Free Clash of Kings by M. K. Hume Page B

master, Cletus need never have touched a clod nor pushed a plough, but he loved the aroma of the earth and was worshipped by his servants for his devotion to them and to his fields. But he never lost an ounce, for all his physical labour.
    As the days became warmer, and the furrows bore fast-growing shoots of vivid green, peace seemed to have come for ever. Fillagh set Branwyn to work at small tasks, but the girl’s condition limited her usefulness to shelling peas or stirring the huge pot of stew that hung on the oven hob. Never for a moment did Fillagh refer to the unborn babe as a girl. When asked why she was so certain of the child’s sex, she shrugged and replied that her instincts told her that the boy would be large and strong.
    And then Branwyn’s waters broke.
    Terrified, the girl told no one, and when her maidservant found her in her room she was rigid with pain and desperate to prevent the birth of the child at all cost.
    Fillagh’s sympathy was lessened by the hysteria in the eyes of her niece. ‘It’s easier to stop the tides, Branwyn, than to prevent this babe from being born,’ she ordered brusquely. ‘So you can stop fussing right now. The child demands to be born, and you have no choice in the matter.’
    Privately, though, she was worried. She whispered her fears to her sister. ‘She’ll damage herself if she can’t be calmed, Olwyn. I know it can hurt the child, but poppy juice may relax Branwyn so that she’ll stop fighting the birth pangs. But the boy might die, I warn you, so the choice must be yours. I can’t take such responsibility on myself.’
    ‘Branwyn is my first concern,’ Olwyn replied. She almost wept, but she felt her husband’s shade pressing against her back and lending her courage. ‘The child must be a secondary consideration, Fillagh. I wish I knew what to do for the best. I’m only good for prayers and I’m a useless mother to allow my daughter to face this awful danger. Father was right all along. I should have remarried and fulfilled my duty to our family.’
    ‘You’d marry without love, Olwyn? Shame on you! You were the one who taught me that marriage is true joy when the heart is engaged. I’ll save Branwyn, and the boy, if only because I owe my whole, lovely life to your example.’
    The birth was long, hard and terrifying. For hour after agonised hour, Branwyn sweated, screamed and cursed, fighting her own body to the point where the women believed that her frail, abused spirit would die. Olwyn promised the goddess whatever duty was required of her if only Branwyn was allowed to live. Even the optimistic Fillagh almost despaired that the girl’s fierce, desperate will would ever permit the child to be born alive. But, finally, as spring rains began to drench the night sky, the child tore his way free from his mother’s body. In blood, distress and pain, the infant took his first, lusty breath.
    The women clustered around Branwyn, staunching the sudden rush of blood. They pressed her abdomen to expel the afterbirth and bathed her face in cool water while Fillagh saw to the welfare of the infant. When her bloody hands touched his squirming, slippery limbs, a shock ran through her fingers and centred on her brain. Fillagh had never been overly religious and she didn’t believe in the Sight, but now she found that disconnected images invaded her unwilling imagination.
    Visions of blood on stones, dead children with splayed limbs mutely begging for help and crowns drenched in gore spiralled through her mind. A pair of brilliant blue eyes suddenly loomed so large that Fillagh lost her balance. She almost dropped the infant, but Olwyn steadied her with one hand and, with the other, took hold of the babe. As her sister had already discovered, the child’s impact was immediate.
    No prophetic revelations stirred Olwyn’s instincts. Instead, she felt a rush of love so visceral that she almost forgot to breathe. Some wary part of her brain warned her that she