chorus.
Of course, there was another explanation for the youth's exuberance. Alassra had lost count of the jugs and skins of honey wine the Cha'Tel'Quessir had passed around their circle. Several of the mourners would sleep where they sat. Not Rizcarn; the aura allowed him to drink to no effect.
And not Bro. Alassra herself had seen to that when she examined his wounds. The youth was living fast tonight, thanks to her spellcraft: a self-indulgent, but useful, variation on the warrior's haste spell left Bro's bones moving at an unexceptional speed while his gut digested honey wine at a prodigious rate. He was steady on his feet when he started walking toward the bushes.
Alassra followed him at a discrete distance. Spells notwithstanding, Bro wasn't as sober as he thought he was, and she needed to remind him-with a pinch of salt and a strand of his hair-that he was thirsty and needed water before returning to the mourners' circle. She trailed him to the stream where they'd found Lanig's body and watched, smiling, as he not only drank his fill, but stripped to the waist and sluiced off the sweat.
Bro headed back to the camp, shirt sleeves tied around his waist, with Alassra keeping a quiet distance behind him. She heard a twig break, loudly and not by accident. Bro finished the journey alone.
'Storm's coming,' Halaern said from the shadows.
'The question is, when will it get here. The wind's died, but the storm's still in the air. I wonder what's holding it there? Red Wizard magic? The wind's from their quarter.'
'The wind,' Halaern agreed. Where weather was concerned, he was the expert. 'But not the storm. The storm's here, my lady. The Yuirwood doesn't like all this magic.'
'All this magic? If the storm's not from the Red Wizards, what magic is there? The Cha'Tel'Quessir baking bread? Rizcarn?'
Halaern shrugged. 'Rizcarn and the Sunglade are part of the Yuirwood, but the Yuirwood has many trees. They are not all the same.'
When it suited them, the Cha'Tel'Quessir could be as oblique as any Tel'Quessir. The Simbul could mimic their features, but never their thoughts. Her forester had known Rizcarn; the images she'd gleaned from his memories were more accurate than those she'd gleaned from Bro. How well had they known each other? What would Rizcarn say if Trovar Halaern, elder of Yuirwood, walked into his camp, or did he already know he had the Simbul's forester as an outrider? If Halaern wanted to get a message into or out of the camp, Alassra didn't doubt he could do it and right in front of her eyes.
Alassra's thoughts were always her own, but the silence belonged to both her and Halaern.
'My queen, I serve you as I serve the forest. I would not wish to lose your trust, but there are things I cannot explain.'
He stood farther away than usual, with more reserve, less affection, calling her his queen rather than his friend. She could guess why.
'Have I lost yours, dear friend? Do you watch me do what you would rather I did not?'
His eyes hardened; she'd touched a nerve. 'Ebroin is young. His eyes are open, but he's never seen.'
'Until today?'
'I beg you, my lady, have a care for him. You are his first. For him, there will be consequences.'
Halaern knew the consequences because he'd lived them. Alassra suffered a guilty twinge for a situation she did not consider her fault, or at least not entirely her fault. 'I do not encourage him, Halaern; I did not encourage you. I offered friendship, and it was freely taken. I offered laughter, and that was taken, too. If Ebroin knew who Chayan SilverBranch was, he'd run in the other direction.'
'You mistake the value of your friendship and laughter, my lady, and you are never less than beautiful.'
'Would you have me masquerade as a sour-tempered crone?'
'No,' Halaern shook his head. 'I have seen you disguised many times. Whether you are a blackbird or a dead tree, it makes no difference to my heart. I share you with all Faerun and, as the gods will, I will grow old and die before you. I ask only that you have a care for Ebroin.'
There were no words to deny the truth. 'Ebroin knows a woman named Chayan of SilverBranch. They will have a few days together, a week, perhaps. Then Chayan will vanish. I hope he remembers Chayan fondly, but if she breaks his heart, she will have done it only once and, if she does, may I presume there will be someone older and wiser nearby to commiserate with him?'
'He won't be alone. But I did not come to argue or talk about Ebroin.'
'I was hoping you'd come to tell me where Rizcarn's been these last two days. Did he have time to get to MightyTree and back as he claims?'
The forester shook his head. 'Not walking. If he used magic, though, anything is possible. The Rizcarn I knew was no druid, but the Rizcarn I knew isn't sitting in that camp up there. My forester is still on her way to MightyTree. When she returns we'll know more. Just as well, though, that Rizcarn has returned and the Cha'Tel'Quessir will walk tomorrow. The Red Wizards are restless in their cold camps. They're tired of hiding and seeing what we intend them to see; they've started exploring. They can scarcely follow a trail that's blazed with fire crystals, yet eventually they'll blunder into each other and I do not think that is anything we want to see in the Yuirwood.'
Alassra nodded. 'You think right. What of the solitaire following Rizcarn?'
'The solitaire didn't follow Rizcarn, my lady,' Halaern's expression became one of pain and distress. 'They were never seen on any of the known paths. When Rizcarn arrived earlier, I backtracked his trail myself. His footprints were clear on the stream banks, but a little further, they were gone. Rizcarn could do that, but not the solitaire. The solitaire was city-bred, like the rest of the Red Wizards. Even with magic they can't conceal themselves, and there was no sense of Thayan magic.'
The Simbul's ageless heart skipped a beat, not because the solitary wizard had disappeared: after the corpse she and her sister had found, she was not surprised that Rizcarn had returned alone. Halaern's reticence-telling her about the solitaire only after she asked the necessary question-troubled her. 'I would have liked to know that first, Halaern. Red Wizards gone missing in the Yuirwood interests me more than the weather.'
'I know,' he said, his own concern evident in his soft, flat tone. 'It took me much longer to backtrack Rizcarn's trail, as well. Rizcarn knows the Yuirwood, my lady, and makes full use of his knowledge. He made certain no one- no Cha'Tel'Quessir-would know which way he'd come. That was what I meant to tell you when I saw you following Ebroin to the stream just now. What I said, it is all true, but it wasn't what I meant to say. When I saw you together, I became foolish. The weather. A hanging storm brings out the worst in a man. It's brought out the worst in me. It won't happen again.'
'You judge yourself too harshly, Halaern, and make promises you may not keep. You told me the storm was the Yuirwood's way of defending itself. You implied, very carefully, dear friend, that someone is keeping that storm up in the clouds. Are you also implying that someone could sense a moment of weakness and use it to distract you?'
Halaern gave the matter a moment's thought. 'Not Rizcarn, my lady. He can hide in the forest, that's all, and he has charmed those who follow him, but Rizcarn always claimed to serve Relkath of the Infinite Branches.'
'The Old Man of the Yuirwood.'
'I have never heard Relkath called that, my lady, but Relkath-I do not think it is wise to awaken the old ones. I never have. As a god, Relkath is like the weather, the only thing a man knows for certain is that it will change. I would sooner invite one of your gods into the Yuirwood.'
That could not have been an easy confession. Alassra reached out to him. 'Give me your hand, dear friend.'
'My lady?'
'I don't want you getting foolish or forgetful again.' When he hesitated, Alassra planted her fists on her hips. 'I will not compel you, Trovar Halaern,' she said, which meant just the opposite. To protect her forester and the Yuirwood, the Simbul would do whatever she judged necessary. She'd live with her conscience. It had proved quite flexible, quite adaptable over the centuries. But Alassra's conscience would lie quiet. Halaern held out his hand. She noticed he had removed the ring she'd given him.
'My lady, I gave it to Gren,' he explained. 'She has more need of it and I was uncomfortable with so much magic.'
'Like the Yuirwood. Better the discomfort of magic you know and trust, dear friend, than the influence of some other kind.'
The Simbul cast three spells in quick succession. The first one fizzled, reminding her that the Yuirwood resisted
