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mage-light halo Askeyia,
her momentary ward. It was a spell better used in the presence of
physicians, for it told her much about the condition of the body upon
which it was cast. The spell came more easily than words would have.
    And it gave her a bitter, bitter answer.
    Askeyia was chilled by the fevers brought on by too great a
use of power in too short a space of time. That, she expected. Her leg
was broken cleanly, but poorly set; her face was bruised but whole, her
vision had been hampered somehow by the strikes to the side of her
face. These, and more, Evayne cataloged in an instant.
    But it was the last thing that was the most terrible, because
she understood it all then.
    Askeyia a'Narin was pregnant.
    She must have tightened her grip, for the girl looked up, the
matted darkness of her hair scudding the underside of the seer's chin.
    "Evayne?"
    No. No, I will not do this.
    "Evayne, what is it? What's wrong? Is he coming?"
    I 
will
not
do this
.
The fifty-year-old woman, who had seen battles that were far darker and
far more real than the glory of legend bit her lip until it bled. Held
the girl, held Askeyia, a moment longer, as if her arms were bower or
cradle—or armor. She lowered her face into the crook of the girl's
neck; blood there, sticky but dried.
    She had not been brought to rescue Askeyia.
    The silver lily that hung round her throat bit into her
collarbone; she did not move, thinking of what its maker would have
said to her for what she was about to do.
    "Askeyia," she said, in a voice so husky the word came out a
rumble. "Forgive me. But I cannot take you from this place. The Lord
who rules it has a grip that is far too strong."
    Lies, all lies. She hated them. Because she knew, now, the
how
of Kiriel di'Ashaf, the dark, wild child that did not—in this year, at
this time—exist. And she was glad that she had not known it sooner.
    But Askeyia was gullible, even in fear.
    "You are caught in a war, Askeyia. And you are a healer."
Swallowing hurt; the words stuck. "You're— you're with child."
    White-faced, the girl drew back, covering herself, pulling the
scraps of dress together as if—as if the night just past had not
passed. As if it never would. Her eyes were wide and dark and round.
    And Evayne raised a hand, gentle with the girl as she could
not be gentle with herself. "No, child," she said, although the Askeyia
that she remembered did not care to be called a child. "Remember your
talent. Remember your birth. You are healer-born. If the child you
carry is not to your liking, you need not carry it to term."
    "But I—"
    "No, not tonight. And not tomorrow, if I am a judge of the
power that you've used. But the night after, if you desire it, you will
have your freedom from—from what you bear." She saw Askeyia's shoulders
slump. Relief, of a sort.
    "If you do nothing," the seer continued, "the child will never
come to term." She stopped speaking a moment, and looked beyond the
gray of wall, to whatever lay without. "Askeyia, I never told you who I
was, and you asked. You always asked." She had hoped the girl would
smile, but there was about her a watchful fear that Evayne was certain
would never again leave her face.
    "I was raised in Callenton."
    At that, Askeyia's brows rose. "In Callenton? That's the town
over from—from where I was born. Evanton. I went there once, with my
father, in the summer." Her eyes clouded then, as she thought of the
father who had sent her to the safety of the mighty healing houses in
Averalaan.
    "My father was a blacksmith, and until his death, I was only a
strange-looking child. After his death—ah. After his death, I was a
stranger, a foreigner. You know how cruel children are before they
discover that they aren't children anymore.
    "In Callenton, I came into the power that brings me to you."
She very gently reached into her robes—her white robes—and pulled out a
glowing sphere that pulsed in her hand like a heart. In it, silver
clouds turned in upon