more effective than fireballs.
She slew them all and could only hope that, in the confusion, no Red Wizard had managed to slip away. Halaern could deal with that problem. He'd had enough time to solve the world's problems, let along Ebroin of MightyTree's.
Halaern-dear friend-
When there was no immediate answer, the Simbul searched her mind for the circlet's echo. It proved cold and nearly lifeless beneath her mental fingers. Carefully controlling her thoughts, Alassra took two measured steps to the right, then two more, listening to the echo. When she had Halaern's location fixed in her mind, she started running. She reassembled her Cha'Tel'Quessir disguise as she ran.
Alassra found the forester in the brush between the tree where they'd talked and the camp where the Cha'Tel'Quessir napped, oblivious to all danger. Halaern's arms were swollen to the elbow and discolored with the black-and-white patches of severe frostbite-hardly the injury she expected to see in height of summer. Bro was nowhere to be seen. As she knelt beside her unconscious friend, the Simbul had a bad feeling that she knew what had happened.
Halaern could have healed himself more easily than she could, had he been conscious. The foresters had mastered the Yuirwood's magic before they came to her. Her circlets enhanced their power, but didn't create it. However, he wasn't conscious. Alassra tried to rouse him with his name, with gentle pressure on both his shoulder, and with vaporous white crystals she carried as a purifying reagent. When nothing worked, she opened a shiny steel vial and began working ointment into the discolored flesh.
Halaern came to when she had one arm nearly restored to its natural dimensions and color. His eyes filled with comprehension, then closed with a sigh.
'I lost him, my queen.'
'The solitaire?' Alassra asked, knowing the answer. She continued massaging the ointment into his arm.
The forester levered himself into a sitting position. 'One moment he was there. The next there was a shadow around him. I wasn't quick enough. I wasn't where I should have been.'
Alassra started on his other arm. 'You did your best. It's my fault for leaving everyone unprotected. While I was here, she couldn't get close enough. Once I'd left… It would have happened anyway, Halaern. Don't blame yourself.'
Halaern shook his head. 'It is my fault, my lady. I wasn't beside him. He'd said something outrageous-that you were Zandilar-and I let him get ahead of me. If I'd been beside him-'
'I would have lost both of you. The solitaire is a zulkir, my friend. The Zulkir of Illusion and an old, old enemy. I've expected her since I arrived in the forest. She's a small woman. When you mentioned a small, isolated footprint, I knew which one was her, but I thought I still had time to trap her. I was wrong. My mistake. My fault.'
Halaern applied internal healing to his discolored flesh and the wounds faded like frost. 'My heart lies heavy to think what a zulkir will do with him.'
'No heavier than mine.' They began walking to the Cha'Tel'Quessir. 'But don't lose hope entirely. It won't satisfy her to take him. Whatever she has in mind-and I have a few guesses on that score-she won't do it unless I witness it. We'll have a chance. Mystra's mercy, we'll have a chance.'
'Did you solve your other problems?'
'Yes, for all the good it's done us.'
Rizcarn was still carving runes. He set down his rock and chisel when he saw Chayan and Trovar Halaern of Yuirwood walking grim-faced toward him.
Mythrell'aa hated the Yuirwood, hated the buzzing insects, the bits of dead leaves that got into her robes and made her skin itch. She hated last night's rain and wind, even though she'd made herself a secure shelter against it. She hated today's mud that ruined her sandals and made her stumble. She hated everything about the forest, but she was deeply satisfied that she'd made the journey from Bezantur.
The mongrel-Alassra's pet-lay blind and silent on the ground, fighting futilely against the spells she'd lashed around his body and his will.
The thing Mythrell'aa hated most about the Yuirwood was its effect on her magic. Everything was more difficult, as if the very rocks and trees ranged themselves against her. But the forest hadn't withstood her shadows, especially not when Lailomun cast them and walked within them. Keeping Lailomun's attention, though, was a trial. The man's mind faded so quickly; she'd had to relax his compulsions just so he could obey her commands.
But the mongrel-Ee'bro'een, she'd plucked his name from his surface thoughts-made it all worthwhile. His corrupt elven heritage was quite noticeable: a narrow, feral face, mottled green-and-copper skin and swept-back, pointed ears. Mythrell'aa's flesh crawled when she had to touch him. There was no question of taking him back to Bezantur when she'd gotten her revenge and victory over Alassra Shentrantra. He was supremely expendable.
'Wake up,' the Zulkir of Illusion commanded her helpless prisoner, and his eyes sprang open. 'Stand up,' she added, and he struggled fruitlessly because she hadn't loosened the bonds that held him against the ground. 'Suffer,' she concluded, and he did, screaming until blood trickled from his nose. 'You see, I have all the power and you have none. No one can hear you scream. We are quite perfectly isolated here. Now, you can answer my questions or you can suffer. You have only begun to suffer, Ee'bro'een. The choice is yours.'
His mouth worked frantically. Mythrell'aa thought, with some small regret, that he was going to cooperate, but he spat at her instead and she castigated him with a thousand insubstantial cuts. He didn't bleed, but he thought he did; that was the power of illusion and she was the most powerful illusionist in Thay.
Stubborn and deliriously foolish, Ee'bro'een yielded nothing without a struggle. He proved to have a higher tolerance for torment than the few elves that had previously fallen into her hands. She almost reconsidered his expendability.
But the knowledge Mythrell'aa extracted from his mind advised her that while elf-human mongrels might be worth the trouble of collecting and keeping, this particular mongrel had a different destiny. He didn't know why Alassra Shentrantra-the Simbul, as he called her-had taken an interest in him and his horse, and he didn't know that the woman who'd been marching beside him for the last five days was that same Simbul.
Mythrell'aa hadn't been completely certain herself until last night when the forest erupted in flame and lightning. She knew Alassra's spellcasting signature and it was all over the sky. It was interesting that Ee'bro'een thought his lover was the mongrel goddess, Zandilar, but only insofar as that created possibilities in Mythrell'aa's fertile imagination. Ee'bro'een expected himself, his horse, and his half-breed goddess to dance together at the moment of the full moon, midway through this coming night at a place he knew as the Sunglade.
Odd to worship the moon in a Sunglade, but the forest mongrels were, at best, odd.
Ee'bro'een expected some great miracle to result from this unlikely union, some rebirth of the forest powers, but mostly he expected a night of highly unimaginative passion in his lover's arms.
Ee'bro'een knew the way to the Sunglade, and, after a short deliberation, Mythrell'aa knew what she wanted to have happen there: two events, two triumphs, the first more important than the second. The first would destroy Alassra Shentrantra and the second… Mythrell'aa found the notion of impersonating a goddess, even a mongrel goddess, appealing.
To implement her first triumph, Mythrell'aa roused Lailomun from his lethargy. He, too, had become expendable. Generations ago, during Thay's struggle for independence, the transmuter, Lusaka Gur had developed a spell that made the Mulhorandi think twice before capturing a Red Wizard. To cast it was suicide, which, unsurprisingly, had made the spell difficult to perfect. Indeed, Gur's notes showed that in its early versions, he'd cast the spell on someone else: an enemy, a slave, another Red Wizard. Mythrell'aa possessed a true copy of Lusaka Gur's notes. And while she kept the final version of Gur's spell-lash memorized at all times, she'd found the early mark of Gur more useful.
In either version, it was a complicated spell, far too complicated for Lailomun's addled memory, but he wouldn't have to cast it. He would merely bear its mark until she touched his mind with the triggering words.
'Alassra,' Mythrell'aa whispered to her handsome, doomed pet as she anointed him with cade oil. 'Alassra Shentrantra. When next you hear those words, my pet, she will be in front of you. No matter what your poor eyes tell you, my pet, it will be her, and you will be free to go to her. Do you hear me, my pet? You will be free.' She
