The Simbul’s Gift

Rizcarn—or his god—got the message. "We will begin together. Chayan, you will move to the center when it is the right time." He anticipated her next question. "You will know when it is the right time. There will be no doubt."

It was plain awkward at first. Alassra was conscious of every knee, ankle, elbow, and wrist. Her back was rigid and her hips simply would not sway to the twisting, twirling music that came from Rizcarn's silver pipes. No Red Wizard or Zhentarim mage had devised a crueler torture. As moonlight peeked through the trees, awkwardness became anger—the childish, self-destructive anger that had worried her Rashemaar guardians centuries ago. Alassra struck the man behind her hard enough to knock him to the ground; she only wished it had been Rizcarn and that the whole farce would come to a halt.

But Rizcarn was out of reach on the other side of the Cha'Tel'Quessir vine. To reach him, she'd have to move across the circle. That would be dancing, alone, and the time would never be right for that.

Never.

The moon rose above the ridge, huge and so bright it hurt, like the sun, to look at its face. Anger, frustration, and the knowledge that it was hours until dawn, pushed Alassra Shentrantra to distraction. She seized her hair—Chayan's brown hair—and pulled it out by the roots, letting her hair—the Simbul's silver hair—flow into its place. She became blue eyed again, and pale skinned. She threw back her head and screamed.

The power of the Yuirwood, so like the lightning essence she called upon when she fought her enemies and yet so different, too, rose within her. It burst through the pores of her skin, her eyes and mouth, the tips of her fingers. And then, as suddenly as it had ebbed, the essence waned.

"Who will come away with me?"

Rizcarn's music had stopped. The question came from the center of the circle where a silver-form woman stood beside a twilight horse.

"Who will dance with me?"

Alassra waited with the others. Her scream, and the power that answered it, had brought a sense of peace, of oneness with the world around her, that she had rarely known before. She was ready for whatever Relkath—or the Zulkir of Illusion—provided. The subtle play of magic beyond the paired circles didn't disturb her. Two people, possibly three, stepped from the shadows of magic to the shadows of the Yuirwood: Mythrell'aa—tiny, hairless, and patterned like a deadly snake—and one, possibly two, man-shaped companions.

"Who will dance with me?" Zandilar asked.

One of Mythrell'aa's companions started walking forward. Alassra readied a spell that would release four others: three to punch through Mythrell'aa's defenses, one to whisk Bro to safety. It wouldn't take a gesture or even a word to loose them; a thought, an intention would be sufficient and not even a zulkir's reflexes would be fast enough to counteract them.

She waited for the optimum moment when Bro was closer to her than to Mythrell'aa, for the moment she could see his face.

Not his face.

Not the face of Ebroin of MightyTree, but the face of Lailomun Zerad, smiling, laughing, running toward her. 28

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Nearing midnight, the twenty-fifth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

Lauzoril had ridden the marble stallion for two days and nights without rest, guiding it across the breadth of Thay and into the unknown realm of Aglarond and its forest. The knife was his target, a bright star in his mind that had kept him on an unerring course until, suddenly, it had vanished early in the previous afternoon. He'd pressed on, pointed to the place where he'd last felt its presence: a poor excuse for a path through the everywhere tangle of laurel and briar that bothered the stallion not at all but had made the zulkir's life a misery since they'd entered the Yuirwood.

Spent magic had lain heavy on the ground where the knife had vanished. Lauzoril had determined that his knife, and the youth who carried it, had been snatched by a wizard and had been either taken very far away or was being held nearby under impenetrable, undetectable warding. Warding was the greater possibility, and Lauzoril had run down his mental list of Faerun wizards capable of hiding from a Thayan zulkir. He'd put the Zulkirs of Illusion and Invocation at the top and Aglarond's queen close by.

Then he'd backtracked the ground trails his spells had revealed. One had led him to two bands of Red Wizards, all dead, stripped of their magic artifacts, all Invokers or archers paid in Bezantur coin. The others had come together in a grove not far from the place where the knife had vanished. From there the trail had been easy enough to follow. Lauzoril had hoped it would lead him to the knife and the youth who'd captured his daughter's attention.