Sunglade. It had fallen around Lailomun's shoulders, and he'd stopped running. He'd looked at her, all love and longing. He'd looked at his arm-why, Alassra couldn't guess. He'd said something; she'd seen his lips move, but the sound hadn't carried and she didn't know what his words had been. Then he'd turned and run back toward Mythrell'aa who'd collapsed-from shock or horror-before the mark of Gur consumed him.
The mark was a powerful spell as Lusaka Gur devised it, but Mythrell'aa had compounded its effect. The blast sphere was larger and more destructive; and when it touched the outer limit of the Simbul's habitual defenses it triggered the counterspells she'd researched long ago. The spells would have carried her back to Velprintalar, if she'd let them, but Alassra chose drifting, tumbling, wallowing between guilt and despair.
It wasn't easy for a wizard of the Simbul's experience to lose herself, but she tried and settled, eventually, in a place of gentle darkness.
'You have found me. You are welcome, but you cannot remain here.'
The voice came from all directions. It was a sadly wise woman's voice, very much like Mystra's voice when the goddess first appeared to Alassra in the Outer Planes. The Simbul gathered her wits: her defenses and might. Her strength of mind and magic was the main reason Alassra Shentrantra could never lose herself. She hovered in the darkness and studied it. There was form around her, shifting veils of angular shadow surrounding a faint, but clear, light.
'Who are you?'
'Ask yourself.'
Alassra locked her despair and grief in corner of her memory to which she might-or might not-return. She was in the presence of divine power-not Mystra-and it demanded her full attention.
'I am Alassra Shentrantra, Queen of Aglarond, called the Simbul.'
The light within the shifting shadows grew stronger. Alassra remembered the stone she'd called her own. The truth was suddenly so obvious she could only marvel at the ancient magic that had kept it concealed. And though there was no ground beneath her feet, Alassra got down on her knees.
'But you are the Simbul. I knelt before your stone; I kneel before you now.'
'Stand before me, Alassra. Though you were never meant to see my face, it is too late for worship. You cannot remain in here. You must go back.'
Alassra stood. 'I will.' She cleared her throat. 'I serve… Another goddess chose me.'
The sharp veils fluttered with amusement. 'Mystra. Yes. I know all about you, Alassra Shentrantra. To be forgotten is not the same as being blind or deaf. Your goddess sent you to Aglarond.'
'Intentionally?' Alassra asked bluntly.
She hadn't asked to be Chosen, might well have refused if she'd been given a choice-had refused when Mystra first confronted her after Lailomun's abduction. Mystra hadn't mentioned the Simbul when she suggested Aglarond might be a good place to heal. But goddesses weren't compelled to mention anything and sharing one of her Chosen wouldn't have been entirely unprecedented. Alassra's drow sister, Qilue, was high priestess of Eilistraee in addition to being one of Mystra's Chosen, but that had been arranged before Qilue's birth.
If this sharing was also the result of a six-hundred-year-old bargain, Alassra was going to be angry beyond measure: the end didn't justify the means, not when it was her life in the balance.
The Simbul eased Alassra's worries. 'Like you, Queen Ilione's mother was Cha'Tel'Quessir. She remembered her heritage when you first came to her brother's court; she remembered the Simbul.'
Alassra shook her head in contradiction. 'Nobody knew. It was just a word-not even a name. The stone has been defaced since before the first Cha'Tel'Quessir were born.' She thought about the other vacant Sunglade stones and the bits of legend the elven sages had revealed in Everlund. 'The Yuir gods: Relkath, Zandilar, Magnar… you were adopted by the Seldarine, absorbed by them, and then forgotten?'
The shadow light dimmed slightly. 'It wasn't supposed to happen that way. Our race-our mortal kindred-was besieged. The bonds between us were doomed. Our realm was doomed. We had chosen another path and it led nowhere… it led here. The Tel'Quessir came from elsewhere. They weren't besieged, but they needed a place in Abeir-toril. Our heritage passed to the Sy-Tel'Quessir, who swore to cherish, nurture and protect it.'
'But they couldn't do that for something they were afraid of. I met with elven sages at Everlund. If you know all about me, you know what they said.'
'Fierce,' the Simbul replied. 'Fierce and reckless: that is what Ilione saw and why she gave you my name. I had not had a presence for so long… My moment had been forgotten before the Yuir passed into the wood.'
'So, that's what I am-a wild and reckless presence in Aglarond. Rizcarn is Relkath's magpie in the Yuirwood. Are there others?'
'Magnar hopes for a strong man. Zandilar wanted a child-and a dancer.'
Alassra thought of the carnage she'd escaped. 'She didn't get what she wanted, did she?'
'She has more than most of us. There's always a place for Zandilar. Her moment cannot be forgotten; her power will always be remembered. You have not asked, Alassra Shentrantra, what the Simbul is. When were we not forgotten, why were we remembered?'
'I'm not so sure I want to know.'
'When the Tel'Quessir came, they asked me to choose between Labelas Enoreth, the Seldarine power of time and philosophy, and Erevan Ilesere, their power of change-'
Powers, moments, and presence, Alassra thought, but not gods. The Simbul spoke of Mystra as a goddess, but she had not applied the word to herself.
'I became the power of balance allied to Labelas Enoreth-'
'But you're not balance. I'm not balance. I've been hearing that all my life.'
The shadows rippled with laughter like the breaking of fine glass bells and the light brightened again. 'I am the edge, Alassra Shentrantra. When the hunter facing the charging beast has to decide whether to throw his spear, whether to dodge, and the moment to do either, I am that moment. I was. When the hunted comes to two paths and, knowing neither, must still choose between them, I am that moment of choice. I am the edge of the cliff, the bending branch, the moment when you must jump. When you decide, without knowing why, without knowing anything at all, at that moment I am with you.'
'I think I understand the problem. The Tel'Quessir aren't like that at all-well, maybe the drow. You'd have done better with humans.'
'We began with humans, when humans were young and the gods you know had yet to be imagined, and we bargained futilely and to our detriment with the drow.'
'Now you have the Cha'Tel'Quessir who are looking for gods, not moments. Gods who will make them a mighty people.'
The Simbul said nothing.
'There's always more,' Alassra complained. 'More than can be told. More that can't be revealed.'
'More that is not known!' The Simbul roared and the Simbul's namesake fought to keep her place against the wind. 'Knowledge comes after the moment!'
They faced each other in the nowhere realm of forgotten gods.
'I am going back,' Alassra said, with no particular grace or friendship. 'I know the way.'
'I give you a gift.'
'I refuse.'
'It is only advice, Alassra Shentrantra. I've already given you my name; I have nothing else to give.'
In her heart, Alassra didn't believe that, but she stayed to hear.
'The hunter practices with his spear, the hunted learns every path in the forest but they survive because when they come to the edge, they give themselves to the edge and the edge guides them.'
'So?'
'You could have had a child tonight, Alassra Shentrantra. You could have a child any day or any night, but you will never have a child if you turn back from the edge.'
Cutting words surfaced in Alassra's mind. She drove them back. The Simbul's advice wasn't a threat-or even a promise. She had made too much of wanting Elminster's child, her way, her time, her place; she'd gotten in her own way, pushed herself further from her desires-if they were truly her desires.
Pushed herself further from the edge.
'I'll think about it.' Alassra found the spell in her mind that would take her back to the Sunglade-whatever remained of it. 'I'll think about it, and I'll remember.'
