The Simbul's Gift (41 page)

“
Zandilar
didn't defeat the Old Man of the Yuirwood. Mark me on this, Ebroin: The storm defeated the Old Man—the way running out of arrows will defeat an archer. All
Zandilar
did was attract his attention.”

“Still, she might have taken Rizcarn to the same place she took Dancer.”

“She was humbled. She didn't take anything away from this battle.”

Bro argued, but not for long. They both spotted the brightly glowing tree at the same time. Chayan, Bro noticed, had her hand on her sword as they approached. The first thing Bro noticed was that none of the light came from Rizcarn. It all came from the tree where his father chiselled a Relkath rune. Rizcarn's clothes were torn and ragged. A raw burn ran the length of his right arm. It was painful to behold, but didn't seem to affect him as he hammered an iron chisel with a rock-hammer. By the depth of the cuts, Rizcarn had been chiseling and rechiseling the same rune for quite a while.

“Wake up the trees, Rizcarn.”
Bang!
“Gather the Cha'Tel'Quessir, Rizcarn.”
Bang!
“Lead them to the Sunglade, Rizcarn.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Wake up the trees.”

“Poppa?” Bro called, keep a good distance between himself and the tree, and grateful for Chayan's sword, which he assumed she could use. “Poppa?” he called a second time, louder than before.

“Ember? Is that Ember?”

Rizcarn turned around with the rock and chisel still in his hands. There was a gouge across his face that ran diagonally from his forehead to his cheek. One eye was swollen shut; the other had the white-ringed aspect of madness. Yet Ember had been Bro's name before his father died, a name Rizcarn hadn't used since they'd reunited.

Bro exchanged a glance with Chayan, who nodded in response to his unasked question.

“Yes, it's me, Poppa. Ember. Chayan and I have come looking for you.”

“You have a ladylove now? You're growing up … grown. I didn't see you grow. How is your mother, Ember? I
haven't seen her in so long, either. I've been with the trees, waking up the trees.” He gestured with his chisel and rock. “So many trees. Wake up the trees to protect the forest.”

“Poppa, Shali's dead. Lanig's dead. Yongour's dead. A whole lot of Cha'Tel'Quessir died tonight. Don't you remember.”

Rizcarn's open eye blinked. “Shali dead? When? How? Lanig and Yongour?”

Of all the madness Bro imagined for his father, this one, in which Rizcarn appeared oblivious to his own wounds, to the destruction into which he'd led them had never entered his mind.

“How—?” he began sharply. Chayan took his arm. Bro jerked free and turned his question at her instead. “How can he not remember? How can he
pretend
he doesn't remember? Look at him. He was there. He was hurt. How can he not remember?”

“You were lying in the mud with your hands over your head. You told me to go away. You told me you wanted to die.”

“But I remembered!”

“You weren't responsible for all those who died. There's no guessing what got jarred loose in Rizcarn's mind. You think you saw Zandilar—”

“Zandilar?” Rizcarn interrupted. “You saw Zandilar? Did she come to protect the Cha'Tel'Quessir? Did Relkath wake up to protect the trees?”

“See? He
does
remember. He was pretending.”

But Chayan ignored him; she had her own questions to ask. “Protect the trees and the Cha'Tel'Quessir from what, Rizcarn? What did Zandilar fight back there? What waited in the storm? Why did it want to stop you from leading the Cha'Tel'Quessir to the Sunglade?”

For a moment it seemed that Rizcarn knew the answers to Chayan's questions and would share them. Then his mad eye narrowed with cunning intelligence. “Where are the others?” He looked left and right before choosing the direction that would lead him back to Chayan's little fire. “There's still time. She cares for you, Ebroin. She's forgiven you. Zandilar will dance with you at the Sunglade. The rest doesn't matter.”

And though the dancing goddess had saved his life, that was nothing Bro wanted to hear. He didn't like the way
Rizcarn's manner had changed so suddenly, either, almost as if something sleeping inside Rizcarn had awakened. Bro tried not to think about the warning Chayan and Halaern had given him: Rizcarn might be possessed by a Red Wizard, but at this moment possession seemed preferable to some of the other thoughts in his head. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of the Simbul's dagger.

Beside him, Chayan cursed and muttered under her breath. “He knows. He knows. At least he knows who it was … 
what
it was. It's Yuirwood, not Thayan. He wouldn't know the Red Wizards.” She paused. “Cold tea and crumpets. That body we found. Half wizard, half Cha'Tel'Quessir. What walked away? Half Cha'Tel'Quessir, half wizard? Could that happen? It could happen.
Anything
can happen in the Yuirwood. What
does
he remember? Halaern said the Yuirwood doesn't like him. Well, maybe it wouldn't, not if he's half wizard. And where
does
Zandilar fit in?
Elminster!
You hairy old goat, this is all your fault!”

“Elminster?” Bro knew the name. Everyone alive knew Elminster's name. “Is Elminster involved in this?”

Chayan scowled. “Elminster? Who said anything about Elminster?”

“You did, just now. You said ‘Elminster, you hairy old goat, this is all your fault.'—”

“You heard me say that?” She scowled deeper and stared at his hand, still clutching the knife, before she shook her head. “I must be getting tired. It's something we said fighting the Tuigans. Whenever something went wrong:
Elminster, this is your fault.”

Bro walked beside her another few steps before saying, “You said it in Trade.” He meant the common human language of all Faerûn.

“There weren't many Cha'Tel'Quessir up fighting the Tuigans, Ebroin. You pick up a lot of languages when you spend your life fighting other folk's battles. Wait and see, when I'm truly exhausted, I might start cursing in goblin or orc.”

Bro didn't expect to hear either of those exotic languages any time soon. He wasn't entirely convinced Chayan was tired. Rizcarn certainly wasn't. He was striding across the moonlit ground as if he'd just awakened from a good night's sleep and Chayan was having no
trouble keeping up with him. The sell-sword was as strange as everything else in Bro's strange journey from Sulalk to who-knew-where, but when she held out her hand, he grasped it without hesitation.

There were eight, not eleven, Cha'Tel'Quessir waiting for them when they got back to the fire. Rizcarn said they should start walking again. Bro argued, saying they should wait until dawn and look for more survivors. He turned to Chayan, expecting her support, but she was as stone-faced as the others.

“Do you want to be in this place when the sun comes up?” she asked.

“No, but—”

“There are no more survivors, Ebroin.”

“The dead?”

“It took four men half a day to dig Lanig's grave.”

“Their beads?”

Chayan patted a pouch at her waist. “I have all I could find.”

Rizcarn was leading the other eight away.

“This is war, Ebroin.” She held out her hand again:

Bro shook it off. “It's Sulalk. It's the same as Sulalk.” He had an unwelcome vision of crows and vultures perched on the cottage roof. “It's not right,” he muttered, on the verge, suddenly, of tears. “It's not fair.”

“It never is, Ebroin.”

She took his hand and led him away.

They walked through dawn and into a bright, cool morning. Fewer people made faster progress along the trail. Bro recognized the forest now, in a general way. Details had changed in seven years, of course, but he knew when they were near MightyTree and said nothing as they walked past the trails that would have taken him south and west to home.

Rizcarn called a midday halt. Two of the Cha'Tel'Quessir fell asleep as soon as they sat. The rest ate what they had before closing their eyes. Rizcarn found a suitable rock to use with his chisel and started carving Relkath's rune into every tree large enough to hold it. Chayan told Bro to take a nap while she kept watch.

“Once I fall asleep, you're going to go off and talk to your cousin.”

“You have a suspicious mind, Ebroin.”

“But you are, aren't you? You wouldn't have walked away if you hadn't known he was alive. You're going to ask him about the Red Wizards, whether they were close enough to get killed, and tell him what you've seen, so he can tell the Simbul.”

“And I suppose you'll follow me, if I don't invite you to come along?”

He didn't bother answering the question, but got up and walked with her. Trovar Halaern waited in the crook of a tree no more than three hundred paces from where they'd been sitting. The forester was tired and ragged.

“Bad storm last night, cousin,” he said as he leapt down from the tree. “Worse for you though. I see Rizcarn survived, and Ebroin. You're still headed for the Sunglade?”

“Zandilar has Ebroin's colt. My bones say she's going to dance tonight whether we're there or not. What about our Red Wizard spies? How did they fare last night?”

“Better than they deserved, my—cousin. Wet and frightened and convinced that they're on the right trail. They outnumber you now, almost two to one. Rizcarn seems to be a changed man.”

“Several times over,” Chayan agreed. “I'm starting to think that corpse the Simbul found—”

Halaern cleared his throat. “The foresters found it, cousin, following her suggestions.”

“I knew
I
didn't find it. But it wasn't wholly Cha'Tel'Quessir or Red Wizard, and I don't think Rizcarn is, either.”

“That should make tonight more than interesting.”

Chayan nodded. “I think it's time to make it less interesting. Ebroin had a good idea the other day. There're too many Red Wizards in the Yuirwood.”

“And the Simbul?”

“If she asks, we'll blame it on Elminster, won't we, Ebroin?”

“Elminster?” Halaern looked from his cousin to Bro.

“It's a joke, I think,” Bro explained. He wished he'd had the sense to stay with the other Cha'Tel'Quessir. When Chayan and her cousin bantered, he felt like a child who only understood every other word in adult conversation. “I overheard her cursing Elminster last night after the
storm. She said it was a habit she picked up fighting the Tuigans.”

“You never mentioned that, cousin.”

Chayan flashed a dangerously toothsome grin. “When do we have a chance to talk, cousin? What about our solitaire Red Wizard, the one that followed Rizcarn out of the camp when it was west of here? At first you said you thought it was a woman. Why? And do you still think so?”

“Before Rizcarn left, I found a footprint, small and narrow. It could've come from a child or a halfling, but my best guess was a woman. I haven't seen any more. She's smarter than the others, I think, and she's alone, or nearly so. I never saw her, only felt her presence, and I haven't felt it since Rizcarn left. She's stopped using magic.”

Chayan seemed lost in her own thoughts. Bro seized an opportunity to ask a question that had been very important two days ago. “Did Rizcarn actually visit MightyTree? He said he would, but he wasn't gone long enough, even if he ran day and night.”

“It would seem that he did, Ebroin. According to Urell, Rizcarn, or something like him, appeared at his door in the middle of the night and gave him his daughter's necklace. Rizcarn said he couldn't stay, but wanted a mourning bead, so Urell gave him one off his own neck. That
is
MightyTree work.” The forester pointed to the bead in question.

“How?”

“Why not ask him yourself?” Chayan asked, more an order than a question. She turned to Halaern. “You'll join me after?”

“Yes,” he agreed, but she was already walking away, not as quiet as a forester, but quiet enough that she was quickly gone. “Come on, Ebroin. I'll walk you back to the others.”

Bro folded his arms. “I'm not a child, Trovar Halaern, and I saw what Red Wizards can do to a whole village. She's got a sword, that's all. She doesn't even have her spear anymore and she decides—just like that—that she's going to
destroy
the Red Wizards?”

Halaern nodded. “Let's go, Ebroin.”

“Chayan's not what she says she is, is she?”

“She's very good at what she does, and one of the things she does is destroy her enemies, including Red Wizards.”

“She's not your cousin.”

The forester gave up with a sigh. “No, Ebroin, Chayan's not my cousin; and she's not what she seems, either.”

“She's Zandilar in disguise, isn't she?”

Halaern was speechless. Bro was pleased with himself and his guess. He started back to the napping Cha'Tel'Quessir. A twig snapped; the forester must be so flustered that he was making noise as he caught up. Bro turned around. He saw a shadow, then a face, then hands that grabbed him.

He heard a voice from deeper in the shadow: “Good, Lailomun, my pet. You caught him. Now bring him here.”

Bro struggled and as he did he heard another voice, the forester's, but it came too late. He fell forward into darkness.

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.