A Passionate Magic (28 page)

Vivienne’s couch was covered in sea green
silk. A clothing chest stood to one side. On a polished stone table
lay a book bound in purple leather which, from the gold letters on
its cover, Emma recognized as a treatise on magic. Beside the book
a silver pitcher held a few moorland flowers. There was a chair
pulled up to the table. A bowl and a cup sat upon a narrow rock
shelf. Those were all the furnishings, yet the room gave the
appearance of being a true home. The air was warm and fresh,
faintly scented by the flowers, and daylight shone through a
fissure high above.

Vivienne was nowhere to be seen.

“Come out at once!” Agatha ordered, and
uttered a string of words that made Emma stare at her in
disbelief.

“How can you know that ancient language?”
Emma cried. “I read those words once and was warned never to speak
them aloud. They are the property of – unless you are—?”

“Haven’t you guessed by now?” Agatha said,
grinning at her.

“What is it?” Dain asked. “What’s wrong?” He
broke off suddenly, and an incredulous expression spread over his
face. Clenching Emma’s hand, he stood perfectly still, gaping as
the figure of a woman emerged from the crystal-studded rock wall.
She stepped right through the falling water and into the room
without a drop of moisture clinging to her.

“
He
made me return,” Vivienne
said.

“Of course he did,” Agatha responded.
“
He
knows what’s best for you. As you see, the spell is
almost completely broken. Dain looks upon you and lives.”

“Dain.” Vivienne moved toward him, her white
robes floating about her as if touched by a that breeze none of the
others could feel. She lifted a slender hand to stroke his face,
then stood immobilized, her hand inches from Dain’s cheek, while
tears streamed down her face. “Oh, my dear. I have waited so
long.”

“I should know you,” Dain said, his brows
drawn together in concentration. “I should remember.”

“Greet your sister,” Agatha said to him.

“I have no sister.” Dain tore his gaze from
Vivienne to look imploringly at Agatha, and then at Emma, seeking
an explanation.

“Speak her name aloud and you will remember,”
Agatha instructed. “It’s the last step in breaking the spell.”

“Vivienne.” Dain obeyed Agatha’s instruction,
uttering the word with a gasp. Emma thought he would crush her
hand, so tightly did he hold it. “Vivienne,” he said again,
sounding as if he could not quite believe the sound of his own
voice.

“I feared you’d never remember me,” Vivienne
said.

“Nonsense,” Agatha told her. “You always knew
there would come a time for revelation. Now you are both free.”

“Not yet,” Dain said, in a way that told Emma
he was far from satisfied with the working of Agatha’s magic. “I am
owed a fuller accounting than just, ‘the spell is broken,’ and I
refuse to leave this cave until I receive it. Where are the
memories I was promised? I do believe in my heart that Vivienne is
my sister, but I know nothing else about her.”

“Let us go to the outer chamber,” Vivienne
suggested, “where he will not follow us.”

“He cannot pursue,” Agatha said to her, “as
you very well know. Not for centuries will he be released.”

“Who is he?” asked Dain.

“The one who lives in there,” Agatha
answered, indicating something behind the glittering wall and the
tiny waterfall.

“Those words you spoke in an unknowable
tongue that I barely recognized,” Emma exclaimed, realization
flooding her mind.

“Speak not the name,” Agatha hastily advised,
hand raised in the beginning of a magical gesture that would
prevent Emma from saying more than she should. “Names contain
powerful magic, as we have just seen. Vivienne, is there anything
you want to take from your old home?”

“Everything I have ever wanted is here with
me now,” Vivienne replied, her eyes on Dain as if she were making
up for all the years when she could see him only from afar. She
spared not a single backward glance for the inner chamber.

Emma walked beside Dain through the arch to
the outer chamber. She did look back, in wonder and faint
apprehension, toward the place hidden deep within the rock, where
the greatest magician the world had ever known lay imprisoned until
the time was right for him to be released. Then Agatha gestured,
and the open arch vanished, and Emma knew it would remain closed
for centuries to come.

“Now,” said Agatha, moving toward Hermit’s
peat fire with the smooth stride of a young woman, ‘let us have a
bit more light and warmth, and I will answer all your questions,
save for the ones infringing upon the secrets of magic, which I am
not permitted to answer.” At a motion of her hand the fire blazed
high, as if it were fueled by dry wood.

They all sat on the sand, with Dain between
Vivienne and Emma, and Agatha facing them across the fire. Seen
through the leaping flames, Agatha’s face was alternately that of
the elderly healer who was familiar to Emma and the visage of a
younger woman of unearthly beauty. Dain did not appear to notice
the continuing transformations; but then, he was seeking within his
own mind for his lost memories. As for Vivienne and Hermit, they
did not remark on the changes in Agatha, a fact that made Emma
suspect they had observed something similar in the recent past.

“Begin,” Dain commanded Agatha, “by telling
me what happened during the time I still cannot entirely
remember.”

“I will begin before then,” Agatha said, “and
Vivienne will add to the story as she thinks fit. Dain, you know
already of your father’s first marriage, to the lady
Morigaine.”

“Yes.” Dain nodded. “You told me once that
she died in childbirth.”

“Bearing her second child to Halard,”
Vivienne said. “I was their first child. I was four years old when
my mother died, and her just-born son with her.”

“Until this hour, I did not know of your
existence,” Dain said to her.

“I made you forget,” Agatha told him.
“Listen, now, and hear the rest of the tale. You already know how
Lord Halard wed Lady Richenda less than a year after Morigaine’s
death, and how you were born barely a year after that second
marriage. You have been told often enough of your father’s attempt
to wrest a disputed patch of land away from Udo of Wroxley, and of
the terrible wound Halard sustained during the battle.”

“And died of the wound nearly five years
later,” Vivienne added, “when I was barely ten years old.”

“I was five when my father died,” Dain said
to her. “That’s old enough for a child to recall his own sister,
yet I have no memory of you except for the moment when you gave me
the blue bead.”

“I am coming to the reason why your memory is
lacking,” Agatha told them. “Vivienne inherited her mother’s
magical ability. You know how Lady Richenda feels about magic.”

“She is a bitterly jealous woman,” Hermit put
in, “and Halard dearly loved his daughter. But I doubt if he loved
his second wife. He’d had his great love in Morigaine, you see, and
lost her, and possibly blamed himself for the loss. Men sometimes
do blame themselves when a wife dies in childbirth. Still, he
needed an heir, so he married again as soon as he could arrange it,
and it’s likely he respected Richenda well enough.”

Vivienne was weeping quietly. Dain reached
over and laid his hand on top of hers.

“As soon as Halard was buried and the funeral
guests had departed,” Agatha continued the story, “Lady Richenda
ordered Vivienne to leave Penruan.”

“And go where?” Dain asked.

“She told me she cared not,” Vivienne said,
holding onto his hand with both of hers. “She said, ‘Onto the moor,
into the sea, wherever you like, but never come near Penruan
again.’ ”

“You were only ten years old!” Dain
exclaimed. “How could anyone be so cruel to a child?”

“Jealousy incites cruelty,” said Hermit. “The
two are close partners. “

“I was at Penruan for the funeral,” Agatha
said, “for I liked and respected Lord Halard, and he had always
accepted my close friendship with Morigaine. After the other guests
left I stayed on, because I suspected Lady Richenda of preparing
some devious scheme to cause harm to the stepdaughter she hated. I
saw Vivienne run down the stairs from the lord’s chamber to the
great hall with Lady Richenda behind her, shooing her along as if
the girl were of no more consequence than an errant chick that has
wandered into a garden and started to peck up the seeds.

“Vivienne was crying so hard she ran right
into me without seeing me. I hushed her and hid her behind my
skirt, and waited for what I feared would come next. What I
expected did happen. Lady Richenda spoke to a man named Wade, whom
she had brought to Penruan from her father’s house, who was bound
to her service, and I guessed what murderous order she was giving
him.

“It was then I struck my bargain with Lady
Richenda. It was no secret how she detested me, though while Halard
lived she could do nothing to rid herself of my occasional presence
at the castle, any more than she dared rid herself of Halard’s
daughter while he lived. I offered to take Vivienne with me when I
left and find a home for her far from Penruan, so Lady Richenda
could avoid bearing the sin of murder on her conscience.

“Vivienne slipped away from me while we
talked. That was when she went to Dain, to say her farewell and
give him the blue bead. The next thing I knew, Vivienne was
hurrying back down the steps and Dain was following her, crying to
his sister to come back as if his heart was broken, for she was his
dearest companion. I could see Lady Richenda wasn’t going to accept
my offer, not with Dain wailing and trying to reach Vivienne, and
Lady Richenda’s newly commissioned murderer holding the girl by one
arm to keep her away from him. That dreadful woman was half mad
with jealousy of the love those two young ones bore to each other,
so I took advantage of her fury. I told her I’d remove Dain’s
memories of his sister so he’d cease to pine for her, and I’d place
a spell on the entire castle, so no one else there would remember
Vivienne either. Furthermore, I promised to teach Vivienne that
Dain would die if ever they met face-to-face.

“Lady Richenda’s own memory I refused to
erase. She has remembered every single day for a quarter of a
century what she did to Vivienne, and to Dain. It was the best
punishment I could conjure on such short notice. At the time it
seemed to me far more important to use my power to protect those
two helpless children. Lady Richenda finally agreed, and I have
kept my promises to her. Since that day she and I have not spoken.
We have passed each other a few times when I was at the castle. She
always looks the other way, as if not facing me keeps her pure of
the taint of magic. But she knows her own guilt, and neither all
her prayers nor the masses she orders said as soon as I have gone
can cleanse her of the harm she’s done to an innocent brother and
sister.”

“That must be why she hated to know I visited
you,” Dain said. “She always punished me when she found out.”

“What your mother has never understood,”
Agatha said, “is the working of the human heart. Vivienne
remembered you, Dain. I could not take her cherished memories away
from her; doing so would have broken her heart and likely would
have killed her. To convince her not to use her own magic to
overcome my promise to Lady Richenda that she’d never see you, I
was forced to swear to Vivienne that one day I’d bring the two of
you together again and restore your memory. The moment I met Emma,
I knew I had found my agent. There was no need to place any spell
on her; all I had to do was make certain she saw Vivienne from time
to time and let Emma’s natural curiosity do its work.”

“What of you, Hermit?” Dain asked. “What part
have you played in Agatha’s clever scheme? I am sure she used you
as she has used Emma.”

“No wicked part,” Hermit said. “I came to
this cave with a badly maimed arm and fully convinced that my soul
was in peril. I sought only a peaceful place in which to die.
Agatha and Vivienne between them have treated my arm till it’s
almost completely restored. Vivienne’s willingness to listen to the
story of my long wanderings has helped to heal a heart that was
originally in worse condition than my arm. No man could ask for two
more faithful friends.”

Vivienne made a strangled little sound and
turned her face away from Hermit. He did not appear to notice, but
Emma did, and understood Vivienne’s distress as only another woman
could. Emma began to wonder exactly what Hermit’s story was.

“Can you honestly tell me you knew nothing
about all of this?” Dain said to her, his sudden question jerking
her out of contemplation of Hermit’s association with Vivienne.

“Nothing,” Emma said. “Looking back now, I
can see there were hints offered to me, but at first I was so
concerned with hiding my magical ability from you, and then later,
with trying to find the right time to tell you the secret, and
worrying whether you’d hate me when you learned of it, that I
missed every lure Agatha cast in my direction.”

“I don’t hate you,” Dain said, going directly
to the heart of her fears. “How could I, when there’s magic in my
own family?”

“Not in your bloodline,” Vivienne corrected
him.

“Close enough.” Dain smiled at his sister
before returning to his wife. “Emma, I wish you had not kept your
magic secret from me, though I do understand why you felt it was
necessary, and perhaps you were right to fear I’d reject you if you
revealed the truth to me at our first meeting. You and I will deal
later with our differences on the subject. At the moment, there’s a
more urgent matter to settle. I intend to confront my mother. Will
you come with me?”

“Of course I will.” Emma was on her feet as
soon as Dain stood up.