The Simbul_s Gift

Mythrell'aa raised her arms above her head. The window wards crackled with sickly green light behind her.

"I care not a whit's finger for your safety, Vazurmu. Didn't I tell you to follow the bitch? Didn't I tell you to be my eyes and ears? What good are eyes and ears in a dead village? If you'd done what I told you to do, even if you'd died in the forest, your shade would be there to tell me what had happened! What happened to the boy? Where's the horse? Am I to believe that the Great Bitch rescued a girl-child and left a damned horse behind?"

"Mighty Zul-!"

Vazurmu's plea for mercy was cut short as the serpentine wreath tattooed above Mythrell'aa's hairless brow glowed. Illusion's alliance with Szass Tam had given Mythrell'aa-among other things-an awesome and very private array of necromantic magic, ripe for casting. From the tattoo, the light leapt to Mythrell'aa's hands and from her hands it narrowed to a dagger's point within the incense image. There was a flash bright enough to blind a zulkir.

The brazier clattered across the floor, striking Lailomun, who roused from his stupor. His eyes had been shielded in the crook of his arm. He could see clearly and, for the first time in memory, he remembered more than the distant past, more than the horrifying moment when he realized the woman waiting for him was not Alassra.

This time Lailomun remembered the brazier, the room, Mythrell'aa herself, and the words she taunted him with. He was a quick-witted man with a gift for seeing the shortest path. While the zulkir blinked and rubbed her eyes, Lailomun pieced together what he could. Mythrell'aa, his master in magic and first lover, had crippled his memory. She'd left him unable to recall recent events. He lived in isolated slices of time with no ability to plan where he'd go next or remember what had gone before.

How many slices? The question elbowed into his thoughts; he shoved it out again. How long, how many didn't matter. In his current condition, he couldn't hope to thwart, much less defeat a zulkir. In another moment she'd be able to see; his torment would begin again-and knowing that he, himself, was a Red Wizard of Thay, Lailomun knew that it was mercy, not tragedy, if he could not remember what happened to him. Except…

In his one memory, Mythrell'aa had said Alassra had a child. She'd tried to make him believe the child wasn't his, because legitimacy was important to Red Wizards. A poker lay beside him. It had fallen with the brazier and remained to sear his skin when he pressed it against his forearm.

You have a child, Lailomun told himself as he made a second, curving mark and a third that curved the other way. A part of you lives free. He knew he wouldn't remember but perhaps, if Mythrell'aa didn't take away the scars, he'd look down at his arm each time he awakened and read the message there, written in a code he'd devised when he was an apprentice with many spells to learn.

"Lailomun! Stop that. You're hurting yourself." Mythrell'aa wrenched the poker from her pet's hands.

Their eyes met at close range. It seemed to Mythrell'aa that there was something more in his expression, something like hope. She seized his cheek, digging her enameled nails into his flesh.

"What are you thinking, Lailomun? What plan have you hatched? Nothing will come of it, my pet. You can't remember anything from one hour to the next. I've had you here for more than a hundred years and I'll have you for another hundred before I'll let you die. There's nothing you can do, my pet, nothing."

The light that had glimmered briefly in his eyes was extinguished.

8

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Near dawn, the fifteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Ba

The moon set into the Yuirwood treetops, leaving Bro in deep shadows with only Zandilar's Dancer for company. The colt nibbled forest grass contentedly from the end of the lead rope. Bro had anchored the rope beneath his heel as he sat with his back against a tree trunk, too weary to sleep, too numbed to think.

A great owl roosted in the branches above him. Bro greeted the night hunter with proper Cha'Tel'Quessir deference. It examined him with gold-glowing eyes, hooted sharply, and fluffed its feathers until it seemed twice as large as before.

"Don't leave," Bro whispered when it batted its wings.

He heard the hollow ache in his voice. Ashamed by what he took for weakness in a man's character-he couldn't imagine his father or stepfather on the verge of the childish tears that threatened his eyes-Bro hung his head, hiding from the owl's judgment. He closed his eyes when he heard the soft whump of its wings. Long moments passed, each bitter and burning, before he found the courage to look up again.

The owl had moved to another branch, closer to the trunk, closer to the ground and him. Relief freed more tears. Bro wiped his eyes until both sleeves were damp and useless, then he stared up at the lightening sky and let his tears flow unhindered.

Zandilar's Dancer folded his legs for a nap as the lavenders of dawn yielded to the brighter colors of sunrise. Bro tried to follow the colt's example but each time he closed his eyes, he found flames and death. Think of pleasant things before you close your eyes, Shali had said in the days after Rizcarn's death. Fawns and flowers for springtime, summer berries, autumn leaves, and a warm hearth in winter. Bro thought of his mother, not her advice. Sleep was farther away than ever.

Dawn became a gray-clouded morning, unseasonably cool but damp and clinging. Dent would call it a day when he worked twice as hard to do half as much…

More numb tears for a man he hadn't loved. Disgusted, Bro threw his shoulders back, cracking his head on the tree trunk. The collision distracted him; he repeated the act until its sheer stupidity made him stop.

His stomach growled; he hadn't eaten since supper a day ago. Shali had made bread soup and simmered it beneath a thick cheese crust. Her son's mouth watered, then his eyes: There'd be no more bread soup, with or without cheese. No more Midwinter puddings laced with nuts and bits of dried fruit. No more dumplings. No more sausage. No more of any of his favorite meals, nor any of the lumpy vegetable porridges in their various shades of green, tan, and orange that he'd never liked.

He felt like a fool, because he was. He felt alone, because he was, as he hadn't been after his father's death. Rizcarn had roamed the forest alone, leaving his wife and son behind. Bro's Yuirwood was a tiny cottage on the edge of the MightyTree community, but still very much a part of it, with a steady stream of aunts, uncles, cousins, and lesser kin looking out for Shali and him whenever his father was gone. He wouldn't have been alone if Shali hadn't taken him out of the Yuirwood.

In Sulalk, Bro had dreamed of returning to the Yuirwood, imagining that he'd follow his father's restless footsteps, when what he truly remembered, truly missed was the company of MightyTree.

"I want to go home," Bro said aloud, because sound broke the isolation.

Home is gone, his thoughts answered.

"I want what I had."

It's gone, forever.

Bro sobbed loudly, waking Dancer. The colt stood over him, licking the salt from his cheeks. Bro knotted his fingers behind Dancer's ears and let the colt help him to his feet. There were twigs and leaves in the colt's mane. For a few tearless moments Bro busied himself with grooming, until he found a tangle that wouldn't yield to finger pressure. He wished for the curry-comb he'd made last winter and Dent's shears, both of which were kept in the barn…

Bro struggled to put anger in front of grief. He trained his thoughts on the Simbul. "All gods curse on her. This is her fault!"

But neither the curse nor the anger were strong enough to stanch his tears. He blamed Aglarond's queen and wanted her, too: The Simbul had said she would return and of everyone, she was the only one who could keep her word.