Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

"The dead aren't-" Eskaia began.

"The dead are dead," Rubina said, and Ellysta heard savage self-command in her voice. "But I still have to thank them."

"I can come," Ellysta said. "Lady Eskaia looks tired."

"Well, you look even worse," Rubina said. "Besides, you might be carrying Gerik's child, and you should save your strength."

"Gerik's-" Eskaia began, in bewilderment. Ellysta vowed to strangle the Princess of Vuinlod, if she so much as smiled.

"Yes," Rubina said. "I hope it will be a girl, because then I will have a baby sister, even though I will really be her aunt. I can-I can-"

Silently, Ellysta held Rubina with one arm and Eskaia with the other. This was rather a public place for all three of them to cry at once, but all of them needed it and nobody in their right senses would say a word.

Two days' sailing had taken the human fleet into clean seas, and a night's rain had washed the deck of Red Elf . The planks were still damp under Torvik's bare feet when he and Mirraleen came on deck at dawn.

It was more darkness than light still, and they had the deck to themselves save for the steersman and lookout. Torvik wanted to put his arms around Mirraleen and use all his strength in the embrace, so that perhaps they might merge into one flesh and never be apart.

Instead, he put his hand over hers, as she stood by the railing.

"You-you seem to know that I am leaving," she said.

"I do not exactly know. But I did not want to ask anything."

"Afraid of the answer?"

Torvik shook his head. "Afraid to show that I was of two minds about your leaving," he said.

Mirraleen looked truly confused. "I think you owe me an explanation," she said.

"After last night, I doubt I can pay any woman anything, I but I'll try.

"I love you, and not only when we share a bed. I would have gladly gone about my life, known as the captain with the Dimernesti wife. Besides, it would have made sea otters even safer, at least around Vuinlod. Nobody would dare risk hitting one of my kin by marriage!"

That had been the right thing to say. Mirraleen's laugh was a gurgle, like a clear brook running over stones on sunny day.

"I would walk apart, of course," he said, "but I would be near to my kin, or at least to my own people. You would walk not just apart, but alone."

"Save for you."

"Am I-that much?"

"Very nearly."

"But not quite?"

"No," she had to say.

Torvik hugged Mirraleen, in love, gratitude, relief, and desire all churning together. She returned the embrace. He thought warmth had left him, but now it seemed to be returning.

It was Mirraleen who broke the embrace, then kissed him lightly on the corner of both eyes. She sprang to the railing and snatched her tunic over her head. It floated to the deck, as the dawn breeze lifted her hair.

Then she was gone, with only a faint cloop in the water alongside. When Torvik could lift his head and stare dry-eyed at the wake, only the sea stared back at him.

On an island so far north of where Suivinari had been that the seasons were the reverse of what they were in Ansalon, Mirraleen sat cross-legged on a mat of fragrant dried seaweed. She was nursing her son.

Water rippled, then splashed, in the pool in the middle of the cave. Medlessarn the Silent rose from the water, swam to the shelf below where Mirraleen sat, and walked up to her.

"How fare you both?" he asked. His eyes, however, were fixed on the babe. The babe, it seemed to Mirraleen, was returning stare for stare. But perhaps it was easy to imagine things about those eyes. They were the same intense dark brown as his father's, so well remembered from love bouts and much more.

"I think the lad will be one to make Torvik proud, whether he ever learns of the boy's existence or not," Mirraleen said.

That was the plainest answer she had yet given Medlessarn. It was also somewhat of a test of his character. He wanted to try not merely to be her mate but wed her in the old style. The rites and ceremonies of that old style, however, said nothing about the bride's having already borne a half-elven child to a far-distant human seafarer.

Mirraleen was not sure whether she wished Medlessarn to be equally silent, or to speak eloquently. She decided that silence or speech could equally well lie or tell the truth.

"Has he changed yet?" Medlessarn asked.

Mirraleen laughed. "At barely four months old? I have never heard of even the most potent of the Dargonesti changing before a year. We shallows-dwellers are laggards.

"He can swim, though," she continued. "That is not common in human babes of his age. They seldom have that much use of their limbs, or if they do, too much fear of the water. I could sometimes wish he had more fear in him, of the water and other things."

"It is easy for a babe with a good mother to grow without fear," Medlessarn said.

"Easier when the mother has as many friends as I do."

That was not merely flattery. Medlessarn's clan had taken Mirraleen in, swollen belly and all, and given her as much help with the babe as if one of them had sired it. This said plainly that they did not think like the Silvanesti or the minions of the kingpriest, when it came to mixed-blood children.

Medlessarn lay down on his belly, propped his chin on one hand, and waggled the fingers of the other to amuse the baby. He was rewarded by a formidable belch, then a squeal of laughter.

"Swimming that young suggests the blood breeds true," he said.

"Which blood?" Mirraleen asked.

"It could be either, I admit," Medlessarn replied. "More likely shallows-dweller, but Torvik was not one of those human seafarers who refuse to learn swimming because that will only prolong their dying if they fall overboard."

"He could swim like an eel," Mirraleen said. "But he was much warmer to the touch."

They sat in companionable silence for a while, each thinking back to the battle now over a year in the past. Medlessarn broke the silence with evident reluctance. "How long will you keep him?"

"If he runs true to the shallows-dweller blood, until he is grown. If he does not, I shall take counsel on the best way of returning him to his father." She looked at the water, seeing nothing.

"Grown men or women can live where they please, with whom they please, and as they please," she said. "But a babe should grow up with those most like him, who understand his needs."

Medlessarn laughed. "Tell that to Darin," he said. "A minotaur raised him from the age of three, and he has the best of both races in him."

"Yes, but he was not of mixed blood, with his mother a sea-dweller. Humans and minotaurs are both dryfeet. If the boy cannot learn to change-"

"What of the old spells that could give a dryfoot that power? They were known once, at least among the Dargonesti," Medlessarn offered.

"Indeed, the tales run so. But are they still known, anywhere?"

Medlessarn frowned, and said, "I have heard whispers, which may be nonsense, I admit. But would it not be worth asking about? I have traveled farther than many in these islands, but there are some who have traveled and lived longer."

Mirraleen was grateful to her friend for not adding that he could give the babe what Waydol had never given Darin-two parents to raise him. She shifted the babe and patted his cheek.

"It is too soon to decide our future, let alone that of a babe who is still too young to be named." She was observing the old custom of waiting to name a Dimernesti babe until he or she had changed for the first time. This did not keep her from calling him in her heart "Joimer," the Dimernesti form of his grandfather's name.

"Ah. But if you wait that long, he may know you well enough that he will sorrow to leave you even for a father. Also, by then Torvik may well be wed to a human woman who will not be pleased at his half-elven by-blow coming out of the sea to remind her of his past."