He had no need to send to Emuin. Emuin had sent for the midwife, both in the gray space and on Paisi’s quick feet—for thinking the babe a week away, Gran Sedlyn had gone home tonight, as she did one day in seven. Paisi ran, to bring her up the hill, in the storm and the lightning. He was aware of Paisi racing out the West Gate barefoot as he had lived much of his life, slipping on the cobbles, running in icemelt, rapidly insensible of pain.
And at Emuin’s lancing inquiry, he knew Gran Sedlyn’s unfamiliar touch, an old woman roused out of a warm bed and searching, he thought, for stockings, even before Paisi was past the first uptown street.
“There we are, m’lord,” Uwen said, and pressed a warm cup into his hand. He trusted anything from Uwen, and sipped at it, brought to a realization of soldiers and resources at his command.
“The Aswydds,” he said. “Orien’s trying to bring the baby. Go tell the abbot.” The man’s workings were small, but the man knew the Aswydds, too, and the abbot was closer and fleeter of foot than Gran Sedlyn.
He said so, and in the gray space Orien tried to bar him from doing that. So did Tarien, following her sister’s lead blindly, desperately, in her pain. For a moment a storm raged, but harm was all too easy if it came to a struggle, and he disarmed himself and kept out of the gray space except the most minuscule awareness, wishing no harm at all to the baby. Orien might assail him and cause him pain, but he sat and sipped hot tea and bore with it, for rage as she would Orien made no gains against his determination to hold things as they were.
It was Tarien that afflicted him worst, Tarien with her pain, and her fear, and her anger: she tore at him and pleaded for everything to be done.
—Mine! she cried. My son! My baby! Let him alone! Let me alone! You’re killing my baby!
—Your sister will harm him, Tristen answered her. It’s your sister’s time, not his. Hear him. Hear him, not Orien!
But Tarien was blind in her fear and deaf. Orien was her life, and Orien said now was the time. Orien said to wait was to kill her child—and so he wished them all quiet, smothered Orien’s dire warnings under stifling silence, smothered Tarien’s fears and even the babe’s silent struggle.
A distressed guard came to his door to report screams from the Aswydds within the apartment, and that the baby might be coming. And at the same moment Uwen had returned, reporting the abbot was awake.
“As he’s prayin’, or whatever he can do. Ye want me to go over there?” Uwen asked, meaning the other wing. “A midwife I ain’t, but babes an’ foals is some alike.”
“It won’t be tonight,” Tristen said into what seemed a great hush. “Orien wishes it. But I wish otherwise.”
“M’lord,” Uwen said with some evident misgiving. “A baby once’t it starts comin’ ain’t amenable to arguments. Ye stop it, an’ ye might kill the baby.”
“The babe’s alive,” he said, staring into that gray distance, “and so is Tarien.”
“It ain’t good,” Uwen said. “It ain’t a good thing, m’lord, if there’s a choice.”
“There isn’t,” he said, and drew a deep breath, aware of Orien and Tarien and the babe all at once.
“What are they at?” Uwen asked him. “Is it the baby comin’?”
“Orien wishes it,” he said, and went back to his chair in the study, picked up a just-poured cup of tea as thunder cracked and boomed above the roof, wizardous and uncertain. The gray space opened wide to him, and Orien was there, and Tarien appeared, a hurt, small presence with the child wrapped close, not yet free. “But the time is wrong.”
“The babe’s?” Uwen asked, “Or master Emuin’s?”
“Both,” Tristen said, with utter assurance, sipped his tea, and Uwen’s expression eased.
He knew others had waked, now. Emuin was there, and from a greater distance, Crissand roused out of a sound sleep, confused and alarmed and half-awake. Cevulirn had sat up, in his bed in the camp outside the walls.
They consented to what he wished so strongly—supported him, as if they had set arms about him, not questioning what his wish was. Their trust in him was a heady drink, and gave him strength against Orien.
And not just Orien. He became aware of a presence elsewhere, from far away, from the north, from Tasmôrden’s direction, and that presence was thin and subtle and laced with excitement and desire.
He would not have that. He flung himself from the chair with a crash of the teacup, sent a table over as he flung out a hand to the nearest wall and willed the wards to life, strong, stronger than any intrusion.
The wards sprang up blue and strong as he could make them, from here to the town gates: he felt them, and as he turned about, hearing outcries and questions, he saw astonished faces, Tassand’s, and one of the guards from upstairs. But Uwen was there, too, calm and steady, saying to the rest, “ ‘At’s all right, His Grace is seein’ to what’s amiss, just ye stan’ still and don’t fret.”
In that moment violence lanced between the fortress and the heavens, and Emuin’s will deflected it. Thunder boomed and shook the very stones, and men cried aloud in fright.
“We’re inside,” Uwen said, “an’ Ts Grace is watchin’ out for us, so the lightnin’s ain’t to fear. An’ if he don’t want that babe born tonight, ‘e won’t be.”
Crack! went the thunder above them, and Emuin flung out an angry wish to the heavens, chiding the storm… and Orien Aswydd.
So Tristen did, and stood fast while three more sharp cracks pealed and boomed through the stones. The very air seemed charged, and the smell of thunderstorms and wet stone permeated the apartment, as if a window were open.
A woman’s voice cried out in agony, and that pain went through the gray space.
—Bring him into the world! Orien cried, defying him as the lightning whited the windows. Do nothing they wish!
Lightning flared beyond the window, such as he had never seen, whitening everything in the room, and blinding him, deafening him with the crack of thunder.
The blindness lingered a moment in the gray space, and in the world of Men. His sight cleared slowly on Uwen and the frightened staff, sight shot through with drifting fire. And the wards were under assault, from within and from without.
“I’ll go to her,” he said, and forgot, as once on the parapets of Ynefel, that he had left his clothing. It was his servants and Uwen who pressed that necessity on him, and dressed him in haste, a few moments’ delay while he shivered in the cold, as his sight within the world and within the gray space slowly returned, and all the while the wards rang and echoed to the assault. Emuin held it. He did. He was aware of Cevulirn and Crissand, both dim and far and confused about the source, both in danger.
—Silence! he bade them harshly. Be still! Hold the wards!
In that, their efforts aided him. The ringing grew more distant. Tarien grew quiet, but he was aware of Orien prowling the wards of a physical room, her room, Cefwyn’s room, the room where the babe had begun its life. She attempted the window, and opened it, bringing in a gust of rain-laden air. It did not breach their protection: he would not permit it, and, dressed at least to his servants’ insistence, he left his apartment, went down the hall and down the stairs, then up again, to the wing that housed the women, while Orien raged at the barriers of the sisters’ prison.
Owl whisked up the stairs, a fleeting Shadow of an Owl, as he came to the floor where the women were. Guards were at sharp attention as he passed them, going toward the doors.