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By Root 783 0

Yet the baby certainly looked normal enough, though much more human than elven. Although his ears were sharp and close to being slightly pointed, his eyes had human irises and pupils, and his face and hands were round and chubby rather than being long and slender. Unlike the women of Deverry, elven women never wrapped their babies in swaddling bands; propped up in a big pile of cushions, Dallandra was holding him, loosely wrapped in a light blanket, while he nuzzled her breast. Aderyn knelt down next to her, kissed her on the forehead, then merely stared for a long time at the wrinkled, reddish creature with the soft crown of pale, pale hair. His son. He had a son, and at that moment he felt young again, felt, indeed, that he’d never loved the mother of that son as much as did right then. Yet if he told her, would she only pity him the more? An old man, gloating over a child as proof that he was still a man?

“What shall we call him, Ado?” Her voice was soft, trembling in exhaustion. “I was thinking of my father’s name, but truly, I haven’t seen him in so long now that it wouldn’t matter if you wanted to call him something else.”

“I truly don’t have anything else in mind. Stupid of me, but you know, I never even thought about names to this moment.”

She winced.

“Are you all right? Does something hurt?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” She looked up with a forced smile. “The name I’m thinking of is Alodalaenteriel. We called him Laen for short.”

“Well, that sounds splendid. If you like it, why not?”

Although the baby became Alodalaenteriel in Elvish, Aderyn tended to call him by a Deverry-sounding nickname, Loddlaen, because it was a great deal easier to say and a pun as well, meaning “the comfort of learning,” which amused him. As the years passed, though, it became an omen, for learning and Loddlaen both were the only comforts left to him.

Dallandra was never quite sure exactly when she decided to return to the Guardians. She realized first that she didn’t particularly love this baby she was saddled with. After the birth, she was oppressed a good bit of the time with a heartsick sadness that she could neither understand nor explain away. The slightest wrong word or look would make her burst into tears, and Loddlaen’s crying was a torment. Aderyn took to keeping the baby with him unless Loddlaen needed feeding. Dallandra disliked nursing him. At first, when his sucking made her womb contract in the usual manner, she felt none of the pleasure some women feel, only cramping pains; when those stopped, her milk was scant, leaving him hungry and making him cry the more. Although Enabrilia tried getting him to suck sheep or mare’s milk from a wad of rag, this animal food only made him vomit convulsively. The one joy Dallandra had during those days was seeing how much Aderyn loved his son, although even this was spoiled by the bitter thought that her man no longer cared about her anywhere near as much as he did their child.

Half starved as he was, Loddlaen might have died very young from some fever or another, but when he was two months old, they traveled to an alardan, where Dallandra found a woman named Banamario who had just given birth herself. Banamario was one of those women who produce milk in great quantities, enough for her own child and two more, most likely, as she remarked, and her breasts caused her great pain unless she expressed the milk one way or another. Dallandra handed over Loddlaen without a qualm. When she saw how fondly Banamario smiled at the nursing baby, how gently she stroked his pale, fine hair and how softly she touched his little roundish ears, Dallandra felt stabbed to the soul by guilt pure and simple—she didn’t care half as much for her own son as this stranger did. Since she was elven, born to a people who saw every infant as both a treasure and a weapon laid up against their extinction, the guilt burned in the wound for days. Yet even so, she took to leaving Loddlaen for long periods of time with Banamario, who was nothing but pleased to do a favor for the Wise One.

At times, as she rode alone out