I leaned back into the room. "We're leaving. Now," I commanded. Don't ask me why they didn't argue or wonder—
Aral told me later I was snow-white and just for that moment had a voice like her father. They came without question.
Vilkas took one look, grabbed Aral by the arm and started dragging her away towards the front gate. I followed.
Ah well, I thought as I hurried behind them. That's me in it up to the eyeballs, at any rate.
As soon as we hit the deserted corridors outside the first years' chambers, we started to run.
X The Price of Belts and Bright Days
I learned that evening why Lanen had been so ill. Rella met me on the stair as I was returning from my bath.
"Varien, there's been a Healer in to see Lanen," she said, stopping one step above me. We each carried candles and the flickering shadows were disconcerting. I could hardly see her face, but her voice was grave. "She's a little better but she's not well."Rella's concern seemed greater now than before we had entered the city. "Was the Healer not able to aid her?" I asked. "I have seen Gedri healers bring Lanen back from the brink of death. What did the Healer say? What afflicts her so?"
Rella held the candle away from her face. "Go to her, Varien. She needs you."
I stood back to allow her to pass on her way down the stair. I climbed slowly, breathing in long deep breaths, taking myself through the first stages of the Discipline of Calmmat was so helpful in controlling the fierce passions of the Kantri. I did manage to slow the rapid beating of my heart.
I opened the door to our room slowly, lest she should be sleeping.
I have tried to forget that moment, but I cannot. It is an odd trait—both Kantri and Gedri remember events in much the same way, but I find there is a curious effect when the heart is most deeply involved. The strangest visions choose to stamp themselves on the memory.
The long side of the bed faced the door with its head against the right-hand wall, and the single candle by the bedside shone on Lanen's gleaming hair, for her face was turned away from me, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms around them. I thought she was gazing out the small window directly opposite the door.
"Lanen," I said softly, as I put the candleholder on the shelf by the door. She did not move.
"Lanen?" I called again. She did not respond as I closed the door, and I knew could not approach her. I was beginning to learn the Attitudes of the Gedri, and Lanen's especially. There is a set in the shoulders, a something in the tension of the back even under her shift, that speaks as loudly as words and warns off even a husband from a too-swift approach. I "listened" for her mindvoice and heard nothing.
I addressed her in traespeech, for my heart's fears threatened to break through the fragile calm I had imposed on them. "Dearling, forgive me, but I fear for you. Rella told me a Healer had been to see you but that you are not yet well."
I listened in the dark and the quiet and heard only the faintest response. As though from a great distance I heard her calling in traespeech, longing, desperate, lost.
"Akor! Akor! Help me—oh sweet Lady, help me—"
I had her in my arms all in a moment, comforting her with mind and voice and holding her tight to me. "Lanen my heart, I am here, I am here," I repeated. Senseless, I know, she knew perfectly well that I was there, but it seemed to be the right thing to say. She held on to my arms with all her strength and I did not hear her breathe for the longest time, when suddenly between one breath and another she shook me off and stood up. She began to pace the room, her arms crossed before her, her bare feet shaking the floor as she stamped her anger on the boards. She was breathing as though she had run a race.
"Akor—the Healer said—I can't—"
She stopped pacing and stared at me, holding her arms tight round her chest, shaking. "Akor, I'm pregnant. And the Healer said—the Healer said it's killing me. That's what's been wrong with me, why I can't hold down food, why I've been so tired and swollen and had a headache for so long."
I felt the world's fool, but I could not help it. "Forgive me, dearling, I know not that word. What means 'pregnant'?"
"I am carrying our child," she said quietly.
I was very glad that I was sitting down, else I would have fallen. "What, already?" I said stupidly.
"Yes, already," said Lanen, annoyed. "How long did you think it would take? We've been lovers for nearly four moons!" She cracked a little at that and managed a small smile. "And making good use of the time, as well."
"Dearling, you have taught me much, but of the getting of younglings in this body I know nothing. It takes us years to conceive, and the younglings grow for the best part of two full years before they are born."
"Oh Hells, Varien, I'm sorry. I forgot you really don't know," she said, coming slowly to where I sat. "We can conceive after just one encounter, and we give birth nine moons later."
"Nine moons!" I cried.
"If all goes well. And it isn't." She stood again and wrapped her arms about her. "Varien—the Healer said I was warring within myself, that—that it would be better if I could lose the child. And she said"—Lanen started pacing again, striving to speak past the tightness in her throat—"she said it would be as well, that my body knew what it was doing, that it was"—her throat closed again, but she managed to speak through it, her voice rough—"in case it wasn't—in case it was so ill-made it wouldn't live anyway."
That was it, that was the terrible thing past. I sprang up and caught her as her strength left her at last. She wept for a moment in my arms, allowing me to see her weakness as I held her to me. In Lanen that was an intimacy as deep and vulnerable as physical nakedness.
I lifted her tenderly in my arms and laid her gently on the bed, and she sat up against the pillows. I laid the blankets over her bare legs and sat down beside her.
"Lanen, kadreshi, your pain is mine," I said, stroking her hair, surprised at how tight my own throat was, "for this child you carry is mine as well as yours." I gazed deep into her eyes. "Dear one, if me Healer is right, what must we do?"
"No!" she cried. "No, I don't believe her! She tried to get rid of it without telling me, in any case, and couldn't." She sighed and put a hand on her belly. "I'm glad she couldn't. She doesn't know about you. Of course it is difficult for the babe." She laughed, harsh laughter through her anger, and said as quietly as she could, "Name of the Winds, Akor, it's got half a Dragon for a father, of course it's going to have a hard time being born."
"Could it be as simple as that?" I asked, stunned. "But surely if I have the form of a child of the Gedri, I am of the substance of the Gedri as well!"
"Are you so certain?" she replied. "You stopped that sword with your arm the night the bam burned, and you were only cut."
"A cut to the bone, and it still aches," I said.
"Akor, if you were a normal man you would now be one-armed if you were alive at all. I saw that bastard, he was huge. And don't forget what you did to the pell—I find it hard to believe that a man of your build could be so strong."
"What has build to do with it?" I asked, confused. "This form I was gifted with is light but very strong, muscle and bone, and—"
"Just like dragons. I've wondered how in the world such vast creatures manage to fly at all. It shouldn't be possible, unless you have wildly strong bones, hollow like a bird's, and muscles many times as strong as a man's." She paused, looking at me. "And if you are made still of the same stuff, only in the form of a man—sweet Lady—no wonder the Healer couldn't help you! And poor Jamie's pell!"