keep her word.

She was the only one who knew where he was.

Bro had left the Yuirwood just once, with his mother after Rizcarn died. He'd followed her; she'd followed a stream from the forest to the grasslands, from the grasslands to Sulalk and Dent. The night Bro rode Dent's mare into the trees, he'd been looking for the stream. He'd seen nothing recognizable then, saw nothing now. Bro had no idea where in the Yuirwood he and Dancer were. And despite his bold assertions about being Cha'Tel'Quessir, the Cha'Tel'Quessir weren't one friendly family.

A lone half-elf could find himself in a world of trouble if he hunted in the wrong part of the forest. Rizcarn had managed, but Rizcarn wasn't like other Cha'Tel'Quessir. Bro's father claimed to be Relkath's messenger and said that the tree god protected him-which made his death, falling out of a tree, all the more pointless.

That last summer before he died, Rizcarn had taken Bro on two of his shorter journeys. What little Bro knew about living free in the Yuirwood, he'd learned during those few days. Mostly he'd learned to carve runes into Relkath's trees.

Remind the trees, Rizcarn said. Help the Yuirwood remember. If the forest forgets, we're all lost.

Rizcarn wouldn't explain what the forest was supposed to remember. He was long on telling someone what to do and short on telling someone why, especially when someone was his son, whom he didn't know very well. And, when Rizcarn did come home, Bro got sent off to stay with his mother's sister. All the childhood tears and tantrums Bro remembered were associated with those visits to his aunt's. Bro had begun to relive childhood events as if they'd just happened, balancing old hurts against the burden he carried away from Sulalk… trying to balance them, and failing.

Dancer demanded attention, rubbing his head against Bro's chest, flattening Bro's back against the tree until the youth had to scratch the places only fingers could reach. It proved impossible to wallow in memories while nose-to-nose with an animal that depended on him. He scratched, petted, and scratched some more, until the only pain he felt was a pleasant ache in the muscles of his arms.

"You and me, Dancer." Bro wrapped his arms around the colt's neck. He filled his lungs with the scents of horse sweat and a light forest rain. "Just us. We'll see each other through. Together, we're not alone."

Dancer nodded vigorously, not agreement, merely behavior Bro had encouraged over Dent's insistence that horses shouldn't be permitted to toss their heavy heads. And a wise insistence at that, when Bro's chin came out second-best in a collision with the colt's long nose. He'd bit his lower lip and the pain, though ultimately trivial, had him hopping on one foot-to Dancer's snorting amusement.

"It's not funny," Bro insisted. "I'm bleeding!" This was true and it produced a fresh scent that horses, especially young and untrained horses, didn't like.

The colt retreated, stiff-legged and tossing his head again in a way that made it both difficult and dangerous for Bro to grab the rope dangling from his halter. Disaster was averted, but Dancer wanted the rope's full length between himself and his suddenly suspect god.

"We'll find water and I'll wash myself off," Bro promised, tugging on the rope.

Dancer wasn't reassured, wouldn't cooperate. The search for a stream was a frustrating battle of wills, while a storm formed above them. Bro knelt down and drank his fill beside the colt. Then, because rain was falling and there was no longer a need to rinse his face or shirt, he looked for shelter.

A cave would have been best, but caves were few in the Yuirwood and any one large enough for a horse was likely to be occupied by something not interested in sharing with strangers. That left gullies, underbrush, and young trees with tall neighbors to draw the lightning away. Bro headed upstream until he found an acceptable spot where he and Dancer could wait in safety, if not comfort.

The storm left them soaked and shivering, though that changed quickly as the sun burned through the thinning clouds. Zandilar's Dancer munched on the bushes that had sheltered them. Bro found a handful of half-ripe berries that did little to end his hunger.

Flooded by rainfall, the nearby stream was out of its banks and choked with debris, including a gopher's bedraggled carcass. Bro hauled it out of the water, said the words of departure and thanksgiving, and asked himself if he was desperate enough to eat raw meat because, though he had steel, he had no flint and even if he'd had both, the dripping Yuirwood offered no tinder.

"She knew," Bro admitted to Dancer, the carcass, and himself. That quirky smile on the Simbul's lips before she left with Tay-Fay had meant she knew his Cha'Tel'Quessir boasts were hollow. She'd given him a knife and boots but he'd need more if he was going to stay in the Yuirwood-much more if he was going to live free.

Bro examined the knife the Simbul had given him and the silver strand she'd wrapped and knotted around his wrist. The hair was her key for finding him-or so she'd said. And if-a very large if-he believed her. The knife was the finest blade he'd ever seen. It was sharp enough to cut wood or flesh and a whetstone set into its sheath would keep it that way. One touch and it would rid him of the silver hair, if the hair was her key.

He'd never heard of magic hair, but he'd heard of magic knives. After what the Simbul had done in Sulalk, Bro wouldn't believe that she carried a plain knife and he assumed she wouldn't tell the truth about it either.

"I should get rid of the boots, too."

But he needed the boots and he needed the knife, so he left the silver hair knotted around his wrist. That way he'd know if Aglarond's human queen kept her word.

Bro untied Dancer's rope and started up a gentle slope, away from the stream, leaving the carcass behind. He needed flint and tinder, yew wood for a bow and willow withies for arrows. Most of all he needed to know where he was. Sighting on the sun and its shadows, Bro oriented himself then started hiking northward. The Yuirwood was broader east to west than north to south and, little as Bro wished to admit it, he stood a better chance of getting his questions answered and earning his gear in the humans' Aglarond than he did with his own kind in the forest.

Hunger and weariness claimed their toll. Bro's pace slowed and finally stopped, far from death but too exhausted to take another step.

"I've got to sleep," he explained to the colt as he looped the rope around a sapling and pulled it tight.

His hands were shaking: through the storm and since, he'd carefully not thought about why he was in the Yuirwood. Before he could sleep, he'd have to close his eyes and he feared the images that would seep out of his memory when he did. The mossy ground roots of a butternut tree formed a ready-made pallet. Bro picked off a few stray twigs, stretched out and quickly stood up again.

Butternut trees with their numerous, spreading branches were Relkath's favorite trees. Rizcarn never passed a butternut tree without carving Relkath's mark into its trunk. This tree was old, if Rizcarn had ever seen it, he would have marked it and Bro would know his father had passed this way. He found what he was looking for on the tree's southern flank.

Bro unsheathed his knife and refreshed his father's carving.

"Remind the trees. Help the Yuirwood remember. Don't let the forest forget."

It was hard work, even with the Simbul's knife, but not so hard that Bro forgot to clean the knife or tie it securely before he returned to his mossy pallet.

Perhaps Rizcarn had napped in this same place. Bro closed his eyes. He summoned his oldest memories, a summer day when he was younger than Tay-Fay and his father was outside the cottage, carving messages into the trees.

Despite his worrying, Bro's nap was deep and dreamless. He might have slept until sundown, or later, if a band of seelie hadn't noticed him facedown on a forest bed, too peaceful, too tempting for their mischievous natures to resist.

Bro awoke with laughter ringing in his ears and a sliver as long as his middle finger, as thick as a songbird's leg rising from the back of his hand. In the confusion between sleep and wakefulness, he thought the sliver had fallen from the tree and that the tree was somewhere in Sulalk. An instant later, he'd recalled that he wasn't near Sulalk and why. He brushed the barb aside and forgot it as he pounded his fist and screamed silently into the ground.

"Get up!"

"On your feet!"

The voices were shrill, but not childlike, and very close to his ears. The words were clear, but the accents were wrong for either Cha'Tel'Quessir or human Aglarondans.

"Dance! Dance! You're supposed to dance!"

Dancing was the last thing Bro felt like doing. He lashed out blindly with his fist, striking nothing, though something hit him just above the wrist. Burning pain engulfed his arm, bad enough that he cried aloud. The pain ended as suddenly as it had begun; when he raised his head, he saw the tiny javelin that had caused it. He was under attack from creatures no larger than his hand.

There were at least a score of them screeching and careening against each other, disappearing and reappearing magically in the humid air beneath the butternut tree. Some were winged, some weren't. Some were palm-high, as Bro had expected, but some were larger and brandished weapons that could slice through a finger or an eye. He'd never seen their kind before, though one of his uncles told a tale of the seelie folk who'd haunt and torment a solitary Cha'Tel'Quessir until he went mad and killed himself.

"If you won't dance, then bark like a dog!"

"And croak like a tree frog!"

Bro's ears popped twice. He guessed that spells, not javelins, were his assailants' favored weapons and that, inexplicably, they'd failed to affect him. He knew better than to expect his luck to continue. The Simbul's knife, his only weapon, was on his belt beneath him. Bro clawed right-handed at the sheath, while with his left hand he groped for any sort of weapon. The best he could grasp was a fist-sized lump of moss, which he hurled at the first thing he saw from the corner of his eye.

"Go away," he warned.

"Go away!" "Go away!" "Go away!" they echoed amid raucous laughter.

One of the larger, unwinged seelie with the head and tail of weasel and a stone-tipped spear darted forward and launched his weapon at Bro's neck. The Cha'Tel'Quessir weren't as quick as their elven cousins, but Bro was quick enough to dodge.

"Leave me alone," he warned again.

"Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" they echoed, adding rude gestures to their chorus.

Bro's ears popped a third time. He couldn't guess which seelie had cast the spell, nor what it had been meant to do. He guessed they were more interested in tormenting him than harming him, but he had little interest in being their goat, either way. Bent-kneed and balanced on his toes, Bro tore another fistful of moss from the ground. He feinted at the weasel-seelie, but threw the clump at a smaller, man-shaped seelie who didn't sense danger coming his way.

The man-shape dropped straight to the ground with the moss landing on top of him and his shimmering wings broken beneath him. He wasn't moving. All the smaller seelie vanished. The larger ones hovered together, humming a low note among them.

"I'm sorry," Bro apologized. It had happened so quickly, so easily. Yesterday, he'd been the victim; today, he was the murderer. "I warned you."

"He warned us," a seelie said and the others echoed: "Warned us."

"He doesn't want to dance," another seelie said, and the echo: "Doesn't want to dance."

"He wants to fight!" A hawk-faced seelie raised a silver sword.

Bro swallowed fear and settled behind the Simbul's knife, striving to look more menacing than he felt or was.

The little seelie reappeared around Bro's head. Their tiny swords in their tiny hands couldn't break his skin, but they made him flinch while their larger brethren surged forward with weapons that drew blood. They concentrated their attacks on Bro's right hand and wrist. He kept his grip on the hilt until the weasel-seelie twirled himself around Bro's forearm and held on long enough to thrust his sword into the tendon at the base of Bro's thumb.

Pain paralyzed his arm from the shoulder down. Bro beat his forearm against the tree trunk. He knocked the weasel-seelie off, but he dropped the Simbul's knife, too.

"Now he'll dance for us!"

Bro lunged for the seelie who seemed about to cast the spell. His ears popped and a tingling spread down his legs. He thought for sure he was going to land on his face, but his feet began dancing wildly, and it appeared that he could not fall. He attacked instead, and knocked another seelie to the ground.

The seelie pulled back again, the little ones vanishing as before while the larger ones made their droning sound. One of them, the weasel-seelie, larger than before, pointed at Zandilar's Dancer, whom they'd ignored until that moment.

"Leave him alone!" Bro shouted.

His spell-driven dancing made it difficult to move closer to the colt without frightening him. But Bro judged that the lesser of two evils-Zandilar notwithstanding, horses weren't made for dancing. He'd sooner turn Dancer loose in the Yuirwood than see him go down with a broken leg. His greatest problem was keeping still long enough to untie the rope one-handed; he solved that by dropping to his knees and using his teeth.

His ears began popping before he got the knot undone. He began to sing loudly a song that made him blush, but he got the rope loose just in time for Zandilar's Dancer to rear up, trumpeting like a stallion, and beat the air with his front hooves. Bro threw himself backward, legs still dancing. The seelie laughed, but not loud enough to drown Bro's bawdy song.

Bro hoped laughter meant the seelie were satisfied. He hoped in vain. Misty light in rainbow colors spiraled up Dancer's hind quarters, transforming horse legs into bear legs. The colt reared again and fell over, hard and screaming.

Dancer's agony was more than Bro could endure. He stood on his hopping feet, shouted a challenge between the words of his song, and charged. Magic and weapons pelted him. He was blind and surrounded by rainbow light, floating and falling, on fire and freezing cold at the same time. At the end, he was shrinking and growing a bushy tail.

Bro emerged from the top of the Simbul's boot, chittering his song rather than singing it, hopping from one foot to the next, and next, and next. He saw the forest clearly and all around him, but without color. There was room in his shrunken head for his name, the broadest outlines of his history, and the natural instincts of a squirrel; nothing else fit or mattered. When he saw the laughing seelie, he fluffed his tail and flicked it once, then bounded over his abandoned trousers. He dug his claws into the tree bark and escaped into a lofty tangle of branches.