Broken Mirrors

by A. F. Dery

  If I had had any notion that childbearing would do this to her, I would not have let it happen, he thought bitterly. He felt the numbness of shock splintering; now fear and self reproach warred to fill in the cracks. He knew the babe was probably dead; he had seen blood seeping through her nightgown when he’d laid her on the bed awaiting the midwife. But would she live? That was all he could think about, that and the fact that she had been upset when he’d arrived in her room this morning. What had upset her? Who? Had that been the cause of this newest trouble, or had it been brewing from the time she’d conceived?

  When he had tactfully alluded to his wife’s troubles in one of his regular missives to the High Lord, the man had volunteered to send aid that would ease her affliction, but Lord Malachi knew nothing of what he thought would help. The High Lord had no wife, nor children of his own. Some tincture recommended by his personal healer, perhaps? He loathed the very thought of entering into the High Lord’s debt and had been skeptical he could truly be of aid in this case, but as a moan more shrill than the rest pierced the air-and his heart-, he knew that he would issue an acceptance at once, if there were any chance it could help her now.

  Lord Malachi sprang to his feet and strode to the door, stopping just short of it, his hands grasping and ungrasping the handle impotently. He knew there was nothing he could do; this was women’s work if there ever were such a thing. He longed to be at his wife’s side, whatever the midwife’s objections to his presence, but he feared to interfere or cause a distraction at a crucial moment, as this might very well be.

  Not Maggie, not Maggie, he prayed silently. He forced himself to sit back down, his heart pounding rapidly as another cry rent the air. He wiped damp palms against his legs, biting his lip until he tasted blood.

  But after a time- it could have been hours or days, for all he knew, it certainly felt like it could have been either of those- Maggie’s cries quietened and there was silence. He felt his blood run cold, his flesh prickling, his throat suddenly too closed to swallow. Not too long after that, the midwife opened the bedchamber door and he sprang to his feet, shoving past the woman heedlessly as he went to Maggie’s side. He was afraid to quite look at her, afraid she would be beneath a shroud, but she was curled up on her side facing out, covered in blankets to her shoulder, her face still white but her eyes open, if weary.

  He knelt beside the bed, taking one of her hands in his own. It felt hot to his touch.

  “Maggie, my love, I’m here,” he said softly. Her lips quivered in a weak, fleeting smile and he squeezed her fingers gently, feeling them twitch back a response.

  He noticed the midwife had come up beside them.

  “What happened to my wife?” he asked, without looking away from Margaret. Her eyes fluttered sleepily and he gave her a smile he hoped was reassuring.

  “The babe tried to come early, my lord, and there was some bleeding- I think her bag of waters was starting to come loose from her belly,” the midwife said quietly.

  Lord Malachi hesitated, uncertain of how to phrase his next question with his wife still awake, but the midwife added of her own accord, “The babe lives, for now. I managed to stop her rushes with my medicines, but she will need to stay off her feet from now til she delivers, if there is to be any chance at all of the babe surviving its birth.”

  “What about...the bleeding you mentioned?” Lord Malachi asked carefully.

  “It has stopped for now. If she stays off her feet, it might resolve itself. There’s not much to be done. If it comes apart entirely, of course...” the midwife trailed off, the rest all too evident.

  “Maggie? How are you feeling?” he asked his wife.

  “Tired,” she murmured, barely audible. “Hurts.”

  Now he turned his head to look at the midwife. She gave him a helpless look. “I can’t do much for that now, my lord. I am afraid to give her anything for it, for fear of what it could do to the babe when in such a delicate state.”

  “It’s all right, Edmund,” Maggie said in a near-whisper. “I’ll get through it. The important thing is, the baby is hanging on.”

  No, the important thing is you’re hanging on, he wanted to say, but he gritted his teeth and just squeezed her fingers again.

  “I thought I would stay in the room with her from here on out, my lord. Things can change very quickly at this point,” the midwife said cautiously. He jerked his head in acknowledgment, looking back to his wife.

  Her eyes were nearly closed now. “Sleep, my love,” he murmured. “I’m here, and the midwife, too.”

  As soon as she’d succumbed, he gingerly released her hand and went to her writing desk in the corner. It didn’t matter if the High Lord proposed a dancing monkey to ease Lady Margaret’s troubles, Lord Malachi would not spare his pride if it meant seeing her through this as comfortably as possible.

  But he suspected it wasn’t his pride that the High Lord wanted.

  A month passed, and each day, Margaret seemed to fade a little more before her husband’s eyes, but still, she, and the babe inside her, lived. Not a week after he’d written the High Lord, a brief response had come: the High Lord would arrange everything as quickly as possible.

  Lord Malachi still didn’t know what “everything” was, but he was past the point of desperation. His sleep was restless and broken, punctuated with episodes in which he’d awaken out of breath and with racing pulse, barely able to tamp down his anxiety until he’d checked on his wife, invariably finding her unchanged. He rarely left the castle now, fearing even to enter the courtyard. He had reassembled the horse Margaret had named on the table in the main dining room, accompanied by stabs of guilt that perhaps it had been her distress over its dis-assembly that had provoked the early birthing pangs. It now stood, as if on guard, in the corridor outside her bedchamber, against the opposing wall where she could glimpse it from her bed whenever the door opened. He spent most of his time at her side, reading to her or working out some of the theories behind his pet projects out loud. It seemed to keep her amused and was a blessed distraction from the constant worrying over her condition, but by the month’s end, she no longer seemed able to focus: he watched sweat roll down her face as she struggled to keep herself still as her stomach heaved at all hours, whether she ate or not, and her body ached.

  The last thing he expected, then, was that one of the two women who worked in his kitchen would appear at his door and announce, in her flat, disinterested tones, that a foreign woman and a pig were here to see him and refused to be sent away, bearing the signet of the High Lord.

  “Sent away?” Lord Malachi had barely kept his voice below a roar as he strode from the room. “I’ve been waiting nearly a bloody month for them, if they are from the High Lord! If they had gone, I’d be using you as fuel for something more useful, you cow!”

  He found himself wondering as he only just kept himself from breaking into a run on his way down to his audience room if the pig had some magical curative powers or some such thing. Enchanted bacon? Chops of healing? I can just imagine what Thane would have to say to that!

  And then he remembered he was no longer concerned with any of that big idiot’s thoughts and shoved the thought away with a barely suppressed growl. No doubt he’d be thrilled to know Maggie is suffering so, fodder to say he told me so, the heartless bastard...

  His internal rant was only just heating up when he arrived, a little breathless, at the audience room. It was one of the more spacious rooms in his castle, which was not, despite the name, actually all that large. It received a fair amount of sun through large windows on one wall, and on the other, his family’s coat-of-arms was proudly hung alongside some ceremonial weapons inherited from his forebears. Flanking the room and every entrance were his very own homemade sentries. It was hard even in his haste not to note them with pride, their metallic armor dazzling in the reflected sunlight, their red glass eyes seeming lit from within. They looked like nothing so much as metal men with flat, featureless faces, their arms ending in
various weapons instead of fists- one here had a bludgeon, one over there, an ax, still another, what resembled the head of a scythe. Their biggest shortcoming was that they could not move all that quickly, but with this many in a relatively confined space, positioned as they were, there was no getting around them for the room’s occupants, or past them from anyone outside the room unless he issued contrary orders. Knocking them over was nigh unto impossible; their weight was tremendous and their balance, impeccable. They could swarm and overwhelm, if not exactly quickly, then certainly with adequate sufficiency to fulfill their purpose. Particularly given those weapons.

  Lord Malachi barely stopped himself from patting one affectionately as he entered the room. Despite the fact that there actually were chairs arranged instead in front of a larger one that Margaret liked to call his “casual throne,” the foreign woman and the...pig...stood behind them, both looking around anxiously.

  For, yes, the pig- easily the largest pig Lord Malachi had ever laid eyes on, by far- was standing on its hind legs, just like a person, and was even wearing clothes- a blue shirt and trousers and a sunflower-patterned waistcoat even Lord Malachi dimly recognized as being years out of fashion. He was not sure if the pig had human-like feet, for its legs ended in a pair of well worn black boots. It had a great round head and pointed pig ears sticking out from a shock of dark, wiry hair on the sides of its head. Its round, damp-looking snout was the size of a man’s fist and quivered constantly and its thick, fleshy lips smacked as though tasting the very air before it. And as it apparently sniffed that same air, it grunted continuously from low in its throat. The woman at its side was actually smaller than it was, and appeared quite young to his eyes, more girl than woman yet. She wore long, dark brown hair in a single braid down her back and a plain but finely made gray dress that came to her ankles. She had very rosy cheeks, he noticed, recalling with a pang the roses of his wife’s cheeks before she fallen into such a dire condition.

  “You were sent by the High Lord to help my wife?” he addressed the woman without preamble.

  She looked startled, and to Lord Malachi’s own surprise, the pig spoke first, in a rough but clear voice.

  “Yes, she is a gift from the High Lord. I am Master Graegun, sent to escort her to you safe-”

  “Yes, yes,” Malachi interrupted impatiently. “It’s hardly relevant to me who you are. What can you do, girl? Are you some kind of healer?”

  The pig gave a sudden squeal that made Malachi wince briefly, but otherwise he ignored it, staring at the young woman, who gave no sign of noticing it at all, returning his stare with anxious green eyes.

  “No, my lord, I am a Mirror,” she said softly. “I can help ease your wife’s pain, but I can’t heal whatever is causing it. I’m sorry.”

  “Come with me then,” Malachi said, gesturing to the doorway. He turned and walked off, pausing only when he reached the outer corridor when he heard snorting from behind him that indicated the pig was coming along.

  “You will stay, sir,” he said shortly without turning his head. “I will return to speak with you once I have seen what this ‘Mirror’ does.” He continued walking.

  There was a long grinding noise, a rumble and a squeal as the young woman hurried after him and the sentries moved as she passed them to block the pig’s exit.

  They ascended to Lady Margaret’s bedchamber in silence, stopping right outside the closed door.

  Lord Malachi turned to her. She was panting a little and trying to hide it without success.

  “I will give you an hour, if you have not helped her in that time, you will be returning to wherever you came from with the swine who escorted you,” Lord Malachi said.

  The young woman shook her head and said breathlessly, “No, my lord, it won’t take that long. You will see right away what I can do.”

  Lord Malachi’s brows furrowed. “Is this some sort of magic? Sorcery?”

  “No, my lord, I am not a sorceress!” the Mirror replied, sounding offended.

  “I don’t care if you are, I just like to know what I’m dealing with, you understand,” Lord Malachi explained, unperturbed. “This is my wife you will be assisting. If anything happens to her because of you, there will be nothing left of you to identify. I have many theories whose research could benefit from the use of organic matter. Just so you have fair warning.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed and apparently speechless, as he turned from her with a nonchalant shrug of one shoulder, rapped politely on the door and pushed it open.

  Margaret was still in the bed, of course, though now she was propped up using several pillows behind her and to both sides of her. She somehow looked even thinner and paler in the short time since he’d left her side than she had before it, the round swell of her belly beneath the rose-colored coverlet like a mountain surrounded by plains. She looked surprised to see the young woman at his heels, an eyebrow lifting as he announced, “I have brought a gift from the High Lord for you, my love.”

  “Oh, um, very thoughtful of him,” Margaret murmured. Her breathing was shallow and even from the doorway he could see the sweat beading her forehead.

  He moved quickly to her side, seating himself in his chair beside the bed and taking her hand. “She said she can help your pain.” He looked to the young woman and she gave a nod in the affirmative as she moved into the room.

  She stopped by the foot of the bed, a faraway look coming into her eyes, as she was looking very far off. She shut them briefly, and when she opened them, Margaret gasped. “Oh!”

  Lord Malachi dropped her hand and surged to his feet, his hands already clenching into fists, but Margaret added, “I-I can’t believe it! Edmund, it’s gone!”

  “Gone?” Lord Malachi paused.

  “Yes, the pain! I feel fine, absolutely fine! It’s a miracle!” Margaret cried. She started to move but the Mirror said quickly, “No, my lady, don’t! I haven’t healed you. I’ve only taken the pain away. It still worsens when you move.” There was a curious strained quality to the young woman’s voice that made Lord Malachi study her more carefully. She had gone very white, her breathing even more shallow than it had been in the hall.

  “What’s the matter with you, girl?” Lord Malachi asked bluntly.

  The Mirror looked a bit perplexed. “I take the pain away, my lord.”

  “You mean, you’re feeling Margaret’s pain for her?” Lord Malachi’s hands relaxed at his sides. “How is that possible? Is that the only feeling you are taking away? Does it matter what causes the pain?”

  “I- yes, you could say that I’m feeling it for her. I can only take pain, and the cause isn’t important, but it must be physical pain, not..hurt feelings or something like that.” The Mirror took a deep, shuddering breath, and Lord Malachi felt his wife’s fingers graze his sleeve. He looked to her and she murmured, “Perhaps another time would be better for questions, husband. The poor woman has been traveling, only to arrive at this.”

  Lord Malachi nodded his understanding. “We will speak more later then, Mirror. Or are you called something else?”

  “You may call me whatever you wish, my lord,” the Mirror replied. “My name is Elsbeth.”

  “Will you be all right if I leave the two of you for a little while, wife?” Lord Malachi couldn’t help but grimace slightly. “There’s a rather large pig awaiting my attention in the audience chamber.”

  “A...pig, Edmund?” Margaret looked perplexed and again, he nodded.

  “Yes, my love, a talking pig. It was...kind...enough to escort this woman here to us.” At those words, Margaret looked to the Mirror for confirmation, and she gave a little nod.

  “Um..certainly, husband. We’ll be fine. Please be careful,” Margaret said uncertainly. Lord Malachi gave her a reassuring smile as he left the room, and a final glance of warning to the woman who called herself a Mirror as he passed by her. She curtsied dutifully in response and Lord Malachi barely suppressed a sigh. He’d almost forgotten that human servants- or perhaps he ought t
o amend that to merely to living servants- were supposed to do that sort of thing. Certainly he’d never seen either of the two women working in his kitchen curtsy or anything like it.

  “Maybe it’s a foreign custom,” he muttered under his breath, not really believing his own words. He hated to deal with people if there was any chance he could talk himself out of it.

  By the time he arrived back at the audience chamber, he regretted his haste. Now that the Mirror had arrived and Margaret was comfortable again for the first time since her pregnancy had begun, he felt the state of anxiety and near-panic he had been in for that duration begin to ebb, and weariness replace it in his very bones. He suddenly wanted nothing more in the world than a single undisturbed night in his own bed, as he felt every year of his life weighing heavily on him as though made of iron.

  He pushed such fanciful longings away and, squaring his shoulders, paused by one of the sentries at the door to enter new orders before entering the room to meet his strange guest. The pig had seated himself this time, and was grunting continuously in a low, guttural stream that could have been some foreign monologue, incoherent swearing, or nothing at all but what it sounded like.

  Hearing Lord Malachi’s boots against the tiled floor as he approached, the pig hastened to his own booted feet, hooves, or otherwise, his eyes glaring.

  “My lord, I must protest this treatment! I have come as an ally at the behest of the High Lord himself, and you have abandoned me to the tender mercies of these...these...things!”

  “I have treated you just as well as I would treat any of my dearest friends,” Lord Malachi said consolingly. “And if you’d had the friends I have had, you would perhaps have greater sympathy for my approach.”

  The pig stared at him, momentarily at a loss, before once more taking up the complaint. “I have been many days traveling from the Ytaren border with that dim little creature for your wife’s benefit, not allowed to enjoy myself in the least, and you’ve not even offered me drink nor meat for my efforts!”