Chapter Seventeen

A/N: I don’t know, you wait around for a chapter of Childhood Demons, then three come along at once :D

Just a warning; this chapter contains descriptions of childbirth.

Chapter Seventeen

The whole room seemed to spring into action at once. Two novice priestesses leapt forward at the sound of Aesca’s scream and had moved three wooden screens into position around her with such swift efficiency that they were in place almost before Cori and the others could reach the bed. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once, trying to make their voices heard over the din.

“If she haemorrhages like this for much longer, we’re going to lose her!” Lyndra said grimly, grabbing a spare sheet from the chest by Aesca’s bed and jamming it between the unconscious woman’s legs.

“PELLIN!” the High Priest had slipped out from between the screens and seemed to be bellowing at the top of his lungs down the hallway, “PELLIN!”

“Yes, master?” Pellin arrived so swiftly that Cori wondered, momentarily, if the boy had grown wings on his heels. Then he turned his attention back to Aesca; checking her pulse, her breathing, gently probing her swollen belly. The muscles in her abdomen contracted beneath his touch and the young woman seemed to come back to her senses in the same moment, emitting a prolonged groan of pain.

“Aesca…!” Edarís was sobbing now, his face a masque of misery, but no one seemed to have much attention to spare for him. Ignored, terrified beyond his wits, the young man buried his face in his hands and cried shamelessly.

“She’s gone into labour,” Cori told Lyndra, “we need to get the baby out quickly or we’ll lose them both.”

“Cori,” the High Priest steered a wide-eyed Pellin past the screens, “tell Pellin what you need and he’ll fetch it for you.”

“Bragís leaves,” Cori responded, not even bothering to ask why the High Priest was deferring to him and not to Lyndra, “steep them in boiling water until it turns green, then get it here as fast as you can.”

“What’s bragís?” Pellin asked.

“We call it levarnís,” Lyndra told him, “they have different names for some herbs where Cori comes from – now hurry, lad. Go!”

Pellin dashed off obediently and the High Priest, running out of other useful things to do, knelt at the base of the bed and began to pray.

“What’s happening?” Aesca groaned. Her hand groped across the sheets, found Cori’s and gripped it so tightly that he thought she might have cut off the circulation.

“Your baby is on its way,” Cori told her, “just try to relax, you’ll be OK.”

“Great Goddess Brae’ara, mother of mothers, lend your protection to this woman and her child…” The High Priest intoned.

“Why’s he praying?” Aesca demanded, “What’s wrong?”

“Because he’s a priest,” Lyndra told her, “nothing’s wrong; you’re doing just fine.”

The look Lyndra flashed at Cori, in stark contrast to her reassuring words, bordered on sheer panic.

“I’ve not seen a birth this bad in all my life!” she whispered.

“Maebrí bled like this, too,” Cori hissed back, “though, not as badly…” he conceded.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” Pellin dashed back into the room, carrying a bowl that was almost as big as himself and slopping quite a bit of its bright green contents over the floor in his haste; ever efficient, one of the novices materialised immediately to mop it up.

“Easy!” Lyndra cried, relieving him of the bowl and setting it down on top of the chest before he could spill any more of it, “but good speed!” she praised.

Cori grabbed a cup off the bedside table, dipped it into the bowl and held it to Aesca’s lips; meanwhile, Lyndra dipped the sheet into the bowl, also, then applied it directly to the haemorrhage. The result was almost instantaneous; the bleeding slowed.

“Drink as much as you can manage,” Cori told Aesca, “it will help with the pain and speed up contractions … thank you, Brae’ara.” He added – this herb, so useful for women in childbirth, was heavily associated with the Moon Goddess.

Aesca tried to obey, but just as she put her hands around the cup and tried to guide it to her mouth, she suddenly doubled with renewed pain, crying out in agony, and the cup was knocked to the floor.

“Oh, by Rin it hurts!” she cried.

“You're doing really well,” Cori soothed, picking up the cup and placing it atop the chest next to the bowl full of the still steaming medication – well, if the contractions were so intense that she couldn't even drink it, then she was probably beyond the need for a herb that hastened labour, “try to relax...”

“I can't...” Aesca groaned, tightening her grip on Cori's fingers, “it hurts! I can't do this ... I can't do this ... it's too hard!”

“That's why they call it labour,” Lyndra responded. Beneath Cori's hand, Aesca's stomach muscles bunched up violently.

“Time to push, I think.” he suggested. Aesca groaned, thrashing her head from side to side in denial.

“I can't!”

“Oh yes you can!” Cori gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, “you can, Aesca ... no, look at me...” he took a gentle hold on her chin and tilted her head so that she was looking into his face, “look, we'll do it together. Take a deep breath...” and he drew in a lungful of air, demonstrating, “and on three, push down hard, OK? One, two, three...”

Aesca let out a long, loud wail as she obeyed and bore down hard, compressing Cori's fingers in a death-grip as she did so.

“Good!” Cori praised, “and again! One, two, three...”

Aesca screamed louder; somewhere behind Cori Edarís whimpered in utter despair.

“Head's out!” Lyndra cried.

“Once more,” Cori encouraged, “One, two, three...”

Aesca obeyed, but just as her feeble body expelled the child that had been the cause of all her pain, her body convulsed and she fell unconscious once more.

“Aesca!” Edarís screamed, “AESCA!” and he would have pushed Cori out of the way and thrown himself upon the young woman if not for the High Priest's quick reflexes; Edarís found himself being wrestled out of the screened area, still screaming in wild denial.

Cori swore and pressed his ear to Aesca's mouth; fortunately she was still breathing, but her pulse was weak ... there was little he could do, however, except pray that this enforced rest was just what Aesca’s body needed to recover from the trauma it had just endured.

“She'll be all right, I think.” he told Lyndra, who was busy with the tiny new arrival ... who wasn't moving.

“She's early,” Lyndra told him, “just past her seventh month, if Edarís got it right. She's not breathing.” and she hooked her finger into the baby's mouth, removing a good deal of mucus, then closed her lips around the newborn's nose and mouth and breathed gently.

After three repetitions of this method the baby made a little coughing sound, then let out a thin but decidedly indignant wail, flailing tiny fists in the air. Lyndra and Cori grinned in unified relief.

“Little fighter, this one!” the Dendrí healer proclaimed, wrapping the infant in a yari skin and placing it in a basket laid ready by the side of the bed, “though we should lay her a little closer to the fire – babes that come early have trouble keeping warm.”

Cori looked at the tiny little girl with her wrinkled skin and shock of jet-black hair and was reminded, suddenly, of the night when Malin had been born.

“Should I try to wake Aesca?” he asked; the first feed, which contained colostrum – a liquid that passed on antibodies from mother to baby – was extremely important, especially for premature babies. However, he was spared that decision as Aesca, with a groan, regained her senses.

“Baby...?” she asked groggily.

“She's a girl!” Cori announced, lifting the infant from her basket and handing her into the waiting arms of her mother, “well done, sátha!”

“Oh!” Aesca sighed with pure contentment, wrapping her arms around her new arrival, “she's so beautiful ... and she has Oryn's nose!” this comment brought both smile and tears to her face. “Oh, where's Edarís?”

One of the screens was thrust almost violently aside and Edarís rushed forward. Ignoring Cori and Lyndra completely, he knelt beside the bed and put one hand on Aesca's arm.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Edarís...” Aesca half laughed, half cried, “she has ... she has Oryn's nose...” and she burst into tears, burying her face in Edarís's shoulder. “Oh, I miss him!”

Edarís's eyes, too, were bright with tears.

“Me too.” he whispered hoarsely, me too.” He turned to Cori then and, amazingly, the hostility had completely vanished from his voice when he asked:

“Will she be ok?”

“Someone will have to keep an eye on her for a few days, but yes – I think she'll be ok now.” Aesca's labour had been surprisingly quick, in fact; Cori had been expecting the birth to take hours, maybe even days. Ah well; perhaps it wasn't wise to look a miracle in the mouth ... praise be to Brae'ara!

“Can that 'someone' be you?” Aesca asked, sniffing in an attempt to halt her tears. “Please?”

“If that's what you want,” Cori answered, surprised, “but Lyndra has far more experience than I do...”

He turned to the Dendrí Healer, about to apologise, feeling as though he had somehow usurped her authority. Lyndra, however, merely smiled.

“In matters concerning Arisharma, lad, I bow down before your greater experience and skill!” and she actually did bow. “I have plenty of patients to keep me occupied, what with an entire room full of expectant mothers and a Temple full of novices who seem to make it their vocation to acquire as many cuts and abrasions as humanly possible ... and poison themselves during my lessons!” and she shot Edarís a look that meant that although circumstances had, temporarily, let him off the hook she had not forgotten the reason why she had dragged him down here to see the High Priest in the first place. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I think the High Priest might like a word.”

She left.

Cori, too, had just remembered what had happened before Aesca went into labour. This young man sitting before him had actually been the one who had smuggled in the poison that had nearly killed Maebrí!

“Excuse me, I need to go check on my sister ... and a friend of mine,” he tried to keep his voice even, but he knew that Edarís had picked up some sort of inflection in his voice for the young man looked up with a very strange expression on his face – somewhere between defiance, denial and ... regret, maybe? Cori couldn't really make an accurate judgement because, suddenly, he was unable to look the young man in the eye.

With a nod towards Aesca, who was gazing at the baby in her arms with tears in her eyes, Cori pushed one of the screens aside and hobbled out of the ward.

“I just don't know what to do with that boy!” the High Priest cried, exasperated. “One minute he shows a complete lack of consideration for the feelings of others, the next he becomes empathy personified! And now I've expelled him!”

“Quite right, too!” Lyndra's nostrils flared, “bringing a substance like that into a Temple – into the reach of a vulnerable woman – the boy has obviously lost what little sense he had!”

“True,” the High Priest conceded, “and it's because of my duty of care to others in the Temple that I expelled him ... however...” he sighed and sank into his chair; he and Lyndra had wandered back to his office to discuss this matter in private, “...however, Aesca is here. I don't have the heart to tell him that he can't stay with her ... nor she that he has to go ... Rin knows they've both been through enough lately.”

“Hmm,” Lyndra wasn't sure how best to reply; she disapproved of the tone in the High Priest's voice that suggested that he was reconsidering his decision to expel the rebellious and, in her mind, dangerous young man, but had to concede that he had a point – the death of Oryn, Aesca's betrothed and Edarís's brother, had devastated them both ... and the discovery that Aesca was pregnant with an Arisharma child was, it seemed, the final straw that plunged Edarís into a destructive downwards spiral. Watching her health decay day by day, seeing her belly distend as the demon child grew fat whilst she wasted away, Edarís's sense of helplessness had grown and he spent long hours locked away in the apothecary, desperately trying to find something, anything that would help. Now it seemed that his attempts to find a way to destroy the demon growing within his beloved brother's fiancée had led to him procuring a substance that was not only deadly, but also illegal and a jeopardy to his career with the Temple.

“He's endangered more people than just young Maebrí,” she said slowly, “anyone, anyone could have found those phials. Supposing he accidentally left one of them in the apothecary? The younger novices would not know what it was – they may even have mistaken it for something innocuous.”

The High Priest looked drawn; the last few months had been a terrible strain on him – the sudden influx in the number of demons, the resultant rise in demon hunters on the roads and the knowledge that duty forced him to send the women he had sworn to protect out of the safety of the Temple grounds and, therefore, probably to their deaths, weighed heavily upon him ... and he was not getting any younger. In fact, he thought grimly, perhaps it was time he designated a successor; One never knew when One would be called into Soa'ara's great underworld – to use the vernacular, he may well be chewing hay by next year's Soa'aran. Oh, but he mustn't complain – he had chosen this life, after all – he'd sworn to serve the people – all the people – to help the needy, to aide the sick ... the very thought that duty meant that he had to turn away some of the most sick and needy people on Calrain repulsed him.

But what of Edarís? Was he yet another person in need of his help that he was about to turn away in the name of duty? Of course, that question was redundant, anyway – in a few days time he would be forced to send Aesca and her new baby on their way ... and wherever Aesca went, Edarís was sure to follow.

He explained this to Lyndra and watched as the anger drained from her face.

“Oh, Great Father – we can't turn Aesca away ... she's possibly the most in need of our help out of all the women! Great Father, she's grieving! She's been struggling to come to terms with ... with the baby's affliction. It's Oryn's baby, yet it's been sapping all the life out of her ... she's confused Great Father ... we can't just throw her out on the road like some wild animal!”

“I know!” The High Priest felt ill – he'd developed a special fondness for Aesca ... as could be expected – Oryn had meant the world to him, too, and his death had hit him just as hard. “But what choice do I have? I can't let an Arisharma stay in these walls for more than a few days, I just can't ... I'd risk losing many lives just to save one! I ... I can't make an exception ... not even for her.” he sighed deeply.

“Rin's greatest curse upon me for making this decision, but by the end of the week Aesca will have to leave. And if Aesca leaves, then...” he took a deep breath, overcome by guilt and grief, “...then my last living son will follow.”