Chapter 72
The pain woke Alenor in the middle of the night. The red sun was high overhead when she suddenly sat up in bed as a violent pain ripped through her abdomen. Gasping with the shock of it, she doubled over, wondering what had caused such a thing. She had not eaten anything odd at dinner, and could not think what would cause her such discomfort. She was still wondering about it when another pain ripped through her like a butcher’s knife.
She cried out in terror as much as pain, but it was followed almost immediately by another contraction, even worse than the previous one.
This time she screamed.
Her screams brought Dorra running into the room. Alenor toppled sideways on the bed, her knees drawn up under her chin as wave after wave of agony tore through her.
“Your majesty?” Dorra inquired with some concern.
“Help me . . .” It was all she could manage. The pain cleaved through her again, and she had only the breath left to cry out. Dorra hurried to her side and pulled back the tangled sheets.
“Goddess!” she exclaimed in shock.
Alenor glanced down. The bed was stained bright red as the blood gushed from between her legs. “Dorra!” she cried in panic. “What’s
happening
?”
“Stay right there, your majesty,” the lady-in-waiting ordered, as if Alenor had any choice in the matter.
She cried out again as the pain seemed to grow worse with each pounding thump of her heart. Dorra ran from the room, leaving Alenor alone, sobbing and frightened. Somewhere, amid the torment, she realized she was losing her baby. Perhaps there really was a Goddess. Perhaps I’m being punished . . .
“Your majesty! Alenor!”
Choking back her sobs, Alenor wiped her eyes. The physician Yuri Daranski hurried into her room and stood over her for a moment with a concerned frown. Then he pulled back the sheets, took one look at the bright blood spilling from her womb and turned to Dorra decisively.
“We have to stop the bleeding,” he said. “Get her on her back.”
They tried to move her, but Alenor screamed, too afraid to unclench her knees. The pain slashed through her in waves, as if someone was standing over her with an invisible sword, slicing the unborn child from her womb. She was trembling and cold, as if her fingers and toes had been dipped in ice.
“Alenor!” Yuri said sharply. “You must let us help you!”
“But it hurts . . .” she sobbed uncomprehendingly. “Oh, Goddess! It hurts so much . . .”
“Then let us help you, your majesty,” he urged. When his pleas received no response he looked up at Dorra. “Find the Shadowdancers. I think both Ella Geon and Olena Borne are in the palace tonight. I will need their assistance.”
Dorra fled the room at a run and Yuri turned his attention back to Alenor.
“Tell me where it hurts exactly,” he said.
She tried to answer him, but the only thing she could manage was a sobbing moan.
Oh dear Goddess! Make it go away!
“I need you to lie on your back, Alenor,” Yuri explained soothingly, trying once again to get her to move. “I know it’s painful, but if we’re to save your baby, we must stop the bleeding.”
“I can’t . . .” she moaned. “Just make it stop . . . please . . .”
“I can only make the pain go away if you help me to help
you
.”
Alenor wanted to help him. She wanted to make it stop, but she just could not bring herself to unclench muscles that had tightened in terror. Somewhere through the pain she heard more voices. She was dimly aware of Ella and Olena arriving.
“Get me towels, sheets, anything!” Yuri ordered urgently. “She’s hemorrhaging badly. We must try to stem the flow. And we must get her onto her back. It will put pressure on the abdominal vena cava and help slow the bleeding.”
She protested weakly as Ella and Yuri forced her onto her back, no longer having the strength to fight both the pain and the physicians trying to help her.
“Do you have any lavender oil?” Yuri asked Ella.
“Of course,” the Shadowdancer told him. “But it will do little to ease such intense pain. Poppy-dust would be more effective . . .”
“No!” Yuri told her emphatically. “I’ll not risk her child by giving her anything so strong.”
“It’s patently clear that she’s lost the child, Yuri,” Ella pointed out with callous disregard for Alenor’s feelings. “Our concern now should simply be for the queen’s comfort.”
Alenor whimpered, and tried to roll onto her side.
“Stay where you are, Alenor,” Yuri insisted, placing a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder. “It will all be over soon.”
Olena hurried back into the room carrying a pile of fresh towels. Yuri grabbed one from her, rolled it into a tight cylinder, and then Ella held her legs apart while he held it in place. The indignity of her position seemed minor compared to her pain.
“She needs ergot,” Ella suggested. “A few grains will help stop the bleeding . . .”
“No!” Yuri said. “Not until I’m certain what has brought this on.”
“I’ve some clary sage mixed with jasmine and geranium we can use to massage her abdomen,” Olena offered. “It might help the womb to contract and slow the bleeding.”
“Get it,” Yuri ordered, turning to Olena. “And get a servant in here to darken this room. I want as little light as possible. And then get the kitchens to prepare several pitchers of sugared water. We need to keep her fluids up.”
Olena rushed off again to do as Yuri ordered. Alenor glanced down through her tears to find Dorra standing at the foot of the bed.
“Will she live?” her lady-in-waiting asked.
“If we can stop the bleeding,” Yuri replied. “Where is Kirshov? Her husband should be here.”
“I’ll find him. Should I wake Prince Antonov?”
Yuri hesitated for a moment, and then he nodded. “Perhaps you should.”
With a terrified sob, Alenor clutched at his arm. “Am I dying, Master Daranski?”
“Of course not, your majesty,” he told her comfortingly. “You’re just having a little problem keeping the baby, that’s all. Just hang on a little longer, my dear. Olena has gone to fetch something for the pain, and then we’ll massage your belly with some special oils, which will ease it even more.”
Olena returned a few moments later with the oils Yuri needed. He took them from her and then returned to Alenor’s bedside. “I want you to open your mouth, Alenor. This won’t hurt. I just want to put a few drops of lavender oil under your tongue. It will help the pain.”
She did as he asked, the lavender tasting sharp and strange as he dropped it carefully into her mouth. He handed the small vial back to Olena, and then took the clary sage oil from her. “Massage this into her abdomen. It will be painful at first, and she may fight you, but don’t stop.”
Olena nodded and moved to the bed. She tipped some of the oil onto her hand and then lifted Alenor’s nightdress and began to rub her belly. Far from relaxing her spasms, the oil seemed to encourage them to contract. She screamed, but the Shadowdancer ignored her protests.
“I’ve not seen a spontaneous abortion this violent before,” Yuri remarked to Ella with a frown.
“Are you suggesting this
wasn’t
spontaneous?” Ella asked in surprise.
“She displays all the symptoms of ergot poisoning.”
“Which is why you don’t want to give her any more,” Ella concluded with a nod of understanding. “It might not slow the bleeding, it might kill her.”
The physician shrugged. “If she was the daughter of a minor baron and this was six weeks after Landfall, I’d not hesitate to diagnose an abortifacient. But this is the Queen of Dhevyn.”
Alenor fought through the agony to listen to the conversation. She gasped in horror. “I . . . I didn’t . . . I swear! I didn’t take anything . . .”
Ella looked down at her. “Nobody is suggesting you did, your majesty. Are you feeling any better?”
She nodded weakly as she realized that the lavender had taken a slight edge off the pain. Or perhaps the worst was over. She found she didn’t care. Alenor just wanted to curl up into a ball and die. She was frightened and in pain. She wanted her mother. She wanted to be held and cuddled and told that everything would be all right.
But instead she was here in Avacas Palace, with nobody she trusted and nobody she loved, except . . .
Alenor forced herself not to name him, even in her thoughts. She wanted so badly for him to come to her, to hold her and make everything better, but even in her agony, Alenor had the wit not to call out his name. If she was going to call for anybody, she must call for her husband. To name another man might prove fatal for both of them.
“What in the name of the Goddess is going on?” Antonov’s voice boomed from the next room. The doors flew open and he strode into her bedroom, barefoot and bare-chested, dressed only in the trousers he had hurriedly thrown on in answer to Dorra’s summons.
“The queen is hemorrhaging, your highness, however, we should have it under control soon.”
“Has she lost the baby?”
Yuri glanced down at Alenor for a moment and then nodded sadly. “Most likely.”
I’m being punished,
Alenor sobbed silently.
This is what I get
for thinking I could be happy . . .
“Alenor?”
She felt Antonov’s weight on the mattress as he sat down beside her, felt his hand gently brush the hair from her forehead.
“You mustn’t cry, my dear,” he told her gently. “You’re young and strong. There’ll be plenty of other babies for you and Kirsh.”
“I’m so sorry . . .” she sobbed in a voice barely more than an agonized whisper. He didn’t understand what she was apologizing for, but that didn’t matter. Maybe, if she was truly sorry, the pain might stop . . .
“Now, now, you mustn’t blame yourself, Alenor. These things happen.” Antonov turned to Yuri. “She is to get whatever she needs to make her well.”
“Of course, your highness.”
He turned back to Alenor with a warm smile. “See? Master Daranski will make everything better.”
“I’m sorry to cause such a fuss . . .”
“Nonsense. You’re a queen, Alenor. Queens are allowed to cause a fuss.” He patted her hand in a fatherly manner, but his sympathetic smile faded as he rose to his feet, and turned to look at the others in the room.
“And now,” he said, in an icy tone, “would someone like to tell me where the hell my son is?”
Chapter 73
You’re drunk,” Antonov accused Kirsh when he was escorted into his father’s study by the guard sent into the city to look for him. They had found him in a tavern near the wharves where the Regent of Dhevyn was making himself very popular by footing the bill for everyone in the taproom. Kirsh hated to drink alone.
He smiled. “Tired and a little confused, maybe . . .”
“You should have been here. With your wife.”
“Alenor seems to get along very nicely without me,” he remarked. It was the closest he dared come to admitting the truth about his relationship with her. He was not so drunk or foolish that he would let the truth slip. Angry, certainly, but not so foolish as that.
“While you were out making every tavern owner in Avacas between here and the docks a wealthy man, your wife was having a miscarriage.”
The news sobered Kirsh considerably. “Is she all right?”
“She lost the baby, Kirshov. And you should have been there. Not whoring around town.”
“I wasn’t . . .” he began, and then he thought better of trying to defend himself. “I’m sorry.”
“She almost died.”
“But she’ll be all right, won’t she?” He was a little surprised to find himself genuinely concerned for her. The news that the child she carried, the child that belonged to some nameless man he would dearly like to kill, was now lost, had not really sunk in.
“Eventually. She was calling for you.”
Kirsh found that hard to believe, but he could hardly admit it to his father. “I’ll go to her.”
“Not in that state you won’t,” Antonov decreed, looking him up and down with disdain. “You’re filthy and you stink like a cheap whore. Get cleaned up first, and then you may visit with her. And you’ll damn well stay with her until she’s well again. I didn’t waste the last few years trying to convince the Dhevynians that you and Alenor were truly in love, just so you could ruin everything because you’re too damn thoughtless to be with your wife when she needs you.”
Kirsh opened his mouth to defend himself, but realized that anything he said would just make things worse. “Yes, sir.”
He turned to leave, but Antonov called him back.
“Kirsh?”
“Sir?”
“Send the Shadowdancer away.”
“Marqel’s got nothing to do with this . . . quite the opposite. Alenor likes her. She was the one who invited Marqel to Kalarada.”
“Which means at least you’re being discreet,” Antonov conceded. “But your wife needs you at the moment more than your mistress does. It won’t hurt you to put her aside until Alenor’s recovered. And you’re lucky I didn’t find you with Marqel tonight while Alenor was bleeding to death, or I’d have taken care of her myself.”
“I can handle it, Father.”
Antonov studied him thoughtfully for a moment and then nodded. “See that you do handle it, Kirsh. Alenor must recover and bear another heir as soon as possible.”
“I hardly think you need an heir from Alenor and me now that you’ve got Dirk Provin back,” Kirsh retorted bitterly. Perhaps he was drunk enough to say something truly stupid after all.
Antonov’s expression darkened. “Just do what you’re supposed to be doing, Kirsh, and let me worry about Dirk Provin.”
“I hope
you
can handle
him,
” Kirsh said, and then turned and left the room before his father could take him to task for his insolence.
Freshly bathed and dressed in clean clothes, and certainly feeling much more sober than when he confronted his father, Kirsh was let into Alenor’s room just on second sunrise. He was shocked when he saw her. The darkened room was hushed and reeked of lavender. She looked tiny and pale against the sheets, her eyes puffy and red from crying. As Dorra stood back to let him into the bedroom, Olena was heading out carrying an arm-load of blood-soaked sheets. The amount of blood startled him. Could you lose that much and still live?
Yuri Daranski looked up when he heard Kirsh enter, his face a portrait of stern disapproval. “You’re here,” he remarked unnecessarily.
“I’d like to be alone with my wife,” Kirsh announced.
The physician nodded and, with Ella and Dorra, he silently left the room. Kirsh crossed the rug to the bed, his earlier anger fading a little in the face of Alenor’s obvious distress.
She turned to look at him as he approached, her eyes welling up with tears. “You must be pleased.”
“I never would have wished such a thing on you, Allie,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her.
“Well, at least you’ll be spared the shame of having to raise another man’s bastard.”
“My father said you nearly died.”
“I wish I had,” she whispered, as the tears spilled onto her cheeks.
He took her hand in his and held it for a moment. Despite what had happened between them recently, he felt for her, although he had to admit he was feeling relief as much as sympathy.
“Allie, you didn’t . . . I mean, this was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“You think
I
did this?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “I just couldn’t help but wonder.”
“I wanted this baby, Kirsh.”
“Even though it wasn’t mine?”
“Especially because it wasn’t yours.”
He found himself unable to meet her accusing gaze.
“How did we ever get into such a mess, Allie?”
She did not answer him.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked. “Anyone I can . . . get for you, perhaps?”
She smiled thinly. “Nice try.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Not consciously, perhaps. But if I had the wit not to call for him when I thought I was dying, Kirsh, I’ve certainly got enough sense not to tell you who it is now.”
“We can’t go on like this, Alenor,” he sighed with a shake of his head.
She wiped her eyes and looked away. “You chose this course, Kirsh, not I.”
That was one argument he was not prepared to get into right now. “We’ll have to stay here in Avacas until you’ve recovered enough to travel,” he told her, looking for a safer subject.
She shrugged apathetically. “It makes no difference. Your father has enough people running my kingdom that they hardly need you or me there.”
“I’ll see to it you have everything you need.”
“Your father’s already done that.”
“Is there
anything
I can do?”
“You can go to hell,” she told him, and then she turned her face away and refused to speak to him further.
Marqel was waiting for him in his rooms when he returned, and he held her wordlessly for a long time, unable to confide, even to her, what was wrong. She kissed him after a time and then searched his face for some hint of what he truly felt.
“I’m so sorry, Kirsh,” she said. “You must be so disappointed that Alenor was too weak to carry the child past the first few months.”
“It’s tragic,” he agreed.
“Shouldn’t you be with her now?”
“I’ve been to see her. She’s still upset. I don’t think she wants to know me right now.”
“She’ll get over that.”
“I doubt it,” he muttered.
Marqel looked at him curiously. “Is something wrong, Kirsh?”
He shook his head. “It’s been a long night.”
“And I shouldn’t stay,” she added, surprising him with her intuitiveness. “Your wife has just had a miscarriage, my love. It wouldn’t look too good if word got around the palace that you consoled yourself that same night in the arms of your mistress.”
Kirsh glanced at the window. The second sun was almost fully risen. “It’s not night any longer.”
“I should still leave. I’ll come back later, when things aren’t so . . . fraught.”
He smiled at her understanding. “I love you.”
“I know you do.”
“I wish . . .” he stopped the thought from even forming in his mind. What he wished for could never be, and it served no useful purpose to hope that it might.
“You wish what?”
“Nothing.”
“It’ll all work out for the best, Kirsh,” Marqel assured him. “Just you wait and see.”
Kirsh kissed her again and then let her go. As she slipped from the room, he wondered where she got her confidence from. Perhaps it had something to do with being a Shadowdancer. Maybe it was her faith in the Goddess that made her so certain that things would fall into place as she willed them.
Right now, Kirsh could feel the start of a tremendous hangover beginning to form, and all he wanted to do was crawl into bed, pull the covers over his head and sleep it off.
Maybe, when he awoke, he thought wistfully, he wouldn’t be married to a woman he didn’t love, in love with a woman he could never marry, pretending to grieve the loss of a child he had fervently wished was dead.
And that was the hardest thing to deal with, Kirsh realized. Before losing himself in the taverns of Avacas, he had stopped for a moment in the Goddess’s temple that his father had built in the grounds of the palace.
He had prayed—begged, almost—that she would make the problem go away.
It seemed the Goddess had answered his prayers, but for some reason, it didn’t do anything to ease the guilt he felt for asking.