There was a long silence.
"What will you name this child?" the druidess asked.
Daeghrefn stared more deeply, more intently, into the storm. Name the child? He turned the sword over in his palm. Why should he even keep it, let alone name it?
Triumphant, exhausted, Abelaard took the baby from L'Indasha and presented it to Daeghrefn. "He's beautiful, don't you think, Father? What will you call him?"
When he heard the boy's voice, Daeghrefn sheathed the sword. Abelaard was here. He could not kill the baby. But he would find a way to leave it with this sorceress-good payment for her trouble, he mused. So now was the time for omens, for auguries of his own, for the naming was Daeghrefn's by the Measure, no matter who was the
child's father. Its mother was, still and all, his wife. And, more importantly, Abelaard's mother.
Daeghrefn set down the sword and steepled his hands, still stiff and red from the cold.
Yes, now was the time for names. A time to answer his wife in kind for her cruelty and betrayals. He thought of ice, of loneliness, of forbidding passage….
Winterheart? Hiddukel?
He smiled spitefully at the second of the names. God of injustice. The broken balance.
But, no. There was a certain evil grandeur to the names of the dark gods. He would confer no grandeur on this child.
As if it had been summoned, a large tomcat, lean and ragged, slinked out of the inclement darkness, snow spangling its half-frozen fur. Daeghrefn regarded the creature in horrified fascination. This is the omen, he thought. The name is about to come to me. The cat carried something large and limp in its mouth-a dripping entanglement of matted fur and dirt and torn flesh.
A winter kill. A rat or a mole, perhaps. Something tunneling blindly beneath the snow, scratched from the hard earth, chittering and scrabbling in its dark nest.
Daeghrefn closed his eyes, warmed by his bloody imaginings. "Verminaard," he announced proudly. "The child's name is Verminaard. For he is vermin, dwelling in darkness and filth like his damned father."
L'Indasha's eyes widened in amazement. Quietly she mpved to Abelaard's side. A shriek from Daeghrefn's wife pierced through the hush, through the knight's pronouncements and curses.
"Ah, no!" The druidess turned sharply, a new trouble in her voice.
Daeghrefn sat silently, his eyes closed. From the commotion, from the druidess's whispered instructions to the lad, the knight imagined the scene unfolding behind him.
The druidess knelt above the woman, her ministrations frantic and swift. But soon, inevitably, she sighed, her hands slowing, her touch more benediction than healing. Sorrowfully she pushed the boy and the baby away, gesturing toward a straw mattress in a candlelit alcove off the main cavern.
Abelaard lingered above his dying mother for a moment, his eyes dull and unreadable. A well-schooled Solamnic youth, he did as he was told, his emotions veiled behind the stern tutelage of his masters. And yet he was only a child, and for a moment, he bent low, his stubby fingers cradling the head of his newborn brother, and reached down to touch his mother's whitened cheek with the back of his hand. Then, with a soft and nonsensical whisper, he carried the baby to the alcove and settled onto the straw, wrapping a thin wool blanket about the both of them. Soon the infant nestled against his brother and slept deeply and silently.
"She's dead," L'Indasha announced scarcely an hour later. " 'Gone to Huma's breast,' as your Order says. What will you do now?"
Daeghrefn sniffed disgustedly, his eyes fixed on the wintry landscape beyond the cave entrance. The storm was swelling, the wind rising. The red moon Lunitari peeked from behind the racing clouds, flooding the snow with a staining crimson light.
The knight turned slowly, the side of his face bathed in the hovering torchlight. For a moment, he looked like a skeletal wraith, like the Death Knight of the old legends, through whose hands had slipped the power to turn back the Cataclysm.
"And who are you to question me, idolater?" he mur-
mured, his voice low and menacing, like the humming of distant bees or the high whirring sound of the rocks over Godshome. "You have no claim on me or on my son." He gestured vaguely toward Abelaard, his sword waving grotesquely in the mingling light of the fire and the spinning moons. "You have no claim on any of us. Not even that dead harlot's get," he concluded venomously and stepped suddenly toward the fire, brushing the snow from his mantle.
L'Indasha inwardly shrank from the knight. Instinct told her to fly, to scatter elusive magic and escape in the confusion, to burrow into the sheltering dark…. But she squarely faced the knight and fought back with words calculated to wound.
"This child will eclipse your own darkness," she proclaimed, holding the baby above the firelight, holding him out to Daeghrefn. Her voice rang in the ancient inflections of druidic prophecy and sheer rage. "And his hand will strike your name. But I will not tell you the rest."
Daeghrefn laughed harshly. It was ridiculous druidic babble. Then her blazing eye caught his.
Her anger was real.
Daeghrefn held her gaze. Dire things passed briefly through his mind, and for a moment, the sword turned in his hand, the melted snow beading ominously on the sheath's carved raven. He would make her retract it. He would bury the blade in …
No. He would send Robert back here to … clean out this cave.
"So?" he said, shaking his head slowly, distractedly, his eye passing over the new child's fair hair and creamy skin. He beckoned for Abelaard. The boy approached him, stopping only to take the baby from the druidess and hold him cautiously in his shivering, thin arms.
"Druidic nonsense," the knight whispered. Then louder, his voice cold and assured, he added, "Put on
your cloak, Abelaard, and leave the child." He stared bale-fully at the druidess. "We must be off for Nidus while there's aught of the night to travel. It's still a good walk home, by my reckoning."
The boy put on his garment, but he would not give the baby back to the druidess. "I've looked forward to a brother for so long, Father. Please. We must take care of him."
Daeghrefn could refuse Abelaard nothing short of this request. Nothing short, but not this.
"No," he replied.
The druidess stepped forward and placed her hand on Abelaard's shoulder, an idea forming as she spoke.
"No, Daeghrefn," she began, a dry warning in her voice. "You'll keep this child and keep him well. If you leave him-or worse-all those in your command will know of your cuckolding. And who would follow such a man? You cannot be undone before them, can you?"