Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [188]
“Well, here she is.” Carra sat up straight, holding the baby in the crook of one arm, running the other hand through her own hair to smooth it back from her face. “She’s very beautiful.”
Evandar walked over to the bedside and looked at the child. With a large pink and toothless yawn, Elessi woke and turned her head his way. For a long time, they stared into one another’s eyes. Even though the infant was too young to focus her sight properly, Dalla was suddenly sure that she recognized the soul who’d been her father back in her old home. The moment passed as the baby turned to snuggle her face into her new mother’s breast.
“A beauty she is,” Evandar agreed. “My thanks to you, Carra, for this birthing. Did you suffer much?”
Polla made a clicking noise with her tongue and stepped forward to intervene, but Dalla laid a hand on her arm and held her back.
“I did, truly, but it was worth it.” Carra was smiling, utterly bemused by this strange creature. “Why do you ask?”
“I think me I owe you a fee, that’s why, just as your people would pay to a wet nurse—or truly, that’s much too cold, isn’t it? Not a nurse’s fee, but a fine present, a gift.” Evandar smiled in a sudden delight that had an almost overpowering charm. “A gift. That’s what you shall have, the finest gift I can give you.”
“Now here.” Carra laughed in answer to that smile. “I did it with no hope of reward, good sir!”
“Nonetheless, you shall have one. Now, here’s a riddle for you. You shall have the gift as soon as I can fetch it for you, but you won’t realize what it is or what you have for years and years.”
All at once, suddenly and completely, he was gone. Shuddering, Polla and Ocradda turned toward Dalla, as if for comfort, but Carra laughed aloud, still caught by Evandar’s warmth.
“Well, I’ve got a charming kinsman!” she said. “But Dalla, who is he? A dweomermaster, obviously, because he can come and go like that.”
Dalla decided that half a lie would be far better than an unexplainable truth.
“He is at that, Carra. One of the greatest dweomer-masters the Westlands have ever known.”
“Oooh, how wonderful, then! But why did he say he owed me somewhat? Or wait, I know! He’s seen some omen, hasn’t he, about my Elessi’s Wyrd?”
“He has, indeed, and truly, she’s a very important little lass.”
“Wonderful and twice wonderful.” Carra looked at the child sleeping in the crook of her arm. “But I’d love you anyway, splendid Wyrd or no. I wonder what gift your grandfather has for me? Dalla, do you know?”
“I don’t, and if I know Evandar, he’ll never tell you, either. Once he sets a riddle, it’s for the hearer to puzzle out without another clue from him.”
“Well, he said I’d find out someday.” Carra paused for a yawn. “If I remember that long.”
Dalla gathered up the other women and herded them out then and there while the swaddling bands were still forgotten. She herself, however, learned the answer to the riddle later that night, when Evandar appeared in her chamber, crystalizing into the lamplight just as she was brushing out her hair. He sat down on her bed and lounged back on one elbow, smiling while he watched her.
“I wondered if you’d come back,” she said. “Does the child please you?”
“She does, indeed, though I’d wish her ears were proper long ones. It doesn’t matter much, truly.”
“And what about that riddle? What gift are you planning to give her? Some of your gifts can be beastly dangerous, my love.”
“So I’m finding out.” Evandar looked sincerely rueful. “So I put a bit of thought into this one. But you have to swear you’ll never tell her. I refuse to let her know the answer to the riddle unless she puzzles it out.”
“Oh, very well, then. I swear I won’t tell her or so much as hint at the answer.”
“My thanks, then. I’ve done for her what I did for your deryn, given her the life of an elf—but this time I did it right. I didn’t understand, then, about aging and the wheel of Time, but I’ve learned a fair bit now. She