Children of Enchantment

by Anne Kelleher Bush

  She took his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. Hers were dark in the moonlight. “Please. Don’t stop.” They found a rhythm that matched, and she moved beneath him like the sea, and as the pace increased, she sought his mouth with hers. She was his, all of her, and he had never felt so complete, or so one with any other woman. Bound together at lips and loins, they moved toward the same place, faster and harder, and when he felt her body tense and then relax, tense and then relax, he let himself go. She stifled a cry against his shoulder. A little later, he lifted his head. They looked at each other and smiled.

  They spent the rest of the night entwined in each other’s arms. Her body molded itself to his as if they truly were two halves of one whole. They slept, finally, as the moon sank in the night sky and the air grew chill.

  He woke near dawn to see her standing at the window, watching the sea in the gray half light, and held out his hand. “Come back.”

  She turned, clasping her nightgown to her breasts, and he saw she had been weeping. “What is it, sweet? What’s wrong?” She closed her eyes and wiped her cheeks and came to lie beneath the covers next to him. “Can’t you tell me?”

  “I was thinking about my mother—” She shook her head and turned away.

  “What about her? Do you want me to send a messenger—?” “No!” She shook her head violently. “Leave her in peace … do you think she would want anyone to see her the way she is?”

  He did not try to understand. He said nothing more, but gathered her in his arms, kissed away the salt tears, and held her until she slept.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Annandale opened her eyes. A long shaft of morning sun slanted across the bed, and she saw that the sky outside the window was a bright, clear blue. It must be very late. She turned her head. Roderic still slept, his face pillowed on the palm of one hand, a lock of his light brown hair falling across his face. With a gesture which was becoming automatic, she reached out and smoothed the hair off his face. He stirred and mumbled something, then settled back to sleep.

  With the very tip of one finger, the lightest of caresses, she traced the line of his cheek down to his stubbled jaw. They had been married two weeks, and in that time, she still found it hard to comprehend the depth of the communion between them.

  With the sharing of their bodies came an intimacy deeper and more profound than anything she had ever imagined. He felt it, too, and she knew that some of the doubts and suspicions which he harbored had been assuaged. The rest would fade with time. Each time they came together, she felt his loneliness, his uncertainty, fears which ran so deep within even he was unaware of them. She knew just how much he loved the King, how much he wanted to succeed in Abelard’s place. She knew as no one else could the weight of the burden he bore, a burden which could only increase.

  She pushed thoughts of the future away, for a dull sense of dread nagged at her awareness every time she thought of what would come. Her mother’s warnings echoed over and over in her mind. Sooner or later, Amanander and the Muten Ferad would come for her. It was inevitable. Time and again, her mother had cautioned her, time and again tried to make it clear that in the final analysis, whatever happened would be up to her. But would she be strong enough to resist, she wondered? Would she possess the strength of will necessary to hold off an assault upon her very self? And all the King’s men would be helpless to assist her in any way at all. She gazed at Roderic, at his gentle, vulnerable mouth, softened in sleep, and tried to believe he understood the threat.

  Suddenly, with a little sigh, he opened his eyes. “Good morning.”

  She smiled back, pushing aside all thoughts of the future, and turned to kiss the hand he raised to lay against her cheek. “Shall we ride today, Lord Prince?” They had spent the better part of the last two weeks in bed, and she sensed a growing restlessness. Much as he lusted for her, and she for him, he was used to a much more active life.

  At once his eyes lit up, and he tightened his grip on her hand. As he moved closer, she evaded him and sat up. “The day is half over. I’ll get our breakfasts—you dress.”

  He rolled over on his back, and she felt a tug of desire at the sight of the flat lines of his belly, the smooth curves of the muscles of his chest and arms. According to Nydia’s descriptions of the King, Roderic was leaner than Abelard had ever been, his coloring completely different, and she wondered why everyone else failed to see how little Roderic resembled the King. Perhaps, she thought, it was because people saw only what they wanted, or expected, to see.

  He caught her wrist as she walked past the bed to gather the clothes he had discarded the night before. “Wait. Are you very hungry? Could you wait to eat?”

  She shrugged, a little mystified. He looked as excited as a child, and a little of that excitement seeped into her as well. “I could wait for a little while. Why?” she asked, smiling as the feeling grew. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Let’s go to the beach.”

  “Now?”

  “Why not?” He sat up, the sheet falling away, and she felt her cheeks grow warm. “Come here.” He pulled her against him, lifting her up onto his lap as easily as if she were a child, and he nuzzled her neck and earlobes and her breasts. “But then again, perhaps we should just—“

  Laughing, she pushed him away. There was strength in his embrace, strength in his love. “I’ll have them pack us a basket. The day is beautiful—there will not be many days left like this.” She nodded at the window.

  He glanced outside, and a shadow crossed his face. “We’ve been lucky so far.”

  A chill went through her, something she could not explain and could not name, and she rose to her feet. “Yes,” she said as she bent to gather up their clothes. “We’ve been very lucky.”

  The hour was close to noon by the time they rode into the country outside of Ahga, her inevitable guard following at a discreet distance. When they came to a little stand of trees which bordered the beach, he swung off his horse, and helped Annandale off hers. Roderic tethered both horses to a tree and reached for the basket of food. The leaves above them were all shades of red and orange and gold, and through the trees came the heavy sigh of the waves as they rolled against the beach. “I used to sneak away and come here every chance I could,” he said. “Then they learned where I was.”

  “Did you have to stop coming?” she asked as she gathered up her skirts. A light breeze rustled the leaves, and she caught a whiff of a foul odor. She turned in the direction of the sea.

  Roderic smelled it, too, for he looked over his shoulder. “Something must have died nearby. Come on. I’ll show you where I’d hide when they came looking. It won’t smell on the beach.” He held out his hand and led her through the trees. But the closer they came to the beach, the stronger the odor became.

  The trees thinned out, and a stretch of white sand opened up before them. Annandale was a little behind Roderic, for the path was narrow and overgrown, and so she only saw him stop at the edge of the beach. A stronger breeze ruffled his hair, and this time she gagged on the stench.

  Roderic stared at the beach, eyes wide with disbelief.

  “What’s wrong?” Annandale caught up with him, peered around him, and the words died unspoken in her throat. The beach was a wreck. All along the shoreline, broken chunks of granite lay scattered like a child’s forgotten toys. They were covered with dead fish and sandy seaweed, as if they had been flung from the bottom of the sea. Waves broke over the debris, as though the water would wash it all away. Hundreds of gulls swooped and shrieked, feeding in a frenzy over this unexpected feast.

  “What could have happened here?” he muttered, looking first one way then the other. “Last summer there was the earthshake—but I’d no idea that this—“

  “Roderic.” Annandale touched his arm. “This wasn’t caused by an earthshake last summer—this was caused by Magic.”

  He sat down on a rock at the edge of the sand. Clouds of flies buzzed and swarmed over the reeking corpses. “What
are you talking about?”

  “This happened recently. Look—” She pointed across the sand, where blank-eyed fish stared sightlessly on and between the blocks. “These aren’t even picked clean. This must have happened just within the last few hours. Look,” she said, pointing to the sand where the nearest block lay, “the sand is still wet. Somewhere, for some reason we may never know, someone used the Magic. And this was the consequence.”

  “Then—why hasn’t someone come and told me this happened?” He looked like a child struggling to understand.

  “You said no one comes to this beach—that’s why you liked it. You said that the rocks—these blocks—beneath the water made it impossible for fishing boats to come close, and that the water was very dangerous. And it’s Vember. We’re nearly a half hour’s ride from the city. Who would come?”

  “So—” he shook his head as if to clear it “—what happened here? How could this happen without noise, without some sign?”

  She looked around. “Does anyone live near here?”

  He glanced back up the path and answered her with his silence.

  “No one ever knew how the Magic worked, Roderic,” she said, gently.

  “Could your mother have caused this?” he asked, suspicion giving his voice a hard edge.

  “No.” She shook her head emphatically.

  “Why not? How do you know?”

  “My mother had me to help her.”

  “Help her? You told me you don’t know the Magic.” He remembered what Vere had said. “My brother said that you— empaths—are the means to controlling the Magic. If you don’t know it, how can you control it?”

  She hesitated only the fraction of an instant. “It’s difficult for me to explain these things, but I will try. But let’s go back to the clearing? Perhaps we could eat there?”

  He picked up the basket. “Let’s go. I can’t stand to look at this anymore.”

  Once they were settled in the little clearing where the horses were tethered, Roderic reached into the basket and portioned out the food. They were both hungry and for some minutes they ate in silence. Finally Annandale said, “When I heal, some part of me, deep inside my mind, knows how things are supposed to be. When I focus my thoughts on the person I want to heal, I see that person whole and healthy and complete, in harmony with the world around them.”

  Roderic tossed his apple core over his shoulder to the horses and nodded. “Go on.”

  “The Magic is like an injury to the way the world is supposed to be.” She gestured with her hand, searching for the words. “And somehow, I don’t know how, the same part of my mind understands and knows how to heal the injury. So if my mother wished to use the Magic, she and I would focus on whatever it was she wanted to do, and—” She broke off in frustration. “I’m a channel, a conduit for the energy of the Magic. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. I only know that’s what I am.”

  “So if someone wanted to use the Magic, all they would need is someone like you—” He raised his head and stared into the trees behind her. Understanding began to dawn. So this was why she feared Amanander. “I’ve told you about Amanander—how he killed Jesselyn, how he believes the throne should be his. We’ve had no word from Alexander, nor from any of the garrisons to the west. There’s been no trace of him at all.”

  “If I were willing to help, then that sort of destruction—like the beach back there—wouldn’t happen. But I must be willing, Roderic. It must be a conscious act on my part. And I would never be willing to help Amanander.” She raised her face to the sun and took a deep breath. Here, beneath the open sky, on the leaf-strewn grass, surrounded by the trees, that part of her she could not articulate felt far more nourished and secure than she ever did behind the walls of Ahga, built of the rubble of human hopes, mortared with human tears. “I know this all seems like madness to you.”

  Roderic smiled ruefully. “What would you think, if you were me?”

  “Think of it like this.” She hugged her knees to her chest beneath the spreading skirts. “See that tree? That one, over there—see how different it is from its neighbor? And yet they’re the same sort of tree … their leaves, their seeds, their wood, it’s all the same. You can separate the parts, even carry them away, but each tree is a whole thing in and of itself. And that is what the universe is: a whole thing, made up of millions and millions and millions of pieces, but whole and complete in and of itself. And for some reason, part of me is able to comprehend that pattern, whatever it is, and keep it whole.”

  “Is there nothing you can’t heal?”

  She cocked her head, considering. “Pain which is self-inflicted. The Bishop, she was the saddest, loneliest person I have ever met, but there was no easing her. And Peregrine—” She broke off, sensing at once his discomfort at the mention of his First Lady’s name.

  “Has it been all right? Has she treated you well?” He sat up, nearly spilling his wine. “I can’t send her away—she’s the mother of my child—“

  Annandale smiled sadly. “It’s not easy for her, Roderic, loving you as she does. But she’s another I cannot help. Her pain is both her shield and her sword. It cuts both ways, such a weapon. But I think it would be cruel to send her away.”

  He reached across the blanket and drew her close. Beneath his tunic, she could hear his heartbeat, and immediately, hers adjusted to his rhythm. There was strength in him, like the trees, rooted deep in the essence of his being. But there were wounds there, too, little ones, scars he carried and never knew he had. “I wouldn’t have her make trouble for you.” His fingers caressed her cheek, her hair, and he breathed deeply as though he would inhale her. “My dear, dear love—this is what your mother meant—about Amanander, why I must keep you safe.” She nodded against his chest. “There’s been no trace of him at all,” he repeated against her hair.

  “Except maybe that ruin on the beach.”

  “Amanander isn’t the kind of man to give up.” He tilted her face up to his. “What makes you think he couldn’t force you to help him? What if he said he would kill someone if you didn’t help him? Could you stand by and watch someone die in agony, knowing you could stop it in an instant?” His hazel eyes held hers, and in her silence, he had his answer. “If he’s disappeared, there’s a reason. I hope I’m ready for him when we find him.” He clutched her closer to his chest and bent his head down to hers. “I’ll never let anything happen to you,” he whispered, his mouth against her ear. “I swear it. Amanander won’t get within a hundred miles of you—I’ll keep you safe, always.”

  “It may not always be possible to keep me safe.”

  He lifted her face to his, hands buried in the thick tresses of her hair, and tried to coax a smile from her. “I have but to give the order, and ten thousand men would stand between you and whatever would do you harm. I shall never let anything happen to you.”

  The tears in her eyes did not match the smile on her lips. She touched his cheek again, and beneath his bravado, she felt the calm certainty that something waited—for them both.

  She turned to face the far horizon in the north. “I think we’ll hear something of your brother soon. Very soon.”

  When they reached the castle, a groom came running to take the reins, and a servant dashed across the courtyard just as Roderic was helping her off the horse.

  “What is it now?” he asked wearily.

  “War, Lord Prince.” The man breathed hard, from either exertion or fear. He pressed a worn and muddy dispatch into Roderic’s hand. “In the north. Your brother, Alexander, is under siege.”

  For a split second, Roderic looked stricken. Then he ripped open the seals and scanned the parchment in dismay. “Summon Phineas and Brand. I will be in the council room in fifteen minutes. I want ten kingdom messengers, and tell the stables to have horses saddled and ready to go within the hour. Tell my scribe to be in the council room, as well.”

  He bowed his head. “As you say, Lord Prince.”

  “Send a message to Ar
iad, head of the grain merchants. I want a representative here within two hours.”

  “At once, Lord Prince.”

  “That’s all. You may go.”

  The servant practically vaulted across the courtyard. Roderic turned back to Annandale, and his indecision was plain on his face. “I don’t want to leave you.” He touched her cheek.

  “Must you go?”

  He hesitated. “Let me talk to this messenger. Perhaps it won’t be necessary.”

  “Roderic!” Brand called from the steps which led into the inner ward. “The messenger is in the hall.”

  “Let’s talk to him now.” With Annandale at his heels, Roderic followed Brand into the castle. In the hall, a knot of perhaps a dozen people clustered near one of the great hearths. A kingdom messenger lay spent on a pile of furs hastily pulled off the benches. His uniform was in tatters, covered in mud, his shoulder was bound with a bloody bandage, and crusted rags covered another wound on his thigh. Peregrine knelt by his side, a goblet in her hand, a bowl of water on the floor next to her.

  Annandale clenched her fists together and sank down on a bench some distance away.

  “Will you be all right?” asked Roderic, holding her hands in both his. “Let me talk to him—I’ll have him moved to private quarters, and then—” Their eyes met, and she nodded. He was beginning to understand, she thought, how it was for her.

  “Messenger.” Roderic dropped down on one knee. The man opened his eyes; his breathing was labored, and his breath was foul.

  “You—the Prince?”

  “Yes. What can you tell me of my brother’s situation?”

  He coughed painfully, and Roderic looked at Peregrine, who shook her head. “Betrayed.” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “By whom?”