WindBeliever (46 page)

His gaze narrowed with suspicion. “Like what?”

She thought a moment then her face lit. “How about Khamsin?”

That didn’t sound so bad. “What does it mean?”

She could see interest in his eyes for the first time. “In the language of the Inner Kingdom it is a hot southerly wind.” She laughed. “Your temper is as hot as they come, my friend. I think the name suits you.”

He shrugged. “Call me whatever you want.” He fused his gaze with hers. “I don’t have to answer if I don’t want to.”

“No, you do not,” she agreed. She leaned back against the wagon’s side rail. “Shall I tell you about yourself, Khamsin?”

He was dying to know what she could tell him, but somehow didn’t think letting her know he was all that eager was such a good idea. It was hard to feign indifference, but he gave it a try.

“Do whatever you want.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 221

Sabrina studied him for a moment, seeing through the guise of his unconcern. The man was exactly as he’d been described to her--arrogant and insolent and supremely churlish, but there was a vulnerability there that touched her deeply. He had no notion of who he was and that knowledge was a thorn in his side.

“Are you going to just sit there and stare at me?” he sneered. “Or are you going to tell me who the hell I am?”

Arrogant? Sabrina thought. The man was more than arrogant. He was downright surly. Then again, she’d heard him described that way on more than one occasion.

“Let me show you something,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her skirt. She withdrew a packet of what appeared to be letters wrapped with a blue ribbon. She held them up. “This is how I know you.”

Conar looked at the small packet of parchment and then looked back at her. “Letters?”

She nodded and laid the packet in her lap to untie the thin blue ribbon. “Letters from someone very close to you.”

“Who?”

he

growled.

She picked up the first letter and unfolded it. “I will read it to you.”

Sabrina took a deep breath and then began to read to him the contents of the letter.

“My dearest friend,

I finally took your advice and journeyed to Serenia. It is as I have always heard it described,
beautiful and wild. The people there are friendly, although somewhat suspicious of strangers,
but once they get to know you, they accept you with open arms.

I know you are anxious to know if I have met him. Aye, I have, and in a way that I am sure
you would not approve of.”

Sabrina glanced up to see that sapphire gaze staring at her with boredom. “This letter is written about you.”

His thick brows drew together.

“I had been told by one of his men that he would be at a certain tavern on a given day and it
was there to which I traveled, hiding myself in the loft of the stable where his horse was
boarded.”

Conar looked up from the letter to the woman.

“The tavern was called the Hound and Stag,” Sabrina told him. “Does that mean anything to you?”

He shook his head irritably.

“It was not long before he came out to the stables and I could tell from the look on his face, a
face even more handsome than I had imagined it ....”

The black woman glanced up to see a smug look on her companion’s face. She snorted gently and continued to read.

“ ... there was to be trouble.”

“Who’s writing this letter?” he asked.

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 222

Sabrina shushed him.

“Three men entered the stable not long after him and I began to realize they were there to
rob him. A mistake on their parts since Conar had no intention of letting them take anything that
is his.”

“Damned right,” he muttered.

“You can not imagine how brave he is, Sabrina. He took them all on, single-handed.”

Sabrina lowered the letter and arched a brow at him. “Not a particularly intelligent thing to do on your part, do you think?”

Conar shrugged. “Obviously I won.”

She answered his shrug. “With help.” She seemed to scan the letter until she found the part she wanted. “Here. This I like.”

“He didn’t see the pitchfork coming at him. If I had not been there, he would have died. As it
was, my dagger barely made it into the bastard’s throat before he could ventilate Conar’s back.”

Sabrina looked up and saw her companion’s scowl. “Four against one are rather mighty odds, don’t you agree?” At his nod, she continued.

“I killed two men for him that day, Sabrina, and wounded another. One escaped and I pray
for his sake he never shows his face around me again for I will be inclined to make him pay for
trying to hurt my beloved.”

“Beloved?” Conar repeated.

Sabrina put the letter down. “Yes. This was written by your intended, Liza.” She smiled as confusion spread over his face. “It goes on to tell how you and she travel to a keep owned by your brother and then on to another tavern where you ....” She lowered her eyes. “Made her your woman.”

Conar stared at her, watching her re-fold the letter and lay it down beside her. As she unfolded another parchment, one much smaller than the first, his mind was working furiously.

“Liza?” he asked, the name meant nothing to him.

Sabrina nodded and held up the smaller parchment, putting it close to his face so he could read it. “This is your wedding invitation.”

He jerked his head away. He glared at her around the obstruction of the parchment she held.

“My what?”

“Read it,” Sabrina sighed. When he refused to look at the parchment held in front of him, she rattled it. “Go on, Khamsin. Read it.”

Cautiously his tore his gaze from her and let it settle on the parchment, drawing his head back some to focus on the elaborately scrolled letters. She pulled the parchment back, adjusting the distance for him and he was able to read it.

“The King and Queen of Oceania request the pleasure of your company at the nuptials of
their firstborn daughter, the Princess Anya Elizabeth, to the firstborn son of His Majesty, King
Gerren McGregor of Serenia, Prince ....”

He slowly lifted his eyes from the page and stared at Sabrina with his mouth open.

The black woman nodded, lowering the page. “You are Prince Conar Aleksandro McGregor.”

He snapped his mouth shut, his furious stare boring into her. “Who the hell do you think you are, woman? I don’t know what your game is, but ....”

“Elizabeth was a very good friend of mine,” she interrupted him. “We took our initiation into the Daughterhood on the same day. She meant more to me than any woman I had ever met and her letters to me were like warm rays of sunshine.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 223

“I am not royalty,” he shouted at her. “Look at my back and tell me different!”

Sabrina jerked up another letter and quickly unfolded it, ignoring his outburst.

“Sabrina,

They have found him guilty and have sentenced him to a public lashing and then exile. I can
only pray they will allow me to accompany him. If they do not, I will find a way to join him even
if it means moving heaven and earth to do so.”

Looking deeply in his eyes, Sabrina hoped her explanation would jiggle his memory. “They whipped you that day in the Tribunal Square. Whipped you so badly even your own physician thought you had died. Liza was inconsolable, taking to her bed for days on end because she could not cope with your loss. There was no way any of your family could know that the Domination had only made it appear that you had succumbed to the beating. They used magic to make everyone believe you were dead and they transported you to the Labyrinth Penal Colony where you spent five years of your life hidden away.”

Something leaped in his memory and then fled before he could catch it. He remembered fragments of his imprisonment--the hot, arid sand, the back-breaking labor, the punishments on the uprights, so what she was telling him made sense to him.

“What had I done?” he asked.

“They say you hired men to kill your father so you could gain the throne.”

“I’ll see you in your grave before I allow you to take away my birthright!”

Conar shivered, that memory jumping up to haunt him.

“You did not,” Sabrina told him, reading his thoughts. “You loved your father. Liza told me you threatened him, but you would not have carried out the threat.”

He shook his head, wanting to remember, needing to, but nothing seemed to be there. He looked up at her.

“Does she know I’m alive?”

Sabrina smiled sadly at him. “You came back from the Labyrinth a different man, Khamsin.

You were angry, distrustful and you brought back with you a hatred for Liza that nearly destroyed the both of you.”

His face showed his confusion. “Why?”

“Because, thinking you dead, she fell in love with your brother, Legion.”

“Legion.” The name on his tongue seemed to mean something, but he could not hold on to it.

He let it slip away. “Surely I didn’t blame her for wanting to be happy if she thought me dead.”

Sabrina nodded. “Oh, but you did. It was not until much later that you forgave her.”

He looked away from her, not liking the portrait of him she was painting. “Where is she now?” he asked. When the woman didn’t answer, he turned back to her and found her eyes glistening. “What?” he asked, afraid to know.

Sabrina unfolded the last letter in her lap. It took her a moment, a moment in which the man across from her stared at her with a look that told her he really didn’t want to hear what was in the letter, before she could speak.

“My most cherished friend,

We leave for the Abbey at first light. Although this confrontation between my beloved Conar
and Tohre has been a long time in coming, and unavoidable, it is with a heavy heart that I
accompany him.

I shall not return from the Abbey, Sabrina.”

His heart thudded in his chest. He shook his head. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

Sabrina re-folded the letter. “She drowned in the Maelstrom.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 224

There was a bleak look of hopelessness on his face. “Did I not try to save her, Sabrina?” he asked, using her name for the first time.

She nodded. “It took four men to drag you away from the ledge, Khamsin. Four men to keep you from plunging to your own death alongside Liza and your brother, Brelan.”

He closed his eyes and lowered his head. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“You will,” she said gently, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

He lifted his head. “How did I get here? What happened to me?”

Her fingers caressed his shoulder. “At the end of her last letter to me, Liza asked a promise of me. The woman was good at her craft, Khamsin, an adept of the highest order. She could look into the divining pool and see into the future. She knew our paths, mine and yours, would cross one day, and she bid me protect you as she would have.” She moved her hand to his scarred cheek. “And I shall with the last breath in my body, sweet wind.”

“Sabrina,

I

...”

She shushed him with her fingertips. “I am going to unchain you and I want you to rest. Are you hungry?”

Despite the turmoil boiling inside his head, he nodded. “I’m famished.”

“Then I’ll have Kharis bring you something to eat.”

She took a key from her pocket and slipped it into the wrist lock at his right hand, then unlocked his left.

Conar chaffed his wrists and looked at her with puzzlement. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to escape?”

“Where will you go, Khamsin?” she inquired. “We are miles from Asaraba and miles still from my keep beyond the Nilus. I have told you I mean you no harm. The only way I could protect you, that I could return you unharmed to Serenia and your people, was to buy you.”

“I will pay you back,” he vowed.

“I know,” she answered. “But until I can arrange safe passage for you, well cleared of any problem with Prince Guil ....”

“The man who bid against you?” At her nod, he frowned. “He hates me, doesn’t he?”

Sabrina sighed. “Yes, and I don’t understand why, but it doesn’t matter. I will not allow him to harm you, Khamsin.” Her eyes hardened. “I made a vow to Elizabeth McGregor!”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 225

Rasheed Falkar’s back was crisscrossed with stinging, burning lash marks and just sitting in the saddle was an agony he would have foregone the pleasure of having had it not been for the knife his master had placed at his throat.

“We will have to go after that infidel dog, Falkar!” the Prince had yelled at him. “And when we do, I will give you one more chance to redeem yourself.”

“McGregor is not to die,” Prince Jaleel interrupted. “I want him alive.”

Rasheed had agreed, thanking the Prophetess once more for saving his miserable life. He would do everything he could to make sure McGregor did not escape retribution again.

“How much further to the oasis?” Jaleel called out, gaining Rasheed’s attention.

“Three miles, Your Grace,” the servant answered. “They would have stopped there earlier this afternoon. We should catch up to them by midnight.”

Jaleel

nodded.

By

midnight,

McGregor

would be in his hands.

“What will you do to him, Jaleel?” Guil asked.

Jaleel Jaborn smiled. “Take him back to Abbadon.”

Guil whistled. “Why do I get the notion you don’t intend to kill him right away, old friend?”

The smile on Jaborn’s face grew vicious. “There are worse fates than death, Guil.” His hands tightened on the reins. “And McGregor will have intimate knowledge of each and every one before I slit his worthless throat!”