The Simbul’s Gift

"A bit of everywhere, but I was born in the Yuirwood, same as you. Left it, too; it's a long story. I got the urge to come back a while ago. When I got here, I heard your father was going to wake the gods in the Sunglade and figured that's what I'd come home for. Anything else you want to know, Ebroin?"

A hundred things, maybe a thousand, but they could wait. The pain was back, less intense than before, but still potent. Bro braced his good arm behind him. "I've got to get up, catch up with my father."

"Not a chance." Chayan laid her hand on him again. It wasn't cold this time, but just as effective in keeping him pressed against the log. "Wherever your father's gone, he's got a day's start on you. You couldn't catch him if you were sound, which you're not. You need a day's rest, which some Cha'Tel'Quessir think you've earned."

"You?" Bro blushed and didn't believe he'd said that.

"When I told the Cha'Tel'Quessir in charge—" Chayan tipped her head toward the center of the camp—"that I'd tended more than my share of arrow wounds fighting the Tuigans, they sent me over here to tend yours. They'd lose faith in me if I let you wander."

"You fought the Tuigans? You've been in the East?" Bro began to suspect that his good sense had leaked away with his blood. He stopped caring when Chayan threw back her hair and laughed.

"I've been everywhere, Ebroin, and I've fought with everyone. I'll fight with you, too, if you try to get up again. I want to look at your wounds. Are you going to behave like an intelligent man? Or am I going to have to knock some good behavior into you?"

For a moment—for no good reason—Chayan reminded Bro of the Simbul. Then he'd promised to behave intelligently and she was poking at his wounds.

"Who shot you?"

Bro couldn't answer. He had his teeth clenched, pretending nothing hurt. By the time he trusted himself enough to open his mouth, they weren't alone. Yongour challenged Chayan, who stood up with a confident smile.

"He was talking nonsense. I thought the wounds might be festering; they're not. I'd like to see the arrow that pierced him."

Yongour said, "Rizcarn's son was pierced by the gods."

Bro didn't like the sound of that for many reasons and was relieved to see Chayan didn't either. "Shot by the gods and you cauterized the wound? That's a strange sort of faith. The gods don't miss, and when they use poison they get it direct from Talona. The arrow?"

It took another few rounds of discussion, but the arrow arrived, bigger than Bro imagined it would be and stained with his blood.

"It's not Cha'Tel'Quessir," Yongour insisted. "Not Aglarondan at all."

"I can see that," Chayan agreed with a tone as cold has her icicle touch. 21

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Afternoon, the twenty-second day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

Alassra examined both pieces of the arrow the Cha'Tel'Quessir had removed from Bro's side. She recognized it without magic. It came from Thay.

She did use magic on the arrow, swiftly, surely, and without fear that it would be detected. Over the centuries, Alassra had absorbed a number of useful spells—some simple, some not. They'd become as much a part of her as her eyes or ears and when she disguised herself those spells were disguised as well. The ruse would never fool Elminster or another masterful wizard, but in the Yuirwood, among Cha'Tel'Quessir who couldn't cast more than three spells between them, her mind asked questions; her fingers perceived answers as natural as breath, as quick as a single beat of her heart.

The arrow had no magical properties. It had been steeped in a nasty poison that would have condemned young Ebroin to a drawn-out, agonizing death if the Cha'Tel'Quessir hadn't tended the wounds with her knife. The feathered, spiral vanes at its base, so difficult to shape precisely and the reason the Cha'Tel'Quessir thought it had been shot from a god's bow, were the work of a Thayan master fletcher, almost certainly working for a zulkir. With a drop of quicksilver and a sprig of betony the Simbul could have deduced which zulkir but that would have undone her disguise.

Mythrell'aa was the only zulkir with reason to put a slow-poison arrow in poor Ebroin's back and leave his father alive, though that assumed she wasn't trying to abduct Ebroin as she'd taken Lailomun. Trovar Halaern was roaming the nearby forest. He'd find the answer and eliminate the guesses. Meanwhile, the Simbul would get a different sort of answer from the Cha'Tel'Quessir.

"Why would gods shoot an arrow at Ebroin?" she asked the man who'd handed her the arrow.

"Not at Rizcarn's son, at Rizcarn himself, to keep him from leading us to the Sunglade. There are many who wish the Yuirwood and the Cha'Tel'Quessir to remain apart."