by Flora Speer
“I had a bead like it once,” Dain said, and began rubbing his forehead as he had done when Emma first mentioned Vivienne’s name to him. “My mother took it away from me. It’s part of what I can’t remember.” He fell silent, still gazing at the bead.
“Agatha,” Emma said to the elderly healer, who had stood quietly at one side of the chamber since entering it, “what do you know about this?”
“Tell them,” Hermit said. “It’s time, Agatha. You know it is.”
Agatha said nothing aloud; she merely made a gesture in Dain’s direction, a gesture that Emma recognized as magical. Dain began to speak in an oddly slurred voice, as if he were half asleep.
“She gave it to me so I wouldn’t forget her,” Dain said. “Before she left Penruan she crept into my room and kissed me and put it into my hand. I can see her folding my little fingers around it and telling me she wouldn’t forget me, either. ‘I will love you always.’ she said. Emma, help me! Am I mad?”
“No.” Emma put the bead into Dain’s hand and folded his large, adult fingers over it. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. “Not mad, Dain. Not you. But you have been held in a spell.”
“What else do you remember?” Agatha asked him.
“My mother snatching the bead away from me, scolding me for having it, slapping my hand until my fingers were red and aching, telling me over and over that it was an evil object,” Dain said, his voice growing steadily clearer as he spoke. “It wasn’t evil, it was a gift. The last gift – ah! My head!” He pulled away from Emma’s embrace, both hands at his head. The blue bead fell onto the sand and Hermit picked it up.
“It’s his memory returning,” Agatha said. “I have released the spell.”
“Take his pain away now!” Emma shouted at her. “Then I insist you tell us what you’ve done to him, and tell us who Vivienne is.”
“Let magic undo what evil has wrought,” Agatha proclaimed in a deep, sonorous voice. Drawing herself up to her full height, and then up again until she was at least a foot taller than the old healer, she reached out to touch Dain’s forehead.
Dain’s hands dropped to his sides. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
“Emma,” he whispered, “the pain is gone. I knew you’d help me.”
“Now Agatha is going to help you,” Emma said. “Agatha is going to explain why she has held you under a spell for more than twenty years. I intend to see to it that you remember everything Agatha made you forget.”
Chapter 14
“A spell?” Dain said. “Agatha, why would you do such a thing? I’ve always considered you my friend.”
“So I am,” Agatha said. “The spell was an act of kindness, intended to protect you and to save Vivienne’s life. Dain, there is a danger if I allow you to recover all of your lost memories. Are you willing to take the risk? I warn you, it won’t be the danger you expect to find. Arms and armor will be of no use to you. The knowledge you gain will permanently alter your life.”
“For years I have been pretending to myself that the emptiness inside me didn’t exist,” Dain said. “Most of the time it was easy enough to ignore, because no one ever spoke the strange woman’s name. So far as I can tell, no one at Penruan, or in Trevanan village, even knows what the name is. Not until Emma learned it and spoke it aloud to me did the torment in my mind begin in earnest, and it has plagued me ever since. I must have answers! Agatha, if you are my friend as you claim, then break the spell and give me back my lost memories. Or teach Emma how to do it.”
“It’s you who hold the power to end the spell,” Agatha said.
”I? There’s no magic in me.”
“We shall see.” Agatha gestured, and the surface of the rock through which Vivienne had disappeared began to waver.
Dain blinked and shook his head, as if trying to clear his vision. Emma took his hand and stepped forward, drawing him with her to the rock. Though he was plainly puzzled, he didn’t resist.
“Don’t fight us, Vivienne,” Hermit called. “Let us in. The time has come.”
“Vivienne!” Agatha no longer spoke with the voice of an elderly woman. Her clear, commanding tones rang through the cave. “The time for fear has passed! Your exile is about to end.”
A section of the rock wall suddenly vanished, revealing an arched opening. Still holding Dain’s hand, Emma walked through the arch and into the room beyond. Above a smooth rock floor the walls and the high ceiling shimmered and sparkled with multicolored embedded crystals. From halfway up one wall a spring burst forth, its water falling with a soft, trickling sound into a depression at the base of the rock.
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.<
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“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 Emm
a’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?”