Aerenden: The Child Returns (Ærenden) (39 page)

Her
dark brown hair looked almost black. It cascaded down her back in silken waves
that called for him to run his fingers through it. Her eyes shone copper. With
gold flecks. He had noticed it when she stood in front of him. The color in
them sparked, ignited, and burned all thought from his brain. Her skin was
smooth and milk white, dotted with freckles, and he ached to touch it. He had
given into that urge for a moment yesterday when he had needed the contact
most.  His hand had only brushed hers, but the warmth had started
building, and it had not eased until they had been wed.

The
mistake had been his, and he did not blame her for being upset. It confused him
as well. The wedding had not been ordinary. But neither was the woman who stood
in front of him. If they had met under different circumstances, he had no doubt
he would have loved her. He leaned against the wall and felt the stone cold
reality of their current circumstance pressing against his back.

“Are
you hungry?” she asked again.

“Do
you aim to poison me?”

She
laughed. Walking to the bars, she stopped where they had stood together the day
before and shook her head. “I only aim to feed you.” She slipped her hand
through the bars and extended it. A small paper package lay on her palm. “It’s
cheese,” she said. “I’ll be able to get you more once I authorize your
release.”

He
studied the parcel she offered him. His stomach grumbled in anticipation for
it, but he did not move toward her. “Why would you do that?”

“Because
I won’t execute my husband,” she responded. “Please eat. I know the food in
here is terrible, and I also know they haven’t given any of it to you yet. They
usually wait a day or two to provide the first meal.”

He
approached and removed the cheese from her hand. After unwrapping it, he tore a
chunk from it and offered the morsel to her first.

“Still
think I want to poison you?” she asked. He smiled in response and she took the
cheese, tossed it into her mouth and swallowed. “Satisfied?”

“Yes,”
he said and started eating. “Where’s your guard?”

“Past
the light, in the shadows,” she nodded her head toward the hallway. “I made her
wait there so we could talk.”

“You
mean so she wouldn’t interrupt again,” he quipped and heard a growl from the
darkness. He laughed. “She can hear, apparently. Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to
hurt you?”

“You
won’t. I’m certain our powers wouldn’t have joined us if you meant me harm.”

“Then
you believe me? You believe I’m not trying to trick you?”

“I
know you aren’t. I knew it yesterday, but the wedding took me by surprise. I
shouldn’t have treated you that way.”

“You
knew?” he asked. “How could you have known? It’s not as if it’s happened
before. If our roles were reversed, I would think the worst of you.”

“No,
you wouldn’t.” She leaned against the bars, wrapping her hands around them. “If
you held my role, you would know the secrets I know.”

He
finished the last of the cheese and joined her at the bars. He wrapped his
hands around hers. “And what secrets do you know?”

“Royal
ones,” she replied. “That song you sang yesterday isn’t just a tale. It’s
history. My family’s history.”

“I’ve
heard that before. It’s not a secret.”

“How
they fell in love is. They belonged to rival tribes, the two largest in these
parts before the kingdom came about. There were wars at the time. Each tribe
had gathered the smaller tribes to their sides, essentially dividing the lands
in two. One war lasted for decades. Some say fifty years or more, but I don’t
know for certain if that’s true. It could have been longer. It could have been
shorter.” She shrugged. “The tribes were too evenly matched. Either they had to
eliminate each other, or they had to reach a truce. They never had the chance
to decide which they wanted to do. They called a meeting of the elder tribesmen
and their families. As soon as everyone arrived at the gathering point, the
powers of the opposing Chiefs’ children wed them. They say it happened so fast
the bride fainted.”

“You’re
serious?” he asked. “Why would your family hide that?”

“Because
it tells better as a love story. The Chiefs’ children hated each other at
first. They wanted to continue the war, but the Chiefs took the wedding as a
sign they must make peace. They did. The kingdom was formed and eventually the
anointed King and Queen grew to love each other in the way we know them in
song.” She paused and studied him, her head tilted in curiosity. “A Seer later
prophesied there would be more weddings in the same fashion, weddings brought
about with purpose instead of love.”

“So
what do you think our purpose is?”

“I
don’t know. Perhaps we’ll never know. It could be something we need to do
together, or it could be we need to create a descendant. The only thing we can
know for certain is we’re bound to each other.”

“I
hope someday you’ll be happy with that,” he told her. “The original King and
Queen found love. Maybe we can too.”

She
smiled and turned from him. “I’ll have the guard release you. It won’t be
long.”

“Wait,”
he called out to her. “Queen Adelina, please don’t go yet. I came for a
reason.”

She
faced him again. “Adelina,” she said and returned to the bars. “Just Adelina.
I’m no more Queen over you than you’re King over me.”

“I’m
not a,” he started and then felt his heart race in panic. “Adelina, I’m not
meant to be a king. I only lead my people because they need help.”

“All
people need help,” she told him and reached through the bars to lay a palm
against his cheek. “You’ll make a fine king, I assure you. Now what is it you
needed from me?”

“My
people,” he forced the words from his mouth. “We’re not like you.”

“What
do you mean?”

“We
were from Zeiihbu once, a long time ago. We left the lands there to live south
of the border, in the forests and mountains. We’ve always been nomads, living
off the land and making what we need. But the Zeiihbu War made our regular
territory unsafe and depleted our resources.”

“Which
is why you started raiding the villages,” she said.

“My
father made that decision. I never agreed with it.”

“But
you didn’t come to me before and you didn’t go to my mother. What brings you
here now?”

“We’re
not like you,” he said again. “Once we ventured into the villages, we caught
diseases we’d never been exposed to before. Some only harmed us until we built
immunities. Others killed whoever caught them. Until recently, the deaths were
minimal, though, limited to a few people at a time. Now we’ve caught something
that’s killing everyone it touches. I think it’s a plague. We’ve lost a third
of our population already, and I can’t save the rest of them without your
help.”

“What
are the symptoms?” The question came from the shadows and he turned his head in
time to see May step out of them. “I need to know them in order to figure out
what type of plague it is.”

He
raised an eyebrow, surprised at the relaxed manner in which she asked the
question. She seemed to want to help. “It starts with a stomach ache and bloody
eyes, and then the pain becomes so bad the infected can no longer eat or sleep.
We force water into them to keep them alive, but it hurts them. They scream the
whole time.”

“And
eventually they starve to death,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It’s
not a disease. It’s the Famine Curse. It’s a bad spell designed to mimic
disease, which is why it didn’t hit everyone at once. ”

“Where
did it come from?”

“The
short answer?” May asked. “It stems from revenge. I’m guessing your people do
more than raid villages. They rob travelers too.”

“Sometimes,”
he admitted. “How did you know?”

“Because
I know of the Spellmaster who created this spell and you can’t get into his
village, which means your people had to have robbed him or he wouldn’t have
bothered to cast the curse. He used the same spell on the Zeiihbuans during the
war. I helped my mother come up with the cure for it.”

 “You
helped the Zeiihbu people when you were at war with them? Why?”

“I
won’t allow people to suffer if I can help them. It’s not in my nature.”

“I
can understand that,” he said and regarded her with a new respect he would
never have thought possible in their first meeting. “I would do the same.”

She
nodded. “I believe you. And I’m sorry for the way I treated you yesterday. I
can be wrong occasionally. Even about Raiders.”

“I
hate that name. I wish you wouldn’t use it.”

“What
do you want to be called?”

“My
people don’t have a name, but you can call me Ed. It’s short for Edáire.”

“Ed
it is then,” she agreed. “I’ll organize the Healers and as soon as you’re
released, you can show me where your people live. You’ll also need to take the
potion or it won’t be long before you fall to the spell.”

“I
understand. Thank you.” He turned back to Adelina. “How soon can I go?”

“I’ll
need to explain this to the head guard and then probably the Guardian Elders.
It could take half a day or so.”

“And
if I had a way of leaving here sooner, would you allow it?”

“Of
course. What did you have in mind?”

“You
asked me how I got my instrument back yesterday. I used my power and retrieved
it from the guard station where they left it.”

“What
is your power?”

Instead
of telling her, he showed her. He passed his arms and then his entire body
through the bars, walking through them as if they were no more than beams of
sunlight. Adelina’s mouth hung open and it was all Ed could do not to laugh at
the reaction.

“I
can move through objects,” he told her. “Now it’s only a matter of getting out
of here without lighting the torches along the hallways. The guards are bound
to notice my escape if we do that.”

“Why
would we light the torches?” she asked and shook her head. “There’s no need.”

“How
did you get down here then? It’s impossible to see anything without them.”

“Not
if you have my power,” she said and turned to extinguish the torch. He felt her
hand grip his. “I can see in the dark.”

§

M
EAGHAN CLOSED
the book and sighed as tears streamed down her face. Her parents had
seemed so real. She had watched them move, heard their thoughts, felt their
breath as they took it in and let it go, and sensed their emotions as if they
were standing in the room with her. No one could describe them to her the way
she had just seen them. The book was a gift. But it was also a curse to be this
close to them and not be able to touch them, to feel their presence and not
have them feel hers, and to know they would die too young and not be able to
warn them. She had hated the story as much as she had loved it.

She
stood and slipped the book into the backpack. Running her hand over the bag’s
rip-stop material, the irony did not escape her that she was using the last
reminder of one father to house the only memory she had of the other. Weary,
she climbed back into bed with Nick, and closed her eyes. As she drifted to
sleep, she wondered if Queen Adelina and King Edáire had ever discovered the
purpose of their wedding. Had they found a Seer who knew their only child would
experience a prophesied wedding as well? Had it crossed their minds that their
purpose might have been to create that child?

Meaghan
doubted it, but they had not needed to know for it to matter. She knew. And she
would not let them down.

S
OMETHING SLICED
into Meaghan’s stomach. The pain came hot and swift, ripping through
her from her belly button to her breastbone. Then, as fast as it had started,
it stopped. Before she could catch her breath, pain squeezed at her neck and
panic joined it. Terror matching no other she had ever felt overcame all else
and then faded into nothing.

She
forced her eyes open, and then squinted as the pink haze of a new day greeted
her. It chased some of the shadows from the cottage, leaving those that
remained to shrink into the corners, and she knew she had not been asleep long,
maybe a few hours at most. She sat up and a new round of pain began. The first
strike came as a blow to the temple that exploded like sharp fingers across her
head. Before it faded, the second seized her arm, splintering up to her elbow
from her wrist. A sharp needle stabbed her heart next, and then flames seared
her lungs. When pain burned her skin, she screamed.

Nick
startled awake beside her. “There’s danger,” he muttered, and then faced her.
She felt his panic and his fingers on her arm before she tumbled from bed. The
pain continued to roll. Her legs hurt. Her feet felt like they were on fire.
Her lungs convulsed, and then her stomach turned. She tried to stand, but could
only pull up to her knees before she fell back down, landing on her palms.
Desperate, she crawled across the floor, making it as far as the trash can
before a wave of nausea overcame her.