Children of Enchantment (3 page)

“Tsk, tsk. Don’t fret. That’s the way they all are, even my Brand. Why do you suppose our high and mighty lady is so out of
sorts? It’s been weeks since she’s had word from the King. Never you mind. Your prince will come home, and when he does, everything
will be just fine.”

“But, Jaboa—” Peregrine turned to face the older woman “—what if she sends me away like—“

“Oh, child, don’t believe those tales.”

“But it’s not a tale, Jaboa, you know it isn’t. She could send me away—me and my baby, both. What if she convinces the King
to marry me off before Roderic comes home? Then we might never see—“

“Don’t you think he’d come looking for you? And the baby? He’s none too fond of her. You know that as well as I.”

“But he doesn’t know, you see. I wasn’t sure—before he left. So I didn’t tell him about the baby. And now—“

Jaboa’s faded blue eyes were soft with sympathy, and Peregrine remembered that, throughout the years, the maintenance of Meriga’s
fragile peace required Brand’s absence from Ahga far more often than his presence. “And now Roderic has other things to think
about. But, really, you mustn’t fret. Brand will bring him home. I promise.” She gave Peregrine’s hand another gentle squeeze.
“Now come along. It’s getting much too cold out here.”

Peregrine met Jaboa’s eyes and was startled to see the merry expression.

“Besides,” Jaboa said, leaning forward to whisper in Peregrine’s ear, even though no one was about, “you don’t want to miss
the surprise we’ve brewed for my lady. Old Mag put—“

Sudden shouts drowned out the secret. Peregrine looked up and frowned. In the outer ward, men were calling for grooms, for
a doctor, and before she could move, a horse and rider burst through the opened gate which led into the outer ward, followed
by at least half a dozen of the guards on duty.

The rider slid off the horse and stumbled as his leather boots slipped in the snow. A groom dashed forward to catch the animal’s
bridle. Blood-streaked foam flecked the horse’s mouth, as it shied and tried to rear, slipping and sliding on the snow-slick
cobbles. With a curse, the man waved away the others who offered aid or escort, and Peregrine saw that he wore the uniform
of the King’s Guard. The lower half of his face was obscured by a matted beard, and his hair was plastered against his skull.
His cloak was torn and splattered with mud, and he looked as if he had been in the saddle for many days.

He staggered toward them, ignoring the guards who called for the sergeant of the watch.

“Lord Phineas,” the man cried, his face red and raw with windburn. Peregrine glanced at Jaboa. Was the man insane?

“Take me—Lord Phineas—at once,” panted the soldier. “Take me, lady—must speak with him—“

Peregrine’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. Was it Roderic? Was the messenger from him? She sprang to the door. “Come,
soldier. I’ll take you there myself.”

“But—” began Jaboa. One look from Peregrine stopped her protest. “I’ll—I’ll just let Gartred know a messenger’s come.”

Peregrine caught at the soldier’s arm as he heaved himself up the shallow steps, breathing hard, snow frosting his brows and
beard. “Please, just tell me, is it the Prince? Does he live?”

The man paused, narrowing his eyes as if he’d not quite understood. “The Prince? I know nothing of the Prince, lady. It’s
the King. King Abelard has disappeared.”

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

“L
ost? My father is lost?” The parchment scroll fell to the floor unheeded as Roderic Ridenau, eighteen-year-old heir to the
throne of Meriga, stared at the messenger in disbelief. An unruly shock of light brown hair, silky as a tassel of wheat, fell
across his forehead, and he swiped it back automatically. “Phineas expects me to believe that the King has just disappeared?”

The messenger, one of the special corps who rode the length and breadth of Meriga in the service of the King, twisted his
gloved hands together, his shoulders shifting beneath his dark blue cloak. “Lord Phineas has sent out three regiments of the
King’s Guard to search.”

Roderic sank onto one of the long wooden benches beside the rough-hewn council table, feeling as if the air had been punched
from his lungs. He stared at the hide map of Atland pinned to the surface, as though it might hold a clue to the King’s whereabouts.

On the opposite side of the room, his eldest half-brother, Brand, stood with arms crossed over the insignia of the King’s
Guard emblazoned on his tunic. “When exactly was it realized that the King was missing?”

“He was expected at Ithan Ford by Thanksgiven Day, Captain. When he didn’t arrive by the fifth of Sember, Lord Senador Miles
sent word to Lord Phineas in Ahga and Lord Senador Gredahl in Arkan.”

“And?” asked Roderic.

“The King had left Lord Gredahl’s holding in Arkan at the beginning of Vember, Lord Prince. He should have arrived in Ithan
in plenty of time for Thanksgiven.”

Brand gestured a dismissal. “That will be all for now. Tell the master of supplies to give you dry clothes and a place to
sleep. We may need to talk to you again before we send you back to Phineas.”

As the messenger bowed out of the door, Roderic looked up, the dismay plain on his narrow face, with its high, slanting cheekbones,
his light brown brows furrowed above his gray-green eyes. Brand walked around the table, and stooped to pick up the discarded
scroll. “Well, little brother. It’s a fine coil we have here.”

“What are we to do?” Roderic twisted restlessly on the bench and stared over Brand’s head at the narrow window. Outside, sleet
spattered the rippled panes of smoky glass, and the wind howled between the low stone buildings of Atland garrison.

Brand paused in his reading, his lips pressed tight in an expression which reminded Roderic of their father. Finally, Brand
looked up, and concern flickered in the depths of his dark eyes. “We don’t have a choice.” He shook his head, and the protest
died in Roderic’s throat. “Right now, we don’t have a choice.”

Roderic stared at his brother. At forty-five, Brand was not only the eldest of all of the King’s illegitimate children, but
the Captain of the King’s Guard as well. The King’s Guard were the elite troops charged with the responsibility for the King’s
safety, and the Captain of the King’s Guard outranked every other soldier in all the Armies of the King. Abelard trusted Brand
as he trusted few others. Only Abelard’s insistence that Brand accompany his heir had prevented Brand from going with their
father on what should have been a routine tour of the Arkan Estates. Now, in the orange glow of the fire, Brand’s face was
closed and grim, his jutting hawk nose so like Abelard’s looking pinched in his square-jawed face. His hair, clipped close
about his temples, was more silver than black, and the stubble on his chin was nearly all gray.

He blames himself, thought Roderic. He got up with a sigh, hooked his thumbs in his belt and paced to the window.

The rain was falling in fat, steady drops, regular as the muffled beat of a funeral drum. The guards huddled at their posts,
wrapped against the weather in heavy cloaks of olive drab, crouched over low braziers of smoking charcoal. He gazed over the
walls into the dark mountains rising up, stretching off into the distance as far as he could see. Beyond the garrison walls,
the land lay ravaged beneath the lowering sky. Here and there, the black, bare trees rose like twisted skeletons, reminding
him of the charred bodies he’d seen too often in the course of this wretched campaign.

This was his first command, and he had hoped to make his father proud. Now, he wondered bitterly if Abelard would ever know.
And what would Abelard’s disappearance mean for him? He was the heir of Meriga, the only child of Abelard’s dead Queen. So
far, he’d yet to prove himself on the battlefield. How could he rule all Meriga?

He turned away from the window with another sigh and paced to the hearth, where the fire snapped and hissed.

“Stop that, damn it,” Brand spoke over his shoulder.

“Stop what?” Roderic threw another log into the middle of the fire.

“That pacing. It reminds me of Dad.”

Roderic swung his long, gangly legs over the bench beside his brother and tapped the scroll. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. I suppose Dad could have been ambushed by Harleyriders—though they’ve usually retreated to the
deserts south of Dlas by Vember. Maybe he met a Muten war party as he crossed into Tennessey on his way to Ithan, or maybe
there was some sort of accident.” He looked at Roderic and shook his head again. “I just don’t know.”

“Phineas says he’s called an emergency Convening of the Congress. Shouldn’t I be there?”

Brand shrugged. “In theory, of course. The Congress will acclaim you Regent—which I suppose you already are. But in reality—you
can’t leave Atland, Roderic. Not now. Not until we get the upper hand in this revolt.” The brothers lapsed into silence, both
thinking the same thing.

The war in Atland was not going well. Roderic was charged with what he increasingly thought of as an impossible task—the defeat
of the Muten rebels once and for all. The King had managed to quell the last rebellion, a dozen years ago, by a combination
of diplomacy, tactical genius, and luck, when a particularly virulent form of plague swept through the Muten ranks. Impervious
to all the diseases which afflicted the Mutens, the King’s Army had easily overrun the enemy.

But both brothers knew that so far, his heir was not so lucky. It was simply that terrain and weather, as well as sheer numbers,
were against them. The Mutens bred like rats, producing six and seven and eight offspring, and those who did not starve or
die from disease, went on to reproduce the same way. They were vermin, and like vermin, impossible to eradicate.

A log split with a loud hiss, and Roderic was reminded of their last encounter, only a few days ago. The driving rain had
turned the ground to a soupy sea of red mud, and his horse had slipped and scrambled for purchase, even as he shouted the
order to retreat. Once again they had underestimated the number of the Muten forces, underestimated the ferocity with which
the Mutens fought. He had clung to his stallion’s neck, watching the foot soldiers scramble for safety beneath a volley of
razor-sharp spears that whined above the wind. From his perch on a rocky promontory, he had counted the bodies, slick with
gore, heaped upon the battlefield. Most of those bodies wore the colors of the Armies of the King. The cries of the wounded
and the dying, the horns which signaled the retreat, joined in an eerie chorus, punctuated with the shouts of officers as
they tried to marshal the survivors into some semblance of order. The memory of that sound made his blood run cold, and the
realization that he was ultimately responsible for those deaths made his sleep restless. They had left Ahga four months ago,
but it felt like four years.

Finally Brand spoke, and his voice was heavy with regret and self-reproach. “We’ve got to get you back to Ahga in time for
that Convening, if we can. I reckon we’ve three months—at the most.”

“Three months?” Roderic repeated. “That long?”

“If Phineas sent word to the estates when he sent the messenger to us, some of the Senadors haven’t even heard the news yet.
And with the weather, and this rebellion, there’re too many Scnadors that can’t leave their estates. For example, Kora-lado
can’t get out of the Saranevas until spring. The Senadors on the eastern coast would be fools to try to cross the Pulatchians
in the middle of a Muten revolt. We have time. But not much.”

“Not much of what?” The door from the outer room slammed open and shut, and Reginald, another of Roderic’s half-brothers,
stood shaking the water off his cloak. He threw back his head and ran his fingers through his long, lank strands of sandy
hair. His watery blue eyes were the only feature which reminded Roderic that Reginald was Abelard’s son. “Not much chance
of finding a woman to come out in this weather. Hell of a way to keep New Year’s.” He scratched his armpit and yawned. His
clothes reeked of old sweat and damp wool.

Reginald had commanded the garrison in Atland for years, charged with keeping the peace between the Pulatchian Highlanders,
the lowland farmers, and the Mutens who lived in the inaccessible mountain hollows of the Pulatchian Mountains. Roderic knew
his father had never questioned Reginald’s abilities as the commander of the largest garrison in southeast Meriga. But in
the last months, Roderic had begun to regard Reginald’s slovenly habits and sloppy person with disgust, and he was beginning
to think that perhaps Abelard had never really known what sort of man Reginald was.

Now Reginald reached across Brand for the flagon of wine leftover from the noon meal. “There anything left in here? Not much.
Let’s send for more.”

“Sit down.” Brand’s voice brooked no disobedience.

“As you say, Captain,” Reginald replied sarcastically. “Why the long faces? What in the name of the One’s wrong with you two?”