Sosie released a groaning sob. “But she’ll—Markle, I think the baby’s breech or something. He won’t come out, and I think he’s ripping up her insides. She’s going to die—they’re both going to die—and I don’t know what to do.”
“Might be better that way,” Markle said, polishing a glass and setting it on the wood of the bar. “You know—with your sister’s troubles.”
Senneth had been watching attentively anyway, but at that, she raised her eyebrows and gave Kirra one quick look. Kirra’s expression matched the one she could feel on her own face.
Sosie choked with fury and then started crying. “It will not be better if she dies! You—did my father tell you to send your wife away? Did he tell you not to help me if I came to you? She’s dying, Markle. After the baby’s born, she’ll leave—we’ll both leave. But she’s dying! How can a good man let such a terrible thing happen?”
Senneth was on her feet before the last sentence was even spoken. Tayse said, “We weren’t going to draw attention to ourselves,” but she brushed by him, Kirra at her heels. She was beside Sosie before the weeping girl even knew there was a stranger in the room. She put her hand cautiously on the girl’s arm.
“We’ll help you,” she said softly, and Sosie whipped around to stare at her through red-rimmed eyes. “My friend is a healer, and I have a little skill in that area myself. Your sister won’t die.”
For a moment, an array of conflicting emotions crossed the girl’s face: hope, fear, distrust, and a basic desire for honesty that almost led her to speak the secret Senneth had already guessed. Fear for her sister won out. “Can you come right now?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Senneth said.
A small parade followed Sosie as she hurried out into the night, for Tayse and Justin were not about to let the women go anywhere unescorted, and the other two saw no reason to be left behind. Though Senneth fancied she saw a little relief on Donnal’s face when she asked him to go back and stay with the raelynx.
“We won’t need you at this task,” she told him as she jogged along behind Kirra and Sosie. “And I think he’ll be calmer if one of us is near.”
He nodded and dropped back. Cammon hurried up to take his place beside Senneth. “What do you think it is?” he puffed. “The woman in labor is a mystic?”
Senneth nodded. “Or the baby is. Or the baby’s father was, and they fear that the child will be as well. Some kind of magic is afoot, no doubt.”
He grinned. “Tayse isn’t going to be happy about this.”
“When is Tayse ever happy?”
The way to Sosie’s house was some distance off the main road through a rutted track and a tangle of scrubby trees. The house itself was unprepossessing, small and ill-built, with a few sheds and lean-tos on the back. Clearly the family members weren’t farmers, so Senneth guessed they hunted or hired out for seasonal labor. Or lived off poaching and thievery; who knew? She fell in step beside Kirra and entered the dimly lit house two paces behind Sosie. The men crowded in behind them.
A quick look gave her all the particulars. They stood in a low-beamed room crammed with threadbare furniture and four people arguing. Wretched moans were issuing through a door to the left—the bedroom where the pregnant woman lay, apparently. Sosie and Kirra headed straight there without pausing, slipping inside the room before anyone else in the house had even acknowledged their presence.
Senneth waited for the inevitable explosion.
“Hey!” That came from the small, wiry, furious man whom Senneth took to be the patriarch of the family. He looked as if he wanted to run after his daughter and the unknown woman but felt compelled to confront the mass of strangers at his door. “Who are—what do you—get out of my house, whoever you are!”
Behind him, his two sons deployed; a weeping woman collapsed on a battered sofa, apparently too spent to care who entered her house or why. Senneth faced the men, speaking in her calmest and most persuasive voice.
“My name is Senneth. My friend Kirra and I have been traveling to Nocklyn on personal business. This is our escort. We were at the tavern when your daughter rushed in, asking for help. Kirra is a healer of quite remarkable skill. It seemed only humane to come as quickly as we could and offer our services to save a woman’s life.”
The man spat directly on the floor mere inches from Senneth’s foot. She did not even flinch. It had not escaped her notice that his ragged pants were belted in place with a buckle studded with moonstones. “Better for this baby not to be born,” he said.
“Surely the Pale Lady welcomes all new life to the world,” she said softly.
“Not tainted life. Not evil life,” he retorted.
A shriek came from the other room, followed swiftly by the sound of Sosie’s frantic weeping and Kirra’s soothing voice. The woman on the sofa sobbed and buried her face in her hands.
“Don’t need to worry about it, Da,” one of the young men said. “She’s not gonna pull through this.”
“Baby’ll kill her coming out,” said the other. “Kill hisself, too, most like.”
“Not my Annie, not my Annie,” the woman on the couch moaned.
“She might die,” Senneth nodded. “But between us, I believe Kirra and I can probably save them both.”
“Don’t want them saved!” the father said savagely. “Don’t you understand plain speaking? The child’s wicked! The Pale Mother is striking him down now before he can do any harm!”
She held on to her calm, but it was a struggle; fury piled like dry kindling in every vein, waiting to be ignited. “What is it you accuse him of ?” she asked. “Why does such a helpless thing deserve your hatred?”
He came a step closer and practically sprayed her face with saliva. “He’s a mystic’s bastard, and he bears mystic powers,” he said venomously. “Since he’s lain in my daughter’s belly, he’s corrupted her with his spiteful magic—she’s done things and seen things that I—” He shook his head, unable to put his disgust into words. “Maybe once he’s out of her, he and his poison blood, she’ll be my good Annie again, but I’m afraid he’s turned her. I’m afraid she’s lost to us now. The Pale Mother knows what to do with people who have been given over to magic.”
“I’m sure Annie will be happy enough to leave your house once she and the child are well enough to travel,” Senneth said, still speaking quietly, still behaving reasonably. Not for long, though; oh, not for long. She could feel her shoulders aching with her desire to set this man on fire. She could feel a headache lurking on the highest knob of her spine.
“They will not leave here alive!” the father roared, and lunged for the open doorway of the bedroom. His wife screamed. His sons shouted.
Senneth knocked him backward with a swipe of her fist. He cried out and put his hand to his burning shoulder. “You will not disturb the birthing bed,” she said, her voice low and menacing. “You will not harm your daughter, or her child, or you yourself will not live through this night.”
He came at her again, and she flung her hands before her, radiating such heat from her fingertips that he retreated, coughing and cursing and brushing at his face. Behind her, she heard the smooth metallic glide of swords being pulled from scabbards, but she did not turn to see what sort of threat Tayse and Justin were offering to the household. She was dangerous enough on her own.
“What right do you have to come into my home and give me orders?” the man panted. His sons massed uncertainly behind him, but came no closer to Senneth. His wife had stopped sobbing and now stared at the whole tableau, her mouth open in astonishment. “Who are you? What are you? Damned mystic like my daughter’s son?”
She couldn’t stop herself; she placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him, hard. He screamed, and scorch marks appeared on his shirt as he tumbled backward.
“If you try to harm that baby,” she said in hard, precise words, “I will burn your house down around your head. I will set your flesh on fire. No prayer to the Pale Lady, no moonstone around your wai
st, will save you from my magic. She is safe, do you hear me? You cannot kill her.”
He was a man not used to being thwarted or threatened, and even his fear could not dampen his sudden burst of rage. He uttered a wordless yell and launched himself at her across the floor.
And then Senneth went a little mad.
She threw a fireball at him, rolling up his stomach, over his head, and down his back. She tossed sprays of red heat at his sons, who started her way and then stumbled back, batting at the air and covering their heads with their arms. She gestured at the curtains, and they burst into flames—at the scarred wooden rocker, and it burst into flames—at the central pole of the house connecting floor and ceiling, and it burst into flames. The room grew so hot it seemed as if the air itself might kindle at any moment.
“Stay where you are,” she warned, as the three men stood rooted to the spot, looking about them in horror. “Nothing will be harmed if you do not approach me or your daughter’s room. If you make a move in her direction, the whole house will burn. Except the room where your daughter lies laboring.”
“You’re a sorceress,” the man whispered, half afraid and half furious. “The Pale Mother curses you.”
“I’m not afraid of your paltry little goddess,” Senneth said in contempt. “Or you fools who worship her. Now stay back from me.”
And she turned on her heel and entered the room where the woman Annie was giving birth. She saw shadows behind her and knew that Tayse and Justin had moved to guard the door. Where Cammon was during all this she had no idea. She tried not to think about it; she tried to close her mind to every thought except what might be going on right now in this small, dark room where magic waited to be born.
CHAPTER 18
KIRRA and Sosie, positioned on either side of the bloody bed, looked up as Senneth strode in. Kirra looked very sober, Sosie terrified. The woman between them was white as death already. Her dark hair lay spread on her pillow; her eyes were closed against pain. It seemed possible at any moment that she would breathe her last.
“Can you save her?” Senneth asked baldly.
“I’m not sure,” Kirra answered. “But I can save the baby.”
“Please.” A whisper from the laboring woman. “Please save him. Let me go.”
Sosie started crying again and leaned over the bed, touching her own forehead to her sister’s face. “No, Annie, no, Annie, you can’t die. You can’t leave me behind.”
“What’s the situation out there?” Kirra asked.
“No one will disturb us,” Senneth replied.
“Then help me,” Kirra said. “If you can stop the bleeding—”
“Oh yes,” Senneth said, “I can do that.”
They fought for the next two hours to bring the troublesome infant into the world. Annie struggled in and out of consciousness, laboring for her child’s life even more than her own. She barely had the strength to scream when Senneth’s hands cauterized her bleeding womb, but that touch seemed to improve the overall situation somewhat. At least there was a little less blood afterward.
But. “She’s fading, Sen,” Kirra said as that second hour crept past. “Can you—is there some way—”
“Is there a way I can hold her soul in place?” Senneth finished. “I’ll do what I can.”
Sosie looked up in some alarm as Senneth shifted position, moving up toward the head of the bed. Sosie herself merely sat as close to her sister as she could, clutching her hand and repeating how much she loved her. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“Try to detain her,” Senneth said.
“Will it hurt?”
Senneth almost laughed. There was so much pain in the room already that the question seemed ridiculous. Senneth herself was dizzy with a headache that pressed in on the top of her head like a row of chisels being hammered with an axe. But her body still raged with fire; she was hot with magic. “Everything hurts,” she replied, which she very well knew was not a comforting answer. “Living hurts. This is something you want her to feel.”
She perched on the edge of the bed and put one hand on Annie’s forehead, one hand on her chest, overlaying her heart. The woman hissed at the sudden fiery touch. “That’s right,” Senneth murmured. “You can feel that. You are still inside this cage of bones.”
“Sen,” Kirra said suddenly. “I’ve almost got the baby.”
Senneth nodded. The baby was no longer her concern; Annie was. She could feel the ebb and flow of blood under her fingertips, the cool clamminess of the skin as Annie’s will and strength failed. As her soul evaporated, insubstantial as breath. “No,” Senneth murmured, “you will not escape that easily.”
The heat of her own body seeped into Annie’s veins and began circulating through her dormant form. Senneth could feel the woman’s temperature rise, degree by degree. Still, Annie’s heartbeat faltered; still, her lungs did not have the strength to fill and empty. Senneth pushed down harder, released even more warmth onto the chilled flesh. She pressed heavily on the reluctant heart, forcing it to work.
Annie sighed once and turned her head to one side. She did not breathe again.
“Annie!” Sosie screamed. “Annie!”
“No, you don’t,” Senneth said softly. “Not this time. Not now.” And she bent down and covered Annie’s cool lips with her own. She closed her eyes and breathed, imagining all her vitality, all her power, passing from her body into Annie’s. She imagined her breath like a bright butterfly, skipping down the interior corridors of Annie’s bones, leaving color and a sparkle of life everywhere it flew.
Annie gasped, choked, and then spasmed on the bed. Suddenly she gulped in great gusts of air, and twisted violently where she lay.
“Got him,” Kirra exclaimed, and a few sounds of slickness were followed by a hiccuping cry. “A boy, just like you thought. Lady’s tears, but he’s a big one.”
Sosie’s eyes went indecisively from Annie’s face to Kirra’s. “Do you—do you need me?”
The boy choked once and began a long, indignant wail. “No. I can handle him,” Kirra said. She rose and carried the infant across the room where water and rags were laid out.
Sosie bent over to whisper in her sister’s ear, and her hair brushed Senneth’s hand on Annie’s forehead. “Did you hear that?” she asked. “That’s your son crying. Listen to him! Hear how strong he is! But he needs you, Annie—don’t let him go—stay with him—”
Annie’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. From the other side of the room, Senneth could hear the infant still bawling, could catch sounds of splashing water and ripping linen, and Kirra’s soft, reassuring voice. But she paid attention to none of it. All her focus was on Annie.
The woman’s eyes were open, and she was staring up at Senneth as if at the Bright Mother herself, source of all life. Clinging to the image of Senneth’s face, willing herself to stay alert, stay alive. Senneth shifted her hand on Annie’s face and saw the red imprint of her palm on the pale forehead. Heat from her body still poured through her fingers into Annie’s blood. Annie’s heartbeat seemed more certain, less erratic. Her breath was more even, more determined. The wan face was brushed along the cheeks with the faintest hint of color.
From across the room, there was the sound of glass crashing to the floor.
Sosie flinched at the noise and jumped up, Annie’s hand still in her grasp. “What was—did you drop something?”
Kirra was cursing. “By the Bright Mother, the Pale Lady, and all the forgotten gods! No, I didn’t drop anything. Who was it who found your sister’s bed and got this child upon her?”
Sosie stood indecisively, looking down at Annie, then over at Kirra. “I—some boy. He was with a group of peddlers who stayed at the village for a week or two. Annie said he could do amazing things—juggle plates and glasses and a cannonball—even without touching them, she said. I didn’t believe her, of course.”
“Well, I don’t know what god would make that kind of magic, but it seems like this little one
has inherited his father’s skills,” Kirra said. Her voice was partly amused, partly exasperated, and not a little afraid. “He just knocked over the water pitcher from three feet away.”
A moment’s silence. “Are you sure?” Sosie said blankly.
“Well, I didn’t touch it,” Kirra answered.
Senneth smiled down at Annie, who was still concentrating on her face with all the strength in her body. “Did you hear that?” Senneth crooned. “Your son has amazing strength. He will be a powerful man. But he needs you right now. He is so small, and he is so afraid. He will stumble and hurt himself if you aren’t beside him to help him—”
“I—will help him,” Annie said.
They were the first words she’d spoken for two hours. Sosie whimpered and fell to her knees beside the bed, kissing her sister’s knuckles. “Annie, Annie, are you all right? Can you hear me?”
“I’m—I can hear you,” Annie whispered.
Kirra came over, the wrapped infant in her arms, and stood beside Senneth. “And is she? Going to be all right?”
“I think so,” Senneth said. “She’s weak, of course. But she seems to have—come back to life.”
“Thank you,” Annie whispered.
“Hush,” Sosie said. “Save your strength.”
Annie moved her lips silently, her eyes now on Kirra’s face. Kirra smiled and bent down, holding the fierce bundle close to her. “Can you see him? Isn’t that a fine little face? I’m going to put him right up to your mouth, so you can give him a kiss, and then I’m going to take him away so you can rest.”
This maneuver accomplished, Kirra crossed the room again, bouncing the baby in her arms. Sosie looked over at Senneth. “What do I do now?” she asked. “How do I take care of them?”
Yes, Senneth had realized all along that this might be an even more vexing question than how to keep mother and child alive during the labor process. “Can you trust your mother?” she asked. “Or does she do what your father tells her?”