The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [25]
They approached the stall together.
They weren't too late.
Zandilar's Dancer had squirreled himself into the far corner. The colt's neck was flat, his ears were flatter against his sweat-soaked head and there were white rings around his eyes. If his ears hadn't been ringing from the thunder blasts, Bro knew they would have ached from the sound of Dancer's panicked fury. It wasn't safe to enter the stall. He called the colt's name, hoping to calm him but Dancer ignored him.
Belatedly, Bro realized there was someone else in the stall.
A pale-haired stranger stood in another corner. The stranger wore dark boots, trousers, and a belted shirt. Men's clothes such as the grain-traders had worn, but this stranger was a woman whom Bro had never seen before-unless one of the wizards had been better disguised than the rest. She was taller than most women and slender enough to pass for Cha'Tel'Quessir. Indeed, Bro thought she was Cha'Tel'Quessir, until she studied him with eyes that shone with their own milky light.
She pointed a long forefinger at the space between his eyes.
Bro had faced an angry wizard already this morning; he wasn't fool enough to think he'd survive a second encounter. He unwound an unresisting sister from his shoulders and pressed her face against his breast.
"Ember?"
He saw the stranger's lips move, but her voice was magic inside his head. He wondered, briefly, how she knew Shali's name for him. Not that it mattered. The stranger's eyes blazed; Bro closed his.
"Worse than that, wizard."
Her voice echoed between Bro's ears. His knees grew weak and he prayed that he wouldn't fall before she struck him down.
"I am the witch-queen of Aglarond and you've made your very last mistake."
A force like the kick of the mightiest horse knocked Bro sideways. He struck his head on the doorpost. Like Shali, he thought… like Mother… and then he thought nothing at all.
*****
"Bro! Wake up, Bro! Hurry!"
Bro woke up; he hadn't been asleep. He didn't know what he'd been doing, or where he was, or who the little girl tugging on his sleeve was, not until he took a deep breath. The little girl was his sister. He was on the packed dirt ground outside Dancer's stall. What he'd been doing-how he'd fallen-that remained a mystery that Bro tried to solve by raising his head. Pain threatened to blast his skull from the inside out. When it subsided, Bro was sitting and the mystery was solved. He remembered everything from the moment he put his feet on the floor this morning to the stranger's milky eyes and the words she'd left in his head.
"Hurry, Bro!"
Tay-Fay retreated a step and, with her hands braced adultlike on her hips, stamped her foot impatiently. A man's body sprawled behind her, made visible by her retreat. At least Bro thought the mangled corpse had once been a man; it didn't belong to the pale-haired woman who'd struck him down.
"Hurry," Tay-Fay repeated. Her voice was faint, but clear. "She's getting away. She's taking your horse."
She-the pale-haired woman, the witch-queen of Aglarond-Bro gasped as the morning's events formed a pattern in his thoughts. The Simbul had come to Sulalk because she knew everything that happened in Aglarond and because everything in Aglarond belonged to her, if she wanted it. The Red Wizards had followed the queen, because they were her sworn enemies and that's what enemies did: follow each other and fight whenever, wherever they could.
Wizards didn't care if a handful of Aglarondan farmers got in their way. Maybe the Simbul had cared. She hadn't killed him when she'd had the chance. He could almost wish she had.
"Bro-o-o!" Tay-Fay persisted, turning his name into a melody. "She's getting away!"
With Zandilar's Dancer. Bro had no real hope of separating the Simbul and her prize. As a loyal Aglarondan, he shouldn't even try, but broken pride and a broken heart would destroy him as surely as her magic if he didn't. The half-elf