WINDHEALER (47 page)

"What do you want?"

"I think you know." He looked up when his brother made a hateful snort.

"Occultus sent you to lecture me on my conduct?" There was fire in the cold eyes, heating them to the boiling point. Conar's body was rigid with distrust and anger.

"Why the hell can't you talk to a person in a civilized manner?"

"Because I'm not a civilized man, you son-of-a-bitch!"

"I can see that." Jah-Ma-El started to walk away.

"Don't turn your back on me!" Conar shouted.

Jah-Ma-El looked over his shoulder. "If you want to feel sorry for yourself, that's your business. But I don't have to watch you do it!"

Occultus frowned at the aging warlock when Jah-Ma-El reported to him. "You got no further than I expected, Jah-Ma-El."

"There's has to be a way to reach him," Grice sighed. He looked at his best friend. "If anyone can, it will be you."

And so Brelan was sent again.

Conar looked at him as he sat beside him at the indoor pool. The two didn't speak. Conar sat for a moment, expecting Brelan to open the conversation. When he didn't, Conar dove into the pool and surfaced at the far end, staring across the rippling water at Brelan.

"I take it it's your turn to bedevil me for awhile," he yelled, treading water. "Aren't you supposed to try to make me ashamed of the way I've been behaving?"

Brelan simply stared.

Conar sank beneath the water, swam a long time under the gently lapping waves, then bobbed up in front of Brelan. "Are you supposed to wear me down with that look?" His lips curled in scorn. "You can't, you know."

"Why don't you grow up?"

Steel sharpened Conar's words. "Why don't
you
just leave me the hell alone?"

"You may think you've reached the point where you don't need anyone, little boy. Physically that may be so, but I don't think you'd really like to be left alone, would you? Didn't you get enough of that at the Labyrinth?"

Quiet, ravaging pain entered those cold eyes. When Conar answered, he spoke of himself in a self-degrading tone, belittling the man he once was. "That man didn't like being alone; I don't care one way or the other. I'm stronger than he was."

"No, you've just developed a nasty habit of thinking only of yourself."

Conar's mouth twisted with fury. "I gave up my life for the good of the Wind Force! What the hell did
you
give up?"

"The only thing you gave up was your ability to be reasonable! This damned snotty attitude is wearing thin! If you don't watch out, you're going to wind up having someone's fist rammed through your face!"

Conar came out of the water in a lunge of fury. He splashed water over Brelan in the process and reached down with vengeful hands to pull Saur to his feet. "You wanna
try
putting your fist through my face?"

Brelan looked into a face rabid with rage, filled with hate, but held his ground. "You want a fight? You can't carry on a normal conversation with
anyone
without your temper making a fool of you. If you want to hit me, go ahead; I won't stop you. That's all you know how to do anymore—to push everyone who cares about you as far away as possible!"

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Conar's hands tightened on Brelan's shirt.

"Your brother."

Conar's body was tight with coiled fury. He shoved away Brelan. "Leave me the hell alone before I wind up hurting you!"

"Sooner or later you're going to need someone's help in handling what's causing this anger. You can't do it on your own. Can't you see that?"

"I don't need anyone's help! I don't need
your
help! Just get out of my sight! Get out of my
life!"
He turned to go, but Brelan gripped his shoulder and spun him around.

"And that's something else that's gotten to be a nasty habit. Running away when the truth gets too close for your liking!"

Conar drew back his fist, intent on smashing it into Saur's smirking face.

"Do it," Brelan said. "You've been wanting to."

"Damn you!" Conar spat, lowering his fist. "Why can't you mind your own business?"

"Because I love you. I'm worried about you, just like all the men are. This brooding is destructive. Something has to be done to snap you out of this moroseness."

The grief had been driven deep. It had brutalized his soul. And he didn't know how to deal with it. He was hurting and knew Brelan understood, but he didn't know how to go about exorcising it from its hiding place. "What do you want from me?" He shook free of his brother's hold. There was such paralyzing pain in the dark eyes. "No matter what I do, it's wrong!"

"Sit down? Will you talk to me?" Brelan reached out to touch him but he backed away. "What are you afraid of? Are you afraid to let people close to you anymore?"

"People who get close to me have a way of getting hurt."

"So you keep them at a distance? What kind of life is that?"

"A life of not being bothered by bumbling fools and incompetent jackasses! I can't, and
I won't,
tolerate fools who I have to mollycoddle and lead about by the ears! If a man doesn't know his job, he'll not be one of mine for long. I'll not be anybody's babysitter. Not even yours!"

Brelan's patience snapped. "How can you be so damned stupid? My god, you're become cruel and insensitive as well as unreasonable. You hurt people just for the sake of doing it. Do you really think that makes you better than those you sneer at?"

"I'm not sneering at anyone! I just want to be left alone to do what I have to do. Stay the hell out of my way and you won't have to worry about my insensitivity or unreasonableness!"

"God, I wish you'd listen to yourself!"

"Just walk away and let it go. You're not going to change how I feel, you're not going to lessen the hate I feel—"

"Most men don't hate like you do. They learn to forgive and forget. Your hatred is growing."

"Most men haven't been where I've been. You don't forget hell; you don't forgive those who sent you there."

"Is Liza one of those to be blamed for your sojourn into hell?"

Conar stilled, his tawny brows drawing together in sudden hurt. The scars that slashed across one bronzed cheek jumped.

"Why won't you let go of it? There's so much you don't understand; things I can't tell you about now. If you don't let go of the hurt, it's going to cripple you. It makes the loneliness worse."

Conar shook his head. "I'm way past the point of being lonely."

"You know what I see when I look at you? A heart that was once warm and tender and sweet turning cold and hard and bitter. There doesn't seem to be anything I can say to stop that from happening. The horrible things that have happened to you keep haunting you, wearing away the fabric of your sanity. One day, only a slender thread will remain if you don't let us help. Just like the rest of us need your help. The men of the Force are like the branches of an oak. We can reach out to shade and protect our lands, but without the mighty oak, itself, alive and well and flourishing, the branches will wither and die.
You
are that oak. Without you, we don't stand a chance."

"I don't want to lose any more people I care about. If I don't let them close to me, it won't hurt so bad if they leave."

Brelan understood now. He put his hands on Conar's shoulders, surprised when his brother didn't move. "We're not going to leave you. We're here for you. Whether you like it or not."

Conar's voice was dead, emotionless, but the fear on his face was there. "The gods bless you with something and They see how happy it makes you. They let you keep it for awhile, treasure it, grow to depend on it. But if you grow to love it too much, They get jealous, angry, so They punish you by taking it away. Eventually They may give it back if you're willing to pay a high enough price. But always,
always,
in the back of your mind, is that fear that They're going to take it away from you again, and the next time They'll take it away for good." He looked away. "Like They took Liza from me."

"Conar, she's—"

He held up his hand. "Never bring her up to me again. I mean it."

Brelan watched Conar walk away. There was no longer the livid rage on the scarred face, but there was still the distance that had erected a barrier no one seemed able to climb.

Three events shaped the man the Wind Force would know as Raven.

The first had been Raja DeLyle's sorceress seduction of him. Even after being told the elixir meant for him had been tampered with, he still blamed himself for succumbing to her. He had wanted to keep himself as pure as the last day he had seen his beloved lady, Liza. He had wanted to be able to look into her lovely face, take her in his arms, swear his love had been as faithful as it was on the day he had been taken from her.

Secondly, Raja's declaration of Liza's betrayal, and with whom, had torn at his heart, had shattered what was left of the idealistic young man he had once been. It wasn't so much the fact that she had been lover to three of his brothers, or that she had borne children by each of them. It would have been cruel, and foolish, for him to expect a woman who believed her husband dead to remain chaste and celibate, especially a woman as vital as Liza. And he knew how much she'd cared for Brelan and Legion. Both men loved her, as well, and if truth were told, it would have been Legion he would have seen with her. That she had slept with both men hurt him, but he understood. What had hurt him the most was the time in which she had done it.

Over and over in his mind he heard those twice-damned words that Raja had screamed at him. "She waited all of two months!" The bitch's assertion that Liza had been pregnant before her wedding to Galen had been confirmed by his aunt. In his mind, he saw, not the woman he had loved so desperately, but a woman who had long craved the crown of Serenia, and a woman who had eventually gained it, not once, but twice.

Legion's part in all that had happened did not go unnoticed, either. Conar had expected A'Lex to protect Liza, to see that Galen did not realize his plan to marry her. But Legion had failed. He had allowed the cursed marriage to take place and had been unable to keep Galen from taking Liza. A betrayal in itself, Legion's marriage to Liza after Galen's death only served to make Conar even more furious with him. He started to hate his brother, and that hate began to fester into something more…the red-hot stab of unnatural jealousy and brooding revenge.

Oddly enough, he didn't seem to mind Brelan's part in the affair. For reasons he could not understand, Conar pitied Brelan. It might well have been because he knew Saur, like him, had loved and lost the one woman he would ever love. That, Conar knew, was punishment enough.

And then there had been the murder of Se Huan.

Even under ordinary circumstances, when a good and cherished friend dies, the ones left behind are stunned, numbed by what has happened, unwilling, and often unable, to accept the finality of the situation. Se Huan had become Conar's oasis of calm and tranquillity in his disorganized life. She had chased away his nightmares and lovingly given herself to him in the only way in which he could honorably accept her. And she had understood. She had not pressed him for something he could not, and would not, give. It was her devotion, and quite possibly her love for him, that had ultimately taken her life, and he was all too aware of that.

It was her dying, unknown and unfelt by him, that tore at his heart. He blamed himself for not being able to protect her as she had protected him. His inability to do so ate at him, turned him bitter with self-contempt.

"If I can't even protect one small girl, how the hell am I supposed to protect a kingdom?" he had asked Occultus.

Despite his friends' best efforts, his vicious, unsettling attitude seemed to grow steadily as though it was a malignancy.

Something else happened that would cause him sleepless nights and problems—Raja's disappearance.

One moment she was in the custody of Tran's donjon, the next she was nowhere to be found. Obviously she'd had help, either mortal or supernatural, but her whereabouts could not be traced. She was gone, her two accomplices mysteriously slain. Along with Raja's disappearance, two arrows and two daggers from Conar's personal arsenal came up missing.

* * *

Brelan sat beside his younger brother by the fireplace in their uncle's study. "We'll be leaving on the evening tide. Holm will drop anchor near Fealst and I'll find a way to get to Boreas on my own."

"You'll be careful?"

Saur smiled. "As careful as I ever am."

Conar snorted. "Try a bit harder, okay?"

Brelan put a heavy hand on Conar's knee. "I will." He stared into Conar's face. "I'll never get used to your eyes being that odd color."

"The darker the eyes, the darker the soul."

Brelan looked away. He was used to self-contemptible words from his brother, but it still made him uneasy. He wanted to change the subject. "How long do you think it will take you to get to Shalu's palace?"

"A week. Ten days, tops." A strong hand went through flowing blond hair. "I don't know how long we'll be there, but you know how to get word to me as soon as you've reached Boreas."

"What am I going to say to Legion?" Brelan was nervous about the answer.

"Don't tell the bastard anything." Conar stood and walked to the sweeping window that faced the east. "By the time the Raven comes calling at his door, he'll know all I want him to know."

"But shouldn't I tell him about us? After all, he isn't our enemy. He should be apprised of what we're going to begin."

He turned and fixed his brother with a hard stare. "Tell him nothing. Understood?"

"Not even that you're alive?"

"
Especially not that!"

Brelan walked to him, laid a hand on Conar's shoulder. "They have a right to know you're alive. At least let me tell Eliza—"

Agonized fury tore across his scarred face. He grabbed Brelan by the front of his shirt and slammed him into the wall. "I will see you in hell before I will let that happen!" he sneered into Brelan's strained face. "You don't tell her shit!"

"Why?"

It was as though reason suddenly returned to him and he realized he had his brother pressed against the wall. He backed off, his hands spread wide. He viciously shook his head. "I want
no one
to know I'm alive. Do you hear? Promise me you won't tell anyone."

"I don't see what harm—"

"
Dammit! Promise me!"

"
All right!"
Brelan yelled back.

Conar relaxed. He sat on the hearth again. "I have my reasons."

There was no sense arguing with him, Brelan thought. He'd lose. Men didn't argue with Conar; they obeyed him. "I'll do what you want, Raven."

A derisive laugh came from Conar's chiseled mouth. "You have trouble saying that name?"

Brelan frowned. "I'm just not used to it."

"It's always been my name, did you know that?" At Brelan's look of inquiry, Conar lifted one thick brow. "In the ancient Oceanian tongue, the word 'Conarus' means 'black-winged scavenger.' If that is what I am to become, the name is fitting."

"Tohre will think so."

The laughter left Conar's lips. "He'll not like my scavenging, that's for certain. Soon, there will be nothing that bastard does that I won't know about."

* * *

Brelan was already on board
The Ravenwind,
Paegan and Holm saying their good-byes to the other men. Conar stood on dock, gazing up at the ship that was, by rights, his. He sighed. When he was little, he had sailed on the
Boreas Queen
with Holm. He had enjoyed it more than anything else in his childhood.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" a soft voice intruded on his memories. Xander Hesar, the Healer, walked toward him.

"She'll do her part."

"As will we all."

"I'm sure you will." Conar waited until the man was close to him. "I haven't thanked you for all you did for me in the Labyrinth."

"It wasn't necessary."

"It is. I am grateful for all the times you helped ease my pain." He gripped the Healer's wrist. "You saved my life more than once, and my sanity constantly. Thank you."

"I did what I could. I only wish I had been able to do more."

Conar let go of the wrist. "I've been told you knew Cayn? Where did you meet him?"

"In the Labyrinth."

Conar's tawny brow shot up. "I never knew he was there. When was this?"

"Before you were born, obviously!" The Healer grinned. "He volunteered to serve there for a few years. I was there already, and when it was time for him to leave, he trained me as a healer. It was a way for me to have some dignity in that hellhole. For the most part, I was left alone."

"Why were you there?"

Xander shrugged. "Political reasons. I made one too many enemies among the Domination in Virago."

"Who was Chief Priest there, then?"

"A bastard named Faulkus. Tolkan Coure's younger brother. A mean-spirited son-of-a-bitch, but not as bad as I hear Tolkan was." He looked at Conar and saw a ridge of white around the young man's lips. "I suppose you know all about Tolkan, though, don't you?"

"More than I ever wanted to. Why'd they send you to the Labyrinth? What'd you do?"

"You know you don't have to do much to incur their enmity. Faulkus took exception to my marriage and made sure I didn't have the lady long." A glimmer of hatred shot across the Healer's face. "The Domination had other plans for my wife."

Conar put a hand on the Healer's shoulder. "They sent you to the Labyrinth to get you out of her life?"

"They told the world I was dead and then they wed my lady to another."

A stab of rage went through the dark blue eyes. "They have a knack for doing that."

"I loved her. I will always love her." Xander ground his teeth, speaking through a tightly clenched jaw. "There has never been a day that I have not thought of her, of what could have been."

"What, perhaps,
should
have been?"

"Aye!" Xander touched Conar's cheek. "The Wind be favorable to you, Lord Conar. I'll keep you in my prayers!" Spinning on his heel, the Healer practically ran up the gangplank. He didn't turn until Conar called to him.

"My mother loved you, too, Xander."

The Healer stared. When at last he could find his voice, he heard his words trembling. "How did you know?"

Conar grinned, his eyes showing warmth for the first time in a long time. "It was merely a guess."

"No one must know!" Xander came halfway down the gangplank so no inquisitive ears could hear.

"Know what? That I'm a bastard? That the entire line of my father's loins are bastards?" Conar laughed. "It doesn't bother me."

"Don't say that! No one must know her marriage was not legal!"

"In the sight of the Tribunal I am sure it was legal. Otherwise, they would've never allowed them to marry. Only in the sight of the gods and man is it
not
legal." Conar looked toward Serenia's distant snow-capped mountain range. "But it doesn't matter, anyway. The monarchy is at an end, in Serenia and everywhere. When the Raven flies, there will be one rule—
mine!"

Xander shivered. The man with such terrible power was frightening to look at. He wouldn't want to be Conar's enemy. There was strength of purpose in those icy orbs, but there was also a promise. The promise that nothing would ever stand in his way again.

"Use your power well," Xander warned gently. He laid a comforting hand on the young man's hard shoulder. "Please don't let the past govern the future."

The anger softened. "I have no past. And my future is like the wind. It will carry me where I need to go; where I am needed. As for my power, He who gave it, will govern it."

"Conar, when I was first at the Labyrinth, I knew a terrible hatred deep in my soul. A hatred so viral it nearly destroyed me. When I learned your mother had been given in marriage to another, and that it had been a love match, I wanted nothing more than to die. Cayn stopped me. He gave me a purpose, a reason to live…"

"I, too, have a reason to live, my friend. I am going to see all those responsible for my living death pay for every moment I suffered!" His gaze went to the tall peaks once more. "And the gods help them, so will those who have caused me grief!"

* * *

"I said no, dammit, and no is what I meant! What part of the word don't you understand, Wynland?"

"Papa, please! Give me one good reason why I can't go!"

"I have said you can't, and that's the only reason I have to give!"

"That's not good enough!" Wyn yelled back at his father. He stood his ground, staring at his father with the same stubbornness. His chin raised another fraction of an inch and he pursed his lips together as tightly as his father's.

Conar would have liked to have throttled him. Never had he raised a hand to any of his children, his past preventing him from ever doing so no matter how much they had angered him. But as he glared at Wyn, and the boy—no, Conar thought with fury, the young
man
—glared back, his palm itched to slap the smug look of defiance off Wyn's face.

"Neither Coron nor I are being allowed to go with him, either, Wyn," Dyllon remarked and flinched as Conar's dark eyes swung to him.

"This is between me and my son!"Conar snarled.

"Aye, it is!" Wyn echoed, flicking his annoyed glance over his youngest uncle. "And I'm going to have a reasonable answer. Why the hell can't I go?"

Rylan Hesar glanced at Jah-Ma-El and silently whistled. What had been intended as a last-minute family get-together before the men left for Necroman had turned into a battle of wills.

Coron and Dyllon had protested, too, wanting to return to Serenia, but Conar had also forbidden them. Older than the boy, the two brothers had understood, if not accepted the fact, that their roles would have to be played out in Chrystallus. Besides, both young men had wives and Conar refused to allow the women along on general principle.

But Wyn was not so handicapped, and had revolted at the idea of being left behind.

"Dammit, Papa! I want an answer!" The strong young arms of a swordsman-in-training folded over a chest starting to widen and thicken like his father's. He tossed his long blond hair out of his eyes and braced his feet wide apart. "Why can't I go?"

Conar was vividly reminded of similar arguments he'd had with this boy's grandfather and that knowledge ate at him. I'm turning into my father, he thought dismally. He fell back on one of his father's favorite excuses: "I don't have to give you an answer!" Conar shouted. "I only have to give you an order and I expect it to be obeyed!"