WindDeceiver (40 page)

The young woman looked away. “That is what they call what they have been doing to you.”

For a brief moment he stared at her, then nodded slowly. “The games,” he repeated.

Sighing heavily, he pushed up and got to his feet, put his hand down to help her. Still clutching her cool fingers in his, he asked her once more to fetch him a sword.

“Milord, please!” she tried reasoning with him. “There is help that has come. We are no longer alone. By now, Grandmother will have--“

“Who am I, Celene?” he asked, cutting her off.

She glanced behind her, hearing the voices and thump of footsteps coming closer. She flinched as he took her upper arm in a fierce grip.

“Who am I, Celene?” he asked again, shaking her firmly with each word.

She knew what he meant. “The Dark Overlord, Your Grace.”

“That’s right,” he said. “And are you not as beholding to me as you are to my Lady?”

The voices were much closer, too close. “I am, milord,” she answered.

“Then go and do what I tell you, Celene,” he said, wondering why he knew as surely as he was standing there that this girl was of the Multitude.

She searched his face for only a moment, then turned, slipping back around a section of wall. When she glanced around, hoping to see him hiding in one of the niches, he was gone.

“What are you doing down here, woman?” Belial roared as he rushed to her and grabbed her arm in a punishing grip.

“I--I am trying to find--him, sir,” she panted, wincing at the pain the big man was causing her.

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“Get your ass back where you belong, bitch!” Belial roared at her, shaking her brutally.

“Before I turn you over to my men for their amusement.” He spun her around and shoved her, sending her stumbling away. “And don’t come down here again!” he yelled after her.

Conar stayed where he was, well out of sight of the men searching for him, knowing they’d never look for him among the dead. Wedged behind the bodies of his friends, protecting him in death as they had often protected him in life, he was safe from Jaleel Jaborn.

Meghan Dunne slipped quietly up to the woman and touched her on the shoulder, nearly scaring the poor thing out of her wits. The gaping grin Meghan gave her was enough to calm the woman, but not enough to stop the barrage of scolding.

“You near took twenty years off my life, woman!” Sabrina gasped, but she knew she’d found another of her kind among the women hovering about the kitchens.

“Looking for something, are you, girl?” Meghan asked, searching the pretty black face before her.

“Something lost awhile back,” Sabrina replied. “Something dear, worth keeping.”

“A hard thing to lose, eh, girl?” Meghan inquired.

“And hard to get back, I’m afraid,” Sabrina told her.

Meghan put a finger along her nose. “Well, as to that, I’m thinking ‘twill be easier to do than you’d think.”

Sabrina looked around at the women who, up until the old one had accosted her, had been ignoring her as though they had not seen her. Now, they were keenly interested in her and what she was saying.

“How many, Grandmother, do you have to help?” Sabrina asked.

The old woman grinned. “There are close to two hundred warriors in this fortress, milady.

Every one of them has a woman.”

“And there are well over three hundred slave women scattered about the fortress,” Miriam added as she joined them. “Maybe half that many men slaves who’d just as soon see Jaborn and his men slaughtered as look at them.”

“There’s the Prince’s concubines and his wives,” Meghan said, pretending to count.

“That’s about forty in all, I’m reckoning.” She nodded. “I’d say there is somewhere between five hundred and forty to five hundred and fifty women hereabouts.”

“How many are Daughters?” Sabrina demanded.

Meghan looked at Miriam and shrugged before turning back to Sabrina. “All it really takes is three powerful women to rid this fortress of the evil in here. Up until now, there’s only been me although the rest of them are well enough at what they can do.”

“But those imprisoned here who have been to the Shadowlands were never allowed inside,”

Miriam said. “No one but Mother Meghan.”

“How many Daughters in all, though?” Sabrina asked again. “We have to know. I don’t know if I’m powerful enough to help you do what must be done.” She shook her head. “I was never allowed inside the Obelisk, either.”

Meghan’s face clouded for a moment. She could have sworn she had sensed great power invading the fortress. “In all,” she answered, disappointed, “enough to bring this rubble down.”

“But how many?” Sabrina demanded.

“Four hundred,” Miriam answered for Meghan. “All true to the Daughterhood and sworn to the Great Lady and Her consort.”

Sabrina’s mouth dropped open. “Four hundred?”

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“Most born here,” Meghan explained, “and few over the age of twenty-five. But even our little ones can wield magic if there are three adepts running the show.”

Sabrina was staggered by the numbers of her own kind amid the women of Abbadon. She sank down into a kitchen chair. “I had no idea,” she muttered.

“Another came with you,” Meghan asked. “Where is she?”

Sabrina looked up at her. “She’s gone after his lady.”

“Catherine,” Miriam put in. “Jaborn handpicked the women allowed to care for her. None are Daughters. As far as he knows there is only a handful of us here, but he dared take no chance with the Dark Overlord’s wife.”

“For fear we’d try to help her escape,” Meghan added.

“We’ll do more than help her escape,” Sabrina growled, getting up. “Where do you meet?”

she asked.

“In a room in the second sublevel,” Miriam answered.

“Can you gather together the Elders without causing too much attention?”

Meghan nodded. “There are only nine of us.”

“Mistress Ruck will find his lady, but we’ll need someone to show them the way to the meeting place,” Sabrina stated. “This woman Rachel. Where is she?”

“I am surprised you know of her,” Miriam answered. “We can arrange for her to be let out of her room.”

“Then find someone to lead Mistress Ruck and the lady to the meeting place, but take me there now. We brought our Sentinels and they are trying to locate the Outlanders who are being held prisoner here. They will need our help in freeing those men.”

“Five of them are dead,” Meghan said and put a comforting hand on Sabrina’s shoulder as the black woman groaned. “Gone to make Peace with the Wind, they have.”

Sabrina’s face turned cold. “We’ll send their murderers to a place where peace can never be made!”

At the light scratching at her door, Catherine rushed to the panel. “Who’s there?”

“Meg, milady. Open up.”

Catherine stared at the panel, unable to believe what she had just heard. She put her ear to the wood. “Meg, who?” she called out.

“Who do you think?” came the heated reply. “Open the door, girl!”

Conar’s wife twisted the lock and nearly smothered the old woman she pulled quickly into the room. She wrapped her arms tightly around Meggie Ruck and rained kisses down on the wrinkled face.

“I never thought to see you again, Meggie!” she cried, squeezing the old woman so tightly Meggie’s face began to turn red.

“You might not see much of me, neither, if you don’t let me breathe, child!” Meggie gasped.

Catherine let her go and re-locked the door before drawing the old lady to the bed. “How did you find me? Have the others gotten free? Have you seen Conar? Is he all right? Have they hurt him? Have--“

“Hush, child,” Meggie chided her. “I just got here.”

A pained look shot through Cat’s eyes. “You weren’t captured like me, were you, Meg?

Please tell me you weren’t captured!”

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“Me and another Daughter brought our Sentinels through them doors downstairs just like them doors weren’t even there!” Meggie boasted. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

“She’d better be worried about McGregor, though.”

Meggie jumped, nearly screeching as the smooth young voice broke into their conversation.

She stared across the room at the young man lounging next to a gaping hole in the wall.

“Who are you?” the old woman demanded.

“He’s a friend,” Catherine said, getting up and going to Kalli. “What’s happened? Is Conar in trouble?”

Kalli looked past her at the old woman. “They’re down in the catacombs trying to find him.

I saw one of you women sneaking down there with a sword and if I’ve learned anything over the years from Jaleel and Guil about Conar McGregor, he’s going to use that sword to dispatch a few of my brother’s top warriors.”

“How many men?” Meg asked, going over to the young man.

“Ten or so,” Kalli answered. “The odds are not in his favor.”

“They will be!” Meggie snapped. She took the young man by the arm and pulled him toward the opening in the wall. “Can we get down there from here?”

Kalli’s eyes lit up. “Are you thinking to go down there on your own to help McGregor?”

He winced as her nails dug into his arm at the unintended insult. “I meant no offense, Grandmother, but you aren’t what I would consider of an age to be of much help to him.”

Meggie put her face in his. “Which wine makes you drunker, lad: freshly bottled or aged?”

Kalli grinned. “Aged.”

“Then don’t be giving me none of your smart lip!” Meggie growled. “Just lead me to my bonny lad.” She pulled the young man toward the opening.

Kalli dug his heels in, refusing to move until he could look the old woman in the face.

“How do you know I won’t lead you into a trap?”

Meggie smiled. “You want to live, don’t you?”

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The sword Celene brought him had been Tyne Brell’s. The irony of that was not lost on Conar as he hefted the Widowmaker blade and flexed it. He lowered the point and lunged, sliding forward with the ease of an expert swordsman. Straightening, he turned to look at Celene.

“You’d better go now, Mam’selle. There will be blood shed here and I would prefer none of it be yours.”

“Jaborn has all your weapons, those he took from you and those he had stolen from your cache in Serenia, locked up. He keeps the key to the armament room with him at all times, but today he can not seem to find it.” Celene reached into the pocket of her gown and handed the key to him. “Rachel’s present to you.”

He looked up from the brass key in his hand. “She is all right? He hasn’t hurt her?”

“He would not dare,” Celene laughed. “He knows she is a Daughter.”

Conar sighed. “I’m beginning to think every woman I meet is.”

Celene smiled at him. “You should be thankful,” she answered.

“Aye,” he mumbled. “I should.” He pocketed the key in his breeches’ pocket. “Now, go, before those bastards come back this way and find you with me.”

“I can’t believe you want to take them all on, milord,” she told him. “If you will but wait awhile longer--“

Conar glanced at the men he had loved. “My waiting is over, Mam’selle. I won’t let Jaborn slaughter another of my friends.” His jaw clenched. “Or my son.”

“My mother gave them their meals this evening. They were all as well can be expected then. I would not think any of them have been harmed since your disappearance.”

“They’d better not have been,” Conar snarled. He lifted his chin. There were voices coming back toward them. He turned Celene around and patted her smartly on the rump. “Go.

Now!”

She would have done as he said had there not been men blocking her path. Her eyes opened wide and she cried out, spinning around to run back to him, seeing that, at her cry, he had turned and found her escape cut off.

“You must tell me the secret of your success with women, McGregor,” Jaleel Jaborn drawled as he strolled toward them. He was flanked by the two eunuchs and Rasheed and his faithful lap dog, Guil Ben-Shanar Gehdrin. “How do you inspire such blind devotion in them?”

Celene backed up, pressing herself to the wall. She looked at the Outlander’s calm face then beyond him to the men coming up behind him. She could see the triumph on Belial’s cruel face.

“I don’t manhandle them, Jaborn,” Conar answered, aware of the warriors advancing behind him and cutting off his retreat. He lifted Tyne’s sword. “And I don’t have to rape them.”

Jaleel chuckled. “Well, if memory serves me correctly, you raped Elizabeth McGregor on at least two occasions, now, didn’t you?”

Celene was looking at the Outlander as Jaborn spoke and she watched his face turn carefully blank. But that blank look had not come quickly enough to hide the pain Jaborn’s words had caused him. She had seen intense sorrow well up in his sapphire eyes.

“At least I was married to the woman I loved,” Conar answered. “You never got that chance, did you, Jaborn? Another man broke your mare to saddle.”

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Rasheed drew in a harsh breath, shocked by the Serenian’s insult. No one dared mention the Princes Cyle to His Grace and to remind Prince Jaleel that he had not been the one to take Cyle’s maidenhead, was folly of the worst kind.

Jaleel’s mouth went white around the lips and he stepped forward, his anger lashing out at McGregor with enough force to have been a physical blow.

“And whose fault was it that I did not get to initiate my woman, McGregor?” the Hasdu bellowed. “Had it not been for you--“

“You’re a fool, do you know that, Jaborn?” Conar asked in a calm voice. He cast a quick look behind him at the men standing in his way. “You can’t even fight your own battles, can you?”