The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [160]
Dallandra stepped off the path, walked through the lozenge gate, and found herself on Citadel, in the garden of the house Niffa shared with her brother. The sun hung low in the west, sinking toward its setting. As always, what she’d perceived as a few moments on the road had marked the passing of hours in the physical plane. The stench of Cerr Cawnen hit her like a blow to the face. The townsfolk dumped all their refuse into the outrunning river, but they did it where the water still ran warm from the lake. The resulting smell was one thing she wasn’t going to miss about the town.
“Here I am, indeed.” As her body adjusted again to the solidity of the world of form, Dallandra realized that her breasts were aching. When she rubbed them, milk oozed. “It’s good to see you. Er, did you happen to find someone who needs a wet nurse?”
“I did, and she be waiting for you inside. One of my brother’s granddaughters, Hildie. Here, let me carry those saddlebags for you. You must a-weary be.”
Dallandra realized that, indeed, weary she was.
In the spacious great room of Jahdo’s home, a scatter of finely worked chairs, each cushioned with bright fabric pillows, stood near a pair of windows with actual glass in them. Jahdo had done very well for himself over the years, Dalla realized, trading back and forth with the Gel da’Thae as well as the Mountain Folk. A young blonde woman sat in one chair, holding a baby who fussed and whined. She was trying to get him to suck water from a cloth sop, but the infant would only cry and bat at the thing with one feeble hand.
“That be Hildie,” Niffa said. “And little Frei. He be some two months now, and her milk, it were scant from the beginning.”
Hildie looked up with a smile so strained that Dallandra realized that the lass was choking back tears. She decided that formal introductions could wait and strode over to sit down in the chair next to Hildie’s.
“Give him to me,” Dallandra said.
When Hildie handed the baby over, he began to wail at this rude transfer to a stranger, but as soon as Dallandra pulled up her tunic, releasing a waft of milk-scent, the wails changed pitch to a demand. She settled him at her breast with a sense of mutual relief. Niffa pulled up another chair and joined them.
“This be my friend Dallandra,” Niffa said to Hildie, “as doubtless you did guess by now.”
“So I did, and you have my thanks.” Hildie paused to wipe her eyes on her sleeve. “It be a bitter thing, to starve your own child. I do feel so shamed.”
“Don’t,” Dallandra said. “I never had enough milk for my first-born, but with the second I have plenty. I’ll wager you will, too.”
“See?” Niffa said. “I did tell you, but truly, I do see why you were loath to believe me. I’ve not had a babe of mine own.”
“Never did I not believe you.” Hildie managed a smile. “It just did no good for the babe I have now.”
“Well, true spoken,” Niffa said. “Dalla, Hildie will be sheltering here for some days, till it be time for all of us to leave Cerr Cawnen.”
“Good, that will be convenient all round, then.”
Grateful for the cushions, Dallandra leaned back in the chair. Feeding the baby made her drowsy, and for those few moments, as she sat listening to Niffa and Hildie gossip about the various members of Jahdo’s large family, the Horsekin threat receded, a disturbance on some far border, perhaps, of another country. Reality, however, shoved itself into her consciousness when Jahdo came down to join them.
Dallandra hadn’t seen Jahdo since he was a young lad. He’d grown into a slender man, not very tall but not particularly short, and his dark eyes and thinning gray hair had nothing particularly distinctive about them, either. He walked with a pronounced limp, the legacy of a bandit raid on one of his caravans.
“Good morrow, Dalla,” he said in a voice darkened with age. “The servants, they did tell me you were here.”
“And a good morrow to you,” Dallandra said. “It’s good to