scrying for someone or can I talk to her?”
“You’re not welcome here,” Dubro replied evenly.
“I would like to see my sister. I’ve never done anything to hurt her in the past
and I don’t intend to start now. Stand guard beside me, if you must. I will see
her.”
Dubro sighed and set his tools carefully back in their proper places. He banked
the fire and moved buckets of water close by the cloth door of the simple
structure he and Illyra called home. Walegrin was about to burst with impatience
when the plodding giant lifted the cloth and motioned him inside.
“We have a visitor,” Dubro announced.
“Who?”
“See for yourself.”
Walegrin recognized the voice but not the woman who moved in the twilight
darkness. It was Illyra’s custom to disguise her youth with cosmetics and
shapeless clothing-still it seemed that the creature who walked toward him was
far too gross to be his half-sister. Then he saw her face-his father’s face for
she took after him that way-and there could be no doubt.
She slouched ungracefully in the depths of Dubro’s chair, and Walegrin, though
he had little knowledge of these things, guessed she was late in pregnancy.
“You’re having a child,” he blurted out.
“Not quite yet,” she replied with a laugh. “Moonflower assures me I have some
weeks to wait yet. I’m sure it will be a boy, like Dubro. No girl-child would be
so large.”
“And you’re well enough?” Walegrin had always assumed she was barren: doubly
cursed. It did not seem possible that she should be so robustly breeding.
“Well enough. I’ve lost my figure but I’ve got all my teeth, yet,” she laughed