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 current. Bro let Dancer pull him. He held onto the lead rope as the colt surged out of the water and was a half-breath too late letting go once Dancer had solid ground beneath his hooves. After adding new bruises to his old ones, Bro crawled to the verge, where he offered Rizcarn a boost.
Arm against arm and so close that Bro could smell the other man's breath, they stared into each other's eyes. Bro had thrown up a mighty wall between present and past when he started walking behind Rizcarn. He hadn't thought about Sulalk or his mother in nearly three days. Suddenly, the wall crumbled. He wanted this man to be his father; he didn't want to be an orphan.
Rizcarn pulled away before he found the right words.
'Over there.' Rizcarn pointed at a toppled tree. 'Food's there.'
Despite the summer heat, Bro felt bone cold as he followed Rizcarn, wondering how Rizcarn had known the island was here, much less the tree.
The food was a mottled fungus called tree ears that grew in thick ridges along the trunk. Rizcarn swore it was wholesome. He broke off an ear the size of his forearm and bit in. Bro's mouth was sour and pasty. What else, he asked himself, had he expected? From the start Rizcarn's caches had been rotting carrion. At least tree ears were wholesome. Shali floated them in his favorite stews. He'd never eaten one raw…
There had to be a first time for everything.
Snapping off a more modest piece than Rizcarn, Bro sniffed it-it had no odor-touched it to his tongue-it had no noticeable taste-then, when Rizcarn began to laugh, shoved it into his mouth. The texture wasn't as bad as he'd feared, and the taste, after he'd chewed it a while, was almost pleasant. Sitting beside his dinner, he pulled off a chunk the size of his fist. He'd gnawed through two larger chunks before he was finished.
Bro finished his meal with a drink of the fast-flowing water around the island's edge. For the first time since that last night in Sulalk, his stomach was full.
'How long before we have to start walking again?' Bro asked when he rejoined Rizcarn.
Rizcarn looked at the sky where a bright spot marked the sun's place behind the clouds.
'Rest, son. Sleep, if you need to. I'll watch the colt and wake you when it's time.'
The thought occurred to Bro, as he stretched out in the grass, that Rizcarn might head off with the colt while he napped. Zandilar's Dancer was more important to Rizcarn than he was. But Dancer wouldn't go quietly without him holding the rope. Confident that the colt would awaken him, if Rizcarn didn't, Bro closed his eyes.
It seemed that no time had passed when Rizcarn shook him awake.
'Time to go, son.'
Rizcarn offered his hand, which Bro took, bounding to his feet and regretting it immediately. The island swayed and Bro swayed with it, barely keeping his balance. His gut rebelled. He lurched toward the water, clutching his sides. He didn't make it, but fell, retching, in the grass. His joints ached, as if there was a knife wedged in every one.
When Rizcarn appeared at his side, Bro blurted out one word, 'Poison,' and retched again.
With the few clear thoughts left in his skull, Bro doubted his own judgment: Rizcarn wasn't ill. Of course, seven years ago, Rizcarn had been rotting dead, just like the tree. Bro stopped thinking. He sipped water his father brought him, then closed his eyes and waited to die.
'Are you well yet?' Rizcarn asked.
Bro opened his eyes. The sky was noticeably dimmer than he remembered it and streaked with red and orange, blue and purple.
'Can you walk? We must start walking. I told you, this is no place to be after sundown.'
Walk? Bro couldn't raise his head without pain, but his thoughts were clear: If he wasn't dead, then he didn't want to be in the swamp. With Rizcarn's help, he got to his feet. Clinging to his father, he took a few steps, then a few more, but walking proved impossible.
'I can't, Father. Sorry. Dying. Can't eat what you eat.'
Rizcarn's eyes were dancing flames in a face that blurred and seemed less man-like the longer Bro looked at it.
'A few tree ears?' Rizcarn scoffed, sounding more like the father Bro remembered than he had earlier. 'More than a few. You've eaten yourself sick, son, but you're not dying. You can walk it off.'
He leaned on his father a few more steps, then his legs gave out. Rizcarn caught him as he fell.
'Ride, then. Zandilar's Dancer can carry you.'
Bro wasn't too far gone to miss the concession, but the true meaning-if it were more than Rizcarn's belated concern-escaped him. The grass had turned as orange as the sky. Dancer was brilliant blue, except for his eyes, which shone like the sun at sunrise. After Bro tried to explain that everything looked very different, very strange and colorful, Rizcarn brought him more water.
If he weren't already poisoned, Bro was certain he would be if he let the black ooze in Rizcarn's hands touch his lips. Then a luminous green worm wound itself around Rizcarn's thumb. The worm extended its head and opened a single, blood-streaked eye. Bro staggered backward.
But things got better once Bro was astride Dancer. With his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around the colt's neck, he could let his overheated imagination wander to pleasanter places: springtime meadows around Sulalk, autumn in the Yuirwood he remembered, all the places he'd ever wanted to see from Dancer's back.
Bro heard the sucking mud, as Rizcarn guided Dancer through the swamp, but the sound was distant, easily excluded from the visions swirling behind his closed eyes. He could hear the ever-present insects, too, but the swarms were clever enough not to feast on a doomed Cha'Tel'Quessir. Once-just once-Bro opened his eyes. The bones in his arms, the bones in Dancer's neck were shining jewels visible through translucent flesh. Looking down, he could see Dancer's heart, a pulsing ruby, and his own, which seemed smaller… darker… dying. He closed his eyes more tightly than before but the bones were etched behind his eyes, and the pleasanter visions wouldn't return.
Dancer stopped beneath him. Rizcarn grasped his arm and shook it.
'We've come to the river.'
Aglarond had streams aplenty but only one river, the River Umber, flowing out of Thay to the Sea of Dlurg on the northern coast. Bro had never seen the Umber. He opened his eyes. The sky was purple, the evening stars were green and the ribbon of water before them was the color of milk.
'Zandilar's Dancer must swim again.' Rizcarn took Bro's wrist and knotted the lead rope around it. 'And you'll have to tell him.'
The swamp was a step or two behind them. Bro suggested they could camp on the river bank.
'On the other side, son.'
'I can't see right,' he protested, not adding that he could still see his bones and Dancer's, but that Rizcarn had none. Rizcarn was a voice and a shadow. Another time, that might have disturbed Bro. Confronted with his own skeleton, though, his father's featureless shape was oddly reassuring. 'I can't ride-not like lord or knight. What if I fall off? I won't know which way to swim.'
Rizcarn tugged on the rope. 'That's what this is for: to keep you and Zandilar's Dancer together. I'll find you, son, wherever the colt fetches up, but it would be better if you stay astride.'
'If I can-'
'No ifs, Ebroin,' Rizcarn said as he whacked the colt's rump hard.
Dancer leapt into the water. The river wasn't wide, if Bro could believe anything his addled eyes perceived, but it proved deep and swift. The colt was swimming from the start, his legs churning steadily, powerfully. He tried to return to the bank where they'd started.
'Tell him where to go!' Rizcarn shouted.
Zandilar's Dancer was an even-tempered, but untrained colt. Bro was a panicked Cha'Tel'Quessir who knew no more about riding a horse than Dancer knew about being ridden. On land, trust and luck kept them together. In the river, they needed more than either knew how to give. Shouting and throwing clots of mud, Rizcarn kept them from returning to the near bank, but convincing Dancer not to turn around wasn't the same as convincing him to
