Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) (33 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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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
 
K
IRRA 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?”
“She’s afraid of him,” Sosie replied. “But I think—if Annie and the baby are alive—she’ll defy him and help us.”
Senneth nodded. “Good. For the short term, I’m going to put a ward on this room. A—a spell of protection. Only you and your sister and your mother will be able to leave and enter the room. Unless there’s someone else you can count on who might come by at some point to help.”
“Hadda,” Sosie said. “She hates my father.”
Senneth nodded. “It will be a while before your sister is strong enough to move. But when she is—I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave here. Go someplace safer.”
“I know,” Sosie said. “We had planned—we were going to leave this week—but then the baby started coming—”
“It will be difficult,” Senneth warned. “Not just because your sister will be weak, but because the baby is not like other babies. That pitcher he broke—that won’t be the only thing he breaks. If he has the power to lift and hurl objects across the room—well—”
“How can we keep him safe?” Sosie burst out. “Or us? And if we go somewhere and people are afraid of mystics—”
“I know,” said Senneth. “You’re going to have to learn to control him.”
Sosie stared at her. “I don’t know how to control magic. I don’t have a mystical bone in my body. Annie, either.”
“I know,” Senneth said again. “You’re going to have to go someplace where someone can help you. I’m going to draw you a map to the house of a woman who lives not far from Rappen Manor. She’s a mystic. She can teach your sister what she needs to know. But I don’t know how long you’ll be safe with Aleatha. There are—there are a lot of people these days who hate and fear us. As soon as you can, I think you should take your sister and her baby and travel to Ghosenhall. Aleatha can give you names of some friends there. So far, the king has protected mystics. You will be as safe there as you will be anywhere.”
“We’ll go there,” Sosie whispered.
A small crashing sound came from across the room—something little tipped to the floor, Senneth guessed—and was followed by a “Damn it!” from Kirra. Senneth could not repress a smile. “What you’re going to have to do,” she said, “in order to even make it safely to Rappengrass, is to check the baby’s power.”
“How do I do that?”
“Bind him with a moonstone. Wrap it in a piece of cotton and tuck it inside his crib, or tie it around his waist. Don’t let it touch his skin, or it will burn him.”
Sosie’s eyes dropped to the bracelet glowing diamond-white around Senneth’s wrist. “You’re a mystic. You’re wearing moonstones, and they don’t seem to burn you.”
“I’m different,” Senneth said.
Kirra called in a low voice, “And the sooner you get that piece of moonstone, the better. I wouldn’t want him to fall asleep without it. I’m guessing his power will be even wilder when he dreams.”
Senneth nodded, watching Sosie. “So, do you understand? Do you realize what you must do?”
“I think so. Give my nephew an amulet, stay here in this enchanted room till my sister is healed, then run to a mystic in Rappengrass. Then, when everyone is strong enough, go to Ghosenhall—where we might be safe, but we might not.”
Senneth smiled. “How old are you, Sosie?”
The surprise showed on Sosie’s face. “Seventeen.”
“It’s hard to have to do so much when you’re so young,” Senneth said. “Hard to have to be so responsible. But I can see you’re strong enough. I can tell you won’t fail them.”
Sosie tilted her chin up. Her cheeks were streaked with dried tears, and her lips were red from the many times she had bitten them during this grueling night. “No,” she said. “I won’t fail them.”

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