The Simbul’s Gift

"Your grandfather and great-grandfather—my father and grandfather. Necromancers. I sent them after Ferrin. He hid from me. You hid him from me."

"He was afraid of you. I kept him in my room."

Lauzoril nodded and rubbed his chin. "Do you understand what happened here? Why your friend is gone?"

"You destroyed him, Poppa."

"No, Mimuay," Lauzoril's voice was very soft, very angry. "I did not; I had decided he was no harm to you or me. Gweltaz, my grandfather, destroyed Ferrin—subsumed him because my concentration faltered and he was able to move freely. My concentration faltered because you battered at my wards and I had a choice: to send you away with magic or dissolve the wards. I'd given you my word I would never touch you with magic. You were where you should not have been, doing what you should not have done. But I kept my word to you. Now do you understand what happened?"

She said nothing, did nothing except return her father's stare. Lauzoril couldn't untangle her thoughts—not without resorting to spellcraft. He could scarcely untangle his own, strung as they were between rage and sorrow.

"It's late," he said when she had said nothing for longer than he could bear listening. He cast the light as a sphere and sent it toward the door. "We'll talk again later. Not tomorrow or the day after. I'm leaving Thazalhar, Mimuay."

"I understand, Poppa."

And she might, but Lauzoril didn't understand her. "I'll be back, Mimuay. I'm going to the Yuirwood, in Aglarond." 24

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Afternoon and evening, the twenty-third day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

With Rizcarn's return, word had spread among the Cha'Tel'Quessir that they'd be walking tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that. Daytime rest would be infrequent. Nighttime camp would be late and cold. If folk wanted journey bread, they had the rest of day and a night to grind their flour and bake it. A lucky few, the men and women who'd known Rizcarn from before, gathered in the center of the camp to mourn Shali of MightyTree, the mother of Rizcarn's son. Everyone else, including Chayan of SilverBranch, found a flatish stone and a roundish one, then got down on their knees and began to grind.

Grinding took the most strength, and the least talent. Mixing flour, leavening, and water, while not unlike combining the reagents for a spell, required a better understanding of cookery than Alassra had bothered to acquire over the centuries, and kneading dough was a mystery she'd never unravelled. So she ground grain throughout the afternoon: wheat and oats from the packs of Cha'Tel'Quessir who traded with farmers beyond the Yuirwood, wild rice and millet other families grew in forest clearings, and ripe nuts that could be knocked loose from nearby trees.

The Simbul ground whatever they set in front of her until her back muscles screamed. In private, she healed herself, then she ground more, wondering how the men and women who didn't have a pouchful of magic kept themselves fed. Her hands were another matter. Scraping them bloody as she ground the grain between her two stones was inevitable, and healing them was impossible if she wanted to maintain her disguise.

By sundown, when the grinding ceased, there was a little bit of Aglarond's queen in every loaf. She ate her supper—passing on the fresh bread—alone at the edge of the camp, nursing sore fingers, and in a foul mood. Her frayed temper owed more to the weather than her raw knuckles. The wind had shifted to the east—from Thay— hot, heavy, and thick, plastering Alassra's sweaty skin with bitter dust. It did take a weather-witch to know a storm was coming.

The moon and stars hid behind a stifling cloud blanket. A few Cha'Tel'Quessir kept their fires burning. The rest let the embers die once the bread was baked. Like Alassra, they sat, alone and still, watching the mourners at the center of the camp.

The Simbul pricked her finger with her drow sister's knife, adding elven sight to her mage senses. She didn't like what the night revealed. A silver-green aura flickered around Bro's father. She expected to see that aura around the ancient trees and mossy menhirs that were the source of the Yuirwood's protection. She'd never seen it cast by a man—if Rizcarn was a man. Short of seizing him by the shoulders and subjecting him to a wizard's interrogation, the Simbul couldn't decide what manner of creature Bro's father had become.

He was alive. She'd ascertained that with spells from a distance and by subjecting Bro to an examination of his healed wounds that, not coincidentally, allowed her to get close to Rizcarn. If the man had ever been dead, he'd been brought back a long time ago and brought back by a master. Still, Rizcarn wasn't like any other living man she'd met. Their eyes had met and, fearing he had the power to see through her Cha'Tel'Quessir disguise, the Simbul had looked away first.