Alora looked at him and nodded: he was only speaking the truth. He didn’t mind; but she did not know how much that decision had cost him, and she couldn’t help wondering. And she did mind, somehow; and she rather thought that their people, even if only wistfully, did too. Antin was a nice boy (and let nothing happen to him! One could only hope Lirrah’s parents could find someone with sense enough for two to marry her), but … she didn’t mean to think of Ellian, but still she often did; and she knew the rumor that was whispered about her, Queen Alora: that she bore her husband and her kingdom no children because she had never quite recovered from the loss of her sister years ago. She wasn’t sure that this wasn’t correct.
But then, shortly after she became Queen, and after a dozen quiet years of marriage, Alora began to have dizzy spells in the mornings when she first stepped out of bed. She didn’t like being sick, so she ignored them, assuming that if they didn’t get any attention they would go away; and every day they did, but most mornings they came back. Then other things happened, and she knew for sure: but she was afraid to tell anyone, because perhaps it still wasn’t true, maybe she read the signs wrong because she wanted so much that it be true. And then one day Gilvan went looking for his wife and couldn’t find her anywhere that he thought she should be; and at last when he was beginning to feel a little worried, he ran her to earth in their big bedroom. The bed itself was a monster, up three velvet-carpeted steps to a dais almost as large as the dais that held the royal table in the banqueting hall. The four carved bedposts stood eight feet above the mattress, broad as masts, and were almost black in color, yielding only a very little brown warmth if the sun shone full upon them; the bed-curtains were as elaborate as a hundred of the finest needlewomen could make them, working all day for six months before the royal wedding, a dozen years ago.
Alora looked very small, sitting at the great bed’s foot, her arms around one of the posts, her face pressed against the curtains. She sat very still, as if she were afraid she might overflow if she moved; but with joy or sorrow he could not tell.
“What is it?” he said, and realized his heart was thumping much louder than it ought to be.
She opened her eyes and saw him, and a smile overflowed her quietness. She let go the bedpost and held out her arms to him. “Our heir,” she said. “Six months more, I think, if I have been keeping proper count. I’ve been afraid to tell you before, but it’s true, after all these years.…”
Gilvan, who had never cared before, discovered suddenly and shatteringly that he was about to care very much indeed.
Alora had been keeping proper count; five months and twenty-seven days later she gave birth to a daughter, while Gilvan paced up and down a long stone corridor somewhere in the palace—later, he was never quite sure where it was—and thought about all sorts of things, not a one of which he could remember afterward. They named her Linadel, and her christening party was the most magnificent occasion anyone could remember. The young sprigs and dandies of the court—even the best-regulated court has a few of them who are above having a good time—had a good time; the great-grandmothers who spent all their time complaining how much handsomer and finer and generally superior things had been when they were young unbent enough to smile and admit that this was really a rather nice party, now they came to think of it. And the old King and Queen dusted themselves off, and left their precious flower garden long enough to return to the capital, and meet their new granddaughter, and borrow some fancy dress, and go to the party; and they even thought their granddaughter was worth it.
Linadel herself was rosy and smiling throughout, and didn’t seem to mind being kept awake so long and passed from one set of strange arms to another, and breathed on by all sorts (all the better sorts, at least) of strange people. She continued to smile and to make small gurgles and squeaks, and to look fresh and contented. It was her parents who wore out first and called an end to the festivities.
Linadel grew up, as princesses are expected to do, more beautiful every day; and with charms of mind and manner that kept pace. She didn’t speak at all till she was three years old, and then on her third birthday she astonished everyone by saying, quite distinctly, as she sat surrounded by gifts and fancy sweets, and godmothers and godfathers (she had almost two dozen of them), and specially favored subjects and servants, “This is a very nice party. Thank you very much.” Everyone thought this was a very auspicious beginning; and they were right. Linadel never lisped her r’s or took refuge in smiling and looking as pretty as a picture (which she could have done easily) when she tackled a comment too large for her. On her fourth birthday she presented everyone with what amounted to a small speech. “And a better one than some I’ve heard her granddaddy give,” said a godfather out of the corner of his mouth to a godmother, who giggled.
She never looked back, whatever she did. In any other kingdom her parents and friends—and everyone was her friend—would have said that the faeries had blessed her. Here, they said only, “Isn’t she wonderful, isn’t she beautiful, isn’t it splendid that she’s ours?”
She was beautiful. Her hair was dark, velvet brown by candlelight and almost chestnut in the sun; and it fell in long slow curls past her shoulders. When she was thoughtful, she would wind a loose curl—her thick hair invariably escaped from its ribbons—around one hand and pull gently till it slid through her fingers and sprang back to its place. This habit, as she grew older, made young men breathe hard.
Her eyes were grey. Or at least mostly grey. They had lights and glimmers in them that some people thought were blue, or green, or perhaps gold; but for everyday purposes (and even a princess has need for a few everyday facts) they were grey. Her skin was pale and pure, with three or four coppery freckles across her small nose to keep her from being perfect. Her hands were long and slim and quiet, and a touch from them would still a barking dog or soothe a fever.
But the strongest thing about her, and perhaps the finest too, was her will. It was her will that prevented her from being hopelessly spoiled, when without it—in spite of the intelligence and cheerfulness that were as much a part of her as her dark hair and pale eyes—it would have been inevitable. Her will told her that she was a princess and would someday become a queen, and had responsibilities (many of them tiresome) therefore; but beyond that she was an ordinary human being like any other. It was her position as a princess which explained the extravagant respect and praise she received from everyone (except her parents, whom she could talk to as two other ordinary human beings caught in the same trap); and it was this belief in her essential ordinariness that prevented her head from being turned by the other. She did very well this way; and the strength of this willful innocence meant that she did not realize that the respect and admiration was by it that much increased.