WindBeliever (26 page)

Prince Sajin Ben-Alkazar sighed and sat back down on the bed. He looked at Conar. “I don’t think either of us will be vying for Cat’s hand this weekend.”

A fatalistic shrug was the only answer Conar could give.

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 121

“I don’t know why Catherine told such a lie,” Peter said, shaking his head. “I haven’t even sent off the other invitations, yet.”

“We’ve made them out, but they haven’t been posted,” Mikel affirmed.

“Why, that little ...,” Sajin began.

“She needs her fat ass turned over someone’s knee and his ....”

“Hand applied vigorously,” Sajin concluded.

“Aye!” Conar punctuated.

Peter glanced at Mikel. “Who’s going to be the one to try something like that?” he asked.

Conar frowned. Sajin scowled.

“I didn’t think so,” Peter laughed.

“They can be up at the end of the week if they continue to improve,” the physician announced. “No tourneys until at least the middle of next month. Longer if His Grace’s ribs haven’t mended.” He snapped his bag shut and walked to the door, then stopped and looked around. “Do you feel hot, Your Grace?” he asked Conar.

Everyone looked at the Serenian.

“Why?” There was a strange look on McGregor’s bruised face.

Doctor Talebov shrugged. “You just seemed a little too warm to me.”

Sajin watched as the Serenian seemed to withdraw, his sapphire eyes darting away to hide the flare of knowledge the man obviously wanted kept hidden.

“I’m fine,” was the quick reply.

But Sajin Ben-Alkazar knew the man was lying and he would have bet his last Ryal of gold that lying didn’t set well with Conar McGregor.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 122

Yuri walked with Doctor Talebov as the elderly physician headed back to the Palace. “He has a fever, doesn’t he?” Andreanova asked, his face set in heavy lines of worry.

“It would appear he does,” the physician answered. He glanced at Yuri. “Is there something I should know about him?”

The Outer Kingdom warrior looked back at the infirmary hut and nodded. “He has what the Serenian’s call Labyrinthian Fever. There is nothing he can be given that will help when he has an attack.”

The physician stopped walking. “Labyrinthian Fever?”

“Yes,” Yuri said. “He becomes very ill with it. It lasts several days. Sometimes over a week.”

Doctor Talebov’s forehead crinkled. “Tell me how it effects him.”

“He has the fever, of course. Very high. Sometimes he’s so hot you’d think just touching him would burn your flesh. And chills, very bad chills. He hallucinates and often goes into convulsions ....”

“Headache, profuse sweating, talking out of his head?” the physician asked.

“Yes!” Yuri agreed. “Have you treated it before?”

“Not here, I haven’t,” the physician replied. “But when I lived in the Northern climes, I saw such symptoms in malaria patients.”

“Malaria!” Yuri breathed, slapping his forehead. He looked furious with himself. “Why did I not think of the similarities before?”

“You say the Serenian’s had no treatment for the fever?”

Yuri shook his head. “No, but if I thought to connect Labyrinthian Fever with malaria ....”

He shuddered. “When I think of all the needless suffering my stupidity has caused him ....”

“If it is, indeed, malaria he has contracted, then he will always have bouts with the disease. It is caused by parasites in his bloodstream and the parasites can not be destroyed for they breed inside him.”

“But there is a remedy to relieve his suffering?” Yuri asked.

“Quinine,” Doctor Talebov answered. “Go to my house and tell my wife I need the jar marked cinchona bark.”

“I have not heard of such a tree.”

The physician shook his head. “We do not have the cinchona shrub in the Outer Kingdom. I have it sent to me from an Inner Kingdom province.” He pushed out at Yuri’s shoulder. “Go, Andreanova. If the young Outlander is about to have another bout with this fever, I will need plenty of quinine on hand.”

“Do you have a headache?” Sajin asked.

Conar looked over at the Kensetti. “Why?”

“Your face is all screwed up and you look like you’re gonna puke,” was the jovial reply in mimic of Conar’s words to the nomad earlier that week.

“Leave me alone, Ben-Alkazar.”

“Oh, ho! You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, can you?” Sajin chuckled.

“It’s not a migraine.”

Sajin noticed the Serenian’s complexion. “You’re face is flushed,” he said in a sober tone.

“Are you ill?”

“Just get your clothes on and go!” came the demand. He glared at the man. “Can you do that WINDBELIEVER

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without annoying the hell out of someone?”

The nomad watched as McGregor’s teeth clicked together. “Chills?”

“Go away, damn you!” Conar shouted at the man, pressing his lips together to stop his teeth from chattering. He pulled his covers up to his chin.

“You are ill,” Sajin stated, walking over to Conar’s cot. “You want me to go get the doctor.”

“I want you to leave me alone!”

“Not a chance in hell,” Ben-Alkazar’s replied. He walked back to his bed and swiped up his shirt from the floor. He turned, pointed a rigid finger at Conar. “Keep your ass in that bed until I get back.”

“Kiss my ass!” Conar snarled.

“Turn it up here and I’ll take a bite out of it,” Sajin responded.

“In your dreams,” Conar replied nastily.

Sajin hurried from the hut, his face set in a heavy grimace of concern. He had been surreptitiously watching the Serenian Prince all morning. The man kept his coverlet tight around his neck, but his face was not only flushed but glistening with sweat.

“Fever,” the nomad whispered and shivered.

He was all too familiar with the word.

They carried him on a stretcher to his room where he could be constantly looked after by the servants. He was stripped, bathed, a fresh nightshirt pulled over his shivering, shuddering body.

His febrile gaze had slid over those helping him, not recognizing them, not understanding what they were trying to do. Now and again he would call out a name no one understood, no one knew, and they would shush him, wipe his fevered brow with a cool, wet cloth.

“Meggie!” he called time and time again, but the servants only looked at one another with concern.

He was trying desperately to cling to consciousness, striving to swim up through the blackness surrounding him. He didn’t know these people. He didn’t know where he was. He was afraid. He was lost and he needed something to hold on to.

“Conar?”

He struggled to keep his eyelids open.

“You’ll be all right, milord.”

Someone took his hand in theirs. The flesh was soft and smooth and cool.

“Meggie?”

A gentle hand smoothed the damp hair back from his forehead. “No, milord. It’s Catherine.”

He peered up at her. “Liza?”

Catherine shook her head. The servants told her of the strange names he called during the night. The man had been delirious for most of the day and now his nightshirt had to be changed nearly every hour.

“It’s Catherine, Conar.” She squeezed his hand. “Catherine Steffenovitch.”

She watched as a flash of agony, of regret, of terrible, terrible grief entered his face. His dark eyes glazed with unspeakable torment before the heavy sweep of his golden lashes covered them.

“Not my lady. Not her.”

“Your

Grace?”

Catherine turned to find Doctor Talebov behind her. In his hand he carried a tumbler. “The quinine?” she asked. At his nod, she asked if he needed her to help hold the Serenian’s head up for him to drink.

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“I would most assuredly appreciate it. The sooner I get this brew into his system, the faster the fever will leave him.”

She stood up from the chair beside Conar’s bed and bent over him, lifted his head, alarmed at how hot the flesh at the nape of his neck was.

“You must drink this, milord,” the physician insisted as he brought the rim of the tumbler to the parched lips of the Serenian.

“I don’t ....” he whispered, fearing these people were trying to poison him.

“It’s for your own good, milord.”

He tried to shake his head, found he couldn’t. He had no strength to keep the tumbler from his mouth or the bitter vetch which entered it from seeping down his throat.

“God!” he gasped, gagging at the horrible taste. He coughed, feeling the bitter taste go up his nose. He gagged again, found the cool edge of a basin at his chin.

“Try not to vomit, Your Grace,” he heard a man telling him. “We must get this medicine in you before you can get better.”

“No cure,” he tried to tell them. No cure for the Labyrinthian fever that had claimed him too many times to count.

“You will stay with him?”

Catherine nodded. “The servants are taking a rest. They have been with him all day.”

Doctor Talebov hesitated. At his Tzarevna’s curious look, he shrugged helplessly. “He will have to be bathed down in a little while, Highness. His nightshirt will need changing.”

Catherine

blushed.

Doctor Talebov smiled and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Andreanova will do it.”

She shook her head. “He’s been with Conar most of the day, as well. The man needs rest, too.”

“I’ll do it.”

Catherine looked past the doctor and found Sybelle Bath-Alkazar standing in the doorway.

“I have bathed my brother many times when he has been ill,” the Kensetti Princess explained. “I bathed my husband until the day he died.”

The physician let out a relieved breath. “Good. Then, I will leave him in your capable hands.”

“You need not stay,” Sybelle told Catherine.

For a reason she did not understand, Catherine did not want to leave the Kensetti woman alone in the room with Conar. She shook her head.

“I will help you.”

Sybelle shrugged. “As you wish.” She moved to the bed and stood with her hands clasped until the doctor had left. Her gaze as she stared down at the ill man was hard to fathom.

“What can I do?” Catherine asked, drawing the woman’s attention.

Sajin’s sister flung out a hand. “Can you hold him while I pull the nightshirt from him?”

“I can try.”

Catherine sat down on the bed and between the two of them, they lifted the semi-conscious man to a sitting position. Her nose wrinkling with distaste at the sour smell of Conar’s sweat, Catherine let his head drop to her shoulder as Sybelle dragged on the soaking nightshirt and began to pull it up his chest.

“My brother is very taken by you,” Sybelle admitted as she tugged hard to get the nightshirt from under Conar’s rump. “He would make you a fine husband.”

Catherine frowned. “I’m not ready for marriage.”

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Page 125

There was a lilting peel of laughter from the Kensetti princess. “I know how you feel. I married young and have no desire to ever be at a man’s whim again.”

The nightshirt came up over Conar’s hips and Sybelle reached down to take his limp left arm up to push through the sleeve.

“How long were you married?” Catherine asked, helping Sybelle to maneuver the shirt sleeve off.

“Too long, I would not do it again for any man.” She bent over the bed and began to drag Conar’s other hand back through the right sleeve. “I have yet to find one I consider worthy.”

“Your brother seems to be a fine man,” Catherine said, more in an attempt to take the fierce frown off the other woman’s face than to make conversation.

“Sajin is ....”

Sybelle’s dark eyes widened and her lovely mouth parted as she flung herself back, away from the man who was limply leaning against the Outer Kingdom woman’s shoulder. One trembling hand came up to cover her mouth as a sickened groan escaped her trembling lips.

Catherine stared up at her, surprised to see the woman’s dark gaze misting. “What is it?” she asked.

The Kensetti Princess stared down at the ravaged flesh of Conar McGregor’s back and groaned again, knowing firsthand the agony that must have caused such horrible scarring. She slid down the wall behind her and buried her face in her hands.

“Sybelle?”

Catherine

questioned.

“Lay him down!” the other woman cried, not looking up. “For the love of the Prophetess, lay him down!”

It was difficult to return the sagging body of Conar McGregor to the bed and Catherine grunted with the effort. Her blouse was soaked with the man’s sweat and he had drooled on her shoulder. She bent down to pick up his hand, which fell off the edge of the bed and returned it to the mattress beside him before she turned her attention to the woman kneeling on the floor.

“What’s

wrong?”

Sybelle shook her head. “He’s a sorcerer,” she mumbled. “He knows things he should not. I should feel no pity for him.”

Catherine stared at the woman. What the hell was she talking about? Sorcerer? Who?

The Kensetti princess lowered her hands and stared up at the sweating profile of the Outlander. She seemed to shudder, to take hold of herself, and then she pushed her back up the wall and stepped away, her attention still on Conar.

“Sajin must be told,” she whispered, dragging her gaze from the unconscious man to Catherine. “He needs to be told.”

“Told what?” Catherine asked, thinking the woman’s face far too pale and far too upset. She reached out to her to help.

“No,” Sybelle barked, backing away. “Stay with him until I can find Sajin. He must not be left alone.”

Stunned as the woman practically ran out of the room, Catherine could only wonder what had unsettled the Kensetti so badly.

“Meggie?”

Catherine looked down and found the hot stare of McGregor’s eyes boring into her. “What, milord?” she asked.

If humoring him would help, she would. “I am here. What do you need?”