Children of Enchantment Read Free Page B

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