The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [79]
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 swim for the far bank. Without firm guidance, he wanted nothing to do with either bank and, once in the current, headed downstream.
"Tell him, Ebroin!"
Dancer wasn't listening to anything except himself. He'd decided where he was going, and his neck was stronger than Bro's arms. Rizcarn's shouts had faded; the milk-colored water had turned a bloody red under an equally bloody sky. In last-ditch desperation, Bro wriggled forward until his legs clamped around Dancer's shoulders and his free hand grabbed the halter.
"Over there!" he screamed as he pulled with all his strength. "To the land!"
The colt's body followed his head. Bro released the halter when the far bank was directly in front of them. A heartbeat later he realized he should have turned Dancer upstream, but at least the colt was swimming crosscurrent, and when the bank didn't shout or throw things at him, Dancer decided land was the place he wanted to be. After that, there was nothing Bro could have done to keep the colt in the river.
The riverbank was higher than the swamp island had been. Dancer tried twice before his hooves found solid ground, then he shook like a wet dog, from nose to tail. With neither saddle nor reins to help him, Bro lost his never-secure perch and tumbled to the ground, twisting his tied-up arm in the process.
The best horse in the world was a skittish creature, apt to shy at anything, friend or foe. After all he'd been through, Zandilar's Dancer shied mightily when Bro yelped. He took off at a trot, dragging Bro beside him. Soaked and swollen, the serpent knot at Bro's translucent wrist wouldn't yield to his frantic fingers until he remembered the Simbul's knife, secure in its sheath. Its blade-ordinary steel in Bro's otherwise addled vision-cut the rope cleanly, though he nicked himself before he got free.
Dancer took off, an apparition of glowing bones and barely visible flesh galloping across blue-green grass. Bro gave up the chase before it started. He was nauseous again, and the cuts on his forearm stung. When the stinging spread up his arm, Bro suspected magic and, remembering the seelie, kept hold of the hilt as he dropped to the ground.
He blacked out when the stinging reached his heart. When he recovered consciousness, the land around him was night-dark, as it should have been. The nausea had passed. Hard, itching scabs sealed the cut he'd given himself. Without thinking, Bro scratched the itch. The scab fell away; his skin was smooth.
A crescent moon had cut through the clouds. It shed enough light to distinguish shape from shadow. Bro was out of the swamp, out of the Yuirwood, maybe out of Aglarond altogether. He had to find the colt and Rizcarn or else he was going to have to find his way home alone.
After wringing out his hair, clothes, and boots, Bro stood