The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [128]
"What truly happened back there? What did you see?"
"Me? I closed my eyes, Ebroin. You tell me, what did you see?"
"But you said-"
"I lied. You were healed. Does it matter who did it or how? Let it be Relkath, that's what Rizcarn and the others want to believe."
They trudged another hundred paces in silence.
"I thought it was you, Chayan. I thought I felt magic pass from you to me."
"Nonsense, Ebroin," she said, though that was precisely what had happened. "A sell-sword like me, making trees explode? What do I look like, the Simbul herself?"
"No. Of course not. It's just… Chayan, I'm not myself. I don't know me anymore. But I-I could more than like you, Chayan-if I thought you cared."
"Oh, Ebroin, I care. I care very much, but I'll move on, too. I don't stay in one place very long."
"I guess that's what Rizcarn told my mother."
Alassra slipped her hand around Bro's. "There's a time for thinking about tomorrow, Ebroin, but it's not when there's a hanging storm over your head."
They walked through a sultry afternoon where the only breeze was the hot breath wafting from their lungs. From time to time, Alassra glimpsed Halaern or another forester pacing them in the near distance. Like them, she kept her senses honed for Red Wizard activity. Spread out and nearly mindless, the Cha'Tel'Quessir were vulnerable to attack, but none came. The Thayans were taking their cues from Rizcarn, following him to the Sunglade along with two-score Cha'Tel'Quessir.
Sunset was a smear of hot-forged steel on the western horizon. Night was black and marked by whiplash winds that came without warning. Halaern could have said whether the storm had followed them as they walked or whether it was as large as the Yuirwood, but Halaern wasn't available for conversation. Alassra knew only that it had been hanging for a full night and day: longer than any summer storm in her memory.
Rizcarn kept them walking. Alassra cut her finger on her sister's knife and kept pace with the Cha'Tel'Quessir. She wondered how the Red Wizards were faring, but not through any misplaced compassion. Though there were spells that would give a human man or woman elven vision for a night, there was a good chance that they'd do something rash if they thought their quarry was getting ahead of them. Even if it were Mythrell'aa herself pacing them, the illusionist was surely traveling with a wizard who could cast the invocation spell for lightning into the hanging storm to bring it down on them all.
Alassra's worst fears seemed confirmed when the winds intensified and pummeled the Cha'Tel'Quessir from every direction. Thunder began, not as ear-splitting cracks but in long, low-pitched rumbles. The sky stayed dark; lightning hadn't yet broken free.
Three steps farther, and Alassra stopped. Lightning was her favorite death spell. When she cast it, the white-hot bolts were met and balanced by a counterthrust from deep within the soil. That force was building under her feet. Looking into the trees, she glimpsed ghostly blue fingers rising from the topmost branches.
The trees of the Yuirwood and all the life beneath them were about to get caught in a battle between the sky and the ground. Alassra threw aside her bow, her arrows, her steel-headed spear and unbuckled her sword belt: She touched one of the studs on her shirt. Her finger healed and the forest went dark.
"Get down!" she shouted in a voice that carried over the wind. "Lie flat."
She might as well have told them to pray to Relkath. When the first bolt struck, a pine tree burst into flames. The second bolt struck an oak. A branch bore the bolt to the trunk, the trunk carried it to the ground where it spread out like a spider's web. Alassra felt it pass beneath her feet, then the thunder fell down on them.
There was panic among them as the Cha'Tel'Quessir ignored her advice, and perhaps just as well. The burning pine collected three more bolts in blinding