The Simbul’s Gift

With the few clear thoughts left in his skull, Bro doubted his own judgment: Rizcarn wasn't ill. Of course, seven years ago, Rizcarn had been rotting dead, just like the tree. Bro stopped thinking. He sipped water his father brought him, then closed his eyes and waited to die.

"Are you well yet?" Rizcarn asked.

Bro opened his eyes. The sky was noticeably dimmer than he remembered it and streaked with red and orange, blue and purple.

"Can you walk? We must start walking. I told you, this is no place to be after sundown."

Walk? Bro couldn't raise his head without pain, but his thoughts were clear: If he wasn't dead, then he didn't want to be in the swamp. With Rizcarn's help, he got to his feet. Clinging to his father, he took a few steps, then a few more, but walking proved impossible.

"I can't, Father. Sorry. Dying. Can't eat what you eat."

Rizcarn's eyes were dancing flames in a face that blurred and seemed less man-like the longer Bro looked at it.

"A few tree ears?" Rizcarn scoffed, sounding more like the father Bro remembered than he had earlier. "More than a few. You've eaten yourself sick, son, but you're not dying. You can walk it off." He leaned on his father a few more steps, then his legs gave out. Rizcarn caught him as he fell.

"Ride, then. Zandilar's Dancer can carry you."

Bro wasn't too far gone to miss the concession, but the true meaning—if it were more than Rizcarn's belated concern—escaped him. The grass had turned as orange as the sky. Dancer was brilliant blue, except for his eyes, which shone like the sun at sunrise. After Bro tried to explain that everything looked very different, very strange and colorful, Rizcarn brought him more water.

If he weren't already poisoned, Bro was certain he would be if he let the black ooze in Rizcarn's hands touch his lips. Then a luminous green worm wound itself around Rizcarn's thumb. The worm extended its head and opened a single, blood-streaked eye. Bro staggered backward.

But things got better once Bro was astride Dancer. With his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around the colt's neck, he could let his overheated imagination wander to pleasanter places: springtime meadows around Sulalk, autumn in the Yuirwood he remembered, all the places he'd ever wanted to see from Dancer's back.

Bro heard the sucking mud, as Rizcarn guided Dancer through the swamp, but the sound was distant, easily excluded from the visions swirling behind his closed eyes. He could hear the ever- present insects, too, but the swarms were clever enough not to feast on a doomed Cha'Tel'Quessir. Once—just once—Bro opened his eyes. The bones in his arms, the bones in Dancer's neck were shining jewels visible through translucent flesh. Looking down, he could see Dancer's heart, a pulsing ruby, and his own, which seemed smaller ... darker ... dying. He closed his eyes more tightly than

before but the bones were etched behind his eyes, and the pleasanter visions wouldn't return.

Dancer stopped beneath him. Rizcarn grasped his arm and shook it.

"We've come to the river."

Aglarond had streams aplenty but only one river, the River Umber, flowing out of Thay to the Sea of Dlurg on the northern coast. Bro had never seen the Umber. He opened his eyes. The sky was purple, the evening stars were green and the ribbon of water before them was the color of milk.

"Zandilar's Dancer must swim again." Rizcarn took Bro's wrist and knotted the lead rope around it. "And you'll have to tell him."

The swamp was a step or two behind them. Bro suggested they could camp on the river bank.

"On the other side, son."

"I can't see right," he protested, not adding that he could still see his bones and Dancer's, but that Rizcarn had none. Rizcarn was a voice and a shadow. Another time, that might have disturbed Bro. Confronted with his own skeleton, though, his father's featureless shape was oddly reassuring. "I can't ride—not like lord or knight. What if I fall off? I won't know which way to swim."

Rizcarn tugged on the rope. "That's what this is for: to keep you and Zandilar's Dancer together. I'll find you, son, wherever the colt fetches up, but it would be better if you stay astride."

"If I can—"

"No ifs, Ebroin," Rizcarn said as he whacked the colt's rump hard.

Dancer leapt into the water. The river wasn't wide, if Bro could believe anything his addled eyes perceived, but it proved deep and swift. The colt was swimming from the start, his legs churning steadily, powerfully. He tried to return to the bank where they'd started.

"Tell him where to go!" Rizcarn shouted.