agony. “Do something useful… kill them!”
“There are at least thirty, Majesty,” replied Avner. “We can’t possibly-”
“Don’t bother me with… with this!” Brianna snarled. She heard a clatter from the front of the tunnel as the nervous front riders rose to obey her orders; then she regretted her words. She wasn’t going to save her child by issuing impossible orders. “Wait, you men! Don’t listen to me. Can’t you see I’m giving-” She paused to groan. “That I’ve got other things on my mind?”
The soldiers glanced at each other and studiously avoided looking toward the back of the tunnel. They hovered just inside the portal and did not seem to know what to do. Brianna dropped to her knees, then fixed her gaze on Gryffitt’s slack-skinned face. She had seen fog giants with better color.
“What do you think, Gryffitt?” the queen asked. She could still feel the baby against her pelvis, but the pressure from her womb was slackening. She hoped that meant her body was resting, not that it had given up. “The delivery isn’t going well, is it?”
Gryffitt’s baggy eyes flicked away. “I’m not much of a midwife, Majesty.”
“But you are a father six times over,” Brianna countered. “Surely, you learned something.”
Gryffitt rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. “I’ve never heard such yelling, milady,” he said. “Even with number three, and he was breech.”
Brianna’s heart sank. “That’s what this feels like.” She looked to Avner and asked, “What about Gerda?”
The young scout shook his head. “There are thirty firbolgs between us and the road,” he said. “And even if we could get past them, there are twenty more with the courtiers.”
Brianna nodded. “Then you and I must turn the baby.”
Avner swallowed. “But Gryffitt-”
“Will keep a watch on the firbolgs,” the queen interrupted. She did not want the front rider with her, even if he was a six-time father. The last person she needed nearby was someone more terrified than she. “Gryffitt understands what a woman in labor might say. He’ll know better than to obey if I start shouting crazy commands.”
“I’ll do my best, Majesty.”
Gryffitt turned toward the tunnel mouth, the strain already draining from his face. Brianna shook her head, unable to understand the peculiar male fear that made it easier to battle a troop of grim firbolgs than to help a woman give birth.
Avner cast an envious glance after the front rider. “And Gryffitt, keep one eye on the canyon rim,” he said. “When our border scouts finally show up, we don’t want them thinking the firbolgs are on our side.”
“I’ll let ’em know who the enemy is.” Gryffitt fastened his parka against the chill wind outside, then dropped to his belly to crawl out on the rock dump. “Don’t worry about that”
“Avner, I need your help now,” Brianna said.
The young scout reluctantly turned around. “Of course, Majesty,” he said. “What can I do?”
Brianna almost told him that he could start by speaking to her more warmly and trustfully, but stopped herself. Even a queen could not command her subjects to feel certain emotions, especially not subjects she cared about deeply. Besides, he would see soon enough that Galgadayle was wrong.
“I’m going to cast a spell,” Brianna explained. “But you’ll have to be the one to use it”
As she spoke, the queen sat down on her cloak and pulled her satchel to her side. She withdrew a small, ragged book of mica, then peeled off a single silver sheet The leaf was almost as clear as glass, save that the color of the mineral cast a gray sheen over everything behind it, and the grain caused a faint blurring. Brianna placed the sheaf on the underside of her swollen belly, directly over her womb, then took her goddess’s talisman from around her neck.
“Valorous Hiatea, patron of families and nature, always have I served your cause well and kept your creed close to my heart,” Brianna whispered. “I call upon your magic now, that I may safely bring my own child into the world and abide in the true light of your glory.”
The amulet’s silver flames glowed to life, then suddenly flickered and began to crackle and dance. Brianna touched the talisman to the mica on her belly, then took a moment to gather her concentration and lock her pain safely away in one corner of her mind. Once she felt sure she could ignore any sudden surges of agony, she slowly and confidently uttered the mystical syllables of her spell.
A silver aura flashed around Hiatea’s spear talisman, and the flames stopped dancing. A shimmering, pearly light passed from the amulet into the mica, which vanished in a puff of sparkling white smoke. Brianna felt a scorching heat against her belly. The pain spread deeper and outward, until her whole stomach burned as though someone had spilled boiling water on it. Her skin began to glow with a brilliant sheen. The queen felt her baby kicking and clawing inside her womb, as though it, too, could feel Hiatea’s searing magic.
Though it was not apparent to her, Brianna knew that her flesh was growing silvery and pellucid. She often used this spell on desperately ill or injured people to look inside and see what was wrong. In Hiatea’s wisdom, however, patients could not look inside their own bodies-as much, the queen suspected, to preserve life’s mystery as to prevent sufferers from seeing their own grotesque injuries and growths. Brianna wished that just this once, the spell would work differently. More than anything, she wanted to see the child in her womb, to confirm for herself what Simon had told her: that Galgadayle’s dream was quite mistaken.
Avner’s eyes, growing wider and more uneasy as the glow brightened, remained fixed on her belly. Finally, when the queen’s shining stomach illuminated the tunnel with a flickering gray light, the young scout’s jaw dropped, and Blizzard nickered in astonishment. The mare lowered her nose to the queen’s abdomen and sniffed the skin; her ears pricked forward and her black eyes grew huge with astonishment.
Avner pushed the mare’s head aside and, amazingly enough, did not get bitten. “I can see the baby!”
Along with several layers of muscle, membrane, and intestinal walls, the queen’s skin had become as transparent and brittle-looking as the mica she had laid on it earlier. Through the silvery window, Avner could see into the queen’s womb, where a bluish infant lay squeezed into a pocket of pink, fibrous flesh. The baby was reclining with its legs tucked in front of its belly and its head pointed down toward the birth canal. Its face was turned away, showing a mane of surprisingly thick and black hair on the back of its head. A pulsing blue cord ran over its flank to a sack of turbid liquids at the top of the womb.
Although its eyes were certainly still closed, the infant was craning its neck back, as though trying to peer through its mother’s pelvis into the outside world. Both hands were stretched down toward the birth canal and gently clawing at the walls of the soft prison, but Avner could see the child would never escape. The baby’s skull was as big around as a catapult stone, much too wide to fit through the cramped opening of the queen’s pelvic cavity.
“Avner, what’s wrong?” Brianna asked, her voice edged with pain. “Simon was right, wasn’t he? It’s not twins?”
The young scout took a deep breath. He looked up, trying to keep his face relaxed so Brianna would not see how frightened he was. “No. There’s only one.”
The queen sighed in relief, then gave him a condescending, if weak, smile. “Do you believe me now?” she asked. “Firbolgs may not lie, but they’re not always right, either.”
Avner did not know how to reply. Although Galgadayle had clearly been wrong about the twins, the infant’s full head of silky black hair was distressing. Tavis’s hair was full, and Brianna’s was silky-but only the ettin’s had been black.
A front rider approached from the tunnel mouth. The man, Thatcher Warton, knelt at Avner’s side, being careful not to look toward his naked queen. “The firbolgs are moving toward the trails that lead up here,” he murmured. “If you don’t hurry, they’ll trap us here.”
His whisper was not quiet enough to escape the queen’s ears. “Hurry? How should I hurry?”
The front rider flushed and did not answer.
“Perhaps Blizzard could sit on my stomach?” Brianna growled. “That would squeeze the child out in short order, would it not?”
Thatcher only looked at the ground. His face showed no sign of ire or indignation, and Avner suspected Gryffitt had warned him that the queen might seem unreasonably cross.
Brianna glared at the front rider for a moment, then closed her eyes and hissed between clenched teeth. Avner looked down and saw the infant’s small fist pushing deep into the wall of her womb. The pain seemed to help the queen focus. She let out two deep breaths, then fixed her gaze on Avner.
