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He did not respond until they had entered the shade of the colonnade. There was a bench there, though he did not sit on it. He stopped and faced her. “You’ve seen her. What do you think?”
“I think the baby will come within the week, if not sooner,” Morag answered. “She seems to be in a hurry to be born.”
“It’s not terribly early,” he said. “Is it? She’ll be safe. They both will.”
“Gods willing,” Morag said. “Why? Is something troubling you?”
He shrugged. He looked very young then, almost painfully uncomfortable with the emotions that tangled in him. “It’s just fretting, I’m sure. The Healers say all is going as it should. She’s managing well. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Healers aren’t midwives,” Morag said, “or wisewomen, either. Yes, you’re fretting, but sometimes there’s a reason for it. I don’t suppose you’ve taken any time to find a wetnurse?”
He frowned. “A nurse? Are you afraid she won’t be able to—” He stopped. His whole body went still. “You think she’s going to die.”
Morag glared. “I do not. I’m being practical, that’s all. How long do you think she’ll let herself be tied down to a baby? She’ll be wanting to ride and teach and work magic as soon as she can get up.”
“Yes, but—”
She cut him off. Men were all fools, even men who were mages and imperial princes. “Never mind. I’ll see if there’s someone suitable here. If not, we’ll send to the nearest city.”
“I’m sure there’s someone here,” he said a little stiffly. “I’ll see to it today.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Morag said. “You go, do what First Riders do on spring afternoons. Valeria isn’t going to die, and she’s not likely to drop the baby tonight. We’ll both watch her. Then when it happens, we’ll be ready.”
He nodded. Some of the tension left him, but his shoulders were tight. She had alarmed him more than she meant.
Maybe it was to the good. Kerrec had certain gifts that made him a remarkable assistant during a birthing. If he was on guard, those gifts would be all the stronger.
She patted his arm, putting a flicker of magic into it. He relaxed in spite of himself. “Stop fussing,” she said. “I’m here. If I have to go to the gates of death and pull her back with my own hands, I will keep my daughter safe. You have my word on it.”
“And your granddaughter?”
She almost laughed. Trust that quick mind to miss nothing. “Safer still. She’ll have a long and prosperous life, if I have any say in it.”
“And I,” he said with an undertone that made her hackles rise. She should not forget that he was a mage and a powerful one. Even the gods would yield to his will if he saw fit to command them. In this, for the woman he loved and the child of his body, he most certainly would.
Chapter Five
Valeria woke to morning light, a noble hunger, and a plump and placid girl sitting by the window, nursing an equally plump child.
She scowled. It was her window, she was sure of that, in the room she shared with Kerrec. And here was this stranger, who might be a servant, but what was she doing with a suckling child?
Morag’s tall and robust figure interposed itself between Valeria and the girl. “Good morning,” she said. “Breakfast is coming. Come and have a bath.”
Valeria sat up. She had been dreaming that the baby was born and she was her slender self again, riding Sabata through a fragment of the Dance. The dream had been sweet, but her mood was strange.
She felt heavier and more ungainly than ever. The bath soothed a little of that. Breakfast was more than welcome, but her appetite faded as fast as it had risen. She ate a few mouthfuls and pushed the rest away.
In all that time, Morag had not explained the girl by the window. The child finished nursing, clambered down from the girl’s lap and came to stand with his thumb in his mouth, staring at Valeria with wide brown eyes.
“This is a rider’s son,” Valeria said. “Is that his mother?”
“That is Portia,” Morag said. “Portia is deaf and mute, but she’s quite intelligent. She’ll nurse your daughter when you go back to being a rider.”
“She will not!” Valeria said fiercely. “I’ll raise my child myself. I don’t need—”
“Of course you do,” said Morag. She dipped a spoonful of lukewarm porridge and cream. “Here, eat. You’re feeding the baby, too, don’t forget.”
“Are you trying to make me sorry you ever came?”
“You’ll be glad enough of me before the day is out,” Morag said. “Finish this and then we’ll walk. You want to visit your horses, don’t you?”
Valeria glowered, but there was no resisting her mother. “This argument isn’t over,” she said. “When I come back, I want that girl gone.”
“I’m sure you do,” Morag said, unperturbed. “Eat. Then walk.”
Morag was relentless. Valeria did not like to admit it, but she was glad to be up and out. She was not so glad to be marched through the whole school and half the city, then back again. She was a rider, not a foot soldier.
At least the long march included the stable and her stallions. Sabata and Oda were in the paddocks behind the stallions’ stable. Marina was instructing a rider-candidate under Kerrec’s stern eye.
Orontius was a competent rider, but he was profoundly in awe of Kerrec. That awe distracted him and made him clumsy. He almost wept at the sight of Valeria.
She forgot her strange mood and her body’s sluggishness. “There now,” she said. “Remember what we practiced yesterday? Show us how it went.”
Orontius breathed so deep his body shuddered. Then, to Valeria’s relief, he remembered how to focus.
Marina’s own relief was palpable. A stiff and distracted rider was no pleasure for any horse to carry, even one as patient as the stallion. As Orontius relaxed, his balance grew steadier and his body softer. He began to flow with the movement as a rider should.
Kerrec would hardly unbend so far as to laugh in front of a student, but his glance at Valeria had a flicker of mirth in it. He knew how he seemed to these raw boys. Sometimes it distressed him, but mostly he was indulgent.
Valeria could remember when he had been truly terrifying. He was merely alarming now. He was even known, on rare occasions, to smile.
She slipped her hand into his. His fingers laced with hers, enfolding her in warmth. She knew better than to lean on him in front of half a dozen rider-candidates and their instructors, but his presence bolstered her wonderfully.
Orontius finished his lesson without falling into further disgrace. Lucius was waiting his turn, holding the rein of Kerrec’s stallion Petra. Valeria caught his eye and smiled.
“I’ll teach this one,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Kerrec asked.
He was not asking her. His eyes were on Morag.
Valeria’s temper flared. She opened her mouth to upbraid them both, but the words never came. She felt…strange. Very. Something had let go. Something warm and wet. Something…
Kerrec swept her off her feet. She struggled purely instinctively, but his single sharp word put an end to that. She clutched at his neck as he began to run—biting back the question that logic bade her ask. “Why carry me? Can’t I ride?”
She knew what his answer would be. Not now.
The baby was coming. Not this instant—Valeria was not a mare, to race from water breaking to foal on the ground in half a turn of the glass. Human women were notably less blessed. But the birth had begun. There was no stopping it.
She had thought she would be afraid. Fear was there, but it was distant, like a voice yammering almost out of earshot. The pains were much more immediate.
They were sharper than she had expected, and cut deeper. They wrenched her from the inside out.
Kerrec was with her. He would not let her go.
A very remote part of her was comforted. The rest was in stark terror.
The pains were too strong. They should not be like this. They set hooks in the deepest part of her, the part that she had buried and bound and prayed never to see again.
The Unmaking had roused. Absolute nothingness opened at the core of everything she was.
All because she had read a spell in an old and justly forgotten book, not so long ago. It had been quiescent since she came back to the Mountain from the war and the great victory. She thought she had overcome it.
She had been an idiot. It had been waiting, that was all, biding its time until she was as vulnerable as a human creature could be.
She should be riding out the pains, guiding her child into the light. Instead, all the power she had went into holding back the Unmaking.
She did not have to panic. Her mother was there. So was Kerrec. They would keep the baby safe. She had to believe that.
She could feel Kerrec around her, holding her. His quiet strength brought comfort even through the terror that was trying to swallow her. It was always there, always with her, no matter where she was or what she did. It was as much a part of them both as the color of their eyes or the shape of their hands.
She leaned back against him. It was a strange sensation, as if she moved her body from without with a third hand while the rest kept a death grip on the Unmaking. His lips brushed her hair, a gesture so casual and yet so tender that she nearly wept.
She had no choice but to hold on and be strong. No one could help her with this. No one here even knew.
They could not know. If they did, they would try to help—and the Unmaking would lair in them, too. She would rather give herself up to it than destroy them.
That hardened her heart. Her grip had been slipping, but now it firmed. She walled the Unmaking in magic, calling on the strength of the Mountain and the stallions who were always within her.
She would never have dared to do that if it had not been for the three whom she protected—not only her lover and her mother but the child who struggled to be born. The Unmaking must never touch them. That was a great vow, as deep as the Unmaking itself.
Valeria lay barely conscious against Kerrec’s body. Pains racked her, but her spirit was elsewhere. She had gone far inside herself behind walls and wards so strong he dared not break them for fear of breaking her.
“Is it always this way with mages?” he asked her mother.
Morag’s frown was etched deep between her brows. “I’ve never midwived a horse mage before. No one has. Her body is doing well enough. The baby is coming as it should. But—”
“But?”
“I don’t know,” Morag said, and that clearly angered her. “Is there something about horse magic that makes this unduly difficult?”
“Not unless the old riders are right and it matters that she’s a woman.” Kerrec shook his head as soon as he said it. “No. That’s not what it is. It’s not our magic at all.”
“Then what—”
“I can’t tell,” Kerrec said with tight-strained patience. “She won’t let me in. And no, I can’t force it. She’s woven the wards too well.”
“We’ll do our best without her, then,” Morag said. “Damn the girl! She’s never in her life made anything simple.”
Kerrec bit his lip. He would be the first to admit that the two of them were all too well matched.
The body in his arms went stiff with a new and stronger contraction. The life inside sparked with fear. He smoothed the world’s patterns around it—not so much that the birthing stopped, but enough to take away the worst of the pain.
He walled his own fears inside. That much of Valeria’s example he could follow. He had to be steady and strong to bring his daughter into the world.
There was a deep rightness in that. The patterns opened to accept her. She was a strong spirit, brimming with magic. She yearned toward the light.
He showed her the way. It seemed terribly long and slow, but as human births went, it was remarkably fast.
Valeria woke in the middle of it. Her consciousness flared like a beacon. The child veered away from Kerrec and toward that much brighter light.
He caught them both. Valeria was reeling with pain and confusion. All her patterns were scattered, her magic trying to shake itself to pieces.
The child’s own confusion and the shock of birthing drove her toward her mother—like calling to like. Kerrec throttled down panic. Now of all times, he must be what he was bred and trained to be.
He breathed deep and slow, as he willed Valeria to do, and quieted his mind and heart and the rushing of blood through his veins. As he grew calmer, the patterns around them lost their jagged edges and smoothed into the curves and planes of a world restored to order. For strength he drew from the earth, from the Mountain itself that was the source of every rider’s magic.
The stallions were there, and their great Ladies behind them, watching and waiting. Kerrec was bound in body and soul to the stallion Petra, whose awareness was always with him. But this was a greater thing.
He had never sensed them all before. Sometimes he had seen them through Valeria’s eyes and known for an instant how powerful her magic was. She could see and feel them all, always.
This was not a shadow seen through another’s eyes. It was stronger, deeper.
The white gods had drawn aside the veil that divided them from mortal minds and magic. None of them moved, and yet this was a Dance—a Dance of new life and new magic coming into the world.
Kerrec dared not pause for awe. The gods might be present and they might be watching, but they laid on him the burden of keeping his lover and his child alive. They would do nothing to help him.
It did no good to be bitter. The gods were the gods. They did as they saw fit.
Under that incalculable scrutiny, he held the patterns steady. The pains were close together now. Valeria gasped in rhythm with them. She spoke no word, nor did she scream. She took the pain inside herself.
Morag moved into Kerrec’s vision. He had all but forgotten her, lost in a mist of magic and fear.
“I need you to hold her tightly,” Morag said, “but don’t choke the breath out of her.” She placed his hands as she would have them, palms flat below the breasts, pressed to the first curve of the swollen belly. “When I give the word, push.”
Kerrec drew a breath and nodded. His legs were stiff and his back ached with sitting immobile, cradling Valeria. He let the discomfort sharpen his focus.
Morag’s voice brought him to attention. “Now,” she said. “Push.”
Valeria began to struggle. She was naked and slicked with sweat, impossibly slippery in Kerrec’s hands. He locked his arms around her and prayed they would hold.
Morag slapped Valeria, hard. The struggling stopped. Valeria was conscious, if confused.
“Now push,” Morag said to them both.
Valeria braced against Kerrec’s hands. He held on for all their lives and pushed as Morag had instructed.
For the first time in the whole of that ordeal, Valeria let out a sound, a long, breathless cry. Kerrec felt the pain rising to a crescendo, then the sudden, powerful release. Valeria’s cry faded into another altogether, a full-throated wail.
