Sleep was slow coming. Her back ached. Her legs and feet hurt. Her mind would not abandon its neurotic harping despite her efforts to silence it. And the baby would not lie still.

But sleep of a sort did come, and with it visions as disquieting as anything her mind threw up while awake.

They belonged to a family of dreams she had begun to know well. She dreamed about Ethrian, a desert, and a great, frightening shadow. Her son was calling for help. His voice was weak and remote. The shadow was amused. It lashed out at her child, inflicting intolerable torment. She reached out for Ethrian, but he couldn’t tell she was there.

She had had a lot of Ethrian dreams lately, mainly when she wasn’t too deeply asleep. They varied, yet always showed her son alive, trying to evade some shadowy peril.

Varth claimed it was just pregnancy doing strange things, that her dreams had no parallel in the real world. But she had been through this before, several years ago. She hadn’t been pregnant then.

She believed cluster dreams reflected truth. There was great magic in dreams, though she hadn’t the knowledge to interpret them. Her own touch of magic was severely diminished now she no longer had brothers. Their grasp of the Power had always required the concentration of the entire family….

Varth was no expert, either, but he should know enough to realize her dreams had significance… or did they? Suppose he was right? Suppose they were manifestations of her fears and insecurities?

She was coming out of the twilight into which she’d fallen. She wasn’t chasing every will-o’-the-wisp notion. She was trying to think linearly… And she was disappointed. For an instant she’d felt she’d reached a half-open door, about to capture an unsuspected glimpse of the truth.

She heard a soft rustle, quiet footsteps. She recognized the maid’s step. “I’m awake, Margo.”

“Ah, Lady. I didn’t want to interrupt your nap. Your husband asked me to check.”

“Tell him to come in.”

Varthlokkur seated himself on the edge of her bed, held her hands. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good. What’s happening in the rest of the world?”

“The usual. They’re being born, they’re dying, and generally acting silly in between. Four hundred years I’ve watched them and they haven’t changed. They keep right on doing the same stupid things.”

Disappointment trickled through Nepanthe. There would be no discussing her dream while he was like this. “You’re in that mood again?”

“What mood?”

“All is vanity and chasing after the wind.”

“Hunh! Sometimes it’s the only realistic philosophy.”