The Simbul's Gift

by Lynn Abbey

  “Why are fish slimy, Bro?”

  “They just are. It’s easier if you grab ’em from the front.”

  Carefully following his instructions, she stood behind the basket. “Why don’t they close their eyes?”

  “Quiet, Taefaeli. You’re scaring the fish.”

  “They don’t have ears. How can I scare the fish when they can’t hear?”

  Bro backhanded the gaff and sent a gust of water at his sister. She screamed and started running. If she’d run toward the village, he’d have let her run and faced the consequences later, but she was going the wrong way.

  A few of his longer strides brought Bro within grabbing distance. He swept her clean off the ground, both his hands secure around her waist. She shrieked with delight.

  He’d gone another two steps before sound overwhelmed his ears. Thunder, though the morning sky was bright blue and cloudless. Thunder, striking his back like a fist of wind. Bro stumbled as he stopped. Clutching his sister in his arms, he turned: The grass and bushes, the trees themselves, all bent to the mighty rumbling. Gradually, they straightened, but the ringing in his ears continued.

  “Sulalk!” He shouted and heard a whisper. “Momma! Dent!”

  Bro started to run again. His sister clung to him like a burr. There was a second blast as he splashed across the stream and a third, short of the hill crest between the stream and the village. A fist of sound pounded the breath from his lungs. Bro dropped to his knees. Tay-Fay’s mouth was an open grimace, but for all Bro could hear her tears were silent. He scooped her up and staggered to the crest.

  They could see the mill and a plume of smoke rising from its thatched roof. There were other plumes. Matching what he saw against the Sulalk he held in his mind, Bro knew immediately that Dent’s cottage—their home—was on fire. Running too fast for memory, he carried Tay-Fay along the path he knew better than any other.

  Flame fingers danced in the thatch of Dent’s cottage and in the wooden lintels. Bro blinked several times, as if opening his eyes wide enough would rouse him from a nightmare, but he was awake and the fire was real.

  Another blast shook sense back into him: Whatever had happened here, it continued and neither he nor his sister were safe.

  Safe?

  Safe was the cottage. Safe was his mother who always knew what to do.

  Shali spent her mornings inside the cottage. A wave of horror washed down Bro’s body. When it passed his spirit was as numbed as his ears. He pried Tay-Fay from his shirt and shoulders.

  “Stay right here. Don’t move. Don’t follow me. Don’t go anywhere until I come back for you.”

  Bro couldn’t hear his voice, but his pale and quaking sister seemed to understand. She sat and folded her arms around her knees. He patted the top of her head as he strode past, into the smoke, beneath the fire.

  “Mother!”

  He doubled over coughing. Smoke and instinct had closed his eyes; he forced them open. Eerie light from the burning thatch enabled him to see shapes around him. For one awful instant nothing was familiar, then he recognized the stairs to the loft where he slept; the hearth, where fire never burned in summertime, the table where they ate, the bench where they sat, and finally, horribly, his mother between the bench and table.

  Shali lay on her back. One arm was crooked beneath her, the other extended above her head, across the hearthstones. Rizcarn had had the same awkward, uncomfortable appearance after he fell from the tree, except Rizcarn’s neck had been obscenely twisted; Shali’s remained straight.

  Bro took heart: She was hurt, he told himself, but alive. The blasts had knocked her off her feet. She’d struck her head on the hearthstones and hadn’t moved since. She was unconscious, but alive.…

  Alive.

  Bro repeated the word in his mind as he knelt and slid his hands beneath her back. His hopes soared as he freed her cramped arm: he thought he’d heard a sigh. They shattered a heartbeat later: There was warm liquid beneath her skull. Blood. A lot of it. Too much.

  He put his hand to the hollow of her neck. When Bro pressed as hard as he dared blood flowed over his other hand, still beneath her head. He felt no pulse. No life. The fire ceased to matter. The blasts, another of which shook the cottage and showered him with sparks, ceased to matter. All that mattered lay in his arms. Bleeding. Not unconscious—dead.

  Bro couldn’t move, couldn’t face the next moment of his own life until a sixth sense, newly born in his grief and rage, advised him that he was no longer alone in the cottage. He was strangely calm and confident, easing his mother’s body from his arms to the floor, breaking the knotted thong that held a clutch of brightly colored beads in the hollow of her lifeless neck and placing them in a belt-slung pouch. His balance was perfect as he rose into a crouch and stayed perfect when he stretched for the cleaver Shali must have been holding when the blast struck. He saw each flame-cast shadow as his legs pushed him upright, each whirling drop of his mother’s blood as he spun around, ready to hack apart any intruder.

  He had all the time in the world—and needed every bit to stop his hand before the cleaver slashed through Tay-Fay’s neck.

  His sister never listened, and she didn’t comprehend that her brother had nearly killed her. Arms outstretched and ready to wrap tightly around his waist, Tay-Fay barrelled into Bro’s gut, knocking the breath, the calm and confidence out of him. A heartbeat earlier, everything had been clear. Now there was confusion and Tay-Fay’s innocent trust that while she clung to him there was still a safe place in the world.

  In her world, not his.

  Not his, not ever again.

  Yet another blast rocked the cottage and with it, chunks of burning wood from the beams came down. They jolted Bro into renewed awareness of danger. He had little experience with danger on this scale, but he knew, without hesitation, its source: Magic.

  Nothing else could cause the damage, the cloudless thunder, the fire and death; but magic could rise from many sources. Storytellers filled Aglarond’s long winter evenings with magic battles, invading Thayan wizards, and deaths too horrible to be described.

  The oldest tales were the same way throughout the land: humans and Cha’Tel’Quessir together, defeating common enemies. Since the deaths of the Gray Sisters a century ago, when humans took the Verdigris Throne, the tales had diverged. In the Yuirwood, the Cha’Tel’Quessir were grateful for the Simbul’s defense of the forest, but she could defeat whole armies on her own and, increasingly, the Cha’Tel’Quessir were inclined to let her.

  Let humanity fight its battles with human blood and magic, the tribal elders said; Cha’Tel’Quessir began and ended with the Yuirwood.

  Bro—Ebroin of MightyTree—had never felt closer to his Cha’Tel’Quessir roots than when a length of burning roof beam crashed to the floor between him and his sister. His first thought when he’d carried her outside was to run for the trees and the forest. His second, wiser, thought was that Tay-Fay couldn’t run that far. His third was for the colt, Zandilar’s Dancer, who could.

  He was halfway down the path to the barnyard when a fourth, unwelcome, thought snuck into his overheated mind: the colt—his colt—might be the cause of this magic-born destruction. Although he hadn’t seen Zandilar since the colt was born, the memory of her was always near the surface of his thoughts.

  Come when you’re ready.

  Even now the apparition shimmered behind his eyes. Had Zandilar danced for someone else? Had she withdrawn the invitation and come to claim the colt herself?

  Bro came to a flat-footed stop short of the barnyard. He stared at a fencepost, not knowing what held his attention until his mind snapped and he saw a man’s body—the lower half of it. Something—magic—had sliced through his gut. His upper half was missing, not flung aside or shattered, but gone. The gaping wound was dark and shiny. There was no blood, not on the ground, nor the post.

  The smell of roast meat was in the air.

  The boots were Dent’s.

  Bro’s bones froze. Sh
ivering free of Tay-Fay, he dropped to his knees and retched without result.

  A small, light hand tapped his shoulder: Tay-Fay. Bro prayed to all the gods that she didn’t see what leaned against the fence post. For her sake, he gulped down his terror, raised his head, met her eyes. She pointed away from the fence post, at a man coming toward them.

  By his clothes, Bro marked the man as one of the grain traders who’d been at the mill since new moon. He’d had dark blonde hair then, but he was bald now and his face was dark and blotchy.

  Burns, Bro told himself, though even at this distance he could see that the marks weren’t burns. Scars, then—or tattoos. All the winter tales agreed that the Red Wizards covered their faces with tattoos and covered their tattoos when they came to Aglarond.

  Bad cess, Dent had said when the grain traders arrived a month before Sulalk’s grain was ripe. They were different men than those who’d come in previous years. Their prices were better and they paid in advance. That pleased some of the Sulalkers. They sold their grain while it was still on the stalk, but not Bro’s stepfather.

  I’ll wait, Dent had said. No good comes of selling the grain before it’s reaped, or selling it to strangers. Mark me well, Bro, they’ve got something to hide. The truth will come out.

  And it had, out, for all the good truth had done for Dent. The traders were spies, Thayan wizards, and whatever their purpose in Sulalk, they weren’t leaving witnesses. The man had noticed him and Tay-Fay. They had one choice left: they could run and be blasted from behind, or they could stand and meet death face-on.

  Bro thought of a third choice. A scorched pitchfork lay at Dent’s side. Bro seized it and vaulted over the fence. The wizard raised his hands in a dramatic gesture. Bro’s breath caught in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, only to open them again a moment later, when he found he was still alive.

  Magic didn’t always work. Suddenly, a scared half-elf with a pitchfork had the advantage over a wizard. With the shaft braced against his flank, Bro broke into a run. He pursued the tattooed man across the fenced-in yard, catching him at the stile steps and thrusting the fork’s tines into his back. The wizard died swiftly. His shriek was the first sound Bro heard since he’d clambered across the stream a lifetime ago.

  A swift death wasn’t enough, not for Dent or Sulalk, certainly not for his mother.

  Bro jerked the pitchfork free. When the corpse fell to the ground, he pierced it again and again. He’d have kept at his bloody work until his arms tired, but another blast drove the madness out. Seeing what he’d done, Bro let the pitchfork fall. He ran back to the fence, wiping his hands on his trousers as he went.

  “Tay-Fay! Tay-Fay!” The sounds were barely audible to his ears.

  His sister hadn’t wandered. She stood by the fence post, sprinkling blades of grass over Dent’s legs; the gods alone knew why. Bro didn’t ask, just wiped his hands one last time before extending them toward her. She dropped the last few broken blades and wrapped her fingers around his.

  The barn was dim, as it always had been, but eerie, too, when all Bro could hear was echoes. He cursed himself for leaving the pitchfork behind: Every dusty shadow here might hide another wizard. Movement flickered in the corner of his eye. He pulled his sister close and waited. Heart beats passed; Tay-Fay squirmed. Bro lifted her onto his shoulders.

  His heart sank when he saw the open door to Dancer’s stall, the empty peg where the colt’s knotted halter usually hung. He was too late. The wizards had gotten what they’d come for. Or—bitter thought—Dent had done him a favor and set the colt out to pasture before he died. A hand, not his own, brushed away Bro’s first tear. He tried to set his sister down, but she wouldn’t release his shirt.

  They approached the stall together.

  They weren’t too late.

  Zandilar’s Dancer had squirreled himself into the far corner. The colt’s neck was flat, his ears were flatter against his sweat-soaked head and there were white rings around his eyes. If his ears hadn’t been ringing from the thunder blasts, Bro knew they would have ached from the sound of Dancer’s panicked fury. It wasn’t safe to enter the stall. He called the colt’s name, hoping to calm him but Dancer ignored him.

  Belatedly, Bro realized there was someone else in the stall.

  A pale-haired stranger stood in another corner. The stranger wore dark boots, trousers, and a belted shirt. Men’s clothes such as the grain-traders had worn, but this stranger was a woman whom Bro had never seen before—unless one of the wizards had been better disguised than the rest. She was taller than most women and slender enough to pass for Cha’Tel’Quessir. Indeed, Bro thought she was Cha’Tel’Quessir, until she studied him with eyes that shone with their own milky light.

  She pointed a long forefinger at the space between his eyes.

  Bro had faced an angry wizard already this morning; he wasn’t fool enough to think he’d survive a second encounter. He unwound an unresisting sister from his shoulders and pressed her face against his breast.

  “Ember?”

  He saw the stranger’s lips move, but her voice was magic inside his head. He wondered, briefly, how she knew Shali’s name for him. Not that it mattered. The stranger’s eyes blazed; Bro closed his.

  “Worse than that, wizard.”

  Her voice echoed between Bro’s ears. His knees grew weak and he prayed that he wouldn’t fall before she struck him down.

  “I am the witch-queen of Aglarond and you’ve made your very last mistake.”

  A force like the kick of the mightiest horse knocked Bro sideways. He struck his head on the doorpost. Like Shali, he thought … like Mother … and then he thought nothing at all.

  “Bro! Wake up, Bro! Hurry!”

  Bro woke up; he hadn’t been asleep. He didn’t know what he’d been doing, or where he was, or who the little girl tugging on his sleeve was, not until he took a deep breath. The little girl was his sister. He was on the packed dirt ground outside Dancer’s stall. What he’d been doing—how he’d fallen—that remained a mystery that Bro tried to solve by raising his head. Pain threatened to blast his skull from the inside out. When it subsided, Bro was sitting and the mystery was solved. He remembered everything from the moment he put his feet on the floor this morning to the stranger’s milky eyes and the words she’d left in his head.

  “Hurry, Bro!”

  Tay-Fay retreated a step and, with her hands braced adultlike on her hips, stamped her foot impatiently. A man’s body sprawled behind her, made visible by her retreat. At least Bro thought the mangled corpse had once been a man; it didn’t belong to the pale-haired woman who’d struck him down.

  “Hurry,” Tay-Fay repeated. Her voice was faint, but clear. “She’s getting away. She’s taking your horse.”

  She—the pale-haired woman, the witch-queen of Aglarond—Bro gasped as the morning’s events formed a pattern in his thoughts. The Simbul had come to Sulalk because she knew everything that happened in Aglarond and because everything in Aglarond belonged to her, if she wanted it. The Red Wizards had followed the queen, because they were her sworn enemies and that’s what enemies did: follow each other and fight whenever, wherever they could.

  Wizards didn’t care if a handful of Aglarondan farmers got in their way. Maybe the Simbul had cared. She hadn’t killed him when she’d had the chance. He could almost wish she had.

  “Bro-o-o!” Tay-Fay persisted, turning his name into a melody. “She’s getting away!”

  With Zandilar’s Dancer. Bro had no real hope of separating the Simbul and her prize. As a loyal Aglarondan, he shouldn’t even try, but broken pride and a broken heart would destroy him as surely as her magic if he didn’t. The half-elf rose with his human sister’s help. He wasn’t quite himself; the barn spun dimly before he was ready to follow Tay-Fay toward the light.

  The Simbul had cast a spell on Zandilar’s Dancer. There was no other way the colt would have stayed inside the wide and glowing circle she’d made in the center of the fenced-in yard. But magic
wasn’t enough to keep Dancer calm or convince him that the Simbul was trustworthy. He reared when she tried to reclaim his dangling halter rope.

  Bro watched the colt he’d raised from birth straighten his neck and sink onto his haunches. He knew as surely as he knew his own name that Dancer was going to bolt and that breaking a wizard’s circle was certain death or worse. With waving arms and a banshee wail, Bro raced toward the colt.

  He felt his hair rise like cat’s fur as he leapt over the glowing line. It seemed as if countless hot thorns had pierced his skin, but Bro kept his balance when his feet touched down inside the circle. He lunged for the halter rope then hung on for dear life when the Simbul shouted his name and Zandilar’s Dancer reared for the sun.

  Alassra spread her arms in a desperate attempt to control the spell the boy’s sudden appearance within her circle had disrupted. She almost had the magic in balance when his sister followed him across the line. The spell was ripe. Either it carried them away or it killed them. She seized the boy with her left hand and the girl with her right, then let it fly.

  There were foggy cracks in time and space around them long enough for Alassra to count to ten—twice as long as she considered prudent. There were dangers between here and there that couldn’t be ignored—which meant she didn’t know where they were headed, except it wasn’t Velprintalar. That meant more spells unreeled from her memory to insure that they hovered a moment in breathable air when the fog dissipated.

  The boy, naturally, chose that moment to wrest free, taking the colt with him. They hit the ground running … through faint moonlight … into dark, thick trees. Alassra put a quick stop to their escape with a bit of crystal and a word that froze both in midstride, then she lowered herself and the girl to the ground.

  A tangle of branches hid the sky. “Trees and moonlight! Cold tea and crumpets! Where are we? When are we?”

  A moment’s concentration and, stars or no stars, the Simbul had one answer: The Yuirwood. The forest’s ancient magic pressed against all her senses. The trees tolerated her presence among them; they did not welcome her. Respectfully, Alassra made herself small and inconspicuous, though not before she cast one last spell above the living canopy. The stars of summer were in the sky, each one subtly displaced.