Yo Hsi had made one grave error. Fiana's child had been a girl.
That had complicated matters for everyone.
Then Yo Hsi and Nu Li Hsi had been destroyed in Castle Fangdred. The plot lay fallow till Yo Hsi's daughter, Mist, resurrected it.
The ultimate failure of the rebel cause had brought the girl home to her mother. Then, during the winter, she had died of a spider bite.
"All right. Get to the point."
"This is the child meant to be born then."
"What? Bullshit. I ain't no doctor. I ain't no wizard. But I know for goddamned sure it don't take no fifteen years...."
"I confess to complete mystification myself. If this's Yo Hsi's get, then, necessarily, Carolan was your daughter."
Fiana's struggles lessened as Wachtel's drug took effect.
"Wizard, I can believe almost anything," Ragnarson said. "But there ain't no way I'll believe a woman could have my baby five years before I met her."
"Doesn't matter what you believe. You'll see when we deliver. Doctor. You agree we'll have to cut?"
"Yes. I've feared it all month. But I put off the decision, just hoping.... It should've been aborted."
"When?"
"I'll have your help?"
"If I can convince the Marshall...."
"Of what?"
"That this isn't your get. And that you should let me have it."
Ragnarson's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"I know what you're thinking. You don't trust me. I don'tknow why. But try this. We'll deliver the child. If you want to acknowledge it then, that's your choice. If you don't, I get it. Fair enough?"
Why would Varthlokkur lie? he wondered. The man was wiser then he.... "Do it, damnit. Get it over with."
"We'll need some...."
"I've been at birthings before. Nine." Elana had had three children who had died soon after birth. "Wachtel, have what's-her-name get it. Then explain why it's not ready already."
"It is ready. Sir." Wachtel was angry. No one questioned his competence or dedication.
"Good. Get at it." Ragnarson settled on a chest of drawers. "The man will be here watching." He rested his sword across his lap. "He won't be happy if anything goes wrong."
"Lord, I can't promise anything. You know that. The mothers seldom survive the operation...."
"Doctor, I trust you. You do the cutting."
"I plan to. The man's knowledge I respect. I don't know his hand."
Wachtel began. And, despite the drugs, Fiana screamed. They bound her to the bed, and brought soldiers to help hold her, but she thrashed and screamed....
Wachtel and Varthlokkur did everything possible. Ragnar-son could never deny that.
Nothing helped.
Ragnarson held her hand, and wept.
Tears didn't change anything either.
Nor did the most potent of Varthlokkur's life-magicks. "You can't beat the Fates."
"Fates? Damn the Fates! Keep her alive!" Ragnarson seized his sword.
"Sir, you may be Marshall," Wachtel shouted. "You may have the power to slay me. But, by damned, this's my field. Sit down, shut up, and stay the hell out of the way. We're doing everything we can. It's too late for her. We're trying to save the baby."
There was a limit to what Wachtel would tolerate, and the soldiers saw it his way.
Ragnarson's aide, Gjerdrum, and two men got between Ragnarson and the doctor.
While Wachtel operated Varthlokkur began a series of quiet little magicks. He and the doctor finished together. The child,brought forth from a dead woman, floated above the bed in a sphere the wizard had created.
Its eyes were open. It looked back at them with a cruel, knowing expression. Yet it looked like a huge baby. "That's no son of mine," Ragnarson growled sickly. "I told you that," Varthlokkur snapped. "Kill it!"
"No. You said...."
Gjerdrum looked from man to man. Wachtel confirmed Varthlokkur's claim.
"Child of evil," Ragnarson said. "Murderer.... I'll murder you...." He raised his sword.
The thing in the bubble stared back fearlessly. Varthlokkur rounded the bed. "Friend, believe me. Let it be. This child of Shinsan.... It doesn't know what it is. Those who created it don't know it exists. Give it to me. It'll become our tool. This's my competence. Attend yours. Kavelin no longer has a Queen."
Kavelin. Kavelin. Kavelin. A quarter of his life he had given to the country, and it not the land of his birth. Kavelin. The land of.... What? The women who had loved him? But Elana had been Itaskian. Fiana had come from Octylya, a child bride for an old king desperately trying to spare his homeland the ravages of a succession struggle. Kavelin. What was this little backwater state to him? A land of sorrow. A land that devoured all that he loved. A land that had claimed his time and soul for so long that he had lost the love of the woman who had made up half his soul. What did he have to sacrifice to this land to satisfy it? Was it some hungry beast that ravened everything lovely, everything dear?
He raised his sword, that his father had given him when he and Haaken were but beardless boys. The sword he had borne twenty-five years, through adventures grim, services honorable and otherwise, and days when he had been no better than the men who had murdered his children. That sword was an extension of his soul, half of the man called Bragi Ragnarson. He took it up, and whirled it above his head the way his father, Mad Ragnar, had done. Everyone backed away. He attacked the bed in which his Queen had died, in which he had lain with her, comforting her, her last night on earth. He hacked posts and sides and hangings like an insane thing, and no one tried to stop him.
"Kavelin!" he thundered. "You pimple on the ass of the world! What the hell do you want from me?"
Into his mind came a face. A simple man, an innkeeper, once had soldiered with a stranger from the north, whom he believed had come to set him free. Behind him were the faces of a hundred such men, a thousand, ten thousand, who had stood with him at Baxendala, unflinching. Peasant lads and hillmen, their hands virgin to the sword a year before, they had faced the fury of Shinsan and had refused to show their backs. Not many had been as lucky as that innkeeper. Most lay beneath the ground below the hill on which Karak Strabger stood. Thousands. Dead. Laid down because they had believed in him, because he and this woman who lay here growing cold had given them a hope for a new tomorrow.
What had Kavelin demanded of them?
"Oh, Gods!" he swore, and smashed that faithful blade against stone till it flew into a hundred shards. "Gods!" He buried his face in his hands, raked his beard with his fingers. "What do I have to do? Why must I endure this? Free me. Slay me. Keep the blades from going astray."
Wachtel, Varthlokkur, and Gjerdrum tried to restrain him.
He surged like a bear throwing off hounds, hurling them against the walls. Then he sat beside the torn body of his Queen, and again took her hand. And for a moment he thought he saw a tiny smile flicker through the agony frozen upon her dead face. He thought he heard a whisper, "Darling, go on. Finish what we started."
He threw himself onto her still form and wept. "Fiana. Please," he whispered. "Don't leave me alone."
Elana was gone. Fiana was gone. What did he have left?
Just one thing, a tiny mind-voice insisted. The bitch-goddess, the changeable child-vixen which he had come to love more than any woman.
Kavelin.
Kavelin. Kavelin. Kavelin. Damnable Kavelin.
His tears flowed.
Kavelin.
Henceforth there would be no other woman before her....
He lay there with his head on Fiana's breast till long after sundown. And when he rose, finally, with night in his eyes and tears dried, he was alone except for Gjerdrum and Ragnar.