With a last, wounded look at the slumbering child, Sasha followed the vampire.

The night was silent and windless, and she cradled the Jerle Shannara like a slumbering child rocked gently in her arms.

She looked also at her slumbering child.

"Right here, safe and warm and sound asleep," answered the barmaid, pointing out the slumbering child.

The boy's mother smiled and pulled the sleeping furs more closely around her slumbering child, then signalled for Morgan to withdraw with her to the outer chamber.

A pair of nuns, dressed identically to Sister Catherine sat in heavy wooden chairs, intently watching the slumbering children.

Still she repeated it, a soft, hypnotic murmur, her words half-lost in the sound of water, hissing past the side of the ship, and she spoke no longer to the man beside her, but to the slumbering child within.

She was sitting in the huge gilt-framed bed which had been originally intended for her and James, her knees drawn up to her chest, arms clasping her lower legs, looking down at the slumbering child.

Silence ensued around the slumbering child, and the sages of the realm ceased from their deliberations.

So did everything else, except the warm lump of her slumbering child.