12
The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Sundown, the fifteenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)
Bro awoke at sundown, thinking it was dawn, thinking he'd gone to sleep with a stomach full of bad dreams. Then his bed bent beneath him, and he realized he wasn't in bed at all, but clinging to a far-too-slender branch. Immediately, he remembered Sulalk and that he was alone. Those grim memories kept their distance, giving him space to remember how he'd wound up in the young branches of a tall tree.
A very tall tree, once Bro had made the nearly fatal mistake of looking down.
He clamped his arms tight against the bark, realized he was naked, too, and considered whether it might not be easier if he let himself fall. When a breeze convinced him that he wasn't ready to die, Bro wriggled backward, one rasping branch at a time. The wood beneath him had grown thick enough to support him securely before he'd pieced events together.
He'd fallen afoul of the seelie. The Simbul's knife had protected him from their nuisance spells while he held it. When he'd finally dropped it, the infuriated creatures had struck hard. Bro blushed thinking of the song he'd sung and the foolish dance, but mostly he remembered Dancer trying to run on a bear's hindquarters. Then they'd turned him into a squirrel-that's how he'd wound up in the tree-and compounded their mischief with a sleep spell.
But what about Zandilar's Dancer? Bears couldn't climb trees as well as squirrels, but horses couldn't climb down at all. Bro almost cursed the seelie, then, but swallowed the thought. Cha'Tel'Quessir legend whispered of two seelie races, the mischievous ones who made folk act like fools and their dark cousins who'd hound a man to his death. He thought he'd encountered the mischievous race and didn't want to risk attracting the other one with a curse.
When he'd been a squirrel, it seemed that he'd run forever between the place where the spell struck and the tree. Returned to his natural form, Bro could see the Simbul's boots not more than twenty paces away. His clothes were there, too. By what little he knew of magic, when a wizard transformed a person, his clothes were supposed to get transformed, too. But the Cha'Tel'Quessir elders always said that magic was different in the Yuirwood.
He shook each garment thoroughly before pulling it on, expecting to find seelie mischief in each sleeve or trouser leg, but they'd left no surprises behind. The cloth, though, remained damp from the afternoon storm. It felt dead and stuck to his skin. He shivered uncontrollably as he laced up the boots-that was mostly hunger.
It was almost two days since he'd eaten a substantial meal; another two and he'd be starving. He stared at the silver hair tied around his wrist. It had transformed with him. Maybe the Simbul hadn't thought to look in the trees. Maybe she couldn't find that bit of herself when it was lost within squirrel fur.
Maybe she hadn't come at all.
Bro could imagine someone leaving soggy boots behind, but the knife was right where he'd dropped it, and he couldn't imagine anyone, even a queen, leaving a good steel blade to rust in the forest. His heart hurt from too much loss, too much disappointment. His arm hurt, too, where the seelie barbs had pierced it, and his thumb was warm to the touch. Pain shot up his forearm to his elbow when he bent it. Poison, Bro reckoned, and hoped it wasn't strong enough to make him sick. Come morning he'd look for a willow tree and make a poultice from its bark.
Until morning, he'd look for Zandilar's Dancer. In Sulalk, Bro had patiently trained the colt to recognize his name and come when he heard it. Sulalk was another world, a world with pastures, fences and bright orange carrots from Shali's garden to reward the colt when he'd mastered a lesson.
"Dancer! Dancer, come!"
Damp leaves swallowed Bro's words. He sounded young, frightened, more apt to attract a bear than a colt. A bear or something worse. Seelie weren't the worst that lived in the Yuirwood. There were wolf packs, panthers, and creatures every bit as magical as the seelie, but a hundred times larger and meaner. Bro didn't think the Simbul's knife would help him against a greenhag, if he met one. The danger was small. The Yuirwood recognized the Cha'Tel'Quessir as rightful guardians, and in turn the trees sheltered the Cha'Tel'Quessir from their enemies.
The forest should recognize him, despite his woven-cloth farmers' clothing. The Simbul's boots had almost certainly been made by a Cha'Tel'Quessir craftsman. They were soft, yet sturdy; the way his boots hadn't been since Shali led him out of the forest. They belonged in the forest, as he belonged. But just to be sure, Bro reached inside his shirt and pulled out a leather thong, which also had transformed with him when the seelie turned him into a squirrel. Carved beads slid along the leather. Four of them told his story: a son, recognized by his mother's MightyTree kin and his father's GoldenMoss folk, old enough to take part in the men's rituals, but-lacking a clear-stone bead-not yet a man. Bro's fifth and final bead, on the shadow side of GoldenMoss, was dark in the moonlight. His mother's father had given him that bead the day they buried Rizcarn, because the no-father bead had to come from a man, and no men from GoldenMoss had come to bury Rizcarn.
Bro scarcely knew his father's kin. Rizcarn never spoke of them, except to say that his parents weren't alive and that GoldenMoss was rooted in a distant part of the Yuirwood. Maybe not so distant now, considering that Bro didn't know where he was. He might find his father's tree-family before he found his mother's, but when Bro imagined the Cha'Tel'Quessir, he was looking for familiar faces. When he found MightyTree he'd sit down between his grandparents and tell them what had happened in Sulalk. He'd weep, but he wouldn't be alone.
They couldn't bury Shali, but they'd bury her beads-Bro slapped the pouch resting against his thigh, assuring himself that the seelie hadn't stolen them. His grandfather would give him a second black bead. He'd be an orphan for the rest of his life, but he wouldn't be alone.
The tears Bro hadn't shed when he awoke in the tree overwhelmed him, but each time he wept, it hurt a little less because Shali was a little further away. He swiped his eyes on a damp sleeve and called the colt again, wanting a companion more than he worried about predators.
A crescent moon had risen above the trees. In a clear sky, it shed sufficient light on the forest floor for half-elf eyes to follow a trail, once he dusted off the tracking lessons he'd had from his uncles and cousins. On his hands and knees in the soggy mulch, Bro examined the ground where he'd last seen the colt. His stomach soured when he found the incongruous mating of hooves and claws. At least there was no doubt he'd found the right trail.
Broken branches and muddy streaks on bare ground marked where Dancer had fallen on his mismatched legs. Bro searched for blood, but every leaf and twig glistened moistly in the moonlight. One place, where the colt seemed to have had trouble regaining his feet, a sapling had been broken off. Using the Simbul's knife, Bro stripped the smaller branches and made himself a staff.
His confidence rose with a big stick in his hand. He moved faster, breaking into a run at the end when he saw a familiar shape among the trees. The colt raised his head before Bro called his name and met him halfway, nudging hands and sleeves in search of carrots. Bro ran his hands along the colt's neck and back, then down each leg. Except for mud and clinging leaves, the colt seemed unharmed by the seelie spells. Even the braided halter and its lead rope were intact. With the rope firmly in hand, Bro wrapped his arms around the colt's filthy neck. He'd succumbed to another round of tears when he heard a familiar, yet terrifying, sound.
"Never fight with the seelie, son."
Bro backed slowly away from Dancer. He'd dropped his sapling staff, but he had the Simbul's knife and withdrew it from its sheath while he scanned the trees for the voice's source.