Eld Ailea sighed, reached for a spiced biscuit, and set small white teeth into the treat. She chewed and wiped her mouth with a napkin before answering. 'I decided long ago that I would not seek you out while you were but a child, that because the Speaker of the Sun was set on raising you as an elf, seeing me could only be a constant reminder of your 'other' half.
'But I realize now that my absence was a mistake. And I apologize.'
Tanis, without taking his gaze from her worn face, groped for his tea mug and took a sip. Eld Ailea warmed the drink with a refill, and Tanis sipped again.
'I gave you your name, you know,' Ailea said. 'It means 'ever strong.' I did that because I knew you would need great strength to live in an elven world. You may find, as I did, that you will have to live away from Qualinesti for some time before you can appreciate both parts of yourself.'
Tanis's voice dripped contempt. 'Appreciate the part of me that's like an animal?'
She smiled. 'I like to think that I have the best traits of both races. Remember, Tanthalas. You have a father who, yes, certainly, was a brutal, terrible human being. But through him, you are related to many other humans who, most likely, were much better than he.'
Tanis blinked. Flint could see that the old midwife had shed a new light on his viewpoint.
'I…' he stammered, then gulped down his tea in one swallow. 'I'll have to think about this.'
Eld Ailea nodded, and the conversation veered to other topics, especially the news announced at the palace that afternoon. As it turned out, Ailea had already heard.
'Lord Tyresian…' she mused. 'I have heard that he is very… traditional.'
Flint queried, 'Did you deliver him, too?'
Ailea shook her head. 'Ah, no. Well, not exactly, young dwarf.'
Young? Flint shook his head, then thought that he probably was, in comparison to her.
'Why 'not exactly'?' Tanis pressed.
Ailea hesitated. Tanis pounced. 'It was because of your human blood, wasn't it?'
Eld Ailea hesitated again, then nodded. 'I'd have put it another way, but it comes to that, yes. I attended Tyresian's mother early in her confinement; things seemed to be going well, and I had high hopes of her delivering a healthy infant.'
She trailed off. 'And?' Tanis asked.
Ailea looked into the fire, her words lifeless. 'Tyresian's father came into the room and discovered who was attending his wife. He ordered me out, but I remained outside, near the home, in case I was needed after all. He sent for a full elf to stay with Estimia, but none was available.'
'When he learned that, he ordered the children's governess to deliver the baby,' the midwife continued. 'The poor lass had never attended a birth, much less actually delivered a baby. But Tyresian's father-I could hear him shouting even through the rock walls of the mansion-said that any full elf woman would be better than a part- human.'
Tanis opened his mouth to say something, but Eld Ailea continued on. 'Then I heard Tyresian's mother screaming.' Ailea's face contorted as though she were still at the scene. 'I pounded at the door. I begged them to let me come in and help Estimia, but Tyresian's father came outside himself and forced me away. He said he would have me arrested if I did not go away.'
'Interesting, considering Qualinost has no jail,' Flint noted drily.
Eld Ailea rose and selected a miniature of a pretty elven woman from the mantle. She brushed slender fingers over the uneven paint. 'Tyresian lived, but Estimia died.'
She wandered around the room, Flint and Tanis following her progress in the firelight as she touched a frame here, a cheek there. When she arrived at the door, she swung around and said simply, 'Tyresian's father said the death was my fault.'
Tanis gasped. 'How?'
She looked down and, suddenly officious, smoothed her loose gray skirt. 'He said I must have done something wrong before he had a chance to order me away.'
'That's absurd,' Flint snapped. Tanis nodded, his face angry-
Ailea nodded. 'Yes, it is,' she said calmly. 'I have my weaknesses, but incompetence is not one of them.' She returned to the kitchen with the mugs, teapot, and plate, and Flint followed her to help, leaving Tanis browsing through the baby portraits in the entry room.
'When you were at my shop,' Flint said, hoping to prolong the conversation even though it was nearly midnight, 'you told me that you'd delivered the Speaker.'
'And his brothers,' Ailea added, handing Flint a dish to dry with a towel that apparently used to be a woven shirt of the sort she'd worn to Flint's shop. 'Why?'
'I'm curious about the third brother.'
'Arelas? Why?'
'The Speaker said Arelas was sent away from court because he was ill, but he didn't say what illness his brother had. Do you know?'
Ailea rinsed the teapot in a bucket of clear water brought in from a well behind the house. 'I'm not sure anyone knows. He was fine until he was a toddler, but about the time he learned to walk, well, he changed.'
Flint looked up from under one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. 'Changed? How?'
Eld Ailea's voice took on the tone of someone used to telling stories to babysitting charges. 'One day,' she said, 'he, his brother Kethrenan, his mother, and I went for a picnic in the Grove,' naming the tree-shrouded area between the Tower of the Sun and the Hall of the Sky. 'Arelas wandered away and got lost.'
'Did you find him?'
'Not at first. We combed the area, but it was as though the earth had swallowed him. We saw no sign.' She handed the teapot to the dwarf. 'Someone must have found him, but we never discovered who. After three days of fruitless searching-Solostaran's father must have called out nearly every soldier in Qualinesti-little Arelas was found sleeping on the moss in the courtyard of the palace one morning. He must have wandered in-or someone brought him in, past the guards-through the opening to the gardens. He had been covered with a cloth, to keep him warm.'
Flint gave the burnished copper teapot one last polish with a rag and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table. 'He became ill?'
'Very. He had a fever when we found him. He hovered near death for days. I administered what nostrums I had. I used what magic I could, but I cannot cure. I can only ease symptoms. No one was able to help. Finally, the Speaker at that time ordered Arelas sent to an elven cleric outside Qualinesti.'
Flint leaned against a countertop as Eld Ailea sloshed clear water around the ceramic container she'd used to wash the dishes in. The conversation seemed to have reminded her of other things, for she continued to speak after she'd laid the container, upside-down, on the counter near Flint's elbow. 'Solostaran and Kethrenan were relatively easy deliveries-as easy as childbirth ever is, of course. But Arelas… even before he was born, he was not… right. He simply wasn't positioned correctly within his mother. The birth took more than a day, and I finally had to use forceps to deliver him, something I try never to do.
'That time, however, it worked out fine,' she said cheerfully. 'Nothing but a little cut on his arm, and it healed quickly, left only a scar. Just a little mark shaped like a star. It reminded me of the mark that I've heard some of the Plainsmen place on young men when they reach manhood.'
'Now, come, Master Fireforge,' she said briskly, placing strong arms on the dwarf's shoulders and turning him around, 'let's see what young Tanthalas has been up to.'
They returned to the main room. Tanis stood next to an open cupboard near the front door. 'You painted all these portraits,' he said, his reddish brown hair swishing against his leather jerkin as he turned.
'From memory, yes,' Ailea said, smoothing the braid that encircled her head and ended in the bun at the back of her head.
'Is there one of me?' His voice was gruff from his attempt to be offhand. Flint found himself hoping the midwife wouldn't disappoint him.
'Not down here, no.' Tanis's shoulders sagged at the reply.
'I keep
Flint found himself exchanging a wordless glance with the half-elf as they marked the elderly midwife's steps
