The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [80]
With a hand on the studded hilt protruding from its sheath, Bro started walking upstream. He had no fear and wasn't unstrung when Rizcarn, leading Dancer, separated from the darkness.
"You're better now, son."
Bro shrugged. No reason to tell Rizcarn about his knife. "Grandfather always said terror could cure anything from hiccoughs to fevers. I'm so cured I could walk until dawn, if that's what you want."
"Not so far or long, son. We're almost there."
Rizcarn started walking away from the river. Bro followed, leading the colt by the rope.
"This was forest once, long before the Cha'Tel'Quessir were born," Rizcarn explained, more talkative than he'd been before. "See… over there. That's where Zandilar danced with the hunters."
Bro sighted along his father's arm and saw the stones, a score of them at least, heaved into the night. He touched the knife; his fingers tingled.
"Is she there, Father? Am I-? Is she going to dance with me, as she promised?" After today, Bro didn't want to dance with anything magical.
"Zandilar keeps her promises." There was, unexpectedly, a hint of concern and caution in Rizcarn's voice. "But not tonight, I think. Later. Best it were later, son. Relkath protects."
The stones rose haphazardly from the ground, no two the same height or angle, completely unlike the measured stone circles of the Yuirwood. Bro worried that they were no part of his heritage, until he stood close to one and studied its markings. He couldn't read the runes his elven ancestors carved on trees and stones alike, but he recognized them and was reassured.
"Magnar." He touched one of the more common carvings. That last summer, when he'd followed his father through the forest, they'd carved Relkath's name into the trees, but they'd carved Magnar's name whenever they'd found a moss-covered boulder. "The stones remember."
"No time to awaken the stones, son. We're here for Zandilar."
Bro wasn't terribly surprised when Rizcarn produced a pair of silver pipes. He'd never heard his father play, but it was a rare Cha'Tel'Quessir who couldn't coax a melody from the pipes. He wasn't terribly concerned that the melody was unfamiliar and grew less disciplined as Rizcarn wove from one stone to the next. Though he'd been a child when he left the Yuirwood, he'd heard about moonlight revels where everyone danced themselves to exhaustion. If Zandilar were going to dance, he imagined she'd prefer wild music. Just so long as she didn't expect him to dance with her.
His trust vanished when they reached the center of the ancient stones. A large stone lay flat, its visible surface covered with swirling marks that weren't like any runes Bro had ever seen. When he stared at them, his body began to weave in rhythm with Rizcarn's music. He walked forward, toward the stone until he tripped and, aware that there was magic in the air, wrapped his hand firmly around the hilt of his knife.
Immune to both his father's music and the meandering swirls, Bro noticed the hole at the stone's center. No bigger around than a circle made by the thumb and fingers of both hands, it was unnaturally dark and cold in his night vision. He'd opened his mouth, to call it to Rizcarn's attention, when he noticed a pale, thin mist rising from its depths. Bro's hand tingled, then the hilt itself seemed to freeze in his hand, a warning, he supposed, that Zandilar's magic was stronger. He tried to turn around and found that, though his thoughts remained his own, his feet did not. It was stand still or move toward the stone and the mist.
Bro kept a grip on Dancer's halter while the mist thickened into the goddess herself. The lithe figure had a woman's arms and legs, but it was taller than him and its body was shimmering,