Mother of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

voted on anything!” snapped Graw, who, as far as Rudy knew, wasn’t even on the Settlements Council. “But as a man of the land whose labor is supporting you, I have the right to know what’s being done! Not one of your wizards has come down to have a look at my fields.”
    “The slunch is different down there?”
    “Thank you very much for coming to us, Master Graw.” Minalde’s voice warmed as she inclined her head. As Graw made a move to stride toward the Keep, she added, with impeccably artless timing, “And I bid you welcome to the Keep, you and your riders, and make you free of it.”
    He halted, his jaw tightening, but he could do no more than mutter, “I thank you, lady. Majesty,” he added, under the cool pressure of that morning-glory gaze. He glared atRudy, then jerked his hand at the small band of riders who’d accompanied the herd of tribute sheep up the pass. They fell in behind him, bowing awkward thanks to Alde as they followed him up the shallow black stone steps and vanished into the dark tunnel of the Doors.
    Rudy set his jaw, willing the man’s hostility to slide off him like rain.
    In a sweet voice trained by a childhood spent with relentless deportment masters, Minalde said, “One of these days I’m going to break that man’s nose.”
    “Y’want lessons?” Janus asked promptly, and they all laughed.
    “Why is it,” Minalde asked with a sigh, later, as she and Rudy walked down the muddy path toward the Keep farms, “that one always hears of spells that will turn people into trees and frogs and mongrel dogs, but never one that will turn a … a lout like that into a good man?”
    Rudy shrugged. “Maybe because if I said, ‘Abracadabra, turn that jerk into a good man,’ there’d be no change.” He shook his head. “Sheesh. I’ve been around Ingold too long.”
    She laughed and touched his hand. His fingers fitted with hers as if designed to do so at the beginning of time. The farms—which, contrary to Graw’s assertions, were in fact the chief business of the Keep, and always had been—were far enough from the walls that wizard and lady could walk handfast without exacerbating the sensibilities of the conservative. Everyone knew that the Keep wizard’s pupil was the lady’s lover and the father of the child she carried, but it was a matter seldom mentioned: the religious teachings of a less desperate age died hard.
    “You’re going to have to go down there, you know,” Alde said in time.
    “Now?”
    Their eyes met, and she rested her free hand briefly on the swell beneath her gown. “I think so,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s the second or third time he’s been up here, demanding that something be done about slunch. He has a lot of influence in the Settlements, not with the nobles, butwith the hunters, and some of the farmers. If he broke away from Keep rule, he’d probably turn bandit himself. The child isn’t due for another two months, you know.”
    Rudy knew. Though he’d helped to birth dozens of babies in the five years he’d been Ingold’s pupil, the thought of Alde being brought to bed while the master wizard was still on the road somewhere terrified him.
    With Alde, it was different.
    The Lady of the Keep. The widow of the last High King. Tir’s mother.
    The mother of the child that would be his.
    The thought made him shiver inside, with longing and joy and a strange disbelief. He’d be a father. That child inside her—inside the person he most loved in the whole of his life, the whole of two universes—was a part of him.
    Involuntarily—half kiddingly, but half not—he thought,
Poor kid. Some gene pool
.
    And yet …
    Under the all-enveloping bulk of her quilted silk coat she barely showed, even this far along. But she had the glowing beauty he’d seen in those of his sisters who’d married happily and carried children by the men who brought them joy. Ingold had early taught him the spells that wizards lay upon their consorts to keep