Children of Enchantment (4 page)

Before either Roderic or Brand could reply, there was a loud shriek and the muffled sounds of a scuffle from the outer room.
Brand rose with a curse and was across the room in a few long strides. He flung open the door. “What’s going on out here,
Sergeant?”

“What’s wrong now?” Roderic hastened to his brother’s side and looked over Brand’s shoulder. Six or seven men-at-arms, brandishing
weapons, all hovered around the farthest corner of the room. Warily, he slipped past Brand. “What is it?”

The duty officer pulled himself straighter and saluted. “Caught one of them, Lord Roderic.”

Roderic tried to get a better look at the intruder, but in the shadowy corner all he could see was what looked like a pile
of old clothes. “Stand aside.”

“Careful, Lord Roderic! These things are dangerous,” the sergeant warned, but he motioned to the men to step away. The soldiers
obeyed, but they did not lower their swords.

Roderic peered through the tangle of legs and weapons and realized that the intruder was in fact no larger than a child. “Come
here.”

The bundle of rags shook itself like a puppy, and a clay-colored face emerged.

“It’s one of them, all right,” muttered the sergeant as the other men made noises of disgust.

“Shall I kill it, Lord Roderic?” One of the men-at-arms raised his sword.

“Hold!” Roderic stooped, gazing at the little face peering back at his from the shadows. One dark eye, above and centered
between the other two, stared back unblinkingly, and he shuddered with revulsion. But the rest of the face was thin, too thin,
the reddish skin stretched tight across the delicate bones, and Roderic realized that this was, indeed, a child. A Muten child.

He motioned the soldiers back. “Where did you say you found him?”

“Kitchens, Lord Roderic,” was the reply. “Trying to steal food, filthy thing. We nearly cornered it there, but it was too
fast. Led us all the way through the garrison, it did.”

“Do you understand me?” Roderic spoke slowly to the child, who had not taken its eyes off Roderic’s face.

The Muten gobbled a response and nodded.

“Why were you in our kitchens?”

The child made another series of noises and held out a thick crust of bread and rubbed its stomach with the other hand. Beneath
the ragged clothes, its two secondary arms emerged and twitched involuntarily, the tiny appendages smaller than a human infant’s.

“You’re hungry.” Roderic stared at the hand that clutched the bread. The fingers were bony claws, the skin dry and flaking
across the swollen joints. He raised his hand without thinking, and instantly the child stuffed the bread in its mouth.

“It’s got into the food!” cried Reginald. “Kill it.”

“No!” Roderic turned furious eyes on his brother. “Can’t you see it’s starving? Let it—him—whatever it is—go.” He turned away,
feeling sick and sad. “Let it go.”

“But, Lord Roderic—” began the sergeant.

“I said, let it go. I don’t make war on children. Starving children, at that. Increase the guards around the food stores.
But take this one to the gates of the garrison, and if any harm comes to it, the man responsible will answer to me.” Roderic
met the shocked expressions of the soldiers evenly. If he were ever to assume his father’s position, he’d better start playing
the role. He knew Abelard wouldn’t have cared whether the child lived or died, but he was certain his father never let anyone
forget who was King. Brand watched from the doorway. He pushed past the soldiers, who snapped to attention, and Brand gave
a little nod of approval. “Come in here, Reginald. We need to talk to you.”

“About what?” Reginald clumped into the room behind Brand, who shut the door as the child was led away.

Brand resumed his place at the table. “If you’d been here, Reginald, instead of in pursuit of a woman, you’d have seen the
King’s messenger come in—“

“From Ahga?” Reginald’s raised brows were pale against his reddened skin.

“From Phineas.”

“And what’s he want? Updated body counts?”

“Be quiet, Reginald.” Roderic leaned across the table.

“Ho! The kitten shows his claws. Old man’s not pleased with the way things are going?”

“Dad’s missing.” Brand’s glare expressed more clearly than words what he thought of Reginald.

Reginald’s little eyes darted from Roderic to Brand and back again. “What do you mean, missing?”

“Lost,” said Roderic. “Disappeared without a trace. Here—” He shoved the parchment across the tabletop. “Read it yourself.”
If you can, he added silently.

Reginald took the scroll and scanned it. When he finally looked up, his expression was serious. “So what should we do?” He
spoke to Brand, but it was Roderic who answered.

“Get this situation under control, so I can return to Ahga as soon as possible.”

Reginald snorted. “You’re going to ‘get the situation under control’? How?”

Brand cleared his throat. “We’ll call for reinforcements.”

“From where?” Reginald drained the dregs of the wine into a clay goblet. “Everyone’s got their hands full—just who—“

“Amanander,” answered Roderic, looking at the map.

Even Brand looked surprised. Roderic tapped the map. “You’re right, Reginald. Everyone north and west is tied up in this rebellion.
But Amanander has a full garrison at Dlas-for’-Torth and a clear march through Missiluse.”

“And you think he’ll come?” Reginald leaned back in his chair, swirling the wine in the goblet.

Roderic raised his head. His father had always relied upon his brothers; he would have to rely upon them as well. “What choice
will he have? The kingdom is in jeopardy. He swore the same Pledge of Allegiance the rest of us have.” A memory flashed through
his mind, of his father’s steady blue gaze and strong grip on his shoulder on the day that he, too, had knelt and sworn to
uphold the kingdom and the King unto death. The words ran through his mind: I pledge allegiance to the King of the United
Estates of Meriga and to the kingdom for which he stands, one nation, indivisible … Indivisible. With blood and sweat and
sheer determination, the Ridenau Kings had forged Meriga into one nation after generations of chaos. And now the task had
fallen to him. He met the eyes of both his brothers with squared shoulders. “What choice do any of us have?”

T
he cold Janry wind wailed across the ocher sands of Dlas-For’Torth, whipping at stunted cacti. Even to the unaccustomed eye,
the weathered rocks appeared to lie in long lines and right angles across the desert floor. In the eastern sky, the sun was
a thin red crescent curving over the flat horizon, and the first streaks of gray and violet light blotted out the last stars.

Sand shifted across forgotten highways, blew relentlessly against the high, crushed-rubble walls of the desert garrison. It
made a sound like the hollow rustle of dead leaves. Above the rooftops, white smoke spiraled in thin lines, then dissipated
in the gusty updrafts. It was the only sign of human habitation at this lonely outpost established to protect the borders
of the Southern Estates against the incursions of the Harleyriders.

In the middle of the dusty yard, two sentries rubbed their hands over a small watchfire and tucked the ends of their cloaks
more securely against the cold. The watch was nearly over.

“Cold last night,” commented the taller of the two as he laid his spear upon the ground and blew on his fingers.

The other nodded. “Messenger come in late, did you see?”

“I was patrolling the eastern perimeter all night, you know that. Where from?”

“Hard to tell. But I saw he wore the King’s colors.”

“Kingdom messenger, then. From Ahga?”

His companion’s shrug was interrupted by the sudden pounding of hooves from the direction of the stables. A horse, nothing
more than a black shape in the predawn light, burst into the courtyard, screamed in protest as his rider drew hard on the
reins. “You, at the gate—open it!” The voice was imperious, impatient.

On the other side of the wide yard, the sleepy gatekeepers jumped to attention, tugged down the heavy crossbars, and pulled
open the high, massive gates to let the dark rider out. A low cloud of dust was all that remained of his passing. “Wasn’t
that—?” The grizzled sentry turned incredulous eyes to the other.

“Lord Amanander. Riding as though the wrath of the One were behind him.”

The ruddy light cast by the rising sun brought little warmth. Amanander flexed his hands in the black leather gloves, the
fur lining soft and warm against his skin. The stallion rode hard at his urging, hoofbeats muffled by the sand. He followed
the straight line of an ancient roadbed, due south, his shadow growing darker as the red sun rose. His dark blue cloak billowed
out behind him. He wore his black hair long, knotted at his neck in an intricate braid, and his face was shaved smooth despite
the early hour. His square jaw and high cheekbones bore the unmistakable stamp of his father the King, but his eyes were so
dark they were nearly black, and his brows swooped like crow’s wings across his forehead.

An hour from the garrison he pulled the horse to a stop. The road lay in ruins: great chunks of ancient stone lay piled haphazardly
like some giant’s discarded toys, and here and there metal sheets, scoured free of paint and corrosion by the relentless sand,
stood at twisted angles from rusted poles.

The wind tugged at his cloak. His horse whickered and stamped, its breath a great white plume in the dawn light. A barely
discernible shimmer hovered just a foot off the ground. Amanander closed his eyes, and a thin line appeared between his brows.
His lips moved silently, and the shimmer subsided. He touched his knees to the stallion’s sides and flapped the reins. The
horse moved slowly off the road.

At the base of a great pile of ancient brick, Amanander paused once more. He swung out of the saddle with practiced grace
and tethered the horse’s reins to a twisted metal staff sticking out of the sand. He gathered his cloak and bent his back
to enter the concealed cavern. No one would have noticed it without knowing it was there. Once inside, he stood straight,
his head nearly touching the low ceiling. His boots scraped across a tilted floor of a material which had not been made in
Meriga in centuries. Insects scuttled out of the dust raised by his passing, and in the dark corners, bats stirred with a
leathery whisper of black wings. A lone torch burned in a crude bracket.

In the far wall of the cavern, he pushed on a metal bar, and a heavy door shrieked open. Preserved by the climate, protected
from the wind, faded white letters proclaimed in a language half-forgotten:
RESTRICTED ACCESS. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Amanander did not hesitate. A long corridor lay before him: the low roof and squared walls gave evidence that this was no
natural corridor. Clumsy brackets set at intervals three-quarters of the way up the wall held torches which cast an orange
light. “Ferad!” His voice echoed down the length of the corridor. “Ferad?”

With a sigh, he started down the corridor. Other doors were set in the walls; these he ignored. At last the corridor turned
right. At the end of the hall he pushed against another door. It opened silently, smoothly on well-oiled hinges. A draft from
some unseen crack in the ceiling brushed across his face. “Ferad?”

A figure hunched on a high wooden stool beside a rusted metal desk looked up. “I was not expecting you, my Prince. At such
an early hour.” A lone lantern flickered on a surface dull with the dust of centuries, the flame drawn back and forth by the
invisible, nearly indiscernible breeze which filtered down from above.

“I had a message last night.” Amanander drew the gloves from his hands, smoothed the supple leather and tucked them into his
belt. His boots made almost no noise at all as he crossed the floor. He took another rudely carved stool and sat down on the
opposite side of the desk.

The other looked up, and in the candlelight, three black eyes gleamed flatly like a lizard’s. Amanander suppressed a shudder.
He was used to the Muten, had known him more than fifteen years, but his initial reaction to Ferad’s deformities was always
repulsion.

“Well?”

“Things aren’t going so well for my little brother in Atland. He requests aid. From me, of all people.”

Ferad’s third eye, set in the center of his forehead, stared fixed and unblinking. He had no sight in it, of course, none
of them did, although the ruling families of the Tribes did have full use of the small pair of secondary arms which in Ferad’s
case dangled limply from his shoulders, lost in the folds of his robe. He set down his pen in the center of his parchment
scrolls and shrugged. “So?”

“I want you to keep my father alive in my absence.”

Ferad glanced at a low door in a dark corner of the room.

“Alive, Abelard Ridenau remains a formidable threat.”

“I don’t want him dead yet.”

Ferad’s smaller arms quivered in involuntary response. “And if Phineas sends the Armies of the King to search? Ten thousand,
twenty thousand men will take the field, with twice that number in reserve. Are you so sure you want to take that risk? Is
revenge worth it?”