The born of Godborn

“Almost,” the priest said, not hearing her as he stared into her body and tried to save her child.

"Do something," said Derreg from somewhere behind Varra. "She is in too much pain."

He had refused to leave her since bringing her to the abbey.

"We are doing all we can," the priest said, tension putting an edge on his voice.

Varra focused on her breathing and stared up at the vaulted ceiling. Her entire frame of reference distilled down to an awareness of only her abdomen, the birth canal, the child she was soon to deliver. But there was no ease from the pain. Her vision blurred. She feared she would be too weak to push when the priest told her to do so. She feared she would never see her child.

She screamed again as the priest manipulated the child within her, a dagger in her belly.

"Get the child out!" Derreg said, stress causing his voice to break.

The priest looked up from between Varra's legs, looked first at her, then past her to Derreg.

"I cannot. It is dying."

The pronouncement pulled a moan from Varra, hollowed her out.

"No," she said, and tears wet her cheeks. "No."

The priest looked at her, his expression soft, sympathetic. "I am so sorry."

"You are not trying hard enough," said Derreg, and she heard him move across the room toward the priest, though he remained behind Varra, out of eyeshot.

The priest's soft voice never lost its calm. "I have done all I can, Derreg. I must…take steps if the woman is to have a chance."

Varra felt Derreg's hand on her head, on her hair, a protective gesture that soothed her, warmed her.

How strange, she thought. She realized in the clarity of the moment that in another time, another place, he was a man she might have loved, despite the difference in their ages.

"Her name is Varra," Derreg said.

"Cut it out," Varra said, her voice as soft as rain, its quiet resolve slicing through the room.

Derreg's hand lifted from her head, as if he were recoiling.

The priest looked as if she had spoken in a language he could not understand. "What? What did you say?"

The midwife squeezed Varra's hand. "You are not clearheaded--"

"Cut it out," Varra said, louder, her mind made up. Her body tensed, a contraction gripped her, the child moved within her, and she screamed. "Cut it out. I am already dead. I see it in your face."

The priest and the midwife stared at her, eyes wide. Neither gainsaid her words.

"I am already dead," Varra said, more quietly, the words spiced with her tears, her grief.

The priest swallowed, his tracheal lump bouncing up and down. "I have not prepared the correct rituals, and I do have not the needed tools…"

"A knife will do," Varra said, and managed to keep her voice from faltering. The room began to spin. She closed her eyes until it subsided.

"A knife?"

"There is little time," Varra said.

"Right, of course," the priest said, looking past her to Derreg, as if for permission.

Derreg's hand returned to Varra's head, cradling it as he might an infant, as he might a daughter. His fingers twisted gently in her sweat-dampened hair. She reached up and covered his hand with hers. His skin felt as rough as bark. His bearded face appeared next to hers, his breath warm on her cheek.

"Why?" he asked.

"It is my child," she said, four words that said everything.

The priest produced a small knife and held it aloft in his shaking hand. The lantern light flickered on its blade. Stress squeezed sweat from his brow.

The midwife's clammy fingers clenched Varra's hand. Varra alone seemed to feel calm.

"Derreg, listen to me," she said. "Someone…did something to the child, changed it. I do not know what, but it is my child. Mine. Do you understand?"

His hand squeezed hers. He buried his forehead in her hair. How could she have come to love him in mere hours, in mere moments? How cruel that they'd had only hours to share rather than a lifetime.

"I understand," he said.

She swallowed in a throat gone dry, nodded. To the priest, she said, "Do it."

The priest winced, steeled himself to his work.

"This will pain you," he said, and began to cut.

The midwife averted her gaze when the point of the blade slit flesh. Varra walled off a scream behind gritted teeth as the knife slid across her abdomen and opened her womb, spilling warm fluid down her sides to pool in the sheets she lay in.

Pain blurred her vision. Sparks erupted behind her eyes. She might have been screaming, she could not be certain. She felt the priest and midwife manipulating the hole they'd made in her, felt them reaching inside her.

She was screaming, she realized, swimming in pain, in blood.

She focused on Derreg's hand, its solidity, the gentle way it cradled her own beside her ear. Warmth radiated from his flesh, dulled the edge of her agony.

He would never leave her, she thought. Never.

Something warm and wet pattered on their joined hands. Her fading consciousness mistook it for blood at first, but then she realized it was tears. Derreg's tears. She felt his mouth near her ear and he whispered words of faith.

"From ends, beginnings, from darkness, light, from tragedy, triumph. Night gives way to dawn, and dawn to noon. Stand in the warmth and purifying light of Amaunator who was Lathander and fear nothing. Fear nothing, Varra."

She felt herself fading, slipping. The room darkened.

"Care for him," she whispered to Derreg.

"Him?" Derreg said.

Varra nodded. She knew the child would be a son, a son for the father. "His name is Vasen. After his father."

"I vow it, Varra," Derreg said.

Varra heard a rush like roaring surf. The room darkened. She could no longer see. She felt herself drifting, floating in warm water, sinking….

She heard a tiny cough, then a newborn's cry, the defiant call of her son as he entered a world of light and darkness.

She smiled, drifted, thought of Erevis, of Derreg, and feared nothing.

* * * * *