Children of Fire Page 2

  Gretchen snorted. “Stillborn. You mean dead. I cannot raise the dead.”

  It had been over a year since her last pregnancy, but still the hag’s words stung. But she refused to let herself cry. Not for this child. Not yet.

  “This baby is not dead. I felt it kicking on the night of the last full moon. The other pregnancies were different. I felt nothing but the weight of the child, like a cold stone in my belly.”

  Gretchen set her stick down and picked up a small bone from the pile at her side. Cracking it open with thin, twisted fingers she sucked the marrow out. She chewed and gnawed the two splintered ends with decayed stumps of teeth, making a squishing sound that twisted Nyra’s face up in revulsion.

  The witch picked up her stick and jabbed the fire with the tip, then spit into the flames. There was a tiny shower of sparks in response, and a foul, rotting odor wafted up in a thin cloud of yellow smoke.

  “That was a fortnight ago,” the hag declared, seeing the truth in the flames. “The child is already dead within you. There is nothing I can do. It will be born like the others: lifeless and cold.”

  Nyra wanted to scream her protest to this foul, bitter woman. But hysterics would accomplish nothing. She took a deep breath before speaking. “The child still lives within me. I know it.”

  “How?” Gretchen demanded. “Have you felt it move?”

  A lie would be pointless here in the light of the enchanted fire.

  “The child lives. I just know.”

  The hag nodded and laid her stick to the side to pick up another tiny bone. As she cracked and chewed it, Nyra noticed that the stick used to stir the embers was itself a long, thin animal bone, blackened by years of smoke from the hag’s fire.

  Once more Gretchen spit into the fire. Again a shower of sparks, but this time the rising smoke was blue. It smelled faintly of the rich, pungent manure her husband used to spread on the fields.

  “What have you brought me?”

  Nyra reached down to the deep pocket at the front of her dress and felt for the small leather pouch she had stuffed inside before beginning her journey. It was awkward, fumbling around her stomach’s girth to explore the pocket while sitting on the ground. For a brief second she could not locate the pouch, and she feared it had been lost during her stumbling journey up the path. Then her fingers closed around the loop of drawstring. She pulled it out and held it up for the hag to see.

  Gretchen reached across the fire with eager hands to seize the offering, undaunted by the heat rising up from the flames. She snatched it from Nyra’s grasp and poured the contents into her wrinkled palm.

  The small collection of coins and jewelry amounted to a substantial sum. Nyra’s husband was not a rich man, but he was hardworking and successful. And he loved to buy his wife beautiful and interesting trinkets from the traveling merchants who passed through their small village. Before she had left her home this night, Nyra had selected the most valuable items from her collection, along with the small stash of gold coins she had saved up over the years.

  “It’s not enough,” Gretchen declared after appraising the contents.

  “I … I brought nothing else,” Nyra stammered in surprise.

  She had expected the cost of what she asked to be easily covered by the generous gift. The value of her offering exceeded two years’ pay for a field hand working on their farm.

  The hag eyed her with her milky orbs, a greedy gleam poking out from beneath the white of her cataracts. “Your ring.”

  Nyra recoiled, her hands clasping together over her wedding band as if she could hide it from the hag’s greedy gaze. She had been hoping Gerrit would never miss the small stash of jewelry she had taken, but if she came back without the ring he had given her on their Union Day he would surely notice.

  “No! My husband will ask what happened. He must not find out I have been here.”

  Gretchen shrugged. “The ring or nothing. That is the price of your child.”

  Nyra hated her, this wretched old woman who held the life of her unborn baby in her ugly, twisted hands. Slowly she removed her ring, struggling to get it over the bulging knuckle of her swollen finger. In a flash of spite she threw it at the hag with all the strength her weary arm could muster. The old woman’s hand snatched it from the air with the speed of a striking serpent.

  After examining the ring for a brief second the hag stuffed it into a hidden fold of her garments, along with the rest of the contents of the leather pouch. She tossed the pouch into the fire, where it was quickly consumed by the unnatural flames.

  Reaching down Gretchen picked up another small bone and offered it to the young woman. Despite the fear in her breast Nyra reached out to accept it. She turned it over in her hands, trying to determine from what animal it must have come. The bone was thin and light, like a bird’s. It was too large to be from any chicken she had seen.

  As if reading her thoughts the hag said, “A young griffin. No more than a week or two old by the size. Not powerful, but powerful enough for this.”

  Nyra could do little but take the old woman at her word. She had never seen a griffin; no one had. No one living. Griffins had been extinct for centuries … if they had ever existed at all. Nyra wouldn’t be surprised if Gretchen was lying to her about the origins of the bone.

  “Break it,” the hag instructed. “Suck the marrow, but do not swallow it. Chew it, gnaw the bone. Then spit it into the fire.”

  The bone was brittle and snapped easily in Nyra’s grasp. She made a bitter face as the sour sting of the marrow burned the cut on her lip and the bite on her tongue. But she did as she was told, chewing and gnawing until the hag nodded her head in the direction of the flames.

  Nyra spit, the gray of the bone mingling with the deep red of the blood still trickling from the injuries to her mouth. The fire flared with a bright orange heat so intense she had to turn her eyes away from the flash. When she looked back she could see a small gleaming white coal no larger than the size of her thumbnail in the center of the now blue-green flames.

  “Take it,” Gretchen commanded.

  Nyra remembered the way the hag had earlier reached right across the magical fire without seeming to feel the heat. She thrust her hand into the flames and seized the white coal, then cried out in pain and surprise, yanking her arm back as the heat seared her flesh. But her fist remained clenched about her prize, which seemed to hold no heat at all.

  Gretchen cackled as Nyra studied her burned hand. The skin was an angry red, and there were a few blisters from the heat. But nothing serious, nothing permanent. She felt tears welling up in her eyes: tears at the pain; tears at the cruelty of the hag; tears of fear and despair she had been denying herself ever since she realized the babe in her womb had gone still. But she would not cry. Not in front of this cackling old woman. Not now, when there was true hope for her baby. Nyra glared at the hag, and the evil laughter stopped.

  “Swallow the coal. It will give you a healthy child with the coming of the next moon,” the hag instructed. “But understand that there is yet a cost to be paid,” she added under her breath.

  Nyra didn’t hear her … or at least pretended not to. Instead, she popped the small coal into her mouth. It burned with the salty warmth of life going down her throat. She gasped in surprise, then burst into tears of joy when she felt the baby give a sudden kick.

  Two weeks later Nyra once again endured the agony of childbirth, soaked in a sheen of sweat. A cool cloth covered her forehead, but room was hot; the midwife’s assistant had piled the fire high to ward off the fading winter chill. The sticky warmth of blood coated the inside of her thighs, leaking out from between her legs … the same color as the moon in the sky the past three nights.

  The Burning Moon, Nyra thought, panting in and out with short, quick breaths as she fought to control her contractions. An ill omen.

  There was a sudden thrust of pain deep within her and she screamed aloud.

  “Don’t push!” the midwife yelled from down betwe
en her legs.

  Nyra could hear the fear in her voice. She could feel hands down there; grasping, wiping, turning. She wanted Gerrit; wanted to feel his strong fingers enveloping her own, hear his whispered reassurance. But the women had sent him out partway through the birth.

  One of the assistants rushed up to change the cloth on her head. She could see the horror on the teenage girl’s face.

  It’s not always like this, Nyra tried to tell her. There’s not always this much blood, this much pain. It’s not always like this—just for me. But instead she screamed as she was ripped apart from the inside yet again.

  “Now!” the midwife screamed, “Push now, Nyra!”

  And she did, pushing even though she could feel herself being rent asunder. The world dissolved into a veil of blind suffering, and suddenly she understood the final warning of the hag in the woods. Now she knew the true toll exacted by the power of Chaos.

  She heard the wailing cry of her son being born, the midwife’s shouted, desperate orders, the hurried rush of the assistants to save the mother, and at last Nyra wept. Wept at what she had seen, at what she finally understood. Wept with joy and sorrow and terror at the price of her son’s life, even as her world went dark and her own life oozed out between her legs in an ever-expanding pool of blood.

  Chapter 2

  The baby girl coughed once, spewing forth a ball of phlegm and blood that had blocked her breathing. She choked. She gasped. And then she began to cry. Her screams ripped through the heavy silence of the room at the back of the Golden Circlet, and Methodis muttered a quick prayer of thanks to the New Gods that the child had survived what the young, malnourished mother had not.

  The little girl was strong; stronger than he would have imagined possible, given the circumstances of her birth. Had he believed in such things he might have called it a miracle … or a tragedy.

  Her mother dead, the father unknown, the healer thought. Only seconds old, and she’s already alone in the world.

  He tied off the cord and handed the newborn to the terrified scullery girl who had been pressed into service as his assistant here in the back rooms of the pleasure-house. Like the dead mother, Methodis didn’t recognize her. She must have been one of Luger’s newest catches.

  “Use the soft cloths to wipe the child clean,” he explained slowly. “Be very gentle. Then wrap her in the blankets.”

  The wide-eyed girl nodded, gingerly taking the tiny baby’s squirming form in her outstretched arms. She glanced down at the mother lying in a bed usually reserved for more carnal pursuits, then snatched her eyes away from the corpse’s torn, bloodstained midsection.

  “What about Ilana?” the serving girl asked in a trembling whisper.

  Methodis wondered briefly if the serving girl had known the mother well. Had they perhaps been friends?

  “Leave her to me. I will clean her up and arrange for a proper burial. After I speak with Luger.”

  Methodis made no effort to clean himself up before going to speak to the owner of the establishment. He wanted Luger to see everything: the blood smeared on the front of his smock, the gore covering his hands and arms all the way up to his elbows where he had reached in to rip the child free of the dying mother’s womb. He left a crimson handprint on the handle of the door as he pulled it open.

  Luger was leaning casually against the wall in the corridor beyond. His one good eye momentarily went wide, but otherwise he showed no reaction to the doctor’s gruesome appearance. As always, the ugly scar and the empty socket staring back from the left side of Luger’s face reminded Methodis of that night nearly two years ago when he had stitched the knife wound closed in this very same hallway. He had known better than to ask Luger about the fate of the customer who had inflicted the injury.

  “I heard that baby crying, so I know it’s alive,” Luger said, then spit a wad of chewing leaf onto the floorboards. “Didn’t think the whelp would live. Not being born under the Burning Moon.”

  For the past week the sky above Callastan had been dominated by a full moon the color of fresh blood, an incredibly rare phenomenon not seen since the days of the Purge over twenty years ago.

  An old saying sprang unbidden into Methodis’s mind. Children born under the Burning Moon are touched by Chaos. There were many, the doctor knew, who would consider the little girl cursed. As if she doesn’t have enough problems already.

  “How ’bout Ilana?” Luger demanded, interrupting the healer’s thoughts. “How’s she doing?”

  Had Methodis been speaking with the scared serving girl in the back room he would have chosen his words to soften the blow. But he wasn’t about to make the same effort with the pleasure-house’s despicable owner. “She’s dead.”

  “Dead? First the stupid wench gets herself pregnant, and then you let her die on me? You know how much she cost?”

  Luger was no longer leaning against the wall, but was standing at full attention. His six-and-a-half-foot frame towered over the doctor’s slight form.

  “There is only so much I can do under these conditions,” Methodis said, struggling to keep his voice calm and even. He knew the consequences of arousing Luger’s temper. Yet remembering the bruises and welts covering the mother’s body made his own anger difficult to control. “I am not trained to deliver a child in the back of a Callastan whorehouse.”

  “What the hell did I pay you for if you couldn’t even save her? I ought to take what she cost out of your fee!” Luger spat once more on the floor and took a step forward, casting a dark shadow over the healer. “Gods’ blood, I should be charging you for this visit! She was one of my best girls before she got herself swollen with that damn child!”

  “You should have come for me sooner!” Methodis shot back, voice rising as his own rage bubbled over. “You waited too long. You let her bleed out. Trying to save yourself a few coins cost that girl her life!”

  The healer took a defiant step forward, narrowing the distance between them to mere inches.

  “Or maybe,” Methodis added through clenched teeth, “you shouldn’t have beaten a pregnant woman in the first place, you bastard!”

  Luger moved so quickly that the smaller man didn’t even have time to react. He scooped the healer up and slammed him against the wall, knocking the air from the his lungs. He pressed his face in close enough for Methodis to smell his acrid breath and squinted his one good eye.

  “Nobody talks that way to me in my house, little man.”

  He held the healer pinned to the wall for several seconds to emphasize his point, then released his grip and stepped back. Methodis dropped to one knee, gasping for breath. It was some time before he could stand upright again.

  “You said the baby’s gonna live?” Luger asked, as casually as two men making conversation in the market square. A fuse quick to fire, a mind quick to forget, they often said of Luger.

  “The child will live, though I can’t take credit for that. A little girl. She is a few weeks early, by the look of her. But she’s a fighter. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.”

  “You?” Luger asked incredulously. “Why should you take her? I’ll get a wet nurse to feed the brat, and I’ve got a dozen girls here to look after her.”

  The offer caught Methodis momentarily off guard. “You … you will raise this child? But why?”

  “Because she’s mine, damn it.”

  Methodis was stunned. The owner of a pleasure-house did not sleep with his girls. It simply wasn’t done. It wasn’t just bad business; it was seen as a sign of weakness. Luger’s ruthless reputation was well known and hard-earned; the thought of him and one of his own girls was almost inconceivable.

  “You’re the father?” Methodis mumbled in confusion, still trying to wrap his head around the concept.

  Luger gave a derisive snort.

  “I’m not the father, you stupid dolt. I don’t let my dick lead me around. No good can come of breeding my own whores! But I bought the mother, so the child is mine. I own her.”

 
Suddenly it was all clear. Luger was the same vile and disgusting creature he had always been. At his core he was a businessman looking to recoup his expenses. To him the girl was an investment for the future. He had called the mother—Ilana—one of his best girls. No doubt he figured the daughter would take after her in beauty. In time she could earn as much as the mother in the back rooms of the whorehouse. More if Luger was depraved enough to rent her out before she reached her womanhood.

  But for all the sins and vices widely available in the port city of Callastan slavery was still technically not legal. With the image of the babe struggling—and somehow succeeding—to draw her first painful breath outside the womb still fresh in his mind, Methodis made a sudden and rash decision.

  “The body of the mother must be taken away for burial. The constables will be curious as to what happened to her.”

  Luger shrugged. “A hard childbirth under a cursed moon,” he said by way of explanation. “If they don’t buy that, I’ll kick them a couple of coins to look the other way. Plenty of dead whores in this neighborhood.”

  “They will also ask about the child,” Methodis pressed. “What happened to her; who plans to care for her? They might be curious as to why a man who is not the father claims ownership of the girl. Do you really want to tell them you bought Ilana?”

  Smooth as silk a small knife appeared in Luger’s hand. He rubbed the flat of the blade along his own chin as if in deep thought.

  “Are you threatening me, Methodis? Do you really think you’re so valuable to the people of this neighborhood that I won’t kill you where you stand?”

  The doctor chose his next words carefully.

  “It’s hard to find a healer willing to work in a district as close to the docks as this one. Before you kill me you better have a replacement in mind. You’re not the only one who has regular need of my services. The other tavern owners in the district might become very angry with you.”

  “Their anger can be soothed with silver,” Luger countered, a dangerous glint in his eye.