It was Tarien that afflicted him worst, Tarien with her pain, and her fear, and her anger: she tore at him and pleaded for everything to be done.
— Mine! she cried. My son! My baby! Let him alone! Let me alone! You're killing my baby!
— Your sister will harm him, Tristen answered her. It's your sister's time, not his. Hear him. Hear him, not Orien!
But Tarien was blind in her fear and deaf. Orien was her life, and Orien said now was the time. Orien said to wait was to kill her child—and so he wished them all quiet, smothered Orien's dire warnings under stifling silence, smothered Tarien's fears and even the babe's silent struggle.
A distressed guard came to his door to report screams from the Aswydds within the apartment, and that the baby might be coming. And at the same moment Uwen had returned, reporting the abbot was awake.
"As he's prayin', or whatever he can do. Ye want me to go over there?" Uwen asked, meaning the other wing. "A midwife I ain't, but babes an' foals is some alike."
"It won't be tonight," Tristen said into what seemed a great hush. "Orien wishes it. But I wish otherwise."
"M'lord," Uwen said with some evident misgiving. "A baby once't it starts comin' ain't amenable to arguments. Ye stop it, an' ye might kill the baby."
"The babe's alive," he said, staring into that gray distance, "and so is Tarien."
"It ain't good," Uwen said. "It ain't a good thing, m'lord, if there's a choice."
"There isn't," he said, and drew a deep breath, aware of Orien and Tarien and the babe all at once.
"What are they at?" Uwen asked him. "Is it the baby comin'?"
" Orienwishes it," he said, and went back to his chair in the study, picked up a just-poured cup of tea as thunder cracked and boomed above the roof, wizardous and uncertain. The gray space opened wide to him, and Orien was there, and Tarien appeared, a hurt, small presence with the child wrapped close, not yet free. "But the time is wrong."
"The babe's?" Uwen asked, "Or master Emuin's?"
"Both," Tristen said, with utter assurance, sipped his tea, and Uwen's expression eased.
He knew others had waked, now. Emuin was there, and from a greater distance, Crissand roused out of a sound sleep, confused and alarmed and half-awake. Cevulirn had sat up, in his bed in the camp outside the walls.
They consented to what he wished so strongly—supported him, as if they had set arms about him, not questioning what his wish was. Their trust in him was a heady drink, and gave him strength against Orien.
And not just Orien. He became aware of a presence elsewhere, from far away, from the north, from Tasmôrden's direction, and that presence was thin and subtle and laced with excitement and desire.
He would not have that. He flung himself from the chair with a crash of the teacup, sent a table over as he flung out a hand to the nearest wall and willed the wards to life, strong, stronger than any intrusion.
The wards sprang up blue and strong as he could make them, from here to the town gates: he felt them, and as he turned about, hearing outcries and questions, he saw astonished faces, Tassand's, and one of the guards from upstairs. But Uwen was there, too, calm and steady, saying to the rest, " 'At's all right, His Grace is seein' to what's amiss, just ye stan' still and don't fret."
In that moment violence lanced between the fortress and the heavens, and Emuin's will deflected it. Thunder boomed and shook the very stones, and men cried aloud in fright.
"We're inside," Uwen said, "an' Ts Grace is watchin' out for us, so the lightnin's ain't to fear. An' if he don't want that babe born tonight, 'e won't be."
Crack! went the thunder above them, and Emuin flung out an angry wish to the heavens, chiding the storm… and Orien Aswydd.
So Tristen did, and stood fast while three more sharp cracks pealed and boomed through the stones. The very air seemed charged, and the smell of thunderstorms and wet stone permeated the apartment, as if a window were open.
A woman's voice cried out in agony, and that pain went through the gray space.
— Bring him into the world! Orien cried, defying him as the lightning whited the windows. Do nothing they wish!
Lightning flared beyond the window, such as he had never seen, whitening everything in the room, and blinding him, deafening him with the crack of thunder.
The blindness lingered a moment in the gray space, and in the world of Men. His sight cleared slowly on Uwen and the frightened staff, sight shot through with drifting fire. And the wards were under assault, from within and from without.
"I'll go to her," he said, and forgot, as once on the parapets of Ynefel, that he had left his clothing. It was his servants and Uwen who pressed that necessity on him, and dressed him in haste, a few moments' delay while he shivered in the cold, as his sight within the world and within the gray space slowly returned, and all the while the wards rang and echoed to the assault. Emuin held it. He did. He was aware of Cevulirn and Crissand, both dim and far and confused about the source, both in danger.
— Silence! he bade them harshly. Be still! Hold the wards!
In that, their efforts aided him. The ringing grew more distant. Tarien grew quiet, but he was aware of Orien prowling the wards of a physical room, her room, Cefwyn's room, the room where the babe had begun its life. She attempted the window, and opened it, bringing in a gust of rain-laden air. It did not breach their protection: he would not permit it, and, dressed at least to his servants' insistence, he left his apartment, went down the hall and down the stairs, then up again, to the wing that housed the women, while Orien raged at the barriers of the sisters' prison.
Owl whisked up the stairs, a fleeting Shadow of an Owl, as he came to the floor where the women were. Guards were at sharp attention as he passed them, going toward the doors.
Earl Prushan was waked from his sleep, the Aswydds' neighbor in that halclass="underline" the old man had come out in his night robe, with his bodyguard and his servants, and farther down the hall, so had Earl Marmaschen and some of the lesser residents, like shopkeepers gap-ing at some parade in the streets, for he brought himself, and Uwen, and his guard.
"Open the door," he said to the guards who watched the doors.
Orien had opened every window, to judge by the cold wet blast that met him in the foyer and the windblown flare of drapery as he Went into the room. The candles within had all but a few gone out, and in that semidarkness sat Tarien in a chair by the billowing draperies, with Orien leaning over her, arms about her heaving shoulders.
"Let her be!" Tristen ordered Orien.
"She is my sister!" Orien cried in indignation. "My sister! The babe is coming! Let her be! This is women's work!"
Tristen strode to the open window vent and shut it, stopping at least that source of draft and harm, and the ringing of the wards grew dim. The thunder still muttered above them, and lightning flashes made the roofs a tangled maze outside the clear and stained panes of the leaded glass.
Then he turned to the women, and willed the child quiet.
Orien willed otherwise, and held to her sister, cornered as they were. They were down to two candles, and those fluttering, the wards he set threatened, if not overwhelmed, until Uwen shut that vent as well.
His guards stood in the doorway. And Orien hated them, op^ posed them with all her might, as Tarien's face showed pale in the candlelight, and Tarien's hands made fists that battered the chair arms.