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.
She motioned him forward, and he waddled toward her. He tripped and fell against her knees. She reached out to hold him up.
Taul smiled. Her hands were fine and gentle, patting his head and holding his face. The boy responded by trying to reach her lap. She obliged him. He investigated the silver chain about her neck and the weave of her robe.
“He is curious,” Taul said. “That is an excellent trait.”
Ryldia nodded and wrapped her arm around the boy. Then, she exhaled, as if releasing all her past failures.
“Call in the witnesses,” she said.
Taul whipped about to the door and showed in the small gathering of relations with Balniss at the rear. He would act as a magistrate today and seal the naming of Ryldia’s son for posterity.
When they had settled, she spoke, head high, her right hand bearing the Toshtolin ring splayed open on the boy’s chest.
“This is my son, Pemzen,” she said. “He has the bearing of his great grandsire, Pemzil na’Hosmyr.”
Everyone nodded.
“Well chosen,” Xura said, at the head of the coterie of priestesses. All agreed.
