The fibers in the cut end of the cord glowed minutely. It was a race between their fire going out and the wick taking light, and Marak yanked out a loop of his own hair to keep the little flame going; Tofi did, and the fire still went out, the middle of the hair loops burning through too quickly.

But the wick had just caught, and in their deep dark and the overthrow of the world, it cast comforting light on worried men’s faces—it reached up and illumined tent canvas that quivered under the steady onslaught of the wind, and it reached aside to the women’s circle.

Carefully, carefully, shielding the light all the way, Marak turned and gave it to Hati. It lit female faces, the lady’s, the mother, the aunts, and Hati and Patya and Norit—and, distressed and tremulous of lip, Lelie. The au’it, too, was there, frowning and without advice—the Ila’s virgin servant.

In the violence of a sudden gust the lady screamed, but the wind drowned the most of it, and Marak sat unhappily listening to a pain he could not help. It would be what it was. If there was anyone to intervene, the women knew, the women would.

“It’s her first,” Marak said to Tofi with a shake of his head. “It’s a month early. It’s the storm. I hope that baby is brave enough to be born.”

“They don’t ever change their minds, do they?” Tofi asked.

“Not often. Not when it’s this far.” Excluding some wisdom of the an’i Keran that he had never heard, the birth was in progress. Not to the good of the mother would the baby change its mind now.

The au’it, incredibly, spread her book and wrote, slanting it to the little light there was. The record resumed. The world went on. Marak drew a wider breath.

Tofi even dared take a brief look outside, through the lacings.

“They’re alive out there,” he reported of the beshti. “I don’t know how.”

They sat, waterless, without easy rest. The wind blew. The labor went on and on, until at last the women clearly despaired of what they saw, and roused the lady up and supported her from either side in a walk about the tent, around and around and around, while Bosginde sheltered the lamp for them.

The lady lay down again. Got up again.

“Is it any closer?” Marak asked Hati.

“No,” Hati said. “No. It isn’t.”

There was yet another circuit of the tent, but the lady failed and collapsed in the women’s arms, screaming in misery none of them could help, crying for her husband, her own mother, people none of them could find. Lelie began to cry, and the wind howled, never less than storm force.

“She wants her husband,” Marak said. “If she wants her husband, he’s not that far.”