Eleventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
Field hospital, base of the hill, edge of Deep Forest, Wheat Lands
They were days too late. It was over, not just the battle but the war, leaving behind deaths beyond counting, horror beyond measure, loss beyond comprehension.
In a quiet corner of the tent, where those who weren’t expected to survive rested, she sat on the edge of a cot. Gilda was there too, grey with worry.
Macha lay on her father’s chest inside his shirt, tucked against his poor left arm, missing a hand. She lay peacefully, knowing him in the wise and ancient way of newborns everywhere. They watched her for a while, watched Dom’s face for any reaction. His head was bandaged, the linen passing down over his right eye.
No one had mentioned Macha’s black eyes, nor the fine hair on her head that burnt red like fire. Like Gosfath. Lanta had called her the Bloodchild, but Rillirin had stolen her from her fate and now, with Dom and Gilda and the rest, she’d raise her in the Light and there’d be no room in that tiny form for evil. Rillirin had sworn it on her own soul, and she meant to see it done. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check.
‘Can you look at her, Gilda, please? The ritual, the Dark Lady … I need you to check her. Please.’ Gilda nodded and Rillirin reached out and lifted Macha from Dom’s embrace. A ripple crossed his face and his arm tightened, just a little. Gilda gasped and Rillirin recoiled as the old woman’s hand found her shoulder.
‘He hasn’t moved since we found him. He knows she’s here, he knows Macha – and you – are here. Talk to him, lass. Bring him back to us.’
Rillirin swallowed hard and squeezed on to the cot next to him, put her head on his shoulder and her hand on the remains of his arm where it cradled their child.
‘Home,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘You and me and Macha. Your daughter. Home is where we are together. Here.’
The slightest frown creased his brow, his breathing changing. Rillirin pressed a soft kiss to his stubbled cheek and Macha squirmed, burbling a contented series of sounds as though she, too, knew they were home.
‘Come on, love, open your eyes. Open your eyes and look at your daughter. She’s missed you. I’ve missed you.’
‘We all have,’ Gilda said.
‘Gilda needs to look at Macha, make sure all’s well with her. I need you to let her go, just for a moment or two. Can you do that?’ She blinked at Gilda and the priestess slid the babe from the crook of Dom’s elbow. His arm moved again, questing, his breathing rapid now, panicked.
‘Hush, love, hush. Gilda’s got her,’ Rillirin whispered. ‘All’s well. Just open your eyes. Look at her. Look at me.’
Dom’s mouth turned down, lips thin. His chest rattled as he breathed, and then his eye opened, blinked, blinked again. Rillirin squeezed him very gently, eyes darting from Gilda and Macha to Dom, trying to see everything at once.
‘Oh,’ Gilda breathed, and Rillirin was dizzy with it. ‘I see, yes. The birthmark.’
‘She wasn’t born with it,’ Rillirin said. ‘The Dark Lady touched her.’ Dom flinched, shied away as though the words were poison. ‘I don’t know what it might have done. If she’s … normal.’
Gilda held the infant up to her face and pressed her nose against the black mark spreading across the tiny chest. She inhaled and grunted, then pressed a series of smacking kisses to the belly.
‘I’m no royal physician,’ she said, lowering Macha back into Dom’s arm – he inhaled so hard he coughed – ‘but that there is a perfect baby. Ten fingers, ten toes, two arms and legs. Beautiful. Healthy.’
‘But the mark. Her eyes,’ Rillirin protested as Dom lowered his chin to brush at his daughter’s head.
‘Nothing to worry about, I promise, but I’ll bathe her in the nearest pool once I’ve dedicated it to the Dancer,’ Gilda said. ‘After that, well … love her, raise her in the Light. That’s all any of us can do.’
She could have been talking about Dom as much as Macha. Rillirin thought she understood, for the first time, exactly what Gilda and Cam had gone through when they’d adopted him, the new calestar, and he’d become and done all of those things. They’d never stopped loving him, or trying to influence him towards the good. They’d never stopped trying to protect him – from others and from himself.
Rillirin took a breath. ‘So that’s motherhood,’ she breathed, her voice tight. ‘And I thought the sleepless nights were bad.’
Gilda’s laugh was strangled. ‘Oh, lass,’ she said, ‘they’re the absolute bloody least of it.’
‘Rillirin.’
Rillirin started, clutching inadvertently at Dom’s arm as he spoke. ‘Dom! Yes, yes, love, it’s me, I’m here. Macha’s here. Oh gods, Dom, can you see me? Hear me?’
‘Hear,’ he whispered. ‘Blind. Not Godblind though, not any more. Godblinded.’ He wheezed and Rillirin realised it was laughter. Her ears roared relief and she laughed too, juddering kisses against his cheek and chin and brow.
‘It doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Here, let me help you.’ She cradled the arm cradling Macha and shifted it upwards, so the babe’s downy cheek nestled against his. ‘Breathe her,’ Rillirin whispered. ‘You don’t need to see her; she’s perfect.’
Tears soaked Macha’s fine red hair as he took in the scent of his daughter. Rillirin put his right hand on the baby’s head and his fingers stroked, with infinite care and wonder, across her crown and down to feel an ear, a shoulder, an arm. Tiny fingers grasped his and his breath hitched.
Then he frowned. ‘She stinks,’ he commented and Rillirin giggled.
‘Oh gods, she does. I need to change her. Sorry, love.’
Dom smiled, his cheek against his daughter’s. ‘I don’t mind.’ But Macha began to squirm harder, mewling her discontent. ‘Gilda, would you mind?’ he asked when she began to cry after a last, endless moment of his lips pressed to her hair. ‘And I love you, by the way. And I’m sorry for it all.’
‘Hush, foolish boy,’ Gilda said, her voice tight. ‘Always the wrong apology at the wrong time.’ She took Macha from his arm and stood, looking long at Dom. Rillirin didn’t understand.
‘Back soon,’ she said.
‘Keep her safe,’ Dom replied. ‘Mother.’
Gilda choked back a sob and nodded once, patted Dom’s foot, and then ducked out of the tent.
‘Now then,’ Dom said quietly, tightening his arm around Rillirin and breathing her in much the same way he’d done their daughter. ‘About that knowing I had. It’s time you fulfilled it.’
‘What knowing, love?’ she asked, nestling closer, not caring about the words, only that he was speaking.
‘Rillirin Fisher, herald of the end. You will bring love to death. And death to love.’
A cold shiver worked its way through her from her scalp to the soles of her feet. She’d forgotten. She’d hoped it would have gone away, after everything. He raised the stump of his arm and smelt it, the warm baby-smell Macha had left on his skin.
He pushed at Rillirin very gently. ‘Sit up.’
She was shaking as she did, twisted at the waist so she could watch him, hands on his shoulder and ribs. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Gods, I wish I could see you again,’ Dom said, his voice low with infinite sorrow. ‘Do you still love me, Rillirin?’
‘What? Of course I do. I love you so much, so much.’
‘Then kill me.’
The light in the tent contracted, shadows leaping, crowding close. There was no air, nothing for her straining lungs to find. ‘What?’ Rillirin didn’t recognise her own voice. ‘I can’t.’
Dom smiled, so tender and full of love she couldn’t reconcile it with his words. ‘I’m dying, Rillirin. Nothing is going to stop that, but you can stop it hurting. If you do it, you fulfil the final prophecy and it’s all over. You bring death to love – me. And you bring love to death – Macha, once the Bloodchild, destined to be death itself and saved by you and loved despite who she was meant to become.’
He trembled, in pain or fear or just tiredness she couldn’t tell. He smiled like a skull, and his breath hitched, and his heart stuttered beneath Rillirin’s hands. ‘Do it now, my love. And then make sure our daughter knows who I was and what I did. Tell her all of it, the good and the bad. She deserves that. Everyone deserves that.’
‘I can’t.’ She wanted to beat him, to press her hands over his mouth and stop his words.
‘You can.’ He reached for her, hand questing in the air until she took it in hers and held it to her cheek. ‘You have to.’ He paused to breathe, fighting pain she finally realised he’d been feeling for years and that built now, wave upon wave, to drown him. More pain than she would ever know. ‘I’m broken, shattered in so many ways there’s no chance of putting me back together. There’s only one thing you can do for me. Let me go.’
‘I can’t.’ The same denial, softer now, a child’s plea against the coming of night, as though if she believed enough, wanted it enough, she could summon back the sun.
‘Please.’
Her heart was burning, her eyes stinging hot, unable to cry. She was numb. ‘But you’re home,’ she whispered. ‘You’re my home, the only one I ever really had. The only one I want.’
‘Macha is your home,’ Dom contradicted her. ‘And Gilda and Ash and Dalli and even Mace. They’re all your home. Give me the grace, my love. Let me make my peace with the Dancer, after all this time and all our angry, bitter words. Let me sleep. Knowing Gilda as I do, she’ll have left you a knife.’
And she had. Rillirin picked it up, the handle smooth and obscene in her palm. And right. ‘I will always love you,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily. Wait for me in the Light.’
‘Forever,’ Dom whispered.
Rillirin bit her lip, hard, until the pain stopped her hand from shaking, and then she pressed a sore and solitary kiss to his brow, heard him breathe her in, one last time. The things he’d done, the people he’d killed and hurt, the betrayals … none of it mattered. Her courage was failing her and he knew it.
He raised his poor mutilated arm and she put her face against it. ‘Best thing I ever did, saving you from the Mireces. It was all worth it in the end. To be with you. To love you.’
‘Best thing you ever did, Dom Templeson, was make Macha with me, our perfect, beautiful babe,’ she contradicted him, and the smile that lit his face would warm her for the rest of her life. ‘Go in grace, my heart,’ Rillirin whispered, and she sent him home.