AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Give her more poppy,” Yseult ordered a young girl who stood near, trembling.
“Be careful with it,” the midwife ordered. “You mustn’t push now. You mustn’t. It will hurt her,” she told Yseult.
“Do what must be.”
“I’ll kill you!” In her rage, in her pain, Shana struck out at the young girl. The cup flew from her hands, and blood trickled downher cheek where Shana’s ring sliced flesh. “I’ll kill all of you, and Odran will crush your bones. Get it out of me!”
“Hold her down,” the midwife ordered. “Yseult, if you would cut her pain with your great power, or give her a few moments of sleep—”
“Birthing is blood and pain. Do what you must.”
The screams, the horrible screams turned inhuman as the midwife reached inside Shana to try to turn the child. She let out a cry of her own, drew back a hand gashed and dripping blood.
“It— There are claws. It rips her.”
“You, you, hold her down, do you hear? You, go tell Odran his child comes. And you?” Yseult moved closer, closed a hand around the midwife’s throat. “Birth this child or die.”
Screams ripped and tore the air. Shana’s hair, gray and matted from sweat, fell around a face tortured with pain.
It took four to hold her down as the midwife worked.
Still she cursed, used every breath to damn them all, to damn the thing fighting to be born.
“It’s turned!” Dripping with sweat and blood, the midwife hunched over Shana. “Push now! Push.”
Instead, Shana lay laughing. “Dead, dead, you’re all dead. I bathe in your blood.”
But it was Shana’s blood staining the silk as the midwife reached in, fighting to help the child along. “Push now, push, lovey. Yseult, I beg you, help me. I can’t do it alone, and she has no strength left.”
Yseult moved to stand over Shana, looked down into mad, glazed eyes. “Push this child into the world.” She held her hands over Shana’s distended belly. “Bring it to life.”
Baring her teeth, Shana lurched onto her elbows. Screaming again, screaming as she pushed.
“I have the head, hold now, please, Yseult, have her hold now.”
The head, coated with blood, showed eyes slitted and swollen, a mouth in a grimace where fangs, short and sharp, snapped.
“Gods have mercy,” the midwife murmured, then cried out as her collar shot pain into her.
“There is no god but Odran. Now bring his child forth.”
It squirted into the midwife’s bloody hands, small enough to cupin them, with a body twisted like rope. It let out a weak, mewling cry as its clawed hands scrabbled.
On the bed, pale as death, Shana let out a laugh, a low rumble that sounded like the madness in her eyes.
“He breathes,” the midwife said, “but not, I fear, for long. I must cut the cord, deliver the afterbirth. She needs tending or she will die as well.”
“Give me the child.”
The midwife’s hands shook when Odran spoke from behind her. And with those trembling hands, she cut the cord, and held the child up to Odran.
He stared down at it. “There is no power in this. Only sickness, deformity, and death. Can you change that?”
Yseult stepped to him, studied the child lying in his hand. “He won’t live through the hour, and is beyond my powers.”
“And what of her?”
“She will never conceive another child.”
