Yongour called three other names; the four of them headed for the stream. Bro moved to follow. Alassra held him back.

"You've done enough," she assured him. "With two holes in your side, no one expects you to carry Lanig's body uphill."

"Before you were telling me to use my arm more. Lanig was no one to me, but he was there when they pulled the arrow out of me; I owe him. He must've died sometime today. Before or after you got here, I wonder. You who've fought everyone, everywhere. You know about Thayan arrows, maybe you know Thayan spells, too. You've been staring at me since you got here, Chayan. Why? Because I'm still alive?"

"Let's go somewhere quiet and talk about this, Ebroin."

She reached for his right arm; he wrested away.

"I don't think I should go anywhere with you, alone."

Alassra tried again and caught his wrist. "I didn't put an arrow in you, Ebroin, and I didn't pop Lanig's heart out of his chest. I'll prove it to you, if I have to, but I'd rather you took my word."

"I want proof."

"Not here. Somewhere private."

She led Bro out of the camp, wondering, as she walked, if he'd be any more convinced of her innocence once he did know who she was. Perhaps the best course would be to summon Trovar Halaern, whose thoughts she could catch through the circlet and who could say, with absolute honesty, that they'd been together last night and this morning and nowhere near the camp.

"We'll start with the simple things." Alassra began, still holding Bro's wrist. "I didn't put an arrow in you because I don't have any reason to. I came to this camp because I'd heard about Rizcarn, your father, and what he planned to do in the Sunglade. When I got here, Lanig told me Rizcarn was gone and Rizcarn's son was injured. So I made myself useful, making sure you didn't die—I know you, Ebroin, I know you better than you imagine and I rather like—"

Alassra got no further in her explanation. Bro's right arm—the one she'd been telling him he could move with confidence—slipped around her waist. Any other time, she would have bounced him off the ten nearest trees for impertinence, but sometimes even the queen of Aglarond took the easy way, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him gently before saying:

"You're a handsome young man, Ebroin. It's very easy to stare."

My lady?

Halaern answering her summons.

Never mind. I thought there was a problem, but I've got it under control.

As you wish, my lady.

He was attractive and his wounds were healing. If she were careful ... but, no, she'd break his heart as she'd broken others, or he'd break hers by growing old. Alassra risked a little magic; Bro found himself yawning and interested only in a nap. Next time she came to the Yuirwood, Alassra swore, there'd definitely be warts on her face, a lot of them, plus crossed eyes, and crooked teeth, with great, dirty gaps between them 22

The Yuirwood, in Aglarond Morning, the twenty-third day of Eleasias, The Year of the Banner (1368DR)

Bro awoke early, wrapped in a woolen blanket. He remembered little of the previous evening, except that he couldn't stop yawning while Lanig's grave was dug and had fallen asleep shortly after sunset.

His wounds didn't hurt, not the cautery burns nor the puncture passage between his ribs. Bro considered the possibility that the Simbul's knife had healed him overnight. The queen hadn't told him it would protect him against poison; he'd had to learn that for himself. Maybe it had healing powers as well.

Perhaps he should have been more careful with her boots. Perhaps he shouldn't have blamed her for Sulalk. Perhaps he wasn't healed at all. Perhaps the lack of pain was proof that the wound had festered, deadening the flesh around it. Perhaps each beat of his heart was pushing fatal poison closer to his brain. Perhaps he should take off his borrowed shirt, unwind the bandages and see for himself.

Bro decided against all of that.

He looked around quickly. His nearest neighbor, still asleep, was a head of long brown hair, half-braided, half-loose, spilling onto another trade blanket. Not Rizcarn, whose hair was raven black. There wasn't a raven hair to be seen in pale light. Rizcarn hadn't returned.

The watch had retired and the camp was stirring. Cha'Tel'Quessir rekindled their fires for breakfast cooking, shook out their clothes, wandered in and out of the bushes, tending their private needs. Bro counted a handful of new faces among them; they numbered forty now, give or take a few. Chayan hadn't been yesterday's only new arrival, though she was the only one he'd noticed.

Thinking of her, Bro pounded his fist against his forehead. Healed or poisoned, he was clearer-headed this morning, and the memories ... What had he been thinking of when she led him out of the camp? Had he truly put his arm around her? Tried to kiss her on the lips?

"Gods curse me for a fool," he muttered, knotting his shirt within his fist, until he remembered it was hers and smoothed it out again. "They were digging Lanig's grave and I was thinking ..."

Bro didn't want to say what he'd been thinking, not even in a whisper. The very morning that she died, his mother had chided him for being too shy and awkward around the Sulalk human girls. Time enough, he'd told himself, when he got back to the Yuirwood.

But barely enough: Chayan was practically the first unspoken-for woman he'd met, and he'd made a fool of himself. Cha'Tel'Quessir grew up as fast as their human cousins, then settled into an almostelven maturity. Bro recalled how shocked he'd been when Shali once told him she was old enough to be Dent's mother. Chayan, who'd fought everywhere with everyone and whose tree-family, SilverBranch, Bro didn't recognize, was almost certainly older than Shali. Age wasn't supposed to be important between men and women in the Yuirwood, but the longer Bro thought about it, the younger and more foolish he felt.

He grabbed the blanket and began folding it, using both arms: he'd sooner die of poison than have Chayan taking care of him a moment longer. It wasn't his blanket anyway; he'd been borrowing blankets or furs each night, as he'd been borrowing everything else since he met up with his father. Two nights ago, he'd borrowed a fur from Lanig...

Bro's hands stopped moving. He hadn't known Lanig well. More than the memory of Lanig's corpse and Dent's and Shali's, it was the number of people who were simply gone that set his hands shaking. His world had turned over so many times, and what was he doing? Folding a blanket, as if it mattered whether blankets got folded, whether he was warm and dry when the dew fell.

Rizcarn went around the Yuirwood carving runes into trees and stones so they wouldn't forget. Bro thought it would have been more useful to carve runes into the Cha'Tel'Quessir themselves so he wouldn't forget who he was, where he'd come from, and what he'd left behind. Shali had a tiny scar on her cheek; for his life, Bro couldn't remember if it had been her right cheek or her left.

He took a deep breath that hurt his right-side ribs and the place he called his heart. Then he put another fold in the blanket, because he was alive, not dead, and he'd have to return the blanket with proper gratefulness. When the blanket was neatly folded in eighths, Bro started to stand, and stopped. The blanket in his hands matched the blanket wrapped around his neighbor, and his nighttime neighbor with the long, brown hair was Chayan.

Chayan, wrapping him in her own blankets, taking care of him because he was too young and foolish to take care of himself.

At least she was still asleep. Carefully, quietly, Bro laid the blanket beside her and tiptoed away. Yongour hailed him as he trudged up from the stream. Had he slept well? Was he feeling better? Would he breakfast at Yongour's fire?

Lanig's death and Rizcarn's continued absence had revitalized the Cha'Tel'Quessir. They gathered like tree-family elders at Yongour's fire, sipping tea and gnawing chunks of yesterday's bread. Bro greeted them all by name; they greeted him as Rizcarn's son and asked him when his father would return.

"The question is, should we wait here, or make our way to the Sunglade," Yongour explained. "I measure that the 'Glade's three days from here, walking fast and alone. We're thirty-eight now, and we can only walk as fast as our slowest legs. Some have to forage as well. If we leave now, all of us will get there. If we wait a day, some won't. If we wait more than a day, like as not, Zandilar will dance without us. Did your father tell you which we should do? Walk or wait?"

Bro wanted to laugh. His father hadn't told him anything. Rizcarn didn't trust his son much more than that son trusted him, but Rizcarn had—unintentionally?—left him with the power to bring thirty-eight Cha'Tel'Quessir to the Sunglade or keep them in this camp until it was too late to dance with Zandilar.

"Wait," one of the women said. "Rizcarn's our guide. I've been to the 'Glade a hundred times, and nothing's come of it. If there's to be change in the Yuirwood, Rizcarn must lead us to the Sunglade, no one else."

Another woman spoke up. "Rizcarn called us together. He told us where to go and when to be there. Now he's gone to do other things. If we fail him, we fail the Yuirwood, we fail the Cha'Tel'Quessir. It's time to start walking."

"You see our problem," Yongour advised Bro. "We were evenly divided until we agreed to listen to you. You're his son. The gods' arrow struck you. Another man would have died, but we see you walking. You have their favor, Rizcarn's son. You could lead us."

Bro assumed that Yongour was one of those in favor of marching toward the Sunglade. "There are other things to consider," he began. "Whoever—whatever—killed Lanig is still out there."

"Lanig lost faith after Rizcarn left," the first woman said.

"He was ready to leave. He abandoned Rizcarn; Rizcarn abandoned him." That from the second woman.

Yongour added his opinion: "Lanig's death is another reason to move on. Rizcarn won't come back to a place where he was betrayed."

Bro started to say My father's not a god, but the words stuck in his throat. To the men and women waiting for him to speak, he was no more than a coin tossed to break a tie in a game of odds or evens. Yongour expected him to break it in his favor. And Bro would have, if he'd thought there was something to be gained for the Yuirwood and the Cha'Tel'Quessir in the Sunglade at full moon. After Lanig's death, Bro didn't believe anything.