The Skull and the Crow Chapter 6: The Other Side

Vanessa swallowed the third spoonful of the green concoction that her son would spit out to Lena's clerics. Nathanael, the paladin, held his jaws open while Ludmilla stuffed his briefcase with pureed comforts. The others prepared the room for the birth. Vanessa squealed and gurgled curses, feeling her tendons creak with the effort of moving through the spell. The clerics remained calm, out of sight, exchanging recommendations on how to clean and care for the woman in labor. Inside her belly, the child stirred, as if sensing the struggle. She felt anxious, but that was little consolation.

"I'm going to kill you all," Vanessa said, when the paladin finally removed the iron from her jaws for a minute.

"Maybe," smiled Brenna, the leader of the clerics. "But a little baby will have a beautiful and peaceful life, and that's all that matters."

Nathanael opened Vanessa's jaws again, tearing her gums and the roof of her mouth. The boy turned pale, but Ludmilla assured him she would recommend a suitable penance to redeem himself in Lena's eyes, and he remained calm. After all, this was a good and holy mission. Even unspeakable violence, like a cut in the mouth, could be forgiven if the intention was sincere.

Vanessa swallowed the fourth spoonful.

"I tried to move my feet; I tried to move my hands. The war mace was two inches from my fingers—a huge chasm." Her spine crackled, motionless yet feeling something stir inside her, the mixture perhaps already taking effect. They wiped the sweat from her forehead with a damp, refreshing, perfumed cloth. They touched her cheek with all their sweetness, and the gashes in her mouth began to close.

The fifth spoonful, and the sixth.

"His name will be Nathanael if it's a boy," Brenna smiled at the paladin, who blushed. "And if it's a girl, Ludmilla."

"I'm very honored," replied Ludmilla as she downed her seventh spoon. "You deserve it."

The faces of the other two became visible, filled with joy and seriousness, the eyes and lips of people engaged in an important and pleasurable task. They were young, fresh-faced, and enthusiastic. Ludmilla and Brenna continued exchanging pleasantries as they reached the eighth spoon.

Vanessa coughed, choked, and felt buried under the thick blanket of magic muffling her movements. The ninth spoon arrived, and Ludmilla was already scraping the bottom of the bowl.

"It's already over," Ludmilla said, smiling. "Now let's bring another of Lena's children into this beautiful world."

Vanessa grabbed the handle of the mace.

She hadn't overcome the spell. It wasn't herself, but the cocoon was gone. The blanket had shredded into air, and she no longer felt buried. She spat the green paste into Ludmilla's face, and the war mace rose in an arc of lightning to meet Nathanael's temple. The side of the paladin's head exploded in blood as he clutched the wound with both hands but remained standing.

Vanessa jumped out of bed with an agility that made her forget her pregnancy, and the skirt covered her hips again. Ludmilla stepped back, serene in prayer, but Vanessa snatched the bowl from her hand and smashed it against the old woman's face.

Nathanael attacked with his staff. The side of his skull was a ruin, but he had a determination that bordered on anger. Vanessa parried the blow, broke the staff, grabbed one of the pieces, and thrust it into the paladin's mouth. Nathanael stumbled backward, and she followed him, pushing deeper, touching his throat as she heard horrified screams and pleas for Lena. He turned around.

"You are not facing just one pregnant woman," Vanessa growled. "You are facing two servos from Keenn."

Suddenly, the bedroom door burst open with a resolute kick, revealing a stranger in a dark hat, now wielding a saber.

"Was it you?" Vanessa asked.

The man smiled. "I'm only an average wizard, but I dispelled their magic, my dear lady. What you do now is your choice."

"Keenn already made his choice," she spat, "and it was to kill."

Ludmilla tried to cast a spell, but Vanessa knocked her down with a punch to the chest. The two young girls screamed, and Brenna looked around, panic in her eyes. Finally, with eyes filled with despair, she turned to the stranger.

"Why? Why did you do this? We are clerics of Lena."

He shrugged. "Gods don't exist, that's why you're all deluding yourselves. There are five people attacking a pregnant woman. It doesn't matter who they think they serve."

Vanessa gave a sharp smile and threw a few blows at the leader. He pretended to lose his balance, bumping into his bag and dropping a dagger at Brenna's feet—calculated, purposeful.

"To hell with you!" she shouted.

He turned to the two young women, who cowered in blind cries of supplication, and raised the mace, only to feel the bite of steel on his back.

Terror on her face, Brenna had her arm outstretched, blood on her hand. She had stabbed him from behind. Realizing what she had done, she felt Lena's embrace leave her. The blow had been pathetic, as Vanessa had predicted, and the woman had been pathetic, as she had also predicted. Vanessa ripped the dagger from her back and, in an instant, used magic to heal the wound.

"Keenn won," he said to the others.

And he won. The fight was over, and Vanessa had done much worse than kill.

❖

The inn was empty. The clerics and the paladin had fled—Brenna a babbling wreck and the two young women struggling to carry Ludmilla and Nathanael, both inert. The innkeeper and her daughters had been expelled. Vanessa wanted to do more to them, but the stranger had dragged her back to the room.

"Do you want the child to die?" he asked. "We need to fight what they did. Lie down," he urged, pushing Vanessa back onto the sweaty bed.

He removed his wide hat, his red coat, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He wore an impeccable white apron. He had forgotten his saber in the corner.

"Who are you, anyway?" Vanessa asked, feeling another contraction, pain coursing through her.

"Doctor Zebediah Nash, Salistick Royal College of Physicians," he said, tinkering with his paraphernalia.

"Salistick?" Vanessa groaned with a laugh. "That's why you don't believe in gods."

"That's why I'm going to save you. Shut up and lie down," he commanded, pushing her again as she propped herself up on her elbows.

Salistick, the Godless Kingdom, stood as a glaring anomaly in the Kingdom. Centuries ago, when it was founded, the kingdom had been invaded by ideas suggesting that the gods of the Pantheon were nothing more than a tasteless joke or, at best, a concept of the past. How could the gods allow their devotees to suffer so much? How could they not interfere? How did they ignore blasphemies and injustices?

Salistick had turned its back on the gods, and in response, it seemed as if the gods had turned their backs on them as well. Divine magic did not work in Salistick, or it manifested as a weak, feeble thing. The miracles granted by the Pantheon were extinguished in the Godless Kingdom.

The healing power of the clerics was replaced by a dizzying advance in the science of medicine. Nowhere else in the Kingdom were so many techniques known, so many details about living bodies understood. Nowhere could a layman bring someone back from death's door. Elsewhere in Arton, the defense against illness and injury relied on prayer and hope. In Salistick, it rested on science and skill.

"What nonsense," Vanessa said, collapsing onto the bed. "The gods are everywhere; just look."

"Or maybe these are all natural phenomena we don't yet understand. Keep your blind faith; I'll stick to my logic. A god, if it really exists, may or may not answer your prayers, may or may not be capricious and selfish. Medicine always works." The child kicked and squirmed. Vanessa felt even more pain.

"Those idiots couldn't keep your son alive," Zebediah Nash said. "If he survived, he would be weak for the rest of his life."

Vanessa grunted in disgust.

"But I'm going to save him," he declared, seeming resolute. "You're not going to like this, but open your mouth."

Doctor Nash forced Vanessa to vomit the green mixture while he administered another preparation that had the opposite effect. He applied leeches and used a strange device to inject a liquid of an undefined color into a vein in her arm. Finally, the pain stopped, and the doctor declared her out of danger.

It was dawn.

In the sodden sheets, Vanessa felt as if she had fought a war.

"And lost," she laughed to herself.

Zebediah Nash was cleaning and putting away his gear when three light knocks on the door announced the arrival of the eunuch wizard.

"My lady?" the almost-man meowed. "Is everything alright?"

"Damn bastard. I was ambushed and have been fighting all night," Vanessa spat. "Why didn't you do something?" She started to get up again.

"Lie down," ordered Doctor Nash.

"My work..." the rounded man said, adjusting his embroidered cloaks. "Why didn't you help me?" Vanessa shouted.

"It's not my job," he replied with a trained, effeminate smile. "And I faint at the sight of blood."

"Get away from here before I kill you," Vanessa warned. "Be thankful I'm as weak as a daisy."

"My payment," the eunuch began.

"Take your gold from my bag."

He complied.

"And know that the Church of Keenn will know exactly what you did. What your guild did." The eunuch turned pale. He began to return the gold, filled with remorse, saying all the expected words of someone who was repentant.

"But please don't do this," he whimpered.

"Oh, no," said Vanessa. "I'm not a thief, and for that, I'm going to pay you. But we'll do what is right, and your guild will suffer the consequences." The eunuch looked at the ground, and suddenly his expression changed. Where it had previously been bovine and effeminate, it now resembled a silver dagger—ornate and deadly. He moved his hands in arcane gestures and began to utter words in the language of wizards.

"Keenn, dead," said Vanessa.

A huge spectral axe appeared above the eunuch's head. He looked up at the ceiling, and his skull split open, scattering brains across the floor.

"This is the most infected room I've ever seen," Doctor Nash remarked. "We're going to have to take her to another one."

"Why didn't you do anything?" Vanessa asked, but in a different tone.

"I would never insult a cleric of Keenn by providing help she doesn't need," Doctor Nash replied. "Even if Keenn doesn't exist."

She laughed, and he laughed, but then he grew serious and told her to go to another, cleaner room. She obeyed, slowly sitting down on a clean bed, feeling pregnant again, for better and for worse.

"Drink this," he instructed.

"What is it?" Vanessa asked, drinking from the cup he held out.

"So you can sleep and be quiet. If you don't stop killing people, you'll never rest."

"Bastard," Vanessa smiled, lying down.

Doctor Nash walked around the room, noticing that the cleric's eyes were nearly closed. She wouldn't let go of the war mace.

"Where are you going?" he asked before she fell asleep. "What sacred mission is so important?"

Vanessa looked at him through a haze of sleep but felt no threat.

"It's not a sacred mission. I'm going after my husband, who went on a stupid mission that only he thinks is important."

"Your husband?"

"A damn knight of the Order of Light, if you can believe it. Sir Orion Drake, the idiot." Zebediah Nash looked at her, hand on his chin.

"And what is the mission? Care to share?"

"Find his own father. Stupid, like I said."

"What will he do when he finds his father?"

"I don't know," Vanessa shrugged. "I think he wants to kill him."

He opened and closed his mouth, finally speaking. "Why are you going after him?"

"Because he's an idiot. Because he won't see his son born. And because I love him, of course." Silence followed.

"Isn't it strange that I ask so many questions?" Zebediah Nash remarked.

"No," she said, stretching and adjusting her belly. "You're trying not to think about yourself, and that's why you're interested in others."

"Am I really that transparent?" he laughed.

"Yeah."

Vanessa slept, and this time nothing bad happened.

❖

In the morning...

"Can I accompany you?" Doctor Zebediah Nash asked.

Vanessa had bathed and dressed, wearing the few pieces of armor her pregnancy allowed, along with all the weapons she could carry. Her red hair tied up seemed indestructible, and no one would ever say she had been fragile the night before.

"Why?" Vanessa replied.

"A doctor doesn't abandon his patient like that."

She kept her eyes on him.

"Because this is something to do while I don't know what to do," Doctor Nash answered.

"Great," she replied, her expression neutral. "But let's go soon."

They left. Toward the north, Lady Vanessa Drake, cleric of Keenn and lady of Bielefeld, walked alongside Doctor Zebediah Nash of the Royal College of Physicians of Salistick.

"You know," he said, "for things that don't exist, the gods cause a lot of trouble."