WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (31 page)

"She'll make him a fine wife, Bali. God, but will she make him a fine lass! She'll curb that reckless streak in him and get him to settle down. I know one thing for sure, if he ever strays, she'll have him lashed to a post and do the whipping herself! Not that that's likely to happen for the lad worships her as much as I believe she does him.

"I told her Mama that she had nothing to worry about as far as my lad being able to keep her little girl safe. The boy would move heaven and earth to stay with Elizabeth Wynth McGregor and shift the moon in its orbit to keep her safe. He's a strong man, Bali. A good man. And we all know that evil don't stand a chance against a good man. He'll find the way to keep those slimy bastards of the Domination away from their doorstep. He'll let no man, nor woman either, keep him from the woman he loves. I have that much faith in him."

Conar wiped at his face, hearing the replica of Hern's voice reading Hern's words to him as though the dead man were speaking them himself.

"He might doubt himself at times, but he's smart enough and savy enough to know that as long as it is what he wants, nothing can stand in the way of his happiness. Not the Domination, not his king, not even himself. And Conar McGregor is his own worst enemy, you know. But I can help him overcome that. Me and his lady-love. We just have to teach him what the two of us already know: Nothing and no one can stand against him or take what is his unless he lets it happen. And we know he ain’t going to do that!

"I wish you'd come to visit, Bali. I want you to meet him so badly. After all, he's your nephew, although only me and you and the Lady has ever known that. You'd love him as much as I do and that's for a certainty. He is what our Papa would have called a hero, Bali. His people love him and would do anything on earth for him.

"Well, I'd best be getting on with it. Belvoir and me got a bet going on when the first little Conar-heir will come popping out. I say right at nine months!"

"It took awhile longer," Conar said quietly. He thrust a trembling hand through his hair.

"Two years later, actually." His bladder was hurting and his head throbbing unmercifully.

Sensing his overlord's discomfort, Balizar stood up, slipped the rawhide thong back over the bundle of letters then bent over to lay them in Conar's lap. At the look of surprise on the younger man's face, Balizar grinned.

"He would have wanted you to have 'em, milord."

Picking up the yellowed letters, Conar only nodded. He would treasure them as Balizar had. "Thank you, Bali," he said. Looking up, he smiled, although the emotion never reached his sad eyes. "Thank you very much."

"You may not want to be hearing this, milord," Balizar answered, "but I think you know it in your heart. Your lady needs you and she's made that plain enough to you by going to Serenia.

She loves you so terrible much."

"It's dangerous for a woman to love me," Conar replied. "Dangerous and not all that smart."

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"Maybe so, but unless I miss my guess, your lady would rather be in danger with you than unhappy without you." The warrior put a heavy hand on Conar's shoulder. "When you've done all you mean to do here, you go back to Boreas and take up where you left off with that lady, lad.

She's your destiny."

How he hated that word, he thought as he forced a smile of understanding to his lips.

Destiny, to him, meant pain and sorrow and grief and as much unhappiness as the old gods could heap upon him. Not once had his destiny ever brought to him the peace he had longed for all his life. But it had brought Liza. And it had brought Catherine.

Destiny had also taken both of them away.

"You can do whatever you set out to do, milord," Balizar reminded him. "Hern knew that.

Hern had faith in you. In your ability to protect your own." He squeezed Conar's shoulder. "Will you be letting him down after he put so much store in you, lad?"

Staring up into a face that was identical to Hern's, listening to the voice that might well have been Hern's own, Conar could feel his mentor's spirit hovering in the room, goading him as Hern often did, chastising him as Hern always had, encouraging him as Hern would have had he been there.

"You're not a coward, milord," Balizar added. "You're not one to run away from your troubles. Why start now?"

Why, indeed? Conar thought after the old warrior had left him. As he stood there, relieving the horrible pain in his bladder, he could not help but remember something Hern had told him long, long ago.

"Whoever told you life was fair, brat? Do you think life is going to let you win just because
you're the so-called Heir-Apparent? Well, I'll disabuse you of that notion right here and now! Life
don't give a flying shit who you are, boy, or what your station in this world is. You get knocked
down just the same be you king or knave! You go after what you want because if you don't,
someone else will come along and take it away from you and kick sand in your face in the bargain!

You ain’t no bleeding coward, Conar Alekandro! Get your ass up and do what you know is right!

Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty or get your ass whipped. You might lose now and again,
but I'll wager you'll win more often than not if you just put your mind to it. Don't you ever let me
hear that you let someone take what was yours without you having put up one hell of a fight to keep
it or
I'll
be the one to whip your ass!"

He hadn't put up much of a fight to keep Catherine, he thought as he sat down heavily on the bed, his legs weak, his head spinning, the nausea having returned full force. He'd let life, and his enemies, take her away from him. He'd let that damnable destiny take her away from him as it had taken Liza away long ago.

"Fool," he called himself as he pushed up from the bed. He made it as far as the chair by the window before he collapsed, grabbing hold of the arm, nearly upending the heavy piece of furniture before he could sit down. The last thing he needed was Rachel to come strolling through the door, but he forced himself to smile at her. "I thought you rode into Dahrenia with Asher."

Rachel started to answer him but she had noticed the tremor in the hand holding desperately to the chair arm. She had noticed the pallor of his face and the sweat dotting his upper lip and running down his temples. She went to him and knelt by the chair.

"You're still sick," she accused, lifting her hand to feel his forehead. "You have a fever."

"Nothing new," he said, pulling his face away from her touch. He could not stop himself from shivering.

"I'm going to get Rupine," Rachel said. She started to get up but he put a hand out to cup Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 140

her neck.

"No," he told her, shaking his head although the motion made him sicker still.

"You were ill all night and you look terrible," she said. "And, by the Prophetess Mosen, Khamsin, you positively reek!"

"Such compliments will not turn my head, Mam'selle," he teased her. He shrugged. "My belly, maybe, but definitely not my head."

"This is no time to be funning with me, Conar!" she snapped.

He was in trouble with her, he knew, for the only time she ever called him by his given name, she was angry with something he'd done. He tried to soothe her, but she kept insisting on calling the physician to see to him.

"I told you no," he said with as much finality and conviction as he could muster despite the twist of his unruly tongue in his mouth. "I don't need him."

Rachel stared at him, itching to slap some sense into him and had he not appeared so sick, she well might have blistered his cheek. As it was, she reached to take his hand in hers, alarmed at the tremor and the white-hot dry heat of his flesh, and pressed his palm to her cheek.

"What can I do, Khamsin?' she asked, pleading in a voice that told him of her love for him.

He caressed her smooth cheek, delighting in the feel of her cool skin, wanting to ease her concern. "Just let me rest, all right? Just let me sit here and rest awhile. I'll be fine. If I get worse, I'll call you."

"But...," she started to protest, but he laid his hot fingers on her lips.

"And I'd rather sleep alone tonight, Rachel," he said.

"Why?" she gasped. "What have I done?"

He shook his head. "Nothing, sweeting, but I just think I'd rest better if I was by myself."

He smiled. "Please? Just this once? I have a lot on my mind and a lot to think about."

Rachel watched him double over in the chair, twisting so that the hot bile which erupted from his lips spewed over the side of the chair and not into her lap. She scrambled up, holding his head as the vomit poured out of him, wondering how he could have so much in his belly when he'd eaten precious little that morning.

"Isn't there something you can do?" Rachel begged. "A potion? Anything?"

"Nothing that I know of." Rupine stood up wearily for he had spent most of the afternoon and into the early evening by Conar's bedside, trying to get the man's high fever down. "The malaria is treatable. The other?" He held up his hands. "I don't even know what it is to call this malady he has developed from the tenerse. How can I treat what I don't know?"

"What about Raphaella?" Sajin inquired.

"There again," Rupine answered. "She knows what has caused this illness, but she can only do so much herself. I shall write her, of course, or ...."

"Meghan will contact her," Rachel snapped. "There is no other way to reach the bitch."

Sajin smiled to himself. Conar's women all seemed to hate one another. "At least I think we've found out the real reason why he sent Catherine away," the nomad commented. "I called him on it when he was too weak to argue and got the truth of it at last."

"You should not have been baiting him with him ill!" Rachel castigated him. "The man is lying there ...."

"At my mercy," Sajin interrupted. "I know. You shouted that at me earlier, remember?"

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Rachel's eyes narrowed into thin slits. "Don't do it again!"

Sajin shrugged. "Leave off, Rachel."

"It doesn't matter why he sent that bitch away," Rachel pouted. "She couldn't take as good care of him as I can, anyway."

You won't be allowed to care for him if he gets much worse, Sajin thought, although he didn't say it to the woman. Conar had already made plans to go to one of the Monasteries when his illness became unmanageable, but he doubted Rachel knew that.

"I'll look in on him again before I go to bed," Rupine told them. "It's just as well that you aren't in there to bother him, girl. He needs to rest quietly."

Rachel drew herself up and glared at the physician. "I wouldn't have bothered him, Uncle!"

"No, but he would have been obliged to talk to you or try to calm your fears and he doesn't need that right now." Rupine shook a finger at her. "Stay out of his room tonight Rachel. Do you hear?"

Sajin chuckled at the militant snort that exploded from the woman as she turned on her heel and stomped from the room.

"He has such a powerful affect on women, doesn't he?" Rupine said dryly.

If there was one thing Sajin understood well about his new friend, Conar McGregor, it was that women found Conar's defiance and the edge of danger about him intriguing. Such traits in a male were a devastating combination which gained a woman's immediate attention. But is was Conar's smoldering anger and at-odds melancholy that kept that attention. Not to mention his nonchalance and I-don't-give-a-damn-what-happens-to-me attitude that made woman slather after him like bitch-dogs in heat. All that, combined with his devilish good looks, made for killer competition between him and other males. A competition Conar had rarely, if ever, lost. Someone less attuned to his own nature than Sajin was might find a threat in that, but Sajin Ben-Alkazar found it funny.

"He doesn't always like the effect he has on them, either," Sajin laughed.

"Women like to coddle a man whether they know it or not. It's the mothering instinct,"

Rupine explained. "It's past time Rachel had a child to mother."

Asher looked up. "Do you know something we don't, Uncle Rupine?"

Rupine lifted one thin shoulder. "She's gaining weight. Have you noticed?"

Sajin sat up in his chair. "You think she's pregnant?" Conar wasn't going to be happy about that situation if she was.

"She has all the symptoms, but I could be wrong," Rupine admitted. "We'll just have to wait and see."

A long, heavy sigh pushed from Sajin's gut and his gaze went upward to the place where he knew his friend was sleeping. "Ah, Conar," he thought. "You aren't going to like this at all!"

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Chaim Al-Shenkar slipped quietly down the corridor of the upper story. His bare feet made no noise on the stone floor as he crept quietly along. His hooded eyes moved constantly, searching, seeking, probing the darkened shadows of the corridor. His acute hearing strained to pick up the faintest footfall, the slightest movement. Satisfied there were no guards outside the chamber door toward which he was headed, a grim smile of purpose settled on the nomad's thin lips and he increased his pace. Almost without thought, he reached down to touch the dagger which he had stuck into the sash of his robe. Reassured that his protection was at his side, he stopped outside the unguarded door and slowly reached out to take the handle. Moving as silently as possible, he pulled down on the handle and eased the heavy wooden door open enough to be able to see through the crack.