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Rain spattered the panes, spotting the colored glass, glistening beads fortress of dragons.html

on the clear side panes. Lightning lit the adjacent roofs, and the rain came down hard. Droplets, lightning-lit, crawled down the glass.

In the same way rain had come to Ynefel and made crooked trails over the horn panes of his small window.

So the thunder had walked above Ynefel's broken roofs, and the trees outside the walls had sighed with hundreds of voices. Balconies had creaked and beams had moved. Shadows ran along the seams of the stones.

But there in Ynefel he had not known Uwen's presence… as now there was approaching behind his back a very sleepy Uwen, drawn by the sound of the storm, stumbling faithfully from his bed. Emuin, too, was awake at this recasting of the weather, and Paisi had waked, as Tarien and Orien had, as all through the fortress and the town and the camps sleepers waked to the wind and the rain and the thunder that heralded another turn in the fickle, wizard-driven weather.

Uwen came, blanket-cloaked, past the shadows of brazen dragons the lightning made lively with repeated flashes as Tristen looked back at him. Uwen had his hair loose: he raked at it, but achieved little better.

In outline he looked like Emuin at his untidiest.

"South wind," Uwen said, and so it was. "It don't sound that cold."

"It doesn't feel cold," Tristen said, turning to put his hand on the glass. As he had gone to bed, frost had patterned the panes. Now these meandering streams of water cast crooked shadows against the lightning.

A prodigious crack of thunder made him jump.

—Rain on the horn-paned window. A hole in the roof of the loft.

—A hole in the Quinaltine roof. Fatal anger of the barons, a threat to Cefwyn that did not go away.

"Oh, 'at were a good 'un," Uwen said. "This is a warmin' rain, this is."

Spring was back. He had gained it once and now gained it back again, as if all influence to the contrary had waned and on this night he reached his ascendancy.

He had all but come full circle now, past sunset and into the night.

Morning would bring the anniversary of his beginning, the evening hours, the precise hour of his own origin, likely at sundown.

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Tomorrow night, Emuin had said the birth of Tarien's child would be most portentous… and now the weather turned.

He listened for disturbance in the gray space, but Tarien's child slept quietly in his mother's womb this stormy night—a week and more away from entering the world, so Gran Sedlyn insisted. It might not, then, happen tomorrow, on that date Emuin called portentous: there were no signs of it happening, and Tarien's time Tristen understood could not be rushed, even by wizardry: the babe was as the babe was, and at the moment it seemed quiet.

So the Zeide, too, rested quietly, anxious as these days were for him.

One more day before the dreaded day.

He had feared the day of his birth as long ago this fall, wondering Would the wizardry that had brought him forth from the dark give him yet another year. When he had feared that, he had had no imagining even of winter and all it might bring. Now for all his dread, he was indeed approaching that point, and, lo! the weather turned back again in his favor. After holding the land by fitful bursts of bitter cold, after his wishing day after day for the spring to come, lo! the skies turned violent and rainy as they had been in his first memories: full circle, and tomorrow he would truly be able to say, offhandedly, oh, it was thus
last year
, like any ordinary Man.

" 'Twill wash the snow away before morning," he said.

"If it don't turn all to ice again," Uwen said, "as it did. If old North Wind wins the contest one more time an' comes back in force, there'll be slippin' and slidin' from here to the river."

Let the rain for good and all erase the snow, Tristen wished, passing his hand across the colored glass panes, and this time feeling power leap to his will.

Let the spring come, he said to himself. Winter had had its day and more. It was time for that season of rain and leaves whispering and roaring in the storm.

It was time for the tracery of water on windows and the crack of thunder in the night.

It was time again for the sheer beauty of a green leaf stuck to gray stone, and the terror of Mauryl's staff, like thunder, crack! against the pavings.

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He had forgotten his clothes that day, and Mauryl had chided him, patiently, always patiently and with a faint sense of grief and disappointment that had stung so keenly then. It still did.

He had remembered a robe tonight—but his heart yearned toward the outside and the rain and the memory of chill water on his skin, and Mauryl's cloak after, and the fire at Ynefel. If he failed there, Mauryl would forgive him, wrap him in warmth, make all things right.

If he failed here, in his war for Cefwyn's lady, there was no mercy.

He would have come full circle tomorrow evening, but Mauryl would not come back. Had not Uwen told him—that men did not do over the things they had done, but that the seasons did?

So there was both change and sameness, there was progress and endless circles. The Great Year and the Year of Years themselves produced the same result: Men changed; Men died; babes were born, and grew; and died; the seasons varied little.

Thunder rattled the leaded windows, fit to shake the stones.

Owl called.

And elsewhere and to the west a wizardling babe waked, and moved in startlement, heart leaping.

Then pain began, an alarming pain, a sense of sliding inevitability—and change that could not be called back.

Tristen rested his hands on the marble beneath the window, dreaded the thunder he felt imminent, and winced to its rapid crack, feeling it through all his bones at once.

"M'lord?" Uwen said, seizing his arm.

He had felt pain before. This was different. This, this was the pain of a babe attempting to be born in haste, by wizardry.

This was the fear of a woman distraught and alarmed, a woman who well knew the risks.

He heard a voice urging, Let it be now, let it be now.

Now was not the time Orien would choose. But the voice continued
relentlessly, striving to coax the babe into the world, urging the
mother to join her efforts.

—
Master Emuin, he called out into the gray space
.

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Emuin was there, aware and alarmed.

—
She's trying to force it, Emuin said. She must not. It must
not,
young lord
.

—
It's too early
.

—
In every way. It wants not to come at all. She begins now to ensure
the day of the calendar at least. No
,—
damn! Midnight! She strives
for midnight! And she must not succeed. Make it quiet! Hush! Be
still
!

He had no idea how to calm the babe and the mother, while the
thunder cracked and the winds of chance and wizardry roared.

In the gray space Orien's voice urged haste, urged the babe toward
birth, and the pain began, stealing his breath.

"Tassand!"

Uwen called for help, thinking him ill, but he drew in a great breath and willed Tarien still, asleep, if nothing else, and the babe to be well.

He was aware of Orien shaking Tarien's shoulder, encouraging her.

Then she perceived him, and the anger that swept through the gray
place was potent as the storm above the roof. Defiance met him. And
pain, Tarien's pain… that came.

He felt the cold marble table surface under his hand, realizing he had shaken Uwen off, and that Uwen was behind him, concerned and not knowing what to do.

—
Be still, he willed the babe, and drew in a breath and straightened
back, willed against all Orien's determination that Tarien's pains
cease. Her breaths and his came as one, and be slowed them, slowed
all that was happening.

But in his hearing Orien was urging her sister now, that Tarien,
having the pangs that heralded the birth, must set to it, must deliver
the child or lose it, adding panic and fear for the child to Tarien's
gray presence.

—No,
he willed. Neither will happen
.

The gray stilled for a heartbeat, a breath, and another, labored,
heartbeat.

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"What's happened?" he heard Tassand ask, but he saw Tarien's surroundings, and in one place he stood, and in another sat, aching and out of breath.

"I don't know," Uwen said, " 'cept it's a takin' of some sort, an' he ain't in his own mind. Set 'im down. Here, m'lord. Here's a chair."

He trusted, and sat. Having both bodies doing the same thing made it easier to manage. He gathered his awareness, stretched out fine and far, and found Orien's angry presence in the gray space, elusive, clever, governing her sister in ways mysterious to him.

He had no need to send to Emuin. Emuin had sent for the midwife, both in the gray space and on Paisi's quick feet—for thinking the babe a week away, Gran Sedlyn had gone home tonight, as she did one day in seven. Paisi ran, to bring her up the hill, in the storm and the lightning. He was aware of Paisi racing out the West Gate barefoot as he had lived much of his life, slipping on the cobbles, running in icemelt, rapidly insensible of pain.

And at Emuin's lancing inquiry, he knew Gran Sedlyn's unfamiliar touch, an old woman roused out of a warm bed and searching, he thought, for stockings, even before Paisi was past the first uptown street.

"There we are, m'lord," Uwen said, and pressed a warm cup into his hand. He trusted anything from Uwen, and sipped at it, brought to a realization of soldiers and resources at his command.

"The Aswydds," he said. "Orien's trying to bring the baby. Go tell the abbot." The man's workings were small, but the man knew the Aswydds, too, and the abbot was closer and fleeter of foot than Gran Sedlyn.

He said so, and in the gray space Orien tried to bar him from doing that. So did Tarien, following her sister's lead blindly, desperately, in her pain. For a moment a storm raged, but harm was all too easy if it came to a struggle, and he disarmed himself and kept out of the gray space except the most minuscule awareness, wishing no harm at all to the baby. Orien might assail him and cause him pain, but he sat and sipped hot tea and bore with it, for rage as she would Orien made no gains against his determination to hold things as they were.

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 fortress of dragons.html

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'?"

"
Orien
wishes 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."

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"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."