hole?'
'I said I was busy. If Boesild told you about Nethra, you can understand those corpses took all my concentration.'
'Of course. But I noticed a difference as soon as I got here.'
Alassra swallowed pride with her tea. 'Thayan?' she asked, all but conceding that she'd grown so accustomed to Red Wizard incursions that she no longer trusted her ability to detect a new one.
'I'm not sure. What I felt was wild, like the wind before a summer storm.'
They both looked out the window where distant lightning silently streaked the sky above the Inner Sea. At this time of year it was sometimes hard for any wizard to sense the difference between man-made magic and the natural interaction between sunlight and salt water. Then Alustriel said:
'If it bears the mark of anything, it bears the mark of the wilderness. I've felt something similar in the High Forest south of Silverymoon.'
'The Yuirwood,' Alassra sighed. 'Something's rising in the Yuirwood.' She'd known that-or she should have- when she first heard the colt's name, certainly when she'd found herself deep in both the forest and the past. Suddenly, talking about children seemed preferable again. 'What did you do with the child?'
'Why, you don't even know her name, do you? It's Taefaeli.'
'She was asleep! I saw no need to wake her up with foolish questions.'
Alustriel had the decency to be shocked and the grace to keep her opinions to herself. 'I found a very nice woman in the palace below. She's human, but her mother was half-elf and she's got a brother in the forest. She knows what Tay-Fay needs. She'll help her understand that her brother won't be coming back.'
'I know that, but how, by the coruscating frosts of Talimesh, do you know that?'
'Children listen and children talk. Tay-Fay told me about Sulalk before I summoned you. She told me what happened to her parents, in the stable when you saved her brother's life and when she told him that you were stealing his colt, the spell-ride to the Yuirwood, and the look in Bro's eyes when the two of you were bargaining.'
'All this time, you've known all that and you've been asking me questions as if you didn't.' Alassra smiled. Her teeth showed; she didn't care. 'Which one of us do you believe, sister?'
'You, of course,' Alustriel said quickly. 'But, what drew your attention to this Zandilar's Dancer in the first place? A vision? Who is Zandilar?'
'The Old Mage thinks she's one of the goddesses the old Yuir elves worshiped in addition to the Seldarine pantheon-or, maybe, before them. He's been helping me with the research. I've been trying to get him here, as I'm sure you know. Once I had the colt in my stable, I thought… Well, the infamous birthday gift, as you said.'
'You know, 'Las, you truly should think this through. A child, if Tay-Fay's any indication…'
Alassra set her cup down. The bowl cracked; the handle broke. 'I have thought this through. I'm not planning to have twelve-' She stopped in mid-tirade. She'd just felt a sharp pain on her scalp, as if she'd plucked out an exceptionally well-rooted hair. She glanced out the window where the coming storm hid the moon and stars. 'Cold tea and scones! Sundown. I told him I'd be there at sundown.' She glared at her sister.
Alustriel scrutinized the specks floating in her tea. 'I thought about it when the sun set. He doesn't want to come to Velprintalar… I assumed you knew. I assumed you were letting him keep his horse.'
'Well, you assumed correctly-for now, anyway. He had nothing from Sulalk, not even shoes. I left him a knife and my boots. I was going to take him better kit.'
Alustriel was on her feet. 'We'll take it now. He'll understand.'
Alassra started to object that Ebroin wouldn't understand anything, then abandoned the notion. Alustriel charmed elves; poor Ebroin wouldn't stand a chance. He'd probably agree to follow her to Silverymoon.
'He's in trouble. I gave him a token-a strand of hair. It just broke.'
'What are we waiting for?'
The sisters clasped hands. The cozy chamber vanished and was replaced by Yuirwood shadows. They were alone on the bank of a stream-fed pool. Bro wasn't there. There were no signs of a fight or ambush cut into the moss. No indication that any Cha'Tel'Quessir had visited the pool recently.
'You're sure this is the right place?'
Alassra had been transporting herself around Abeir-toril for nearly six hundred years. She wasn't perfect, but her mistakes were few and far between-until now. In two days, two spells had dumped her in out-of-the-way parts of the Yuirwood; the same part of the Yuirwood, unless she missed her guess. The forest had always been chancy for wizards, but only a blind fool would fail to detect the beginnings of a new and ominous pattern.
She opened her mind, searching for a piece of herself. If her senses could be trusted, a strand of her hair was nearby.
'It's the place that drew me. Whether it's the right place-look for yourself.'
Alassra hadn't meant for her sister to take her words literally, but Alustriel stripped off her gown and sandals. She dived head first into the dark-water pool, causing Alassra's heart to skip beats until a silvery wreath broke the water's surface.
'He didn't drown.'
'There were other-safer-ways to learn that.'
'And waste more time, if he was under water.'
Alustriel paddled to the side of the pool. Alassra knelt on the bank, offering her hand. The sense that her hair was nearby had grown stronger. Squinting, she caught a glint of silver in an eddy on the pool's far side. Alustriel swam and brought back a forked twig to which Alassra's hair had been carefully attached. She took her sister's hand and climbed onto the bank where she shed a graceful waterfall and was completely-perfectly-dry.
One of the twig's tines was empty, the other wasn't.
'He had help,' Alassra decided.
'You gave him a knife. I assume the steel was good enough to cut hair.'
'Umm… But what I felt was this end coming loose. This was notched and the strand attached before it was cut and I'd tied it around the arm he favored. He'd need help to perform that trick with his off-weapon hand.'
'An extra pair of hands, perhaps, but help?'
'We weren't bargaining,' Alassra admitted, harkening back to Alustriel's recounting of her conversation with the little girl. 'He blamed me for what happened. He didn't want my help. If he found it…'
'He'd have left your hair, your boots and your knife where you could easily find them. This,' Alustriel twirled the twig between her fingers, 'floated here. Someone made certain that Bro would be far away when you found it.'
'Alustriel, you have a devious and suspicious mind. I like that in a sister.'
'I try to keep in practice. Shall we wander our way upstream?'
'You're sure the little girl won't get into mischief while we're gone?'
'Absolutely.'
The sisters hiked opposite banks of the stream, their mage-trained senses sharp for signs of a struggle-broken branches, dislodged stones, skid marks in the damp moss. They were alert for immaterial clues as well, the faint traces that spellcasting, though the latent magic of the Yuirwood consumed such traces quickly.
Two sets of footprints and-more tellingly-a set of hoofprints marked the place where Bro and his now-confirmed companion dropped the twig into the stream. There were no indications that Bro was other than a willing participant in deception. The horse and the two Cha'Tel'Quessir-both sisters assumed Bro was with another Yuirwood half-elf-had continued upstream, not troubling to conceal their trail.
'Follow them?' Alustriel asked.
Alassra shook her head. 'Only if we need to. Open your mind. I'm noticing something very strange.'
As a wizard, Alassra was more skilled than any of her sisters. On a good day and with the wind at her back, she could sense things even the Old Mage missed. At that moment she sensed another corpse, not far from the stream and reeking of magic.
'Yes,' Alustriel agreed after a moment. 'A death gone wrong.'
'My thoughts exactly.'
Alassra led the way, readying spells as she walked. Behind her, she sensed Alustriel doing the same. If malice was loose in the Yuirwood this night, it was in for a thorough trouncing. They followed the trail of footprints and hoofprints some hundred paces before it and the sense of unrightness diverged. The Simbul drew no conclusions, but turned away from the marked trail.
