"No need, my friend," Alassra said in flawless Cha'Tel'Quessir dialect. "Halaern was expecting me."

The woman shook her head slowly. She wasn't convinced, but there were subtle enchantments that Alassra could work without risking her Cha'Tel'Quessir disguise. They began to erode the stranger's suspicions.

"What is your name? Your tree-family?" she asked, her hand at last moving from her knife.

"Chayan." It was a fairly common name among the Cha'Tel'Quessir. "Of SilverBranch."

"SilverBranch? I don't know that tree."

"It's a long story." Alassra heaved a dramatic sigh. "I was alone when I left the Yuirwood and I've been gone a long time. Too long. I'm back now; back for good. The Simbul said I would find Trovar Halaern of Yuirwood here."

The woman brightened. "My brother was here earlier, but he had to leave. I'm Gren, of his tree. Welcome, Chayan. Let me lead you to our home."

"I'd sooner find your brother. Will you take me to him?"

Gren shook her head. "There's been trouble lately with the seelie cousins. He's gone to find the truth, and told me not to follow. There's no wisdom in crossing him-nor in following after him, if you've forgotten the forest or haven't got a sprig of magic to you."

"I've got a sprig or two," Alassra assured her companion, briefly displaying her talisman necklace. "And I haven't been gone so long that I can't follow a forester's trail."

Gren laughed. "My brother leaves no trail, but he said if I met a stubborn woman at the tree, I should send her north after him. Are you a stubborn woman, Chayan of SilverBranch?"

"Very."

"Then hike north and tell my brother I'll come looking for him if he's not back by sundown."

They parted friends and Alassra headed north, then east, following a trail Halaern had blazed for no one but his queen to follow. The Simbul knew she'd caught up with him when she heard a bear growling nearby. She knew he was in trouble when she felt malice and magic in the forest air.

Alassra quickly unslung her bow, tightened the bowstring and tested the weapon's pull. Then, in absolute silence, she followed Halaern's trail to its end. At first she thought he had drawn his sword against a bear, but that wouldn't account for the magic she sensed all around her. She saw twisted shadows among the trees. They swooped down to strike her forester with a variety of weapons, including magic spells.

If the seelie were a nuisance, their dark-spirited cousins, the unseelie, were a true menace, with venom on their blades and in their minds. They did their worst against Trovar Halaern, but the forester was deadly with his sword and the Yuirwood itself shielded him from their vicious, but minor, magic. The bear was not so fortunate. Though the dark seelie preferred to torment the sentient races, they'd stoop to animals if the victims were especially tempting: two bear cubs, midway through their first summer. Both had been shapeshifted and wounded; one appeared dead, the other, with a broken wing sprouted from its back, cried piteously.

The bear instinctively defended her cubs, blind to the magical dangers her diminutive enemies presented. Her coat was ragged and blood soaked where they'd assaulted her with fire and acid.

Halaern fought beside the bear, dodging her teeth and claws as often as he attacked the dark seelie. Watching the skirmish, as yet unnoticed by either side, the Simbul weighed her choices. She had the spells to smite each darting seelie to the ground, killing it directly or stunning it but capturing one of the creatures appealed to her. No one knew where they hid between attacks; it wasn't anywhere that mortal men and women dwelt. Once they'd been rare in the Yuirwood, creatures of legend not experience. That had begun changing several years ago. At first the Simbul had believed the cause was delinquent magic left over from the Time of Troubles but now-with her meeting with the elven sages fresh in her mind-she suspected it had something to do with the Yuirwood's old, wild gods.

A year ago, she'd offered all her foresters rings enchanted with spells meant specifically to counter the unseelie. Halaern had politely declined. He didn't like wizard magic, didn't like any magic unless it was rooted in his beloved Yuirwood. It had taken Alassra years to get him to wear a verdigrised circlet that worked with the forest's innate magic and-because she'd made it-allowed her to sense his well-being whether she was in Velprintalar or six paces to his left.

Her forester was tiring, starting to think that he'd have to leave the she-bear and her cubs to an unpleasant fate. He wouldn't appreciate great gouts of spellcraft, but he was ready to welcome a sword swung by a friend's arm.

Alassra shed her bow, drew her sword and, mindful that interrupting an ongoing fight was dangerous all around, crept through the brush until she was in Halaern's direct line of sight. When she was certain he'd see her quickly and clearly, she gave a warbling war cry and whacked a grotesque seelie with the wings of a bat, the lower body of a serpent, and the upper body of an orc just before it loosed a spell.

She meant to kill it, but instead of falling to the ground, it vanished with a hiss of magic.

"Be wary! They cast spells!" Halaern shouted an unnecessary warning, but then, for all he knew she was just another Cha'Tel'Quessir passing through the Yuirwood.

The dark seelie cast spells in waves, a handful of them darting down from trees to utter obscenities, then vanish, as the bat-serpent-orc had done, only to be replaced a moment later by another group from whatever demiplane they called home. Alassra felt the spells like raindrops: nasty variations of simple magic, just as she'd suspected.

Of course, the unseelie didn't know who she was any more than Halaern did. What they saw was a Cha'Tel'Quessir sell-sword without even a circlet to protect her. When she didn't succumb to their first assault, they tried again, in greater number, with poisoned weapons in addition to their spells. Alassra swung her sword double-handed and struck three of them simultaneously. Two vanished, but the third hit the ground with a thud. She sidestepped and planted her heel on its rib cage.

That was one dark seelie who wouldn't be leaving the Yuirwood.

Alassra ducked another onslaught of poisoned spears, arrows, and spells meant to transform parts of her into a rat. One of the spears narrowly missed her eye, a reminder that even the Simbul could find herself blinded when there were more sharpened objects flying through the air than she could count. She longed to use a spell or two, if only to convince the hovering nuisances that they shouldn't use theirs, but if any Red Wizards made it as far as the Yuirwood, the dark seelie would be their natural allies, and she didn't want to take the chance that any of the here-and-gone-again creatures might guess her true identity.

They gave up after a final wave of weapons and spells that left the she-bear lying on her side, oozing green ichor onto the moss, and Halaern nursing an empty weapon hand that swelled to twice its proper size in the space of three heartbeats.

"Let me help."

"No. Many thanks for your arm, dear lady, but my wound is nothing." He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. The verdigrised circlet shimmered, surrounding Halaern with a pine-scented mist. When it was gone, so too was the swelling in his hand and all the other angry scratches he'd taken on his arms and face. "A gift from a friend. And you? Were you harmed."

"No," she said with a smile, and would have teased him a bit, if the she-bear hadn't tried to rise from the moss.

Maddened by pain, magic, and fear for her cubs, the bear took them for enemies. Alassra readied the same spell she'd used on young Ebroin while Halaern-who had yet to recognize his "friend," placed himself in harm's way.