The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

he said quietly. “How does it look?”
    “Not good, I’m afraid, sir. You know I could have dealt with it otherwise. She’s been trying for hours, and she’s bleeding. Her heart is very faint.” As Elispeth spoke, Rachel moved nearer.
    “Hmmm.” Morgenes bent and rummaged in the sack he had brought. “Give her some of this, please,” he said, handing Rachel a stoppered vial. “Just a swallow, but mind she gets it.” He returned to searching his bag as Rachel gently pried open the clenched, trembling jaw of the woman on the bed and poured a little of the liquid into her mouth. The odor of sweat and blood that suffused the room was suddenly supplemented by a pungent, spicy scent.
    “Doctor,” Elispeth was saying as Rachel returned, “I don’t think we can save both mother and child—if we can even save one.”
    ‘You must save the child’s life,” Rachel interrupted. “That’s the duty of the Godfearing. The priest says so. Save the child.”
    Morgenes turned to her with a look of annoyance. “My good woman, I will fear God in my own way, if you don’t mind. If I save her—and I do not pretend to know I can—then she can always have another child.”
    “No, she can’t,” Rachel said hotly. “Her husband’s dead.” Morgenes of all people should know that, she thought. Susanna’s fisherman husband had often visited the doctor before he drowned—although what they might have had to talk about, Rachel could not imagine.
    “Well,” Morgenes said distractedly, “she can always find another—what? Her husband?” A startled look came to his face, and he hurried to the bedside. He seemed to finally realize who it was lying there, bleeding her life out on the rough sheet.
    “Susanna?” he asked quietly, and turned the woman’s fearful, pain-clenched face toward him. Her eyes opened wide for a moment as she saw him, then another wave of agony shut them again. “Ah, what has happened here?” Morgenes sighed. Susanna could only moan, and the doctor looked up at Rachel and Elispeth with anger on his face. “Why didn’t anyone inform me that this poor girl was ready to bear her child?”
    “She was not due for two months more,” Elispeth said gently. “You know that. We are as surprised as you.”
    “And why should you care that a fisherman’s widow was going to have a baby?” Rachel said. She could be angry, too. “And why are you arguing about it now?”
    Morgenes stared at her for a moment, then blinked twice. “You are absolutely correct,” he said, and turned back to the bed. “I will save the child, Susanna,” he told the shivering woman.
    She nodded her head once, then cried out.
     
    It was a thin, keening wail, but it was the cry of a living baby. Morgenes handed the tiny, red-smeared creature to Elispeth.
    “A boy,” he said, and returned his attention to the mother. She was quiet now and breathing more slowly, but her skin was white as Harcha marble.
    “I saved him, Susanna. I had to,” he whispered. The corners of the woman’s mouth twitched—it might have been a smile.
    “I ... know ...” she said, voice coming ever so softly in her raw throat. “If only ... my Eahlferend ... had not ...” The effort was too much, and she stopped. Elispeth leaned down to show her the child, wrapped in blankets, still attached by the bloody umbilicus.
    “He’s small,” the old woman smiled, “but that’s because he arrived so early. What is his name?”
    “... Call ... him ... Seoman ...” Susanna croaked out. “... it means ... ‘waiting’ ...” She turned to Morgenes and seemed to want to say something more. The doctor leaned closer, his white hair brushing her snow-pale cheek, but she could not make the words come. A moment later she gasped once, and her dark eyes rolled up until the whites showed. The girl holding her hand began to sob.
    Rachel, too, felt tears come to her eyes. She turned away and pretended to begin cleaning up. Elispeth was severing the infant’s