"Try to understand, Ebroin," Alassra said coldly, because cold sometimes worked best with difficult people—or so Elminster claimed.
She bent down to touch his arm. He flinched, but the Simbul's reflexes were lightning fast, and she'd spilled a vial of healing unguent on his skin before he got away. With a pale aura shimmering around him, the time was ripe for brutal honesty.
"Your life has been seized by forces beyond your control, Ebroin. It will never be the same as it was or would have been. Blame me, if you must, though the true fault lies in Thay's malice. They will feel my wrath for this, I promise you. But above all, don't blame yourself. You hadn't the power to shape this day, and you haven't the strength to bear responsibility for it." The spell's aura faded. Bro's bones and flesh were whole again. His mind and spirit were another matter. Alassra's grimoires contained spells to lift a man's emotional burdens though a hundred years had passed since she'd cast even one of them. Magic couldn't salve a guilty conscience, not without leaving something much worse in its place.
"Are you ready to get on with your life?"
Bro planted one foot beside the other and pushed himself cautiously upright, as if he didn't trust the power of magic to restore him. His fingers probed his flank; then he brushed the back of his hand across his mouth. Flakes of dried blood fell away. The lips beneath were whole and unswollen.
"I hate you," Bro swore softly, but stayed where he was. He swept tangled hair away from his eyes and studied their surroundings as if he hadn't noticed them before. His hands shriveled into fists when he saw the horse and his sister both sprawled on the moonlit ground. "What—?"
The Simbul spun her staff, aiming the metal-wrapped butt squarely at his heart before he could take a stride toward them or her. "They're resting—until we settle matters between us. Have we settled matters between us?"
Bro shook his head. "I can't. Don't hurt them, please? It's not their fault."
Alassra lowered her staff. "I won't—"
But before she could finish her assurances an angry yowl broke through the trees to her right. Alassra couldn't match the sound to any creature she knew, in itself a cause for concern. Gut instinct advised that it was large, predatory, and on the prowl.
"Behind me!" the Simbul ordered as she quenched the light spell.
Bro came to Alassra's side and would have gotten in front of her if she hadn't grabbed his arm.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"I don't know. Be quiet, and get behind me!"
He stayed put and Alassra let him be, lest he do something more foolish. Fingerlike clouds reached across the Yuirwood, making shadows with the moonlight. The breeze had returned, stirring treetops, adding shadows to shadows and making it difficult to hear the small sounds Alassra needed to hear. The purely human senses she'd inherited from her father were strained to their utmost and failing.
Alassra withdrew a delicate knife from a sheath strapped above her wrist. She kissed the blade once then squeezed it within her fist.
The knife was a gift from her younger sister, Qilue Eresseae, who'd been born drow, not human, and who was Chosen by both Mystra and the drow goddess, Eilistraee. The elven metal with its swirling patterns was a marvel that never required sharpening. Its edge, however, was the least of its virtues. Awakened by a sister's kiss and a taste of her blood, the knife bestowed elven senses until the wound closed.
In a heartbeat, Alassra saw the Yuirwood with the fire-etched sight of those who dwelt in the Underdark. Shadows gave way to glowing tree trunks and flickering leaves. Bro, when she glanced toward him, was the image of his milk-name, Ember. The knife's effect on Alassra's other senses was less profound. Human ears might have heard twigs snapping in the distance, but not as clearly as an elf's ... or half-elf's. Bro surged forward. Alassra dropped the knife. She seized his sleeve with her bleeding hand.
"Don't be a fool!"
His eyes widened and disappeared—a trick of elven sight where warmth was brightness and eyes were both cool and dark—but he held his ground until the creature yowled again. It was closer now and there was no mistaking its size or intent: something resembling a tall torch flickered in the trees. A spark of sense finally kindled in Bro's thoughts: He went to ground behind his queen.
Alassra allowed herself a smile then turned her attention back to the forest. The creature concealed its shape among the trees, either the natural canniness of a predatory animal or the far-more-dangerous mark of true intelligence. As before, Alassra touched her memorized spells and the gifts Mystra gave her Chosen.
The Chosen weren't indestructible—Alassra's eldest sister had died defending Shadowdale from a maddened dragon only a few years ago. Sylune willingly sacrificed her life; she'd had the power to save herself. Her choice had saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of Shadowdale-men's lives when there was no other way to save them, and Sylune hadn't died an ordinary death: She'd become a spectral harper, learning to make new kinds of music. Even so, Alassra hadn't made peace with her sister's sacrifice. She wasn't about to make a similar choice, not for two children, however good and innocent, and an odd-colored horse.
"Just go away," she whispered to the creature in the trees. There was magic in her voice, a simple cantrip, effective with animals and small children. "There's nothing here for you."
Another yowl confirmed Alassra's worst fears: the creature had the wit to perceive magic. For a moment she saw it striding manlike among the trees with a broad, powerful trunk, long, rooty fingers, and burning eyes. She couldn't yet give it a name, but it had roused a memory. Rashemaar witches, each with a masked face, crowded Alassra's thoughts.
The forest is not ours, they reminded her. The forest was here before us and must be here when we are gone. The forest has had its own protector from the beginning. Woe betide us, if we fail to protect the forest.
Every day, then and now, the witches left offerings for the Old Man, the forest's first and most powerful protector. Alassra's guardians had never seen the Old Man and prayed they never would, but they described him as a giant, both manlike and treelike. Aside from size—the creature before her was no giant—it and the Old Man seemed the same.
As a child Alassra had pestered her guardians: Did the Old Man protect every forest in Faerun, or only theirs? If he protected every forest, how did he get from one forest to another? If he protected only theirs, was every other forest unprotected? The witches had an answer for her questions: hours and hours of tedious labor carding wool or churning butter until she'd learned to keep her curiosity to herself.
Old questions returned. The Cha'Tel'Quessir were the Yuirwood's living protectors, but the half- elves weren't the first. Full-blooded elves had dwelt in the forest before them and the elves' own mythology held that another world, far removed from Abeir-toril, was their birth-home.
The creature yowled again. He circled their clearing. Every few steps he swung his arms and a tree shattered as if lightning-struck. According to the stories Alassra remembered, when the Old Man appeared, uprooting and shattering the trees he otherwise protected, the witches brewed special offerings of herbs and honey, then the eldest witch, the wisest and most revered of their never-large number, would take the offering into the forest, a journey from which she never returned.
"Nonsense," the Simbul muttered. She'd concede that offerings and sacrifices had their place, but only after a more direct approach had been tried and failed. "We mean no harm to you or your forest," she shouted, and kindled her own lightning.
"It's not listening," Bro advised from last year's crumbled leaves.
"You know what it is?"
He might. He was Cha'Tel'Quessir, and even those who served her loyally kept secrets from humans.
"No. I just... I just know it's not listening. I hear it not listening."
A talent for misdirecting teleport spells and hearing a silence. Ebroin would bear closer examination when this was over. Until then ...
"If it's not listening, then we'll have to get its attention."
The Simbul extended her arm. The air burned with a sour smell. Her hair whipped around her, although there was no wind. In the lull between two heartbeats, lightning unfurled from her fingertips, loud enough to deafen, bright enough to blind her drow-gift senses.
Alassra recovered quickly. She watched the creature beat its breast, heard it shake the forest with a roar. Then it raised its arms in a gesture she knew all too well. Without hesitation, she loosed another spelclass="underline" not lightning, but a gout of storm-tossed water that swerved between the trees. In other times, other places, Alassra had destroyed a stone fortress with a similar spell. She expected less in the Yuirwood, where the forest's own magic dampened great spells, and was satisfied when the watery fist pelted the creature solidly in the chest, fizzling its spell, and driving it into the night.
Bro expressed his admiration with an awestruck gasp.
"Can I trust you now, Ebroin?" she asked. "It will come back, maybe with its friends and relations. We don't have much time."
Suddenly they had much less time, or much more. The creature had been part of the mischance that had brought them to this wayward time. Its departure untied a magical mooring rope, and now they were adrift in currents between past and future.
It was a new experience for the Simbuclass="underline" travel spells lifted a person above the temporal stream and blocked awareness of time's passage. If she'd been alone, she would have savored the novelty, even the danger. But she wasn't alone. Kneeling down, Alassra got one hand on Bro's arm and laid her other
arm across the colt's neck.
"Grab your sister! Don't let go!" she commanded, and this time Bro obeyed.
The colt and the little girl both shed her spells when the hand-to-hand link was complete. The girl shrieked and the colt lurched awkwardly to its feet. The Simbul dropped her staff—it was bound to her by a score of spells and would stay with her through any errant magic—and seized the colt's halter.