The Simbul’s Gift

Bro awoke with laughter ringing in his ears and a sliver as long as his middle finger, as thick as a songbird's leg rising from the back of his hand. In the confusion between sleep and wakefulness, he thought the sliver had fallen from the tree and that the tree was somewhere in Sulalk. An instant later, he'd recalled that he wasn't near Sulalk and why. He brushed the barb aside and forgot it as he pounded his fist and screamed silently into the ground.

"Get up!"

"On your feet!"

The voices were shrill, but not childlike, and very close to his ears. The words were clear, but the accents were wrong for either Cha'Tel'Quessir or human Aglarondans.

"Dance! Dance! You're supposed to dance!"

Dancing was the last thing Bro felt like doing. He lashed out blindly with his fist, striking nothing, though something hit him just above the wrist. Burning pain engulfed his arm, bad enough that he cried aloud. The pain ended as suddenly as it had begun; when he raised his head, he saw the tiny javelin that had caused it. He was under attack from creatures no larger than his hand.

There were at least a score of them screeching and careening against each other, disappearing and reappearing magically in the humid air beneath the butternut tree. Some were winged, some weren't. Some were palm-high, as Bro had expected, but some were larger and brandished weapons that could slice through a finger or an eye. He'd never seen their kind before, though one of his uncles told a tale of the seelie folk who'd haunt and torment a solitary Cha'Tel'Quessir until he went mad and killed himself.

"If you won't dance, then bark like a dog!"

"And croak like a tree frog!"

Bro's ears popped twice. He guessed that spells, not javelins, were his assailants' favored weapons and that, inexplicably, they'd failed to affect him. He knew better than to expect his luck to continue. The Simbul's knife, his only weapon, was on his belt beneath him. Bro clawed right-handed at the sheath, while with his left hand he groped for any sort of weapon. The best he could grasp was a fist- sized lump of moss, which he hurled at the first thing he saw from the corner of his eye.

"Go away," he warned.

"Go away!" "Go away!" "Go away!" they echoed amid raucous laughter.

One of the larger, unwinged seelie with the head and tail of weasel and a stone-tipped spear darted forward and launched his weapon at Bro's neck. The Cha'Tel'Quessir weren't as quick as their elven cousins, but Bro was quick enough to dodge.

"Leave me alone," he warned again.

"Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" they echoed, adding rude gestures to their chorus.

Bro's ears popped a third time. He couldn't guess which seelie had cast the spell, nor what it had been meant to do. He guessed they were more interested in tormenting him than harming him, but he had little interest in being their goat, either way. Bent-kneed and balanced on his toes, Bro tore another fistful of moss from the ground. He feinted at the weasel-seelie, but threw the clump at a smaller, man- shaped seelie who didn't sense danger coming his way.

The man-shape dropped straight to the ground with the moss landing on top of him and his shimmering wings broken beneath him. He wasn't moving. All the smaller seelie vanished. The larger ones hovered together, humming a low note among them.

"I'm sorry," Bro apologized. It had happened so quickly, so easily. Yesterday, he'd been the victim; today, he was the murderer. "I warned you."

"He warned us," a seelie said and the others echoed: "Warned us."

"He doesn't want to dance," another seelie said, and the echo: "Doesn't want to dance."

"He wants to fight!" A hawk-faced seelie raised a silver sword.

Bro swallowed fear and settled behind the Simbul's knife, striving to look more menacing than he felt or was.

The little seelie reappeared around Bro's head. Their tiny swords in their tiny hands couldn't break his skin, but they made him flinch while their larger brethren surged forward with weapons that drew blood. They concentrated their attacks on Bro's right hand and wrist. He kept his grip on the hilt until the weasel-seelie twirled himself around Bro's forearm and held on long enough to thrust his sword into the tendon at the base of Bro's thumb.

Pain paralyzed his arm from the shoulder down. Bro beat his forearm against the tree trunk. He knocked the weasel-seelie off, but he dropped the Simbul's knife, too.

"Now he'll dance for us!"

Bro lunged for the seelie who seemed about to cast the spell. His ears popped and a tingling spread down his legs. He thought for sure he was going to land on his face, but his feet began dancing wildly, and it appeared that he could not fall. He attacked instead, and knocked another seelie to the ground.

The seelie pulled back again, the little ones vanishing as before while the larger ones made their droning sound. One of them, the weasel-seelie, larger than before, pointed at Zandilar's Dancer, whom they'd ignored until that moment.