Uwen came, blanket-cloaked, past the shadows of brazen dragons the lightning made lively with repeated flashes as Tristen looked back at him. Uwen had his hair loose: he raked at it, but achieved little better. In outline he looked like Emuin at his untidiest.
“South wind,” Uwen said, and so it was. “It don’t sound that cold.”
“It doesn’t feel cold,” Tristen said, turning to put his hand on the glass. As he had gone to bed, frost had patterned the panes. Now these meandering streams of water cast crooked shadows against the lightning.
A prodigious crack of thunder made him jump.
—Rain on the horn-paned window. A hole in the roof of the loft.
—A hole in the Quinaltine roof. Fatal anger of the barons, a threat to Cefwyn that did not go away.
“Oh, ‘at were a good ‘un,” Uwen said. “This is a warmin’ rain, this is.”
Spring was back. He had gained it once and now gained it back again, as if all influence to the contrary had waned and on this night he reached his ascendancy.
He had all but come full circle now, past sunset and into the night. Morning would bring the anniversary of his beginning, the evening hours, the precise hour of his own origin, likely at sundown.
Tomorrow night, Emuin had said the birth of Tarien’s child would be most portentous… and now the weather turned.
He listened for disturbance in the gray space, but Tarien’s child slept quietly in his mother’s womb this stormy night—a week and more away from entering the world, so Gran Sedlyn insisted. It might not, then, happen tomorrow, on that date Emuin called portentous: there were no signs of it happening, and Tarien’s time Tristen understood could not be rushed, even by wizardry: the babe was as the babe was, and at the moment it seemed quiet.
So the Zeide, too, rested quietly, anxious as these days were for him.
One more day before the dreaded day.
He had feared the day of his birth as long ago this fall, wondering Would the wizardry that had brought him forth from the dark give him yet another year. When he had feared that, he had had no imagining even of winter and all it might bring. Now for all his dread, he was indeed approaching that point, and, lo! the weather turned back again in his favor. After holding the land by fitful bursts of bitter cold, after his wishing day after day for the spring to come, lo! the skies turned violent and rainy as they had been in his first memories: full circle, and tomorrow he would truly be able to say, offhandedly, oh, it was thus last year, like any ordinary Man.
“ ‘Twill wash the snow away before morning,” he said.
“If it don’t turn all to ice again,” Uwen said, “as it did. If old North Wind wins the contest one more time an’ comes back in force, there’ll be slippin’ and slidin’ from here to the river.”
Let the rain for good and all erase the snow, Tristen wished, passing his hand across the colored glass panes, and this time feeling power leap to his will.
Let the spring come, he said to himself. Winter had had its day and more. It was time for that season of rain and leaves whispering and roaring in the storm.
It was time for the tracery of water on windows and the crack of thunder in the night.
It was time again for the sheer beauty of a green leaf stuck to gray stone, and the terror of Mauryl’s staff, like thunder, crack! against the pavings.
He had forgotten his clothes that day, and Mauryl had chided him, patiently, always patiently and with a faint sense of grief and disappointment that had stung so keenly then. It still did.
He had remembered a robe tonight—but his heart yearned toward the outside and the rain and the memory of chill water on his skin, and Mauryl’s cloak after, and the fire at Ynefel. If he failed there, Mauryl would forgive him, wrap him in warmth, make all things right.
If he failed here, in his war for Cefwyn’s lady, there was no mercy.
He would have come full circle tomorrow evening, but Mauryl would not come back. Had not Uwen told him—that men did not do over the things they had done, but that the seasons did?
So there was both change and sameness, there was progress and endless circles. The Great Year and the Year of Years themselves produced the same result: Men changed; Men died; babes were born, and grew; and died; the seasons varied little.
Thunder rattled the leaded windows, fit to shake the stones.
Owl called.
And elsewhere and to the west a wizardling babe waked, and moved in startlement, heart leaping.
Then pain began, an alarming pain, a sense of sliding inevitability—and change that could not be called back.
Tristen rested his hands on the marble beneath the window, dreaded the thunder he felt imminent, and winced to its rapid crack, feeling it through all his bones at once.
“M’lord?” Uwen said, seizing his arm.
He had felt pain before. This was different. This, this was the pain of a babe attempting to be born in haste, by wizardry.
This was the fear of a woman distraught and alarmed, a woman who well knew the risks.
He heard a voice urging, Let it be now, let it be now.
Now was not the time Orien would choose. But the voice continued relentlessly, striving to coax the babe into the world, urging the mother to join her efforts.
—Master Emuin, he called out into the gray space.
Emuin was there, aware and alarmed.
—She’s trying to force it, Emuin said. She must not. It must not, young lord.
—It’s too early.
—In every way. It wants not to come at all. She begins now to ensure the day of the calendar at least. No,—damn! Midnight! She strives for midnight! And she must not succeed. Make it quiet! Hush! Be still!
He had no idea how to calm the babe and the mother, while the thunder cracked and the winds of chance and wizardry roared.
In the gray space Orien’s voice urged haste, urged the babe toward birth, and the pain began, stealing his breath.
“Tassand!”
Uwen called for help, thinking him ill, but he drew in a great breath and willed Tarien still, asleep, if nothing else, and the babe to be well.
He was aware of Orien shaking Tarien’s shoulder, encouraging her.
Then she perceived him, and the anger that swept through the gray place was potent as the storm above the roof. Defiance met him. And pain, Tarien’s pain… that came.
He felt the cold marble table surface under his hand, realizing he had shaken Uwen off, and that Uwen was behind him, concerned and not knowing what to do.
—Be still, he willed the babe, and drew in a breath and straightened back, willed against all Orien’s determination that Tarien’s pains cease. Her breaths and his came as one, and be slowed them, slowed all that was happening.
But in his hearing Orien was urging her sister now, that Tarien, having the pangs that heralded the birth, must set to it, must deliver the child or lose it, adding panic and fear for the child to Tarien’s gray presence.
—No, he willed. Neither will happen.
The gray stilled for a heartbeat, a breath, and another, labored, heartbeat.
“What’s happened?” he heard Tassand ask, but he saw Tarien’s surroundings, and in one place he stood, and in another sat, aching and out of breath.
“I don’t know,” Uwen said, “ ‘cept it’s a takin’ of some sort, an’ he ain’t in his own mind. Set ‘im down. Here, m’lord. Here’s a chair.”
He trusted, and sat. Having both bodies doing the same thing made it easier to manage. He gathered his awareness, stretched out fine and far, and found Orien’s angry presence in the gray space, elusive, clever, governing her sister in ways mysterious to him.