WindDeceiver (31 page)

he asked.

The woman’s left brow crooked in amusement. “Hardly, milord,” she answered in a droll tone. She took up the bowl and spoon. “This is oxtail soup. Very nourishing.”

And very good, he thought as she fed him. Alternating the soup with bites of the crisp salad and buttered bread, she didn’t speak until he had finished the soup.

“If you have to relieve yourself, I can attend to that while I am here.”

Conar stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

Her lips twitched. “I have a husband and two sons, milord. There have been occasions when they were ill that I tended to their needs.”

He was thankful there was little light in the cell for he could feel his face burning. He mumbled something she asked him to repeat and then shook his head. “No thank you.”

She shrugged. “No one will come back here until morning, milord, and it is only half-past seven. If you have to go, is it not best to go in the pot rather than in your breeches?”

Her blunt words shocked him and he stared at her, not knowing what to say. She stabbed the last of the greens on his fork and then put them in his mouth, making the decision for him. She told him she would help him with his bodily needs and that was all there was to it.

“Have my friends been fed?” he asked her as she took the tray out into the corridor.

“I would imagine so, milord, although they are seen to by the guards.”

“Are you allowed where they are being kept?” he asked, hope in his eyes.

She turned at the door and looked back at him. “Is there a reason you ask?”

He nodded. “I haven’t been allowed to see them and my eldest son is among them. I would like to send a message, to let them know I’m all right.”

“They know you are being seen to, milord,” she answered, setting the tray down and taking up the white chamber pot.

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He flinched seeing that degrading appliance in her hand. Embarrassment flooded his face once more as she matter-of-factly knelt between his outstretched legs and bent forward to unbutton his breeches.

“What would you like me to tell them, milord?’ she asked as her cool, soft hands closed around him.

As ashamed as he was to let this strange woman touch him, he knew he had no choice for his bladder had been throbbing with need for quite some time. But still he found it difficult to piss.

“Milord?” she prompted. She was not looking up at his face, realizing how uncomfortable he was. Nor was she looking at his manhood as she held it. Rather her attention was on the far wall.

“Are they all right or do you know?” he asked.

“They have been treated well, I believe.”

He felt his urine start and winced as the hollow sound of it streaming into the tin pot seemed to be loud enough to wake the dead. He sighed as his bladder began to empty.

“Will you tell them I am sorry?” he beseeched her.

She turned to looked at him. “Sorry for what, milord?”

Conar’s face creased with guilt. “For being the cause of them being here.”

The woman nodded, then put the chamber pot aside. She readjusted his breeches and stood up, stooping to take away the chamber pot. “I will tell them, milord.”

He watched her as she walked to the door. He hated to have her leave for he had been alone in that dark world for hours. He hoped to forestall her for a few moments more.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Celene, milord,” she told him. She put the chamber pot outside the cell door, then reached for the heavy wrought iron ring to close it.

“Celene?” he asked. When she looked at him, he tried to smile. “Will you also tell them I ask them to forgive me for bringing them to this sorry pass?” When she agreed she would, he forced the smile to his lips. “Thank you, Celene.”

The woman nodded and pulled the door closed behind her, shutting him away once more with his loneliness and his fear.

Rylan Hesar nudged Tyne Brell with his foot. “Company,” he whispered.

Brell lifted his head and looked through the bars of their cell to see a young woman standing there, watching them.

“I have a message to you,” she said quietly, “from your Overlord.”

Tyne looked at Rylan and then the two men stood up, going to the bars. “Conar?” Brell asked. “They really have him, too?”

Celene nodded. “He was brought in just after dawn this morning.”

“Is he all right?” Rylan asked. “Have they hurt him?”

“His Grace will not hurt Prince Conar,” Celene answered. “He wants your Overlord alive and well in order to exact his revenge.”

“Revenge for what?” Tyne exploded. “None of this makes any sense!”

The woman looked sorrowfully at them. “Prince Conar asked that I deliver his message to you. I need to find the others brought in with you, especially his son. I would answer your questions if I could, milord, but there is not time.”

“What did he send you to say?” Rylan inquired.

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Celene exhaled a long, pitying breath. “That he is sorry and he asks your forgiveness for being the cause of your capture.”

“Stupid fool,” Tyne hissed, pushing way from the bars. He stomped back to his corner of the cell and slid down the wall where once more he buried his face in his arms.

“Can you get word back to him, Mam’selle?” Rylan asked.

“I will be feeding him tomorrow eve,” she answered.

“Good,” Rylan sighed. “Will you tell that poggleheaded idiot that we are grown men and quite capable of getting ourselves into trouble without his assistance?”

Celene put her hand over Rylan’s on the bar. “The Wind be at your back, Your Grace,” she answered him.

Tyne slowly lifted his head and stared at the woman. “Who are you, Mam’selle?” he asked.

“A friend, Your Grace,” she answered. She caressed Rylan’s hand then turned to go.

“Mam’selle!” Tyne called out. When she looked back at him, he flung out a weary hand.

“Tell that numbskull that we love him, will you?”

Celene’s eyes filled with tears. “I think he knows that already, Your Grace.”

Rylan leaned his head against the bars of their cell door and stared moodily at the floor as the woman’s footsteps dwindled away.

“I have a bad feeling about all this, Brell,” he said. His foot, injured so long ago at the Labyrinth Penal Colony, was throbbing and he hobbled back to his place beside his old friend. “I don’t think we’re going to be seeing our homelands any time soon.” He stared into the semi-darkness. “If ever again.”

“Well,” Tyne said, stretching out his short legs. “We’ve had a good run, though, haven’t we, Hesar?” He turned his head and gazed at Rylan. “Everyone has to go sometime or another.”

Rylan snorted. “I wanted it to be in Virago, in my own bed, with my lady at my side.”

“Don’t we all,” Tyne replied.

“You know what worries me most, Brell?”

Tyne leaned his head back against the wall. “What?”

“What they are doing to him.”

Like Rylan and Tyne, Grice Wynth and Roget du Mer had been jailed together on the first sublevel of the donjon, but at opposite ends of the sprawling facility. Ching-Ching, Holm, and Thom were in another cell together while Paegan and Sentian shared still another; all on the second sublevel of the donjon and all separated from one another by hundreds of feet. Jah-Ma-El and his nephew, Wyn, had been placed on the third sublevel, where Conar was confined in a distant wing.

Celene had little difficulty in finding the other men and giving them the Serenian’s message. Each time she relayed those heartfelt words, she was met with laughing contempt.

“Does the man really think we blame him for our folly?” the Oceanian Prince had quipped.

“Tell the bastard I’ll make him eat that damned apology when I see him!”

“Of all the asinine--“ The young Viragonian Prince had been too angry to express his disgust.

“Tell him we needed the rest,” the one called Sentian had finished for his cell mate. “Ask him if he’s enjoying his.”

“You tell that pompous little snot that we are quite comfortable and not to bother us with his whining,” the Serenian Prince’s half-brother had barked. “Tell him to mind his own damned business!”

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“Forgive him?” the funny-looking little man with the monkey face had scoffed. “Well, of all the nerve!” He had looked back at his cell mates with disgust. “It seems our little bird has fallen out of the nest again and whacked that hard head of his!”

Celene had been amazed at the replies to her words. It seemed all the Serenian’s friends were use to teasing him and, even in this most dire of predicaments, still continued to do so. But each and every one of them had wanted the same message relayed to their Overlord. The Prince’s son had been the last to say it, but it had been on each of their lips: “Tell him we love him, will you?”

Rachel jumped as the lock on to her room door clicked and the portal was slipped open quietly. She smiled with relief when she saw who had entered. “You have been to see him?” she asked, coming to her feet.

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“As well as can be expected. He sent me to give a message to his men,” Celene explained.

“They are well?”

Celene nodded, then lowered her head. “For the time being.”

“Have you found out who is to be the first?”

Bleak misery entered Celene’s eyes. “Yes.” She brought her hands up and covered her face as silent sobs began to wrack her slim body. She leaned against Rachel as that woman took her in her arms.

“We can do nothing for them, Celene,” Rachel whispered around the constriction in her own throat. “I wish to the Prophetess we could.”

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He came fitfully awake as his cell door was thrown open. His heart thudding in his chest, he looked up at the trio of hard-faced men who entered his cell. They came to him, two kneeling at his feet to hold his ankles firmly to the floor, while the third bent over with a strange-looking implement and slid the working end under one of the heavy links in the leg iron chain.

Conar flinched as the jaws of the cutter snipped through the link, but was relieved to feel the heavy chain fall away from his left ankle then his right. He didn’t speak to the guards, knowing they wouldn’t answer. The two kneeling down beside him were glaring back at him with sheer malice and he didn’t think he wanted to give them any reason to lash out with those meaty fists that were restraining him.

The third man stood up and unhooked the length of manacle chain from the wall and Conar’s numb arms plopped uselessly down into his lap. He could feel the blood tingling into his hands and had to grit his teeth with the pain. He couldn’t have resisted the man unlocking his manacles even if he had tried for there was no way for his to lift his hands.

“Get him up!” the third man ordered and the two at Conar’s feet lifted him none-too gently and held him erect. Without another word, the three marched him from the cell and down the opposite end of the long, narrow corridor through which he had been brought the day before.

Shuffling along in their taut clutches, Conar’s legs were paining him, as well. The blood was rushing into his legs and feet and the pins-and-needles pricking was uncomfortable at best. He wondered where they were taking him, but didn’t think they’d tell him should he ask. Besides, he thought with bitter rancor, it really didn’t matter since he couldn’t do anything about it, anyway.

The guards stopped in front of a low metal door, unlocked it and dragged him through, careless of whether or not he banged his head on the low overhang. Luckily he had time to stoop down before they forced him through the opening.

Once inside the room, Conar was thrown to the floor and the men retreated, locking the door behind their exit.

“Sons-of-bitches,” he muttered as he pushed himself up off the floor. He looked around him, his forehead wrinkling with puzzlement. “Where the hell am I?” he asked, aloud.

The room was massive, the walls sheer rock that appeared seamless. The floor was equally slick and in the middle was a pool of water, maybe thirty feet in diameter, with a concrete slab sitting directly in the center of the blue water. Above the pool, hanging well out of reach, was a vast chandelier with tall tapers blazing to illuminate the chamber. Set high along the twenty foot high walls were torches to add additional light to the underground room.

Walking over to the pool, Conar looked down into the water and gauged its depth to be no more than five feet at the most. The bottom of the pool was a startling white, again seamless, and the water a clear, clear blue.

Looking closely at the concrete slab sitting about two feet up from the surface of the water, Conar’s blood ran cold.

“Shit,” he whispered, viewing the four iron rings which were stuck into the corners of the concrete, two at the top of the seven foot long rectangular slab and two at the bottom. He didn’t like the looks of the thing and backed away, fearing it.

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There was no other entrance or exit into or out of the room for he checked closely. There didn’t appear to be any peepholes into the room, either. Searching about him, he found nothing he could use for a weapon, so he sat down along one wall and waited.

He didn’t have long to wait.

The door opened and the two guards who had manhandled him to the room came through the door and stood to either side of the low passage. Two more followed, swords drawn. Close on their heels, two burly warriors, each at least seven feet tall, stooped through the door, Rylan Hesar in tow.

“Ry!” Conar called out, coming to his feet.