The late spring rain was heavy and chill. Some of it was seeping through the roof where the thatch was worn. The fire had gone out the day before, and the two children did not know how to restart it. They huddled together to keep warm. Their mother's body lay on the bed amid a pool of blood that was now congealed and blackening. The stench in the cottage had already numbed their nostrils, even as the cold had numbed their fingers and toes. The wind suddenly howled in mournful fashion, and the smaller of the two children whimpered, pressing himself closer to his elder sister.

Rhonwyn uerch Llywelyn focused her brain again as she had these past two days. How was she to save Glynn and herself from certain death? Their mama was dead, birthing the prince's latest child. Their cottage was isolated from any village, for decent women would not tolerate the prince's whore and his bastards. The old crone who had helped Vala in her two previous births had not been there this time, because this time the child had come too soon. Much too soon.

They needed to be warm, Rhonwyn thought sleepily. How did one start a fire? If only it would cease raining. Perhaps they could walk and find another cottage or village-but whatever a village was for she didn't really know, having never left the hill on which she had lived her whole five years. Rhonwyn hugged her three-year-old brother tighter against her when he whimpered again.

"Hungry," he complained to her.

"There is nothing left, Glynn," she repeated for the tenth time. "When the rain stops we will go and find food. If we leave the cottage now, we will surely die." They were apt to die in any event, Rhonwyn thought irritably. If she could only start a fire to warm them, the gnawing in their bellies might not seem so fierce.