The Simbul’s Gift

"We weren't bargaining," Alassra admitted, harkening back to Alustriel's recounting of her conversation with the little girl. "He blamed me for what happened. He didn't want my help. If he found it..."

"He'd have left your hair, your boots and your knife where you could easily find them. This," Alustriel twirled the twig between her fingers, "floated here. Someone made certain that Bro would be far away when you found it."

"Alustriel, you have a devious and suspicious mind. I like that in a sister."

"I try to keep in practice. Shall we wander our way upstream?"

"You're sure the little girl won't get into mischief while we're gone?"

"Absolutely."

The sisters hiked opposite banks of the stream, their mage-trained senses sharp for signs of a struggle—broken branches, dislodged stones, skid marks in the damp moss. They were alert for immaterial clues as well, the faint traces that spellcasting, though the latent magic of the Yuirwood consumed such traces quickly.

Two sets of footprints and—more tellingly—a set of hoofprints marked the place where Bro and his now-confirmed companion dropped the twig into the stream. There were no indications that Bro was other than a willing participant in deception. The horse and the two Cha'Tel'Quessir—both sisters assumed Bro was with another Yuirwood half-elf—had continued upstream, not troubling to conceal their trail.

"Follow them?" Alustriel asked.

Alassra shook her head. "Only if we need to. Open your mind. I'm noticing something very strange."

As a wizard, Alassra was more skilled than any of her sisters. On a good day and with the wind at her back, she could sense things even the Old Mage missed. At that moment she sensed another corpse, not far from the stream and reeking of magic.

"Yes," Alustriel agreed after a moment. "A death gone wrong."

"My thoughts exactly."

Alassra led the way, readying spells as she walked. Behind her, she sensed Alustriel doing the same. If malice was loose in the Yuirwood this night, it was in for a thorough trouncing. They followed the trail of footprints and hoofprints some hundred paces before it and the sense of unrightness diverged. The Simbul drew no conclusions, but turned away from the marked trail.

Not far into the laurel and briar, they found what they were looking for: a corpse, man-shaped in the moonlight. Alustriel made a misty light and set it hovering over their heads. Alassra covered her mouth—a reflexive human reaction when confronted with deformity and mutilation. The High Lady of Silverymoon invoked Mystra's name; she cast several lesser spells against evil and one, which Alassra didn't recognize, that would have freed the man's spirit, had it remained trapped in the mangled body. It was the sort of compassion Alassra expected from and respected in her elder sister and that almost never occurred to her.

On the other hand, Alustriel was reluctant to get down on her knees for a closer look, which bothered Alassra not at all. Using the little wand she'd used to probe the Red Wizard corpses in Sulalk, she began her examination. The wand vibrated in her hand, discharging its particular magic and raising a pattern of incomplete tattoos.

"What the—?"

"That shouldn't have happened," Alustriel said, as much a question as an answer.

"I imagine he said the same thing, or tried to." Alassra resorted to acid humor as she sat back on her heels.

The corpse, already naked, cratered and broken, took on a new awfulness beneath the wand's glowing magic. Gingerly, Alassra touched it again with the wand, lifting a hank of brittle hair away from its face, revealing two mouths, three eyes, and half a nose.

"A soured shapeshifting?" Alustriel suggested. "Illusion, perhaps, or necromancy, or something begun by a god?"

"Or a failed possession. Tried to swallow something and it swallowed him back." Alassra used the wand to expose the corpse's blasted abdomen. "Quite a stomachache."

"How can you make jokes?"

"How can I not?" Alassra stood up. "Someone who might have been a Red Wizard crossed paths with someone who might have been Cha'Tel'Quessir. One of them died, but which one?"

"Both of them, I should think."

"Then who was walking beside young Ebroin?"

"You think he's with ... this? It... it doesn't look recent."

"Agreed. I'd say weeks, maybe months, if I'd come across it anywhere but here. Here is too close. I don't believe in coincidence."

Holding her gown carefully away from the corpse, Alustriel at last knelt down to examine it. "If it's not coincidence, there has to be cause. You didn't plan to come here: Your travel spell yawed. No one could have predicted that, or where you'd come out." Her hand wove above the corpse as she spoke. The luminous tattoos faded. She laid her bare hand on a malformed cheek. Within moments, her expression changed from puzzled to deeply concerned. "I like this not at all, Alassra."

"A coincidence?"