Elizabeth pressed the back of her hand to her clammy forehead. Her eyes opened and she exhaled a long, slow breath. Creyn and a haggard Tanu man in a rumpled yellow robe bent anxiously over her chair. Creyn’s mind touched hers, supporting, querying.
Yes. I have separated them. Finally. Sorry so weak my skill rusty disuse. They will be born now.
The mind of Lord Cranovel of Darask wept gratitude. And she? Safe oh safe my darling?
Human women tougher than Tanu. She recovers easily now.
He cried aloud, “Estella-Sirone!” and ran to the inner chamber.
In a few moments the querulous wail of a newborn infant came to the two who still waited. Elizabeth smiled at Creyn. The first grayness of dawn lightened the mist outside the palace windows.
Elizabeth said, “I’ve never handled anything quite like that before. The two unborn minds so intertwined, so mutually antagonistic. Fraternal twins, of course. But it seems incredible that genuine enmity should have been able to…”
A Tanu woman dressed all in red put her head through the curtained doorway and exclaimed, “A lovely girl! The next one is a breech, but we’ll get it safely, never fear.” She disappeared again.
Elizabeth got up from the chair and walked wearily to the window, letting her mind reach out beyond the birthing rooms for the first time since she had entered so many hours ago. The anomalies were outside, crowding closer and stumbling over one another in horrid eagerness, those twittering little unhuman minds, seemingly operant, changing their soul form even as she tried to grasp them for examination. They eluded her, wove disguises, faded and flared, shrunk to atoms or expanded into looming monsters that postured in the mental-physical fog swirling about the towers of the island palace.
Another baby cried.
Pierced by a terrible realization, Elizabeth’s mind met that of Creyn. A slow-distilling drop of regret formed from a complex of the man’s emotions. Then he slammed down an impervious screen between them.
Elizabeth ran to the door of the inner chamber and pushed the draperies aside. Several women, both human and Tanu, were attendant upon the new mother, a human wearing a golden torc. Estella-Sirone was smiling; the beautiful baby girl held to her right breast. Cranovel knelt beside her, wiping her brow.
The Tanu nurse in red brought the other baby to show to Elizabeth. It was a very small boy, weighing about two kilos, wizened as an old man and with an oversized head thickly covered with wet dark hair. Its eyes were wide open and it screeched thinly from a mouth that had a full set of tiny sharp teeth. Even as Elizabeth watched, the manikin shimmered and became furry all over its body, then shimmered again and turned to a virtual double of its plump blonde sister.
“It is a Firvulag, a shape-changer,” the nurse said. “They are the shadow-brethren of the Tanu from the foundation of worlds. Ever with us, ever against us. The twin situation is fortunately rare. Most such die unborn, and the mother with them.”
“What will you do with him?” Elizabeth asked. Fascinated, horrified, she sounded the small alien mentality and recognized the anomalous mode, now that it was fully separated from the more complex psychic structure of the Tanu sister.
The tall nurse shrugged “His folk are awaiting him. And so we give him to them, as always. You would like to see it?”
Dumbly, Elizabeth nodded.
The nurse swiftly wrapped the baby in a soft towel and hurried out of the birthing room. Elizabeth had all she could do to keep up as the woman raced down flight after flight of stone stairs, all empty and echoing and lit only by the tiny ruby and amber lamps. They finally came to a cellar. A dank corridor led to the outer wall of the town and a great, locked water-gate, beside which was an indoor anchorage full of deserted small boats. The gate had a wicket with a bronze bolt, which the exotic woman shot open.
“Guard your mind,” she warned, and stepped outside onto the fog-obscured dock.
There were lights out there, and they converged with alarming speed, making no sound whatsoever. Then came a single deep-green glow that became a sphere some four meters across, rolling on the surface of the water and burning the mist to shreds as it approached the dock.
With great caution, Elizabeth pried apart the fabric of the illusion and looked inside. There was a boat, a punt rather, with a dwarfish fellow poling and a round-cheeked little woman sitting in the bows with a covered basket in her lap.
So you see us, do you?
Elizabeth staggered as a barrage of lightning seemed to explode behind her eyes. Her tongue swelled as if to strangle her. The flesh of her hands blistered, blackened, burst, and cooked in a living flame.
That’ll show the upstart!
“I warned you,” said the Tanu woman. Elizabeth felt the tall one’s arms about her, holding her up. She saw only the glowing ball receding into the mist. Her mouth was normal, her hands unhurt.
“The Firvulag are operant metapsychics of a sort. All most of them can do is farsense and spin illusions, but those can be strong enough to drive an unready mind mad. We handle them well enough, at Grand Combat time and at most other times, too. But you must not let them take you unaware.”
The baby was gone. After a few seconds the green glow vanished as well, and daylight broke fitfully through rags of vapor. Far up on the battlements, a woman’s voice was singing alien words to a familiar melody.
“Well go back now,” the nurse said “My Lord and Lady will be very grateful to you. You must receive proper thanks, then refreshment and rest. There is a small family ceremony, naming the child and giving her the first tiny golden torc. They will wish you to hold the baby. It is a great honor.”
“Imagine me as fairy godmother,” Elizabeth murmured. “What a world! Are you going to name her after me as well?”
“She already has a name. It is traditional among us to give anew the name of one who has recently passed on to Tana’s peace. The baby will be called Epone, and the Goddess grant that she be more fortunate than the last who bore that name.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Amerie came down to the lakeshore where the freed prisoners were ballasting their hastily inflated boats.
“I’ve had to sedate Felice. She was ready to tear the poor noddy apart.”
“Not surprising,” Claude growled. “Once I’d thought the matter through, I was tempted along those lines myself.”
Richard was treading siphon bulbs with both feet, flooding the interstices of his and Claude’s beached dinghies while the old man loaded equipment into the two small decamole craft Richard had changed back into his pirate costume, curtly telling the nun to keep his spacer’s coverall “for the duration.” Now he glowered at her. “Maybe Dougal did us all a favor without knowing it. How do we know what Felice would turn into once she got hold of a golden torc?”
“There’s that,” Claude had to admit. “But if she’d got it, we wouldn’t have to worry about any immediate danger from the soldiers. As it is, some kind of armed force is going to be breathing down our necks any minute now. We couldn’t have been far from the next fort when the fight started.”
Amerie said, “You two come up and help me with Felice when you finish here. Yosh has been going through the baggage packs, retrieving some of our stuff.”
“Any weapons?” Richard asked.
“They seem to have left ours back at the castle. But most of the tools are there. No maps or compasses, I’m afraid.”
Claude and Richard shared a glance. The paleontologist said, “Then it’s seat-of-the-pants navigation and devil take the hindmost. You go on up, Amerie. We’ll be along in a few minutes.”