The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [274]
“No, it isn't,” the dervish said. He looked down at his hands, marked by lines tattooed in red and fine white scars. “Not anymore.”
It was the quiet that woke Sareth.
Over the last three years he had grown used to the sound of her heartbeat and the gentle rhythm of her breathing. Together they made a music that lulled him to sleep each night and bestowed blissful dreams. Then, six months ago, another heart—tiny and swift—had added its own note. But now the wagon was silent.
Sareth sat up. Gray light crept through a moon-shaped window into the cramped interior of the wagon. She had not been able to make it any larger, but by her touch it had become cozier. Bunches of dried herbs hung in the corners, filling the wagon with a sweet, dusty scent. Beaded curtains dangled before the windows. Cushions embroidered with leaves and flowers covered the benches on either side of the wagon. The tops of the benches could be lifted to reveal bins beneath, or lowered along with a table to turn the wagon into a place where eight could sit and dine or play An'hot with a deck of T'hot cards. Now the table was folded up against the wall, making room for the pallet they unrolled each night.
The pallet was empty, save for himself. He pulled on a pair of loose-fitting trousers, then opened the door of the wagon. Moist air, fragrant with the scent of night-blooming flowers, rushed in, cool against his bare chest. He breathed, clearing the fog of sleep from his mind, then climbed down the wagon's wooden steps. The grass was damp with dew beneath his bare feet—his two bare feet.
Though it had been three years, every day he marveled at the magic that had restored the leg he had lost to the demon beneath Tarras. He would never really understand how Lady Aryn's spell had healed him, but it didn't matter. Since he met Lirith, he had grown accustomed to wonders.
He found her beneath a slender ithaya tree on the edge of the grove where the Mournish had made camp. A tincture of coral colored the horizon; dawn was coming, but not yet. She turned when she heard him approach, her smile glowing in the dimness.
“Beshala,” he said softly. “What are you doing out here so early?”
“Taneth was fussing. I didn't want him to wake you.” She cradled the baby in her arms. He was sound asleep, wrapped snugly in a blanket sewn with moons and stars.
Sareth laid a hand on the baby's head. His hair was thick and dark, and his eyes, when they were open, were the same dark copper as Sareth's. But everything else about him—his fine features, his rich ebony skin—was Lirith's.
The baby sighed in his sleep, and Sareth smiled. Here was another wonder before him. Lirith had believed herself incapable of bearing a child. When she was a girl, she was sold into servitude in the Free City of Corantha, in the house of Gulthas. There she had been forced to dance for men who paid their gold—and do more than simply dance. Countless times a spark of life had kindled in her womb, only to go dark when she consumed the potions Gulthas forced on all the women in his house. Then, in time, no more sparks had kindled.
Lirith had wept the night she told him this, thinking that once he knew he would turn away from her. She was wrong. Knowing this only made him love her more fiercely. That she could endure such torture and yet remain so good, so gentle showed that there was no one in the world more deserving of love.
Even so, he had wept as well. For even if she could have conceived a child, he could not have given her one. Or at least so he believed. When the demon below Tarras took his leg, it had taken something else—something intangible but no less a part of him. Since that day, no woman, not even Lirith, could cause him to rise as a man should. He could love her with all his heart, but he could not make love to her.
Until Lady Aryn's spell.
And now, here was the greatest wonder of all: little Taneth, dark and sweet and perfect.
Lirith sighed, turning her gaze