A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [103]
No one could ever have taken Dallandra’s place in his heart, of course; never would he have thought of remarrying, even though elven law would have allowed him to do so as soon as she’d been gone for twenty years and a day. But he might have found friendship and affection, if not love, might have kept his heart alive instead of suffocating it in his work as he had in fact done. All the energy of his heart, all his capacity to love that he might have given to another woman—he’d transmuted them into something sterile and poured them into his pupils and his studies. He marveled at himself, that he had Dallandra back yet couldn’t really love her again, even though she treated him with all her old affection. She would have shared his bed if he’d wanted, but he used her pregnancy as an excuse and slept away from her.
He didn’t want her pity—that’s how he put it to himself. He was sure that she was treating him, an old man, withered and ugly, with pity, and he wanted no part of it. Even though he’d forgotten how to love, he knew that he wanted no one else to have her heart. As the days slipped into months, and her pregnancy began to show, he turned more and more into a hideous human stereotype that he hated even as he felt powerless to stop his transformation: he saw himself becoming a jealous old man with a young wife. All his dweomercraft, all his strange lore and his great powers, his deep understanding of the secret places of the universe and his conversations with hidden spirits—none of it helped him now, when he would see Calonderiel stop to speak to her and hate him in his heart, when he would see her smile innocently at some young man and wish him dead And what was he going to do, he asked himself, once the baby was born and she was lithe and beautiful again?
If he could have spoken with Nevyn, his old master might have cured him, but Nevyn was off in Bardek on some mysterious working of his own. If they’d lived in Deverry, among human beings in all their vast variety of ages and looks, he might have come to his senses, too, but as it was, every person they saw was young and beautiful except Aderyn himself. His jealousy ate into every day and poisoned every night, but thanks to his long training in self-discipline and self-awareness, he did at least manage one thing: he kept the jealousy from showing. Around Dallandra he was always perfectly calm and kind; not once did he berate her or subject her to some long agony of questioning about where she’d been or what she might have said to some other man. (Years later, when it was far too late, he realized that being so rational was perhaps the worst thing he could have done, because she read his careful control as sheer indifference.) As her pregnancy progressed, of course, it became impossible for her to go off on her own, anyway. The alar made a semi-permanent camp along a stream where there was good grazing and settled in to wait for the birth. More and more, Dallandra spent her time with the other women, and particularly with Enabrilia, who would be her midwife.
When she went into labor, in fact, Aderyn was miles away, showing some of his disciples the proper way to dig up medicinal roots. By the time they got back to camp, Dallandra was shut away in Enabrilia’s tent with the attending women around her, and by elven custom, he would have been kept out even if he’d wanted to stay with her. All evening he sat by the fire in a circle of other men, who said little, looked grim, and passed a skin of mead around until at last an exhausted Enabrilia came to fetch Aderyn to the tent.
“A son,” she said. “And he and his mother are doing well, though … well, no, they’re both doing splendidly.”
“Tell me the truth,” Aderyn snapped. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really. Dallandra did very well, and while she’s tired, she’s alert and strong and all. It’s just that the baby was so quiet. He never cried, not even when he started breathing.”
As he hurried into the tent, Aderyn was remembering all those old stories about changelings and wondering what sort of child his wife had birthed.