Tuigans.'
'You never mentioned that, cousin.'
Chayan flashed a dangerously toothsome grin. 'When do we have a chance to talk, cousin? What about our solitaire Red Wizard, the one that followed Rizcarn out of the camp when it was west of here? At first you said you thought it was a woman. Why? And do you still think so?'
'Before Rizcarn left, I found a footprint, small and narrow. It could've come from a child or a halfling, but my best guess was a woman. I haven't seen any more. She's smarter than the others, I think, and she's alone, or nearly so. I never saw her, only felt her presence, and I haven't felt it since Rizcarn left. She's stopped using magic.'
Chayan seemed lost in her own thoughts. Bro seized an opportunity to ask a question that had been very important two days ago, 'Did Rizcarn actually visit MightyTree? He said he would, but he wasn't gone long enough, even if he ran day and night.'
'It would seem that he did, Ebroin. According to Urell, Rizcarn, or something like him, appeared at his door in the middle of the night and gave him his daughter's necklace. Rizcarn said he couldn't stay, but wanted a mourning bead, so Urell gave him one off his own neck. That is MightyTree work.' The forester pointed to the bead in question.
'How?'
'Why not ask him yourself?' Chayan asked, more an order than a question. She turned to Halaern. 'You'll join me after?'
'Yes,' he agreed, but she was already walking away, not as quiet as a forester, but quiet enough that she was quickly gone. 'Come on, Ebroin. I'll walk you back to the others.'
Bro folded his arms. 'I'm not a child, Trovar Halaern, and I saw what Red Wizards can do to a whole village. She's got a sword, that's all. She doesn't even have her spear anymore and she decides-just like that-that she's going to destroy the Red Wizards?'
Halaern nodded. 'Let's go, Ebroin.'
'Chayan's not what she says she is, is she?'
'She's very good at what she does, and one of the things she does is destroy her enemies, including Red Wizards.'
'She's not your cousin.'
The forester gave up with a sigh. 'No, Ebroin, Chayan's not my cousin; and she's not what she seems, either.'
'She's Zandilar in disguise, isn't she?'
Halaern was speechless. Bro was pleased with himself and his guess. He started back to the napping Cha'Tel'Quessir. A twig snapped; the forester must be so flustered that he was making noise as he caught up. Bro turned around. He saw a shadow, then a face, then hands that grabbed him.
He heard a voice from deeper in the shadow: 'Good, Lailomun, my pet. You caught him. Now bring him here.'
Bro struggled and as he did he heard another voice, the forester's, but it came too late. He fell forward into darkness.
26
The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Afternoon, the twenty-fourth day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)
The queen of Aglarond shed her Cha'Tel'Quessir disguise as she walked through the forest, in search of Thayan wizardry. She became herself, silver haired, blue eyed, and deadly, but still dressed in the durable leather garments Chayan SilverBranch had worn. Her shadow, cast by the sun and by magic, rustled branches as she moved beneath them. The Simbul, when she was hunting Red Wizards, scorned stealth.
A Red Wizard, especially a solitary novice sent to keep an eye on the Cha'Tel'Quessir, knew he was in trouble well before he knew what that trouble was. Alassra heard the novice break into a noisy run, headed straight for his companions. They'd be waiting for her, ready as they could be; that concerned her not at all. Fair play was a worthy notion in children's games, but when it came to squashing one's enemies, the Simbul liked to have them facing her and concentrated in a single location where lightning and fire were most effective. If Mythrell'aa had been among them, Alassra might have changed her tactics, but Mythrell'aa was surely the solitaire and the reason Alassra was exterminating lesser nuisances.
It was difficult for one wizard to judge the true might of another. Above a certain level of proficiency, all wizards were liars. The Simbul fostered notions that she was reckless-not entirely untrue-and careless with her wizardry, when in truth, she detested magical surprises and meticulously planned her spellcasting. The result, as she intended, was that her enemies both feared her and continually underestimated her.
By hard-learned habit, Alassra never underestimated her enemies. She assumed Mythrell'aa had the means to do whatever she wanted. And Illusion's means, full of shadow and guile, were particularly difficult to combat. The Simbul didn't want her concentration muddied with echoes and novices. She also didn't want to light up the afternoon sky with incendiary spells. As she approached the clump of Red Wizards, poorly concealed in trees and behind bushes, she reached into her belt pouch and retrieved a brightly painted goose egg. Walking into their woeful trap, she presented her usual array of defensive spells and a deadly surprise, encased in the goose egg.
An assortment of spells came her way as she lobbed the egg into their midst. Most of the spells, fireballs, and magic arrows fizzled when they got within three paces of her. The wizards had never learned that she was immune to their most common spells. Of course, very few of them survived long enough to share the knowledge.
One of the Red Wizards, thinking quickly but erroneously, launched a spell at the painted egg. It would have cracked and begun its work when it struck the ground, but breaking it in midair was more effective. Once released, an invisible sphere expanded until it was ten paces across. Pushing the Yuirwood air ahead, it left suffocating emptiness behind. Bug-eyed and choking, the wizards died swiftly.
The sphere wasn't impermeable. Alassra watched for escapees. Two thought they were safe until she hurled poison-dipped stars at their necks and dropped them before they'd filled their lungs with fresh air. The larger of the pair, a portly man with a thick wattle of flesh beneath his tattooed chin, was still alive when she reached him. Poison had already turned his face dark blue and stiffened his limbs. He was in agony; there had been days in Alassra's life when she would have stood back to watch him die. Being queen, however, had taught her to value efficiency, if not mercy.
She took a moment to ask a question:
'Are there others, not caught with you?'
He lied, of course, but the Simbul took the truth directly from his mind before ending his life: they'd stood united and died the same way. Alassra removed her throwing star from his flesh and, after cleaning it carefully, returned it to the leather case where she kept a score of the deadly metal bits.
By habit she stripped the wizards of anything obviously useful. Red Wizards carried the best weapons, the best gear, magical or otherwise, that their wealth could provide and most of it was neither inherently good nor evil. Two of their daggers had malignant personalities that challenged her when she touched them; the Simbul destroyed those immediately, but stowed the rest in a pouch similar to the one she wore that was larger within than without. Their gold and silver, jewelry, and their bodies she left behind for scavengers.
The other clutch of Red Wizards was harder to find. The Simbul would have liked her chief forester's help, but she didn't need it. There was a good chance that Bro needed Trovar Halaern's wisdom more than she needed his tracking skills. She continued circling around the Cha'Tel'Quessir and had cleared about two-thirds of the circumference when she came upon the wizards, surprising herself as much as she surprised them.
Alassra was just as glad Halaern was elsewhere. She'd never handled embarrassment well, and the first moments of the skirmish were nothing short of embarrassing, with frantic Red Wizards hopping about, trying to make good use of their last moments and her having to bring them down one by one. This group was larger than the first and supported with archers, who, having no spells and few choices in their memories, kept their wits better than the wizards did, although their arrows, which burst into all-consuming flames as they neared her, were no
