The worst part of that time, however, arose from my own soul with no reference to any other. I am deeply ashamed to admit it, but in the secret depths of my heart I was furious with the child that grew within me. I know it sounds unnatural and I would deny it if I could, but it happened. The simple truth is that I had been told that it could not survive its own birth and I was angry at it for taking me with it. Despite that day in Kaibar when Varien and I had played at becoming parents, I knew that my life was more than likely to end suddenly and badly, when I had only just begun to live. I was very glad that our speed did not allow us to speak much to one another, and I closed my thoughts to Varien as best I could.
We rode through the day nearly without stopping, pushing the horses and ourselves, changing about every twenty or twenty-five miles. The poor beasts would be useless for several days after, but they were all young and fit and it wouldn't really hurt them. And we had travelled well over a hundred miles in a day, with six changes of mount. It was astounding.
At this rate we would be in Verfaren in another day.
I can hear what you are thinking, those of you who have borne children. How could you do that? Didn't it hurt like fury? Yes, it did. Didn't the riding make the pain worse? Yes, of course. But what would you? I was being forced to ride like the very wind towards the one place in all of Kolmar that I should have been avoiding, for the sake of saving my life. The demons were piping loud and clear and I was dancing like there was no tomorrow, for that was indeed like to be the case.
We stopped just to the north of Elimar, the capital of the South Kingdom. Rella again selected the inn. It was expensive, but it was clean and the food was good enough. She disappeared soon after we arrived, only to return in time for the evening meal. "I've arranged for a really fine Healer to come along to see you, my girl," she said, very pleased with herself. "But not until after we've eaten, so get down to it."
I was intensely relieved to hear that a Healer was coming, but I couldn't eat a thing. I had gone to change my cloth when we arrived and found that I had to change all my un-derthings. Even I knew that there was far too much blood. The possibility mat I might die from this was beginning to become very real. I had been trying to blank out the pain but it was now affecting my every movement, and I was starting to feel light-headed from the loss of blood. I started to thank Kella for her kindness when Jamie interrupted me. He had been brooding and growly ever since we'd left Kaibar and he wouldn't tell me what was bothering him. From the storm on his brow I suspected we were all about to find out.
"That's enough!" he said sharply, keeping his voice as quiet as he could with that much anger behind it. I knew it was coming but I still jumped. "Why, Mistress Rella?"
"Why what?" she asked, tearing a chunk off the loaf on the table. "Damn, I'm hungry. Pass the butter, will you, Lanen?"
"Why all of it?" said Jamie, staring at Rella. "Finding Healers, arranging Post horses—I can't believe it's all part of your work."
Rella looked at him, a bit confused. She wasn't the only one. "Why question a gift from the Lady?" she said calmly. "You know I'm on duty."
Jamie sliced the air with one hand. "Ridiculous!" he snarled. "No one could pay the Service enough to get us all on Post horses, not even Maran."
"What!"
The exclamation was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Too late now to call it back and just listen. Ah, well. I tried to ignore the heads that had turned in my direction—I suppose it was a loud shout, at that—and spoke more quietly. "What do you mean, not even Maran? What does my mother have to do with anything?" I asked. I was much taken aback for, as I have said, Maran had been on my mind all the day long.
Rella was frowning and shaking her head at Jamie, but he faced me and said harshly, "Rella's working for her. She's been in Maran's pay since she joined the Harvest ship with you in the autumn. Since you first met her. Didn't you know?"
"What? No! I thought—Rella, you said the Silent Service wanted Marik, you never—I mean, you said you knew Maran—oh hell," I snarled. "Hells' bells and bloody damnation, Jamie," I said, feeling stupid and angry and betrayed. "I've been an idiot again, haven't I?"
"I suspect we all have, my girl," said Jamie, "but I don't intend to continue in ignorance." He rounded on Rella. "Well?"
She had carried on eating, stopping only long enough to say in her normal tones, "I'm not going to say a word until I've eaten and Lanen has seen a Healer. Then you can ask me anything you want. Right now, leave me be. I'm hungry."
We had no choice. We were all subdued and ate quickly. I never tasted the little food I managed to eat, but I was feeling awful anyway and didn't eat much in case it came back up. Soon enough we all retired to an upstairs room, where we found the four small beds taking up nearly every bit of floor space. There was barely room to squeeze around them to get inside the door.
I crawled into the first bed I could reach. I was feeling worse by the moment, as the agitation of all that riding caught up with me. However, once we were in and the door closed Jamie turned to Rella with a grim frown and a nasty expression on his face, and I had something else to think about.
"Very well, Mistress Rella," he said. "Perhaps you will now deign to tell us what in all the Hells is going on?"
"You make everything such hard work, Jamie," she said, shaking her head. "But you're losing your touch. Talking about such things in a common room! Honestly. You only had to ask."
"Lady Rella," said Varien gently, cutting off whatever Jamie was about to say, "of thy courtesy, surely the time hath come for truth between us?"
She was taken off guard by him. She knew who and what he was, but I think she forgot from time to time just what it meant to have lived for so very long. Now, with those deep green eyes fixed on hers, and that lovely voice speaking so kindly to her—well, "the eyes of a dragon are perilous deep," they say.
"Yes, my Lord Dragon, I suppose it has," she said with a sigh. She turned to me and smiled. "You are so much like her, you know. I've known Maran ever since she came back to Beskin, about a year and a half after you were born. She has been a good friend to me in my comings and goings for all that time, even knowing who I am and what I do. She is the best friend I have in the world, Lanen. When word reached me that she wanted to hire me to watch over you I was already in Illara, but I signed on that damned ship and went to what I thought would be my death because I had said I would look after you for her. My dearest friend's daughter. Yes, Jamie, she has paid me. Is paying me. Is paying the Silent Service. And no, there is no money in the world that could have got me on to that ship or arranged these Post horses for us all."
She threaded her way across the crowded little room to stand foursquare in front of Jamie and slapped him hard across the face.
"You bastard," she said, quietly but with a startling intensity. "How can you have travelled with me for so long and know me so little? Yes, I am a minor Master in the Silent Service and I may choose my own assignments. Yes, I have more leeway in the arrangements than most, and yes, I was going to ask for consideration from you and Lanen the next time the Service needs good horses. That does not mean that I do everything for pay, or that I seek to use or betray you. Any of you. I've cared about Lanen since I met her, despite all the rules about these things, and I know how sick she is even if you don't care to. I have arranged this swift transport and a good Healer's visit for her because I give a damn what happens to her, as Maran's daughter and in her own right." You could cut the fury in her voice with a knife. "And fool that I am, I was starting to give a damn about you, Jameth of Arinoc. Get to the Hells and close the gates behind you."
She stumbled across to the door and turned to me. I knew that "I'd rather fry in the deepest hell than cry right now" look, so I didn't say anything. "I'll send the Healer up when he comes, girl. Don't expect me back here tonight." I nodded.
She slammed the door behind her.
Jamie had not said a single word. He stood openmouthed, his brown cheek showing a good s
trong pink stain where he'd been slapped. Quite right too, in my opinion.
"If you don't go after her, Jamie, I'm going to disown you," I said. He gaped at me. I glanced up to the ceiling and sent a swift prayer to the Lady for patience. "You idiot. She just said she loves you. Are you deaf?"
"What?" he said stupidly. "But she—she hit me, and, and she said—"
"Go. Now. Grovel, apologise, do what you have to, but go after her," I said. "For Shia's sake don't make me get out of this bed to push you, just go!" He left in a daze, drawing the door closed behind him.
I turned to Varien, who was standing there with his jaw dropping, much as Jamie had been. "Lanen? Whence came this—ah, I shall never understand!"
I grinned at him. "Gedri females?"
"Any females!" he replied smiling. "The females of the Kantri are every bit as confusing as you and Mistress Rella." He stroked my hair, growing more solemn. "However, my heart, what more deeply concerns me is why Jameth suddenly turned on a friend. I thought he admired the Lady Rella?"
"He does, my love. That's the problem. You don't know Jamie like I do," I said heavily, sitting back. All the excitement had brought back my headache, and everything below my waist hurt like every demon ever spawned had been punching me. "It was the Post horses—I asked Rella, and it really does cost a fortune to move this fast, and Jamie knows it better than I. I think he is starting to truly like her, but when it looked like she was being so kind he got suspicious. It's the way he thinks," I said apologetically. "Comes of not trusting people—no, it comes of not trusting women," I said. "He's never had much luck with women."
Varien frowned. "Another mystery. I have watched him, your heart's father. He is a man honourable and brave, skilled both in the art of the sword and in the deeper art of making the earth bring forth food. His heart is true, I would swear it. How should such a man not find a mate?"
I was feeling worse every moment we sat there, but I knew the Healer was coming and fought off the pain. "I suspect it's because he stayed in Hadronsstead with me," I said, glad of something to think of. "He's too much for any of the women around there, they expect a plain farmer and he isn't that at all."
Varien smiled into my eyes. "No, he is not," he said. "And you also are not a plain anything." He leaned over and kissed me, his hands warm and comforting on my back, his lips hard and passionate against mine. Lady knows I felt awful and the last thing I was thinking of was passion, but—well, as distractions go it was a fine one.
Especially when he continued in truespeech. That has never ceased to sway me to hjs will, the combination of simple physical passion and the wonder of that glorious voice echoing in the silence of my heart, that ancient mind blending with mine to make something new. "You are my beloved, my Lanen, the song of my soul made complete at last. When I thought I could never love you more, when I thought that already you possessed all there was in me to give, behold! I learn that you bear our child below your heart, and love beyond reason springs forth, young and wild, overflowing like a stream in the spring thaw and all, all thine, my Lanen, Lanen Kaelar, Kadreshi naVarien—"
Just as well the Healer came in then, I thought, despite the way I was feeling. I wondered briefly if Varien had done it on purpose. When I thought about it I realised that he most certainly had.
The Healer introduced himself as Jon and asked what troubled me as he summoned his power and sent it gently into my aching bones. I felt it this time, felt the cool blue strength of his work and welcomed the end of pain with a sob. Once the worst was past I could relax and let him work, but even after he finished he gazed long into my eyes, frowning. "Lady, you do know that this child is killing you?"
"Yes, I do. Can you do anything about it?" I asked. He sent his power into me once again and looked long and hard. He tried something, Goddess only knows what, but the moment he put forth any real power it was agony. I cried out from the pain and he stopped, apologising.
"Lady, I know not what to do," he said, sending power again to soothe the pain he had caused. He had a good, kind face, and it was full of sorrow. "There is only one Mage I know of who can help you—Magistra Erthik of Verfaren. She is wise and strong, and her greatest skill is in assisting with childbirth." He would have stopped, but his conscience made him go on. "Lady, I cry you mercy, but I must tell you. I have stopped the pain and the bleeding for now, but it will not last, especially if you insist on travelling. You—forgive me, I must prepare you." He was desperately distressed. He was also a very brave man. "You must realise how near to death you are, Lady. I can see your strength, but you must believe me. What I have done will keep you alive for a few days. If you insist on riding as you have this day, it might only keep you until this time tomorrow. You must stop and rest!"
I was sitting up. I felt a bit ill and very weary and fuzzy-headed, but surely he must be wrong. "I don't feel that dreadful, master," I said. "I cannot believe you. Of what should I die? I am strong, I've hardly had a sick day in my life. Why should this be so dangerous to me?"
"I fear it will come in the end to loss of blood, lady," he said. "The rejection must soon be complete. In a normal pregnancy your body would have miscarried long since, but this is not a normal pregnancy. There is a conflict between something in your blood and something in the blood of the child, and it is stopping the natural process that would protect you." He bowed. "I fear that only a Mage can help you now."
Varien stood beside me and his face was like carven stone. "Is there nothing that can be done?" he asked, his voice calm and quiet even then.
"Unless you find a Mage able to treat the very blood in her veins, then no, there is nothing to be done," said the Healer. "That kind of skill and power are rare indeed, if they exist at all, and where you would find them outside of Verfaren I could not say. And Verfaren is a full week's travel from here." He knelt before me, his genuine concern writ large across his face. "Lady, let me send for help from Verfaren. If I keep working on you while the Magistra comes to us, then perhaps—"
"No," I said. I felt dizzy and confused, but I knew in my bones that I could not stay there and just wait.
"We will consider it, master," said Varien. "My lady wife is weary and needs rest."
The Healer rose to his feet and bowed. "Very well. I have done what I can for you but it will not last. Be warned, lady. You must know what will happen. The pain will return and it will increase. The bleeding will get worse. Your back and your head will ache unmercifully."
I nodded. "I expected as much," I said.
He spoke wearily now. "When you start to pass clots, lady, know that your end has come upon you. May the Lady keep you, for I can do no more."
"I thank you," I said. Varien paid him his fee and let him out.
I had held back the tears very well while the Healer was there, I thought, but I was shaking by the time Varien sat beside me on the bed, and when he put his arms around me I began sobbing in earnest.
For a time he simply held me and let me cry out my fear. However, when I had calmed down a bit, he sat back from me a little and took my hands in his.
"Dear one, forgive me," he said quietly, "I know how you feel but I must say this. What if he is right?"
"No!" I cried. "How can you say that? I am not going to die!"
"Everyone who has ever died has said the same," he replied. I was shocked at the calmness in his voice, but when I looked at him I saw the tears streaming down his face.
"Why should we not at least wait here, dearling? The Healer can wait upon you while Rella and Jamie fetch this Magistra Erthik here." He never took his eyes off me for a second. "And here at least you will be able to rest, to take your ease."
"While I wait for death?" I snarled. "No, I will not! If time is going to be my enemy, at least let me spend it getting as close to help as I can. The Post horses are fast, my love, Verfaren is but a day away at the speed they make."
He stood at his full height, I could almost see him draw the mantle of his years about him as protection as h
e gazed down at me. "Lanen, you are putting your life in danger. You must consider this again."
"Why?" I asked, growing angry. "I will not sit here and wait for death to take me!"
"And I cannot sit by and watch you die!" he shouted. "Lanen, I cannot bear this! How should I live if you were to die? Kadreshi, have mercy on me, I beg you." He knelt before me, his face twisted with grief. In that moment all his protection was gone, all his armour of centuries stripped away in the instant, leaving only a desperate man. "Lanen, do not leave me," he said, that glorious voice all broken with weeping. "I could not bear this life alone."
I took his face in my hands. "I am not going to die," I repeated.
"You cannot know that!" he cried, rising swiftly, angrily to his feet. "And yet you would put what time you have left at risk by riding like a madwoman. What if this Mage Erthik at Verfaren cannot help you? What then? Shall I hold you in my arms as you bleed to death?"
"Varien!" I was shocked.
"Well, what would you? You will not take counsel, you rush headlong into danger for no reason, you refuse to listen to a Healer who has offered to do all in his power to aid you. What is left for me to do but curse the child of our making, or wish we had never met?" He could barely contain his rage, he was shaking with it. "I have kept silent, Lanen, for you did not need to concern yourself with it, but it has been terrible for me to know you in such pain for so long." He stood before me and his eyes locked, blazing, on mine. "Do you forget, Lanen Kaelar, that I hear your every thought? You have not been careful to shield of late. Every jolt, every gasp, every drop of blood and every shooting pain that you have known has shaken me also this last moon."
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