And she had the laran to hear them.
She could not outrun what she was, any more than she could bury herself in the consciousness of a racing horse. Sweetwater was a respite, not a destination.
29
Dyannis went to gather the kireseth for the preparation of kirian, accompanied by Harald’s escort. She found the clusters of bell-shaped blossoms, laden with pollen, high in the hills. At her insistence, the men remained at a safe distance. The harvest went without incident, for the day was still, almost windless, and the pollen lay like golden dust upon the petals. She wrapped the flowers carefully, stowed them in a sealed leather satchel, and carried them to the stone-walled still house.
She moved about the room she’d set up as a laboratory, rinsing, measuring, preparing for distilling. With her sleeves rolled up, hair covered with an old scarf, and an apron tied around her waist, she felt like a working leronis and not some pampered and useless lady. The work settled her, reminded her of the skills she had trained so hard to acquire.
Dyannis found herself singing, but the tune turned sad, shot through with loss. The more time went by, one tenday melting into the next, the greater was her longing for the life of the Tower. She wished Varzil were there, or Ellimara, or even Rorie, so that she would have someone to talk to and reason things out with. Harald would not understand, and there was no hope for a serious conversation on any topic with Rohanne. Besides, Harald had all the cares of running a large estate to contend with. Dyannis decided it was best to keep her own counsel.
She had only enough pollen for a single bottle of kirian, but that would be more than enough to see Lerrys through the worst. Perhaps the boy would have a smooth transition, or need only a little care. Some adolescents learned to manage the milder symptoms of threshold sickness with simple meditation techniques. Dyannis had already begun working with Lerrys, teaching him elementary concentration exercises, when he would permit it. It wasn’t easy to hold his interest; many times, she had to break off a session they’d barely begun when Harald sent for the boy for some chore or other. Lerrys was old enough to be learning the management of the estate that would one day be his.
“I know there’s little for you to do here at the house,” Harald said to Dyannis with unexpected insight. “If you want to do something useful, the wife of one of my tenant farmers, Braulio, is near her time to give birth. Perhaps you could help her, as we have no midwife at this time.”
Dyannis agreed with some hesitation. If she weren’t careful, Harald would plan out her future for her, maybe even marry her off before she was too old.
After a suitable introduction to the husband, she rode out on her favorite roan gelding to meet the pregnant woman. She found Annalise to be an active, pleasant women, her belly hugely rounded with her second child. Their home, a large cottage with three rooms, looked well made, the plot of vegetables bountiful. Annalise looked up from gathering a basket of early summer greens. A sturdy, golden-haired boy of three or four ran after her, laughing.
When Dyannis offered to assist at the birth, the woman blushed and stammered, “Oh, but you’re a grand lady, a leronis of Hali. ’Tis not for the likes of me—I mean—”
“I have often tended ordinary people, even beggars, when there was need,” Dyannis told her.
“Old Kyra was still with us when my first babe came,” Annalise said, kicking off her garden clogs as she stepped across the threshold and gestured for Dyannis to enter. “I didn’t think he’d ever be born, he took so long. Now that I know the way of it, I’m not so afeared.” She moved awkwardly about the kitchen area, setting the vegetables in a pan of water.
Dyannis thought of King Carolin’s first wife, who had died in childbirth with their third baby. One successful pregnancy did not guarantee the next, and a laboring woman’s life was always at some risk, but it would be insensitive to say so. Perhaps confidence in her own abilities was a woman’s greatest strength.
She said, “I’d still be happy to keep you company during your time, even if you don’t need me. It’s women’s work, don’t you think?”
At this point, Annalise giggled, “Aye, and best to keep the menfolk well out of it. Old Kyra had to order my Braulio clear out of the house!”
Dyannis sat at the clean-scrubbed table, sipping last fall’s apple cider and watching the toddler play with a stack of beautifully carved wooden blocks. This is all any woman should want, she thought. A good husband, a healthy son, a house of her own, a garden to tend.
Then, as if to answer herself: I am not any woman. I am Dyannis of Hali.
About a tenday later, Braulio rushed up to the manor house in the middle of the night. Annalise had gone into labor. Dyannis pulled on an old gown of Rella’s, one she would not mind getting soiled, and rode out to the cottage. The first thing she did upon arrival was to order Braulio out of the house.
“Chop wood,” she told him, “boil water, and bring me a lantern. And clean rags! Lots of clean rags!”
Annalise cried out in relief when Dyannis entered the bedroom. The laboring woman was breathing hard and sweating. The night was unusually warm, even for early summer. She’d thrown back her shift and lay half-naked on the bed on a folded, much-patched old quilt. Using both her hands and her laran, Dyannis checked the position of the baby. As far as she could tell, for she had assisted at only a couple of births, the baby’s head was almost at the birth canal.
“It won’t be long now,” she told Annalise. “A fine strong daughter.” That much she had been able to easily determine.
“Oh!” Annalise’s body tensed and for a time, she could not talk. “So soon?”
“Yes, it is often so, after the first,” Dyannis said. “Here, let me wipe your face. You must hold my hand when your pains come.” Immediately, Annalise gripped her hand. “Breathe now,” Dyannis urged, “that’s a good girl.”
“I—I want to push!”
Dyannis sensed the shift in energy of the woman’s body, the demanding need to bear down. She held Annalise’s hand and reached out with her laran to the baby. The position was good, as best she could tell through the intense pressure of the birth passage. Then, at the peak of the labor pain, Dyannis sensed a ripple, a stutter. It disappeared as the pain eased, as if it had never been. She was sure she had not imagined it. A moment later, Annalise bore down again, straining and holding her breath. Dyannis managed to get both her hands free so she could cradle the taut belly. She used the direct physical contact to reach the baby—
—and felt the heartbeat slow . . . pause . . .
—and speed up, a light pitter-patter, as the tense muscles softened and the laboring mother drew breath.
Even with her laran enhanced by touch, Dyannis could not clearly read the baby’s condition. Nothing like this had happened in the births she had attended. Under her hands, the woman’s body tightened.
“Push!” Dyannis cried, trusting to her own instinct to get the baby out as soon as possible. “Push now!”
Behind her, Braulio knocked on the door. “I’ve got the hot water—”
“Later!” Dyannis shouted. “Come on, Annalise, push!”
With a strange, smothered cry, the laboring woman curled forward, grabbing her knees, chin tucked, face congested with effort. She made no further sound for a long moment, but every fiber in her body quivered. Dyannis felt the baby move with agonizing slowness.
“Ah!” Annalise cried. Her head fell back on the bed. Dyannis reached around just in time to cradle the wet little head as it emerged. A heartbeat later, one shoulder followed the other and the newborn slid into her hands. The umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around the baby’s neck. Dyannis pulled it free. The baby lay there, hot and still.
Oh, Blessed Cassilda!
Braulio, who had moved silently into the room, shoved a folded rag at Dyannis. Not knowing what else to do, she rubbed the coarse fabric over the tiny form. Suddenly, the baby gave a convulsive twitch and began to cry. Dyannis felt the sting of tears as she wrapped the little
girl in a second cloth and handed her to her mother. Then she stepped back as Braulio embraced his wife and new daughter.
She waited until she was sure both mother and child were doing well. There was little for her to do, besides clean things up. Annalise confidently put the baby to nurse and shortly afterward, both fell asleep.
Braulio thanked Dyannis effusively, as if she had done something wondrous. Dyannis thought the only wonder had been the natural process of birth. In truth, any other woman with a modicum of experience or common sense could have done as well, and Dyannis would not have known what to do had something gone truly wrong.
Dyannis rode back to the manor house, somber and thoughtful. Her horse bobbed its head, knowing the way. He belonged here, as she did not. She could send a relay message across hundreds of leagues, rebuild a stone wall with her mind, conjure a dragon out of thought, or walk the Overworld. Yet now she felt humbled by the birth, by the rolling hills, the distant heights, the solid animal sureness of her mount.
I must be what I am—a leronis of Hali. She would set aside what she had done as under-Keeper. Let some other, more worthy, take that place. There was work enough in the circle where her strength and experience were needed.
As she considered her return to the Tower and the community of Gifted workers, an invisible weight lifted from her shoulders. She arched her back and stretched, inhaling the moist night air. The horse picked up his pace, as if to hurry her on her way.
By the time Dyannis reached the house, she knew she’d made the right decision. She would stay at Sweetwater a little longer, until Lerrys passed the awakening of his laran. It would surely be soon, from his increasing irritability. Then she would make the trip back to Hali, perhaps even in time for Midsummer.
Greatly contented, she rode into the yard, stripped the tack from the horse and turned him loose in the paddock. Then she went into the quiet house for a well-earned rest.
Midsummer came and still Lerrys hovered on the edge of maturity. The Festival itself was subdued that year. Each family member seemed to Dyannis to be harboring some grievance. Lerrys, like many of the adolescents she’d known at Hali, alternated between sulky withdrawal and fits of temper, sometimes outright defiance of his parents. Rohanne had never given up trying to induce Dyannis to join her in embroidery and gossip, two things Dyannis loathed. When Dyannis politely but firmly declined, this seemed to irritate her sister-in-law.
Harald’s temper fared no better. The day before Midsummer’s Eve, word had come from Serrais, the Ridenow capital. Dom Eiric Ridenow, having determined that an offensive strike against Asturias was necessary, had ordered Harald to send another twenty men and horses. Harald could scarcely afford to spare them, and Dyannis saw how it pained him to be sending men he had known all their lives into battle. So, although the central hall was bedecked with flower garlands and the tables were laden with platters of roast lamb and barnfowl and summer gourds, pots of honeyed fruit and baskets overflowing with the braided egg buns, a shadow hung in the air.
During the festive dinner, Harald and Lerrys almost came to blows when the boy declared his intention of joining the war party. Harald, red-faced in his holiday finery, retorted that it was out of the question.
Lerrys glared back at his father. “Siann’s going, and he’s only a year older than me! Besides, he’s riding Socks!” The old chestnut, marked by three white socks and a blaze on its forehead, had been his favorite horse as a child.
Rohanne cried, “You must not say such things, Lerrys! Harald, tell him no! He’s just a child!”
“He is almost a man,” Harald replied, “but he is heir to Sweetwater, and I will not have him risk himself needlessly.”
“Aunt Dyannis!” Lerrys turned to Dyannis, his eyes bright and pleading. “Tell him I can do it—I’ve been practicing—I’m ready!”
Dyannis shook her head with a little shiver of sadness. “Lord Harald is right to forbid you, chiyu. Would that none of us—not you, not your friend Siann, not myself—face such horrors. Ordinary battle is terrible enough, but once clingfire and other laran weapons are brought in, there is no honor or glory, only death.” Her throat closed up and she could not go on. She wondered if the lucky ones were those slain in the first fighting. She thought of Francisco and the other Cedestri folk, of the refugee farmers and soldiers she’d tended at Hali. No one, she thought, should live with such memories as she’d seen in the minds of the survivors.
“You’re all against me!” Lerrys cried, and bolted from the table. Rohanne started to rise, but Harald stopped her with a gesture, saying, “Let him be. He will get over it, once his friend and the others are well away.”
Rohanne glared at Dyannis as if the boy’s rebellion were all her doing.
Harald sighed. “In the end, we may have little choice, once the war is upon us. Dom Eiric has taken his own sons into battle, and we must all be prepared to defend our homes.”
After that, the heart went out of the festivities. No one wanted to dance. Harald and Rohanne retired early so that those servants who cared to might continue their own celebrations unconstrained.
Dyannis, deciding that a suitable cooling-off time had passed, sought out Lerrys. His room was down the hall from her own. When she knocked, she heard the sounds of scuffling, the clink of metal and the lid of a chest slammed shut. Pausing with her fist poised to knock again, she smiled and shook her head. The boy had a good dose of youthful Varzil in him.
Lerrys opened the door a crack. A single candle set on a ledge on the far wall lit the room.
“It won’t work, you know,” she said.
Lerrys drew his brows together, very much as his father did when confronted. Although she hadn’t used her laran to sense the borrowed sword, the rain cloak, and other gear at the bottom of the chest, she caught his unguarded thought, She’s read my mind!
“Are you going to give me away?” he said.
“No, I don’t see the point in it. But I’d like to talk.”
“You mean you talk and I listen.” With an aggrieved sigh, he stepped back for her to enter.
She sat on the bed, pushing herself back so her feet swung free. “And I try to convince you to mind your father, like a good aunt should, is that what you mean? It doesn’t sound like very much fun, but if you insist, I’ll try.” She chuckled until she noticed his outraged expression.
“What’s so funny?”
Ah, youth. Had she been so deathly serious at his age? “I wasn’t laughing at you, but at all of us Ridenow. We never seem to do things the easy way, do we? I’m too young to remember whatever Harald did, but Varzil—oh, my! When he wanted to go to Arilinn Tower and Father refused, what a fuss!”
The boy’s mood lightened minutely. He took a step closer, although his posture remained one of mistrust.
“Varzil ran away just after he’d been presented to the Comyn Council,” Dyannis continued, “and Father went berserk, not knowing where he was. I suppose Harald told you all this?”
Lerrys sat down beside her, listening now. “Father told me once, but Mother said he wasn’t to mention it again. She thought it would give me ideas.”
“Oh, yes! Varzil’s been giving people ideas all his life!” Dyannis laughed again, and this time, Lerrys laughed with her. “It was bad enough that Varzil tried to get admitted to Arilinn Tower on his own, but we weren’t yet on good terms with the Hasturs, and the Keepers there wouldn’t take Varzil without his father’s permission. Too politically dangerous, you know. So what did you think he did?”
Dark eyes flashed. “He found a way to get in anyway.” Obviously.
“No, he didn’t.” She shook her head. “What you must understand about Varzil is that all his life, he had been different. It would have killed him to stay here, herding cattle and horses, running Sweetwater along with Harald. His laran set him apart. He was born to be a Keeper, and he felt it in his bones. He wanted to train at a Tower more than anything else. Anything else, except honor.”
“Is there a p
oint to all this?”
She watched him, the soft candlelight making him seem even younger. He was no child, nor was he completely a man. Yet he now faced a man’s difficult choices.
“You see,” she went on, “if he went against Father’s wishes and snuck off to some place like Cedestri, where they’d take him no matter what, he’d be turning his whole life into a lie, instead of keeping faith with who he was.”
Lerrys looked uncertain. He was old enough to understand the importance of integrity, but clearly had not thought that staying home and obeying his father’s wishes might be an honorable course. Gently, she said, “It was the hardest thing for Varzil to do—to give in, to leave Arilinn with Father, but he did it. I think that decision helped make him who he is today, a man who shapes our times. He didn’t just do whatever he wanted, he did the right thing.”
Lerrys wasn’t ready to give up. “But he did go back to Arilinn. He found a way.”
“Only after Father agreed. Actually, it was Harald who changed Father’s mind, after the incident with the catmen. Harald isn’t as hide-bound and unreasonable as you think. It’s the natural course for all sons to challenge their fathers. But he loves you. He wants you to grow strong and wise, to rule Sweetwater after him. How can you do that if you cannot even rule yourself?”
Lerrys glanced away. His chest rose and fell; she could almost hear the pounding of his heart. His desires—for adventure and glory, for his father’s approval, for honor—roiled in his breast.
“It isn’t easy, is it?” she said in a low voice.
He shook his head. “What should I do? I can’t just give in.”
She touched the back of his hand, brushing his mind with her laran. “Just go about your chosen course. I doubt Harald will say anything. Your mother will fuss, but then, she would do that no matter what you decided.”
He grinned, and she knew he’d truly understood. Two days later, the men left to join Dom Eiric’s attack on Asturias.