Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [186]
“It’s coming!” Polla called out. “Now, lass. Here’s where you can push.”
Moaning, leaning hard into the rope, Carra did just that. Dallandra and Ocradda hurried over, standing right nearby, muttering encouragement and watching the midwife. At last, the baby slipped out into Polla’s waiting hands with a good strong howl of a cry.
“Oh, what a pity! A daughter,” Polla said, sighing. “Ah, well, they can’t ail be sons, can they? She’s a pretty creature, and no doubt the Goddess will favor you more next time.”
Panting so hard that she was drooling, Carra seemed not to hear her. Clutching her rope, she leaned forward dangerously far to catch a glimpse of her child. Ocradda grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Polla took her little silver knife and slashed the umbilical cord.
“Hold her while I tie it off, herbwoman.”
Dalla took the baby, all red and sticky, held her still while Polla did just that, then handed her to Carra. She grabbed her child, clasping her tight against her sweaty breasts, cooing to her and touching her face with an awestruck finger. All at once, she winced and moaned again. Ocradda knelt down fast by the birthing stool and spread a big square of white cloth under it.
“Ah, good.” Ocradda sighed. “Here’s the afterbirth.”
“Is it all there?” Polla said.
With great care, Ocradda looked through the liverish raw mass.
“It is, truly.”
“May the goddesses all be praised,” the two women sang out in a chant. “Let us give them all thanks! May they be praised for the life of this child! May they be praised for giving us back the life of its mother! In their hands they held her blood and her life. Now they have given her back to us.”
“May they be praised,” Dalla sang. “May they live forever!”
While the other women helped Carra into a clean nightgown, this one slit down the front, and helped her lie down, Dalla washed the baby in warm water. Although the infant lay quiet in her hands, she wasn’t truly asleep. Every now and then, her big yellow eyes would open in the unfocused stare of the just-born; once Dalla saw a flicker of what might have been recognition.
“Elessi,” she whispered. “Elessi, it’s me, Dalla. You’re home, my sweet. You’ve come home at last.”
Again, and for the briefest of moments, the child seemed to recognize—not her words, certainly—but the sound of her voice. Dallandra wrapped her in a piece of blanket, thinned and softened with age, and brought her to Carra.
“Oh!” Carra reached out eager arms. “She’s so beautiful!”
“Put her to suck, love,” Polla said. “It’ll help your pains.”
Carra, however, seemed to have forgotten that such a thing as pain even existed. She cuddled the child close, helped her find a nipple, then merely stared, grinning all the while, as her newborn suckled.
Watching them made Dallandra’s eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, and for the first time in hundreds of years, she remembered her own child, her little half-human son, whom she’d left behind with his dweomermaster of a father when she’d gone off to Evandar’s country. She turned cold all over when she realized that she couldn’t even remember her child’s name. Aloda—well, it had started out with those syllables of her own father’s name, but how exactly had they shaped the patronymic? Alodadaelanteriel? Perhaps. Most likely, in fact. But right away they’d given him a Deverry-sounding nickname, Loddlaen.
Dalla left the other women to fuss over Carra and the child and went down to the great hall. By a blazing fire in the dragon hearth, Dar paced back and forth, while Rhodry sat slumped on a bench at the table of honor to keep him company. Not far away, curled up in the straw with a couple of dogs, Jahdo lay asleep. In one corner, a servant stood polishing tankards. Otherwise, the vast hall