Love! called the insatiable wee mind. More love!
Mother loves you. You love Mother. Sleep.
The child-mind drifted away, content.
Poor Aiken. Mercy thought, comparing.
And then: Nodonn. My Nodonn.
“But it is not our way,” protested Lady Morna-Ia. “A mother of our battle-company should travail courageously until victorious! And especially you, who may well be the founding matriarch of a new Host!”
“We will conduct the birth in the way I’ve decided.” Mercy said “The Lord Healer has come to assist me with the Skin, and all of the noble ladies now await us in the audience chamber.”
“All of them?” Morna was as awed as she was dismayed. “For this most private, sacred moment?”
“The female knights who accompanied Lord Aiken-Lugonn will have to receive their instruction later. But the others are ready. I willingly forego my privacy. I am Lady Creator, and it’s my duty to instruct all of you in this. For the future.”
Morna could not mistake her intention. “Surely you don’t think—”
“When the others see it—and the way it affects the baby— they won’t have it any other way.”
Morna bowed her head. “As you have said, you are Lady Creator. But so many things have changed.”
Mercy smiled encouragement at the towering woman in the lavender robes. Her eyes were a brilliant blue tonight and her aubum hair hung free. She wore a long gauze shift, white with a golden hem, and her arms were bare, the skin very pale with a dusting of tiny freckles. The yoke of the gown, where the golden torc shone, was slashed straight between her full breasts to a point just above the swell of the child.
“Dear Farseeing Sister Morna. you’re Kingmaker Aspirant now, and second ranked among the Most Exalted Ladies. But you’ve also been kind to a bereaved human woman—and once, eight hundred long years agone, you midwifed Queen Nontusvel when she bore her first son. The office wilt be only slightly different this time. And, of course, Agraynel is a girl. But as you’ll see once her aura is separated from mine, she’s going to be an exceptional person, worthy to be your godchild.”
Mercy took one of Morna’s cool dry hands and pressed it to her belly. “Feel her. Meet her! She’s ready.” The fetus gave a great bound and Mercy laughed. The minds of the two women embraced. “Now then. Take me to the dais of the audience chamber, where all of them are waiting.”
The great room was very dim, and of course the stained-glass windows that glorified it in daylight were night-masked. There were no faerie lights, only sconces of candles casting a wavering orange glow about the stage. No couch waited, no chair, no birthing-stool. There was only a golden table with two large basins—one beaten gold, the other transparent crystal, half-filled with warm water. Beside the table waited Dionket Lord Healer, summoned from his voluntary retirement in the Pyrénées, holding a golden pouch in one hand and a glittering ruby blade in the other. Ranged behind him, looking self-important and radiating not a little apprehension, were three Tanu maidens: a redactor wearing scarlet and white, a psychokinetic dressed in rose and gold, and a blue-garbed coercer—this last none other than Olone, the bethrothed of Sullivan-Tonn.
Very slowly, Mercy came to the front of the dais and stood alone. The several hundred spectators were cloaked and hooded in white, unmoving, their minds as carefully enshrouded as their bodies.
I greet you Sisters, Mercy bespoke them.
We respond to your summoning, the minds whispered. Lady of Goriah.
I am here to demonstrate a new way of bringing forth life. You know that my powers are great, and that they are also different from those of most creative persons among the Tanu. My powers are gentle, not aggressive. They are not for battle, but for nurture. I will teach them to you. For you may all, if you desire it, follow this way that I am going to show to you now.
She stepped back to the table, to Dionket. Morna and the three girls hovered in the background. Mercy stood facing the audience of breathless women and closed her eyes. The tall Lord Healer made a gesture. From his golden pouch flowed an enveloping sheet of material thinner than the finest plass. It settled over Mercy, perfectly transparent, like a veil covering a statue. Her body began to radiate, the light concentrated most strongly in the swollen abdomen. The white gown seemed to become as clear as the Skin, and in the midst of the light was a small form.
Something almost ectopiasmic came from Mercy’s body, shimmering through the abdominal wall, to float between her hands that were now outstretched. A mind-gasp, instantly suppressed, arose from the crowd. Dionket’s austere face softened in a smile. The closest spectators were aware of a great web of redactive and psychokinetic power from his mind blending with creative forces of the mother for her almost instantaneous healing.
Dionket gestured and the Skin whisked away into nothingness. Through farseeing eyes, all of the women saw Mercy gazing down on her newborn. The baby was still enclosed in the fetal membranes. A gossamer bubble filled with fluid, the amnion, hovered just above Mercy’s extended hands. The umbilical cord, still attached to the placenta, was clearly visible.
Now Morna lifted the golden basin and held it beneath the baby with the help of the psychokinetic lady-in-waiting. Dionket’s ruby scalpel flashed briefly and the waters cascaded down. The Healer touched the baby again, freeing the cord, and the membranes vanished with it into the bowl.
Agraynel opened her eyes. She breathed easily after Mercy’s lung-inflating kiss, enveloped in warm air. Now the redactive maiden stood ready with the crystal bowl, a silk sponge, and towels. The infant continued to hover in space, wriggling gently, as Mercy and Morna washed away the pasty vernix coating, leaving her skin pink and fresh. Mercy kissed the child again and she was dry. Young Olone stepped forward with clothing and a receiving blanket, and the small form was swaddled to the armpits.
Mercy hugged her daughter, offered a breast. The baby was still too new to suck milk, but her mind was open and drinking, drinking. The crowd of awestricken women hardly dared to reach out—but with Mercy’s encouragement, they came carefully, bestowing feathery mental pats of affection.
“Peace—for the naming.” Morna’s physical voice was soft. Nevertheless everyone in the audience hall heard. The old woman held high a tiny golden torc and there was a collective sigh. The three young ladies-in-waiting went stiff with anticipation. Who would it be?
“Olone,” said Mercy, beckoning with her mind.
The maiden in the robes of the Coercer Guild took the child into her arms, rapturous. You should be mine! How lovely you are!
“I call you Agraynel ul-Mercy-Rosmarvur-Thagdal.” Morma slipped the golden ring about the baby’s neck and fastened the twisting catch. “The good Goddess grant you long life, honor, and happiness in her service.”
Slonshal, whispered the hundreds of female minds.
Slonshal, sighed Dionket Lord Healer.
Slonshal, Mercy told her daughter, as she took her back from the reluctant Olone. Her heart overflowed with joy for the first time since the Flood and the loss, and she reached out in playful query to Morna, who had come to lead her away.
And are you a true Kingmaker Aspirant, Farseeing Morna-Ia? Do you have the sight? And does it show you this sweet little one as a queen? . . .
The mind-voices in the hall were singing the Song in tones as soft as an aeolian harp.
“I see Agraynel queen of our Many-Colored Land. Yes.”
Mercy uttered a delighted cry. “Do you! Oh, don’t be teasing!”
There were beads of sweat on the old woman’s smooth brow. Her lips were trembling. “I speak the truth. I knew as she first breathed.”
Mercy stood still before the draperies at the rear of the dais. Her look was fey and wild. She had the baby drawn up tightly against one flushed cheek. The infant’s eyes seemed enormous in the tiny face.
“And her king!” Mercy cried. “Who will he be?”
“He…is not yet born.”
“But you know who he
is? Whose child he will be?” Mercy persisted. “Tell me, Morna! You must tell me!”
Morna backed away, her face white and her mind walled up. “I cannot!” she said tremulously. “I cannot.” She turned and fled through the heavy draperies, leaving Mercy staring wonderingly after. Dionket came and put a protective arm around the mother, and at the same time his redactive faculty slipped into her tired mind to fend off the inevitable question, the anxiety, and the fear.
Mercy forgot.
The baby snuggled into the front of her gown, began to nurse, and there was for Mercy nothing else to be concerned about.
5
HE WOKE TO THE AWFUL, NOURISHING KISS.
His food, masticated and warm, without flavor, transferred from her mouth to his. The encouraging thrust of her tongue. Moist female fingers massaging his throat until he must perforce swallow. Her rhythmic two-note humming, monotonously timed to his heartbeat.
He smelled the meaty aroma of the food and her unwashed body in its garment of half-cured skin, and smoke and enclosing rock. He heard, besides her voice, a distant tinkle of water and someone coughing and spitting far away, echoing. And bird-song. And the wind’s harsh breath in mountain pines.
His farsight was blind and his body paralyzed, but he could at least open his eyes. There was pain, even though the light was dim. A low moan escaped him. The humming cut oft abruptly.
“O God, is it you?”
Hanging locks of very long, very dirty fair hair. A face, doughy-pale beneath grime, the nose short and flat, the eyes small, wide-set, too gray a blue, now popping with incredulous delight. The mouth agape, lips all smeared with the food lately shared. Carious teeth.
“My God from the Sea. You’re awake!”
The face approached to blurriness and again there was the kiss, not nourishing this time but alive with joyful passion. When she freed his mouth her lips caressed his nostrils, his cheeks, his eyes and forehead, the lobes and shells of his ears, his beardless jaw and chin.
“You’re awake! Awake and living! My beautiful God!”
He was incapable of any movement, except for his eyes: a mind immured, lacking any metapsychic faculty. When the woman leaped up and ran away, he saw stone walls, a kind of cavern arching into darkness above; but toward his feet (if they existed) was light.
A querulous, sour old-man voice, interrupted in its coughing: “He is, is he? Well, let’s see this miracle.”
Shuffling steps, panting exhalations all gurgly with phlegm. Her excited whispers: “Be quiet, Grandpa. Be careful. Don’t touch him.”
“Shut up, you stupid cow, and let me see.”
The two of them bending over him. A great husky woman in a stained doeskin shift. An aged Lowlife man, bald and bearded, with reddened eyes and a cruel hawk nose, wearing tattered cloth trousers and a black mink vest, glossy and superb.
The old man squatted down. Quick as a spider, one of his hands darted out, grasping.
“Grandpa, no!” wailed the woman.
The newly awakened eyes filled with pained tears. The old man had seized him by the hair and hauled up. When the tears spilled, there was the sight of a body covered to the breast with a fur robe. The aged tormentor let loose of his hair and he fell back inert. Cackling, the old man tweaked his nose, pinched a cheek with rough fingernails, rolled his head from side to side with sharp slaps.
“Yes! Yes! Awake! But helpless, you high-and-mighty lump of Tanu shit! You heap of dead meat!”
The woman hauled the old man, squawking, to his feet. “You may not hurt the God, Grandpa!” she said in a terrible voice. There was a thudding sound, a pained gasp, whimpering. And the woman: “He’s mine! I saved him from the sea and from death. I won’t let you harm him.” Again the thud and feeble cries.
“Goddam it, girl, I wasn’t going to do anything. Owww . . . You’ve put my back out, you gallumping bitch. Help me up.”
“First you promise, Grandpa.”
“I promise. I promise.” And vicious subvocal mutterings.
“Go bring his hand. And the oil warming on the fire.”
Chuntering and snuffling, the old man went off. She knelt reverently and again there was the kiss from her slightly everted lips. He clenched his teeth weakly against her probing tongue.
“No, no,” she scolded gently. One hand smoothed his hair. “I love you. You mustn’t be afraid. Soon I’ll make you very happy. But first there’s a surprise.”
Grandpa was standing there with a skin bag and some kind of open container.
“Can—can I watch?” the old brute asked. His eyes had become oddly bright and he licked his cracked lips. “Please, Huldah. Let me watch.”
Her chuckle was amazingly ironic. “You want to remember how it was with you.”
“Didn’t I make his hand for you?” the old man whined. “I won’t make any noise. You won’t know I’m here.”
“I know you spy on us at night. Silly old Grandpa. All right. But first the hand.”
A diminution of warmth. She was turning back the fur coverlet. Faintly his kinesthetic sense told of movement on his right side. Then he saw.
She raised his right arm, and halfway below the elbow it terminated in a stump.
From deep in his throat there came a sound.
The arm was lowered. She cried out in pity. “Oh, poor God! I forgot you didn’t know.” Kisses. Terrible kisses. “When I found you at the edge of the lagoon, you were hurt. One of your glass gloves was gone. Your hand was all torn from the sharp salt-crusts that form on the rocks below our cliffs. And there was a hyena. I drove it away, but its spit was poison and your wound stank and wouldn’t heal. Grandpa told me what I would have to do. He didn’t think I would dare.” The coarse face, full of devotion, came close, bathing him in fetid breath. She smiled and withdrew, and then she was holding something.
A wooden hand.
“I had Grandpa make this for you.” Somewhere, the abominable old man was giggling. “I’ll put it on you now, so you’ll be whole again.” Happily, she held it up for him to view. The stump fitted into a kind of leather cup, and there were straps. The digits were fully jointed. “When you’re well, you’ll be able to make it move. That’s what Grandpa says “She tilted her head anxiously for a moment, casting a dartlike glance at the old man. “I hope he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t, always. But you mustn’t think about that. Just think about getting well.”
He closed his eyes against the prospect. The old man’s laughter trailed away into a paroxysm of hacking.
Warm oil smell. “Don’t worry Don’t fret. I know what to do. How to bring the life-energy back.” Insistent, primal, the two-note humming captured his heartbeat and began speeding it.
The fur blanket removed. The oil smoothed and kneaded into his paralyzed flesh. Rolled over. She flexing and invigorating the flaccid muscles. On his back again, with her kneeling at his hips.
“Come alive, my God of Joy. Come alive for me!”
No, he besought the betraying energies No—not with her. But a sunlight radiance was responding to her coaxing, brightening the cave with rosy-gold glory. Its urgency could not be pent. She breathed, “Oh,Yes. Oh, yes.”
The brightness was engulfed by her. She was humming again to an ever-accelerating tempo, and rocking, and he was swept away in the tide of life.
6
PEOPEO MOXMOX BURKE.
I hear Elizabeth.
I have seen your dilemma Peo.
Madness! Found nearly 1000 bivouaced [location] west-shore LacBresse. Sickstarvinghurt. Fighting amongselves. Chivvied into thisplace by Howlers(?) Firvulag(?)
Both I think. There have been peculiar migrations of Howlers during the past months. And the Firvulag sacked Burask and drove its bareneck populace into the Hercynian Wilderness. Part of the group you found consists of Burask refugees. The others are Lowlives whose tiny settlements were raided by the migrating Howlers.
Just look perisherschlemiels’ Thisplace shithole until our party come force order kill
crazies. What HELL going do? HiddenSprings or IronVillages never absorb suchrabble. We abandon they goners. Besides Amerie won’t leave.
She scents a mission!
Well? Advise! They are human.
Postpone returning to Hidden Springs. Your mission there will keep. And Basil’s embassy to Sugoll and Katlinel must be reorganized as well. The Howlers have left the Feldberg.
World turned upsidedown!
Peo your mounted and armed force of thirty can deal with this wretched mob and at the same lime forward part of our own design. Take them north. At the head of the Lac de Bresse is a small river with a trail that will take you to a low divide. Across it and sixteen kloms to the west you come upon the headwaters of another river. The Firvulag call it the Pliktol. Follow it. It becomes raftable almost at once. About a hundred and sixty kloms downstream it merges with a larger river the Nonol. (This is the one that flows past Burask.) Follow this Nonol River for another fifty kloms until you reach an extensive meadowland that the Little People call the Field of Gold. (This time of year it’s a mass of buttercups and St. John’s-wort. Later there are big yellow daisies.) On the right bank of the river connected to the Field of Gold by a hanging bridge is the Firvulag city of Nionel.
I thought just legend!
No real. Sugoll and Katlinel and their people have been given it by the Firvulag on condition they restore it.
!!
Take your mob of pathetickers there Peo. Sugoll will welcome them.
Surely you Jest.
He will. Don’t tell the mob they’re bound for a Howler city. Just say it’s a place where they’ll be safe and happy . . . Are any of them torced?