"No!" said Soth in something of a harsh whisper even though the noise within the hall was more than enough to drown out any part of their conversation. "You must stay…" His voice trailed off, then suddenly gained strength. "Please."
Isolde shook her head. "What am I to do here? Istvan is wasting his own valuable time trying to find things for me to do." "You can stay," Soth said, searching his mind for any reason at all for her to remain.
"Perhaps you might be able to help Korinne with the child when it comes."
"Oh, I doubt that very much. Lady Korinne wouldn't want me anywhere near her child."
"She has no reason to dislike you."
Perhaps not, but let us just say I have a feeling that I am not one of her favorite inhabitants of the keep."
Soth looked aside and accepted the congratulations of a woman who passed by; then he turned back to Isolde.
"I want you," he said, "to stay." He paused, considering his words. "As
Korinne becomes heavy with child, I will be needing you more than ever."
He looked at her for the longest time, letting his steel blue eyes pierce right through to her heart.
"All right," she said at last, her voice edged with a sort of doomed reluctance. "I will stay."
Soth's head arched back and he smiled as if Isolde had just said something tremendously funny. "Wonderful!" he said, shaking her hand. He raised the volume of his voice so those close-by could hear him. "Yes, indeed. I am a very happy man."
Korinne had watched as Soth moved through the hall, greeting people and gladly shaking hands. He seemed happier than she'd ever seen him before, and she was satisfied that she had made him that way.
But then Soth had turned away from Caradoc and found himself face-to-face with the elf-maid Isolde.
The sight had suddenly made Korinne feel sick to her stomach.
She had watched motionless and silent as her husband and the elf-maid talked to one another on the other side of the hall. There was nothing out of the ordinary in their mannerisms, nothing that might suggest they were anything more than friends. Of course, there was a bond between them. He had saved her life, after all.
Korinne had felt a little better when she saw the elf maid idly tuning her harp and her husband intently greeting passersby in the middle of their little chat. When they were done, Soth had laughed politely at some joke the elf had made and they had parted as simply as any two? friends would part.
There had been nothing to it.
Then why, even now as Soth happily moved about the room to chat with others, did this feeling of sickness continue to gnaw at her belly?
Chapter 18
The months passed like days for some, like years for others.
For those inside the keep, the months flew by as countless hours were spent preparing the nursery, making clothes or guessing what name the new Soth might be blessed with.
But for Lady Korinne the winter moved at a crawl. While some of her early months were spent performing such motherly duties as decorating the nursery, much of her time was spent resting in bed under the almost constant supervision of the healer, Istvan. His regular examinations always concluded with the same proclamation
"Everything between mother and child is as well as could be expected."
But no matter how many times Korinne heard those words, they did little to ease the pain she felt inside. The child had become more than a simple burden upon her and at times she wondered why she had never heard other pregnant women complain of bouts of such constant, throbbing pain.
And as the months wore on, it was a surprise to no one that an ever-increasing amount of Korinne's time was spent at rest. Throughout the night and much of the day she'd lie in bed, either asleep or in a half-awake sort of daze in which she was almost literally blinded by the pain.
As a result, the winter days and nights seemed to be at a standstill for
Lord Soth, who in aching anticipation of the birth of his child, found he could spend little time with his wife. When she was up and about she tried to occupy herself with some pleasant detail concerning the child-to be. Or, if she were free, he would be occupied by some tedious, but nevertheless important, matter of state. When she slept, the healer had ordered that she not be disturbed, and when she was lying in her bed neither awake nor asleep, she was too affected by her pain to be much of a companion, or even very receptive to Soth's awkward efforts at comforting her.
And so, on one of the coldest days of Deepkolt, Soth looked elsewhere in the keep for companionship. Weeks earlier, he had instructed the healer to provide Isolde with her own private quarters. The healer had done so gladly, putting the elf-maid in a room at the south end of the keep that had not one but two entrances, one leading in from the main hallway, and another leading in from a seldom used storage room. Soth thanked the healer by promising to acquire more blue hyssop for him on his next trip to Palanthas, and never spoke of the matter again.
And now, Soth walked through the cold, damp storage room placing his hand against the inside of the moss covered south wall to guide his way.
When he came up against another wall, he patted his hands against it until he felt the rough grain of several wooden planks butted up against one another. Certain he'd found the door, he rapped his knuckles against the wood.
"Who is it?" came the sweet voice from inside.
"It is I," he said. "Lord Soth."
Seconds later, the door was being opened.
The months continued to pass.
Brookgreen… Yurthgreen… Fleurgreen… At last spring was in the air.
New buds appeared on the branches.
Flowers began to bloom.
And Korinne's child was ready to come into the world.
Soth lay on the bed, his muscular naked body covered with a thin layer of sweat. At his side, the lithe form of Isolde, similarly damp with sweat, nestled into place within his arms. When she'd found a comfortable position she breathed out a deep sigh of satisfaction, then said, "The keep will soon have another mouth to feed."
Soth's smile was brief. Although he did not like to be reminded of his wife and unborn child when he was with Isolde, he'd never told the elf-maid not to mention Korinne, because the times she did were rare.
"Yes," he said matter-of-factly. "Korinne is due to birth the child any day now."
Isolde looked at Soth with a coy sort of grin.
Soth noticed the look on the elf-maid's face. "What is it?" he asked.
"I'm not talking about Lady Korinne."
Soth was silent for a moment. "If not Korinne, who then?"
"Me," said Isolde. "I'm talking about me."
Soth's mouth opened, but he found himself unable to speak. He sat up in the bed and looked at the elf-maid grinning up at him like a kender who'd just borrowed a large cluster of priceless jewels.
"You mean…"
Isolde nodded.
At first, Soth was overjoyed, but slowly found himself becoming troubled by the news. All he could think of was the problems a bastard child would cause for him within the keep. The secrecy and lies, the problems his offspring — both of them-would have when they would inevitably fight one another for the legacy of the Soth name. He thought of his own half-brother and half-sister, both killed due to his orders to ensure his own succession as sole heir to the Soth name and to the throne of Knightlund.
In a single horrible moment, Soth realized that although he had vowed to distance himself from his father he had actually become his father, producing a bastard child just as his father had done so many years ago-a half-elven child at that.
The words of his father echoed cruelly in his ears.
"Don't be so quick to condemn me, my son," Aynkell Soth had said. "You are of my flesh and of my blood. You always will be. There's too much of me in you for you to be so critical of my life."