Elizabeth Kerner - Redeeming the Lost

I walked slowly back to my mother's house. I got in just before the rain came.

The next evening I went into labour.

I flew low, ashamed to be aloft yet as unable to stay with Lanen as to turn back time.

I had never thought of myself as a coward before, but I could not escape the evidence. The bravest thing I did was dare to bespeak my wife as I left. My heart burned within me as though it were truly aflame. I flew to escape my skin, to escape the torture of being so near to happiness yet forever separated from it.

I did not fly far. My strength seemed to drain away from the instant I left Lanen. I just managed to glide to a patch of open ground before I fell from the sky. I was confused and dizzy and my eyes didn't seem to be working very well. I felt rain begin to beat upon me, lightly at first, then harder and harder as the clouds opened. I was soon soaked, and I had the curious feeling that I was shrinking with every raindrop. Perhaps the Winds have heard my plea and have sent this rain to dissolve me, I thought, oddly cheerful. Eyes closed, shaking with fever, I imagined that I grew smaller and smaller. Perhaps Lanen will have room in her womb for me, I thought, but that was a very peculiar thought and I didn't like it. I decided not to think any longer. That was good. And after another little time, just before the end, I realised that I could no longer move my limbs or feel my wings.

It is over then, I thought, tolerably content for it to be so. Farewell, my dearest Lanen. Even as I sleep on the Winds I will love you. Now awaken, Shikrar! I come! I sang with my last thought, and my mind floated away into darkness.

Vilkas and Aral managed to stop my body from continuing with the birth immediately, but at most they could delay it for a fortnight. Still, as Vilkas said, at that stage even three days would be useful.

Idai scoured the land round about, shocked and angry, but Akor was nowhere to be found.

I began labour in earnest ten days later. I was sufficiently terrified to be going on with, but—as Vilkas reminded me forcefully, several times—I had in attendance the two best Healers in all of Kolmar. Will spelled them at my bedside, letting first one then the other get some rest.

They kept the worst of the pain at bay, and they never left me alone, Goddess bless them. After full twelve hours of it, I'm told—the Goddess is kind, I have no memory of how long it took—my son and daughter were born within minutes of each other. She came out first, followed after a very few moments by her brother.

My mother helped Aral clean them while Vilkas looked doop into their tiny bodies, making certain that all was well with thorn. He nodded, smiling, and they laid my children in my arms. I wept with relief. I wasn't the only one.

"They're beautiful, Lanen. They're just beautiful," said Maran, grinning madly. "All their fingers, all their toes, one head each. Well done, my girl." And then she said, more than a little stunned, "Grandchildren. Goddess save us, I have grandchildren." She burst out laughing. "Oh, very well done, Lanen!"

"Are they meant to be this small?" I asked. I was exhausted, thrilled, worried about them, missing Akor desperately, and utterly enchanted by these two tiny people I held.

Everyone laughed. "They've been born a moon and a half early, Lanen," said Aral. "Yes, they are meant to be tiny. They're fine, believe me, they'll grow soon enough. And Vil and I will stay with you for a while yet to be certain that all is well with them." She grinned. "Have you and Akor chosen names for them?"

"Yes," I said, choking back a sob. "He is Trezhan, and she is Irian. They are to be called Ta-Varien, to remind them always of their father's love." My throat closed on the words. Thankfully, just then there was a knock at the door. Maran, muttering something about Will being a lax door warden, went to answer it. We all waited to hear the voice of the visitor, but whoever it was said nothing but came directly up the stairs. Maran was silent as well. That was unusual, certainly.

We were, therefore, all staring curiously at the doorway when Varien walked through it.

He strode to my bedside, leaned over, and kissed me—I didn't kiss him back, I was barely able to breathe let alone kiss him back—it was—he was human—Varien, caressing our children—

I'm afraid I blasphemed rather thoroughly before I fainted.

"Aral!" I shouted, catching up the baby nearest me. She was watchful and gathered up the other before Lanen dropped it.

I was tempted to bring Lanen back to consciousness immediately, but judged that she had been through enough and let her recover in her own time. In the meanwhile I dragged Varien— Goddess, it was Varien, wasn't it?—downstairs and more or less threw him into a chair. Aral stayed with Lanen, but Maran wisely brought down the other babe. In moments he held one in each arm, gazing at them in turn, lost in wonder and delight.

He was not alone. Looking around the room, I decided that a quick treatment for shock would not go amiss. I sent my Power out from me in a soft cloud, parting it around the newborns that it might not so much as brush against them. We all were locked solid in amazement, though, until Maran managed to speak. With difficulty. After clearing her throat.

"Varien, lad?"

He looked up at her, bemused. "Yes, Mother Maran?"

"Would you care to tell us just how in all the Hells you come to be here like this?" she asked. With admirable restraint, I thought.

Before he answered, he looked to me. "Lanen is well, Mage Vilkas?"

"Aside from an unexpected shock at a delicate moment, yes, she's fine," I said. "How in all the world did you manage it?"

He began to answer, but his daughter drew a deep breath and tried out her new lungs.

Good lungs.

Varien started violently.

"Take them back upstairs, you idiot," I said, restraining a rogue smile, as her brother took up the refrain. "They are hungry, and you're not equipped."

He grinned and started back up the stairs. Lanen's voice greeted him halfway up.

"Varien Kantriakor, you bastard, get back up here NOW and bring the children!"

In the face of all temptation, I held Martin back and called Aral to come to me. "What, Vil?" she asked, worried. "Lanen's al-right, isn't she? Her colours good..."

I smiled. At last, one up on Aral in the field of humanity.

"Her colour's fine. But I expect they have a few things to say to each other. A little privacy for the new family, eh?"

Aral had the grace to blush.

"Blast your delicacy, boy," said Maran grumpily. "I want to know how in the Hells he did that!"

I had a thousand questions, a thousand demands, a thousand kicks and kisses to administer, but truth be told I could pay attention to nothing else once the babes began to suckle, and I fell asleep instantly afterward. When I woke again, only a little time later, it was to find mother Maran sat by my bedside.

She answered my expression before I could speak. "It wasn't a dream, he's downstairs having a meal. I'll send him up."

"What did he...?"

"He's refused to tell us a thing," she pouted. "And I'm sure he's right, you should hear it first, but by every blade of grass that ever grew, I'm this far from threatening his life if he doesn't start talking."

When Varien was seated beside me, the babes asleep in our arms and the rest of the company waiting patientiy and not so patiently below, he told me the tale of the night he left.

"I honesdy thought I was dying, Lanen," he said earnestly. "I felt myself shrink, then I couldn't feel my wings, then I lost consciousness—and I woke in that spot some few hours later, cold and wet and human."