Lynn Abbey - The Nobles 06 - The Simbul's Gift

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The Simbul’s Gift

Book 6 of the Nobles series

A Forgotten Realms novel

by Lynn Abbey

A ProofPack Release

Proofed and formatted by BW-SciFi

Ebook version 1.0

Release Date: March, 15th, 2005

For a heartbeat, Bro believed he'd lost something more precious than his mother's love. Then, with

the knife hilt stinging his palm, he saw danger for him and the colt he'd raised. He saw, as well, that no

matter what he did, the colt was doomed: Zandilar would have Dancer, had always had him. Bro found

the strength to release the knife and wrap his arms around a trusting neck, to hide his face in a coarse,

black mane.

"Good-bye," he whispered, not a word he'd trained the colt to understand.

Then, with a last pat, he offered the rope to Zandilar who had no use for it. Her mist-made form

dissolved around the colt, obscuring him, consuming him, drawing him back into the small dark hole.

THE SIMBUL'S GIFT

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or

other unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express

written permission of TSR, Inc.

Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Random House, Inc. and in Canada by Random

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Distributed to the hobby, toy, and comic trade in the United States and Canada by regional

distributors.

Distributed worldwide by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and regional distributors.

Cover art by Todd Lockwood.

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All TSR characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned by

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TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

First Printing: October 1997

Printed in the United States of America.

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From the Concise History of the Chosen Seven written by Cirian,

Master Chronicler at Candlekeep, in the Year of the Blue Flame.

Filed—misfiled—by Mehgrin, apprentice at Candlekeep,

on a dreary day when she had a headache.

The queen of Aglarond, called the Simbul and the witch-queen and many, many other, less

complimentary names, is, in fact, Alassra Shentrantra, sixth of The Seven Chosen Sisters. The

circumstances of her birth in Neverwinter in the Year of the Yearning are recorded elsewhere. Suffice

to say, she was not yet two years of age when her mother, Elue Shundar, died and her father, Dornal,

vanished from her life. The mage Elminster entrusted her to the Witches of Rashemen for her

upbringing, telling the witches that Alassra was an orphan and without siblings.

Neither statement was true, but the witches, trusting Elminster, believed him, and Alassra grew up

believing the witches.

Alassra left Rashemen at the age of sixteen, leaving neither roots nor regrets. For decades she

roamed Faerun in search of magic. She stopped wherever there was something to learn, and stayed

only until she had mastered it. Deep in a bat-ridden cave, while she was searching for the living pearls

of Mysotic, Alassra Shentrantra discovered that though she was human and vulnerable to death, she

did not age as other humans did—could not age as they did.

With the pearls in her purse, Alassra returned to Rashemen, hoping to learn more about her origins.

But the witches who had raised her were dead, their successors ignorant, and the Vremyonni seers

trembled when she approached them in the Running Rocks. Never one to bear frustration lightly, even

in her youth, Alassra took her curiosity to the Outer Planes, visiting places that no human before her

had seen, much less survived. She gathered spells like apples. She became a master of magic, but she

learned nothing about herself.

Over the next four and a half centuries, the unaging Alassra Shentrantra lived three-score lives,

most as a human woman, but sometimes as a man and sometimes within another race's skin. On

occasion, she lived in obscurity, but many of her disguised lives are remembered in song and legend.

By her own accounts, given to the monks here at Candlekeep during her rare visits, she enjoyed her

notoriety and was pleased by the number and quality of her enemies. Beneath her disguise, she'd lost

much of her humanity, replacing it with the dross of learning and magic.

We foresaw a loneliness that would consume her and guessed that her lonely spirit would welcome

oblivion when it arrived.

Then, when we and she least expected it, the Sixth-of-the-Seven fell in love. Not for the first time,

of course. Alassra took and discarded lovers in all of her disguises, but it was different when Lailomun

Zerad strode into her life.

Lailomun was a mage, a candle mage compared to Alassra's firestorm. But it was danger, not

magic that held them together and led Alassra Shentrantra to reveal herself for the first time, and

completely, to another. Now Zerad was an initiate of a magic school that forbade association, intimate

or otherwise, with free-lance wizards such as Alassra Shentrantra. More specifically, Zerad's mentor

was a woman who tolerated no rivals, intimate or otherwise. She owned her students outright and

would sooner have destroyed a man than surrender him to another.

The scent of danger surrounded them both during the two years they trysted in secret. Then,

Lailomun's deceit was uncovered.

The next time Alassra arrived at their bolt-hole, she found a rose-thorn branch waiting on her

lover's pillow. She grieved—of that there is no doubt—but her grief was less than her need for

vengeance. Alassra was not yet Chosen; she is the Sixth of the Seven, but she is the first with

spellcraft. Beyond doubt, she could have crushed Lailomun's mentor. With a little care and planning,

her spells could have destroyed his homeland. And, at that time, her conscience would have raised no

objections to the loss of innocent lives.

The time had come for Alassra Shentrantra to learn that her conscience had never belonged to her.

The Seven had been marked before birth by the goddess Mystra. Their immortality and their

consciences belonged to her.

Mystra confronted Alassra in the planes where she gathered the reagents for her most cataclysmic

spells. The confrontation lasted a month and in the end, the goddess prevailed. Alassra left the planes

as one of the Chosen. She was as wroth as she'd been when she found the rose-thorn branch, but many

times wiser.

Not long after that fateful encounter in the planes, Alassra Shentrantra arrived in Aglarond,

southwest of Rashemen, due west of Thay where dwell the Red Wizards, longtime enemies of

Alassra's one-time guardians and—not at all coincidentally—home to Lailomun's mentor. Without

revealing her name—any of her names—the Sixth-of-the-Seven offered herself as an apprentice to

Ilione, sister of Halacar, King of Aglarond at that time, though Ilione knew no magic that Alassra

hadn't known for at least a century.

As the years passed, Alassra buried her love for Lailomun and raised it up again in the simple folk

of Aglarond. The vengeance Mystra had forbidden became the just defense of her new homeland.

Time and time again, Alassra directed her fury into the land of Thay and against the corrupt Red

Wizards who rule there. At Ilione's suggestion, King Halacar dubbed the nameless apprentice, the

Simbul, a meaningless title, so far as I have been able to determine, but one well-respected in Aglarond

where it became synonymous with a tall, silver-haired woman, with lightning eyes and a temper to

match.

Emboldened by his sister's fierce apprentice, King Halacar launched Aglarond's small army against

the Red Wizards, but, for all her magic, the Simbul was not yet a warrior and certainly not a competent

army commander. The Aglarondans barely avoided a rout. The people lost faith in their king; the king

lost faith in his sister and the Simbul. For a year the very air of Aglarond was rank with anarchy and

treason, until the king died, poisoned, it was said, and probably by Thayan hands—though no one

looked hard for the culprits.

Ilione succeeded her brother on Aglarond's Verdigris Throne. She restored order and righteousness

throughout her kingdom, as is recorded in many other chronicles. She built Aglarond's first navy and

rebuilt its army, but kept it home. Throughout Ilione's sixty-year reign, her apprentice, the Simbul,

oversaw Aglarond's borders and—sometimes with the army's aid but more often alone—kept them

secure from Thayan incursion.

Before she died, Queen Ilione named the Simbul as her heir. By then, of course, the Aglarondans

knew the Simbul was no ordinary human woman, no ordinary wizard. No noble family nor merchant

faction was foolish enough to object to the Simbul's coronation in the Year of the Watching Cold.

For seven years now, Alassra Shentrantra has ruled as the Simbul. She is at best respected, more

generally feared, and only rarely loved by those around her. She keeps the Red Wizards out of

Aglarond, and for that she commands her realm's undivided loyalty.

Notes for an examination,

Written by Mehgrin, apprentice at Candlekeep,

placed, by accident, in Cirian's Concise History

and filed with it

(The day was very dreary, and the headache very bad)

Zandilar: a goddess, maybe, called into being in the Yuirwood a long time ago by humans who

lived in crude lakeside huts and hunted with stone-tipped spears. The only depictions of her from that

time show her either naked and dancing or running with animals—usually horses—while hunters

throw spears. (Does this mean that there were two Zandilars?)

When the Tel'Quessir came to Faerun, a tribe of the Sy-Tel'Quessir took the Yuirwood for their

own. They were stronger and smarter than the humans; they had their own gods, who were stronger

and smarter than gods like Zandilar. The humans disappeared from the Yuirwood after the Sy-

Tel'Quessir arrived, but their Seldarine gods absorbed Zandilar and the other old human gods instead

of driving them out.

According to the Sy-Tel'Quessir, there was only one Zandilar and she was always dancing. They

knew her as the goddess of physical passion and romance, and when they depicted her, they depicted

her with a cat, not a horse, because cats are like that. Probably she was a popular goddess, but not an

important one, and the other Tel'Quessir never adopted her or any of the other gods the Sy-Tel'Quessir

worshiped in the Yuirwood.

Once the Sy-Tel'Quessir were in the Yuirwood, nothing changed, for a very long time. Then the

Yuirwood Sy-Tel'Quessir got careless and got tangled in wars with goblin-kind and the drow. They

drew their gods into the wars with them, and even though they won the wars and kept the Yuirwood,

they lost, too, because they and their gods had done bad things in order to win.

So the Sy-Tel'Quessir of the Yuirwood began to forget things. They began to die. When humans

came back to the Yuirwood, there weren't many Yuir elves left, and they'd forgotten most everything

that had ever been important to them, including their gods. Other elves remembered the Seldarine, but

only the Yuir elves had ever known about Zandilar, Relkath, Magnar and the other old human gods.

Now, no one knows anything about Zandilar. The Candlekeep mentors say she's missing or that

she's become a part of the forest. But they don't know. No one knows what's happened to her, why she

vanished, or whether she could come back.

I think she could come back, if the Cha'Tel'Quessir who live in the Yuirwood now wanted her and

the other old gods, but maybe they shouldn't try too hard. Maybe Zandilar's been gone too long.

Maybe she wouldn't be a goddess of passion and romance when she came back.

The village of Sulalk, in Aglarond

Eight days after Greengrass, The Year of the Staff (1366DR)

It was a warm spring morning. Trees were cloaked in flowers. The grass had greened with the

promise of rich forage for the mothers of the lambs, calves, and colts born each night in farmyard

birthing sheds.

Bro wanted to stretch out on the ground and nap until noon. No matter how beautiful the days, it

was the nature of babies to be born at night, and it was the duty of farmers and farmer's stepsons to sit

in the birthing shed. Bro had been vigilant for six nights' running, through a steady stream of births, all

but one of which had been successful.

A good spring, so far, with good trade even for the stillborn lamb whose tender hide would make a

fine pair of gloves for some lady in the royal city, Velprintalar. Dyed and embellished with jewels and

silks, the lamb's hide might find its way onto the queen's hands, though thoughts of Aglarond's mighty

Simbul fled Bro's mind as fast as they occurred. In Sulalk, on the Yuirwood's verge, Aglarond's

seacoast capital was a world, not a week, away.

Adentir, Bro's human stepfather, paid the queen's tithes and abided by her laws, which were,

fortunately, rooted in common sense and easily obeyed. Dent raised a glass in the queen's name at

festival times and never mentioned her otherwise. For Bro, who'd lived his first twelve years among

his own kind, the Cha'Tel'Quessir half-elves of the Yuirwood, the Simbul was the living emblem of an

uneasy truce between them and the world outside—the world in which Bro had lived since his father's

death.

A hand touched Bro's shoulder. With it came the scents of pine bark and moss that were Shali, his

mother, and the Yuirwood. But the forest was memory and the bowl she offered was filled with whey-

soaked grain.

"Hungry, Ember?"

She called him by his boyhood name. Everyone else called him Bro, a crude shortening of Ebroin

because, deep in their guts, humans remained averse to Cha'Tel'Quessir names and, in his own soul,

Bro knew he hadn't yet made Ebroin his own true name.

More tired than hungry, Bro set aside the collection of half-braided thongs that would, when he was

clearheaded, become a halter for a newborn foal. He accepted the bowl.

"Maybe tonight." Shali ran a hand through his hair, leaving his ears exposed to the sunlight.

"Maybe." Bro tossed his head, returning his hair to its customary ears-and-face-hiding disorder.

He watched his mother flinch and felt shame. Half-elves weren't a race like their elf or human

forebearers. First-generation half-elves took after their elven and human parents equally, but among

the Cha'Tel'Quessir, family resemblance was a chancy thing. It wasn't Shali's fault that her skin was

human-fair and her ears were small and rounded while he was forest-shadowed to the tips of his very

elven ears. No more than it had been her fault that Rizcarn had broken his neck falling out of a tree

he'd climbed a thousand times. Shali had loved Rizcarn in a way Bro couldn't begin to imagine; she'd

left the Yuirwood because she couldn't bear her memories and couldn't die, either—because she had a

son she'd had to finish raising.

In the five years since Rizcarn's death, Shali had become a stranger dressed in layers of woven

cloth, a kerchief bound over hair and ears alike. She'd never go back to the trees; they both knew that,

just as they both knew he would. The knowledge ached between them.

"Adentir says the foal will be yours, if it's a colt." Shali gave a brittle laugh. The Cha'Tel'Quessir

weren't horse-folk. A colt wouldn't keep Bro out of the Yuirwood.

"I'll hold him to his word," Bro replied.

She smiled a thin-lipped half-smile, the only smile Bro saw anymore.

"He's not bad," Bro said awkwardly, speaking words that were, and were not, the truth.

Adentir was human. Everyone in Sulalk was human, except for Bro and Shali. Even Tay-Fay, his

half-sister, was human. That was the way of things for the Cha'Tel'Quessir: If a half-elf mated with an

elf or human, their children belonged to the full-blooded world. The Cha'Tel'Quessir way of life could

vanish in a generation.

Bro didn't blame his stepfather. Human ways were ideal for humans, elf ways were ideal for elves,

but Cha'Tel'Quessir had to resist both, if they valued themselves.

"He's been good to me, Ember. He understands. Rizcarn—"

Bro gagged down another spoonful of the cold porridge. He hated it when his mother talked about

his father, expecting him to take Rizcarn's part. He'd loved his father, missed him and mourned him,

but when push came to shove, he couldn't—didn't want to—replace Rizcarn.

"Dent says it'll take two years at least to train a colt," he muttered. "Says we'll do it together. Says

he'll show me how it's done. He's got good hands—" he paused, leaving the words, for a human,

unsaid.

"A tree doesn't grow until a seed's been planted, Ember. A lot can happen in two years." Shali

tucked Bro's hair behind his ears again. "If it's a colt."

And if the mare foaled a filly, instead? Bro closed his eyes. A lot would happen in two years, no

matter what happened after they led the mare into the birthing shed. In two years he'd be back in the

Yuirwood; he couldn't—didn't want to—imagine being anywhere else.

"A pretty girl might catch your eye."

Bro flinched. Shame burned for a second time, then his anger flared: He'd never look at a human

woman. Never. And Shali knew it. She looked at the sky; they were each alone and miserable.

"Momma! Momma! Bro!"

A child's voice broke the silence. Bro and Shali glanced toward the path where Tay-Fay ran as fast

as four-year-old legs could carry her. She stumbled as she stopped and avoided a fall only by lunging

for Bro's knees. The bowl speckled all three of them with cold porridge and laughter. Bro shook his

head dramatically, then swung his sister into his lap.

"What's the matter, Little Leaf?"

Her true name was Taefaeli—Light-through-the-Leaves—a Cha'Tel'Quessir name: Adentir did

understand, better than Rizcarn would have understood were the situation reversed. But Taefaeli knew

nothing of the forest. She called herself Tay-Fay and hadn't yet noticed that she didn't look like her

mother or brother.

Tay-Fay gasped for breath. "Poppa says come quick. To the shed. The momma-horse—"

Bro pushed his sister off with a kiss on the forehead. Tay-Fay whimpered as he stood and

threatened worse until he picked her up. She was spoiled, human, and a thorough pest; no

Cha'Tel'Quessir tree-family would have put up with her. She fought when he passed her to Shali.

"Later, Little Leaf. I'll take you to the bank above the stream. You can pick flowers, pinks for the

mare, yellow-bud for the foal."

Her sniffles became a grin that Bro returned effortlessly. He couldn't explain the joy he felt when

she smiled, but Tay-Fay was the reason he hadn't left Sulalk yet and the only reason he might still be

here two years hence. * * * * *

Adentir greeted Bro with a grunt and a gesture toward the straw sheaves heaped against the wall.

With no other instruction, Bro hauled an armful into the shed. The mare ignored him until he got the

straw spread, then she pawed it and tried to lie down.

"Hold her standing while I tie up her tail," Dent said. "Keep her calm. You know best."

Bro did. Five years ago, Dent would have held the mare while Bro did the chores; now Dent

wrapped the mare's tail in a tattered length of cloth while Bro stroked her head. In the Yuirwood, the

Cha'Tel'Quessir were hunters and, for their own sakes, they quenched the innate rapport they felt with

wildlife. It was different on a farm—harder in some ways because, in the end, farmers were hunters,

too. But before the end, farmers needed rapport with their animals.

"Good, Bro . . . good. Let her down now, if she's ready. Keep her calm. That's good, Bro."

They worked together well enough at times like this, and Dent was careful to praise his wife's son,

which wasn't, in truth, something Rizcarn had done very often. And maybe that was the root of Bro's

problems: It wasn't easy to be around Dent without feeling disloyal to his father. The only way he

could balance the guilt was with rudeness.

Not that guilt or rudeness mattered right then. The mare had foaled before. She tolerated men's

hands because they'd always been on her. Straining, resting, then straining again she birthed her foal

while Bro whispered gentleness in her ear.

"Got yourself a colt-foal, Bro," Dent exclaimed when the birth was well underway.

Bro and the mare sighed together, but there'd never been any doubt, not in Bro's mind.

When the mare was standing again, Bro joined his stepfather in the doorway. The mare whuffled

her acceptance of this offspring, then, in the grip of nameless instinct, she licked the life into him.

"You're a man of property now, Bro," Dent said, a bit too casually, as the colt thrust a spindly leg

forward, tested its strength and collapsed. "Time to start thinking of your future. Gudnor's widow-

sister has come to keep house for him, now that his wife's gone. She's got two daughters, dowered by

their dead father and both unspoken for. Be a good time for you to make yourself useful to Gudnor. I

give you leave."

Bro ignored him; his future most emphatically did not include Gudnor's sisters, regardless of their

dowries. The silence grew thick, until Dent cut it again.

"I've never seen that color before, all fog and twilight. Old Erom's stud-horse throws blacks and

bays, regular as rain, but in all my days, Bro, I've never seen a twilight horse."

There was a challenge in Dent's words, for all they were soft-spoken. Unafraid, Bro met his

stepfather's eyes. "I took her—" he admitted, an admission he'd made before and that had resulted in

his one beating at Dent's hands. "I rode her to the Yuirwood and back again. We met no one, man or

beast. If Erom's stud-horse didn't sire her foal, I don't know what did."

The words weren't lies, but they weren't true, either, and Dent was wise enough to ken the subtle

differences.

"You're a man now, Bro. No good comes from the lies a man tells or the secrets he keeps from his

kin."

You're not my kin! Those were the words battling for Bro's tongue. In the beginning, when Shali

first came to Sulalk to keep house for another man, Bro had thought Adentir was a lack-wit. He knew

better now: Dent was a simple man, simple in the way that good, honest men were often simple,

simple in a way no son of Rizcarn Golden-Moss could imitate or defeat.

With the sounds of the mare and foal behind him, Bro saw his stepfather as his mother saw him: as

different from Rizcarn as night was from day.

Probably, Dent would understand. Probably, Dent would light his pipe and listen to anything Bro

might say about his father. For all their disdain, villagers were insatiably curious about the Yuirwood

and the Cha'Tel'Quessir. Possibly, with a pinch of effort, Bro could have reconciled himself to his

mother's second husband, to Sulalk and farming, to the pure humanity that lay generations deep in his

heritage.

But because reconciliation might have been possible, Bro maintained an arrogance that masked,

however inadequately, both loneliness and fear. He strode away from the shed, from his stepfather and

the twilight colt.

"Will you be back?" Dent called after him. "What do I tell your mother?"

Bro hunched his shoulders and kept walking. He'd be back; for two more years he'd be back,

training his colt. Then he'd be in the Yuirwood where, if he were lucky, he'd never see the naked sky

again.

He'd been back just once, when he stole the mare. Driven by a persistent dream in which he'd seen

the trees and heard his father's voice, Bro had ridden her to the forest edge, just as he'd confessed. He'd

arrived at twilight, beneath a full moon. A deep-wood wind blew from the trees. A sign, he'd thought:

an invitation to put farms and human farmers behind him. He pointed the mare into the Yuirwood, felt

the dappled moonlight on his skin—or imagined he could. Come morning, though, he was back in the

meadow beside a flock of sheep.

The Yuirwood had rejected him.

With no one to watch or care, Bro had crumpled into the dewy grass. He'd wept himself sick: his

dream had been mere delusion or, worse, deliberate deception; he could hear his father's laughter in

the morning breeze.

Bro had ridden the mare back to Sulalk. Where else could he go if the forest wouldn't have him?

He'd admitted his folly and taken his punishment: four strokes for thievery, another three for deceit.

He'd tried to hate the man wielding the short whip, but there were tears in Dent's eyes.

Winter had been cold and dreamless but lately, as the birthing season approached, Bro had begun to

dream again. He'd seen the mare's foal, a twilight colt of the Yuirwood.

When the birthing shed and Dent's hurt-puzzled face were behind him, Bro settled against one of

the great trees that still grew here and there in the farmland, sentries of the vanished Yuirwood. He

closed his eyes and opened his thoughts to Relkath Many-Branched, as Rizcarn had taught him to do.

Relkath was Lord of Trees, Godhead of the Yuirwood and buried so deep in time and memory that

listening for his voice was like listening for the splash of a single raindrop during a summer storm.

If no one listens, Rizcarn had said, why should Relkath Many-Limbed ever talk to us again? If

enough of the Cha'Tel'Quessir listen—truly listen—he'll hear our faith.

Bro remembered his father's words better than he remembered his voice or his face. He could

summon Rizcarn's particulars: his deep, mottled, copper-green skin, raven hair, even darker eyes, and

flashing, ivory teeth. His laughter, always faintly mocking, even at the last, when Rizcarn had

balanced on the tree limb, chiding everyone for clumsiness a moment before he slipped and crashed

headfirst onto the hard ground.

Bro could see that image—his father, facedown, limp, lifeless and odd-angled—but try as he

might, Bro couldn't fit the living pieces together.

When Shali first brought him to Sulalk, Bro had come to this tree to grieve. He'd grown too old for

tears. Today, as it had been for at least two years, he was simply numb and empty, thinking nothing,

until there were voices and laughter coming along the path. Bro recognized one of the voices: Varnnet,

a farmer's son a few years older than him; the other voice belonged to a stranger, a woman, one of

Gudnor's eligible nieces.

Bro made himself small in the tree's shadow. He'd tangled with Varnnet a few times and never

come out the victor. It would be worse if Varnnet thought there was a woman at stake. Bro told anyone

who asked that the Sulalk women didn't stir him in the least, but that was another lie. His heart leapt to

the sound of a woman's laughter, the sway of her skirt as she walked past.

"You're growing up, Ember," Shali had said when he first confessed his wayward thoughts. "Soon

the girls will notice you and you'll be breaking hearts until you fall in love yourself. I'll lose my son to

another woman!"

Her conclusions frightened Bro as few things frightened him: he'd become a stranger in his own

body and his mother laughed! It was better now, or he'd grown more accustomed to the way his idle

thoughts slewed. Bro drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his ankles as the

merrymaking voices came closer.

Walk on by, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut, as if his thoughts were wishes. I'm ignoring you,

not looking at you at all, there's no reason for you to see me. Why did I come to this tree? It's too close

to the path to Gudnor's farm.

As Bro's luck would have it, they stopped on the tree's other side. The woman's light, musical voice

was enough to drive Bro mad, especially when he felt the fringes of her skirt brush lightly against his

arm. Varnnet, surely, was standing nearby, fists cocked, waiting to pound a luckless Cha'Tel'Quessir

rival. Bro gritted his teeth till his jaw ached. His pulse was loud enough to drown out the laughter.

"Zandilar!"

That was her voice, her name, her breath on the back of Bro's neck, teasing him while Varnnet

flexed his muscles. Desperate, Bro flailed an arm, expecting disaster, finding only air beside him.

"Leave me alone! Gods curse on you—"

He opened his eyes. There was no one nearby: no dancing girl, no bully waiting with his fists. The

humans had passed. The laughter—Bro still heard laughter—came from elsewhere.

"Zandilar!"

The name reminded him of the Yuirwood and nights with his father, but he couldn't place it

precisely.

"Fine, young man, come dance with me!"

Locks of Bro's hair twisted on his neck and a touch soft as feathers, warm as life, caressed his arm.

Bro clutched the cuff of his boot before he sprang to his feet. There was a knife—a dark-steel

Cha'Tel'Quessir knife—in his hand when he stood, wary of an enemy he could feel, but not see.

"Fine, silly, young man! Come dance with Zandilar!"

He saw her then, hovering above the grass: a slender apparition in silver and gold. Cloaked in

dazzling light, the apparition had no sex nor race, but her laugh was feminine, as was her manner. She

sat astride a twilight horse whose black legs disappeared in its shadow.

A golden arm stretched out to trace the angle of his cheek; Bro's knees weakened. He staggered

backward into the tree, dropping his knife as well. Her laughter shook the tree. Leaves brushed Bro's

face as they floated down.

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TheSimbul’sGiftBook6oftheNoblesseriesAForgottenRealmsnovelbyLynnAbbeyAProofPackReleaseProofedandformattedbyBW-SciFiEbookversion1.0ReleaseDate:March,15th,2005Foraheartbeat,Brobelievedhe'dlostsomethingmorepreciousthanhismother'slove.Then,withtheknifehiltstinginghispalm,hesawdangerforhimandthecolthe'dr...

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Lynn Abbey - The Nobles 06 - The Simbul's Gift

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