Stay with us, the devices seemed to say, in this timelessness.

He drifted in that darkness, eternal, the goddess…

The boy!

Taul wrenched himself from that Dark place and crawled back to the tunnel’s opening and peered around the edge. His nose crinkled. Piss had escaped and warmed his leg.

The pale outline of Maunyn’s form was gone, but Taul dared not move.

Ren was still. The boy still lay on the cavern floor. Taul looked for Maunyn, but if the knight had hidden himself, was waiting for him in the shadows, he was doomed.

Ryldia filled his thoughts. For her, he must try.

What would it be like for her if he never returned without a word? Balniss would tell her the truth, he hoped. He wouldn’t let her think he had run off, too ashamed to continue with an empty vessel as a consort. The need to serve her surged. He must do everything possible to aid her, to ease her shame.

He rose to his knees and listened. His ears throbbed and rang. The more he tried, the less he heard. Flashes of light burst everywhere. Trembling, he stood and stumbled toward Ren and the boy.

The boy stirred, smacking his lips and stretching his little arms.

Taul sheathed the dagger, darted forward, and scooped him up. He crouched by Ren to see if the man lived.

Ren stirred weakly, whispering something.

Taul leaned close.

“The goddess… wants… you to have him,” Ren said, grasping him with bloody hands. He reached inside his tunic, blood bubbling from his mouth, and pulled out a folded and sealed letter.

“You can use this,” he said. “But save it for when you truly need it.”

Taul nodded and tucked the letter away.

“He is a child of great destiny,” Ren said with a deep sigh. “I know it.”

The last words squeezed out painfully and a tremulous breath escaped Ren’s lips. And then the very last breath, low and whistling.

Taul bowed his head. Pebbles trickled at the end of a tunnel. His heart pounded. If the boy woke, screaming his lungs out, there’d be no escape.

“I’m sorry, Ren,” he said in a faint voice. “I should like to give you a proper funeral and let your essence return to the stars or to the rock, as your fate has determined.”

He pulled Ren’s hood around his face and the cloak around his limbs. He looked like he was merely sleeping. Ren deserved a priestess’s blue fire, even a village priestess’s yellow fire, any fire at all. Instead, he had the fire of Taul’s words, a poor blessing. So much of this was unjust.

“Yauren Lor’Naldril, rest in goddess light, know the power of her dawning.”

With that done, the best he could do, Taul left, the child pressed to his chest. He struggled through tunnels, exhausted by fear, unsure how deep he’d gone. A shadow hounded him, stuck to the scent of blood on his clothes and the boy’s hair. He clambered through fissures, over boulders. Nothing seemed familiar, but he pressed on. Finally, he made out the faint light of the distillery’s cellar.

Safe in the cellar, he stopped to rest.

“I’m sorry, boy,” he whispered, “that you have been born to our house under such awful circumstances. But know this: we will love you.”

He kissed the boy’s head.

Ryldia would love him; she had to. Taul felt like a hero returned from the bowels of the earth, having faced enormous trials and now returning victorious with a great boon.

Her face, smiling, tears of joy in her eyes, filled his mind.

A boy at last.

Ryldia would not look at the boy.

At the entrance to her parlor, Taul waited with the boy’s little hand in his own. Dressed as a crater Mornae in a gray wool tunic and pants with a tiny gray felt belt and black felt boots, the boy hadn’t cried or opened his mouth once.

“We should name him, don’t you think?” Taul asked her.

Ryldia, wrapped in a silk robe, just regarded the orchard through a narrow-slitted window. The leaves were changing. They’d gathered the last of the fruit. Silla Lor’Vamtrin had returned to her home, along with her host of helpful matrons. She’d told him it was now up to Ryldia to survive her sadness. It was not good for a matron to neglect her house. Ryldia’s long gray neck arched so she could peer out the windows and view the passing light of the goddess.

“A gold goddess is auspicious,” she said.

Taul’s heart leapt. “Yes indeed, matron.”

Whatever her weakness or the failings of her line, she was a true matron, gracious and thoughtful. She tugged on a cord by the window. A moment later, her handmaid appeared, leaned close to receive a command, and then scurried off.

“Let me see him then,” she said to Taul, but without looking down at the boy.

Taul and the boy approached.

“Voravin, you say?” she asked. With each word she uttered, his love for her grew. All he’d endured in that horrid tunnel was nothing compared to her favor.

“Yes, that is what I was told,” he said. Voravin was a legend, even a myth, but he understood it in the basest way: a true Mornae.

She smiled, but there was pity in her eyes. Pity for him.

“Aren’t they all?” she said. Her voice trailed off as the servant presented the matron’s ring, a ring of three silver bands laced together like the branches of a tree. A single black opal sat in the center. Ryldia slid it on with a grimace, as if she took on an enormous burden.

Taul smoothed out the boy’s little tunic and combed his unruly silver hair. He had cut much of it because Ren’s blood had soaked into it. He’d not been able to wash it out properly.

Ryldia looked the boy over, neither pleased nor displeased. Taul knew the boy wasn’t much to look at, with his flat face, little point of a nose, and small, beady eyes. The eyes were so deeply set and small that he could not make out their color, either slate or river clay.

“Boys change over time,” he said. “I sprouted and altered so much when I reached my fifteenth winter. No one recognized me when spring came.”

She must evaluate the boy’s potential to enter an academy. At three, it was hard to know, but he had an illustrious sire, if Maunyn was indeed the father.

“He has an attentive gaze,” she said. “I will ask Balniss to educate him at once. What is your name?” she asked the boy.

Taul started to speak for the boy, but she held up her hand. A true Mornae should have the wits to know when to be quiet and move with the moment. Survival in Vaidolin depended on it, even at three. Ryldia was well within her matron’s right to cast the boy out, or worse, to kill him.

The boy’s mouth shrunk to a tiny slit, and he said nothing. If she was to be his mother, then he had no name until she gave it.