The Simbul's Gift (33 page)

Pale sunlight had replaced the stars when Bro opened his eyes again. His chest was tight in bandages that reeked of wine and bitter herbs. Separate bandages bound his arm to his waist. He was in Rizcarn's camp, propped up against a fallen tree. A man knelt beside him, Bro recognized him as the one who'd held his arm during the night and remembered his name, as well: Yongour. He held a wooden mug that steamed and stank worse than the bandages.

“A purgative. If any poison lingers.”

Not thinking, Bro reached with the arm that was bound to his waist. Embarrassed and hurting, he warded the mug away with his left arm and immediately felt for the Simbul's knife. It was where it belonged. He drew it out for examination.

“That's a fine knife, Rizcarn's son, and nothing that you got while living in a dirt-eaters' village. Now drink this while it's hot.”

Bro refused for half a heartbeat, then wisdom prevailed. He took the mug from Yongour's hand and drained it in several unpleasant gulps. The mug slipped through
Bro's fingers as he passed out again.

His consciousness flickered all morning. It was mid-afternoon before Bro was alert again. Front and back, shoulder to waist, he was in pain, though nothing like the previous night. A deep breath convinced him he could not get to his feet or walk anywhere before sundown. Then he realized no one had walked anywhere; the camp hadn't moved. The Cha'Tel'Quessir had stayed put, waiting for him to live or die before Rizcarn led them all to MightyTree.

“Poppa?” he asked after the woman tending him had given him a drink of water. “Rizcarn. Can I see him? Will you tell him I'm awake?”

“Not here,” she replied, the same answer he'd gotten last night before they pulled the arrow.

“Where is he? I want to talk to him … tell him I'm better.”

“Rizcarn's gone. He came back at dawn, before you woke. He said the gods had spoken when you fell and that there were things he had to do alone. We're to wait here until he returns.”

The bandages tightened over Bro's ribs. “Did he say where he was going?”

“Headed east, that's all. Toward the Sunglade.”

Toward MightyTree. Bro put his hand on his neck. His talisman beads were there. Shali's were gone. He'd given them to his father; he'd been a fool. A fool to look for Rizcarn; a worse fool to swallow anything Rizcarn said. Rizcarn had beguiled him by talking about Shali. He'd soothed Bro's surface hurts and left his deeper questions unanswered.

“You'll be well again, Rizcarn's son.” The woman misunderstood his despair. “Walking, climbing trees, dancing in the Sunglade.”

Dancing in the Sunglade with Zandilar. Rizcarn had called Zandilar's name as he fell. Bro arched his back against the tree trunk, savoring the pain.

“Leave me,” he asked. “I need to rest.”

Bro stared at the sun. His eyes burned; he shut them. The woman walked away. He let the tears flow until there were no more. Then he tried to stand.

“Not so fast, Ebroin.”

A woman he'd never seen before sat on the fallen trunk on his unharmed side. He couldn't see her clearly in the sun, but she'd known his name. Bro thought that was a good sign, though Rizcarn had called him Ebroin, too.

He tried again to stand. She laid her hand on his good shoulder. Her fingers were ice; they froze his breath in his lungs.

“They told me you wanted to rest.”

She'd withdrawn her hand and moved slightly, so he could see her better. She bristled with steel weapons and brass studs. Her fitted boots and wine-dyed leathers hadn't been put together in the Yuirwood, but she was, without doubt, Cha'Tel'Quessir. Though there was nothing extraordinary about her brown hair, her brown eyes, Bro couldn't keep himself from staring.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Call me Chayan. You've seen a woman before, haven't you?”

He wondered if he had and wondered, too, where the pain had gone. “Where are you from?”

“A bit of everywhere, but I was born in the Yuirwood, same as you. Left it, too; it's a long story. I got the urge to come back a while ago. When I got here, I heard your father was going to wake the gods in the Sunglade and figured that's what I'd come home for. Anything else you want to know, Ebroin?”

A hundred things, maybe a thousand, but they could wait. The pain was back, less intense than before, but still potent. Bro braced his good arm behind him. “I've got to get up, catch up with my father.”

“Not a chance.” Chayan laid her hand on him again. It wasn't cold this time, but just as effective in keeping him pressed against the log. “Wherever your father's gone, he's got a day's start on you. You couldn't catch him if you were sound, which you're not. You need a day's rest, which some Cha'Tel'Quessir think you've earned.”

“You?” Bro blushed and didn't believe he'd said that.

“When I told the Cha'Tel'Quessir in charge—” Chayan tipped her head toward the center of the camp—“that I'd tended more than my share of arrow wounds fighting the Tuigans, they sent me over here to tend yours. They'd lose faith in me if I let you wander.”

“You fought the Tuigans? You've been in the East?” Bro began to suspect that his good sense had leaked away with his blood. He stopped caring when Chayan threw back her hair and laughed.

“I've been everywhere, Ebroin, and I've fought with everyone. I'll fight with you, too, if you try to get up again. I want to look at your wounds. Are you going to behave like an intelligent man? Or am I going to have to knock some good behavior into you?”

For a moment—for no good reason—Chayan reminded Bro of the Simbul. Then he'd promised to behave intelligently and she was poking at his wounds.

“Who shot you?”

Bro couldn't answer. He had his teeth clenched, pretending nothing hurt. By the time he trusted himself enough to open his mouth, they weren't alone. Yongour challenged Chayan, who stood up with a confident smile.

“He was talking nonsense. I thought the wounds might be festering; they're not. I'd like to see the arrow that pierced him.”

Yongour said, “Rizcarn's son was pierced by the gods.”

Bro didn't like the sound of that for many reasons and was relieved to see Chayan didn't either.

“Shot by the gods and you
cauterized
the wound? That's a strange sort of faith. The gods don't miss, and when they use poison they get it direct from Talona. The arrow?”

It took another few rounds of discussion, but the arrow arrived, bigger than Bro imagined it would be and stained with his blood.

“It's not Cha'Tel'Quessir,” Yongour insisted. “Not Aglarondan at all.”

“I can see that,” Chayan agreed with a tone as cold has her icicle touch.

Alassra examined both pieces of the arrow the Cha'Tel'Quessir had removed from Bro's side. She recognized it without magic. It came from Thay.

She did use magic on the arrow, swiftly, surely, and without fear that it would be detected. Over the centuries, Alassra had absorbed a number of useful spells—some simple, some not. They'd become as much a part of her as her eyes or ears and when she disguised herself those spells were disguised as well. The ruse would never fool Elminster or another masterful wizard, but in the Yuirwood, among Cha'Tel'Quessir who couldn't cast more than three spells between them, her mind asked questions; her fingers perceived answers as natural as breath, as quick as a single beat of her heart.

The arrow had no magical properties. It had been steeped in a nasty poison that would have condemned young Ebroin to a drawn-out, agonizing death if the Cha'Tel'Quessir hadn't tended the wounds with her knife. The feathered, spiral vanes at its base, so difficult to shape precisely and the reason the Cha'Tel'Quessir thought it had been shot from a god's bow, were the work of a Thayan master fletcher, almost certainly working for a zulkir. With a drop of quicksilver and a sprig of betony the Simbul could have deduced which zulkir but that would have undone her disguise.

Mythrell'aa was the only zulkir with reason to put a slow-poison arrow in poor Ebroin's back and leave his father alive, though that assumed she wasn't trying to abduct Ebroin as she'd taken Lailomun. Trovar Halaern was roaming the nearby forest. He'd find the answer and eliminate the guesses. Meanwhile, the Simbul would get a
different sort of answer from the Cha'Tel'Quessir.

“Why would gods shoot an arrow at Ebroin?” she asked the man who'd handed her the arrow.

“Not
at
Rizcarn's son, at Rizcarn himself, to keep him from leading us to the Sunglade. There are many who wish the Yuirwood and the Cha'Tel'Quessir to remain apart.”

The Simbul nodded, silently agreeing with Halaern's opinion: Rizcarn's followers were passionate believers in something no outsider could understand. She pitied Bro who sat in shadows while others stood close and talked over his head. From the carnage in Sulalk to Yuirwood fantasies in one week was a long, tortured journey.

“Our Rizcarn has enemies,” a woman assured Alassra. “The Simbul would tear the Yuirwood apart to stop him, if she knew his plans.”

The Simbul asked, in her sweetest voice, “Why ever would she do that? When I left Aglarond, the Simbul was the Yuirwood's staunch defender against Thay.”

“Aglarond and Thay aren't the Yuirwood. The Yuirwood won't need Aglarond or its queen once our gods are awake. The Yuirwood will swallow the world once it's awake again!” the woman spoke in hushed, urgent tones, sharing some treasured secret.

Alassra nodded. These people weren't searching for the mysterious Cha'Tel'Quessir heritage. These people had taken leave of their senses—which, from a queen's perspective was neither harmless or trivial. Without half trying, the Simbul could think of a score of magical ways to blind ordinary folk or corrupt them, and the Red Wizards of Thay knew them all.

Punctured Ebroin notwithstanding, the person Alassra truly wanted to see was Rizcarn. She was tempted to find her forester, tell him to keep an eye on these lost sheep, and pursue the more interesting quarry herself. She even considered taking Bro with her, but to catch up with Rizcarn, she'd have to heal his son and she'd probably wind up revealing herself in the process. Waiting in the camp while healing him more slowly with subtle magic these folk might readily believe came from the Yuirwood gods, became the more rational option.

As for what Ebroin might think or want, Alassra could see him sinking into despair near her knees. Once he'd
seen the arrow that pierced him, seen how close he'd come to dying, he'd stopped feeling lucky.

“Rizcarn's son needs rest.” Alassra took a step back from the log, hoping the Cha'Tel'Quessir would follow her. She wouldn't resort to spells if simple persuasion would suffice. “He'll need food, too. We all will. I don't see any fires burning.”

Men and women straightened their backs as if startled. They looked around, saw what Alassra had seen and hurried to get the cooking fires going. Purposeful activity, which had been lacking when she arrived, spread through the camp, confirming the Simbul's suspicion that without Rizcarn's presence, the magic that kept his followers together was unravelling.

“Thank you, Chayan,” The boy struggled to make himself presentable in clothes that were ragged when they left Sulalk and were slashed, bloodstained ruins now. “They don't listen to me, not truly. I don't think they see me at all. I'm Rizcarn's son, something to be brought along with the baggage until we get to the Sunglade.”

Alassra looked through
his
disguise. Bro was young and unsure of himself, but he wasn't a boy. He'd grown since she left him with a strand of her hair knotted around his wrist. Shock and loss of blood accounted for much of the change, but finding his father must not have been easy. And there was the small matter of Zandilar's Dancer. The horse wasn't in the camp; there were no horse images in the surface thoughts she'd skimmed from the Cha'Tel'Quessir while they surrounded her.

If Bro had lost his horse, that would account for the deep melancholy Alassra sensed around him. She couldn't ask; he had to bring the subject up.

“That shirt's seen better days. Got another one?” she asked, because Chayan wouldn't know he'd left Sulalk empty-handed. Bro shook his head and fussed with his shirt some more. “Never mind, I've got a spare in my kit.”

Helping him into it gave Alassra another opportunity to dose his wounds with a healing salve. Bro complained of her icy hands, an unavoidable consequence of the salve; she complained that he favored his injuries more than necessary.

“If Zandilar wants me dead, nothing will save me.”

“Do you truly think a
goddess
shot that arrow?”

He stared at his feet; Alassra stared at them, too, and at her boots, scuffed, scratched and muddied almost beyond recognition.

“Everyone else was asleep in the camp, except for the guards and Rizcarn. If I don't believe what they tell me, then I've got to ask myself if I think that my father put an arrow in my back.”

So, he had considered that possibility and hadn't gotten around to wondering where
she
might have been last night—with Trovar Halaern, for an extra day of discussion, and more, but she couldn't tell him that. Instead, she asked, “Well, do you?”

“Rizcarn didn't have a bow. He never was much of an archer, and that arrow, it wasn't a Cha'Tel'Quessir arrow. It wasn't an Aglarondan arrow, either. I never saw anything like it before.”

Alassra seized an opportunity. “I have. It was a Thayan war arrow thick enough to pierce lightweight chain mail and spiral fletching to make it twirl as it broke your skin, to make the entry wound bigger. That fletching also slows it down so it's less likely to pop out your other side. Keeps the poison where it's meant to be: inside the victim. It was shot from a short, heavy bow by someone perched in a tree. An easy shot, I'd guess, less than fifty paces, and either a poor archer, or a very good one, to miss your heart by a double handspan.”