The Simbul’s Gift

Shivers raced down Bro's spine. Those were Shali's words, her favorite words in the spring when she turned the soil in her garden and when she gave him motherly advice he didn't want to hear. Hearing them from Rizcarn pushed Bro to the edge of belief. He reached into his shirt neck, withdrawing his talisman beads and Shali's, which he'd looped around his while they'd walked through the swamps. "Can we go to MightyTree on our way to the Sunglade? Will you ... ?" In the back of his mind Bro conceived the one gesture that would answer so many of his lingering questions. "Can we go together to tell them what happened in Sulalk?"

The light around Rizcarn faded. They stood in a quarter-moon's light filtered through the summer trees. Bro couldn't see his father's face as Rizcarn freed Shali's talismans and hung them around his own neck. He breathed deep and slow and refused to blink.

"We'll go together," Rizcarn said softly. He put his hands on Bro's shoulders and drew him into an embrace. "We'll leave tomorrow."

Bro didn't trust himself to speak. He nodded, instead, and his eyes overflowed down his cheeks, his chin, onto his father's neck. Ashamed, he tried to jerk free. Rizcarn wouldn't let him go; after a heartbeat, he stopped trying.

"You're weary, son. You've carried too much for too long without my help. I'm sorry. Now, go and rest—sleep, if you can—we've got a lot of walking ahead of us."

Sniffing tears, Bro allowed his father to hug him tightly, as hugs had been when he was half as tall as he'd become. "I'm sorry," he confessed when they separated.

"Don't be."

Bro forced a smile and started back to the camp. He'd taken about ten steps—Rizcarn's light had returned, casting shadows onto the path ahead of him. Something thumped between his shoulder blade and his ribs: his father tossing acorns at him, the way his father sometimes had, in jest.

More than an acorn.

Thump became ache became numbness and pain together.

Not an acorn at all, but something that stuck in him.

"Zandilar!"

Not an acorn—an arrow. Bro had been struck by an arrow and imagined it protruding from his back. He thought he should keep walking. He thought he should be able to walk. Men walked with their wounds, he'd seen them. Just lift one foot, move it forward, put it down. The foot dragged and Bro lost his balance, very slowly.

The light grew thicker as he fell, but not thick enough or fast enough to keep him upright.

"Zandilar—not my son!"

The light brightened, became too bright. Bro closed his eyes. One knee had touched the ground before he floated into darkness.

* * *

"Gently, gently!"

"Hold him steady."

"Keep him still!"

Bro heard the voices first, then he felt the pain, like fire piercing him back to front. The arrow. He remembered he'd been struck by an arrow. Where? He remembered his father, surrounded by light. He remembered the light surrounding him as he fell and opened his eyes.

"Don't talk, Rizcarn's son."

"Lie easy."

He was on open ground, surrounded by torchlit faces, all worried, all talking. Lie easy, they told him—of all requests, that one was impossible. The arrow was in his right-side rib cage, level with his heart. He wanted to lie on his face; he thought it would hurt less, but grasping hands kept him up on his left side. Every shallow breath was agony.

Someone Bro knew but couldn't name—he couldn't name anyone except himself just then— grabbed his right wrist and pulled his arm straight. Bro heard himself screaming. Then there was a wicked knife glinting in the light. They slashed his shirt. Someone touched the arrow and he screamed

again, fighting the man at his wrist.

"It's got to come out, Rizcarn's son," that man said, changing his grip so their fingers interlaced.

"Don't let me die," Bro whispered. "Don't. Poppa?"

"Not here. Be brave."

He tried, but there was one long scream in his throat from the moment they started pushing the arrow forward. His voice broke when his flesh did. He was crying, pleading for the torture to end, as they broke the arrowhead off and screaming while they withdrew the shaft.

"The worst is over," someone said; someone lied.

Pain blurred Bro's hearing as well as his vision. Though he couldn't hear clearly, he knew they didn't like the looks of the arrow. He caught the word "poison."

Bro started shaking. At the very least, poison meant enlarging the wounds and cauterizing them with red-hot steel. The Cha'Tel'Quessir surrounding Bro passed around the knife they'd used to slash his shirt.

Bro knew it had to be done and knew, too, that there was a better way, a better knife.

"No," he insisted, trying to free his right arm.

"S'got to be done, Rizcarn's son," the man holding him said.

"My knife. Use my knife. You've got to use my knife."