“No,” muttered the Wraith. He reached into his cloak. “The bastard will never be born. He’ll perish in a gutter along with his whore mother.”

Before Nessa could react, the Wraith pulled a crossbow from under his robe. With a smooth manoeuvre, he fired a bolt that struck Nessa in the chest. She fell forward and landed with a splash in the rainwater.

No, she tried to say, but blood already filled her lungs. Not my baby. Not my little prince.

***

Alone and afraid, the young mage lay in his coffin made of flesh.

“I’ll die here,” thought Fionn, struggling to move. But once he shifted his body, he found he had more room than before. Although nothing but bloodied flesh surrounded him, something quickly became apparent. This was not the pit in the fields of Dromán.

This is from my old dream, Fionn realised. Not the chasm Morrígan created, but this.

He pushed at the walls, kicking with his feet. Indeed, the walls were not made from the bodies of the dead, but of flesh from something else.

He twisted where he lay and kicked again.

I will not die here, he thought. He punched and clawed against the walls over and over, not quite sure what he was hoping to achieve. Suddenly, a glimmer of light fell upon his body. He paid little mind to what the light illuminated, but instead kicked again and again. A small hole had opened somewhere below, letting more light enter the bloody chamber.

For what felt like the first time in his life, Fionn inhaled in a mouthful of air.

I’m almost out, he thought, kicking again and again, until there was a cool breeze upon his face.

***

Bláithín the White held her tongue as Brother Niall and Brother Dillon struggled to find the words to explain what had happened.

“We were walking out at night when we found her, dead in the streets, s-sir,” stammered Niall. “We brought her back, and our healers said she had been gone for three days.”

Arch-Mage Ferdia looked down expectantly at the two Brothers, then he turned to Bláithín. She nodded curtly, as if to confirm the brother’s words, but nothing else.

It would be easier if I could just tell him straight, she thought.

“No, Niall,” cut in Dillon. “You’re leaving out the most important part. Arch-Mage, sir, the reason why we’re bringing this to your attention so late at night is because the woman was with child.”

“This I already know,” said the Arch-Mage. “If there’s more to tell, spit it out.”

Spit it out, echoed Bláithín to herself, her white robes still covered in blood after all that had happened. Surely the Arch-Mage was expecting a far more gruesome account than Dillon and Niall were providing.

“The child,” whispered Niall. “The child was….”

The brother’s voice trailed off again. Never in her twelve years in service to the Academy of Dromán had Bláithín seen such overt cowardice.

Why is it that learned men experienced in the grisliest aspects of healing and medicine balk at the mere mention of the female reproductive system?

“Tell me,” said the Arch-Mage. He leaned forward. “What happened?”

To hell with both of them.

“The child was already born,” said Bláithín, stepping forward. The two Brothers looked back at her blankly, and the Arch-Mage’s brow quivered with anger. Of course, she was breaking all sorts of rules of etiquette by speaking out of turn, but the way things were going, it would take these two fools all night to describe what happened. And she had many other patients to attend to.

“The child was already born,” she repeated. “When they were both brought here, I pronounced the mother dead by three days, caused by a crossbow bolt to the lung. But the child’s cord was still intact. It seemed he had been outside the womb for just a few hours when we found him.”

“Impossible,” said the Arch-Mage. “An unborn child cannot survive so long independent of its mother.”

“But this one did,” said Bláithín, hoping the others would catch on. They did not, so she continued. “For three days, the child lay awake in its mother’s womb, before managing to force its own way out.”

“Ridiculous!” The Arch-mage jumped to his feet. “What you say flies in the face of all we know about Human anatomy. How can this be?”

Bláithín gritted her teeth. Fools. Must I spell it out to them?

“By all rights, the foetus was never meant to survive the trauma of his mother’s death,” she said slowly, as if speaking to children. Once it was clear that the three understood this much, she went on. “But this child did not die. He did not die… when… he was… supposed to.”

At last, a wave of understanding moved over the Arch-Mage’s face.

“No…” he said. “Divine Penetrance. The Lord’s gift.”

“Exactly,” said Bláithín, aware that neither of the two Brothers had reached the same conclusion as the Arch-Mage yet. “The child is alive and well in the clinic. The morticians are dealing with his mother’s remains. What we are to do with the child is up to you, sir.”

The Arch-mage paused, deep in concentration. He stroked his narrow grey beard, as if hoping those old hairs would hold the answer.

“Nobody else can know,” he said finally. “The Wraiths of Seletoth have killed many to ensure no king can ever father a bastard. Right now, I fear for the child’s safety, and indeed our own, if anyone else was to learn the truth.”

“Understood,” said Bláithín. “The Academy has taken in orphans before. It would not be unusual if we were to raise this one as our own.”

“Yes,” said the Arch-Mage. “It will be done. Now, return to your posts, everyone, and erase this meeting from your memories.”

“Of course,” thought Bláithín, as she turned to leave. She would be happy to forget this terrible night.

For the sake of this child, she hoped the others would forget too.

***

Something changed in the air around him, and Fionn’s eyes blinked open. He strained to see, but all he could make out was light, dim lights of fires, from torches, perhaps.

“He’s breathing!” cried a man’s voice, laced with sobbing tears. This was a voice Fionn could remember, but from where? Not from the vision where he was Nessa, nor Bronach, nor Bláithín, but from before, when he was just Fionn. The accent he could place, from the Kingsland, possibly Cruachan. And when it spoke again, Fionn found that he could indeed put a name to it.

“Farris, I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “But you’ve proven me a fool twice in one day.”

“I told you, the Lady showed me,” said another voice. Simian, for sure. “She said he’d know what to do next.”

“We’ll let’s hope he does,” said the first voice. “For the sake of us all.”

Chapter 11:

Incarnate

The most disturbing case of madness at the hands of a Seeing comes from an account written by Garvan Hawkeye, Simian astronomer from Penance in AC376. Whereas once he spent his days mapping and charting the movements of the heavenly bodies for the sake of navigation, Garvan suddenly turned his attention to something less practical: what he called the ‘voids of space’ that lie between the stars. His clear and accurate accounts lost most of their scientific rigour. Sometime later, Garvan was found dead in his laboratory, which had become a dwelling of festering decay over the course of weeks of studying in solitude. Dehydration was pronounced to be the cause of his death, though his workspace had been well-stocked with food and water. Most troubling was what he had apparently spent his last days of life creating; a huge mural of stars and constellations that filled a once blank wall at the back of his laboratory. Although the representation of the firmament here was as accurate as any, a thick line of blood meandered through the stars, annotated with nonsensical characters of no known language.