Inside, Breen saw a rough sort of comfort. Stools by a low fire, a pot simmering on it. A table and chairs, oil lamps and candles. A ladder climbed up to a loft.
“I have an ill?” Sul demanded, her face set, her eyes hard.
“I don’t think—”
“I tire too fast and too often. I feel off my feed. Heal me if you can, tell me if you can’t. I’m no coward.”
“It wasn’t an illness I felt. But a … a condition.”
“What’s the difference? You want to speak only to me. Speak.”
“I wasn’t sure you knew, or would want to let others know yet. I think you’re pregnant. I think you’re with child.”
Sul took a full step back. “Why would you say this?”
“I felt two heartbeats inside you. If I could look again to be sure? With your consent.”
Sul nodded, kept her tawny eyes on Breen as Breen laid a hand low on her belly, another on her chest. Breen thought of the lesson with Marg, how to open, feel life.
Closing her eyes, she let it come.
“I feel a heartbeat here.” She opened her eyes, pressed lightly on Sul’s chest. “And another here.” And against her womb. “The second is quiet yet, but strong. I’m not good enough to tell you how far along you are.”
Holding up a hand, Sul moved away to the back of the hut. She leaned on a long stone counter, and put her head out the window there to breathe.
“I thought it was the change when my courses stopped. Two courses haven’t come, and I’m near enough to the end of the fertile time, so this is what I believed. Then when I felt not good, tired, so often tired, the little pains I should have remembered were from making room for the new life.”
She turned back, those lion eyes glistening. “I have grown children, and they have children. Our youngest is fully twelve.”
“I’m sorry if this isn’t welcome.”
“Not welcome? This is a gift.” She pressed both hands to her belly. “You’ve given me the gift of knowing I make life again, and I weep in thanks.”
She came back, taking off the triangles dangling from her ears.
“Gold from our mines, hammered by our craftsmen. A gift for a gift.”
“They’re beautiful, and thank you. But I didn’t really have anything to do with it.”
On a whoop of laughter, Sul slapped Breen on the shoulder with such cheerful force Breen calculated she’d be sore for a week. “You have sass, don’t ya?”
“So Loga told me. I’m honored to wear them,” Breen said, and despite her stinging shoulder, put them on.
“Now we trade.”
The trading post turned out to be a large, deep cave lit by torchlight and guarded by trolls with thick clubs.
Aladdin’s cave, Breen thought, delighted and dazzled by the stones and crystals—some no bigger than a pebble, others bigger than her dog.
Another chamber held gold and silver and copper. Others weapons and armor forged from the metals, and still another held wares. Jewelry, pots, bowls, cups, chalices.
“Think of what you need,” Keegan said when she wandered and wandered. “Not of what you want.”
“Well, I want and need my own cauldron, so there’s that.” But she resisted the jewelry and trinkets—this time—and backtracked to select what she’d come for.
“Tell me when I hit the limits of the trade.”
Keegan let out a short laugh. “No worries there. Loga will certainly do just that.”
She filled a sack with stones, tumbled and rough, copper wire, silver dust. When she started on a second sack, she spared Keegan a look.
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back.”
“You’ve already enough for two life spans.”
“I’m almost done, so…”
Then she saw the globe, and everything else faded. Labradorite, a perfect circle, large enough she had to cup it in both hands.
When she did, she felt the vibration, in the stone, in her.
It swirled, blues and green, touches of golden brown. Storms and seas, she thought, grass and earth. And she felt she held the worlds in her hands.
In the stone, she saw herself, and then …
“Do you see?”
Because he’d already felt the power shimmering, Keegan set a hand on her shoulder. “What do you see?”
“The waterfall, and the river that runs on both sides, the forest, windswept. Two moons, one new, one full, riding the sky.
“Odran.”
When she spoke the name, some of the trolls who’d come into the post murmured against the dark and made the sign against evil.