Children of Enchantment

by Anne Kelleher Bush

  “I know.” Annandale cradled Melisande close, reveling in her buttery, caramel scent.

  “He went away because of you.” Peregrine stared out the window as though she could summon Roderic back by sheer force of will. “And I have no idea when he’ll come back.”

  “But he will come back.”

  Raw emotion emanated from Peregrine in slow, hot waves—pain born of jealousy and fear. “It isn’t fair.” In the shadowy room, Peregrine’s face was a pale smudge. “Why should he come back to you? Why should you be the one to marry him? What have you ever done—?” Her voice faltered and Peregrine broke off.

  Annandale looked away. Peregrine’s pain was like a snake, twining and twisting in her gut. “I’m sorry.”

  Peregrine gave a little laugh. “For some reason I don’t understand, I believe you. It’s another reason I ought to hate you, but how can I? Even my baby prefers you to me.”

  “That’s not true.” Annandale rose and came to stand beside Peregrine. “She loves you. You’re her mother—” A sudden pang made her break off as she thought of Nydia, alone in the tower, left with her grief and pain and regrets. Her voice quivered as she tried to finish. “Nothing can break the bond between a mother and her child.”

  If Peregrine heard the break in Annandale’s voice, she ignored it. “But you can make her stop crying when no one else—not even I—can.”

  Annandale drew a deep breath and, with a shudder, murmured a silent prayer to some unknown source of strength. Almost immediately, her own pain ebbed away, and with a sigh, she controlled her emotions. Her mother had warned her, time and again, not to reveal who and what she was, under any circumstances. “I—I have always had a way with small creatures,” she said after an awkward silence.

  Peregrine shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I ought to be glad you’re so good to her. Even if Roderic wants me to leave after—I know you’ll take care of Melisande.”

  “He may not decide to marry me.”

  Peregrine snorted softly. “Not decide? He’s made the decision— he just doesn’t know it yet.”

  A shadow of Peregrine’s pain shivered through Annandale. With only the greatest effort she fought back the impulse to reach out, seize the pain, and make it her own. The promise of the exhilaration of its dissolution whispered seductively through every cell of her body. Instead, she whispered, “I am sorry.”

  Derision crossed Peregrine’s face. “What have you got to be sorry about? It’s not your fault that you’re the one his father wants him to marry. Roderick’s always done what his father wanted him to do.” She faced the window. The wind had picked up and the trees rustled as the rising sun tinted the puffy clouds orange and pink and gold in the pale gray sky. “I remember the first time I saw him. I had just come to Ahga— he was only fourteen, but he was all the serving maids talked about. He was always so kind, they said, but he’s his father’s son … an eye for a pretty girl already. I saw him in the courtyard. The other boys were teasing one of the scullions—he was fat and slow, and always the butt of their jokes. But that day Roderic stepped in front of him and dared them all.”

  “What happened?” Annandale shifted the sleeping baby in her arms.

  “Just then the King happened by. They all scattered, even the scullion, all of them but Roderic. He faced the King and took his punishment—“

  “But why was he punished?”

  “Fighting’s forbidden. Teasing isn’t. The King set him to shoveling out the stables. And Roderic did just as he was told, but by the way they looked at each other, I knew they understood each other completely. He really was his father’s son, but not in the way the maids all meant. He saw me watching, and I tried to duck out of sight, because I thought he wouldn’t want anyone to see him shamed, but he smiled at me and winked. I think I fell in love with him then.”

  Annandale placed the baby in her mother’s arms.

  “I knew,” Peregrine continued, her cheek against the baby’s wispy hair, “I knew that someday a woman would come— that he would marry. I thought I would just go away. I didn’t think it would be so hard.”

  “To leave’?” prompted Annandale, sensing that as Peregrine spoke of her feelings, some of her pain diminished.

  “To hate.” Peregrine clutched the baby close and turned to leave the room. As if from very Jar away, there was the distant sound of shouts and the clatter of horse’s hooves pounding across the cobbled courtyard. “They’re here.” Peregrine walked to the threshold.

  “I knew he’d come back,” Annandale said.

  “But not for me,” replied Peregrine. “He’s come for you.”

  When Roderic opened his eyes, Annandale was sitting on the bed next to him, adjusting a veil around her head. A pile of bloody linen lay in her lap, and his bedroom was in semidarkness. Roderic lay for a moment staring up at the wooden bedframe. He blinked. He remembered riding into the courtyard, remembered the shouts of welcome as the household came running to greet him. He remembered the stable boy’s grimy hand on the bridle. He had started to dismount and the horse had reared unexpectedly. He remembered falling backward, out of the saddle. The rest was blank. He raised his head, expecting pain, and was surprised when he felt nothing. “Annandale.”

  “How do you feel, Lord Prince?” She tensed, as though poised to flee.

  “What happened?”

  “The horse shied as you were dismounting. You fell and hit your head.”

  “My head?” He felt cautiously around the back of his head, expecting to feel a bruise or a wound. He rose up on one elbow. A bloodstain soaked the pil low. He sat up and frowned. At the back of his head, his fingers encountered matted, sticky hair, but nothing else: no scab, no soreness, nothing. He looked from the pile of bloody linen on Annandale’s lap to the bloodstains on the pillow. “Where did all this blood come from?”

  She kept her eyes down. “You were hurt.”

  “Why do I feel nothing?”

  She averted her face and finished adjusting her veil.

  “Annandale?”

  She looked at him with such naked, unclouded fear, he was confused. Scarcely believing what he did, Roderic pulled the veil off her head. He touched her hair and stared in disbelief, for it was sticky with clotting blood. He held out his bloodstained fingers. “What is this?”

  She drew a quick breath and she twisted her hands in her lap. “I could not let you die!” The anguished words burst as though torn from her throat. “I don’t care what you think of me—I could not let you die!”

  “Let me die?” He wanted to touch her again, wanted to touch her so badly he clenched his hand in a fist and reached around to the back of his own head instead.

  “You were very badly hurt—“

  “What kind of witchcraft is this?”

  She shuddered at the word. “It isn’t witchcraft at all. It’s— it’s what I am.”

  “What you are?” he echoed, even as he remembered Vere’s words. “An empath? That’s what you are. My brother said—” What had Vere said? “You won’t believe me if I tell you.” Roderic sat up straighten The mattress dipped and Annandale leaned closer involuntarily. Immediately she drew back. “Vere—one of my older brothers—said you were an empath. But he didn’t tell me what that meant.” Roderic took her chin and forced her, gently, to face him. “So you tell me. Just what is an empath?”

  “An empath,” she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear, “has the ability to heal—to heal completely. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid. My mother warned me never to tell anyone, not even you.”

  “Why?”

  She gave a little shrug and a sad smile. “She told me the story of how she came to be at Minnis—how the Bishop of Ahga threatened to have her burned as a witch. Empaths, too, are considered witches by the Church.”

  “You healed Barran’s leg that day in the forest. And Tavia. You had something to do with Tavia getting better, didn’t you?” When she nodded, he asked. “How can this be?”

  Wi
th her head cocked like a child reciting a lesson, she said, “There is a balance to the body and the mind. When the body or the mind is injured or ill, I can restore the balance by taking on the injury or the illness. The other person is left whole, restored.”

  “So you took my injury on yourself?”

  She nodded.

  “Let me see.”

  She bent her head and gently parted the tangled, blood-matted curls. He peered at her scalp. On the white skin a wide angry red mark was fading even as he watched. “That’s all?”

  “That’s what’s left.”

  He sat back. “Do you feel the pain?”

  “It doesn’t last very long.”

  “But—but it must last long enough. And you do this willingly?”

  “I must. The healing would not happen if I did not will it so.”

  “I have never heard of such a thing.” He looked at her in wonder and disbelief.

  “Another empath healed Tavia long ago.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because when I touched her, I could feel the residual pain echoing through her mind. She was attacked by the Harleyriders and left for dead. What was done to her—there is no other way she could have survived such a thing.”

  “But why did that empath not heal her as you did?”

  “The ability has limits. I cannot make the lame to walk or the blind to see. There is a limit to how much energy I can expend at any one time before I too am spent. If I overstep my limit, I will die.”

  “And this has nothing to do with the Old Magic?”

  Once again, she twisted her hands together. “It was the Old Magic that made us.”

  “What do you mean?” He forgot his wariness and gently disengaged her hands.

  “Long ago, before the Armageddon, the men we call Magic-users sought to bring an end to all the mortal sicknesses which plagued humanity. In those days, people got sick—“

  “Got sick? They ate and drank too much?”

  “No, not that. You know, the Mutens have the plague they call the purple sickness? It kills within hours, but it never attacks humans. In the days before the Armageddon, there were many sicknesses like that, sicknesses which did attack humans, which would attack us still. But the Magic-users changed us. They used their knowledge and deciphered the instructions each of us carries within the tiniest units of our bodies, the instructions which make us what we are. But when they did that, there were consequences.”

  “Of course,” Roderic muttered as a chill went down his spine.

  “With their experiments, they did all sorts of things. That’s how the Mutens came to be, and why humanity is impervious to disease—now, we only die from injury or old age. And also, there were others who were even more different, yet who appeared like everyone else. They could see the future, as my mother could, and their children were fike me—they could heal.”

  “So the priests—“

  “Are right, in their fashion. The Magic did bring about the Armageddon. But we—the prescients and the empaths—we are not evil.”

  “The child—the child in the wood, that day I killed the lycat—what did you do to him?”

  “I healed him and sent him on his way.”

  “He was almost dead.”

  “He was the worst I’d ever tried to help. But children are amazingly resilient—they are easier to heal. And each time I do this, I’m strengthened and better able to help the next person.”

  “So there are more like you?”

  “A few, perhaps. I don’t know. So many were killed in the Persecutions. My mother told me never to let anyone know. She said the priests would burn me if they knew.”

  “Then why did you tell me?”

  She bit her lip, and would have twisted her hands together, but he still held them. “Because—because I did not want secrets between us.”

  “My father knew what you would be?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  He lifted her chin with the tip of his finger. “I see.” Their eyes met and held, and suddenly, he was acutely conscious that they were alone, that the bedroom was shadowed and very private. Dust motes danced in the thin beams of light which penetrated the drawn curtains, and time seemed to slow, to stop. Only the thudding of his heart told him that the minutes were passing. This gift of hers must be the reason Abelard had chosen her to be his bride. And no wonder. What need had he of land, of men, of horses? What were any of those things beside the extraordinary ability this woman possessed? She could keep him alive and whole and healthy until the country was united and settled once again. Surely this ability alone would be enough for Amanander to want her, and yet, Vere said she had something to do with Magic, too?

  “Annandale.” For the first time, he realized how easily the syllables of her name slipped off his tongue, how they lingered in his ear like a caress. “What happened to your mother?”

  “I cannot say.” This time she did wring her hands nervously, and he caught them both together and held them, gently imprisoned between his. Her skin was as soft and unblemished as Melisande’s, smooth as the finest silk velvet.

  “You said no secrets between us.”

  “She used the Magic. She used the Magic in a way it must never be used. And so she became as you see her.”

  What had Vere said? The natural order? Magic violated the natural order? “She violated the natural order? And because of what she did, she became that—that—” He stumbled over the words. “That’s why she looks the way she does. Then why—” he hesitated, uncertain how to phrase his question. “Why didn’t you heal her?”

  “She wouldn’t let me.” She would not look at him, but in her voice he heard such sorrow, such grief, he felt tears well in his own eyes. “That’s why she went about veiled all the time, you see. So I wouldn’t see her and wouldn’t touch her accidentally.”

  “But why not?”

  Annandale shook her head and shrugged, a helpless, hopeless little gesture, her fingers spread wide. “She didn’t think my healing would work—the Magic is not only dangerous, you see. What makes it dangerous is that there is so much about it we can’t understand. And the more we meddle—” She shrugged again. “My mother wouldn’t let me help her.”

  A tear rolled down the curve of her cheek. Roderic reached out, drawn by an impulse he could not explain, and drew his fingertips down the path of the tear. Instantly, a thin blue light flared, and Roderic jerked his hand away. He drew back, biting down on his lip until he tasted blood. “If this is not Magic—not witchcraft—I don’t know what to call it.”

  He rolled off the bed, away from her, wishing he could control the pounding in his chest. “Go. Change your clothes. Attend me in the hall.” She rose to obey him, the bundle of bloody linen spilling from her arms. “No wait.” He stopped her with a shaking hand, his emotion seething in a conflicted jumble of wonder, desire, and fear. “Who—who else saw me fall?”

  “Everyone.”

  He swore beneath his breath. “You’d better bind some of that around my head. The One only knows what they’ll think of this—no one had better know. Come.” He sat in the chair by the hearth while she wound the strips of bloodied linen as artfully as she could around his head. “All right,” he said when she was finished. “Go.”

  He waited until he heard the soft click of the outer door closing. Questions swelled in a chorus, doubts dancing through his mind. The intensity of his feelings alone frightened him. He touched the back of his head again, felt the stiff linen where the blood had dried. Whose blood, he wondered. His? Or hers? Part of him wanted to call her back, and part of him wanted to send her away, back to the forest tower, back to the monster who had been created out of her own Magic. At the thought of Nydia, he froze. Annandale said it was the Magic that had made her mother like that. Annandale said the healing had nothing to do with the Magic. But what if she were wrong? The witch herself had refused to let her daughter touch her. But the witch had said Annandale must be protected, and he was beginn
ing to understand why. He looked beyond the walls to the forest looming as far as the eye could see in all directions, and suddenly, it seemed that Minnis was vulnerable in some way he couldn’t name. I ought to get her back to Ahga, he thought suddenly… back to where she can be behind higher walls than these….

  He thought of Phineas, so certain, so sure that he should marry Annandale. He had never had a reason to doubt Phineas. And he had never had a reason to doubt Abelard. He got to his feet, cautiously holding the bandage to make certain it was secure. With a tug, he opened the curtains and the noon sun streamed freely into the room. He gathered his resolve about him like a cloak and opened the door to the outer chamber. “Ben.”

  At once the old man was on his feet, offering a tray of fruit and bread and wine. “Did the lady help you, Lord Prince?”

  Roderic froze in the doorway, and his hand automatically went once more to the bandage on his brow. “Help me? What do you know about that lady?”

  Ben pushed past him gently, set the tray down on the table by the window, and proceeded to plump the pillows and smooth the bedcover. “Haven’t you noticed, Ix?rd Prince, the difference? Since you brought her here, I mean? But then,” he continued, opening a chest and laying out clean undergarments, “you’ve been so busy this summer, perhaps you haven’t.”

  Leaning against the door frame, Roderic watched the servant work. “You’re right. I’ve been busy. So tell me. How are things changed? For the better? Or the worse?”

  The old man raised guileless eyes. “To be near her is like— like finding the warm spot by the fire, like coming into a bright room from a dark night. She’s kind, Lord Prince, kinder than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “Kind in what way?”

  “She cares, Lord Prince. Cares about everyone from the greatest to the least.” Ben hesitated. “I remember her mother. The priests, the Bishop, tried to burn her, you know. But there was no evil in the Lady Nydia. She was only beautiful. I think the old hags were jealous, myself. They were witches, if you ask me, not the Lady Nydia. And here at Minnis, the children—“