His eyes seemed pools of loneliness. For the first time, Rhodry realized, he was seeing into Evandar’s soul, and he found at last something human in that loneliness. After a moment, Evandar spoke again.
“It’s because of her that I began to love you. I want to know what she knows. Afterwards, I’ll go away, so I’ll understand what sorrow is, and the missing of someone.” “It’s not a thing most people want to know.” “But I do.” Evandar turned to him and laid a hand on his arm.
Rhodry hesitated, on the verge of shaking it off. Evandar looked at him steadily, his mouth a melancholy twist. For Gwin’s sake, Rhodry bent his head and kissed the sadness away. All round them the world turned sunny again, there on the island in the mist, and they lay down together in the soft grass.
As the time drew near for Elessario’s birth, Ocradda, who presided over all the childbirths in the dun, took charge of Carra. She brought the actual midwife up from the town, though, a stout gray woman named Polla, whose ready smile put Carra right at ease from the moment she walked into the lass’s bedchamber. Feeling very much in the way, Dallandra hovered in the curve of the wall while Polla had Carra lie down with her dresses hiked up. The midwife stared off into space while she ran gentle fingers over her patient’s swollen middle.
“Well, now,” Polla said at last. “It’s in a good position, head down and ready, sure enough. I’ll wager it drops soon.”
She was proved right not two days later. Dallandra was walking out in the ward when Jahdo came racing up to her.
“Oh, my lady, my lady, they did send me into town to fetch Polla. Lady Ocradda says you’d best come upstairs.”
Fearing trouble, Dallandra rushed into the broch and up the staircase, but she found Carra just beginning her labor. Her water had broken not long before, and now, dressed only in a thin shift, she crouched miserably on the birthing stool with Ocradda standing behind her, rubbing her shoulders and talking softly. When Dallandra came in, Carra looked up and groaned. Sweat beaded her forehead and upper lip.
“Does Dar know?” she gasped.
“Ye gods,” Ocradda said, “I forgot all about the prince!”
“I’ll go tell him, Carra,” Dallandra said. “And then I’ll be right back.”
Finding Dar turned out to be no easy matter. Some said he’d gone riding, others that he was down in the town or out in the stables. Dallandra walked all over the dun before she finally found the prince with Rhodry as the pair of them walked in the south gate. Dar was carrying blue ribands, looped round one hand, a present for his lady.
“Your Highness,” Dallandra said, “Carra’s time has come upon her. She’s upstairs with the women now.”
Daralanteriel turned dead white. Rhodry caught his arm.
“Come have a tankard with me, Your Highness. It’ll do to pass the time.”
When Dallandra got back to the chamber, she found things moving along. Ocradda had summoned a servant lass to clamber onto a chest and tie a stout rope from a beam in the ceiling, so that Carra would have support. Under the pierced stool, she’d spread a heap of rags covered by a clean, new cloth. Carra now sat astride with her shift hitched up round her waist and her face as pale as the linen. Over on the bed lay wraps for the baby, and a kettle of wash water stayed warm by the fire in the hearth.
“Your husband’s down in the great hall, waiting,” Dallandra said. “He looks terrified, I must say.”
“Good,” Carra muttered. “I wish he had to do this, not me.”
“I remember thinking the same thing,” Polla said. “All five times. Now breathe, lass, nice and steady. That’s right. Good deep breaths.”
There was nothing else to do but wait and suffer with Carra through contraction after contraction. Sometimes Polla would have her stand up to ease the pain, leaning into the midwife’s strong arms for support; at others, taking a few steps back and forth seemed to help her. Mostly she clung to the heavy knotted rope while she sat on the high stool and wept. After what seemed a very long time, the chamber began to darken as the short winter day faded. Dallandra lit candle lanterns with a splint at the hearth, then set them round the chamber. Polla took one and put it close by the stool, so she could kneel beside Carra every now and then to check her progress. The pains grew worse and worse, closer and closer together.
“It’s coming!” Polla called out. “Now, lass. Here’s where you can push.”
Moaning, leaning hard into the rope, Carra did just that. Dallandra and Ocradda hurried over, standing right nearby, muttering encouragement and watching the midwife. At last, the baby slipped out into Polla’s waiting hands with a good strong howl of a cry.
“Oh, what a pity! A daughter,” Polla said, sighing. “Ah, well, they can’t ail be sons, can they? She’s a pretty creature, and no doubt the Goddess will favor you more next time.”
Panting so hard that she was drooling, Carra seemed not to hear her. Clutching her rope, she leaned forward dangerously far to catch a glimpse of her child. Ocradda grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Polla took her little silver knife and slashed the umbilical cord.
“Hold her while I tie it off, herbwoman.”
Dalla took the baby, all red and sticky, held her still while Polla did just that, then handed her to Carra. She grabbed her child, clasping her tight against her sweaty breasts, cooing to her and touching her face with an awestruck finger. All at once, she winced and moaned again. Ocradda knelt down fast by the birthing stool and spread a big square of white cloth under it.
“Ah, good.” Ocradda sighed. “Here’s the afterbirth.”
“Is it all there?” Polla said.
With great care, Ocradda looked through the liverish raw mass.
“It is, truly.”
“May the goddesses all be praised,” the two women sang out in a chant. “Let us give them all thanks! May they be praised for the life of this child! May they be praised for giving us back the life of its mother! In their hands they held her blood and her life. Now they have given her back to us.”
“May they be praised,” Dalla sang. “May they live forever!”
While the other women helped Carra into a clean nightgown, this one slit down the front, and helped her lie down, Dalla washed the baby in warm water. Although the infant lay quiet in her hands, she wasn’t truly asleep. Every now and then, her big yellow eyes would open in the unfocused stare of the just-born; once Dalla saw a flicker of what might have been recognition.
“Elessi,” she whispered. “Elessi, it’s me, Dalla. You’re home, my sweet. You’ve come home at last.”
Again, and for the briefest of moments, the child seemed to recognize—not her words, certainly—but the sound of her voice. Dallandra wrapped her in a piece of blanket, thinned and softened with age, and brought her to Carra.
“Oh!” Carra reached out eager arms. “She’s so beautiful!”
“Put her to suck, love,” Polla said. “It’ll help your pains.”
Carra, however, seemed to have forgotten that such a thing as pain even existed. She cuddled the child close, helped her find a nipple, then merely stared, grinning all the while, as her newborn suckled.
Watching them made Dallandra’s eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, and for the first time in hundreds of years, she remembered her own child, her little half-human son, whom she’d left behind with his dweomermaster of a father when she’d gone off to Evandar’s country. She turned cold all over when she realized that she couldn’t even remember her child’s name. Aloda—well, it had started out with those syllables of her own father’s name, but how exactly had they shaped the patronymic? Alodadaelanteriel? Perhaps. Most likely, in fact. But right away they’d given him a Deverry-sounding nickname, Loddlaen.
Dalla left the other women to fuss over Carra and the child and went down to the great hall. By a blazing fire in the dragon hearth, Dar paced back and forth, while Rhodry sat slumped on a bench at the table of honor to keep him company. Not far away, curled up in the straw with a couple of dogs, Jahdo lay asleep
. In one corner, a servant stood polishing tankards. Otherwise, the vast hall lay empty.
“A daughter, and both are fine,” Dallandra announced. “Dar, you can go up now.”
Without a single word, the prince raced across the room and bounded up the stairs. The servant smiled in a rather sentimental way and brought Dalla over a tankard of ale.
“The other women will be wanting a bite to eat, I’ll reckon. I’ll just be in the kitchen hut, cutting up cold meat and suchlike, if you need me.”
“My thanks.” Dalla watched him go, then turned and spoke in Elvish. “I don’t suppose you want to go see the child.”
“I was never that much interested in my own, to tell you the truth,” Rhodry answered in the same. “Not until they had teeth and a few words, anyway.”
“I’d forgotten that you had children.”
When she sat down next to him, Rhodry turned a little to face her. In the firelight, she could see the streak of silver gleaming in his hair.
“Four sons,” he said. “Four legitimate sons, and a daughter, who wasn’t. There may be others for all I know.”
When she made a sour face at him, he laughed, but mercifully it was a normal mirth.
“Neither of us are the kin-bound sort,” Dalla said. “You know, I left a child with Aderyn when I went into Evandar’s country. Loddlaen, his name was. I wonder what his Wyrd brought him?”
The expression on Rhodry’s face took her utterly aback. For a moment he stared, his mouth slack, then winced as if some old wound had stabbed him, and finally he looked away and stared into the fire.
“You know, don’t you?” she said. “And it wasn’t good.”
He merely nodded and took a long swallow of his ale.
“Rori, tell me.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Dallandra considered, watching the flames leap against the chimney wall.
“I don’t,” she said at last. “Not the details, at least. Did he die violently?”
“I’m afraid so. It blasted near broke Aderyn’s heart.”
“It would have. He’s the one who loved the child.”
He cocked his head to one side, seemed to be waiting for her to ask more, but she found that she had no words, not even to frame questions. For a long while, they sat together, watching the fire, and neither of them spoke until the other women came down, all talking and laughing, to eat the meal the servant set out for them.
Although the birth went well, there was trouble of a different sort in the morning. Dalla had just come into the great hall when Polla swept down upon her, Ocradda bobbing in her wake.
“You’ve got to come speak to Carra,” the midwife snapped. “She won’t keep Elessi in the swaddling bands.”
“Indeed?”
“She says the child hates them. Utter nonsense. Babies need to feel secure, and besides, if she’s not wrapped, she’s likely to catch her death of cold. It’s drafty, this time of year.”
“And she insists on keeping the babe in bed with her, not in the cradle,” Ocradda added.
“At least that way she’ll be warm,” Dalla said. “My dear friends, Carra’s just following the elvish ways, her husband’s ways.”
That gave them pause, but for sake of peace, Dalla went with them to speak with Carra. She found Carra sitting up in bed, propped by pillows, and cuddling the sleeping baby. When Dallandra came over, Elessi opened her big yellow eyes, looked in the elven woman’s direction with a vastly solemn stare, then shut them again. Carra wasted no time.
“I won’t do it! She hates the bands, and she screams, and I won’t wrap her.”
“Very well then,” Dalla said. “Her father’s people don’t wrap their babies, after all, and no harm seems to come to them.”
“But Dalla!” Polla stepped forward. “Most babies need—”
“She isn’t most babies!” Carra snapped.
“Just so,” Dalla said.
Polla hesitated, considering her next move. All at once, Ocradda shrieked. Dalla spun round to find Evandar standing in the corner where the partition met the curve of the outer wall. Her hands clasped over her mouth, Ocradda stared in pure horror, but Carra merely watched, her eyes as solemn as the baby’s.
“My apologies,” Evandar said with a lazy grin. “I didn’t mean to startle you so badly.” He bowed to the servingwoman, then to the midwife. “Good dames, consider me the child’s grandfather. In a way I am, as perhaps our Dalla will tell you in some detail, or perhaps not, as she chooses. But I very much wished to see Elessario in her new home.”
“Well, here she is.” Carra sat up straight, holding the baby in the crook of one arm, running the other hand through her own hair to smooth it back from her face. “She’s very beautiful.”
Evandar walked over to the bedside and looked at the child. With a large pink and toothless yawn, Elessi woke and turned her head his way. For a long time, they stared into one another’s eyes. Even though the infant was too young to focus her sight properly, Dalla was suddenly sure that she recognized the soul who’d been her father back in her old home. The moment passed as the baby turned to snuggle her face into her new mother’s breast.
“A beauty she is,” Evandar agreed. “My thanks to you, Carra, for this birthing. Did you suffer much?”
Polla made a clicking noise with her tongue and stepped forward to intervene, but Dalla laid a hand on her arm and held her back.
“I did, truly, but it was worth it.” Carra was smiling, utterly bemused by this strange creature. “Why do you ask?”
“I think me I owe you a fee, that’s why, just as your people would pay to a wet nurse—or truly, that’s much too cold, isn’t it? Not a nurse’s fee, but a fine present, a gift.” Evandar smiled in a sudden delight that had an almost overpowering charm. “A gift. That’s what you shall have, the finest gift I can give you.”
“Now here.” Carra laughed in answer to that smile. “I did it with no hope of reward, good sir!”
“Nonetheless, you shall have one. Now, here’s a riddle for you. You shall have the gift as soon as I can fetch it for you, but you won’t realize what it is or what you have for years and years.”
All at once, suddenly and completely, he was gone. Shuddering, Polla and Ocradda turned toward Dalla, as if for comfort, but Carra laughed aloud, still caught by Evandar’s warmth.
“Well, I’ve got a charming kinsman!” she said. “But Dalla, who is he? A dweomermaster, obviously, because he can come and go like that.”
Dalla decided that half a lie would be far better than an unexplainable truth.
“He is at that, Carra. One of the greatest dweomer-masters the Westlands have ever known.”
“Oooh, how wonderful, then! But why did he say he owed me somewhat? Or wait, I know! He’s seen some omen, hasn’t he, about my Elessi’s Wyrd?”
“He has, indeed, and truly, she’s a very important little lass.”
“Wonderful and twice wonderful.” Carra looked at the child sleeping in the crook of her arm. “But I’d love you anyway, splendid Wyrd or no. I wonder what gift your grandfather has for me? Dalla, do you know?”
“I don’t, and if I know Evandar, he’ll never tell you, either. Once he sets a riddle, it’s for the hearer to puzzle out without another clue from him.”
“Well, he said I’d find out someday.” Carra paused for a yawn. “If I remember that long.”
Dalla gathered up the other women and herded them out then and there while the swaddling bands were still forgotten. She herself, however, learned the answer to the riddle later that night, when Evandar appeared in her chamber, crystalizing into the lamplight just as she was brushing out her hair. He sat down on her bed and lounged back on one elbow, smiling while he watched her.
“I wondered if you’d come back,” she said. “Does the child please you?”
“She does, indeed, though I’d wish her ears were proper long ones. It doesn’t matter much, truly.”
“And what about that riddle?
What gift are you planning to give her? Some of your gifts can be beastly dangerous, my love.”
“So I’m finding out.” Evandar looked sincerely rueful. “So I put a bit of thought into this one. But you have to swear you’ll never tell her. I refuse to let her know the answer to the riddle unless she puzzles it out.”
“Oh, very well, then. I swear I won’t tell her or so much as hint at the answer.”
“My thanks, then. I’ve done for her what I did for your deryn, given her the life of an elf—but this time I did it right. I didn’t understand, then, about aging and the wheel of Time, but I’ve learned a fair bit now. She shall have youth as well, four hundred years, four hundred years, four hundred years and more.”
“Ye gods! Then, my love, you’ve given her a splendid gift indeed, life to match her beloved Dar’s.”
Evandar laughed and tossed up one hand. A long spray of silver sparks gushed to the ceiling, then fell in a glittering shower. When it hit the floor, he was gone.
Another pair of beings were discussing Evandar’s riddles that night. In their hollow by the cliff, Rhodry and Arzosah had a blazing fire burning, thanks to the townfolk who’d brought them wood. The dragon lay stretched out, curving her body into a crescent to catch the fire’s heat, and Rhodry leaned comfortably against her belly to watch the flames dance.
“I can’t live like this much longer,” she grumbled. “Fires are all very well, but my back is cold, Rhodry Dragonmaster. I need my nice toasty cave, I do. Can’t we go back there till the snows have been and gone?”
“And what would I eat and suchlike?”
“Huh. Now that, truly, is a problem.” She heaved a vast sigh. “But a slave that dies of cold is of no use to its master.”
Rhodry considered. He was quite sure that feeding a dragon through the winter would strain Cengarn’s depleted stores. Better to let her fly off and feed herself. If he ordered and enjoined her to return in the spring, doubtless the dweomer of his ring would force her back.
“Well, it could be that I’ll let you go home, if and only if we don’t find any Horsekin riding the town’s way. We’ll scout round here for an eightnight, and then we’ll decide.”
Days of Air and Darkness Page 43