Love, Loss, and Lightning in the Forest
These three chapters are a lot. They cover Bro recovering from his arrow wound, falling for a woman who is secretly the most powerful wizard on the continent, losing more friends, and then we cut to Lauzoril having one of the most emotionally intense father-daughter scenes in any D&D novel. So let’s get into it.
Chapter 21: The Simbul Plays Nurse
The chapter opens with Alassra (still disguised as Chayan) examining the arrow that was pulled out of Bro’s side. She immediately recognizes it as Thayan make. Spiral fletching designed to widen the entry wound, slow-acting poison, the works. This was a professional hit, almost certainly ordered by Mythrell’aa.
But she can’t tell anyone that. She’s undercover.
So instead she plays concerned Cha’Tel’Quessir woman, tending to Bro’s wounds with her hidden magic while the camp falls apart around them. Without Rizcarn, these people have no direction. They can’t even get cooking fires started until Alassra nudges them into action. It’s a subtle detail, but it says everything about how dependent this group is on Rizcarn’s presence.
Bro, meanwhile, is a mess. He’s sitting in the shadows while everyone talks over his head. They call him “Rizcarn’s son” like that’s all he is. Baggage to be hauled to the Sunglade. And honestly, he’s not wrong about that.
Here’s where it gets awkward. Alassra is tending his wounds, giving him a borrowed shirt, being kind. And Bro is seventeen and wounded and lonely. He grabs her hand and won’t let go. She tells him to put those thoughts out of his mind. Not because she’s cruel, but because she knows what happens when people fall in love with the Simbul. She’s watched it happen to Trovar Halaern. She doesn’t want to do that again.
Then they find Lanig’s body across the stream. Torn apart by something, but there’s no blood on the ground, no tracks, no sign of how the body got there. It’s a murder staged to look like an animal attack and concealed by magic. Bro handles it better than you’d expect. He’s the one who suggests doubling the watch, who understands that the Cha’Tel’Quessir will listen to a woman with weapons more than to an injured boy.
The chapter ends with Bro confronting Chayan, suspecting her of involvement. She leads him away from camp to explain. And Bro, being Bro, puts his arm around her and tries to kiss her. Alassra kisses him gently, tells him he’s handsome, then uses magic to make him fall asleep. And swears that next time she disguises herself as a Cha’Tel’Quessir, she’s giving herself warts, crossed eyes, and crooked teeth.
It’s funny and sad at the same time.
Chapter 22: Morning After and Moving Out
Bro wakes up wrapped in a blanket. His wounds don’t hurt anymore, which either means the Simbul’s knife healed him or the poison has gone fatal and he’s lost all feeling. He decides not to check.
The thing that hits him first is embarrassment. He remembers trying to put his arm around Chayan. He remembers trying to kiss her. And now he realizes the blanket he’s wrapped in matches the one she’s sleeping under, right next to him. She gave him her own blanket and slept beside him because he was too young and foolish to take care of himself.
He tiptoes away and goes to Yongour’s fire, where the Cha’Tel’Quessir are debating whether to wait for Rizcarn or start walking to the Sunglade. They’re deadlocked and they want Bro to break the tie. Not because they value his opinion, but because he’s Rizcarn’s son and that makes him a convenient coin toss.
Bro tells them to wait one day, then walk. It’s a smart compromise. Everyone seems satisfied.
Then he notices Chayan leaving camp with her pack and weapons. He follows her. Bad idea. He loses her trail, finds it again, and then overhears her talking with a man about Red Wizard groups shadowing the camp. The man is Trovar Halaern, the Simbul’s forester.
Bro gets caught. Halaern nearly breaks his neck before Chayan tells him to let go. But then something nice happens. Halaern and Bro trace their lineages and discover they’re actually related, distant cousins through MightyTree. It’s a small moment, but it matters. Bro has so few connections left.
The three of them talk about the situation. There are Thayan wizards following the camp. There’s something that killed Lanig with magic that wasn’t Red Wizard magic. There’s Rizcarn, who might be compromised. Bro suggests telling the other Cha’Tel’Quessir about the Red Wizards. Halaern shuts that down.
Then Rizcarn comes back from his supposed trip to MightyTree. He has a mourning bead for Shali that looks genuine. He cries real tears. But he shouldn’t have been able to make the round trip that fast on foot. Something is very off.
The chapter also has a quiet scene between Chayan and Bro after Halaern leaves them alone. She teases him. He’s still embarrassed. But they end up walking back to camp hand in hand. Abbey writes this so naturally. Bro is pleased with himself for about thirty seconds before he sees Rizcarn waiting for him.
Chapter 23: Lauzoril’s Daughter and the Dead
This chapter shifts to Thay, and it’s one of the best in the book.
Lauzoril is teaching Mimuay how to detect magic. He uses his scrying bowl to find the knife he sent to the Simbul years ago. When the image resolves, it shows a half-elf boy in the Yuirwood. Bro.
What follows is incredible. Mimuay, who is maybe eight years old, somehow perceives Bro’s thoughts through her father’s scrying spell. She can feel that his mother is dead. She can feel that a Red Wizard tried to kill him. She sees the Simbul in the space between his memories. Lauzoril can’t perceive any of this himself, which means his daughter has raw talent that surpasses his own.
And it terrifies him.
Not because she’s powerful, but because she’s untrained and he doesn’t know how to train her without turning her into what he is. His own mentors beat the imagination out of him. He can’t do that to her. But too much imagination in a wizard is dangerous.
Then there’s Ferrin. Mimuay’s invisible friend. Lauzoril has been searching for this spirit, and now he sends his undead grandfather Gweltaz and his father Chazsinal to find it. What they drag back is the ghost of an apprentice, a kid no older than Mimuay, who Mimuay found in a grave and called back to life with natural talent she doesn’t even understand.
Gweltaz tries to consume Ferrin. Mimuay breaks through Lauzoril’s wards to save her friend, which forces Lauzoril to dissolve the wards to protect his daughter. In the confusion, Gweltaz devours Ferrin anyway.
Lauzoril speaks a single word in Mulhorandi, the language of the oldest, darkest magic. He lets Mimuay watch as pinpoint sparks expand into a sphere that consumes both his grandfather and his father. Fifteen years of keeping those undead in his crypt, and he destroys them in seconds for what they did.
“I regret Ferrin,” he tells his daughter in the dark.
And then Mimuay asks if they can protect the boy in the mirror. Bro. She felt his sadness through the scrying spell and she wants to help him. Lauzoril says no. But when he goes to the stable later, he sends a straw man walking and makes his decision. He’s going to the Yuirwood.
The chapter ends with him telling Mimuay he’s leaving Thazalhar. “I understand, Poppa,” she says. And Lauzoril realizes he doesn’t understand her at all.
What I Think
The emotional layering in these chapters is something else. Bro’s awkward attempt at romance happening right alongside genuine death and grief, that’s not something you see in a lot of fantasy novels, and especially not in D&D tie-ins. He’s a teenager who tried to kiss a girl while they were digging a friend’s grave. And he knows how messed up that is. But he’s also seventeen and scared and lonely and attraction doesn’t wait for convenient timing.
Abbey doesn’t judge him for it. The Simbul doesn’t judge him for it either, even though she’s the one being kissed. She just handles it with as much grace as a 600-year-old shapeshifting queen can manage.
And then the Lauzoril chapter. Every time I think this book is just a Forgotten Realms adventure story, Lynn Abbey writes a scene where a Red Wizard zulkir destroys his own undead ancestors to protect his daughter’s dead imaginary friend, and I have to put the book down for a minute. Lauzoril is supposed to be the villain. He keeps undead relatives in his crypt and feeds them live chickens. But he’s also a father who won’t use magic on his own child even when it would make everything easier.
The detail that kills me is when Gweltaz’s spirit knife tells Lauzoril to kill Mimuay. And Lauzoril notes that her neck would fit easily between his thumb and fingers. He knows exactly how to do it. And then he hugs her instead. That’s not a villain. That’s a complicated person trapped in a monstrous system trying to protect the one good thing in his life.
These chapters are doing so much heavy lifting. Bro’s growing up. The Simbul’s cover is fraying. Lauzoril is finally being pushed off the fence. Everything is heading toward the Sunglade and whatever waits there.
Previous: The Simbul Goes Native and Thay Calls a Meeting
Next: Dancing With Gods at the Sunglade
Book Details
- Title: The Simbul’s Gift
- Author: Lynn Abbey
- Series: The Nobles, Book 6
- Setting: Forgotten Realms (D&D)
- ISBN: 0-7869-0763-0