by Matthew Cook
"You have to close the breach!” I scream at Lia. “If you cannot, you must scatter them, or all is lost! There are fewer now. Maybe you—"
Lia looks down. “Your water has broken,” she says. “We have to get you inside."
"It can't have broken. I've weeks to go ... It's too soon...” I protest, weakly. “Lia, please, they must not get inside! Help the defenders!"
"The gates will hold long enough,” she says.
Inside, the red tide of my blood magic, coupled with the otherworldly vitality that I stole from the Mor, sings in my veins, filling me like a chalice near to overflowing. I feel as if I could run, could dance and twirl like a young girl. That I could leap from the stone walls and be gone from this slaughterhouse in a twinkling.
The pain drives a fresh blade of agony into me, turning my legs to water, and this time I do fall. Lia grunts as I become dead weight in her hands.
She calls out for help, and a moment later rough hands grip me, lift me. Two men hurry me away, towards a familiar, blood-stained tent.
Inside, men and women lie, their life leaking away in rivers of scarlet, moaning, screaming. Without meaning to, I open my secret eye, and see that the living are surrounded by the spirits of the dead. They turn their white eyes towards me, mouths stretching in supplication, pleading for me to help them, to avenge them. To allow them one last minute of life.
"I cannot be here!” I scream, shutting both my mortal and supernatural eyes tight. “I cannot bear it!"
"But ... Ato can help you to...” Lia stammers.
"Take me out!” I howl. I know that if I remain, I will open my inner eye again.
The men turn me, and a moment later I am outside once more. “Find Livinia. She will know what to do,” I pant, as a fresh wave of fire tears through me. My belly is a stone, a dead weight, dragging me down.
Lia commands one of the men to find the midwife and takes my arm. He dashes off, calling her name. Lia and the man half carry me towards the main hall. Inside, women and children are huddled in a frightened mass.
"Stay with her until the midwife arrives,” Lia commands the man. He nods, his eyes round and wide. He looks at the black blood that coats me from head to toe and swallows, as if holding down his gorge.
Lia grabs my face, forcing me to look at her. “We shall live through this, you and I. And the baby. We shall endure. Do you trust me?"
I nod, weakly, wanting desperately to believe her, and try to smile. The expression twists into a grimace of pain as a fresh contraction ripples through me.
"Go. Please, go now. The gates—"
She nods and hurries out. All around me, people move forward, murmuring comforting words, leading me with gentle pressure deeper into the manor.
Then I am finally lying in a bed. My back screams in protest as they lower me, but even that pain is a pale shadow of what I feel down below. I paw at my dress, sliding the sticky, ruined thing up. The garment smears the Mor's stinking, black blood across my drum-tight belly.
My body absorbs the blood in an instant, leaving my pale skin clear. A woman breathes a prayer, or a curse, I cannot tell.
Darkness beats at my face like blackbirds’ wings. A face swims out of the murk. Livinia.
"Something is wrong,” the old midwife says, her hands stroking my belly. A moment later, her fingers slide inside of me, the sensation tearing a scream from my lips. I look for
Lia, but she has gone, returned to the fighting.
"Your time is very near now,” she says, bringing her face close to mine. I close my eyes, every fiber of my body screaming at me to push out the thing inside of me. A moment later I feel her hands on my cheeks, pulling my face back to hers.
"Kirin! Do not push yet! Listen to me, Kirin. Not yet!"
I nod, eyes still clenched tight, striving to master the agony. Years of study have taught me that labor is indeed painful, but nothing could have prepared me for this.
"It is too soon ... too soon...” I moan. “Please, Livinia, do not let my baby die."
"I have seen babes survive such an early birth,” the midwife says, clasping my hand in hers. “Just concentrate on breathing, as we talked about."
The thought of facing this agony with naught but a few breathing exercises would almost be amusing, were I not in such pain. I bite back the curses I yearn to fling at the old woman; she means well.
"Hold her knees,” she commands. I feel women's hands on me, people I do not know. They spread my legs wider. I feel no shame; am beyond caring about anything as trivial as exposing myself to strangers.
The increasing spasms drown out the noise of the battle raging outside, obliterate every other sensation. Throughout it all, the baby is still, motionless. Waves of pain come and go in a nightmare progression, heralded by Livinia's demands that I not push, that I breathe.
How long I lay there, I do not know. Minutes and hours lose all meaning. My world narrows to my bed of white-hot fire."I see the head!” Livinia finally crows. “Push now, Kirin!
Push!"
I bear down, my muscles trembling. The strength of the Mor has faded. My body is so very weary, lacking the strength to do more than offer up a token effort.
"Again! Push again!” the midwife calls, her hands busy.
I feel something hard, stretching me, sliding past flesh and bone. Livinia grunts as she twists and pulls.
A final push, and the baby slithers out. Instantly, the pain is gone, clean as a knife cut. My torn and stretched flesh still aches in protest of the abuse it has endured, but compared to the overwhelming pain from before, it is easily borne.
"You have a lovely son, Kirin,” Livinia says. I hear the concern in her voice.
The babe is tiny, a scarce double handful, slicked with bloody residue and creamy white mother's wax. It kicks, feebly, in the midwife's hands. It does not cry.
He does not cry.
"Give him to me,” I say, something hot and visceral entering into my voice.
Livinia begins to protest, then a moment later nods, stupidly. Never taking her eyes from mine, she lowers the baby and places it on my breast.
It is so tiny. So light. Certainly not more than three or four pounds. Its weight on my chest is at once barely noticeable and crushingly immense. The thick, dark cord running from its—from his—tiny belly snakes between my thighs. Both it and the baby are feverishly hot.
Still, he does not cry.
My son looks at me. He has Jazen's eyes, large and dark, fringed with thick lashes. His head is crowned with a mass of thick, wet hair. I count fingers and toes, then laugh at myself for doing so.
The midwife steps back, shaking her head, muttering. She seems dazed, confused.
"He's beautiful,” one of the women says, and makes a sound, half laugh, half sob.
Lia strides into the room, her face streaked with grime and blood, her hair in disarray. The flesh around her eyes is bruised, as if someone has struck her, again and again. She sways with weariness.
"Kirin?” she calls, her voice rough with exhaustion. She sees me, sprawled on the bed, and a look of relief floods across her face. “Oh, Kirin ... I missed it."
The baby frowns, his expression almost comically serious, the tiny brows drawing down, just as a man's would. His mouth opens, a silent, dark “O.” I see something, the barest hint of movement, in his face.
I stare, horrified, as roses of blood blossom in my son's eyes, unfurling crimson petals outwards from the orbs’ periphery. He gasps, and a tear of blood runs down his cheek.
I know then what has happened.
"Oh, gods ... no. No. Nononono ... No!” My scream tears from my throat as I struggle to rise. My flaccid muscles betray me, and all I can do is flop back into the bed.
"A knife! Give me a knife!"
"Kirin? What do you” Lia begins.
"Cut the cord!" I howl, fingers scrabbling at the slippery rope. It flexes ... pulses ... under my hand, horribly alive, like a snake, hot and tight. My nails can find no purchase.
>
Without hesitation, Lia grabs the midwife's knife from the bedside table, begins sawing at the tough, dark cord.
"It must be tied first!” Livinia cries, finally seeming to come back to herself.
The razored edge parts the cord, and blood cascades forth. So much blood. A river, an ocean, gushing across the sheets, coating my thighs. Far, far too much blood.
The babe's eyes roll back, the orbs now pools of deepest red. Crimson streams trickle out from his nose, from his ears, as he struggles feebly. I see tiny, dark spider webs tracing across his lovely cheeks, as the delicate veins there burst, one by one.
He opens his mouth and gives his first, and only, cry, the sound coming swift before a gout of black blood. It splashes across my breasts, running down my sides, coating us both. The reek of the Mor wafts from it in waves, a smell like charred fish and hot iron. Horrified, I see the dark liquid sinking slowly into my skin.
My son's blood. Absorbed by my skin.
My scream is primal and wordless. It drowns out all light, all sound. All I can see is him, my baby, my son, struggling for life.
Livinia finally manages to tie a knot in the cord, stopping the torrent. His face is black now, like a strangling victim's, his tiny tongue dark and swollen.
He sprawls across my breast, lifeless, motionless.
Dead.
* * * *
I stand over my son's body. The sounds of battle fell silent hours ago. I am beyond caring. We must have won, otherwise the Mor would have come in and torn us, burned us, long before.
I would not have tried to stop them. I would have welcomed them with open arms.
The babe's body is black, bruised from head to toe, the flesh darkened by blood beneath the surface. I have closed his lids over the blood-filled eyes over and over, but they keep opening, the blood-red crescents somehow accusing.
"Kirin,” Lia whispers. “You should come away, now. Let Livinia tend to the bod ... to him."
"I killed him,” I whisper. I feel Lia pull away.
"What? No, you certainly did not. You wouldn't...” she protests, but I hear the faint thread of distrust in her voice.
What wouldn't a woman like me do?
"I used the blood magic on the Mor,” I say, my voice hoarse, as if my throat is full of graveyard dirt. “When I did, their power flowed into me, and I reveled in it. I kept taking more, and more. I never even thought about what it would do to him. I wasn't thinking about him at all..."
"Kirin, it was an accident. You didn't mean to ... to hurt him."
"I've killed my son. Whether or not I meant to matters not. When the blood of the Mor went into me, it must have ... it must have gone into ... into ... oh gods!"
I fall to the floor, my body torn with racking sobs. I fear that such grief surely cannot be endured. That it will kill me. A moment later, I fear it will not.
Lia pats my shoulders, the gesture somehow feeble and awkward, then kneels beside me. Blindly, desperately, I clutch her. She holds me, for hours maybe, I am past knowing, until exhaustion finally sucks me into its black undertow.
I wake To sIlence. The room is dark, lit by a single taper, burned low. Lia slumps in a chair beside the bed, her gentle, ladylike snores the loudest sound. She is still begrimed, her shift torn and stained. Traces of blood are on her face. A tremendous bruise swells her cheek, below the purpled circles that surround her closed eyes.
I rise from the bed, tentatively at first, expecting pain. I feel fine. Better than fine. There is no pain, although I suspect that there will be, later. I feel strong.
The blood of the Mor, my sister whispers, is potent. You used it to heal yourself.
I stop. It has been months since she last spoke to me, long enough that I feared that she had left forever. I feel tears begin, stinging and hot, at the thought that I am not alone.
I walk into the manor's main room. It is empty; those that huddled here have gone. The fire is low, little more than embers. My roving eyes encounter a small, swaddled shape, laying in a basket atop the table. I walk to the basket, and look at what is within for a long time.
I carry the basket to the bedroom, staring into his pitiful face. In the candlelight, he could be a statue, or a doll, carved from some dark wood.
I see movement, and realize that, while I have been staring at him, my secret eye has opened. I see his shade, ghostly and pale, crawling towards me across the floor.
Then, he is on the bed with me, his wizened face dominated by a pair of opal, staring eyes. He stares, wordlessly pleading for me to bring him back. The hunger he radiates is enormous, bottomless, enough to swallow an ocean of blood.
You musn't, my sister breathes. Do not even consider this thing. Whatever comes back will not be him.
My words are a whispered plea. “But, he is my flesh. My blood. Mine and Jazen's. And maybe, this time, it will be different. The blood of the Mor may have ... may have ennobled him with their strength. This time may be different. He might rise, intact and whole."
You know he will not. What will return will be an abomination, in every way. If you do this thing, you will be damned. From this, you will never return.
"But certainly he deserves the chance, at least? If he comes back as ... if he is damaged ... I can send him back."
As you did with Hollern?
The words are like icy water, thrown into my face, shocking me back to the reality of what I have almost done. What I still yearn to do. My son's shade sits beside his dead body, waiting for me to restore the life that has been stolen from him.
Wordlessly, I reach out. My hand passes through his spectral flesh. His sightless eyes beg.
"I'm sorry. So very sorry, but you cannot come back,” I say, the words passing like razors, each one cutting me, so deep. “You're not supposed to be here. Go. Go beyond, where you belong. Your father is waiting for you. Give ... give him my love.” I can say no more.
Even before my words end, his soul begins swirling, like smoke, like petals in a breeze, up and out of sight. The ghost of a smile plays across his pale lips. Then he is gone.
My son, the true child I thought I could never have, is gone, forever.
I cradle his tiny, cold form, tears streaming down my cheeks. My heart labors, each beat so full of pain and regret that I fear it must break my chest.
I hear a gentle sigh, and look up from my son's sad face. I see Lia watching from her chair. My whispered words must have woken her. Lightning flickers in her eyes. If I had chosen poorly, she would have ended it.
A vast relief floods over me at the realization, a sensation of such pure satisfaction that, for a moment, even my grief is eclipsed. My love for her shines forth, pressing back the darkness that has choked me for so very long.
Even now, even after all I have done, I am not alone.
With a sigh, I lay back, and let sleep, true, healing sleep, claim me.
Epilogue
I close the diary, pushing away from the table with a sigh. I set aside the journal and my quill, capping the precious ink, then massage my hand. It is cramped and sore from so much unaccustomed exercise. Writing everything down was Lia's idea; gods know that I would never have thought to do so on my own. It was her notion that purging my mind of such memories, of the details of my life, might help with the nightmares.
She was right. I think. Once I began to write, recalling those first terrified days following Gamth's Pass, the words spilling, faster and faster, from my pen, I found I could not stop. Many evenings I stayed up far into the small hours of the night, as Lia snored on her blanket, writing by firelight until my head pounded from the effort of recalling.
The more I wrote, the more the dreams faded, becoming less severe, less damaging. I still wake every other night, screaming, the vision of my ... of my dead son, branded in my mind's eye alongside the visions all of the men I have killed, or resurrected.
Still, that is an improvement. At least now I can sleep for a few precious hours and, some nights, not see his small, sad face
staring into mine.I rise, wincing at the stiffness in my back and legs. The Mor's blood, whatever inhuman vitality that it contained, that wasn't also killing me as it killed (my son), did much to heal my body of the wounds that I suffered in childbirth. But, even days later, my flesh seems to recall, like an echo, the tremendous pain I have endured.
I move to the doors, my erstwhile guards following my movements. I do not mock them, or even embarrass them by deigning to notice their presence. We both know that they could do noting to stop me should I choose to free myself. They deserve better than that, and, even after all I have sacrificed for them, even after the way they now look at me, I find that I cannot blame them for their mistrust.
For, in the end, the Mor were finally defeated, brought low by the refugees’ surprising courage (some might call it desperation, but I know better) and the power of Lia's elemental allies. Despite the toll in lives, despite the price paid by so many, in broken and burned bodies, in lost children and mothers, in sons and fathers, the people survived, even as I labored in the relative safety of the keep.
"You saved them. Saved us, I mean,” Lia told me on the first day, after she and Livinia managed to get me to my feet. “If not for you thinning their numbers, they would have overrun us. If not for what you taught them, they would have given up.” Livinia, walking with us, still my nursemaid then, nodded agreement, even as her eyes refused to meet mine.
Everywhere that we walked, that first day, whispers followed us. The tales of what I had done, of my blood magic, reaching out to tear the life from enemy after enemy, ran amongst the people. Tales of me, covered from head to toe in black blood, belly swollen and moving beneath the sodden fabric.
I could not refute, nor explain it; it was what it was. I was done with hiding. Done with asking for forgiveness, for I was beyond forgiving.
For Livinia it was worse. She had been there when it—when my son—was born. She had liked me, had stood beside me before witnessing the terrible price that I paid, that he paid, even if she knew nothing of the real struggle, of the moment when I almost faltered—
But did not. Thanks to Lia. Dearest, Lia. She who watched, and would have done the right thing had I succumbed to my son's terrible plea.