When we reached my mother’s tent, I tethered the horse and left Demizdor beside it, telling her not to stray or the warriors would think her fair game, after all. I was beginning not to like her docility, and the task before me made me uneasy besides.

I went into the tent very softly.

There was a brazier burning by the bed place, no greater light than that. For a moment I did not find Tathra, then I discovered where she sat, in the shadow of the tall Eshkiri loom. There was a cloth on the loom, black and white, the cloth a tribal woman constructed to wrap her dead in, when she had his body. But she was not weaving, and the cloth was barely started on.

She kept as motionless as the night. Black as night, too, with her hair and robe, and her face hidden by the shireen. Yet there was something in her attitude that was as naked as her face was not. Her eyes were shut. She did not weep, but she looked finished and withered as a branch burned in the fire. Her loud crying was inside. Whatever my victory, this I had done, and I was not happy at it.

“Ettook’s wife,” I said, speaking very low, and addressing her as a stranger would do it, trying to come to her gradually. She never stirred. “Ettook’s wife, there is a better tale than you have been hearing.”

“Thank you, warrior,” she said. “You honor me. But do not tell me now, for I am only a fool of a woman who is too stupid to understand in her grief.”

I had disguised my voice too well, I saw. I hooked aside the flap of the tent so some of the light from outside should enter, for the sky had cleared and the risen moon was shining bright.

“Your son lives,” I said to her. “That is the news.”

At this she woke. Her lids lifted, and I turned a little, letting the moon describe me, bit by bit.

“Tuvek,” she said. Her tone was cold and empty enough that it frightened me.

“Yes, Mother,” I answered. “I’m flesh, not ghost. Come and touch me to be sure.”

She got up, stiff as an old woman, and began to walk to me with slow deliberate steps. I dared not go to her, she seemed so full of disbelief and terror; she was almost terrible herself.

But about four paces from me, she must have sensed, as an animal senses it, the warmth from my body, the scent of something living. She gave a muffled sound and stopped as if the earth had hold of her feet. And then her eyes went away from my face, by me, into the moonlight dark beyond the tent, almost as Chula’s had done, except that my mother’s eyes widened and became stony as though the sight had gone out of them, and she dropped down on the ground.