‘As long as it takes, father. I won’t destroy Alara just to satisfy
some picky little concept of reality. She’s a bit lonesome for her
husband, but that’s as far as her misery goes. I’ll keep her happy
for the rest of her life, if I have to.’
He shrugged. ‘You’re the expert, Pol.’
‘I’m glad you noticed that. What are you up to at the moment?’
‘I’m marking time, Pol, just like everybody else. The whole
universe is holding its breath waiting for Ildera to start to bulge.’
‘That’s a crude way to put it.’
‘I’m a crude sort of fellow.’
‘You know, I’ve noticed that myself.’
After father went back to the Vale, Ildera and I let it be generally
known in Annath that Alara was ‘under the weather’ and needed
absolute peace and quiet – ‘her recent bereavement, you
understand’. The ladies of Annath all nodded sagely, pretending to
understand, and so there weren’t any visitors to our house on the north
end of town. We made sure that Alara never left the house
unaccompanied, and Geran’s new wife demonstrated a surprising agility at
changing the subject whenever someone encountered her and her
mother-in-law in the village streets. She could cut off the word
condolences’ almost before it left anyone’s lips. Protecting Alara’s
tenuous grip on sanity became our major occupation, and we grew
better and better at it. Ildera, however, had another job to see to,
and I occasionally fretted about her failure to get on with it. She
continued to aid me in caring for Alara, and her waistline stayed
trim and girlish.
In 5351, Javelin paid father a visit in the Vale to report that
Asharak the Murgo had vanished, despite the best efforts of
Drasnian intelligence to keep him under surveillance. As it turned out, of
course, Asharak had evaded those who’d been assigned the job of
following him at least once already. He’d come to the vicinity of
Annath not too long after the wedding of Geran and Ildera to tamper
– with the geology of the south face of the stone quarry.
Father immediately went to Tol Honeth and virtually
disassembled the city trying to find traces of Chamdar, and when that
failed, he expanded his search to the rest of Tolnedra. That futile
search kept him very busy for the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, back in Annath, Ildera and I took turns keeping watch
over Alara, calling on Geran to fill in for us when we were both
exhausted. The ‘tonic’ Alara took twice a day kept her just a little
vague about the passage of time, and my recently found skill at
implanting some memories and erasing others made it all the easier
for us to control her perception of time. That was the key to keeping
Alara tranquil. As long as she didn’t know how long Darral’s
‘business trip’ was really taking, she stayed happy. I even went so
far as to ‘dusty-up’ the house a few times – usually while she was
asleep or down at the other end of town visiting Ildera – so that we
could spend a week cleaning house. We cleaned house four times
during the autumn of 5353, but Alara only remembered the last time.
House-cleaning is tedious and repetitious anyway, so the memory of
having done it isn’t the sort of memory one clings to very hard.
I’m sure that there are some self-righteous people who’ll read this
and be outraged by my ongoing deception of Alara. These are the
sort of people who secretly delight in causing pain ‘for her own
good’. It wouldn’t really pay people like that to take me to task for
my way of dealing with Alara’s insanity. I might just decide that
it’d be good for them if their heads were on backward.
Another Erastide came and went, and Annath, as usual, was cut off
from the rest of the world by the heavy winter snows. Our little
family celebration of the holiday was subdued. By now, the villagers
all knew that Alara was ‘a little strange’, and they good-heartedly
respected our need to keep her more or less in seclusion. They
weren’t indifferent, though, and any time Ildera or I were out and
about, they’d ask how our Alara was doing. The best we could give
them was, ‘about the same’, and they’d sigh and nod mournfully.
Villagers the world over can be nosey, but their curiosity grows out
of a genuine concern for their neighbors.
It was obvious to me by now that Alara would never really get
better. Her condition was permanent. There wasn’t any cure, but
my combination of herbs and ‘tampering’ kept her moderately
serene and sometimes even a little happy. Under the circumstances,
it was the best I could manage.
Then, when the spring thaw of 5354 was melting off the snow
and the local streams were all running bank full, Ildera came up
the muddy street of Annath early one morning with a radiant smile
on her face. ‘I think I’m pregnant, Aunt Pol,’ she announced.
‘It’s about time,’ I noted.
She looked just a little hurt, but then I laughed and threw my
arms about her. ‘I’m only teasing, Ildera,’ I told her, holding her
very close. ‘I’m so happy for you.’
‘I’m sort of pleased about it myself,’ she said. ‘Now, what should
I do to put a stop to all the throwing up every morning?’
‘Eat something, dear.’
‘You said what?’
‘Put something to eat on the table beside the bed before you go
to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, eat it before you get
out of bed.’
‘Would that work?’
‘It always has. Trust me, Ildera. This is one aspect of medicine
that I’m very good at. I’ve had lots of practice.’ I looked appraisingly
at her tummy. ‘You don’t show yet.’
She made a rueful little face. ‘There goes my girlish figure, I guess.
None of my dresses are going to fit, though.’
‘I’ll sew you up some nice smocks, Ildera.’
‘Should we tell Alara?’ she asked, glancing at her mother-in-law’s
bedroom door.
‘Let me think about that a bit first.’ Then I laid my hand on her
still-girlish belly and sent a gently probing thought into her. ‘Three
weeks,’ I said.
‘Three weeks what? Please, Aunt Pol, don’t be cryptic.’
‘You’ve been pregnant for three weeks.’
‘Oh. It must have been that last blizzard then.’
‘I didn’t exactly follow that, dear.’
‘Well it was snowing very hard outside, and there wasn’t really
anything else to do that afternoon.’ She gave me an arch little smile.
‘Should I go on, Aunt Pol?’ she asked me.
This time, I was the one who blushed. ‘No, Ildera,’ I said. ‘I sort
of get the picture.’
‘I thought that maybe you might be curious – from a professional
point of view. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want all the details,
Aunt Pol?’
‘Ildera! You stop that immediately!’ My face was actually flaming
by now.
Her laughter was silvery. ‘Got you that time, didn’t I, Aunt Pol?’
she said. What an adorable girl she was! I absolutely loved her.
That night I sent my thought out to the twins down in the Vale.
‘Have you any idea at all of where my father is?’ I asked them.
‘He was in Tolnedra the last time we talked with him, Pol,’ Belkira
replied. ‘He’s moving around a lot, so he’s a little hard to keep track of.’
‘I need to get a message to him,’ I told them. ‘There are some unfriendly
ears out there, though, so I don’t want to get too specific.’
‘If it’s urgent, we’ll come up there, and then you can go looking for
him,’ Beltira offered.
‘No, it’s not that urgent – not yet, anyway. It’s just that something’s
going on here that takes a certain fairly predictable amount of time.’ I
thought that was nice and cryptic. ‘Have you found anything new and
exciting in the Mrin lately?’
‘Nothing recently,’ Belkira replied. ‘Everything seems to be frozen.’
‘It’s springtime now, Uncle,’ I told him. ‘Have you ever noticed how
spring always seems to thaw things out?’ I was fairly sure that the
twins would catch the meaning I’d hidden in that seemingly casual
observation.
‘Why yes,’ Beltira agreed, ‘now that you mention it, we’ve noticed the
same thing ourselves. How far along is spring where you are?’
‘About three weeks, uncle. The snow’s starting to melt, and the
wildflowers should come peeping through before too long.’
I was fairly sure that if some Grolim happened to be listening.
he’d be just fascinated by my weather report.
‘I’ve always rather liked wildflowers,’ Belkira added.
,I’m fond of them myself. If you hear from my father, give him my
regards, would you?’
‘Of course, Pol.’
I was rather smug about the way I’d managed to tell them about
Ildera’s condition without actually coming right out and saying
anything about it. As it turned out, however, I seem to have