The Misbegotten King

by Anne Kelleher Bush

  Vere took a deep breath. Even in the shadows the struggle was plain on his face. He sighed and slowly nodded. “You may not believe me if I tell you the truth.”

  “Try,” she said dryly.

  “Do you know what the old Magic is?”

  “Old Magic?” She shrugged. The wind blew harder and she shivered. Her clothes were damp, and the falling dark had lowered the temperature. Vere held out a blanket. “The Keepers tell these tales… of men who could bend steel with their minds, who could shift the earth with a thought… but what have they to do with us?”

  “You know what mathematics is… the study of numbers?”

  She shrugged. “Tis forbidden by the Church.”

  “Yes,” he said, the flames leaping high as the wind blew through the low hanging of the branches of the tree overhead. “For good reason, I suppose. The old Magic is a series of mathematical equations which enable one to manipulate the fabric of the material world with the force of the human will.”

  Deirdre sucked in a deep breath, not certain she understood. “You mean that with the Magic a person can do anything he sets his mind to do?”

  Vere nodded. “More or less. Did you feel how the air seemed to thicken before the trees burst into flame? That’s one of the warning signs of the Magic about to manifest. It doesn’t always happen, but—but often enough.” He took another deep breath and stared moodily into the night. “But it isn’t as it seems. For everything that one does—any changes one makes—there is always a price. Something else happens… something you can’t control or predict.”

  Deirdre listened, digesting the information. “Then what was the price?”

  Vere shook his head. “There is no way to know that. But someone—and I believe I know who—is becoming very bold in the use of the Magic—and is taking carefully calculated risks.”

  “Who?” Deirdre asked.

  “The name will mean nothing to you. And I would rather not say it—there are too many variables at work here. It is impossible to say whether he or one of his minions is about—”

  “You think there is someone near?” Instantly Deirdre was alert. Her hand reached for her sword where it lay by her side, discarded.

  Vere reached out and gripped her arm. “Relax, M’Callaster. No one is nearby. I only meant that this person has ways of listening—ways of finding things out. There is no doubt in my mind that the attack today was aimed at you.”

  “At me? What quarrel does a Muten have with me?”

  Vere studied her face. “You are one of Roderic’s allies.”

  “And what does this Muten want of Roderic?”

  “His wife, for one thing.”

  A sudden gust of wind made the flames leap higher and Deirdre pulled her blanket tighter about her bare shoulders. Roderic’s name triggered a vision of Roderic’s face, and she gazed into the center of the fire.

  She stared moodily into the black night. Vere crouched beside the fire, tending it. “Vere.”

  “M’Callaster?”

  “You know my name’s Deirdre.” She tossed her thick braid over her shoulder. “I don’t think I thanked you for saving my life”

  He shrugged. “You saved mine.”

  She raised her brow, and he nodded. “It was your skill with that—” he pointed to the sword lying sheathed by her side “—that saved us.” Suddenly he took a deep breath and looked at her. “I am glad you decided to stay.”

  She glanced pointedly around the surroundings and smiled ruefully. “I am not sure I feel the same way at the moment.”

  “You know what I mean.” The intensity in his glance took her breath away.

  “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I believe I do.” For a moment they stared at each other, and she was suddenly conscious that the wind had died, that the only noises were the slow drip of the rain through the trees and the snap and hiss of the fire. To her astonishment color rose in his cheeks, staining the faded tattoos. “What are you thinking?”

  He dropped his eyes and turned away, shaking his head, mumbling something indistinguishable.

  A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Shall I tell you what you are thinking?”

  He looked up, suspicion narrowing the corners of his eyes.

  “You’re thinking that you’re a man and I’m a woman—and that by the grace of the goddess we escaped with our lives today and the night is cold and you wonder if I am warm—” She paused, not letting her eyes stray from his face. “And if we would not be warmer together.”

  “M’Callaster—Deirdre—” he whispered. “I-I have— haven’t—”

  “Hush.” She reached for him, cupping her hand around his chin, drawing her face close to his. “When there has been dying, there must be living.‘Tis the way of it, the Keepers say—the balance must be kept.‘Tis no surprise.”

  He made a little noise in his throat just as she pressed her mouth on his, and then his arms went around her, carefully, mindful of her wounds. As the flames leapt higher, they shuddered together in the orange light.

  Chapter Seven

  The stench from the poison pit burned his nostrils. Amanander curled his lip and turned his head, pulling his cloak closer against his face. A warm, damp wind shook the trees, heavy with oily droplets, and the sky overhead roiled with lowering clouds. He shifted in his saddle, less from impatience than from discomfort, and his companions paused in their deliberations, glancing at him over their shoulders. Their voices were barely audible, for they spoke in low guttural tones, their twisted speech falling in unfamiliar cadences upon his ear. Here and there he heard a word he understood, and again and again, he heard a name repeated: Jama.

  Amanander flexed his hands. It had been three weeks since his escape from the confines of Ahga and his own mind, but his body was weak, his muscles wasted and diminished. It would take a long time for him to recuperate the strength which had been his, and he forced his shoulders square. But his mind—oh, that was another story. Through the process of sapping Alexander’s energy, Amanander had felt himself renewed and replenished in a way he had never thought possible. Whatever force had been drained from his twin, it existed within Amanander now, part of him and yet not part of him—a source of strength that allowed him to think with acute perceptions despite his weakened body.

  He watched his tutor with a measuring stare. Ferad had raised the Magic to another level. That much was obvious. Amanander stared into the distance and considered the problem of how to make the knowledge his. He doubted Ferad would share the secret willingly.

  “Are you in pain?” Gartred interrupted his thoughts, her voice a persistent whine as annoying as the beetles which swarmed through the campsites at night.

  Amanander looked at the woman as though seeing her for the first time. The journey had been hard on her. Her hair was scraped back under her hood, and her eyes had dark shadows beneath them. Without the aid of her customary cosmetics, her skin was pasty. But her mind was as easily read as a child’s primer, and he smiled slowly at her. She would make an excellent object for his experiments. “No.” He slid his eyes away from her and fixed his gaze on Ferad. Deep within his mind, he was aware of some residual echo of Ferad’s presence there. More out of idleness, he turned the focus of his thoughts inward, aimed upon that tenuous thread.

  Amanander was surprised when Ferad turned as if in answer to a summons. An odd expression crossed the Muten’s disfigured face, one almost of fear—definitely one of surprise. A ghost of a memory flitted through his mind. Philosophers have argued for centuries over what is real—some would argue this is more real than the material world. The words floated to the surface, twisting and beckoning like a ribbon of road at twilight, lead ing down to— To what? Amanander wondered. What was real—and what did that mean?

  Before Amanander could continue to ponder this any longer, the whole group seemed to reach some kind of assent, for they grunted, and nodded, patched gray robes fluttering as the group dispersed.

  A squat figure approached and re
ached for the bridle of Amanander’s horse. “Come,” the Muten grunted in its fractured accent. “Jama-taw awaits.”

  Amanander slid out of the saddle slowly, his lips narrowed from the concentration required to dismount without shaking.

  “Let me help.” Gartred offered her hand, and he rebuffed her with a look.

  He would not have anyone’s pity. Ferad’s Magic had been sufficient to restore him to sanity, Alexander’s borrowed vigor sufficient to restore his body to some semblance of its former self, but nothing but exercise could restore his withered limbs to what they had been before. Before. His mind shied away from the realization of what his impatience had cost. It was his own fault that he had taken Annandale, only to let her slip through his fingers. He should have ridden south with her, gone back to Dlas, risked capture rather than try to withstand the siege of Minnis. This time, this time, he vowed, he would move slowly, consider each action and its consequences before making the choice. He would not be thwarted again.

  He favored Gartred with a smile. The hen simpered, her lashes fluttering grotesquely over her plump cheeks. Life in Ahga, even in her imprisonment, had been easy for Gartred. Where once she had been pleasantly rounded, her curves were now turning to fat. But she would suffice, he thought as he smiled at her over his shoulder. Oh, yes, she would suffice.

  He followed the Muten off the beaten path, through the low hanging branches of the trees which dripped a silvery moss.

  Beneath the hanging branches of a gnarled tree, another figure waited. Amanander slung his wet cloak over his shoulder and hooked his thumbs in his belt. He glanced at Ferad. “Well? We’ve wasted enough time.”

  The figure raised his head with slow dignity. Amanander looked down into the eyes of a Muten no older than seventeen or eighteen, who met Amanander’s stare with a guileless innocence.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The corners of Ferad’s thin mouth lifted, and his secondary arms quivered. “My Prince, may I present Jamataw.”

  Amanander turned again to the boy before him. He was thin, this Jama. His hair was held away from his face by a leather circlet. The skin of his face was smooth, unmarked by the elaborate tribal tattoos which decorated the faces of every other Muten Amanander had ever seen. The absence of the tattoos, as well as his obvious youth, emphasized his human appearance, despite the third eye set in its wrinkled socket above and between the other two. Amanander shuddered inexplicably. There was something very disquieting in the youth’s appearance. “I’ve met your father.” He paused, remembering a day which seemed like a very long time ago. “And your brother.”

  The boy hissed. His voice was deeper than Amanander expected, and he pronounced the unfamiliar words carefully, his lips slowly shaping each one around his accent. “You were there?”

  Amanander nodded. “The day Roderic the Butcher forced your father’s hand to peace? Yes.” He wondered what the boy would say if he knew whose hand had forced Roderic’s.

  “You did nothing to stop him.”

  It was neither a question nor challenge, only a statement of fact, and Amanander looked harder at the boy before him on the ground. “There was nothing I could do to stop him.” Amanander frowned. He did not like the idea of justifying his actions, past, present, or future, to this scrap of Muten flesh.

  Jama’s dark eyes did not waver. “But you are ready to do something now.”

  “Yes.” Amanander met the boy’s stare and wondered fleetingly if he might try just a hint of the Magic. No, he decided. Let the boy find out later just who—and what— he dealt with. “I claim the throne of Meriga.”

  “You are the heir of the Ridenau King.”

  Amanander glanced at Ferad and shrugged. Were they going to waste all day exchanging meaningless titles? “Would that your words carried weight in the Congress.”

  Ferad made a noise like a curse deep in his throat. “I brought you here for a reason, my Prince. Will you listen?”

  Amanander glanced over his shoulder. He wanted nothing more than to be away from these creatures, who skulked on the edges of existence. His cousin Harland’s castle was less than a day’s ride away, and he longed for a hot bath, a soft bed, and peace in which to consider the implications of his newfound realizations about the Magic. But he remembered his vow to curb his impatience and so he nodded. “Of course.”

  “Will you sit?” The boy’s voice scraped over his ear like gravel.

  With a little grimace, Amanander sank down on the mossy ground a few paces from Jama. A rude clay cup was placed in his hands, and as he raised it hesitantly to his mouth, the green herbal scent made his mouth water unexpectedly. “Talk.”

  “My people have hidden in the hollows and the hills for generations. This you know, Prince of the Ridenaus. Your people have hunted us, killed us, starved us… but we have held on against all odds.”

  Amanander sipped from the cup. “What do you want of me that you acknowledge me to be the Prince of Meriga?”

  “There is no poetry in your soul,” whispered the boy. Fear flickered in his eyes as he glanced from Amanander to Ferad and back.

  “None.” Amanander drained the mug to the dregs.

  “I offer you my men. In exchange for a homeland.”

  “You want a piece of Meriga?”

  “A homeland… where we will not be beaten and starved and killed. Where we can grow old in peace and bear our children and raise them to adults. Is that so much to ask?”

  “Why not go to Roderic? Even if he is the Butcher, he’s the heir of Meriga. I am merely a dispossessed nobody.”

  “No,” the boy’s voice was soft. “He is not.”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  Ferad leaned forward and his breath was soft on Amanander’s neck. “Roderic is not the heir of Meriga, for he is not the son of the King.”

  “What?”

  “Abelard forced his witch to use the Magic to aid his Queen to conceive,” said Ferad. “And Roderic is indeed the son of the Queen. But not the son of the King.”

  “Who—?” Amanander paused as the answer reared up before him like a lycat on the hunt. “Phineas. A stable-hand’s son… my father left the throne of Meriga to the get of a stablehand’s son?” He felt as though a claw of rage, black as obsidian and harder than granite, clutched his heart. He could scarcely breathe.

  There was a silence, the only sound the steady call of the birds who hunted the swamps, calling back and forth. He raised his eyes to Ferad. “My father did this? To me?”

  The Muten’s three eyes stared back. “Do you think your father was above doing anything, if he thought it would secure his throne?”

  Amanander gazed back. “No. But how do you know this? How are you so sure?”

  Ferad shrugged. “As the King’s condition has weakened—shall we say—it has become easier to breach the defenses of his will. I thought you would be particularly interested in that piece of information.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”

  Ferad shrugged. “What use to us is this information?”

  “What use?” Amanander echoed, his mind spinning through a thousand possibilities. He could confront the Congress. He could raise an army. He could challenge Roderic before them all. In a burst of triumph, he saw himself ride into Ithan and demand to be heard. They would listen to him, the assembled Senadors, and Roderic would be set aside and the throne of Meriga handed to him—

  “Prince,” said Ferad softly, “we have no proof. If you go to Ithan and raise your voice against Roderic, what will it profit you? There is no one save Phineas himself who can corroborate this story, and I think that even Phineas’s honor will allow him to lie under those circumstances. And you are the most wanted man in Meriga at this moment… who will entertain your story while you are sent to Ahga under heavy guard? No—confrontation is not the way. Surely you understand that. You must make alliances. And here is the offer of one.”

  “Where is my father?”

  “Nearby, but v
ery close to death. It is getting harder to keep him alive. Especially in such agony.”

  “I want him alive, Ferad.”

  “As you say, my Prince.” The Muten leaned back and folded his hands beneath his robe. “But let us discuss that matter another time. What say you to an alliance?”

  Amanander drew a deep breath, pressed his lips close together. His emotions were swirling, his thoughts a jumble of despair, anger, rage. How could Abelard have deliberately set him aside? What had he done to make his father hate him so? From the beginning Abelard had refused to name him heir, even when to do so would have meant that Abelard could have kept Nydia with him openly at Ahga rather than hiding her away in the wilds of the North Woods.

  A thousand possibilities swirled through his mind, each one rejected almost as soon as it occurred to him. Not even Harland could hear this news—for how could he say he had come by it? Only the King, only Phineas— and Phineas’s loyalty to the King and to his unacknowledged son was bound to be absolute. An emotion beyond rage surged through his spirit, fetid as the dark depths of the poison pit which smoked and stank just a few paces away.

  And yet—in the midst of this anger, this hatred, some part of himself which seemed to stand apart, reminded him of the tremendous energy of the emotion he experienced. These emotions existed in every being, human or Muten. He stared up at the tree behind Jama, a vine snaking up its trunk to twine like a noose around the lower hanging branches. If such energy existed, surely it had enormous potential to be harnessed. And if he could learn to control this energy, focus it, use it, all of Meriga would be his for the asking. What would it matter then what he had promised these miserable Mutens?

  He raised his head and met the eyes of the young Muten. In the inscrutable depths was no sympathy, no pity, only an even resolve. “I accept.” He allowed his eyes to focus unblinking on the Muten who sat unmoving before him. “Aid me in this and all of the Estate of Nourk will be yours.”