The Highwayman

13

Orphan Born Searing lines of fire ran through her ravaged body, but SenWi did not cry out. They were down in a smoky tunnel where Garibond thought that they would be safer during this trying and noisy process. Up above, the air crackled with energy as bolts of lightning split the sky; and the sulfuric residue, that peculiar smell and tingle of a thunderstorm, permeated even down here.

Garibond continued talking about the weather, about how unusual it was for a thunderstorm at this time of year. Winter had barely let go, with little snow remaining and three weeks left until the equinox. "These storms are usually for the middle of spring," Garibond explained, trying to sound excited and engaging. His voice trailed away, for he saw clearly that SenWi wasn't paying him any heed, that she was locked in a life-and-death struggle against the waves of agony.

Never had he felt so helpless. He hadn't ever watched a woman give birth before, and now here he was, serving as midwife, as the only support, and her pregnancy had not been going well for many months.

He bent low and whispered, "What can I do for you?"

SenWi didn't answer, other than to take his offered hand and squeeze hard.

Inside her, SenWi felt as if someone were grabbing her line of ki-chi-kree, pulling and jerking it back and forth. She tried to find some sense of center, some focus of energy, but there simply was none. Spasms shot through her as if they were drops of acid being splashed within her.

She reached with all her powers to try to touch her child, to try to find its life energy. And there was something strong in her womb, a powerful force. But it was not aligned, she understood; it felt as if the thread of this one's chi had been frayed.

SenWi couldn't pause and consider that. The pain and sense of urgency were too great. They tore at her and pressed the air from her lungs. She transferred all her pain to her breathing and used that as her focus, puffing in short gasps, gradually developing a rhythm that she transferred to her thumping heart.

And she felt Garibond's hand, a tangible connection to the physical world. She squeezed that hand with all her strength and let the pain flow through her clutching fingers to dissipate beyond her corporeal being.

But more pain built within, faster than she could let it flow from her; and deeper within, the pressure built against the inside of her birth passage. She felt her skin ripping, felt a sudden surge of agony and a contraction of her muscles so powerful that she was certain they must be tearing themselves apart. It went on and on, and she had no sense of time's passage.

Garibond wasn't holding her hand anymore, and she had to fight off a wave of panic, thinking that she must have fallen away from all the world.

She felt him between her legs, then and heard his shout.

"Push!"

He called to her again and again, and each repetition gave the failing woman a little bit more to hold on to. SenWi gathered all her strength, all her energy, and all her disciplined focus. She lifted the thread of her chi, balling it into a formidable force just above her struggling child. Then, as surely as if she were pushing with her hands or legs, she forced that energy down, down.

Her skin ripped a bit more, and then she felt a rush of sudden coolness, a great release of pressure, and all her lower body went comfortably numb.

She lay there for some time in the cool darkness of semi-consciousness, her body falling into a deep state of relaxation, muscles sinking into the bed as if she were being swallowed by it-and that was a sensation that the battered and exhausted woman welcomed. Moments slipped past in blissful emptiness, with not a spot of light marring the blackness or a whisper of sound defeating the silence.

Not a whisper of sound.

Not the beating of her heart.

Not the cry of a newborn baby.

She was dying. She knew that, and she didn't fight it. Not then. Perhaps it was time for her to surrender.

Her child was not alive. SenWi realized that her child was not crying, was making no sounds at all. She concentrated her life energy and grabbed at her heart, forcing it to beat. She sent her thoughts back through that blackness, as if she were climbing out of a deep hole, and she finally saw a glow of light. She raced for it, desperately now, as she realized that her child was not yet alive.

Her eyes opened and the room came into focus. She saw Garibond standing off to the side, the child on a table in front of him, blue and still. He glanced back at her, and SenWi could see his tears.

Garibond shook his head.

SenWi rolled off the bed and to her feet. She swayed and staggered and nearly fell. She felt the warmth of her own blood running down her legs, and knew that she was bleeding too heavily. But she forced herself into a stumbling walk to the table, where she placed both her hands on her child.

It was a boy, a beautiful boy, a perfect boy.

His life force was so weak, barely a sliver of energy in his little body. Nor was that thread of energy straight, the typical and expected line of ki-chi-kree from forehead to groin. No, she sensed that her child's life line was interrupted at many points, was wavering where it should have been straight and solid. He was not perfect, SenWi realized with horror. He was damaged, badly so; and SenWi knew that it was from the snake venom she had willingly taken into herself when she had healed the condemned girl. As the venom had attacked her, so it had assailed her defenseless infant.

That realization didn't slow her in the least. Garibond grabbed one of her arms and cajoled her to relent and go lie down. He might as well have been grabbing at iron.

Was it guilt driving her? Was it anger?

SenWi didn't care. All that mattered to her was that her baby wasn't breathing, that her baby was damaged, perhaps fatally. She found the connection to his life energy and threw her own into him, offering herself fully to him. She let her chi energy flow out of her and into the child.

The blood splashed down her legs. Garibond's cries became more insistent. "Lie down, woman!" he shouted in her ear. "Your blood's running!"

He tugged and tugged futilely at her. "Too late for the little one!" he insisted.

SenWi felt him let go, and then he came back with a thick cloth and placed it hard against her, trying to stem the blood flow. It didn't matter, she knew by then, and she accepted the sacrifice as she came to feel the life force of her child strengthening.

The baby opened his eyes and gasped his first breath, and then he began to cry.

To SenWi, that sounded like the sweetest music ever sung.

She felt her own life energy spasm, a wild dispersal of strength and reflex that jolted her away from her child. She staggered back a step and would have fallen.

But Garibond was there, gently catching her and laying her back down on the bed. She tried to ask for her baby, but was too weak to give voice to her words. Garibond understood, though, and he took up the child and gently placed it on her chest.

SenWi heard the baby crying. She wanted to tell him that it was all right. She managed to hold the baby in her arms and feel his softness and the warmth of his breath against her neck. And suddenly, he wasn't crying anymore, but had settled in comfortably.

The torch-lit room began to darken once more, the black tunnel's sides rising around SenWi. Regret filled her for just a moment as she considered all that she would miss. She threw that emotion aside at once and considered that her baby was alive, that she had given him existence and then had breathed life into him.

To SenWi, there was no price too great for that.

She let the blackness rise, because she knew that she could not resist it. She felt the baby's breath and softness to the last. He hated leaving the child alone, but Garibond didn't know what else to do. Dynard had to know of the babe and of the fate of SenWi, whom Garibond had buried on the small island on the lake, the island where a younger Garibond and Bran Dynard had spent many of their finest childhood days.

Two weeks had passed since the child's birth, and Garibond still had not named him. He couldn't bring himself to do it. The baby seemed healthy enough, if very frail and thin.

Garibond hurried all the way into town that cold and wet late winter day. He concocted a story of illness, a general soreness in his legs, that would get him into Chapel Pryd, begging healing from the brothers. So when he got in sight of the town, he slowed and began walking awkwardly, favoring one leg.

He found no resistance at the chapel doors. The common area was nearly deserted this day. Garibond limped in and took a seat.

"May I be of service to you, friend?" asked one of the brothers, a younger man Garibond knew as Brother Reandu.

"The cool rain's got into my bones," Garibond explained. "I've come to beg a bit of healing, if that is possible. I'll be putting my crops in soon enough, but I doubt I could bend over to work the ground."

The monk nodded. "I have not seen you regularly in church-it is Master Garibond, is it not?"

"Aye, that is my name. Garibond of Pryd. I live a long way out, brother, and with my weakened knees, the journey is painful. Perhaps if you gave some healing to me, I would be a more frequent visitor in the chapel, bringing donations, what little I have, every time."

The monk smiled at him-a look of sarcasm and not warmth.

"Brother Bran Dynard, he promised me some healing if I could return to Chapel Pryd after the snows," Garibond insisted. "He did, your-our God as my witness."

The doubting smile only widened.

"Go and get him, then!" Garibond insisted. "Go and tell Brother Dynard that his old friend Garibond is here. He'll take that cleverness from your face, I do not doubt."

"That would be a rather long walk for me, friend Garibond," Brother Reandu replied, "for your friend Brother Dynard is not here. At the bidding of Father Jerak, he has gone north to Chapel Abelle. I doubt that he will return before the next winter."

Garibond fought hard to keep his eyes from widening with shock and fear. What was he to do now?

"Shall I ask Father Jerak to come and speak with you? Or tend your sore knees, perhaps?" Reandu asked.

Garibond scowled. "Have you any healing to offer my old bones?" he asked.

"The gifts of God are not without recompense," Brother Reandu recited. "You would find Chapel Pryd more accommodating to your pains if you more regularly attended the sermons of Father Jerak and Brother Bathelais."

With silver coins ready for the passed basket, Garibond thought. He turned his gaze from the useless Brother Reandu and slowly rose. He continued to limp slightly as he made his way out of the chapel, then hardly at all through the rest of the town. Once past the gates, Garibond picked up his pace steadily until he had broken into a run, propelled by fear more than anything else.

SenWi was gone. Dynard was gone.

Leaving him with a child to raise, at least until the following winter. Brother Bran Dynard huddled under his heavy cloak, bringing his hands to his chest. He had wrapped his fingers in fur, but that was hardly sufficient against the biting cold wind. Head bowed, leading a donkey, the monk plodded along. Only a week out from Pryd, with perhaps a hundred miles behind him, Dynard had found that winter had not yet let go. All the shady areas near the road were still covered in snow, and the road itself was icy in many places. More than once, Dynard had slipped and fallen hard to the ground.

All that he had thought about when leaving the chapel was SenWi and Garibond. She would be close to delivering the baby now, he knew, if she had not already.

How he wanted to go to her!

But he could not, for he had left Chapel Pryd escorted by soldiers-Prince Prydae had arranged an escort to the northern edge of the holding. Even after that, Dynard had been aware of eyes watching his every move, scouts for the prince and for Father Jerak, no doubt. If he turned in the direction of Garibond's house, he would give it all away.

Thus he had continued along the northern road, hoping only that he would reach Chapel Abelle and be done with his business quickly.

"Ack, ye let me have yer cloak then," he heard a harsh voice cutting asunder the smooth notes of the wind. Dynard straightened and looked up, left and right; and as one patch of blowing snow thinned before him, he saw a diminutive but undoubtedly solid figure standing in the road.

"Ye give me yer cloak now," the powrie-for of course it was a powrie-said again.

Brother Bran swallowed hard. He kept as still as possible, but his eyes darted all around. Where there was one powrie, there were usually more.

"Come on then. I'm freezing me arse off out here," the dwarf insisted, taking a step forward. "Ye let me use the cloak a bit, and then I'll let yerself wear it in turn, and both of us'll get through this wretched storm. Come on then."

Poor Dynard didn't know what to do. He thought of attacking the dwarf, but his hands were so cold he doubted he could grasp a weapon.

He knew that he shouldn't trust a powrie, but still…

This was not a normal circumstance.

Dynard reached up and undid the tie about his neck, then pulled the cloak back from one shoulder.

"There ye go, giving me a good target," said the dwarf.

Dynard didn't see the sudden movement, but he saw the spear flying his way. He tried to dodge or duck, but he was too late.

The spear drove into his chest.

He was only half aware that he was sitting. He was only half aware as the dwarf pulled his cloak from him, laughing.

He was only half aware when the dwarf wiped its beret across the bloody wound in his chest.

Then the powrie kicked him in the face, but he didn't feel it.

All he felt was the cold wind, slowly replaced by the colder chill of death. Part II God's Year 64