Laera hustled everyone else out of the room, then came back to the bedside of the empress, bending over her with a show of great concern.
“What happened, Michael?”
“I do not know!” he replied. “She simply started screaming! I don’t know what to do! You’ve got to help her! Please!”
“May the gods preserve us!” the physician said as he examined her.
“She is about to deliver a child!”
“What?” said Michael. “But … that’s impossible!”
“Look for yourself,” the physician said. He pointed to her belly. It was swelling rapidly, growing right before their eyes, rising like a loaf of bread. The physician placed his hand upon it. “I can feel it kicking.
Immensely strong.”
“No,” said Michael, shaking his head with disbelief. “It cannot be!
She was not with child!”
“She is now,” the physician said. He shook his head. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It passes all understanding.”
“Send for the midwives! Quickly!” Laera shouted to the guards outside in the corridor. They would prove excellent witnesses for what was about to happen.
The Gorgon’s child was coming. Only it was not taking the normal nine months to quicken and be born. It was happening right now, taking only minutes. Already, Faelina’s stomach had swelled to the point where she looked like a woman five or six months pregnant, and it was growing still, visibly, expanding by the moment. If the midwives did not arrive in the next few minutes, they would not be in time.
“How can this be, physician?” Aedan asked as he stared in horrified fascination at the writhing empress.
The man simply shook his head. He was so baffled he was unable to respond. He could only watch, wide-eyed with astonishment and disbelief.
Michael seized him and started shaking the poor man furiously. “Do something! Help her, for Haelyn’s sake!”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but there is nothing I can do!”
Faelina’s screams continued as she bucked and thrashed in the bed. Her eyes were rolling wildly, and she was breathing in sharp gasps.
“Michael! Michael!” Aedan said, trying to pry the emperor’s grip from the physician. “Let the man go!
This isn’t helping!”
“The child is coming, Your Majesty,” said the physician. “There is no denying it, however incredible it may seem. We must make ready to assist the birth.”
Michael released him just as the midwives came rushing in. They had already been told what was happening, but when they saw it for themselves, they cried out with dismay. Still, they overcame their initial shock and moved to help the empress give birth.
“You must leave,” the senior midwife said to the physician. “This is no work for a man. All the men must leave, right now.”
“I’m staying,” Michael said.
“You will only be in the way,” the senior midwife said curtly.
“Emperor or no, this is no place for a man.”
“Come on, Michael,” Aedan said, taking him by the arm. “There is nothing we can do here now. Let them do their work.”
Dazed, Michael allowed himself to be led outside.
Only Laera, Ariel, and the midwives remained.
“This is sorcery!” one of the midwives said. “Yesterday, she was not even with child, and now she will give birth at any moment!”
“Whatever it may be, our duty now is to the mother and her child,” the senior midwife said.
“Stop your chattering and hold her down before she injures herself.”
Snapping out orders like a drillmaster, the senior midwife quickly took charge. Laera and Ariel assisted. It took them all to get the struggling Faelina into the proper position. She was delirious, but still the screams kept coming. Her stomach now was the size of a ripe watermelon.
“It’s coming,” the senior midwife said. “Hold her!
Stop her thrashing!”
They held her down. Faelina was beyond being able to hear them. And there was no need to tell her to bear down. The child was coming, with or without her help. It was clawing its way out. The senior midwife positioned herself between Faelina’s legs, then cried out with surprise as a gout of blood spurted out and splashed her. One of the younger midwives screamed with fright and bolted, but the older woman caught her and gave her a hard slap across the face.
“Back to your duty! Now is no time to be squeamish!”
Chastened, the woman returned to help hold Faelina down, but she was clearly terrified. Then the empress let out one drawn-out, throat-rending scream, and the child was born, ripping its way out.
The senior midwife, for all her calm composure, gasped and recoiled from the sight. Faelina went limp, falling into a swoon.
“Faelina!” Michael shouted from the corridor.
There were the sounds of scuffling as he was forcibly restrained.
“May the gods protect us!” said the senior midwife, backing away and staring at the infant with horror.
“Mistress! What is it?” one of the others asked.
Then they looked, and they all started screaming.
Two of them bolted from the room in wild panic. The third backed up to the wall and pressed herself against it, staring at the child with horror and whimpering hysterically.
“Oh, Haelyn help us!” Ariel whispered in a shocked tone as she beheld the child.
Like father, like son, thought Laera. The birth was an abomination.
Michael fought off whoever was holding him back and burst into the room.
The first thing he saw was the bloodsoaked bed, and he was brought up short.
Then he saw his “son.” He caught his breath, and his eyes bulged with horrified disbelief. Aedan and Derwyn both came running in behind him, and they saw it, too, and were shocked into immobility.
“Oh, gods!” Michael said. Then words failed him.
The child was dusky, gray-skinned, and
