R. Salvatore - The Highwayman

She felt him between her legs, then and heard his shout.

"Push!"

He called to her again and again, and each repetition gave the failing woman a little bit more to hold on to. SenWi gathered all her strength, all her energy, and all her disciplined focus. She lifted the thread of her chi, balling it into a formidable force just above her struggling child. Then, as surely as if she were pushing with her hands or legs, she forced that energy down, down.

Her skin ripped a bit more, and then she felt a rush of sudden coolness, a great release of pressure, and all her lower body went comfortably numb.

She lay there for some time in the cool darkness of semi-consciousness, her body falling into a deep state of relaxation, muscles sinking into the bed as if she were being swallowed by it-and that was a sensation that the battered and exhausted woman welcomed. Moments slipped past in blissful emptiness, with not a spot of light marring the blackness or a whisper of sound defeating the silence.

Not a whisper of sound.

Not the beating of her heart.

Not the cry of a newborn baby.

She was dying. She knew that, and she didn't fight it. Not then. Perhaps it was time for her to surrender.

Her child was not alive. SenWi realized that her child was not crying, was making no sounds at all. She concentrated her life energy and grabbed at her heart, forcing it to beat. She sent her thoughts back through that blackness, as if she were climbing out of a deep hole, and she finally saw a glow of light. She raced for it, desperately now, as she realized that her child was not yet alive.

Her eyes opened and the room came into focus. She saw Garibond standing off to the side, the child on a table in front of him, blue and still. He glanced back at her, and SenWi could see his tears.

Garibond shook his head.

SenWi rolled off the bed and to her feet. She swayed and staggered and nearly fell. She felt the warmth of her own blood running down her legs, and knew that she was bleeding too heavily. But she forced herself into a stumbling walk to the table, where she placed both her hands on her child.

It was a boy, a beautiful boy, a perfect boy.

His life force was so weak, barely a sliver of energy in his little body. Nor was that thread of energy straight, the typical and expected line of ki-chi-kree from forehead to groin. No, she sensed that her child's life line was interrupted at many points, was wavering where it should have been straight and solid. He was not perfect, SenWi realized with horror. He was damaged, badly so; and SenWi knew that it was from the snake venom she had willingly taken into herself when she had healed the condemned girl. As the venom had attacked her, so it had assailed her defenseless infant.

That realization didn't slow her in the least. Garibond grabbed one of her arms and cajoled her to relent and go lie down. He might as well have been grabbing at iron.

Was it guilt driving her? Was it anger?

SenWi didn't care. All that mattered to her was that her baby wasn't breathing, that her baby was damaged, perhaps fatally. She found the connection to his life energy and threw her own into him, offering herself fully to him. She let her chi energy flow out of her and into the child.

The blood splashed down her legs. Garibond's cries became more insistent. "Lie down, woman!" he shouted in her ear. "Your blood's running!"

He tugged and tugged futilely at her. "Too late for the little one!" he insisted.

SenWi felt him let go, and then he came back with a thick cloth and placed it hard against her, trying to stem the blood flow. It didn't matter, she knew by then, and she accepted the sacrifice as she came to feel the life force of her child strengthening.

The baby opened his eyes and gasped his first breath, and then he began to cry.

To SenWi, that sounded like the sweetest music ever sung.

She felt her own life energy spasm, a wild dispersal of strength and reflex that jolted her away from her child. She staggered back a step and would have fallen.

But Garibond was there, gently catching her and laying her back down on the bed. She tried to ask for her baby, but was too weak to give voice to her words. Garibond understood, though, and he took up the child and gently placed it on her chest.

SenWi heard the baby crying. She wanted to tell him that it was all right. She managed to hold the baby in her arms and feel his softness and the warmth of his breath against her neck. And suddenly, he wasn't crying anymore, but had settled in comfortably.

The torch-lit room began to darken once more, the black tunnel's sides rising around SenWi. Regret filled her for just a moment as she considered all that she would miss. She threw that emotion aside at once and considered that her baby was alive, that she had given him existence and then had breathed life into him.

To SenWi, there was no price too great for that.

She let the blackness rise, because she knew that she could not resist it. She felt the baby's breath and softness to the last. He hated leaving the child alone, but Garibond didn't know what else to do. Dynard had to know of the babe and of the fate of SenWi, whom Garibond had buried on the small island on the lake, the island where a younger Garibond and Bran Dynard had spent many of their finest childhood days.

Two weeks had passed since the child's birth, and Garibond still had not named him. He couldn't bring himself to do it. The baby seemed healthy enough, if very frail and thin.

Garibond hurried all the way into town that cold and wet late winter day. He concocted a story of illness, a general soreness in his legs, that would get him into Chapel Pryd, begging healing from the brothers. So when he got in sight of the town, he slowed and began walking awkwardly, favoring one leg.

He found no resistance at the chapel doors. The common area was nearly deserted this day. Garibond limped in and took a seat.

"May I be of service to you, friend?" asked one of the brothers, a younger man Garibond knew as Brother Reandu.

"The cool rain's got into my bones," Garibond explained. "I've come to beg a bit of healing, if that is possible. I'll be putting my crops in soon enough, but I doubt I could bend over to work the ground."

The monk nodded. "I have not seen you regularly in church-it is Master Garibond, is it not?"

"Aye, that is my name. Garibond of Pryd. I live a long way out, brother, and with my weakened knees, the journey is painful. Perhaps if you gave some healing to me, I would be a more frequent visitor in the chapel, bringing donations, what little I have, every time."

The monk smiled at him-a look of sarcasm and not warmth.

"Brother Bran Dynard, he promised me some healing if I could return to Chapel Pryd after the snows," Garibond insisted. "He did, your-our God as my witness."

The doubting smile only widened.

"Go and get him, then!" Garibond insisted. "Go and tell Brother Dynard that his old friend Garibond is here. He'll take that cleverness from your face, I do not doubt."

"That would be a rather long walk for me, friend Garibond," Brother Reandu replied, "for your friend Brother Dynard is not here. At the bidding of Father Jerak, he has gone north to Chapel Abelle. I doubt that he will return before the next winter."

Garibond fought hard to keep his eyes from widening with shock and fear. What was he to do now?

"Shall I ask Father Jerak to come and speak with you? Or tend your sore knees, perhaps?" Reandu asked.

Garibond scowled. "Have you any healing to offer my old bones?" he asked.

"The gifts of God are not without recompense," Brother Reandu recited. "You would find Chapel Pryd more accommodating to your pains if you more regularly attended the sermons of Father Jerak and Brother Bathelais."