"I'm worried for you."
"Stop. This isn't anything a million other women haven't survived. Just do what I told you. Here. Wait. Help me lay down."
He looked down at her distended belly and its fiery stretch marks, at breasts swollen to twice their normal size. Nepanthe flinched. She knew she was not attractive this way. "You're beautiful," he said.
Tears sprang into her eyes. "Pull the sheet over me and go. Please."
"What's the matter?"
"Just do it. Please?"
He did.
Nepanthe broke into wild tears after the door closed. She could not decide whether they were tears of joy or of disappointment.
The wizard moved through the palace with a fast, jerky step, like a marionette manipulated by a drunken puppeteer. Puzzled eyes followed his progress. He didn't notice. He went directly to the suite occupied by the Royal Physician.
That Doctor Wachtel was held in high regard was evidenced by the fact his personal suite was outshone only by the Queen's. King Bragi himself occupied only two small rooms. The doctor had five.
Wachtel and the wizard were old philosophical adversaries. The doctor received him with ill-concealed glee, yet did not crow about his having come to petition aid. He asked the pertinent questions, reiterated Nepanthe's advice. "Get what sleep you can. It'll be a long time yet. I'll just check in occasionally till the pains get closer together."
The wizard grumbled and babbled and asked foolish questions, and the doctor humored him. Only mildly reassured, Varthlokkur returned to his apartment. He went in and held Nepanthe's hands till the maids ran him out. He tried to rest, without much success.
Varthlokkur was pacing, oblivious to his companions. The King stepped into the wizard's sitting room, watched him for half a minute. "You've got a classic gait," he observed, chuckling, "Get any sleep?"
"A little." As if only suddenly aware of location and situation, he asked, "Shouldn't I be in there?"
"Does she want you?"
"I don't know. Wachtel doesn't."
"I see his point. Made a nuisance of myself at a few birthings. Fathers may be good for the mother's morale, but they're hell on doctors and midwives. At least till they've had enough kids to know when to keep their mouths shut."
"I could help. I have skills... "
"I think the main help Wachtel wants is a closed mouth. He needs you, he'll ask."
"I'm well aware of his opinion of me."
"How's she doing?"
"All right, they say."
As if on cue, the doctor came from the bedroom. He was drying his hands.
"Well?" Varthlokkur demanded. "Is it here?"
"Take it easy. No. She has a long way to go. It'll come around midnight, I'd guess."
"Guess? What do you mean, guess?"
The old doctor scowled. "I meant what I said. I don't have your faculty for seeing the future. All I can do is go by past experience."
"The future? My heavens. I forgot to cast horoscopes for the child." In moments he was furiously busy. He flung charts and books, pens and inkwells onto a table. "Guess I'd better do both today and tomorrow," he muttered. "Midnight. Damned."
The King grinned at the doctor. "That'll keep him out of your hair. See you all later. Duty calls."
Pink ripped the night above Castle Krief. Bold letters formed: IT IS A GIRL. People were amused. The King was heard to say, "Wizard, that's carrying the Proud Papa routine a little far."
Grinning, Varthlokkur accepted congratulations from a horde of well-wishers. He sprinkled silver. He filled the castle halls with diminutive magical delights. Imps dashed about singing silvery hosannahs. The wizard's joy was contagious. He shook hands with people who never had dared approach him before. They contracted the joy-fever and carried it to others. It spread out of the castle and caught on in the town. Winecasks rolled out. Kegs were bunged. For a while it seemed one birth, and one man's pleasure in it, would write the end of an era, would put paid to the long, grim, sober struggle for survival which had ground the nation since the war's end.
"Eat! Drink!" Varthlokkur urged, pushing people toward the groaning tables he'd had set out. "Come on, everyone."
"Make way for the King!"
The noise died a bit. King Bragi pushed through the crowd and thrust out a meaty hand. "It was a long time coming, wasn't it? How's Nepanthe?"
"Perfect. Came through beautifully. Happy as anyone can be."
"Good. Good. Can I see my wife now?" He had sent Queen Inger to hold Nepanthe's hand during the delivery, the only meaningful gesture that had occurred to him.
"If you can find her." The crowd swirled and whirled and swept them apart. When next the wizard spied the King he was forehead to forehead with Dahl Haas, trying to hear over the merriment. Bragi grew pale as Haas talked.
Varthlokkur's joy evaporated. He felt it now. The east was a-boil, roaring, raging. A great typhoon of magical energy had been released there... He should have sensed it earlier. He was getting old, letting one part of life distract him from another this way. He pushed through the crowd, feeling grimmer by the moment. He ignored the startled looks caused by his rudeness. He seized the King's hand, yanked, did not let go till he had dragged the man to the castle's eastern ramparts.
Horrendous flashes backlighted the Mountains of M'Hand. Their peaks stood forth like rotten, jagged teeth. He hadn't ever seen anything like it. The barrage rolled on and on and on, like endless summer lightning playing mutiny beyond the horizon.
"What is it?" the King whispered.
Varthlokkur did not reply. He sealed his eyes and let the indirect might of it touch him. He grunted. Even here, so far away, the psychic impact was like the blow of a mailed fist.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky. A billion stars watched with cold indifference as the two tiny creatures on the stone barrier stood with faces continuously splashed by evil light.
"What the hell is it?" the King demanded, voice scarcely more than a breath. There was no sound in the east, yet the very roots of the walls seemed aquiver.
Varthlokkur stared, ignoring his companion. The signal fires which carried messages from Fortress Maisak and the Savernake Gap were all ablaze. He barely heard the King ask, "Is Hsung attacking Maisak?"
"It's begun. Matayanga is attacking Shinsan. Lord Kuo was waiting. A god wouldn't dare those battlefields now."
The flash and fury went on. "I wonder," Bragi said. "Did Baxendala and Palmisano look that hairy from this far away?"
"Maybe. Though Lord Kuo has mustered more power than we ever saw during the Great Eastern Wars. What can Matayanga throw at him? Besides numbers? They're not much in a thaumaturgic way."
More and more people came to watch the display. There wasn't an ounce of joy left. Varthlokkur spared them hardly a glance. He did not want to see them. They looked like refugees, all huddled and silent.
Bragi said, "I suppose the Tervola will have a taste of that for us someday."
"Shinsan is an empire unaccustomed to defeat," Varthlokkur replied. "We'll see them again. If they survive this."
"If?"
"Would Matayanga have attacked if its kings believed defeat inevitable?"
Horns sounded outside the castle. "That's Mist," Varthlokkur said. "She'll have been alerted before we were."
The woman joined them shortly. "It's begun. First reports came in last night. Southern Army detected the Matayangans moving up. With two million men. Just for the first attack. They've conscripted everyone over fifteen."