“Is that how she’s supposed to sound?” Tobin whispered to Ki. “It sounds like she’s dying!”
Ki shrugged. “Some holler more than others, especially the first time.” But as the night dragged on and the cries turned to screams, even he grew uneasy.
The midwives came and went with basins and grim faces. Just before dawn one of them summoned Tobin inside. As Royal Kin, he was required to be among the witnesses.
A crowd stood around the curtained bed, but a place was made for him by the king and Korin. His cousin was sweating and pale. Chancellor Hylus, Lord Niryn, and at least a dozen other ministers were there, together with priests of all four gods.
Aliya had stopped screaming; he could her ragged panting from the bed. Through a gap in the hangings Tobin caught sight of one bare leg, streaked with blood. He looked away quickly, feeling like he’d seen something shameful. Lhel had spoken of magic and power; this was more like torture.
“Soon now, I think,” the king murmured, looking pleased.
As if in answer, Aliya let out a shrill scream that raised the hair on Tobin’s neck. It was followed by several others, but the voices were not hers. Aliya’s mother tumbled out from between the bed hangings in a dead faint and he heard women weeping.
“No!” Korin cried, tearing the curtains aside. “Aliya!”
Aliya sprawled like a broken doll in the middle of the blood-soaked bed, white as the linen nightgown rucked up around her hips. A midwife still knelt between her splayed legs, weeping over a swaddled bundle.
“The child,” Korin demanded, holding out his arms for it.
“Oh my prince!” the woman sobbed. “It was no child!”
“Show it, woman!” Erius ordered.
Keeping her face averted, the midwife turned back the wrappings. It had no arms, and the face—or what should have been the face—was featureless below the bulging, misshapen brow except for slitted eyes and nostrils.
“Cursed,” Korin whispered. “I am cursed!”
“No,” rasped Erius. “Never say that!”
“Father, look at it—!”
Erius whirled and struck Korin across the face, knocking the prince off his feet. Tobin tried to catch him, but ended up sprawled under him instead.
Grasping Korin by the front of his tunic, Erius shook him violently, shouting, “Never say that! Never! Never, do you hear me?” He let go of Korin and rounded on the others. “Anyone who carries this tale will be burned alive, do you hear me?” He slammed out of the room, shouting for the room to be put under guard.
Korin staggered back to the bed. His nose was bleeding; it trickled down over his mouth and into his beard as he clasped her limp hand. “Aliya? Can you hear me? Wake up, damn you, and see what we’ve done!”
Tobin scrambled away, desperate to escape. As he turned for the door, however, he caught sight of Niryn calmly examining the dead child. He’d turned away from the others; Tobin could see only the side of his face, but a lifetime of reading faces made him catch his breath. The wizard looked pleased—triumphant, even. Shocked, Tobin did not have time to retreat before the wizard looked up and caught him staring.
And Tobin felt it; that nauseating feeling of cold fingers tickling through his bowels. He couldn’t move or even look away. For a moment he was certain his heart had stopped in his chest.
Then he was released and Niryn was speaking to Korin as if the last few moments had not happened. The midwife had the little bundle now, though Tobin had not seen him pass it to her.
“It is undoubtedly necromancy,” Niryn was saying. He stood close to Korin, a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Rest assured, my prince, I will find the traitors and burn them.” He glanced at Tobin again, eyes cold and soulless as a snake’s.
Korin was weeping, but his fists were clenched and the muscles in his jaw worked furiously as he cried out, “Burn them. Burn them all!”
Standing outside with the others, Ki heard Erius shouting, and ducked out of the way when the king stormed out.
“Summon my Guard!” Erius roared, then rounded on the boys. “Go on, get out of here, all of you! Not a word, any of you. Swear it!”
They did, and scattered, all but Ki. Keeping watch from a doorway down the corridor, he waited until Tobin came out. One look at his friend’s white, dazed face was enough to make him glad he’d stayed. He hurried Tobin back to their rooms, bundled him into an armchair by the fire with blankets and a mazer of strong wine, and sent Baldus to find Nik and Lutha.
Tobin downed a full mazer before he could speak, then told them only what they already knew; that the baby was stillborn. Ki saw how his hand shook and knew there was more to the tale than that, but Tobin wouldn’t say. He just pulled his knees up under his chin and sat silent and shivering until Tanil arrived with news that Aliya was dead. Then Tobin put his head down and wept.
“Korin won’t leave her,” Mylirin told them as Ki tried to comfort Tobin. “Tanil and Caliel tried everything short of carrying him, until he ordered us out. He wouldn’t even let Caliel stay. Niryn is still there with him, talking of nothing but burning wizards! I’m going back now and staying outside that door until they come out. Can I send for you, Prince Tobin, if Korin wants you?”
“Of course,” Tobin whispered dully, wiping his cheeks with his sleeve.
Mylirin gave him a grateful look and went out.
Nikides shook his head. “What wizard could hurt an unborn child? If you ask me, it’s Illior’s—”
“No!” Tobin lurched up in his chair. “Don’t say that. No one is to say that. Not ever.”
That was no stillbirth, thought Ki.
Nikides was sharp and caught it, too. “You heard the prince,” he told the others. “We never speak of it again.”
47
Lhel stayed with Arkoniel and the others at the mountain camp, but slept alone in her own hut. Her abrupt withdrawal hurt Arkoniel, she knew, but it was as it must be. The other wizards would not follow him if they saw him as her fancy man. As for Lhel, the Mother was not done with her.
As she’d foreseen, little Totmus died within a few weeks of their arrival. She joined the others in mourning him, but knew that the winter would be hard enough without a sickly one to tend. The others were strong.
With Cymeus to guide them, they strove to build a larger shelter before the storms hit. The children spent every spare minute gathering wood, and Lhel showed them how to forage for the year’s last roots and mushrooms, and how to smoke the meat Noril and Kaulin brought in. Wythnir and the girls added to their stores hunting rabbits and grouse with their slings. Malkanus made himself unexpectedly useful one day by spell-slaying a fat sow bear that wandered into the camp.
Lhel showed the town dwellers how to make use of every bone, tooth, and shred of sinew, and how to suck the rich marrow from the long bones. She taught them how to tan every hide, stretching the raw skins on cedar branch racks and rubbing them with a mash of ashes and brains to cure them. Despite all this, the older wizards still did not trust her or she them, and she was careful to keep her spellcraft hidden. Let Arkoniel teach them what he would. That was the thread the Mother had spun.
The provisions they’d brought and what little they could forage would not be enough and they all knew it. With a long winter staring them in the face, food, hay, clothing, and livestock would have to be carted in. Vornus and Lyan took the cart and set off along the north road to trade in the mining towns.
Snow found them soon after, sifting down from the grey sky in huge feathery flakes. Gentle but steady, it silently built up in mounds on the boughs and capped every stone and stump. By the time the wind was cold enough to make small, sharp flakes the Skalans had managed to construct a lean- to byre and one long, low-roofed cabin. It was crude, but large enough for them all to crowd into at night. They didn’t have enough rope or mud to chink the walls, but Cerana wove a spell against drafts and Arkoniel set another on the bough-thatched roof, knitting the green branches tight against the weather.