Chapter 2074: A Dangerous Birth (Part Two)

"Heila, why isn’t he crying?"

Heila didn’t answer.

She turned the boy over in her hands and cleared his mouth with her smallest finger. Nothing. She rubbed his back with the rough corner of a linen, briskly, the way Cecile had taught her to. Nothing.

His heartbeat fluttered faintly beneath her palm. Still there. Still fighting.

Breathe, she willed him. Breathe, little one. Your sister did. You can too.

"Emmie," she said, very calmly. "Fetch my potion bag. There’s a bottle in it, sealed in red wax. Bring it here, quickly."

"This one?" Emmie said, holding up a dull glass bottle that only held a few drops of liquid that clung to the inside of the bottle.

"That’s the one," Heila said, nodding as she directed the tiniest thread of power into the infant’s heart, keeping it warm while the rest of his body went cold.

"Take one of the sampling sticks, long and thin, and gather up a drop from that vial," Heila instructed. "Be careful," she warned. "What’s in that vial is all I have. If it’s spilled, it can’t be replaced."

Emmie froze in place, her hands hovering over the wax seal on the vial.

"You can do this, Emmie," Heila reassured her. "You just have to be brave. Like your father. This is your arena. You won’t fall here. Just place a single drop on his brow, and I’ll do the rest."

"Mmm," Emmie said, nodding as she started to move again. The seal broke in her hands, and the stopper came out with a soft -pop.-

Heila’s squire took a slow, steadying breath and then she used a thin stick to remove a single drop of dark, thick red liquid from the vial. Emmie held her breath as she moved, bringing the tip of the sample stick to the infant’s brow, just as Heila told her to, depositing the crimson droplet just above his eyes.

Heila wasted no time in beginning her invocation, the words tumbling from her lips as fast as she could clearly speak them.

"Awaken, Potent Blood, through dark shadow and shallow breath,

Paint the world in crimson, rise up to defy death."

For a moment, the drop on the infant’s brow glowed a deep, lurid crimson, and then it sank down into the babe’s blue-tinged skin. Then, a moment later, the tiny chest heaved, the small mouth opened...

And the boy let out a wail so loud and so furious that it startled everyone in the room.

Heila sat down hard on her step.

She couldn’t help it. Her legs simply stopped holding her. She sat there with the screaming, squirming babe cradled in her lap, and she laughed, and she cried, and for a moment she couldn’t tell which was which.

On the bed, Olwyna was sobbing. In Morwen’s arms, his sister had begun to wail too, as if she’d been waiting for her brother to join her. And from the other side of the oak door came a crash, a thud, and Sir Carwyn’s voice, raw with terror and hope.

"Olwyna! Olwyna, what’s happening?" Carwyn called. "Is that... are they...?"

"Not yet, Sir Carwyn!" Heila called, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Stay where you are!"

"But..."

"Stay where you are!" Heila snapped.

There was a rumbling murmur through the door that might have been Barsali talking his friend down from the ceiling. Heila tied and cut the boy’s cord, passed him to Emmie, and turned back to Olwyna.

She wasn’t finished yet.

The afterbirths came, one and then the other. Heila checked each of them carefully, the way Cecile had taught her in countless visions, to be sure that nothing had been left behind.

Then she saw the blood.

Too much of it. Far too much, soaking dark through the linens beneath Olwyna and spreading fast. Olwyna’s face had gone from flushed to grey, and her lips held a faint, bluish tinge. When Heila caught her wrist, the skin was cold and clammy.

"I feel strange," Olwyna murmured. Her eyes were drifting, unfocused. "Heila, I feel so cold..."

No. Heila had prepared for this. She had prepared for this since before the banquet in Lothian, when she’d first heard there were two hearts beating beneath Olwyna’s ribs.

"Morwen. The red bottle on the shelf," Heila said. "Shepherd’s purse and yarrow. All of it, into her mouth. Emmie, the witch hazel, and fresh linens, as many as you can carry."

The girls moved. Heila laid both hands flat on Olwyna’s belly, just below the navel, and pressed down hard. Then she reached deep, deeper than she’d reached all night, into the silver-green, living heart of her witchcraft.

"Willow’s tears upon the wounded fall,

Mend the flesh and bone, one and all."

The magic poured out of her. She felt it sink into Olwyna, felt it find the torn and bleeding places deep inside, felt it bind them the way willow roots bind a crumbling riverbank. And she felt the cost, too: a cold, hollow ache, spreading from her own belly up into her chest, as if something inside her were being drained away.

She didn’t stop.

Slowly, so slowly, the bleeding eased. Then it slowed. Then, at last, it stopped.

Heila didn’t realize she’d swayed until Emmie’s hands caught her by the shoulders.

"Lady Heila," Emmie said, and her voice shook. "Lady Heila, you need to sit."

"In a moment," Heila said. "There’s one more thing."

She climbed down from her step, legs trembling, and took a small stoppered vial from the pouch at her belt. Inside was a potion as clear as spring water, brewed weeks ago with feverfew and elderflower, honeysuckle and a single drop of Ancient Willow sap from the Briar.

She went to the girl first. Emmie held her out, red-faced and squalling, and Heila unstoppered the vial and let three drops fall onto the baby’s tiny brow.

"Let no fever find you," she whispered. "Let no cough take root. Grow strong, little one, and let the willow shelter you until you’re strong enough to shelter yourself."

The drops sank into the baby’s skin and vanished, leaving behind the faintest green shimmer that faded a moment later.

She did the same for the boy. He screamed at her the whole time. Heila found she didn’t mind at all.

Only then did she let Emmie and Morwen wrap the babes in Madame Zedya’s soft, undyed blankets and lay them, one in each arm, against their mother’s breast.

Olwyna’s face was still pale, but her eyes were clear now, and when she looked down at the two small, squirming bundles in her arms, Heila thought she’d never seen anyone look so completely, overwhelmingly happy.

"You can let him in now," Heila told Morwen.

Morwen opened the door, and Sir Carwyn Belvin nearly fell through it.

He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week, which was probably true. His tawny hair stood up in every direction, and his eyes were red-rimmed and wild. Behind him, Barsali filled the doorway, his great scaled body coiled tight with tension and his crested head ducked low beneath the lintel.

Carwyn stopped at the side of the bed. He stared at his wife, and at the two small faces nestled against her.

"Olwyna," he whispered. "Oh, Olwyna..."

"Come and meet them, sunshine," Olwyna said softly. "Come and meet your children."

He knelt beside the bed as though his legs had given out, and he reached out one big, trembling hand to touch his daughter’s cheek. The baby’s tiny fingers curled around his thumb, and Sir Carwyn Belvin, Slayer of Demons and Commander of Belvin’s Hounds, began to weep.

Barsali hadn’t moved from the doorway.

"Barsali," Olwyna said. "Come here. You too."

"Barsali is too big," the serpentine warrior rumbled uncertainly. "Barsali will frighten small ones."

"Barsali," Olwyna said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Come here."

He came. Slowly, carefully, his scales whispering across the stone, until his great crested head hovered just beside the bed. He peered down at the two babes with an expression of such fierce, solemn wonder that Heila had to look away to keep from crying again.

"Small," Barsali said reverently. "So small."

"Our daughter," Olwyna said, and looked down at the little girl with the shock of chestnut hair. "Her name is Cassia."

"Cassia," Carwyn whispered, as though it were a prayer.

"And our son," Olwyna said, turning to the boy, who had finally stopped screaming and lay blinking up at the world with dark, unfocused eyes. "He’s named for the two men who kept him safe before he was even born. For his father." She smiled up at Carwyn. "And for his uncle Barsali."

The great serpent went perfectly still.

"His name is Barwyn," Olwyna said.

For a long moment, no one spoke. Barsali stared down at the tiny boy, and his crest rose and fell, and his tongue flickered out and in again.

"Barwyn," he said at last, very softly. "Barsali will guard him. Always."

Olwyna smiled, tired and radiant, and drew her children closer against her heart.