Children of Enchantment

by Anne Kelleher Bush

  “I can’t see where I’m going,” shouted Barran.

  Stumbling like blind men, they led their horses on foot through the driving sleet. “I think I see something,” Roderic called, as he peered through the wildly dipping branches.

  “Roderic!” Barran cried.

  Behind Roderic there was a loud crash and a horse’s scream. Roderic turned, trying to see through the weather. “What is it?”

  “My leg—it’s—“

  “I can’t hear you.”

  Roderic led his horse back to see Barran fallen by a log lying across the forest floor.

  “My leg,” Barran said above the wind. “I heard the bone snap.”

  Roderic rubbed his hands together and hunched his shoulders against the cold. “I’ll put you on your horse,” he shouted above the wind. He managed to put Barran on his skittish mount. His face was twisted in pain. Roderic looked at the leg and saw the white edge of bone through the raw edges of torn flesh and ragged fabric. “You’ve done a job there, Barran.” He tied the horses together, swung up into the saddle behind his kinsman, and put Barran’s head against his shoulder.

  Barran sagged. “It’s bad, Roderic.” His hair was plastered against his head. His lips were thin with pain.

  “We’ll look for shelter.”

  Blinded by the driving storm, trees bending low and slashing at their faces, the icy sleet pounding through their cloaks, they emerged into a clearing at the very base of the dark tower.

  “Roderic? Not here, surely?” cried Barran.

  “We must,” Roderic answered. “We must have shelter. We can’t go on.” He dismounted as carefully as he could, and Barran slumped forward across the horse’s neck. Roderic bent his head and ran up the great stone steps to the heavy carved doors. He wrapped his wet hands around the icy handles and pushed, then pulled with all his strength. The door would not budge. He pounded with both fists. The door shuddered. He raised his voice and cried “Open!” as loud as he could, and again there was no response. At his back, the wind howled in renewed fury and the horses huddled together in the little clearing. Roderic had raised his fists again when the doors swung open with a loud creak of the ancient hinges. He narrowed his eyes and squinted into the darkness.

  A slight figure, wrapped in a shapeless garment made out of an odd assortment of varicolored rags, stood in the center. “I am Roderic, Prince of Meriga,” he gasped above the weather. “I seek shelter for my companion and my animals.”

  The figure bowed and stood to one side, motioning him to enter. “What about the horses?” Roderic peered through sleet. Something about the way the figure moved told him she was a woman. For reply, she gestured again, motioning him to bring them inside as well.

  “My man is injured. We need a fire and something to bind his wound,” he said as he turned away to lead the horses into the dark space beyond the door. The figure nodded and inclined her head.

  Slowly, Roderic guided the horses up the slippery steps. Barran had slumped forward across the saddle in a faint. Roderic looked around as he stepped over the threshold. The place was ancient, the ceilings vast and cavernous. Corridors led off from the back and sides. The floor was dull, broken squares of black-and-white marble, and the columns holding up the ceiling were webbed with cracks, clumsily patched. The windows, which once had held great panes of priceless glass, were covered over with planks of wood, and little light penetrated the gloom. He stood between the horses, shivering, for a moment. Then Roderic eased Barran off the horse, cradling him in his arms. “He’s hurt badly,” he repeated to the woman. “Please, is there a place I can let him rest?”

  “What comfort we have, you are welcome to, Prince,“rasped a voice above them, too deep for a woman’s, too soft for a man’s. Roderic craned his neck around, and on a wide sweeping staircase, another figure crouched, swathed in black garments from head to toe. Roderic squinted in the dark, trying to see. “Carry him above, Prince,” instructed the voice, “and follow me.” It turned, moving ponderously, and he heard a curious rustle and click as it moved up the steps.

  Roderic looked at the woman standing silently by in her multicolored rags. “Lead on.”

  “But, Lord Prince,” Barran said, in a weak whisper, “that’s the witch.”

  “Would you rather bleed to death here?” Roderic hissed between clenched teeth. Barran was heavy and Roderic was beginning to feel the strain in his arms. “We have no choice.”

  “Come, Prince, and fear not.” The raspy voice floated down from a great height.

  The woman gestured toward the steps. Roderic hoisted Barran again and started up the steps, acutely conscious of the presence of the woman following. The place had once been beautiful, he thought, as he concentrated on getting up the wide, shallow steps. They led in a broad arc to a graceful balcony, and in the rushlight, he saw the squat, black form of the witch in the corridor. Halfway down the corridor, the woman touched his sleeve. She gestured to a room off to the side. Roderic entered, somewhat hesitant. To the side was a low bed, covered in furs, and a small fire burned in a primitive hearth. He realized that, like the central keep of Ahga, the place had been built in the days when the heat came from furnaces in the cellars, blasted through pipes in the walls. She indicated that he should put Barran down.

  He looked at Barran’s white face. She touched his hand, a brief, fleeting caress, and inexplicably, his fear and suspicion ebbed. With newborn confidence, he put Barran on the bed. The woman gestured to the door.

  “Come, Prince,” came the hoarse whisper.

  Roderic hesitated. Barran lay on the low bed with his eyes closed, his breathing slow and ragged.

  “Prince.” The whisper was seductive in its call. With another backward glance, Roderic started down the corridor in the direction of the voice. At the end of the corridor, he paused before a great wooden door.

  “Prince.”

  He pushed the door open and stepped into a warm, brightly lit room. Once this room had been walled with windows on two sides with great panes of precious glass, but now all four walls were hung with tapestries. These were as finely wrought as anything in Ahga. The threadbare furnishings looked as though they, too, had once been covered in rich fabrics, for the wood was carved in intricate designs which could only predate the Armageddon.

  The black-garbed figure crouched like a spider before a blazing hearth, her hands extended over the flames. He could hear the wind howl around the building, but in the warm chamber, the storm seemed far away. He stepped forward. “You know who I am.”

  She turned, and for a moment he thought he saw dark scales on the flesh of her hands before they disappeared beneath her garments. “Who would not know the heir of all Meriga?”

  “I do not know you, lady.”

  She laughed, a hoarse, painful laugh. “You are the first to call me that in an age, Prince. You have your father’s courtesy, if not his face.” And she laughed longer, as if that struck her even funnier.

  “Have you a name?”

  “1 had two names,” she said, “once, long ago.”

  “And now?”

  “I am Nydia, and this dark place is my home.” Her arms extended in a wide sweep and the veils across her face moved.

  He caught a glimpse of something which did not look quite human.

  “Thank you for your hospitality.” Roderic inclined his head.

  She laughed again, and the flesh crawled at his neck.

  “Well you may thank me, Prince, and well you will pay.”

  He frowned. “Pay?”

  “Never mind,” she rasped. She raised her arms, and this time, he did see her hands. Where fingers should be, three curved digits ended in long claws. The flesh was dark and scaled, and he drew back involuntarily and shuddered. As he recoiled, she clapped her two hideous claws together, and the slight-figured girl appeared in the door. Even as Roderic turned, the witch beckoned, and the girl, her head still lowered, hurried to the witch’s side. One slender white hand emerged from the shapeles
s garment, and the witch made an impatient gesture, gripping the girl’s fabric-covered forearm instead of the bare hand. Roderic narrowed his eyes as the witch muttered something he could not understand. A chill rippled through the room, and gooseflesh prickled his arms and neck. He opened his mouth and found his movements constricted and slow, as if time had lengthened. His clothes dried on his back, and where the fabric had been ripped in the storm, it mended in an instant. The moment seemed to condense, collapse somehow, into an ordinary pace.

  “What sort of payment do you want?”

  “Sit. Eat. Refresh yourself.” She indicated a table set with two goblets and bowls of late spring berries and autumn nuts.

  “What’s happening to Barran?”

  “His needs are well met.”

  “I’m going back to get him.” He turned to leave.

  “Not yet, Prince.”

  Again he heard that low croon and his hand suddenly felt frozen, as though all the heat had been leached from the flesh, and he pulled back from the doorknob, just in time, as it glowed white with heat. He flinched. “What manner of woman are you?”

  “I am not a woman at all,” she hissed again. “And you will leave only when you have agreed to my terms.”

  “What terms?”

  “Not yet. Sit and eat.”

  He was across the room in three strides and seized her by the throat. The flesh was soft and felt like sponge through the fabric, and he grabbed her with all his strength. She threw back her veils and his grip faltered as he stared at the horror before him. Her face was inhuman. Her eyes were hooded and yellow like a reptile’s, the pupils long, black slits. She had no nose, only a pointed snout and long, yellow teeth, dripping saliva. Her flesh was scaled and black, reflected green in the firelight. He dropped his hands as a wave of nausea rose in his throat.

  “Since you insist, Prince, we will discuss it now.”

  She moved off and covered her face again. He again heard the curious click beneath her skirts and realized it must be her feet against the floor.

  “What do you want?”

  “You will marry my daughter.”

  Automatically, Roderic’s eyes fell on the girl standing nearly motionless before the hearth. “What?”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “If you want to leave here alive.”

  “You cannot hold me.”

  “Can I not?”

  He tried to draw a breath to answer her and a wall of flame engulfed him where he stood. The fire licked his boots and singed his hair. In another instant, it was gone, leaving only the stink of burned hair.

  “Do not doubt my power, Prince. It is as real as the heat of the flames.”

  “But I cannot marry your daughter.”

  “Why not?”

  “The woman I marry must be—“

  “Of highest birth, of bluest blood.”

  Roderic nodded.

  “My daughter is all that.”

  “I cannot marry her.”

  “You fear she resembles me, perhaps. Well. Let me lay that fear to rest.” She turned to the girl standing so quietly beside her. “Roderic, Prince of Meriga, this is my daughter, Annandale.”

  The figure came forward into the firelight, still swathed in her shapeless rags. Roderic caught at her arm and pushed the hood away from her face. He drew his breath as she raised her eyes to his. He knew her, then, as the girl in the wood.

  At first glance, she did not strike him as beautiful.

  And then, as the firelight flickered across her features, he realized that she was more than beautiful, that her beauty defied every description he could conceive. He was Prince and soldier, not poet, and his father’s court attracted many beautiful women. But there was always some flaw, some aspect that was not perfect, and therefore gave character or charm or counterpoint to the face. But in this girl’s face, as she looked up at him, with eyes of deep and vivid blue, there was no flaw. Her face drew him in as he looked upon it and seemed to grow more beautiful the more he stared. It was in some way indescribably balanced, as if this face were the pattern from which all others are drawn, as if all other faces were only endless variations of this one.

  He felt some reverberation in his flesh where he touched her echo up his arm and spread throughout his body like a warm breeze in his blood, even as he watched a blush creep up her throat.

  Annandale felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Modesty might have made her drop her gaze, but curiosity had the better of her. She stared, unabashed, into the eyes of the young Prince. How, she wondered, could anyone think him Abelard’s son? Surely they saw the leanness in his frame, the long muscles curving smoothly over narrower shoulders than the king possessed. His face was thinner, too, the cheekbones less well defined, the nose straight and tipped at the end, nothing like Abelard’s hawklike beak. And even his coloring—green eyes and light brown hair—suggested another sire than the King.

  But the set of his shoulders was like the King’s and the arrogance of his lifted brow like him as well. His mouth was curved in an expression of both disbelief and disgust, as though the thought of touching her turned his innards. With something like desperation, she glanced at her mother, knowing even as she did so that the thickness of her mother’s veils barred any kind of wordless reassurance.

  She swallowed hard and looked back up at Roderic. This was the man she had been born for, and he was looking at her as if she were a rotten piece of offal flung from the rudest kitchen. Fear shuddered through her. What would her mother condemn her to?

  “Lord Prince.” Her voice was like a bell, and he knew immediately that she was indeed the girl in the wood who had taken the child the lycat had injured. What had happened to that child?

  Roderic lifted his eyes away from Annandale’s face to stare at her mother. “She’s a witch just as you are. I can take her, but I can’t marry her.”

  “Then let me show you what you will wreak upon your father’s land.” The witch drew back from the fire and indicated its depths.

  As his mind reeled in automatic denial, he saw himself, held hostage by the witch’s magic, unable to move or break her spells. He saw Brand and Phineas order frantic searches, all come to nothing. He saw the Congress and the Mutens and the Harleyriders rise in rebellion. He saw a country torn apart, bleeding and vulnerable, split into a hundred different regions. He saw a great army rise and sweep Meriga before it like a dry leaf in a wind. He saw soldiers with dead men’s eyes march across the land, and even the Harleyriders fled in terror before them. He saw children spitted and women torn and men die slow and sickening deaths. On the enemy’s shields they bore a device of a triangle with a sidelong crescent like curved horns at the top. He saw his brothers die in a last disastrous battle, Phineas forced to serve Amanander, his sisters raped and skinned. And Annandale—this girl who stood before him, so small and vulnerable and somehow pure—he saw Amanander thrust himself upon her white, fragile body, and nausea rose in Roderic’s throat.

  He looked at the witch. “Is this about Amanander?”

  “Already he sows chaos across the kingdom, leaving a random, scattered harvest for you to reap. All these things will happen if you do not leave here. Like a beast bringing death in the night, it comes, seeking to crush all Meriga in its jaws. Even now, it stirs; the birth pangs are well along. The time is not of my choosing. Fourteen nights ago, Amanander came to the doors of this tower, seeking entrance. He came with four companions, dark riders all, five men, one purpose.”

  “Amanander came here? For the girl?”

  “He came looking for me, but if he had found my daughter, he would have taken her if he could. I have little strength left. The years have weakened me; my own time nears—I can protect her no longer. The only chance you have to prevail against it is to take Annandale, marry her, and keep her as safe as possible.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “West. West to Alexander. And, he hopes, to succor. Listen to me, Prince,” the witch hissed. “I seek to save your realm. Far more’
s at work here than you will ever know.”

  He looked down at the girl, who stood perfectly still. “Are you one of her enchantments?”

  “She is as you see her.”

  “What word have you to give me that I can trust?”

  “Go to Phineas. And he will tell you that you must marry her, and that you must keep her safe—guard her with everything you have, Prince, for she is your father’s hope and the Magic’s key.”

  “Phineas? How do you know Phineas?”

  “You cannot begin to imagine how much I know.”

  “You will let me go?”

  “As long as you take my daughter.”

  “And Barran?”

  She shrugged. “What use have I for him? See for yourself.” She pointed to the door behind him.

  Barran stood leaning against the door frame. His face had color in it, and he seemed weak, but both his legs were whole.

  “Barran!”

  “Roderic.”

  “Your leg?”

  “My leg’s fine.”

  “The bone was shattered—I saw it myself.”

  For answer, he shrugged. “You must be wrong, Roderic. I don’t remember.”

  Roderic looked back at the witch. “More enchantment.”

  “You know nothing of enchantment, Prince.”

  “I’ll take the girl. I can give you no other promises. And we will ride now.”

  “Roderic,” said Barran, “the storm’s still bad.”

  “We ride now.” Roderic looked down at the daughter. “We go to Minnis, lady. We have no time to pack your tricks.”

  Annandale broke away from his grasp. This was too much. This boy—this man—he didn’t understand yet what was at stake. She had felt the evil come knocking when Amanander had stood before the door, and the thought of leaving the safety of her mother’s side terrified her more than she could stand. She sank to her knees before her mother. “Mother— no, don’t make me leave you. Please, he doesn’t know—he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how to keep me safe. Don’t make me go with him—“

  Nydia pulled back with something that sounded like a snarl. “Your time has come.” Nydia shook away her daughter’s reaching hand impatiently. “Tell Phineas I have discharged my pledge-bond to the King. Go, child—my part in this is over. I want no more to do with it. My price is paid.”