Vanity's Brood - Lisa Smedman [110]
He glanced at Ts'ikil. "That's it?" he asked. He had expected something more.
The couatl smiled, then nodded. It is done. "Then let's go. I want to see my children."
–C;)- -0 Q.,– Ђ9Arvin leaned back against the wall of the hut, his infant son cradled in his arms. The boy was quiet, but earlier he had been competing with his sister in a crying contest. The twins were small- the combined effects of sharing the same womb and the lean nourishment Karrell had found in Smaragd-but they seemed strong enough, and they had powerful lungs.
The boy had brown eyes, like Arvin, a fuzz of brown hair, and a pattern on his smooth skin that might one day become scales. The girl had Karrell's high cheekbones, darker hair, and a slightly forked tongue. Both had human arms and legs, but what was most important was that both had survived.
So had Karrell, though the labor had been hard on her. She lay in a hammock, nursing their daughter.
Arvin watched as two women of the Chex'en clan fussed over the new mother, fanning her and offering sips of cool water. They looked like Karrell-close enough in appearance to have been her mother and sister, though Karrell had said they were only the clan midwife and her apprentice, both distant cousins. Each of them had Karrell's long black hair and dusky skin.
It had been some time since Arvin had slept, even though three days had passed since Ts'ikil had spirited them out of Smaragd. The birthing had taken the remainder of that first night, and the days and nights since then had slipped past in a blur. Arvin hovered somewhere between dozing and wakefulness. The heat of the jungle didn't help, nor did the fact that he kept slipping, in his drowsy state, into the minds of his son and daughter. The link with them came so easily it was like breathing. One moment his thoughts were his own-the next, his mind was overflowing with simple sensation: the sweet slide of milk down his throat, the gentle touch of a warm body against his, the blur of his mother's or father's face as they stared down at him with adoration.
It was easy to let his mind drift. The worst was over. Sibyl and the marilith were as good as dead, their minds empty shells. Sseth was securely contained within his domain, bound and brooding. Pakal had recovered from his shadow wounds and gone back to his people, and Ts'ikil had also fully healed.
Yet…
The younger woman came to Arvin and said something to him in her own language, then gently lifted his son from his arms. It was time for Karrell to feed him. Arvin reluctantly relinquished his son. He had been enjoying the feel of the infant's soft breathing against his bare chest. He stood and straightened the loincloth one of the Tabaxi men had given him, then crossed the but to Karrell's hammock. As he brushed his lips against her forehead, she gave him an exhausted smile.
"We did it," she whispered. "We stopped Sibyl. It's over now."
"Yes," he said.
Yet…
He needed to think, to shake the lethargy from his mind. He stroked his daughter's head, and his son's, then squeezed Karrell's hand.
"I'll be outside," he told her.
The but was circular, made of saplings that had been bound together. The roof was a rough dome covered with broad leaves, laid in a pattern like shingles. It was one of perhaps a dozen huts occupying an oval clearing that had been hacked from the jungle. At one end of the clearing stood a pitted chunk of black volcanic stone, studded with "thunder lizard" olaws-an altar sacred to both Ubtao and Thard Harr. One of the wild dwarves who also made their home in that part of the jungle was prostrated in front of it, his hands extended toward the stone, fingers curled like claws. The clan's meeting house was at the opposite end of the clearing. In the distance behind it, smoke rose from the trees. That was where the rest of the clan was, clearing new land for crops. Arvin could just hear the faint thudding of their axes.