The Shattered Chain (10 page)

She was dismayed, now that she could see Melora by firelight: hands and ankles swollen, eyes red and feverish.
She should have told us hours ago; we should have stopped … but then the child would have been born without water near. …

Melora sank down gratefully on the pile of blankets that the Amazons had arranged for her. For a moment she buried her face in her hands; Rohana could hear her breathing, loud and hoarse like an animal. Then she raised her head and said plaintively, “I am thirsty, Rohana—will you bring me a drink?”

“Of course.” Rohana began to rise, but Melora clutched at her hands. “No, no stay with me. Did I tell you why I suddenly knew I must escape, get Jaelle away, or kill her myself before this child was born?”

“No, dear, you didn’t tell me—”

“When I found her—playing with Jalak’s other little daughters—they had all of them, even Jaelle, tied ribbons about their hands, playing at being grown up, and in chains—”

Rohana felt herself shudder, deep down in the bones. She said quickly, “Dear, let me go. I will fetch you a drink; do you think you could eat a little?” She left Melora lying on the pile of blankets and went to the darkness near the water hole, kneeling to rinse the cup, trembling, glad to hide her face in the darkness.

After a little she managed to control herself and come back. Kindra said from the fire, “Tell her we will have some hot food soon, and something to drink; it may strengthen her for what lies ahead. And I think we can manage torchlight later, if we need it.”

Rohana somehow managed to thank her. She came back and knelt beside Melora, who was lying with her eyes closed; Rohana held the cup to her lips, and Melora gulped it thirstily. Rohana said, “We shall have some hot food for you soon; try to rest.” She went on talking, saying anything that crossed her mind, trying to sound encouraging; after a few minutes, Melora put out a hand to stop the flow of chatter.

“Breda
—” She used the
casta
word for “sister”; in the intimate inflection it also meant “darling.” “Don’t lie to me. In memory of what we both were, once, don’t try to pretend, as if I were still an outsider; what is going to happen?”

Rohana looked at the sick woman, heart-wrung.
So after all she is still Comyn, still telepath; she can read me so easily.
“What can I say to you, Melora? You know as well as I that no woman so far in pregnancy should travel so far or so fast. But other women have survived worse than this, and lived to frighten their granddaughters with the tales of what they endured. And I’ll be with you.”

Melora clasped her hand. “Better you than the evil crone who brought Jaelle into the world,” she said, clinging to her cousin’s fingers. “She would not even free my hands. … ” She ran her fingertips, as with a long-habitual gesture, along the jagged scars at her wrists. “Jalak swore if I bore a son he would give me whatever I asked, save my freedom; I had it in my mind to ask for her head.”

Rohana shuddered, was grateful when Fat Rima approached them; she said, “Here is our midwife; she will do what she can for you,
breda.”

Melora looked up at her; she felt—Rohana sensed it—skeptical and more than a little frightened. But she said (and again, poignantly, Rohana was reminded of the lighthearted and gracious girl Melora had once been), “I thank you,
mestra;
I did not know any of the Free Amazons would choose such a womanly trade.”

“Why, Lady, we earn our bread at any honest work,” Rima said. “Did you truly think we are all soldiers and hunters? The Guild-house in the city of Arilinn, where I was trained, has a specialty of training midwives; and we compare everything that is known about the problems of birth from Temora to the Hellers, so we are the best of midwives; even on the great estates, sometimes, women will send for us. Now, my Lady, let me see how far this thing has gone, and how long you must expect to wait—here.” She knelt, feeling all about Melora’s body with gentle, expert hands. “Well, it is a strong child, and a big one, too.”

She broke off as Jaelle came running toward them. The child’s face was drawn and white in the firelight. “Mother—oh, Mother—” she said and burst into tears.

Rima said firmly, “Come, my child, that will not help Mother. You are almost a woman now yourself; you must not behave like a baby and trouble us.”

Melora dragged herself upright, letting herself lean heavily on Rohana. “Come here, Jaelle. No, let her come to me, I know she will be good.”

Struggling to fight back her sobs, Jaelle came and knelt beside her mother; Melora seized her in a fierce embrace and said, not to any of them, “It was worth it all. You are free, you are free!” She kissed the small wet face hungrily, again and again; then laid her hand under Jaelle’s small quivering chin and looked at her a long time in the wavering firelight before saying, “You must go now, my darling, and stay with the other women. You cannot help me now, and you must leave me to those who can. Go, my dearest love, try to sleep a little.”

Crying, Jaelle let Gwennis lead her away into the darkness beyond the campfire. Rohana heard the child sobbing softly for a long time; then she was quiet and Rohana hoped she had cried herself to sleep. The night wore on slowly. Rohana stayed with Melora, holding her hands, now and then sponging her sweaty face with cold water. Melora was still and patient, doing what she was told, trying to rest between the spasms; now and then she talked a little, and after a time Rohana, with a shudder, knew Melora had lost track of where she was and what was happening. She talked to her own mother, years dead; once she started up with a shriek, crying out curses in the Dry-Town language; again and again she sobbed and entreated them not to chain her again, or cried out, over and over, “My hands! My hands!” and her fingers went again and again to the long ragged scars at her wrists. Rohana listened, murmured to her soothingly, tried now and again to break through the delirious muttering …
If Melora knew she was here and free, here with me. …
She tried, with all her telepathic skill, to reach her cousin’s mind, but all she could feel was horror and long dread.

Blessed Cassilda, mother of the Domains … Evanda, Goddess of light, Goddess of birth … merciful Avarra … what she must have endured, what horror she must have known. …

None of the other women slept, although Kindra had ordered them all to bed; Rohana could sense, like a tangible vibration in the air, their awareness, their concern.
At times like this it is a curse, to read the thoughts of others. …

Once, when Melora slept for a moment, in exhaustion, Rima met Rohana’s eyes over the struggling body and shook her head briefly. Rohana closed her own eyes for a moment.
Not yet! Don’t give up hope yet!

Rima said, pityingly, “She has no strength left, I think, to be free of the child. We can only wait.”

Rohana suddenly knew if she stayed there another moment she would break into hysterical screams and sobs, herself. She said thickly, “I will be back in a moment,” and rose, plunging away, around the campfire, toward the crude latrine the Amazons dug at their camps. She leaned against the harsh rock-face, covering her face, struggling not to vomit or scream. After a moment, controlling herself a little, she went to the fire, where a pot had been left with the hot drink of fermented grain, which the Amazons used in place of bark-tea or
jaco,
just simmering. She dipped herself out a cup and sipped it, fighting for self-control. Kindra, tall and almost invisible in the darkness, stopped and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Bad, my Lady?”

“Very bad.” Rohana felt for a moment that the hot bitter brew would choke her. “She is not—not a woman who could ever have borne children easily; and here, without skilled help, after so much suffering—after this hard journey—without care or comfort …”

Kindra’s sigh seemed to come from the very depths of her being. “I am sorry, truly sorry. It is cruel that she should suffer so much for freedom, and never live to enjoy it, after so much courage. It must add greatly to her suffering, to know that even if her child is born alive, there will be none to suckle him or care for him.”

A resentment she had not known she felt, against these women who had chosen to spare themselves the pains of womanhood, surged up in Rohana, out of control. She had forcibly to restrain herself from flinging the scalding contents of her cup at the older woman. She said bitterly, “You! What would
you
know of that fear for a child?”

“Why, as much as you, Lady,” said Kindra. “I bore four children before I had turned twenty. I was given in marriage very young, and my first child died before I could bring him forth; the midwives said I should not try to bear another, but my husband was eager for an heir. My second and third children were daughters both, and he cursed me. I came very near to death with my fourth child—he was three days in the bearing—and this time, instead of curses, when he saw our son, he showered me with gifts and jewels. And then I knew a woman’s lot in our world was wholly accursed. I was of no value; the daughters I bore him at risk of my life were of no value; I was nothing but an instrument to give him sons. And so when I could walk again, I left my children sleeping, one night, and cut my hair, and made my way alone to the Guild of Free Amazons, and there my life began.”

Rohana stared at her in horror. She could think of nothing to say. Finally she stammered, “But—but all men are not like that, Kindra.”

“No?” Kindra said. “I rejoice you have not found them so, Lady, but that is luck and good fortune, and no more.” She glanced at the reddening sky, and said, “Hush,” listening to the sounds that had changed, in the last few minutes, from long, patient sighs to harsh, gasping breaths and hoarse short grunts of effort. She said quickly, “Go to her, Lady. It cannot be long now.”

There was enough light in the sky now so that Rohana, coming to kneel beside Melora, could see her kinswoman’s face, strained and swollen as she fought, panting, for breath.

“Rohana—Rohana—promise me—”

Rima said, imperatively, “Don’t talk, dear; pay attention now. Take a good deep breath, and hold it. Come now, dear, that’s right, another nice long breath. Now, bear down—come on, hold on tight, just push—”

Rohana let Melora take her hands, cling to them with agonized strength as the inexorable process of birth seized her body, wrenching her into spasms. Rima said, in the singsong that Rohana supposed was common to all midwives, “Come on, now, sweet, that’s a good girl, another nice big push, hard now. That’s right,
that’s
a good girl, come on now, just a little bit more—”

Rohana felt Melora’s nails dig into her hand; the contact wrung her with agony. Wide open to her cousin, she felt the tearing pain wrenching at her own body, gasped with the weight of it.
Too much, too much … worse than when Kyril was born …
She felt the smothered scream Melora was fighting back, thought in dismay,
Gabriel stayed with me; now I know how he felt … I know now he felt all I was enduring. I never knew … too much, too much …

She felt the pain ebb away, felt Melora relax for a moment. Rima said authoritatively, “Come on, now, breathe deep, get ready for the next one; a few more good ones like that and it’ll be all over.” But Melora ignored her, clutching at Rohana’s hands. She gasped, “Rohana, promise—promise—if I die—care for my children. My baby, take my baby—”

She gasped, and arched her body again under the fierce, wrenching pain. Rohana could not speak; she reached for contact with Melora again, directly to her mind.

—I
swear it, darling, by the Blessed Cassilda and by the Lord of Light. … They shall be as my own children, may the Gods seize me if I make any difference between them and the children born of my own body. …

Melora whispered, “Thank you—I knew—” She collapsed again. Over her head, dark with sweat, Rima looked up, and Rohana met Kindra’s eyes. Kindra said quietly, “I had better fetch Jaelle now.”

Rohana looked up indignantly; looked at the swollen, unconscious body, the spreading bloodstains, feeling the wrenching agony seize Melora again, and herself flinched before the terrifying assault on body and mind. She said in violent indignation, “How can you? Is this any place for a little girl …?”

Kindra said gently, but inexorably, “It is her right, Lady. Would you wish to sleep through your mother’s deathbed? Or are you still lying to yourself, Lady Rohana?” She did not wait for Rohana’s answer. Rohana, kneeling, letting Melora grip her hands with that anguished death-grip, heedless of Melora’s nails digging into her and drawing blood, was seized again by that moment of terror she had known at the climax of her own child-beds. …
Breaking, tearing, splitting, coming apart… dying. …
Rohana struggled to keep herself a little apart from Melora’s terror, to give her kinswoman some strength, something to cling to outside her own agony and fear. She held Melora, murmuring endearments, whispering, “We’re with you, love, we’re right here, we’re going to take good care of you.”, but she did not know what she was saying.