saucer eyes pinned to the slide of the wool down the firm, naked swell of her breast.
Elaira managed the grace not to laugh at his expression. She caught the errant wool and snugged it back up to her collarbones. “Are you going to come in?” she asked with mild acerbity. “Or will you just stand ‘til you freeze with your mouth hanging open?”
The shepherd boy shut his baby-skinned jaw with a click. Too young for subterfuge, still innocent enough to flush to the roots of his tangled hair, he ventured a slurred apology behind the snagged hem of his sleeve.
“Of course there’s trouble,” Elaira said more gently. “You’ve a year yet to grow before you start calling on ladies for that sort of randy interest, yes?”
The boy shrank and turned redder. Since he was also frightened enough to bolt back into the night, the enchantress caught his arm in a grip like fixed shackles. She bundled him inside, wise enough to slam the door before she plonked him on the stool by the hearth and let him go.
“Who’s fallen sick?” she demanded, brisk enough to shock through his stunned silence. She groped meantime across darkness to sort through the pile of last night’s discarded clothing. The fire had done its usual and gone out. Gusts hissed down the cottage’s flue and scattered ash across the stone apron where her herbal still rested, a dismantled glint of burnished copper and glass reflecting a meticulous upkeep. Seized through by a shiver, Elaira drew on the icy linen layers of her underthings, then laced the stiffened leather of her leggings overtop.
The herdboy huddled under mufflers on her stool and could not seem to find his tongue.
“Don’t say no one’s sick,” Elaira murmured through chattering teeth as she turned her back, cast off the cloak, and wormed into the dank, frowsty cloth of her shift. The hem which had been dripping as she drifted off to sleep now crackled with thin, crusted ice.
“My aunt,” mumbled the boy. He stared at his toes, unaware of the stockyard pungency of goat carried inside on his clothing. “She’s in childbed. The midwife sent me to fetch you.”
Burrowed into her tunic and struggling with numbed hands to hook the looped leather fastenings, Elaira said, “How long since her labor pains started?”
“Since just after midday,” the boy replied, miserable. “I couldn’t run. Snow’s piled too deep.” He worried his chapped lip with small teeth. “Will she die, do you think?”
“I’ll try not to let her.” By reflex, Elaira stilled her thoughts and used the trained edge of her talents to sound the night for the time. Past midnight, she sensed. The tidal pull of the full moon just dipped past the arc of the zenith. She crouched to retrieve the fleece boots she had kicked off and left where they fell. One hid in deep shadow under the worktable, scattered still with oddments of tin stamped with the sigils for fiend bane. The mate perversely eluded her. “Do you know if her water had broken when you left?”
“Aye, so,” the boy affirmed in his broad-voweled grasslands dialect. “That’s why the midwife would have ye. The birthing’s gone hard, and the caul broke and let forth an unlucky color, so she said.”
Elaira caught a half breath in foreboding. “What color was the fluid, do you remember? Was there blood?”
“No blood.” The boy paused to trace a symbol across his left breast, to avert the eye of ill fortune. “The stream was thickened and greenish. That’s bad, yes? My aunt’s going to pass beneath the Wheel?”
“No. She’s unlikely to die.” Sure of that much, Elaira blew on her fingers, reached, found her other boot, the one she had dunked at the ford when she slipped on a stone and the ice broke. The fleeces were still clogged and soggy. “It’s the babe trying to come who’s in trouble.”
She gritted her teeth and thrust her toe in the cuff before her nerve snapped. No time could she spare to warm the wet out, even were the fire still alight. Every second counted, if in harsh fact the boy’s call for help had not already reached her too late. She scrambled up off her knees and snatched her satchel from the table. Another minute strayed as she struck light to a candle stub and gathered up the specialized herbs she might need, ones the midwife was least apt to carry. More minutes fled, as she groped amid the disassembled coils of her still to twist the curved segment of glass tubing from the cork which capped the collection flask. She could only pray it would be the right size as she stowed it amid her remedies, to chinking complaint from the crockery and small flasks that held her stock of alcohol and tinctures.
“Come on,” she urged the boy. “I’d make you some tea to warm up if I dared, but truly, your aunt’s babe can’t wait.”
No coals lingered in the hearth to be doused. That lapse in comfort became a twisted sort of blessing as she rammed out the door and plowed knee-high tracks through the dunescape of drifts to the shed. A rumbling nicker greeted her from inside. Then a white-blazed face peered out from the dimness, hopeful.
“You idiot butterball,” Elaira replied. “You won’t be begging more grain.”
The slab-sided roan gelding had come with the croft, no replacement in her heart for the spry little bay who had died of old age the past spring. Some frivolous initiate had named the beast Tassel, for reason outside of all logic. Elaira unhooked the rope hackamore that served as his bridle and looped his whiskered nose through the cavesson. He butted her, snuffling in quest of a carrot as she flicked his ears through the headstall, then blew a resigned sigh as she bent to raise his forehoof and treat the cleft with goose grease to keep snow from balling up against his soles.
“Wise one,” said the boy in whispered diffidence, “I don’t ride.”
“You will. If your aunt’s to have help, you must.” Elaira stepped to the gelding’s quarters and grasped a feathered fetlock, not without heart to spare sympathy. “I’ll see you don’t fall off.” In belated, breathless courtesy, she asked his name.
“Kaid, wise one.” From the corner of the eye, she caught the clumsy, mittened gesture he made with intent to ward off spells.
Her stifled smile of irony was lost as the wind flogged her hair against her cheek. “You’ll do fine, Kaid. Not to worry.” The odd contradictions of countryfolk, to summon her for the magics that refined the craft of healing, then to trace out a hedge witch’s symbols to avert the dread effects they feared from the selfsame mysteries.
Elaira had never known the reverent respect once offered to initiates of the Koriani sisterhood. The arts of her order had been viewed with trepidation for as long as she could remember. The ignorant intolerance arisen since the uprising that upset the rule of the old high kings had not lessened with defeat of the Mistwraith’s fell fogs, which had masked Athera’s skies for five centuries. Quite the contrary, the entrenched distrust the townborn folk held for sorceries had been inflamed to root deeper since the hour the vanished sunlight had been restored.
The Koriani Prime Enchantress held adamant opinion on the reason: the new strife arisen through the Mistwraith’s curse of enmity, laid upon the two princes whose gifts had brought its captivity, just provoked such misguided beliefs. Blame was not shared equally upon the shoulders of Lysaer s’Ilessid, birth-born to wield the powers of light. Only the Master of Shadow, Arithon s’Ffalenn, was raised mage-wise. The Prime and her Senior Circle were swift to point out his shortcomings. Unlike the royal half brother set against him, he had spurned the strictures of his training and invoked the high arts without scruple.
Few would deny that across four kingdoms, Arithon’s name was now linked to destruction and unconscionable acts of bloodshed.
Elaira stamped back that distressed line of thought. The Shadow Master’s part in the ruin of Lysaer’s war host on the field at Dier Kenton Vale must never become her concern. She knew his heart; had once shared his deepest fears, and knew of the visceral horror of killing that tormented him, mind and spirit. As sharply as she longed to know whether the affray had unstrung his grip on integrity, the unruly emotions burned into her heart lent iron to her resolve. Her order must never be offered a second opening to use the attraction shared between