'I did not think you'd find me before sundown.'
Sheer joy sparkled in her eyes before they closed and she tightened her arms again.
'Your smile haunts my every thought, dear lady,' he replied. 'I had to find you or go mad.'
A statement not so very far from the truth. Lauzoril freed his ribs and raised her hand to his lips for a storybook kiss. It took one kind of madness to stave off another. Wenne wrested free. She retrieved her discarded work.
'It's almost finished. You must try it on, my prince.'
He took the shirt in his hands. She attacked the shirt he wore. All her considerable magic was in her fingers.
'Not here, dear lady,' he insisted before she had him naked.
Still clutching the griffin shirt, Lauzoril carried his wife to their bedchamber. Secure behind a wizard-locked door, he let her strip his shirt away and made an honest effort to pull the other over his head. Wenne put a stop to that; she always did. Wanton fingers caressed his chest and flanks, fascinated by his various scars, but never- never-exploring the oldest scar of all: the swirling tattoo her grandfather had placed above his heart.
15
The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Mid-afternoon, the seventeenth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)
When he was a boy, Bro couldn't imagine an empty horizon. Then his father had died, and his mother led him away from MightyTree. Two days' walking and the Yuirwood had been behind them.
Had she known the one, fast path out of the forest? he'd demanded, unwilling to take another step in a treeless world. Shali had taken his hand; she hadn't known where the Yuirwood ended, only that if they walked north from MightyTree it would end before the second sunset. Bro remembered that her hand had been cold and shaking and that neither of them had slept that night, huddled beneath countless hungry stars.
By now, Bro had gotten used to fields of grass around him and fields of stars overhead. It was trees that made him nervous halfway through the third day following Rizcarn. They'd traveled through a Yuirwood so dissimilar from the forest he remembered that he wondered if they weren't somewhere altogether different. He'd considered that they were traveling east or west-the Yuirwood was much longer than it was wide-but whenever he sighted sun and shadow, it seemed they were walking north, the same way he and Shali had walked seven years ago.
Seemed, because Bro hadn't made many sightings. The sky had stormed or threatened rain since the morning after he'd met Rizcarn. Rizcarn might be leading him and the colt in circles, though that seemed unlikely. They'd been places that he hoped were unique and would certainly stir his memory if he saw them again.
The first day they'd scaled a ridge of shattering slate, made doubly treacherous by a blinding rain. He'd pled with Rizcarn to wait until the rain eased or look for a way around. Hooves, he'd shouted through the wind and thunder, weren't meant for slick rocks. Rizcarn didn't answer, didn't even slow down. Bro got Dancer across. They both fell a few times, getting bruised and scraped in the process. Rizcarn said it was Bro's fault for not trusting Relkath Many-limbed.
Bro hadn't raised any objections last night, at twilight, when Rizcarn led them into a quaking bog where the rising mists had malevolent eyes. He whispered Relkath's name at every step and kept a firm grip on Dancer's lead rope. Now they were in a swamp, surrounded by dead trees, looking for all the world like bony hands rising out of the murk. The dark water was mirror smooth-except for the V-shaped ripples that matched their pace for a little while, then disappeared.
Bro swore he'd add the swamp to the places he never wanted to revisit. Foul-smelling muck surrounded his feet with every heavy step, ruining the Simbul's fine boots. Yet neither the muck nor the trolling predators were the worst part of the swamp.
He'd never given much thought to insects, except when hunting honey trees with his cousins. Today, every step stirred up a new horde to join the dark clouds already hovering around his heads. The stinging, buzzing, crawling, itching, scratching creatures pushed him and Dancer to the edge of madness. Resting, though, was the worst of all. The moment Bro sank down on a damp, rotting tree trunk, there were ten bugs for every one there'd been before. They swarmed in his ears, followed sweat tracks down his back, and attacked his flesh as if it were the Midwinter feast.
If Bro had been a year or three younger, he'd have done something foolish: refused to take another mucky step, walked off on his own, or hung his head and bawled. But he was a man. He sat, suffered, and tried very hard not to think about anything at all.
Zandilar's Dancer wasn't a man. A colt couldn't reason his way through misery. He'd been fractious when they'd first entered the swamp. He'd kicked and snapped at everything, including Bro, who'd held his lead rope. Now, his twilight coat was streaky black with sweat and swamp water. His head hung and his tail was the only part of him that moved constantly.
Bro abandoned his rotted log and stood at Dancer's flank where swishing horsehair protected him as well. Rizcarn took Bro's movement as a sign that he was rested and, without a word, started walking again. Wearily, Bro untied the rope.
A light rain fell, sluicing sweat from Bro's skin and driving the bugs away. But the relief was short-lived: The air warmed when the rain ended; the bugs were worse than ever. Wisps rose from stagnant water, larger and more menacing than the ones in the bog. Bro no longer wanted to rest and feared nothing more than the chance that Rizcarn would call a halt for the night before the swamp was behind them.
'Relkath protects, son,' Rizcarn said with a laugh after Bro succumbed to a spate of furious slaps at his sodden trousers. 'Have faith.'
It was Rizcarn's friendliest statement since they'd started walking.
'I'm trying.' Bro took a chance, adding, 'It might help, though, if I knew where we're going or why.'
'Relkath protects. What more is necessary?'
Bro stopped walking. 'I'm hungry,' he said evenly. 'Bugs or no bugs, Dancer and I need food. More than that, I need to know where we're going and when we'll get out of this swamp. I need answers, Rizcarn, or I'm turning around while there's still light to leave.'
'As you will, son.'
Rizcarn held out his hand, not for a parting handshake, but for the lead rope. Bro refused to surrender it.
'Answers, Father.'
Rizcarn turned away; he stared at the stagnant water. Bro put his shoulder against Zandilar, ready to turn the colt on the narrow high-ground path they'd been following.
'There's an island rise beyond that.' Rizcarn pointed to a line of skeletal trees shrouded in hanging vines. 'You want food, son, you'll find it there. Rest, too, though not as long as you or Zandilar's Dancer would like. We've got to move smartly. This is no place to be after sundown.'
Bro couldn't argue that, but he needed more before he'd lead Dancer across the flooded mire.
'Where are we going, Father? How long until we get there?'
Rizcarn reverted to his most inscrutable. 'Zandilar waits. Relkath protects.' He waded into the dark water.
Bro looked back the way they'd come. Their tracks were easy enough to follow in the soft ground, but swamps weren't as still as they first appeared. Water seeped into Dancer's hoofprints even as he watched. The tracks they'd made this morning entering the swamp were almost certainly gone, and Relkath's protection wasn't likely to follow him if he walked away from Rizcarn.
He tightened his grip on the lead rope. Muck closed over his ankles at every step, but the water itself never rose above his waist and Dancer's only thought was to stay close. The largest snake Bro had ever seen lurked in the vines overhanging the island's banks. As thick as Bro's thigh and unknowably long, it watched them approach with malevolent ruby eyes and dropped into the water as they passed.
'We're too big for it,' Rizcarn laughed. 'That makes it angry. It thinks of its grandfather, who could squeeze the life from the colt, and wishes it were full-grown. Just like you, son. Just like you. Eat your enemies, son, before they eat you.'
Do I have enemies now? The question popped, unwelcome, into Bro's mind. Are you my enemy, Rizcarn?
Then it was time to start swimming. The water deepened near the island and they had to fight an unexpected
