by Mark Anthony
She trailed off. "And?" Tanis asked.
Ailea looked into the fire, her words lifeless. "Tyresian's father came into the room and discovered who was attending his wife. He ordered me out, but I remained outside, near the home, in case I was needed after all. He sent for a full elf to stay with Estimia, but none was available."
"When he learned that, he ordered the children's governess to deliver the baby," the midwife continued. "The poor lass had never attended a birth, much less actually delivered a baby. But Tyresian's father—I could hear him shouting even through the rock walls of the mansion—said that any full elf woman would be better than a part-human."
Tanis opened his mouth to say something, but Eld Ailea continued on. "Then I heard Tyresian's mother screaming." Ailea's face contorted as though she were still at the scene. "I pounded at the door. I begged them to let me come in and help Estimia, but Tyresian's father came outside himself and forced me away. He said he would have me arrested if I did not go away."
"Interesting, considering Qualinost has no jail," Flint noted drily.
Eld Ailea rose and selected a miniature of a pretty elven woman from the mantle. She brushed slender fingers over the uneven paint. "Tyresian lived, but Estimia died."
She wandered around the room, Flint and Tanis following her progress in the firelight as she touched a frame here, a cheek there. When she arrived at the door, she swung around and said simply, "Tyresian's father said the death was my fault."
Tanis gasped. "How?"
She looked down and, suddenly officious, smoothed her loose gray skirt. "He said I must have done something wrong before he had a chance to order me away."
"That's absurd," Flint snapped. Tanis nodded, his face angry-
Ailea nodded. "Yes, it is," she said calmly. "I have my weaknesses, but incompetence is not one of them." She returned to the kitchen with the mugs, teapot, and plate, and Flint followed her to help, leaving Tanis browsing through the baby portraits in the entry room.
"When you were at my shop," Flint said, hoping to prolong the conversation even though it was nearly midnight, "you told me that you'd delivered the Speaker."
"And his brothers," Ailea added, handing Flint a dish to dry with a towel that apparently used to be a woven shirt of the sort she'd worn to Flint's shop. "Why?"
"I'm curious about the third brother."
"Arelas? Why?"
"The Speaker said Arelas was sent away from court because he was ill, but he didn't say what illness his brother had. Do you know?"
Ailea rinsed the teapot in a bucket of clear water brought in from a well behind the house. "I'm not sure anyone knows. He was fine until he was a toddler, but about the time he learned to walk, well, he changed."
Flint looked up from under one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. "Changed? How?"
Eld Ailea's voice took on the tone of someone used to telling stories to babysitting charges. "One day," she said, "he, his brother Kethrenan, his mother, and I went for a picnic in the Grove," naming the tree-shrouded area between the Tower of the Sun and the Hall of the Sky. "Arelas wandered away and got lost."
"Did you find him?"
"Not at first. We combed the area, but it was as though the earth had swallowed him. We saw no sign." She handed the teapot to the dwarf. "Someone must have found him, but we never discovered who. After three days of fruitless searching—Solostaran's father must have called out nearly every soldier in Qualinesti—little Arelas was found sleeping on the moss in the courtyard of the palace one morning. He must have wandered in—or someone brought him in, past the guards—through the opening to the gardens. He had been covered with a cloth, to keep him warm."
Flint gave the burnished copper teapot one last polish with a rag and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table. "He became ill?"
"Very. He had a fever when we found him. He hovered near death for days. I administered what nostrums I had. I used what magic I could, but I cannot cure. I can only ease symptoms. No one was able to help. Finally, the Speaker at that time ordered Arelas sent to an elven cleric outside Qualinesti."
Flint leaned against a countertop as Eld Ailea sloshed clear water around the ceramic container she'd used to wash the dishes in. The conversation seemed to have reminded her of other things, for she continued to speak after she'd laid the container, upside-down, on the counter near Flint's elbow. "Solostaran and Kethrenan were relatively easy deliveries—as easy as childbirth ever is, of course. But Arelas . . . even before he was born, he was not. . . right. He simply wasn't positioned correctly within his mother. The birth took more than a day, and I finally had to use forceps to deliver him, something I try never to do.
"That time, however, it worked out fine," she said cheerfully. "Nothing but a little cut on his arm, and it healed quickly, left only a scar. Just a little mark shaped like a star. It reminded me of the mark that I've heard some of the Plainsmen place on young men when they reach manhood."
"Now, come, Master Fireforge," she said briskly, placing strong arms on the dwarf's shoulders and turning him around, "let's see what young Tanthalas has been up to."
They returned to the main room. Tanis stood next to an open cupboard near the front door. "You painted all these portraits," he said, his reddish brown hair swishing against his leather jerkin as he turned.
"From memory, yes," Ailea said, smoothing the braid that encircled her head and ended in the bun at the back of her head.
"Is there one of me?" His voice was gruff from his attempt to be offhand. Flint found himself hoping the midwife wouldn't disappoint him.
"Not down here, no." Tanis's shoulders sagged at the reply.
"I keep your painting in my room," she added, and stepped efficiently to a stone stairway that led up from the entry room, left of the door to the kitchen.
Flint found himself exchanging a wordless glance with the half-elf as they marked the elderly midwife's steps above them. It was well past midnight now, and the two had to rise in mere hours for the tylor hunt, but Flint would have died rather than hurry Tanis away now.
Suddenly Eld Ailea was standing on the bottom step, and Flint found himself wondering whether her magical skills included teleportation. She was remarkably quick-footed for someone several centuries old.
"Here," she said, and handed Tanis a portrait encased in an ornate frame of silver and gold filigree, and a steel pendant on a silver chain. "The pendant belonged to Elansa. She gave it to me before she died."
Almost reverently, Tanis took the painting with one hand and the pendant with the other, seeming not to know which to examine first. The half-elf's greenish brown eyes looked wet, but it may have been the effect of the light. "So this is the face she saw," the half-elf whispered, and Flint found himself turning away to stare into the fire. The smoke was to blame for his own misty vision, certainly.
Eld Ailea looked over his shoulder. "You were a robust infant, Tanthalas—remarkably healthy for one whose mother was so frail by the time he was born."
Tanis swallowed, and Ailea continued, her voice barely audible to Flint, only several feet away. He wondered if that was the voice the old midwife used to sooth laboring mothers, to bring calm to colicky infants. "Elansa loved Kethrenan dearly, Tanthalas. She decided, early in the pregnancy, I think, that she didn't want to live without her husband, but she stayed alive, hoping the baby was his."
Tanis's face grew hard. "Then when she saw me," he said, "she knew the truth." He tried to give the portrait back to the midwife, but she wouldn't take it.
"No, Tanthalas." Eld Ailea's voice was gentle, but her hand was strong on his shoulder. "When she saw you, when she saw that face that you look at now, she seemed, I think, to change her mind. She roused enough to nurse her baby, but it was too much for her. She was simply too weak from all she had been through from Kethrenan's death onward." The midwife's voice faltered. "She held you until she died."
Silence hung in the room like a darkness, broken only by someone's heavy breathing—Flint's own, the dwarf
realized. He cleared his throat and coughed.
After a pause, during which none of the three met the others' eyes, Tanis asked, "What about the pendant?"
Eld Ailea took it from him. "It's steel, very valuable. Kethrenan gave it to her when they were married. She wore it always. I've considered it a blessing that the brigands didn't take that from her. She seemed to draw from it what little strength she had during those last months." She walked over to Flint and showed him the amulet. Ivy and aspen leaves encircled the intertwined initials "E" and "K." Scalloping decorated the edges of the circular disk.
There didn't seem to be anything more to say. Flint and Tanis were drooping with fatigue, and even the ostensibly tireless midwife looked weary. As if by unspoken agreement, the men gathered by the door to leave; Eld Ailea moved to retrieve Tanis's sword from where he'd left it by the fireplace. She hoisted it in its scabbard, then hesitated, an odd look on her face.
"This sword . . ."
Tanis spoke proudly. "Flint made it."
"Yes, I know," she said, stammering slightly. "It's beautiful. Yet . . ."
The dwarf and half-elf waited while the midwife collected her thoughts. She inhaled, and seemed suddenly decisive. "Flint." Her voice was sharp. "Come here."
Flint moved to her side, gazing worriedly into her hazel eyes. "Could you fasten this pendant to this sword?" she asked. "Would it ruin the weapon?"
"Well, certainly it can be done, and no, it wouldn't hurt it, but . . ."
"Permanently? That can be done?"
He nodded. Her expression caught him; it was an unsettling mixture of urgency and fear. He pointed to an open swirl in the hilt of the weapon. "I could attach it there."
Her hand closed over his on the sword's hilt. "Then do it," she urged. "Tonight."
"It's so late . . ." Flint hedged.
Eld Ailea grasped his arm. "It must be done tonight. Will you? Without fail?" So close to the midwife, Flint suddenly saw the exhaustion, the years, that her sprightly character normally overshadowed. He promised, and she relaxed her grip-Flint parted from Tanis at the Hall of the Sky. The half-elf continued north to the Speaker's palace, and Flint went on home, carrying his friend's sword.
The dwarf spent the next two hours doing as the midwife had asked.
* * * * *
Miral made almost no sound as he passed the pair of black-jerkined guards posted outside the Speaker's private quarters at the palace; the guards hailed him and waved him on. At ease in the darkness, with only occasional torches to pain his eyes, he made his way quickly down one corridor to the stairwell. But instead of going down to the courtyard, he climbed the steps to the building's second level.
He paused at Xenoth's quarters, hearing the adviser's roisterous snoring even through the door, then slipped by Tanis's door, which stood slightly ajar, revealing a dark and empty interior. Miral imagined the half-elf was out walking the tiled streets of Qualinost, agonizing over the day's developments.
In succession, the mage passed Porthios's and Gilthanas's rooms, until he arrived at Laurana's. A light shone beneath her door, and he heard pacing within.
He knocked softly. The footsteps stopped, then approached the door. Laurana's voice was low. "Who is it?"
"It is Miral, Lady Laurana. I apologize for bothering you at such an unconscionable time, but I need to speak with you."
She opened the door. Miral caught his breath, as he did almost every time he saw the young princess. She was resplendent in a robe of watered silk. The aqua color brought out the glitter in her ashy hair and the coral tones of her curved lips. Momentarily, he fell speechless; then he chided himself for his lack of control.
"May I talk with you in private, Laurana? It's about the Speaker's announcement of your betrothal."
Laurana's exotic green eyes widened, and color rose in her cheeks. "Certainly . . . but not here."
"No, of course not," Miral said smoothly. "In the courtyard, then? I would not want to disturb anyone. This will not take long."
She thought, tilting her head to one side. "Give me time to dress. I will meet you there in ten minutes." Then she closed the door.
* * * * *
Well within the appointed time, Laurana, now more suitably garbed in a cloak and gown of dove-gray satin, was seated on a stone bench in the courtyard—the same bench that had witnessed the archery contest between Porthios and Tanis so many years before. But now the pear and peach trees stood bathed in silver light from Solinari, and the scent of blossoms was almost cloying. The steel door in the two-story marble edifice gleamed in the moonlight. She pulled the cloak tight around her.
Miral paced along the tiled path before her, his red robe appearing nearly black in the deep of the night. He seemed agitated. His hood had fallen back slightly, revealing pale features and the elf's almost colorless eyes.
"What is it, Miral?" Laurana prompted gently. "You said it had something to do with Father's announcement."
"I . . . I wanted to offer my condolences." The mage dipped his head. "I know that you prefer Tanthalas to Tyresian—which, I might add, shows considerable taste on your part." He smiled engagingly, and she followed suit. "Tanthalas is by far the more suitable for one such as you, regardless of his . . . violent. . . heritage. I am certain that you could keep his uncontrolled tendencies under rein, my lady. After all, not all humans are savages, and I have long been impressed by Tanthalas."
He dipped his head slightly, and the hood fell forward over his features again.
Laurana felt flustered, unsure how to sort the mage's combination of praise and condemnation of Tanis. "Thank you, but I don't see—"
"There is one even more suitable for you."
Laurana felt a look of amazement cross her features before years of court training took over and she forced her face to go blank. When she spoke, her tone was carefully neutral. "And who is that, Miral?"
"Me."
Laurana was on her feet before the word had stopped echoing in the night air between them. "You!" she said weakly. "Oh, I don't—"
Miral's tones were urgent. "Please hear me out, Laurana. If you reject me, I will never mention it again. I swear."
Laurana thought wildly, trying to figure out how her father would handle such a delicate situation. Miral had been a faithful member of court for years, and he had won her father's favor long ago for his service to her Uncle Arelas. In a similar situation, Solostaran, she knew, would give the mage time to speak.
"Please sit down, Laurana. This won't take long."
She sat. She had thought Tyresian too old for her, and Tyresian was only the same age as her brother Porthios. The mage, on the other hand, was decades older than that. "I am too young to marry, Miral."
"But not to be promised. Isn't that what you are with Tanis? Promised? Betrothed?"
Unbidden, Miral sank to the bench next to Laurana.
"I first saw you, years ago, when I came here at Arelas's urging. You know my story?" Laurana nodded, not trusting her voice. She was suddenly aware of how quiet and deserted the courtyard was at night. She tried to remember whether the guards patrolled the courtyard as well as the interior of the palace.
"You were just a tiny girl—but what a girl! I've never seen such perfection. A bit spoiled, it's true, and a bit more of a tomboy than I found attractive in an elf girl of noble blood, but perhaps, I thought, such vigor came from being born of the bloodline of Kith-Kanan."
Laurana edged away from the mage, but his hand shot out and caught hers. He was stronger than she'd ever imagined. And his eyes . . . Oddly, she could see them quite well in the dark, even within the gloom of his hood. Fear cast a cold grasp around her spine. The mage's voice continued, cutting through the silence of the Qualinost night.
"I loved watching you, Laurana. I volunteered to tutor you, even though it meant taking on that dolt of a brother of yours, Gilthanas. And Tanis. I loved and trusted Tanis, you know. For after all, weren't you two being raised as brother and sister? What threat could he be to my
suit, when it came? Then I found out yesterday how wrong I was about Tanis." Miral's grip tightened, and Laurana made a sound of protest. The sound broke her fear, and she rose to her feet, the mage seeking to drag her back.
"Wait!" the mage hissed. "Laurana, choose me. I may not be all powerful, but I am a stronger wizard than people think. Ultimately, I can offer you more power, more riches, than Tyresian and Tanis put together, if only you will be patient."
Laurana, heart pounding in fear, broke away and retreated several steps. Miral rose slowly to his feet. "What is your answer?" he asked eagerly.
All thought of court decorum flew from Laurana's mind. All she could think of was escape. Alienating the mage was of no concern now. Flight was. The Speaker would never keep Miral at court after he heard of tonight's events.
"Leave me alone," she demanded, drawing all her strength together, investing her voice with as much power as she could. "Leave this court. If you are gone in the morning, I promise I will not tell my father what has transpired. You will escape the humiliation of being removed from court."
The mage stood, and she turned and strode through the moonlight toward the door. Behind her, she heard the mage mumble a few words, and she broke into a run. Mere feet from the steel doors, however, the spell burst within her brain, and she stumbled and fell in a faint.
She awakened in the corridor outside her room. Two palace guards, one carrying a lamp, gazed down on her with worried expressions; her head and shoulders rested on Miral's lap. She looked up, confused. "Miral?" Laurana looked around. "How did I get out here?"
"I was passing along in the corridor when I heard your door open," Miral said silkily. "I knew the day had been a grueling one for you, and I hastened to you to see if you were ill or needed help. You fainted as I approached. Don't you remember?"
Laurana lay back weakly. "I . . . don't remember anything. I recall walking around in my room, and then, suddenly, I was here." Yet, she thought, it seemed as though she were forgetting something important. She shook her head, unable to think.
