Children of Enchantment (29 page)

“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 beginning 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—“

“What about the children?” Roderic watched the sunlight fall full across old Ben’s seamed face.

“They know, children do. The children all love the Lady Annandale. You’ve been so busy, Lord Prince, you don’t see. But the
children have a sense about right and wrong, and there’s no more evil in the Lady Annandale than there was in her mother.”
Ben held out two tunics. “Which would you prefer, Lord Prince? The green or the blue?”

Roderic ignored the question. He stared out the window, beyond the room. From his place by the door, he could not see the
herb garden laid out in precise squares of sage and basil and rosemary and thyme, but the sultry air was heavy with the scent
of the heat-drenched herbs. He fancied he could hear the buzzing of the bees in the tall stalks of lavender. He kept his eyes
fixed on the blue sky. “What would you say, Ben, if I told you my father wanted me to marry her?”

“I’d say he was a wise King, Lord Prince.” The old man placed the blue tunic on the bed beside the underlinen and shook out
a pair of clean trousers. “This belt, Lord Prince?”

Roderic smiled. “Then what would you say if I said I was going to do as he wished, Ben? If I said I was going to make the
lady my wife?”

Ben paused in humming a little tuneless song. “Then, Lord Prince, I’d say you’d chose well.”

Tober, 75th Year in the Reign of the Ridenau Kings (2747 Muten Old Calendar)

S
team drifted from the surface of the bath, sweetly scented with the essences of roses and lilies. Annandale leaned against
the high back of the porcelain tub, listening to the excited chatter of the women in the dressing room, Tavia’s laughter ringing
out over Jaboa’s gentle murmur. Her dark hair had been washed hours ago and now was piled on top of her head in a careless
knot. Little tendrils trailed over her shoulders and floated in the water. The wedding was less than one hour away.

The candles threw huge shadows on the tiled walls of the bathroom, and on a wooden stand in the corner, the dark blue silk
of her wedding dress shimmered. It was the most beautiful gown she had ever owned. Its simple, careful cut clung to the lines
of her body, yet it was completely plain, without embroidery or any other adornment. A cool breeze blew from the partially
opened window, and she shivered as the air touched the back of her neck. She crouched lower in the water and wondered if it
were only the autumn chill which made her shiver.

In the six weeks since the day she had healed Roderic and revealed her secret, she had not been alone with him once. Since
the court had returned to Ahga, she had not seen him at all, even at dinner. But always, since his healing, guards were present,
four of them, following her from place to place, even posted outside the room in which she slept. She might have thought herself
a prisoner, but her movements were in no way restricted, and they treated her with utmost deference and unfailing courtesy.
She had realized that this was Roderic’s first attempt to protect her from a harm he did not yet understand.

She shut her eyes, remembering how she had cradled his head when he had lain unconscious in her arms. She had sensed the uncertainty
born of his youth, his fear of the threat posed by Amanander, the awful weight of the responsibility the King had bequeathed
him. His doubts were an attempt at self-preservation. If only she could break through those defenses.

She remembered how smooth his hair was, how it had fallen across his brow so that he looked more like a child asleep than
a man injured. She remembered the weight of his body in her arms, the implicit strength in the long muscled limbs, and not
for the first time wondered how it would feel to have his body pressed against her. “Are we born for each other, lady?” he
had asked her. If only he knew just how true that was. She closed her eyes and sank down deeper in the tub, the water up to
her chin, praying to whatever gods existed that their will might include some happiness for them both.

A discreet tap on the door roused her. “Annandale?” Tavia’s voice was muffled through the thick door. “It’s time— the Bishop’s
here—we must dress you.”

Quickly, easily, the women got her dried and dressed, unpinning her hair and letting it fall in a dark cloud across her shoulders
and down her back. “You’ve chosen well, child.” Jaboa smoothed the creases from the dark blue silk where it fell in shimmering
folds from Annandale’s hips to puddle on the floor.

The door opened with a slam, and Peregrine peered into the room, her hair covered with a filmy coif of sheerest linen, the
keys of the household jangling in a heavy mass on her belt. “The Bishop’s waiting. Is everything ready for her?”

Tavia and Jaboa exchanged another glance and Annandale nodded, hoping her face reflected a composure she did not feel. Nervousness
dampened her hands and she clenched them tightly into fists, not wanting to stain the silk gown. “Yes, thank you, lady.” Her
throat was dry, her voice a whisper.

Peregrine neither answered nor looked at Annandale. She pushed the door open farther and stepped out of the way, tugging her
skirts aside with a gesture which might have been a curtsy.

Tavia offered her a reassuring smile. But there was no more time for reassurances, for the Bishop of Ahga lumbered into the
room, her heavy scarlet cloak flapping off her bony frame like broken wings. She paused just inside the doorway, blinking
as though the light blinded her. “The bride is ready?”

Her voice was hoarse and weary with age. Annandale stared, amazed. This was the woman who’d ordered her mother burnt as a
witch—not once, but twice? Who’d dared to defy the King himself in his own city? Whose enmity was the reason the King had
built the fortress of Minnis Saul?

The Bishop’s face was webbed with wrinkles, her brow so deeply furrowed the lines might have been etched by a chisel. “The
bride,” she repeated.

“I’m here,” answered Annandale. She faced the Bishop across the room, as compassion for this aged wreck of a woman who shuffled
across the floor with bent back, a battered leather case clutched in one age-spotted hand, replaced her apprehension at meeting
this old enemy of her mother’s. Annandale stretched out her hand, instinctively responding to the woman’s acute loneliness
running like a river through a deep channel, carving the striated rock bare and vulnerable.

The old woman paused a few feet from Annandale, her eyes narrow slits, and on her craggy face, Annandale recognized a ruthless,
relentless pride. This woman would never bend, never yield. She held to her stubborn belief in an outdated creed with all
the tenacity of a tree which clung by bare roots to the rock which ensured its death. Annandale dropped her hand and curtseyed,
bending her head submissively. The Bishop might lack the spirit for another challenge to the temporal power of the Ridenaus,
but there was no forgiveness in her. Briefly, Annandale wondered if there ever had been.

The Bishop coughed, clearing her throat, and the women all jumped. She fumbled with the worn clasp of her case and reached
inside, withdrawing several yellow sheets of brittle paper. It was ancient, rare, and precious. Her mother had described it
often enough. The print predated the Persecutions and Armageddon. The edges of the paper were ragged and torn, and even as
they all watched, the ancient scripture crumbled between the Bishop’s fingers into dusty flakes which scattered in a random
swirl upon the floor. Jaboa and Tavia gasped, both reaching in a futile attempt to catch the paper as it fell.

The Bishop had not taken her eyes off Annandale’s face. In the craggy hollows of her face, intractability carved the map of
some deep and secret pain. The Bishop’s faith had betrayed her, offering an empty hope and an incomprehensible promise. The
ache which ate upon the Bishop was her own empty heart, feeding upon itself. Soon it would be gone.