WINDWEEPER (2 page)

She took a deep breath, glanced at Saur for strength, and then looked back at Conar. "When Grice and Legion got her back, she was carrying Galen's seed. Healer Cayn aborted it."

Conar's face turned scarlet. "Tohre promised me—"

"You should know by now you can't trust Kaileel Tohre," Brelan sighed.

"All Kaileel Tohre wanted was you, just as he has always wanted you," the queen explained. "Once he had you, once he had your soul, or thought he was about to take it, he was satisfied to leave Anya with your twin's seed impregnating her as a punishment." She turned her head. "For Galen as well, for daring to want her."

"Galen is as tight with Tohre as he ever was," Brelan reminded Conar. "Tohre will help Galen try to take her from you again."

"Galen McGregor will never lay hands to my wife again!" Conar swore. "I will—"

"Anya will be safer here with me," Medea cut in. "I don't believe I can allow her to leave with you in the frame of mind you are now exhibiting."

"I can keep my lady safe!"

"You aren't the most rational of men at the best of times, McGregor," Brelan grunted. "When you're like this, you can't do squat."

"Shut up!" Conar shouted. "I can protect my wife!"

"I can not take the chance you might hurt her," the queen stated firmly.

"You had better have Saur kill me here and now, for I promise, Medea, I will die trying to take her home!" He jerked against Brelan's hold and felt the sting of the dagger slipping across his windpipe. He sucked in his breath, but he tore his thoughts from his physical discomfort. "I have the power to take her!"

The Queen's gaze was sorrowful as she looked at him. "You are only just realizing that power, Conar. You have no clear-cut idea what it is you have, nor do you know how to use it. If the time came to use it and you faltered, if you let your anger rule your head, both you and Anya could be destroyed in the twinkling of an eye."

"She is my wife! She belongs with me. I will not let Saur have her!"

Medea sighed with exasperation. "Anya is yours. Brelan has made no move to usurp that right."

"Not yet, anyway," Brelan said.

"Be still, Brelan," Medea told him. "Your mouth makes things worse. Conar, I will have my daughter safe. Your conduct is caused, no doubt, by something Tohre has set into motion. Do you think he will give up when you bring Anya back with you? He will turn his demons against her as well."

"Have you no faith in me?" Conar roared. He tried to pull free of Brelan's grip; he felt Liza slipping through his fingers once more.

"Move like that again, McGregor, and you'll sever an artery!" Brelan hissed.

"Isn't that what you want? My blood?"

"It would make no difference to me."

"I have told you it would," the Queen warned. She eased away Brelan's hand from contact with Conar's flesh, and flinched as a thin seepage of blood oozed down her son-in-law's throat.

"Be good, Coni," Brelan whispered as he held the dagger close to Conar's throat without touching it. "My hand might slip."

"The
Seachance
is lying at anchor in the harbor," Medea informed the Prince. "The storm might delay departure for a few days, but when the ship is provisioned, you will be put on board. We will keep Anya safe until you have dealt with Tohre."

"You can't do that!" Conar yelled.

"We can, and we will. When you have shown us you can control your temper and Tohre's danger, we will consider whether she may return to you."

"That could take years!"

"That is up to the gods to decide. Anya will remain safely within her homeland until we are satisfied she is in no danger in yours."

Conar's voice went soft as a serpent's hiss. "And if you are never satisfied that I can protect her, you'll just hand her over to Saur. Is that it?"

Brelan lips stretched into a fine grin. "One can only hope."

"Quiet, Brelan!" Medea snapped with irritation. "I'll not tell you again to hold your tongue unless you wish to join your brother in the dungeon."

"Dungeon?" Conar went perfectly still.

Medea placed a cool hand on Conar's brow. She mumbled strange words and he suddenly felt faint. "What are you doing?" he asked, the world skidding away before his eyes. He slumped against Brelan, who hastily dropped his dagger to keep Conar from falling.

"Petrov? Kristoffer?" Medea called.

"Don't touch me!" Conar insisted as the two burly guards marched up to him. He tried to focus on Medea. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Making sure you cause no trouble."

Brelan stepped back as the two men took hold of Conar's arms, tightening their grip when he attempted to pull away.

"Put His Grace in a cell until it is time for his ship to leave," the Queen ordered. "I can not trust him to behave under lock and key in his chambers."

"Don't you dare!" Conar thundered, struggling weakly against the men who firmly held him between them. The struggle only made his dizziness worse.

Medea glanced up the stairs at her husband. "Have your men find his men, Shaz, and jail them."

Shaz nodded, unable to speak. Here was his warrior-wife of legend whom he'd been warned about many years before; he knew better than to go against her wishes.

"Keep him well apart from his men," she told her guards. "I want no conspiracy brewing."

Conar snarled as the men pulled him away. He limply craned his head over his shoulder and glared at the Queen. "You will regret this! You can't keep her away from me!" He managed to free one arm and sent a rock-hard fist into one guard as he kicked out at the other. "Get your gods-be-damned hands off me."

"Shackle him, Petrov," the Queen ordered, surprised by Conar's sudden capability. So strong, already, without a clue how to control it. She reached inside her skirt pocket and withdrew a vial of greenish fluid. "Place this potion on the closings of the shackles. It will ensure him not being able to use his powers to escape."

"Damn you," Conar moaned. He tried to gather his wits into a cohesive line of power, but after his ferocious outburst, he found he couldn't. He tried to kick out, but the a guard grabbed his legs, swinging him off the floor; he was left dangling between them. He was so furious he could think of no curse to hurl at the woman as he was carried out of the hall.

Brelan smiled as Grice and Chand joined him at the foot of the stairs. "What a glorious sight!"

"Don't say that!" Medea hissed.

Brelan's smile disappeared. "I only meant—"

"Oh, do be quiet, Saur! You have no idea what things you've set into motion with your silly, childish taunts!"

"I can't help it if I don't like the man."

The queen stared at him as he joined her sons at the stairs. Once again she saw the future as though she were looking through a pane of glass. She became witness to the final confrontation between Brelan Saur and Conar McGregor. It would be the turning point in their lifelong struggle. She flinched; her sorceress' vision leapt beyond what she had seen taking place between the them to the actual place where it was to occur. Her heart ached. Nothing she could do would ever change what the gods had in store for them.

"Despite what you say you feel about your brother, you will be his greatest ally one day," she called softly, drawing Saur's immediate attention.

"I know that will never happen, Majesty."

Later that evening, when she and her husband were alone, she wept against Shaz's shoulder. He held her as she poured out her fears.

"His love will cost him dearly, Shaz. Brelan Saur will pay a high price." Her voice broke as she saw an unalterable future. "It will cost him his life."

The intense chill of the stone floor woke him from his enforced sleep. He opened his eyes to stare at the moisture-dripping wall across from him and shuddered as a large rat scampered down the slick surface.

His cell was five feet in diameter, windowless in the damp dungeon of Seadrift Keep. The only light was a torch outside the barred door.

The stench of rotting hay and ages-old excrement and urine made his nostrils quiver and his eyes sting. Absently, he wondered who had been the cell's last inhabitant, and how long ago. Not that it mattered in the least, he thought dismally.

They must have looked long and hard to find just the right cell for his imprisonment. This one was, by far, the worst he had ever seen.

Not that he had seen many; imprisonment was something he had encountered only a few times. The cells at the Abbey were harsh, but they were, for the most part, cleaner than this. His one and only encounter with a civilian jail—long ago and thanks to Teal du Mer—had been a helluva sight better than this.
This
was a nightmare.

He growled with contempt, pulled against his bonds, flinching at the pain. He glared at the chains that secured him to the thick wall. His hands, manacled beside his head, had gone numb; his wrists were raw from trying to pull free when he'd first been cast into this dismal, dank tomb.

The bands gouging into his flesh set his teeth on edge; a trickle of pain spread down his arms when he tried to flex his fingers. His feet barely touched the floor, but that was just as well, for he heard the rodents.

Water dripped down his back. He cringed, craning his neck to look at the ceiling. Squinting in the semi-darkness, he could just make out a rivulet of shiny wetness tracking down the wall. From the smell, and thickness of it, it must have come from a privy. He wrinkled his nose with distaste and pulled fiercely on his chains. He howled with frustration, slumping into the bands around his wrists, flinching as the lacerated flesh pulled taut.

"Damn it!" he spat as something thick and viscous dripped onto his right shoulder and the musky stench of excrement filled his nostrils. He jerked involuntarily, gagged as the glob traveled down his chest, slid down his side. Whatever had landed on him oozed past his waist and he felt the trail of its passing like something alive. "Damn it!"

He jerked again, trying to rid himself of what had fallen on him. The movement brought fiery pain through his hands and arms, needles through his fingers.

He gave up and sank into a semi-conscious state of anger and humiliation.

* * *

"You've done what?" Liza shouted at her brother, jerking away from his restraining hand. "How dare you, Griceland? How dare you!"

"Easily!" Grice snapped. "He behaved like an animal and he is being treated like one. I will have no more of this talk. You'll do what Mama and Papa say, Anya Elizabeth. He stays where he is until the ship is readied." He put his face close to his sister's. "And you'd better remember what Mama said. If you try to go to him, or encourage another to do so, you will only be increasing his time in jail!"

Spinning on his heel, the eldest Oceanian prince stalked from the room, slamming his sister's door behind him.

Liza flung a vase of fresh-cut flowers against the door where it shattered onto the carpet. Furious, she snatched up her shawl and flung open her door, mindless of the glass shards crunching beneath her slippers. Her angry stride took her to her mother's room where she knocked with a heavy hand on the pine portal.

"Come," the Queen called even as the door opened.

"I will not have it, Madame!" Liza shouted. "Release him this minute!" She came to within a few inches of her mother and stopped, her gaze angry and belligerent. "He has been through enough because of me already!"

Medea nodded. "And will suffer much more because of you."

"What does that mean?"

"It is not up to me to explain the future to you, girl. You should know it yourself. If you don't, that is the will of the gods."

"I know
this
. If you don't have my husband released immediately, I'll never speak to you again!"

The Queen shrugged. "That can't be helped, Anya Elizabeth." She sat heavily on her bed. "You don't realize what it is you ask. I am only trying to protect you."

"Conar can protect me. Together, he and I, can defeat Kaileel Tohre and his followers if that is your concern." Liza went to her knees in front of her mother, taking the older woman's hands in hers and bringing them to her cheek. "I know you mean well, Mama. I know you love me, but I am a woman grown." Her face turned sad. "It is my husband we have to worry about. Not me."

"Do you honestly believe you are in no danger?" her mother asked incredulously.

Liza shook her head. "It is Conar who bears the burden of Tohre's hatred." Her gaze shifted away. "Or love, as that fiend knows it."

Medea's face flamed. She looked down at her folded hands. "Even though he is a man, and even though Conar does not return that…that…" Her face burned even brighter. "…love, as you call it, Tohre is a rival, daughter." She looked at her child. "Jealousy is a dangerous emotion when two people are fighting over the same loved one. That man could be a danger to you as well."

Liza shrugged. "I can take care of myself."

"As you did when Galen McGregor took you?" her mother asked softly.

"I made a mistake in underestimating my enemies, Mama. I shall not do so again. Tohre had a lock of my hair and I did not realize it. That particular threat has been neutralized. Have no fear,; I know who my enemy is and I know what he wants—my husband."

"Tohre will let nothing stand in his way, Anya. He is dangerous. If he can not have what he wants, he might destroy it entirely."

Liza stood. "You told me once that all little birds have to leave the nest and learn to fly on their own. You said it was difficult for the mother bird to watch them fall, harder still not to pick them up and help them back into the roost. You asked if I thought the little birds would ever learn to fly if the mother bird was always there to pick them up, to smooth their crumpled feathers." She touched her mother's cheek. "I have left the nest, Mama, and made a place of my own with Conar. When we fly, it must be together. If he falls, I will pick him up; if I fall, he will be there to put me back in our nest."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because Conar and I were destined to be together. I am the Keeper of the Wind; he is the Prince of the Wind. Our love is greater than all the adversity thrown our way. Nothing,
nothing
, will ever keep us apart! Not even the Maelstrom!"

Queen Medea lowered her gaze so her daughter would not see the knowledge of the future in her shining green orbs. Sometimes it was best if the child was spared the agony of what was to be, what could not be altered. Looking at her daughter, she sighed in defeat. What would be, would be.

"He will be released this evening," Medea sighed. "His men will be put on board the ship first so there will be no trouble and you may join him once he is on board." Her delicate shoulders sagged with helplessness. "I only wanted what was best for you."

"I know," Liza told her, bending to kiss the feather-soft flesh on her mother's cheek. "I thank you for that."

As she sat there after her daughter had gone, a sad, fleeting smile of hopelessness flitted over Medea's face. It was a heavy thing knowing the future, an even heavier thing to be able to do nothing about it. Sometimes she wished she had no such ability.

"We will protect her," a soothing wind whistled through the Queen's bedchamber.

Medea nodded. "So you have said."

"We will," came the soft reply. "Do you doubt me?"

The Queen flung a heavy strand of jet-black hair from her high forehead and glared into the room's dark shadows. "I find I doubt everything these days."

"Have your doubts, woman. They are of no consequence to me. I have given my word that Liza will be safe." A menacing tone crept into the words. "But you will not be!"

Tears filled the Queen's eyes. "I know," she whispered to the fleeting wind. "I know."

* * *

When his cell door opened and two guards entered to unlock his manacles, Conar chaffed his wrists and glared at Grice Wynth. The Prince Regent of Oceania stood in the cell opening and motioned him out.

"What now?" Conar asked, a surly expression on his unshaven face. He had been in the cell two days, had expected to be there longer, but there was something in the way Wynth stood that caught Conar's immediate attention. Something had happened. "Tell me."

"Your Elite have engaged some of my guards. There has been a death and they have taken hostages. They are demanding to see you." Grice's voice was tight with rage. "Papa wants you to speak with your men so there will be no further bloodshed."

Conar stumbled forward as one of his guards shoved him toward Grice.

"Stop!" Wynth shouted to his man.

But Conar didn't pay any attention to his indignities. Concern filled his face. "Are my men well?"

Grice looked away. "We were in the process of releasing them to take them to the ship, when your man, Sentian, attacked. He took charge and your other Elite followed him."

Conar grinned. "Good for Sentian."

Grice ignored the comment. "Our guards were only doing their duty. Blood should not have been shed. Your Elite are threatening to kill a hostage every half hour until you are brought to them." His face took on a hard edge. "Will they do it?"

Conar's grin faded. "They will."

"I want your word that there will be no more trouble, McGregor."

"We didn't start the trouble."

"A man died! Didn't you hear me?"

"And I tell you, you asked for such trouble when you slapped me and my men in your gods-be-damned dungeon. Sentian did his duty. You can not fault him for defending his Overlord."

The look his Grice gave Conar was one of pure disbelief. "Aye!" he snarled, "and a good man died because of Sentian Heil! Does that make you happy?"

"I am never happy when innocent lives are lost, Wynth; but you are responsible."

Grice Wynth was deeply upset that any lives had been lost. His guards weren't prepared for the sheer volume of violence Sentian Heil garnered as the last man was freed from his cell. Conar's guards had been docile up to that point, but upon hearing their Overlord had also been—and still was—incarcerated, the men had gone berserk.

Hard-pressed to keep themselves from being slain, astonished at the savagery with which the Serenians fought, Grice's men took flight. It was not until Grice had given his word—as Liza's brother—that no harm would befall Conar then the Elite backed off, taking five hostages as they waited for their commander to be released. Grice could only imagine what they would have done had they been told Conar was shackled to a stone wall, standing ankle-deep in shit.

Conar's grin returned, for he picked up on Grice's thoughts. "Aye, it's a
very
good thing," he warned and watched Wynth start with surprise. "I will give you my word they will not harm anyone else. All they want is to see me safe. Once that happens, they will be satisfied as long as none of them have been hurt."

"Your men weren't harmed," Grice said with clenched teeth. He walked away, expecting Conar to follow. He flinched when Conar put a light hand on his shoulder. "What?" came the snappish query.

"I am sorry, Grice. For the loss of your man."

A quick, grudging nod was the only answer Wynth could give. He walked as fast as he could down the darkened corridor to the holding area where Sentian and the others were keeping hostages.

Seeing the grim, dark circles under their Overlord's eyes did little to calm the Serenians. When Thom noticed the raw places on Conar's wrists and realized he had been shackled, he howled with rage and threw himself at Grice. He would have crippled the Oceanian if Conar had not stepped between them.

"No, Loure." He put a hand on Thom's thick chest. "There has been enough violence done."

"They chained you!" Marsh Edan spat, shoving the hostage closest to him against the wall. "They dared to chain you!"

"And they told us we are to leave, but they make no mention of our lady!" Sentian shouted. "We do not leave without her!"

Swallowing bitter bile in his throat at the reminder that Liza was being kept from him, Conar looked at Sentian Heil. He knew he had chosen wisely that day, long ago, when Sentian asked to join the troop leaving for Norus. He also knew Sentian was now his wife's Sentinel, her guardian, her helper in the magic she wielded.

The young village man had become a leader, it seemed, and it was obvious the others now looked to him for guidance. Conar felt a great deal of pride in Heil. It wouldn't surprise him if Heil was voted second in command of the Elite behind Thom, since that position changed yearly.

"See that our departure is made easy, my friend," Conar asked, laying a restraining hand on Sentian's shoulder.

"Does Her Grace travel back with us, Your Majesty?" Sentian inquired, asking what was obviously on the mind of every Elite.

Conar drew on every ounce of his strength to look his friend in the eye. He knew his men would view his answer as defeat; his face burnt with the humiliation. They were willing to fight for him, and even though circumstance forced him to deny them that right this day, he knew in his heart they would come back for his lady. "No, she does not, Sentian."

Grice could have told him differently, but he saw the looks passing between Conar's men and he folded his arms over his chest, curious as to what would happen next.

"If your lady does not leave these shores, Majesty, neither will we!" Storm Jale spoke up for all the men.

Smiling grimly at his friends' words, Conar drew a deep breath, his heart filling with pride. "I appreciate what you are willing to do, all of you, but I have given my word we will cause no further trouble."

"We didn't give
our
word!" Marsh shouted, his eyes blazing. "We will fight to the death, if need be. You have only to say the word, Commander."

"She's our Princess!" Thom snapped. "Our lady goes home with us!"