The Simbul’s Gift

"Mother!"

He doubled over coughing. Smoke and instinct had closed his eyes; he forced them open. Eerie light from the burning thatch enabled him to see shapes around him. For one awful instant nothing was familiar, then he recognized the stairs to the loft where he slept; the hearth, where fire never burned in summertime, the table where they ate, the bench where they sat, and finally, horribly, his mother between the bench and table.

Shali lay on her back. One arm was crooked beneath her, the other extended above her head, across the hearthstones. Rizcarn had had the same awkward, uncomfortable appearance after he fell from the tree, except Rizcarn's neck had been obscenely twisted; Shali's remained straight.

Bro took heart: She was hurt, he told himself, but alive. The blasts had knocked her off her feet. She'd struck her head on the hearthstones and hadn't moved since. She was unconscious, but alive. ...

Alive.

Bro repeated the word in his mind as he knelt and slid his hands beneath her back. His hopes soared as he freed her cramped arm: he thought he'd heard a sigh. They shattered a heartbeat later: There was warm liquid beneath her skull. Blood. A lot of it. Too much.

He put his hand to the hollow of her neck. When Bro pressed as hard as he dared blood flowed over his other hand, still beneath her head. He felt no pulse. No life. The fire ceased to matter. The blasts, another of which shook the cottage and showered him with sparks, ceased to matter. All that mattered lay in his arms. Bleeding. Not unconscious—dead.

Bro couldn't move, couldn't face the next moment of his own life until a sixth sense, newly born in his grief and rage, advised him that he was no longer alone in the cottage. He was strangely calm and confident, easing his mother's body from his arms to the floor, breaking the knotted thong that held a clutch of brightly colored beads in the hollow of her lifeless neck and placing them in a belt-slung pouch. His balance was perfect as he rose into a crouch and stayed perfect when he stretched for the cleaver Shali must have been holding when the blast struck. He saw each flame-cast shadow as his legs pushed him upright, each whirling drop of his mother's blood as he spun around, ready to hack apart any intruder.

He had all the time in the world—and needed every bit to stop his hand before the cleaver slashed through Tay-Fay's neck.

His sister never listened, and she didn't comprehend that her brother had nearly killed her. Arms outstretched and ready to wrap tightly around his waist, Tay-Fay barrelled into Bro's gut, knocking the breath, the calm and confidence out of him. A heartbeat earlier, everything had been clear. Now there was confusion and Tay-Fay's innocent trust that while she clung to him there was still a safe place in the world.

In her world, not his.

Not his, not ever again.

Yet another blast rocked the cottage and with it, chunks of burning wood from the beams came down. They jolted Bro into renewed awareness of danger. He had little experience with danger on this scale, but he knew, without hesitation, its source: Magic.

Nothing else could cause the damage, the cloudless thunder, the fire and death; but magic could rise from many sources. Storytellers filled Aglarond's long winter evenings with magic battles, invading Thayan wizards, and deaths too horrible to be described.

The oldest tales were the same way throughout the land: humans and Cha'Tel'Quessir together, defeating common enemies. Since the deaths of the Gray Sisters a century ago, when humans took the Verdigris Throne, the tales had diverged. In the Yuirwood, the Cha'Tel'Quessir were grateful for the Simbul's defense of the forest, but she could defeat whole armies on her own and, increasingly, the Cha'Tel'Quessir were inclined to let her.

Let humanity fight its battles with human blood and magic, the tribal elders said; Cha'Tel'Quessir began and ended with the Yuirwood.

Bro—Ebroin of MightyTree—had never felt closer to his Cha'Tel'Quessir roots than when a length of burning roof beam crashed to the floor between him and his sister. His first thought when he'd carried her outside was to run for the trees and the forest. His second, wiser, thought was that Tay-Fay couldn't run that far. His third was for the colt, Zandilar's Dancer, who could.

He was halfway down the path to the barnyard when a fourth, unwelcome, thought snuck into his overheated mind: the colt—his colt—might be the cause of this magic-born destruction. Although he hadn't seen Zandilar since the colt was born, the memory of her was always near the surface of his thoughts.

Come when you're ready.

Even now the apparition shimmered behind his eyes. Had Zandilar danced for someone else? Had she withdrawn the invitation and come to claim the colt herself?