The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (13 page)

“I will not let it happen,” Nautien said, her voice as strong as the river’s current. “Do not fear.”

“You must see to her welfare, personally, if I am unable,” I said frantically. “You cannot let Ikselian have her. You must swear it by your blood.” I pointed at the ulio on her belt. “My daughter has a name already,” I said. “It is Leila. You shall make sure she receives it if I am unable. Swear it by your blood.” Giving her the name honored Onatos’s part in making our child. He wanted her called Leila; I would make it so. My daughter would have a name, a gift from her parents. A gift I had never received.

With a name, it would be that much harder for them to sacrifice her. With a name, she was a person.

Nautien drew her ulio. She brought the blade to her forearm and cut a small incision.

“I swear I shall protect the child you carry,” she said. “Her name shall be Leila, as you wish it. I will see that she has a good place in the world. I will do all this in exchange for one task from you. You will make the ritual using your magic to protect our shores. You will do this even though the Kaluq Elders have decreed that you shall not.”

I froze in the middle of the tapiat, my hands clutching my protruding belly over my sealskin cloak. “You could not get them to agree to the ritual?”

Nautien shook her head. “They are crazed by the idea that it will break the Hinge. Ikselian is beyond all reason.”

I spat on the floor. “I will make ritual, yes. It is for that reason that I came here. I will make the magic, and you will make certain my child is given a safe place in the world.”

Nautien laid a quivering hand on my arm. “You understand the consequence of doing this magic? They will not forgive you, and they will convict you of treason and betrayal. After the baby comes, they will make tunixajiq with you, successor or no successor.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. I’d open that dangerous door and face the beast. I’d save Leila, and I’d save my people, too, whatever the cost to myself.

T
ogether
, Nautien and I slipped down to the Shringar shore, where we met up with the woman who had agreed to give her lifeblood for the ritual, a trembling old Shringar woman who likely had only one season left in her bones. At least a young woman hadn’t been asked to give her life.

Nautien led us to a rocky outcropping above the singing sea and placed her sealskin altar cloth, her catching bowl, and her ulio in the traditional arrangement.

The three of us knelt on Nautien’s sealskin, facing the tools of ritual. I thought briefly of Onatos—he had called our practices unnecessary. I had dismissed his views as typically sayantaq, but what if the southerners were right? What if we Ganteans lived in a delusion—thinking we needed to give blood for magic when we did not? I had never entertained such doubts before.

My hands grew clammy and cold.

Nautien nodded gravely at the other Shringar woman. “I shall press you gently into death, my sister.”

The Shringar woman smiled and placed her palms on her knees. “I am ready.”

I could not have faced death with so much calm. I hated Yaqi—the heavy press, as though an iron vest clamped on my chest. I imagined death to be like this, airless and suffocating.

Nautien sliced my arm. Blood welled and dripped onto the damp rocks as Yaqi’s jaws opened to enclose me.

I had never made a ritual so gently before—with Ikselian it had always been a battle.

I might have viewed my role as Cedna differently if Nautien had served in Ikselian’s place. The Gantean world might have been entirely different. So much hinged on the quality of respect between two women.

Our bloodlights gleamed only softly in the open air above the water. Nautien cut the Shringar woman with a swift, silent slice that opened the largest vessel in her neck. Blood poured down, running into Nautien’s bowl, overflowing over the rocks, running towards the sea.

Nautien pressed her blood-filled bowl to my lips. She let me pause between swallows, unlike Ikselian, who had always forced ritual blood down in a rush.

When the bowl was empty, I peered into Yaqi. Nautien glowed in soft, silvery bloodlight, the only illumination in the dark night. My own bloodlight remained as black as ever.

I rolled my head back and opened my arms, remembering the waters that had leapt to my touch so easily as I traveled back to Gante. The power in the blood I had consumed surged through my body, feeding my magic. Perhaps Nautien, watching, saw the surging arrow of my blackstone bloodlight dart outwards over the sea; perhaps she saw nothing.

I struggled to distinguish my imaginings from my reality under Yaqi’s scrim. Did ritual only happen in my head? Could a spirit truly leave a body and travel, like a black wraith across the midnight sky, all the way to the water’s edge? Tides throbbed in my veins. So much force bided in the ocean, waiting to be summoned—pent energy that beat at me with unearthly demands. The beast inside screamed.

That scream shrieked over the waters, farther and farther, infecting the air, wrapping around the island in a loop cast from blackstone bloodlight, shooting down into the water to create a barrier between Gante and the rest of the world.

That scream was ripped from the marrow of my bones. I left part of myself in the water—part of my blood, part of my flesh, part of my soul. My barrier was like an ung-aneraq, a love-bind tying me to Gante the way that heartstring had once bound me to Onatos. The bloodlight barrier sat in the water, a trap waiting for any unsuspecting intruder.

I had done it. I had mastered the magic they believed I could not do. Together, we three: Nautien, the old woman, and I, we had done it, and it had felt natural, seamless, even easy. No warning tremors came from the Hinge; if anything, its power felt stronger.

Nautien led me back to her tapiat afterward, reassuring me that she would uphold her vow to protect my daughter, feeding me seal heart to help me regain my strength after the draining magic. “You must recover quickly,” she murmured. “That child is coming in another moon or less.”

I predicted my next visitor would be Ikselian, raging about how I’d overtaxed the Hinge. Wouldn’t she see the wavering edges of my enchantment from Yaqi? But no one came. Days rolled by in the winter darkness. I grew pallid and did not recover from the ritual.

Those were not good days. My belly stretched, my skin withered, my soul shriveled, and I was wretched in the darkness. I feared my daughter would come out a small, sickly thing. I feared they would take her, despite Nautien’s promise.

I was already doubled over with the first labor pains when Nautien arrived in the tapiat one morning after her usual work; she taught the young girls of her clan how to weave nets, a skill I had never learned. She nodded knowingly as she watched me groan.

“Is it coming?” I asked between gasps. “The baby?”

“Come outside and walk a bit,” she said. “It is coming, but it will be a while yet. We will go to the birthing tent.”

I covered my eyes against the daylight. I hadn’t left the dark tapiat in days. Another labor pain wracked me.

“Walk,” Nautien commanded. I couldn’t march a straight line to save my life. Only the woman’s guidance kept my steps steady to the birthing tent.

The tent’s long wooden beams ran horizontal to the earth, with hides draped over the wood and anchored to the ground to provide privacy. The enclosed space was large enough for several women to bear at once, and, as Gantean women tended to breed of a season, birthing women often labored in unison, though I was alone, perhaps by Nautien’s design.

I grabbed hold of one of the ropes hanging from the horizontal beams, looping my arms so I could hang my weight in a soothing fashion.

Eventually I had to squat down to relieve the searing pains. Nautien checked beneath my tunic, probing my flesh. She nodded her head when she arose.

“Is she coming well?” I asked between breaths. “Is my daughter showing?”

“It will be some time before the head begins to show. Don’t push until I tell you.” She returned to her cross-legged seat in the corner.

I wrapped my arms through the ropes once more and tried to stand. My head swam. The pains came in waves; I used the time between to gather myself for the next onslaught.

“If you push too early you will tear, and it will not go well with you,” Nautien explained. “Stick your tail out like a dog. I’ll rub your back and you’ll feel better.”

My labor continued as the day darkened, dragging on so long that when Nautien finally said I must push, I lacked the necessary strength.

Nautien knelt on the skins where I squatted, speaking softly to lead me through the birthing breath.

“There now! The head is almost free. One, two more pushes.” I pushed, one last bone-shattering effort.

“A female,” Nautien said.

“Leila,” I whispered. “You swore.”

“Yes, she will be Leila,” Nautien said. She had her ulio in hand, ready to sever the birth cord.

“Wait!” I screeched. If she cut the birth cord with her ulio, it would sever me from Leila in Yaqi as well as in Ijiq. I had deliberated long about this moment—letting Nautien cut the cord would mean giving up my daughter to the Gantean way. It would mean she would have a place in the world as I never had. And yet, and yet. I could not do it. Leila was my only remaining connection to Onatos. Leila was mine.
My daughter.
I wanted to keep her, to know her as I had known my mother. I counted on Nautien’s help in this; she owed me.

Nautien gave me a sympathetic look. “It is always difficult when it is your first. Of course you want to keep it. But that is not our way.” She lifted her ulio and brought it through the cord in one swift slice.

“No!” I screamed.

“I swore to care for this child,” Nautien said. “And so I must care for her in the Gantean way. I will protect her from Ikselian, never fear.” She lifted my daughter, my Leila, into her arms. I reached, weakly, to touch my girl’s head. Just one touch, so I would know her in my heart.

But Nautien moved away. She flicked open the tent flap and never even let me see my girl’s face.

Women dragged me sobbing from the birthing tent. Had I once believed I had no tears? How wrong I’d been.

After, I had the childbirth fever. Fatigue blurred my mind, and sickness ate at my heart. When Nautien leaned over me, I turned away from her. I hated that woman. She had taken away my Leila.

“The child is safe, as I have sworn,” she said. “She is healthy and strong.” She stroked my loose hair from my face. I had not rebraided it after the birth.

“I must see her,” I whispered. “Please.”

“If you know her, it will hurt too much. It is better this way,” she said, as if trying to convince herself of the truth of it.

My fever dreams were so vivid I could not distract myself from them with reality.

Onatos holds me in my rooms in his Towers. I keep my eyes closed; if I open them I will find myself on the cold hard floor of a Kaluq cavern.

A baby coos softly nearby. I grope along the edge of the bed, loosening Onatos’s arms. My sightless hand connects with a downy head and caresses it softly, softly.

I must see her. I open my eyes though I know the dream will end.

To my surprise, there is no cold stone room, no black cavern, no misery.

The room is cast in soft light, the walls carved in ornate Amarian style. The embroidered edge of my silk blanket glimmers with the dawn light streaming into my chamber.

I pull the baby against me. Her hair is silky and it curls around her neck. She is small and perfect, Onatos’s daughter: a neat, calm, self-contained creature, at peace with the world. Bone pale skin, night dark hair.

I see nothing of myself in her, but that only makes me pull her closer, so that her plump cheek rests against my breast.

“Leila, Leila.” I whisper her name, loving the foreign lilt of it, the way my tongue has to curl up on itself twice to say it.

“Is she awake?” His voice comes from behind me, sleepy and full of joy. My dreaming mind lurches with longing. Onatos, my love.

He is here, reaching for our daughter with a smile on his carved lips.

“She’s so beautiful,” he says.

There is no happiness better than this. This is the pinnacle—

I rested on the tapiat’s cot, blinking, hating wakefulness. My breasts ached, full of milk that would never be sucked. I wanted to sleep again. I wanted to dream of Onatos and Leila and everything that could have been. I had done my duty; I had birthed my child. There was nothing left for me here in Gante but dreams.

I had thought myself resigned to my fate and my sacrifice, but rebellious notions flitted through my head. The drive to survive was stronger than I had imagined. In my dreams, I found Leila and made my escape from Gante, surprising Onatos with our return to the Alcazar. In my dreams, I went back to him and he protected me. In my dreams, I satisfied the woman and left the goddess behind.

My mind ran ahead of me, making huge, fever-touched plans. I leapt from the pile of sealskins to pace the narrow tapiat on quivering legs. Seven strides took me across the width, ten strides across the length. I had already made the trek back to Amar—in my head—before I recalled that I had no notion of where to find Leila. Onatos would never forgive me if I left her behind. He was no Gantean, to accept the loss of a child so calmly.

I sat back down in the sealskins and tore at my hair, furious and helpless. How could I leave without her? How could I face him without her? I crossed my arms over my chest to dull the twin aches—the phantom ung-aneraq that bound me to Onatos, the unsucked milked I could never give my daughter—but it did not help.

I was helpless, and there was nothing left for me but death.