WINDHEALER (42 page)

There was no smile on Occultus' face, no movement in his body. His breathing was deep, regular. His spine was perfectly straight. Looking at him, the men were reminded of a barbaric picture of lethal strength.

Occultus stared at the altar. His mind and his body were ready for the ceremony. He had fasted for three days, having nothing but purified water and unleavened bread upon arising that morn. His heart and soul had been ready for a long time for the ceremony. He had prayed long and hard in his chambers for many years and even more so during this day and long into the seemingly never-ending afternoon. He had wanted to leave nothing to chance where Conar was concerned. He wanted no problems, no unforeseen difficulties to mar the events of this night.

Sitting on his prayer mat, waiting for the entrance of the man who would set things right for them all, the sorcerer felt an unease he could not name. Some alien power flowed through the room. He had a strong suspicion Conar had gone beyond what he, himself, had taught him, what anyone had taught him, had ventured into a realm where Occultus would never be able to follow. His vague misgivings sent a trickle of fear down his spine, yet he could not say he was overly troubled by the feelings. He trusted his God to deliver them from the Domination and whatever the Great One decided, Occultus would accept.

Yet, it was the unknown that had always frightened him. If what he suspected was true, the young man who would this night undergo the transformation to a new destiny, that of Overlord of the Wind, would, indeed, become a force that no man could stand against.

His dark thoughts went back to the previous night. He ground his teeth, clenched his fists so that his nails dug into his scarred palms.

He should have known the trouble was coming, but his mind had been on the ceremony, his heart and soul involved in fasting and prayers. He had been prepared for what he thought might happen; it had been the unknown quantity that had caused the evil. It had started during the evening meal, the last meal Conar would ever eat.

Conar sat between his aunt and Raja DeLyle at the long table in the formal dining hall of the palace. His uncle sat at the head of the table, Conar at its end, facing the Emperor. The young man seemed nervous, expectant, for the next night would see him at the end of his long journey. He didn't appear hungry, but his aunt, the Empress, had enticed him with fruit and wine.

Occultus watched as Raja whispered something in Conar's ear. He leaned as far away from her as space and politeness would allow. Raja looked furious, and flounced up from the table, pausing only long enough to throw a hard look at Conar before storming out of the room.

"Must have been something I said," Conar quipped, making the others laugh.

Across the table, two sets of pale blue eyes met. Occultus lifted an inquiring brow. Conar shrugged, an annoyed frown on his handsome mouth. He shook his head as if to say it was of no importance. Turning his attention to his aunt, he raised his goblet to the Empress' beauty.

Unhappy, Occultus sat back in his chair, a mild unease nagging at him. He argued most of the day with Conar, trying to dissuade him from taking Se Huan with him when he left for Serenia, but Conar had been adamant. The nightmares still rode him hard and he said he needed the girl's nearness to chase away the demons. Occultus reluctantly agreed to Se Huan's departure.

Raja had tried unsuccessfully over the last year to entice Conar to make love to her. Her single-minded pursuit had become a matter of court gossip and humor. The more she chased him, the less likely it appeared he would surrender. He avoided her like the plague and even had guards stationed outside his quarters. Her bad temper over the last two months had calmed somewhat and she seemed to back off; but Occultus wondered. Raja DeLyle was not a woman to give up easily.

Occultus tugged at the sleeve of his personal servant and spoke in a low whisper. "Have a warm, scented bath prepared for His Grace. I want him in bed earlier than usual."

Overhearing the comment, Jah-Ma-El looked up. "Do you think he will go willingly to bed early, Master? He seems nervous and jittery."

"He will need his strength for the ceremony tomorrow night. Make his elixir stronger. Put a few drops of laudanum in it. I want no nightmares to interrupt his sleep."

Jah-Ma-El bowed and walked to Conar's side. "Occultus wants you to retire, now. He's having a bath prepared for you. You will receive the elixir tonight." He smiled at Conar's grimace.

After only a token argument, Conar nodded. He was tired and the prospect of a warm bath made him sleepy. He was sure even the vile elixir wouldn't be so bad after all the wine he had consumed. Besides, the elixir sedated him and held the nightmares at bay.

He bowed to his uncle and to Occultus, kissed his aunt good-eve, then left the hall amid a chorus of jeers and good-natured insults. Conar smiled to his men as he passed, and when he was sure neither his aunt nor Kym Taborn could see him, he raised his middle finger to the men in salute, grinning widely at their guffaws.

"Promises, promises!" Pearl called, and the laughter escalated.

It was usually Jah-Ma-El's duty to bring Conar the elixir, but on this night, having consumed more mead than normal, he was happy to give Se Huan the task. He trusted the girl, so it was only a small breach of security when Jah-Ma-El handed the goblet to her and trundled off to bed.

Two masked men grabbed Se Huan on her way to Conar's room. Held, kicking and clawing at her abductors, she was carried into a rarely used bedchamber. The next morning, a maid found her. Her neck had been broken, her tiny body brutally abused and battered.

"Conar was in his bath when Se Huan met her horrible death. He heard nothing," Roget informed Occultus and Tran. "He is grieving terribly."

"I'm sure he does not understand why he felt nothing of the pain the young woman endured," Occultus said. "The two had become close, finely attuned to one another. Their special bond had been strong and secure. Now, he feels he is once more alone."

"The bitch had a hand in this," Brelan snapped.

"And I should have sensed what was coming." Occultus shook his head. "But it was not the gods' will that I know."

"What happened afterward?" Tran inquired.

"Raja's henchmen gave her the elixir. She took it to Conar's chamber. He was displeased to see her and asked why Jah-Ma-El was not there. The bitch probably had a good excuse prepared."

"He told me she sat on the floor beside his tub," Roget put in, "staring at the juncture of his thighs. Rather than arousing him, her gesture repelled him. He asked her to leave, but she refused, telling him she would be spending the night."

"He said no," Brelan added. "Her outbursts all week long had been a culmination of three months worth of pawing at him and meaningful looks that had set his teeth on edge. He was growing tired of it and was planning to ask Uncle Tran to expel her from court. She began to argue, so he snatched the goblet and drained it to be rid of her. He says he remembers the taste was like rancid milk, much worse than usual."

"That was the tenerse she added," Occultus said through clenched teeth.

"She said it was laudanum, but he knew that taste," Roget remarked. "Conar says he was so angry, he did not suspect anything when she plunged the goblet into his bath water, dredging the last remaining liquid from the sides. He says she laughed, then tossed the goblet into the fireplace."

"Getting rid of the evidence," Tran stated.

"The effects of what she gave him were almost instaneous," Brelan said. "When he went to get out of the tub he said his head felt heavy and his vision swirled with pinpoints of bright light. He says his knees were wobbly when he finally managed to lever himself up. He was so disoriented, he couldn't even put on his robe so he staggered to bed and fell across it."

"He didn't hear her throwing the bolt on the door lock," Roget continued the tale.

"And then?" Tran asked.

"He would not say," Brelan answered.

Occultus nodded. "The Emperor and I will speak to him and decide what must be done to the witch."

Brelan and Roget bowed to the two men and left. Ten minutes later, Conar was admitted to the royal chamber. The prince's eyes blazed with fury, his hands unclenching and clenching at his sides. A hard look had turned his handsome face to stone.

"Well, Conar," Tran said, "tell us."

"I felt the first flickering of passion winding through my belly. I felt my manhood stir; it came alive. A raging lust raced through my lower body. I groaned with the intensity of the feeling my fingers caused as I stroked myself." Conar lowered his head, hot shame flooding his face.

"Take your time, son," the Emperor said.

"I felt her hand on my thigh. I raised my head; it was throbbing so badly and spinning so violently I could hardly move. But I managed to see a body hovering beside me."

"Who did you see?" Occultus asked quietly.

"I couldn't see the face clearly at first. All I saw was long, flowing black hair and green eyes peering at me out of the darkness. The sharp scent of lavender filled my senses and made me ache with need. I reached out for the woman kneeling over me, pulled her beneath me. When her face was lit by the candle on my table, I looked into a face so lovely and so sensual I wanted to cry."

He buried his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked up, guilt ravaged his face. His voice was devoid of life, analytical, as though he were speaking to a classroom of students. His eyes were dark with remembered pain and self-loathing.

"I pulled the woman beneath me and buried myself deeply within her. She curled her legs around my hips and molded her body to mine. I called her name over and over again as I spent my seed inside her warm cavern. I reveled in the feel of her, took joy in the pleasure of her slender arms gripping me tightly, thrilled to the release that ripped through me and set my body to trembling.

"No sooner was my seed released than another wave of desire tore through me and I wanted—I needed—I
had
to have her again. I felt I would explode if I didn't get inside her quickly."

Occultus looked into his mind and saw the images Conar was seeing through his closed lids. He could hear the same sounds Conar had heard, could smell the same lavender and the stench of passion-filled bodies.

Conar brutally gripped her buttocks and plunged deep, hard, pummeling her with his body. Moans of frustration, passion, and lust had come from him in cadence with his animalistic, furious thrusts. He spent himself once more to the sound of a woman's laughter. Two, three, four more times during the night he rode her body into sweating, slick subservience. He clawed at her, bruised her waiting lips with his own, squeezed and kneaded her breasts as though they were clay. He bit and sucked at her nipples until they bled. By morning, her vagina was red and bloody, his penis, the same, but while he had been taking her, he had felt nothing but the aching, itching lust that ripped through him. The fulfillment of many years of deprivation was his only intent.

"It wasn't until the first rays of light began drifting through the room that I was able to see her clearly for the first time." There was such overriding shame in the words, such hopelessness, that Tran walked to his nephew.

"You don't have to say anymore if you don't want to," the Emperor whispered.

Conar moved away from his uncle's nearness. "I didn't see long black hair; I saw blond. I didn't see pretty green eyes; I saw cold, calculating blue eyes filled with the unholy light of satisfied lust. There was no warm and lovely face staring back at me; it was a vengeful face glowing with triumph. Gone was the sweet smell of lavender; all I smelled was the cloying odor of spent semen."

Conar looked at Occultus. The sorcerer nodded, understanding the silent question.

"The nightmare has been laid to rest," Occultus said quietly. Aye, the sorcerer thought with fury, the nightmare had been laid to rest with the thrust of Conar's manhood into the body of that whoring bitch! But laid to rest in the wrong body.

"I shoved her away and managed to get off the bed. I stumbled to the door and threw the bolt, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of that room, away from her smell."

"Jah-Ma-El and Roget were outside the room," Tran stated.

Conar nodded. "They had heard me yelling." Tears slid slowly down the prince's pale cheeks. "I told them to get her out my room before I killed her! They started pulling her from the room. I told them to cover the slut's body with the bed sheet, to get her nakedness out of my sight."

"They brought her to us," Occultus informed Conar.

"You will need to confront her," the Emperor said. "Here, before us."

Conar paid scant attention as guards filed into the room with Raja.

Raja laughed. "Can you not look at me?"

"Shut up, bitch," Brelan snarled.

"You did not mind looking at me last eve, did you, Milord? You didn't mind dragging your hands over my curves or slobbering over its roundness with your lips." Her laughter was wild and high. "Or thrusting into me with—"

"
Shut up!"
Brelan yelled, taking a step forward as though to hit her.

"Oh, the brave man you are, Brelan Saur!" she shouted. "Conar's keeper?" She turned to Conar. "Do you really think she has been faithful to you?"

"Silence!" Tran shouted.

"She betrayed you. Many times. Ask Saur! Ask him how many times she betrayed you with him, Conar, before you feel guilt over fucking me!"

"
Be quiet, slut!"
Occultus raised his hand to slap her.

Conar grasped Occultus' fist with his own strong hand. "Let her speak."

Raja turned her hateful gaze to Occultus, her lips stretched into a fine, evil line. "You fear him, don't you, Occultus? He has more power than you will ever have!"

"You'd better fear him, whore!" Occultus said. "You are the one who will know his fury if you don't keep your lying mouth shut!"

"The truth won't hurt me! Only him!"

"For once in your life do something good!" Roget demanded of her.

"It is the five of you who are doing him harm; not me! I haven't lied about his precious lady! It wasn't me who hid from him the extent of his bride's unfaithfulness!"

"Explain!" Conar's sharp word was a burst of condemnation.

Raja lifted her chin. "There have been three since you." She smiled as he stiffened. "Men all known to you."

"Who?"

"Conar…" Brelan stopped when Conar turned hard, accusing eyes on him.

Raja laughed. "He doesn't want you to know, my Prince. None of them want you to know about the men who have lain with Elizabeth Wynth!"

Tired of the game, intent at getting the truth, Conar closed his fingers around a handful of her hair. Dragging back her head sharply, he snarled into her face. "
Who?"

"Three of your closest acquaintances," she gasped, pain filling her suddenly fearful eyes. "Your brothers. She has children by all three!"

Conar's face turned white. He jerked his hand away as though he'd been struck by a viper. "You are
lying!"

"Why should I lie? I have what I came for. Why should I care how much or how often your precious Liza has sinned?" She taunted him with her red lips. Her eyes swept the room. "Ask them what three brothers of yours have plunged themselves between her lying thighs!"

"Get her out of here before I kill her!" the Emperor snarled.

Conar stepped away from her for fear he would do her actual harm, as well.

"Galen was her first. You knew about him, didn't you? I think she waited all of two weeks before she married him. But she was already impregnated with his child. She must have lain with him before you were even lashed to the whipping post. She had a second child by him, too. Two sons. Galen proved he was very much a man, indeed!"

Conar reached for her, but she scrambled from the chair, putting as much distance between them as the room would allow.

"She's a whore, Conar! A faithless whore!"

"I'll kill you," he growled.

"Best to kill her lover, the father of her third child, her daughter. He's the only one she hasn't been legally wed to. Galen was barely in his grave when she let him slip between her thighs. Ask Brelan Saur if his daughter looks like him or his precious mistress, Elizabeth!"

"Damn you!" Brelan shouted.

Conar turned to stare at Brelan, shock on his face.

"Then there's her third husband, the man she is married to now," Raja hurried on, watching Conar closely as he stood rigid and silent not more than two feet from her. "She has a son by him. I hear she's pregnant again. Galen made her Queen when he married her and she is still Queen. Ask them who sits the throne beside her now!"

Conar shook his head as though to clear it of her words.

"Legion A'Lex! It is
he
who thrusts between her whoring legs. And she loves him for it!"

Conar lunged, his hands winding around her slender throat. "
Bitch! You're lying!"

"True!" she gasped, digging at his fingers, raking her nails over his flesh. "All true."

His thumbs bit into her windpipe.

"Get her away from him before he kills her!" Tran shouted.

Roget and Brelan tore Conar from her. Conar was beyond caring as he jerked away from them. He rounded on Brelan. "
Tell me she's lying!"

"No lie!" Raja croaked, holding her throat. "Tell him, Saur!"

Brelan glared. "You've done your dirt and you
will
pay for it, you whoring bitch!"

"You're afraid to tell him the truth, aren't you?" Her eyes raked the room as her hands had raked Conar's now-bleeding flesh. "Cowards! You fear what he will do if he knows the truth!"

Conar looked at the men. Roget could not meet his look; Brelan's face was pained, angry, filled with shame. Occultus' face was blank, carefully so, and Tran's was worried. It was at that one lost moment that Conar knew what the witch had said was true. He looked at Brelan.

"Let me explain," Saur tried to say.

Conar shook his head, not wanting to hear explanations. He looked so vulnerable, his eyes sad and fragile as though the answers to his questions might tear him into a million irretrievable pieces. "Is it true?" His voice was as soft as fog.

Even before he asked, even before Brelan looked into his eyes, even before the actual word was spoken, Conar knew.

One word. One horrible word. "Aye."

That was all it took to change Conar's life forever. To alter what could have been and what now would never be. Not Raja's immediate death sentence nor her final words as she was dragged away would alter what happened that fateful morning.

"I have always wanted you, Conar!" she screamed. "I have your babe already seeded within my womb! Will you let them slay the mother of your child?"

Occultus probed her with his senses and found she was, indeed, implanted with Conar's seed. "Shall we spare her life?"

Conar looked at her with hate, hate as cold as the ice on the zenith of Mount Serenia. He gave one word. One quick and decisive word. "No."

* * *

The Empress found him later that morning in the portrait room. They had been searching for him for hours. She looked over the devastation and frowned. To destroy such beauty was a sacrilege, but she understood her nephew's pain. She sat beside him on the floor where he knelt, staring moodily at the destruction he had wrought.

"Are you finished?" she asked. "Is the rage gone?" She calmly took the dagger from his clutched fist. She looked at it and shivered. It was a deadly weapon, two-edged, sharp as sin and twice as lethal.

"That's a dangerous weapon, Aunt Dy. Be careful."

She tucked it in the pocket of her gown, then folded her hands in her lap. "A woman's tongue can be a dangerous weapon, too. It can cut deeper than any blade and be twice as deadly. The only difference between a cut this dagger can give and the one Raja slipped into your heart is that her cut isn't mortal."

"It might as well have been." He drew up his legs and circled them in the protection of his arms. He laid his head on his knees, shutting out the room.

"I am sorry, Conar." She really didn't know what else to say.

"You knew all along what Liza had done. You all did."

"Yes, and several times Brelan tried to tell you, but you didn't want to hear. But I think you suspected something was wrong, else you would have questioned someone about her."

"I never dreamed she would have betrayed me as she has."

Dyreil turned from the cold, repressed anger she saw. Instead, she looked at Elizabeth McGregor's ravaged painting. He had repeatedly slashed the lovely, smiling face. Only the marriage band on her left arm was visibly untouched by his fury. "She believed you dead, son."

"I am dead."

"You are very much alive." She placed her slim fingers on his thigh. "Only a man so alive could feel the hurt you are now experiencing."

She could tell he was trying not to cry, refusing himself the luxury of crying. His teeth were tightly clenched, his breathing slow and even, despite his coiled fury. Dyreil removed her hand.

"I want you to listen carefully, Conar. Don't interrupt. Let me have my say, and when I am through, you may rant and rave all you wish. You may ignore me if that is your desire, but give me the courtesy of your attention because I am your aunt."

He nodded.

"At this moment," she began, sitting up straight as an arrow, her spine taut, "you are angry. Furious, and that is well within your rights. You feel Liza betrayed you, that Legion and Brelan betrayed you, as well."

"They did."

She sighed. It was best he get this out of his system first. "In what way, child?"

"You have to ask?" His voice was tight with surprise. "They let her marry Galen! I never would have thought they'd let such a thing come to pass!"

"If memory serves me correctly, Galen said you asked him to take Liza to wife."

He flinched. "I didn't
ask
the bastard;
I begged
the bastard! And do you know why?" He looked at her. "I was being tortured! Kaileel Tohre threatened Liza's life! I had no choice but to beg Galen to take her!"

"I understand your reasoning. But you thought Legion and Brelan would prevent that."

"I thought they would take care of her, Aunt Dy! I thought they would see that no harm came to my lady!" His eyes filled with tears, but he swiped angrily at the telltale moisture. "But Legion A'Lex took care of her in his own way, didn't he?"