The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [68]
"He's in trouble. I gave him a token-a strand of hair. It just broke."
"What are we waiting for?"
The sisters clasped hands. The cozy chamber vanished and was replaced by Yuirwood shadows. They were alone on the bank of a stream-fed pool. Bro wasn't there. There were no signs of a fight or ambush cut into the moss. No indication that any Cha'Tel'Quessir had visited the pool recently.
"You're sure this is the right place?"
Alassra had been transporting herself around Abeir-toril for nearly six hundred years. She wasn't perfect, but her mistakes were few and far between-until now. In two days, two spells had dumped her in out-of-the-way parts of the Yuirwood; the same part of the Yuirwood, unless she missed her guess. The forest had always been chancy for wizards, but only a blind fool would fail to detect the beginnings of a new and ominous pattern.
She opened her mind, searching for a piece of herself. If her senses could be trusted, a strand of her hair was nearby.
"It's the place that drew me. Whether it's the right place-look for yourself."
Alassra hadn't meant for her sister to take her words literally, but Alustriel stripped off her gown and sandals. She dived head first into the dark-water pool, causing Alassra's heart to skip beats until a silvery wreath broke the water's surface.
"He didn't drown."
"There were other-safer-ways to learn that."
"And waste more time, if he was under water."
Alustriel paddled to the side of the pool. Alassra knelt on the bank, offering her hand. The sense that her hair was nearby had grown stronger. Squinting, she caught a glint of silver in an eddy on the pool's far side. Alustriel swam and brought back a forked twig to which Alassra's hair had been carefully attached. She took her sister's hand and climbed onto the bank where she shed a graceful waterfall and was completely-perfectly-dry.
One of the twig's tines was empty, the other wasn't.
"He had help," Alassra decided.
"You gave him a knife. I assume the steel was good enough to cut hair."
"Umm… But what I felt was this end coming loose. This was notched and the strand attached before it was cut and I'd tied it around the arm he favored. He'd need help to perform that trick with his off-weapon hand."
"An extra pair of hands, perhaps, but help?"
"We weren't bargaining," Alassra admitted, harkening back to Alustriel's recounting of her conversation with the little girl. "He blamed me for what happened. He didn't want my help. If he found it…"
"He'd have left your hair, your boots and your knife where you could easily find them. This," Alustriel twirled the twig between her fingers, "floated here. Someone made certain that Bro would be far away when you found it."
"Alustriel, you have a devious and suspicious mind. I like that in a sister."
"I try to keep in practice. Shall we wander our way upstream?"
"You're sure the little girl won't get into mischief while we're gone?"
"Absolutely."
The sisters hiked opposite banks of the stream, their mage-trained senses sharp for signs of a struggle-broken branches, dislodged stones, skid marks in the damp moss. They were alert for immaterial clues as well, the faint traces that spellcasting, though the latent magic of the Yuirwood consumed such traces quickly.
Two sets of footprints and-more tellingly-a set of hoofprints marked the place where Bro and his now-confirmed companion dropped the twig into the stream. There were no indications that Bro was other than a willing participant in deception. The horse and the two Cha'Tel'Quessir-both sisters assumed Bro was with another Yuirwood half-elf-had continued upstream, not troubling to conceal their trail.
"Follow them?" Alustriel asked.
Alassra shook her head. "Only if we need to. Open your mind. I'm noticing something very strange."
As a wizard, Alassra was more skilled than any of her sisters. On a good day and with the wind at