WindBeliever (40 page)

The slave trader squatted down beside him and grabbed a handful of Montyne’s thick blond hair. “How many women have you had, pretty boy?” the man asked in a low, sneering voice. His grip on Chase’s hair tightened. “A hundred? More?” He put his face close to Montyne’s. “And how many men have had you?”

He brought his hands up, his intention to wrap them around the slave trader’s neck and squeeze until there was no life left in the nomad, but the other two men lunged at him, grabbing him, holding him, keeping him from killing the man who even at that moment was untying the belt of his caftan.

“I think you need to know what it feels like to be forced,” the slave trader taunted.

“No.” Chase heard his own voice, weak, trembling, as afraid as he could ever remember hearing it. His eyes had gone wide in his face. His complexion had drained of all coloring. When the slave trader spoke, something terrible broke loose inside Chase Montyne and the Ionarian prince knew his fate had been sealed.

“Take him down.”

It had only been the slave trader at first. His ruthless thrusting had been bad enough, but WINDBELIEVER

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Chase had been able to endure it. After the man had gone, leaving him with only one guard to see that he did not escape, Chase had lain for over an hour on the floor before he could push himself up on trembling legs. His stomach had heaved and he had bent forward and thrown up.

Vomit had poured from him, gagging him, invading his nostrils where it clogged and burned and stung. The guard had snorted with contempt and stepped away from the sour smell that rose up in the hot warehouse.

He had hurt as he lay back down in a fetal position, curled in on himself, his arms wrapped around his knees. He was bleeding from his rectum, lying in the blood, and every movement brought fresh pain to his lacerated flesh.

And the pain brought back mind-shattering memories of his childhood in the Abbey high atop Mount Serenia.

A sound at the warehouse door made him look up and when he saw four men entering the warehouse with the slave trader, Chase Montyne had whimpered once and then gone as quiet as the tomb.

He had hissed at them, his teeth drawn back over his lips as he pressed himself tightly against the wall. But they had come after him. They had trapped him, the five of them, like a cornered animal and he had not been able to fight for long. They had overpowered him, dragging him down like a wounded stag, and he had gone under their pummeling fists with rapidly vanishing hope.

A part of him slipped quietly away then, leaving him to lie face down on the floor, his legs spread wide to accommodate the plunging evil that invaded him. There was no sound, no movement, not even the flicker of an eyelid to indicate he felt what was happening to him. He stared off into the far corner of the warehouse, his mind shut down, his unwavering gaze seeing something beyond the rafters and dark shadows.

And when they were finished with him, when the last caftan had been adjusted and he had been used so thoroughly he could not have moved if he had wanted to, they left him there on the floor, his hands tied behind his back, the loose end of the hemp crossing his left shoulder and wound once around his neck then looped back under his bound wrists to draw his arms up his back. Any movement of his body would have pulled taut the noose around his neck, cutting off the breath in his straining throat, strangling him, but Chase Montyne was incapable of movement. Or sound. Or thought.

“We’re doing this for you own good, blondie,” the slave trader had quipped. “Just so you won’t hurt yourself until we can sell your sweet little ass.”

“I might buy him, myself,” one of his attackers had joked.

He had been weakened from the drug that had rendered him unconscious at the inn in Basaraba, weakened further by the lack of food and drink and the ungodly heat which had burned him red on his forced march through the shifting sands of the Rysalian desert. Being subjected to such brutal punishment and humiliating treatment as he had received that morning, served to push him down deep into the darkness of his own mind.

The shame of what they had done to him hurt him so badly he wished he could die. The savagery of the attack, the sheer brutality of it, wounded him deeper than anything Tolkan had done to him in the Abbey. It pushed him backwards in time, made him revert to the little burrowing, cowering animal Tolkan had tried to make him.

It wasn’t until late that evening that someone came to release him from his bonds. The man had been kind, placing a cool cup of chilled water to his parched lips.

“Easy, son,” the man had whispered. “Take only a sip or two.”

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His wrists had been chafed raw, his shoulders a source of immediate and paralyzing pain when his arms had been lowered. He had made the only sound since being brutalized and that sound had been a whimper of fear mixed with agony.

“He won’t be touching you again, son,” his benefactor had assured him. “You have been purchased by the Lady Sabrina.”

Gentle hands had lifted Montyne to a sitting position and smoothed down his naked back.

“She’s a good mistress, a fair mistress. You are a lucky man for having caught her eye when Khan brought you here this morning.”

Chase had only partially heard the man’s soft voice. He had been asked no questions, had not been expected to speak. He had remained mute while a fresh white caftan was pulled over his nakedness and he was helped to stand. His grunt of pain had brought immediate concern and a look of sympathy from his benefactor.

“I am to take you to a physician,” the man had told him in an understanding voice. “Are you able to walk?”

Montyne had turned his head and stared at the man, the words meaning nothing to him.

“That’s all right,” the man had said. “I’ll help you.”

He had been walked from the warehouse, helped to a healer’s home where he had been told to lie down on a narrow cot. It was at that moment, viewing that cot and the threat it construed to him, that Chase Montyne came alive. A bleak, heartbreaking wail of inhuman despair rose up to instantly paralyze the man who had been sent to help him and the physician whose face had blanched white when the wavering scream pierced the air and his patient lurched away from them to slam himself against the wall.

“My god,” the physician whispered as the blond man slid down the wall and huddled against the floor, his face buried in his hands. “What did they do to him?”

Kharis El-Malik shook his head. “They raped him.”

Montyne crouched there like a cornered animal, his panting breath coming in harsh drags through his fright-labored lungs. His blue stare was unsettling, wild, filled with unholy terror and he was trembling so violently, his teeth were clicking together hard enough for the two men to hear. His arms were wrapped tightly around his legs and he rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, little whimpering sounds of dread coming through his throat in cadence to his movement.

“It’s going to be all right,” Kharis promised, moving slowly toward the frightened man. “No one is going to hurt you, son.” He held up his hands. “We will not allow it.”

“I will see to him.”

Kharis looked around and a slight frown marred his dark features. “He is not well, Sabrina.”

The tall black woman came forward, her smooth face as gentle as a child’s. There was compassion and concern in her big brown eyes and a slight hint of a smile on her full lips.

“He has gone to a better place in his mind, Kharis,” she answered.

“He is not stable,” the physician warned her. “He could be dangerous, Your Ladyship.”

The black woman shook her head. “No. He is no danger to anyone but himself.” Her eyes turned infinitely sorrowful. “Leave us, gentlemen,” she said softly, although her tone left no room for argument.

The physician bowed respectfully and left the room with only a brief, backward glance at his patient to indicate his worry. Kharis stayed only a moment longer and then nodded, trusting his mistress’ instincts.

The Lady Sabrina, her thick long black braids draping over her shoulders, walked to the WINDBELIEVER

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cowering man she had purchased for a goodly sum and swept back the bright, multi-colored skirt of her sari as she knelt down beside him.

“I am Sabrina,” she said gently, reaching out to put a light hand on Montyne’s arm. “And I will allow no one to harm you.”

A part of him looked out from the wide stare and saw a kind face, a gentle face, a face his heart told him meant him no harm. The hand on his arm was reassuring, almost motherly, and the fingers holding his flesh were caressing.

“Will you let me care for you?”

That part of him that was still functioning, that had not closed down, made him nod at her quiet request.

She put her arm around him. “Let me help you to stand.”

He came unsteadily to his feet, detached, unhindered by thought. He allowed her to seat him on the cot, to help him lie down. He closed his eyes when she smoothed his hair back from his forehead and eased her cool fingers down his flushed cheek. He shivered, some inner workings of his mind still trying to put up a fight at her touch.

“You have nothing to fear, sweet one,” she told him. “I will see to it.”

With her there beside him, he had not protested the brief examination that had turned into an easing of his physical pain. With her hand holding his, he had not minded the salve or the painful stitching that had brought tears and small moans which she shushed with her murmurs of reassurance.

Outside, a warm, sultry southeasterly wind pushed against the windows and a light rain began to fall.

Lady Sabrina smiled as she watched the fall of the water against the panes. She turned her warm gaze back to him, finding him staring up at her like a trusting child waiting for an adult to give him a hint of what he should do.

“Sleep, Sirocco,” she whispered to him, her hands gentle on his brow. She bent forward and placed her full lips against his. “My sweet wind.”

With her arms around him, he had finally slept, the strong drug they had given him melting his world and mellowing the awful memories of that morning.

“Run from me again and I will cripple you!” the keeper shouted at Storm Jale.

Storm went down under the heavy lash, his naked back stinging as the whip struck him again.

He rolled in the sand, flinging his arms up to protect his face as the rawhide lash came down once more with enough force to break open the flesh of his right forearm. He screamed with the pain of it and rolled again, burying his face in the hot desert sand.

“Get him up!”

He felt hands on him, dragging him up, dragging him to the uprights where he knew they would hang him still again. His wrists had not healed from the week before and as the hemp closed around his flesh, he howled in pain.

“You will be broken, Serenian!” the keeper told him. “I will personally see to it!”

Storm clenched his jaw, refusing to allow the groan of agony to erupt from him as his weight settled helplessly on his bound wrists.

“Conar endured it time and again,” he heard a voice inside his head whispering. “You can, too, Jale.”

But Storm wasn’t so sure anymore. His existence had become one long nightmare of agony which, compared to his internment in the Labyrinth, made the Domination’s hellhole seem like WINDBELIEVER

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paradise.

It was not only the back-breaking work that went on from sun up to sun down. Nor was it the lack of decent food and fresh water. He had endured those things in the Labyrinth. It wasn’t just the homesickness or the loneliness that was wearing him down. He had known that in the airless heat of those bluffs, as well.

What ate at Storm Jale the most, what bothered him and what he could not overcome, was the physical punishment that had become almost a daily occurrence for him.

“How did you stand it, Conar?” he wondered. “How did you manage to stay sane?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind he still called out to his hero, but he had long since given up any hope of Conar coming to his rescue. That was a dream, a wish, that he now knew would never come true. He was going to die in this godforsaken place, yoked to one of the massive stone blocks that were being piled atop one another as a tomb to one of the keeper’s masters.

And if he did not die soon, Storm realized, there would be nothing left of his mind to know when he did.

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The pain in his belly had been bad, but the hit had not been mortal. Had it been with one of his own weapons, he might well have died before he slammed into the water. As it was, he had fallen, striking his head against the hull of the ship as he tumbled and had plunged, unconscious, beneath the bubbling wake of the ship and drifted down, taking in water through his open mouth.

He had sank slowly, his arms flung out, fingers crooked. How far down he went, how much water he swallowed and breathed in, no one would ever know, but it was deep enough and large enough that it should have killed him.

Blood oozed out of his stomach wound, spreading like black satin through the murky water, sending out a scent that attracted the more ferocious denizens of the deep and set off a warning signal that brought another form of marine life to his rescue.

The hammerhead moved in with blinding speed, its dorsal fin twitching in expectation of tasting the strange life form sinking through its habitat. Glistening, sharp teeth were poised, ready to snatch at the alien thing before them. The oddly-shaped snout was pulled back, the massive jaw extending in preparation for the bite. There was only a matter of ten feet separating prey from predator when the hammerhead was struck broadside by the pointed nose of the dolphin, the sleek gray belly of the shark opening up as it caved in beneath the fierce hit.

Eyes watched the spectacle unfolding as the shark flipped over and over in the water, its entrails spilling out, the mushrooming flow of its blood emitting the same scent of enticement that Conar McGregor’s blood had sent out to gain the hammerhead’s attention.