WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (21 page)

"That I have seems," he shrugged with annoyance, "selfish," he finished.

"Conar," Catherine assured him, "you are the most unselfish man I have ever known." At his look of exasperated disbelief, she took his arm once more and pulled him toward the keep's entrance. "It's late, milord. If you want to go into the village come morning, I think you should get to bed early."

He allowed her to lead him into the keep, even allowed her to walk with him to his room, but when she would have entered the chamber with him, he slowly shook his head and gently removed his arm from her light grip.

"I need some time to myself, Catherine," he explained, his expression pleading with her for understanding. Opening his room door, he paused, looking back at her, looking for hurt or embarrassment on her face and relieved to see she did, indeed, understand his need to be alone. "In the morning, then?” he asked, reaching out to gently touch her cheek.

"I'll be ready," she answered. Stepping back, she turned and hurried away, her flesh feeling the touch of his against it as she walked.

His room was as silent as the grave from which he had just come, Conar thought as he sat down on the bed. He let out a long, tired breath and lay back, drawing his legs up. He flung his right arm over his eyes and lay there listening to the stillness, hearing his own heartbeat in his ears.

Before long, he was sound asleep.

Sajin glanced up as Catherine came down the stairs from the bedchambers. He laid aside the book he had been reading and stood up, motioning to Conar's wife to join him in front of the fireplace.

"How is he?" the Kensetti Prince asked.

Catherine took the chair to Sajin's left and brought her hands up to her face. She massaged the ache that had begun in her temples. "At peace with himself, I think," she replied.

"It's been hard on him," Sajin remarked. He sat forward, clasping his hands between his legs. "And on you, I would imagine."

A tiny shrug of irritation came from the Outer Kingdom woman. "I'll survive." She leaned back in the chair and rested her hands on the upholstered arms. Her gaze fused with Sajin Ben-Alkazar's polite, friendly watchfulness. "Do you know what I think, nomad?' she asked.

The left corner of Sajin's mouth twitched with humor. "No, milady." His smile was conspiratorial. "What is it you think?"

Catherine's own mouth tugged down at the corners. "That Conar McGregor has to be the most pigheaded, stubborn and arrogant man God ever put on the face of the earth."

Sajin laughed, sitting back to cross his ankle over his knee. "I would agree with that assessment of the man." He jogged his booted foot up and down. "Most folks who know him would, I'd wager."

"I'll let him go back to Rysalia," she said, squinting her eyes as she stared at the carpet. "I'll let him have that whoring slut for a companion." She looked up at Sajin and the expression on her lovely face was militant and speculative. "But when I think it's time, I'll go back to Rysalia, Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 94

myself, and draw that pigheaded, stubborn and arrogant bastard in on a line he won't be able to break!"

The nomad whistled softly at the lady's lethal grimace of promise for his friend. "When you think he's accomplished what it is he feels he needs to accomplish?" he asked.

Catherine nodded grimly. "And not a moment beyond that time, either." She plucked at a straggling thread on the upholstery fabric. "He can have a hundred nomad whores in his tent and I'll still drag his ass back to St. Steffensberg!"

Sajin's eyebrows shot up. "Whether he wants to go or not?"

The baby inside her belly leapt at the Kensetti's words and Catherine reached down to soothe the life growing within her. "He's my husband," she said in a soft voice. "I'll not give him up so easily or so lightly, Prince Sajin." She felt the babe kick in agreement.

Raphaella, listening from behind the study door, smiled. "You'd have liked this one, Liza,"

she said. The sorceress nodded emphatically. "The two of you are too much alike for Conar not to have fallen in love with Catherine McGregor."

"A mistake he will regret most fervently," Raine reminded his mother.

"True," Raphaella agreed, "but the time for that is a long way off." She wondered how much of the future her son could see with his novice's eyes.

"I'll not allow myself such foolishness," the boy quipped, turning to leave. "Love is for the weak."

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There was a faint scent of sandalwood clinging to the thick stone walls as Catherine and Conar ventured inside the tiny village church the next morning. The early Mass had just ended and the womenfolk of Odess were hurrying back to their homes and shops, the fields and streams where the week's wash awaited them. Their polite smiles and respectful nods to the Tzarevna and her escort were followed with giggles and backward glances of approval as the royal pair entered the tall wooden door.

"They like you," Catherine informed him as he held the portal open for her.

"They don't know me," he quipped in a low whisper as he ushered her inside the church, his hand at the small of her back.

Catherine reached around him and dipped her fingers into a small glass bowl, then made the curious sign that finally elicited a question from Conar.

"The sign of the cross," his wife answered. "I'll explain later."

He followed her into the cool sanctuary, looking about him at the rows of wooden benches which faced toward a high marble altar at the rear of the room. Except for a lone woman, her black widow's weeds blending in with the early morning shadows, they were alone. There was silence save for the click of the prayer beads in the widow's hands.

"Here," Catherine said, pointing to one of the benches. She motioned him to sit down, then knelt briefly alongside the bench before joining him. Before he ask her anything else, she put her finger to her lips, then slid gracefully to her knees on the stone floor.

Conar watched her, seeing her make the sign once more before she lowered her head, closed her eyes and began to pray. He studied her for a long moment as she talked to her god, his gaze playing over her moving lips, then turned to look about him.

There were stain glass windows flanking both sides of the church. On each panel were pictures of what he thought might be events in the life of Catherine's deity. He was surprised to see women pictured on the panels alongside the men. His gaze shifted to the walls between the panels and saw wooden plaques with still more depictions.

"You can go look at them," Catherine whispered to him, glancing over to see him squinting to make out the images on the plaques. So engrossed was he, she wasn't surprised when he merely nodded then got up to move to the side of the church.

Conar saw numbers on the plaques and realized they were in sequence along the wall.

Walking to the front of the church, near where a statue of a lovely blond haired women stood sentinel, he gazed up at the first plaque with eyes narrowed in speculation. The images were frightening, somehow threatening to him, and he felt a chill as he followed the procession of plaques. Here was a man being flogged; being condemned before a tribunal of sorts; being forced to carry a heavy wooden beam upon his shoulders as men abused him with whip and pike. There, he had fallen and another had come to help him carry his burden. There, a woman wiped the blood and sweat from his tortured brow. As he made his way to the opposite side of the church, he was deeply disturbed to see that the man had fallen again and again; that he had been stripped of his clothing and then laid down upon the beam while his hands and feet were nailed to the wood. A shiver ran through Conar's body and he hurried past that image. The twelfth showed the man's death and Conar stared up at it, saddened by the violence of a religion Catherine had told him was based on a loving and caring God.

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"He lives," someone said to him.

Conar turned to find the widow looking at him from her place on the floor. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cords and walked back to where the middle-aged woman knelt. "He survived all that?" he asked.

The woman lifted an elegant slim hand and pointed to the last two plaques. "His friends took him down from the cross and then carried him to his tomb. Three days later, he rose from the dead."

Turning back to the remaining plaques, Conar gazed up at the dead man as he lay cradled in a woman's arms. The sight brought unbidden tears to his eyes. "Who is the woman?" he whispered. He was not prepared for the answer.

"His mother."

Fury crept over Conar and he looked back around, impaling the widow with a fierce expression. "A mother should not be forced to look upon her tortured son."

"The woman had been prepared for what her son was to endure for the sake of his followers," the widow answered him. With a sigh of fatigue, she pushed herself up from the floor, waving her hand as the young man made to come to her aid. She sat down heavily on the bench then patted the place beside her, never once expecting the Outlander to refuse her company.

Conar sat down beside the woman, wondering why he felt the need to speak to her. He turned so that he faced her. "Why was he flogged?"

"Because of who he was," she answered. Her soft brown eyes captured his. "I believe you can well understand that, can't you?"

The Serenian nodded, although he didn't quite take her meaning. "What did he do to make the Tribunal kill him?"

"He was the Messiah," the woman answered. "The Chosen." She searched his face. "And he was condemned because the people loved him and followed him. The Sanhedrin, the Tribunal as you call it, were jealous of him. They feared him and the power he could wield over the people.

He taught love and forgiveness, not hatred and vengeance. And for that, his life was forfeit."

Conar looked back around at the final plaque. "But he didn't die." His gaze slid to the left and upward and he noticed for the first time the image of a man hanging from a cross above the high altar. "They just thought he had."

"There are those who say he was alive when he was laid in the tomb, but our bible teaches us he was dead, that his father raised him up to show us there will be eternal life after death."

"In paradise," Conar muttered. He was staring fixedly at the sorrowful figure hanging upon the cross.

"In heaven," the woman answered. "With our Lord and Father."

The image of the crucified man had burned its way into Conar's heart and soul and he did not feel the tears dripping silently down his cheeks. "I know what it's like," he said softly.

"He knows you do," she answered him. "He knows all there is to know about you, Conar McGregor."

The sign of the cross, as Catherine had called it, made sense to Conar then. His wife had touched her head, her heart, her left, then right, shoulder. The significance of that gesture was now all too clear. From the crown of wicked thorns on the man's sagging head, to the wounds in his feet and hands, the sign of the cross was a living reminder of the agony her god had suffered.

"He gladly gave his life so that we might live," the woman told him. "He knew from the first what he would be expected to endure and he embraced that future, if not gladly, at least willingly, for that was why he had been sent to us."

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"He lived for his people," Conar said.

"And died for them," she answered. "I will explain why he did that."

Catherine sat staring at her husband, wondering why he was speaking to himself, wondering what he was saying. She watched him turn now and again and look beside him as though he were in deep conversation with a person sitting with him in the pew. Never once did he look toward her, but carried on with his mumblings, his deep, heavily-accented Serenian drawl soft and excited as he continued to talk to himself. She thought of going over to him, but something made her sit where she was, watching him, loath to interfere. For what seemed like an hour's time, she kept her vigil on the other side of the church from her husband. When at last he seemed to grow quiet, Catherine got up, then walked down the aisle to the pew where he sat. She eased herself down beside him and was alarmed to see the tears still coursing down his cheeks.

"What's wrong?" she asked, reaching for his hand. She was not surprised to feel the tremor in his hand as he gripped hers.

"I understand it, Catherine," he said, not looking at her but up at the cross. "I understand all of it."

Catherine caressed his taut arm. "What do you understand, milord?"

Conar slowly turned his head and looked at his wife. "Everything, Catherine."

Concern filled Conar's wife's face for the look she saw emblazoned on her husband's countenance was one of savage delight and unearthly zeal. She watched with growing fear as he swept his gaze back to the cross.

"I have to get on with it, Cat," he said, his hand tensing in hers. "I have to do what I was brought here to do and then get on with my life." He stood up, drawing her with him. "I have to finish it."

Catherine stumbled as he pulled her from the pew, giving her precious time to genuflect before he dragged her behind him from the church. Once outside in the bright morning sunlight, she blinked away the brightness invading her eyes, and pulled at the hand which held her captive.

"Until I've finished what I have to do," her husband was saying as his long stride propelled them toward their mounts, "my life is meaningless." He let go of her hand as they reached the horses, then gave her no time to protest before lifting her to her mare's back. He stood there, staring up at her, his hand on her leg, his face filled with resignation. "When I've done what I have to do, then I can come to Him and ask His forgiveness." He shook his head. "Until then, I'll just have to make do on my own."