She gasped, and arched her body again under the fierce, wrenching pain. Rohana could not speak; she reached for contact with Melora again, directly to her mind.
-I swear it, darling, by the Blessed Cassilda and by the Lord of Light…. They shall be as my own children, may the Gods seize me if I make any difference between them and the children born of my own body….
Melora whispered, “Thank you-I knew-” She collapsed again. Over her head, dark with sweat, Rima looked up, and Rohana met Kindra’s eyes. Kindra said quietly, “I had better fetch Jaelle now.”
Rohana looked up indignantly; looked at the swollen, unconscious body, the spreading bloodstains, feeling the wrenching agony seize Melora again, and herself flinched before the terrifying assault on body and mind. She said in violent indignation, “How can you? Is this any place for a little girl . . .?”
Kindra said gently, but inexorably, “It is her right, Lady. Would you wish to sleep through your mother’s deathbed? Or are you still lying to yourself, Lady Rohana?” She did not wait for Rohana’s answer. Rohana, kneeling, letting Melora grip her hands with that anguished death-grip, heedless of Melora’s nails digging into her and drawing blood, was seized again by that moment of terror she had known at the climax of her own child-beds…. Breaking, tearing, splitting, coming apart… dying. … Rohana struggled to keep herself a little apart from Melora’s terror, to give her kinswoman some strength, something to cling to outside her own agony and fear. She held Melora, murmuring endearments, whispering, “We’re with you, love, we’re right here, we’re going to take good care of you.”, but she did not know what she was saying.
For the first and last time Melora shrieked aloud, a long, terrible cry of anguish and dread; and then, just as the sun was rising, into the terrible silence there was another sound: a strange, sharp, shrill sound, the uplifted howling of a newborn child.
“Praise to Evanda,” said Rima, holding up the naked, bloody child, feet first. “Listen to how strong he is! I didn’t have to slap this one into life-”
Melora whispered, almost inaudibly, “Give him to me,” and reached out for him, her face changing. The never-failing miracle, Rohana, thought. Always, no matter how hard and terrible the birth, there was this moment of joy, when the face changed, alight and glowing. Melora looks so happy, so happy; how can she? Rohana wondered, not remembering her own happiness. Rima wrapped the baby in a fold of clean towel she had laid ready, and placed him on Melora’s flaccid belly. She said matter-of-factly, “He will do weir enough.”
“Jalak’s son,” Melora whispered, and the joyous smile slipped away. “What will become of him, poor little wretch?”
Rima said sharply, “My Lady-”
Melora reached out her hands. She said, “Jaelle- Jaelle, come here and kiss me-oh, Jaelle-”
Rima cried out in consternation; blood came forth in a great gush, and Melora sighed and fell back, her face white and lifeless. And there was no sound in the sunrise except the crying of Melora’s motherless children.
“Will you truly have Jalak’s son to foster, Lady Rohana?” Kindra asked.
The sun was high in the camp. Jaelle had cried herself to exhaustion and was lying on the sand between them, limp, like some bedraggled little animal. Rohana was half sitting, half lying against a pile of saddlebags. She had wrapped the naked child and thrust him inside her tunic against her breasts, where he squirmed and nuzzled, already lively and seeking the nourishment he did not know would be denied him. Rohana patted the warm bundle tenderly. She said, “What else can I do, Kindra? I swore to Melora that her children should be to me as my own in all things.” ‘
Kindra said fiercely, “He is a male of Jalak’s blood; do not your kinsmen and your foster-brother’s blood cry out for revenge, that you should cherish him? Is there not blood-feud and a life between you and Jalak’s son, my Lady?” She bared her knife, handed it to Rohana, hilt first. She said, “He cost Melora her life, so she came never to her hard-won freedom; and he is Jalak’s son. Avenge your kinsmen, Lady.”