King of Sword and Sky
Page 103

A few chimes later, Captain Waters rode back through the front gate and signaled to the waiting caravan. Drivers clucked and slapped the reins, and the carriages and wagons resumed their forward motion.
While the wagons and servants' carriage peeled off towards the open field along the south wall, Lord Darramon's carriage drove straight to the outpost's gate. Its lacquered sides were coated in thick layers of dust, the shiny yellow-painted wheels chipped and cracked along the edges from weeks of travel over rutted, unpaved roads and rough terrain. At Kiel's signal, the coachman drew the horses to a halt.
The carriage door swung open even before Kiel came within reach. Lord Darramon leaned out, his hair mussed, his face pale and strained and pinched around the mouth. "Are they here, the shei'dalins?"
"They come, my lord."
"Tell them to hurry. My wife has lost consciousness. I think she may be dying."
Within chimes of their arrival, Lady Darramon was lying on the freshly laundered sheets of the garrison commander's own bed, and shortly after that a small knot of scarlet-clad, heavily veiled shei'dalin entered the room in the company of a dozen stone-faced Fey warriors who bristled with steel and leashed menace as they stationed themselves in protective positions throughout the room.
The shei'dalim examined Lady Darramon, then informed her husband that—while the malignancy was indeed draining her life—her current distress rose from a different source.
"Pregnant?" Lord Darramon stared at the five veiled shei'dalim in shock. "My wife is pregnant? B-but how? She's been so ill I haven't… we haven't…" His voice trailed off. Shock shifted to suspicion, then hardened to certainty. "That night. That thrice-damned night at the palace, when the Tairen Soul spun his weave." His voice choked off in sudden silence as his jaw snapped shut. Then, between gritted teeth, he demanded, "What effect will this have on my wife's healing? You'll still be able to help her, won't you?"
"There is some risk," one of the shei'dalins said. "We'll need to go more slowly to avoid harming the child, but no matter what precautions we take, our weaves will be powerful and we will be spinning them in the baby's earliest days of life. Our magic will imprint on the child."
Darramon's spine stiffened. "Imprint how? Will the child be deformed?" He was an old-school lord, born and raised in a harsh part of Celieria, where even now the common fate of children born with physical deformities was to be abandoned on a hillside, left to the animals and the elements. Winding, they called it. As if the winds plucked the child from the earth and carried it off to some happier clime. Romantic tripe meant to soothe the aching hearts of mothers who had their newborns ripped from their arms. Basha would never allow it. She'd tear the manor down with her own frail hands before allowing anyone to wind her child away. Even if the thing were a damned two-headed monster.
"Nei." Another of the shei'dalins spoke, her veils fluttering gently. There was something ineffably calming about her voice. Despite himself, Lord Darramon felt the edge of his temper and his nerves begin to settle. "We are healers," the shei'dalin continued, "not Mages. Our weaves carry no possibility of harm. What my sister means is that if we expose the child to such strong magic at such an early stage in her development, some remnant of our abilities will take root. She will most likely manifest her own magical traits once she is born."
"She? The child is a girl?" Lord Darramon's facial muscles went lax, and his voice cracked on the last word. "Basha always wanted a girl. Our six are all boys—men now." A girl. A little daughter with Basha's big blue eyes, a daughter to pamper and love, who would wrap him as firmly around her tiny finger as her mother had wrapped him around her heart. It was the secret dream he'd always harbored but never voiced aloud.
He caught himself before the fantasy took too strong a hold on his heart. His jaw grew firm again. "You didn't answer my question. Will you still be able to heal my wife even though she's pregnant? I won't risk Basha—not even for a daughter."
"Las, Lord Darramon." The first shei'dalin spoke again. "We are five, and our weaves are strong. We will heal your wife of the malignancy that drains her life, if that remains your wish."
"But be warned, my lord," a third shei'dalin said. "Your child will be born with magic. How strong a gift we cannot say, but her life in your world will be difficult."
Darramon took a deep breath. He was no youngling to mistake the seriousness of their warning, and he knew better than many a lord exactly what difficulties might lie ahead. His lands lay along the Eld border, with Cann Barrial's holding to his east, Griffet Polwyr's and Teleon's to his west. The dark Verlaine Forest, home to lyrant and all manner of other fell creatures, shadowed his southern flank.
His estates had been among the hardest hit in all Celieria during the Mage Wars. The bones and ashes of Drogans, Feraz witches, Elves, Danae, Eld, and Fey rotted beneath the black soil of Darramon, and to this day, there remained many a bleak place where naught but the unholy thrived. For centuries, Darramon's villages had produced hearth witches and hedge wizards by the dozen, and even now, his villagers winded scores of peasant children each year—some because they were born with hideous deformities, but most because they manifested dangerous magical gifts.
Ta, he knew what the shei'dalins' warning meant. He knew exactly. And he had only one possible response.