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together so long.”
    She blew out the candle that illuminated the room. “Yes, my lord,” she said. “I will be near if you need me.” Silently, she glided from the room. She had a chamber of her own, on an upper floor, where she sometimes sat to watch the sky and wait for Rezhyk to summon her. She went there now. There were tasks to be done around the castle—there were always tasks—but she did not feel like doing any of them at this moment.

CHAPTER THREE
    Ť ^ ť
    She called him Cray. She bore him without another human hand to help, while her animals looked on from a ring about her bed. When he was free of her body, cloths washed and swaddled him and laid him upon her breast, and the soiled bedding eased itself away from her, rolled into a ball, and tumbled away to burn itself in the fireplace while fresh sheets crept beneath her and fresh blankets tucked themselves about her and her new son. She slept then.
    He was a happy child, laughing early, reaching out with curious but gentle fingers for the brightly colored flowers and birds of the garden. He grew fast and sturdy, with his mother’s eyes and hair, with no hint of the young knight about him save for a love of fighting men. He would sit before the webs for hours to watch armored warriors strut across the view, to glimpse a sword and shield. He begged his mother to make her spiders move their webs outdoors, where he could watch sword practice and jousting, and she indulged him, as she did in most things. When he asked for a toy sword, she made it with her own hands, of a straight branch with a guard of twigs lashed to one end. She made a shield, too, a light frame covered with cloth, and she embroidered his father’s arms upon the cloth—three red lances interlocked on a white field, just as they were upon the tapestry.
    The tapestry was long completed. It hung in the room of its manufacture, the room from which the empty forest track could be seen. Delivev no longer climbed the stairs every day to look at either. But sometimes, late at night, after Cray was supposed to be asleep, she would visit the tower room and weep before the portrait. On those nights, she remembered the songs of troubadours too well. She listened to them less often these days, preferring to find absorption in her plants, her animals, and her son.
    Cray had followed her to the tower a few times and crouched outside to hear her tears. He knew why she wept, and even when he was very young he wondered why any man would leave a woman to do that.
    “He had pledged himself,” his mother explained. “When a person makes a promise, he must fulfill it.”
    “Even if it means hurting someone?” Cray asked.
    “Even so. That is the nature of a promise, Cray.”
    When he was older, he said, “He must have found Falconhill by now, Mother. He must have given his message. Why hasn’t he returned? He promised you, too, after all.”
    “He did. He said, when his duty was done. Perhaps there was more than just the message itself. He never wished to speak of it, and I didn’t press him.” She was working on another tapestry now, with Cray as its central figure, but he was growing so fast that it no longer portrayed the Cray standing before her. “I will wait here and raise you, my son, waiting.” She smiled sadly. “I never had better plans, before he came to me.”
    In a small voice, Cray said, “Do you think he’s dead, Mother?”
    She sighed. “I don’t want to think that, Cray.”
    “Well, what else could have happened to him?”
    “Perhaps he found some other woman he could love more than he loved me.”
    “More than you?” He threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. “How could anyone love someone else more than you?”
    She kissed her son. “Someday, you may love someone more than you love me, and you will understand.”
    “Never!”
    “Don’t say never, Cray, not with a long life ahead of you.”
    He looked into her eyes. “Why don’t you try to find him, Mother?”
    “It would be difficult after so many