“I will be near,” he said. “There is an old altar to Karak a mile north, following the creek upstream. I will pray for you both.”
“Thank you,” Qurrah said, his entire body sagging as if hundreds of men clung to his back and limbs. “But we won’t need it.”
The demon army took flight as the sun set, leaving Qurrah alone in the sudden silence. To him, it was a great relief. Solitude was something he craved, and for months, solitude was the one thing he had been denied during their flight across Dezrel. But now they were alone, just he and Tessanna.
“Finally,” Qurrah whispered.
Deeper into the forest the trees closed together, as if their trunks and roots intertwined, making them one being. Tessanna lay against one such tree with two trunks, a few thin blankets underneath her swollen form. Sweat poured down her face.
“Not ready,” Tessanna said as she saw his approach.
“You will do fine,” Qurrah said, laying a cloak across her body as she shivered in the cool night air.
“Not me,” she said, then winced as an enormous cramp filled her abdomen. She closed her eyes and clawed the grass. Qurrah watched, a horrible sickness in his chest. His beloved was suffering, and there was nothing he could do to ease the pain. Nothing he could do to quicken the experience. He could only remain at her side, impotent, worthless.
No, he thought as Tessanna grabbed his hand and held on as if her whole body were falling from him. He wasn’t worthless. He was needed, desperately so. He put both his hands around hers, and when her pain subsided he allowed himself to smile.
“You will be a good mother,” he said to her.
“And you’ll be a horrible father,” she said, aware enough in her exhaustion to crack a smile. “Get me something to bite. This is only going to get worse.”
He found her a stick, used his dagger to carve off the crumbly outer layer, and then handed it to her. She bit down on the center, breathed deep, and then moaned as another wave of pain flooded through her abdomen. Qurrah held her hand, stroked her face, and kept silent, wishing again and again he could ease her pain.
An hour passed. He checked her only once, and saw nothing resembling a baby. Her cramps worsened, and it seemed she clung to life by a single, vicious thread of pain and determination. Every wave she leaned forward, tears flowing from her eyes as she moaned and screamed and pushed. Every wave he thought she would die, her tiny frame breaking under the stress. But she was strong, so much stronger than he had ever given her credit for.
Another hour passed. He checked her, and saw what he thought was a head. He kissed her fingers and told her.
“I know,” Tessanna said between deep, labored breaths. “I can feel her when I push.”
“Her?” Qurrah asked, a tiny smile pulling at his lips.
“I know it’s a her,” she said, leaning back and trying to relax even as her lower back throbbed in agony. “I just know.”
The night deepened. Every few minutes her screams pierced the silence. Tessanna felt the baby’s shoulders push through. The pain was beyond immense. The pain was everything. Blood poured out of her. Qurrah knelt at her feet, a blanket in his hands. She had to be close, she had to be. Her body couldn’t take anymore. She felt herself tearing. The contractions worsened. She pushed and pushed.
“Get it out of me,” she sobbed, her dark hair matted to her face.
“One more,” Qurrah said, same as always. “Just one more.”
She gave him one more. She pushed, and Qurrah cried out as he saw the child’s head push through. Fluids rushed over his hands, but he didn’t care. He grabbed the little form and pulled.
“A girl,” Qurrah said as he lifted her to his chest. The forest turned silent but for Tessanna’s gasps of air. The silence turned cold.
“Qurrah?” Tessanna said, trying to sit up but unable to muster the strength. “Qurrah? Say something!”
The child wasn’t moving.
Qurrah used his dagger to cut the umbilical cord, then dropped it. He put his finger into the baby’s mouth, clearing out what he could see, but it didn’t matter. He held no life. He held a shell. He stroked the girl’s face with a trembling hand. Her eyes were closed. Her nose was scrunched against her face from the birth. Red splotches covered her slimy pink skin. But she was beautiful. And she was stillborn.
“Qurrah!” Tessanna cried amid a deep sob.
“You bastard,” Qurrah whispered, tears pouring down his cheeks. “How dare you? How dare you…”
“Give her to me,” Tessanna screamed. Qurrah wrapped the body in a cloak and handed it over. Tessanna clung the child to her chest, weeping. Qurrah stood, his whole body shaking, his heart swirling with too many emotions to understand. Above it all, above the pain and the betrayal, he felt anger.
“He promised us a life,” Qurrah said. “He promised.”
He gestured to their child.
“Is this the promise of Karak?”
“Don’t leave me,” Tessanna said between wracking sobs. “Please, don’t leave me.”
He knelt beside her, and into his pale, shriveled hands he took the baby’s small fingers. The pain inside him seemed unbearable. The sense of loss, beyond anything.
“What have I done to you, brother?” he dared ask. “Is this it?”
He stood. Tessanna lay there, blood pooled about her as if she were some sacrificial offering to a craven deity.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded.
“He promised,” Qurrah said, stumbling north. “I have to.”
The forest was red to him. Red with death. Red with anger. High above the stars were drops of blood, like that which covered his daughter, his divine curse. Everything he had done. Everything he had offered and lost. Cruel. Cruel and vicious and horrific. Someone had to pay. Someone had to suffer, as he suffered.
The trees suddenly cleared, and Velixar waited by a fire amid a circle of stones. He stood, and at the look in his disciple’s eyes he knew something had gone terribly wrong.
“What happened?” he asked.
Qurrah did not answer. Instead, he hurled a bolt of shadow at Velixar’s chest. Stunned, Velixar staggered back as the magic crushed his bones and tore into his rotting flesh. The second bolt, however, he did block, batting it aside with his hand as his glowing eyes glared in the darkness.
“How dare you strike at me?” Velixar said. “Tell me what happened!”
“You are a liar!” Qurrah shouted. Purple flame poured from his fingers. Velixar crossed his arms and summoned a shield. The fire rolled across it, unable to penetrate. Qurrah’s whip lashed out next, cracking across the shield with loud sparks of flame. Velixar released his protection, leaped away from the whip, and then clapped his hands. Shadows shot like arrows from the sky, each one piercing Qurrah’s flesh and dissolving into mist that flooded his body with pain. Qurrah ignored it with ease. He had felt more pain that he had ever thought imaginable. A few stinging darts meant nothing.
He braced his wrists together and stretched his fingers. A solid beam of magic shot forth, sparkling with stars and planets of a lost galaxy. Velixar crossed his arms and raised them high. A wall of stone tore from the ground. The beam shattered it like glass. Velixar rolled, barely dodging the beam, which continued on through several trees, exploding their trunks and burning their leaves. The trees collapsed, and from their branches the grass set fire. Smoke billowed as the two glared, their forms demonic in the flickering red and yellow light.
“When have I lied?” Velixar asked as he staggered to his feet. “I promised you Tessanna would conceive, and she did!”
“The child was dead!” Qurrah shouted back. “You promised us a lie. A cruel joke. Everything you are, everything you claim, is a lie or a joke.”
“I am the only truth this world has ever known,” Velixar roared. He grabbed a clump of dirt and threw it. The dirt melted into a black goop that burst into flame, slamming into Qurrah’s chest with the force of a bull. Qurrah collapsed to the ground, gasping for air and rolling along the grass to put out the fire.
“What truth do you know?” Velixar asked. “Tell me, oh wise one.”
“Truth?” Qurrah gasped on his hands and knees. “I know one. My brother loved me, and I hurt him more than I ever knew.”
