The Simbul's Gift Read online

  “I’ll instruct my chamberlain to purchase blood pearls and dragon-wing powder.”

  “I prefer to purchase them myself, my lord.”

  Another exchange of stares and the zulkir appeared to concede the point. “Of course. My chamberlain will fill your purse.”

  “I will return, my lord, when I have learned more.”

  The zulkir dismissed his spy master with a nod. She left the room. Thrul’s chamberlain met her in a deserted atrium. He returned her clothing and, after she had dressed, handed her a coin purse. There’d been enough time—barely—for the chamberlain to meet with the zulkir. More likely, the chamberlain’s mind was not entirely his own.

  She changed her clothes a second time in a bolt-hole not far from the tharchion’s citadel. When she emerged her wizard’s tattoos were hidden beneath a mane of scraggly hair and padded rags had given her an old woman’s humped shoulders. She hobbled along with a cane that was too short by half for her natural height and attracted no one’s attention as she completed her homeward journey.

  In the paid-for privacy of her room, she tested each coin in the heat of a blue-green flame. In her line of work, a person couldn’t be too careful. Her neighbors and associates wouldn’t accept an ensorcelled coin at face value, but they’d pay extra for anything that would draw Aznar Thrul’s attention to an enemy.

  Two of the lot glowed yellow in the flame. She set them aside with a sigh. There were more tests to run but not tonight. She poured herself a glass of clear liquid and downed it in a single gulp. Tears flowed from her eyes.

  “Oh, Deaizul—you’d better be right about this,” she warned the walls.

  Deaizul was in Aglarond. Deaizul had been the man who’d tracked Mythrell’aa’s spies to the little village, the man who’d told her what he’d found and summoned up the necessary assistance before he’d sent the message, the man who’d taught her everything he knew about spycraft and how to keep the upper hand with men like Aznar Thrul.

  She removed the carnelian brooch—Deaizul’s last gift and the token through which she’d claimed a place in Thrul’s inmost circle—from the inner folds of her rags and set it on the table beside the coins.

  Deaizul had lost his nerve during the Salamander Wars. Her mentor worked alone now or he didn’t work at all. He’d left the village after he sent the message. The village, he’d said, had given him a missing piece to another mystery, set deep in the Yuirwood: gods in search of worshipers, would-be worshipers in search of gods. Deaizul had a plan, he’d said, to bring the worshipers and the gods together—for the greater glory of Thay. He’d have to become someone else for awhile, but he’d done that a hundred times before. Deaizul could live another man’s life for a week, a month, or a year, and his own wife would never suspect.

  When he was done, he said he’d come back to Thay and the zulkirs would be like mud on his feet.

  Just don’t count on him for anything until then. Deaizul in disguise often forgot who Deaizul was or who in Bezantur worried about him each night.

  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 tranquility, 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, regard
less 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, Qilué Erésseae, 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. Syluné willingly sacrificed her life; she’d had the power to save herself. Her choice had saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of Shadowdalemen’s lives when there was no other way to save them, and Syluné 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 c
reature 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 Faerûn, 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.