"Why do you think the others are here? Grice, Chand, and the rest? All are connected to you! Most warriors from the palace guards and even your disbanded Elite were hanged, but not the men who were sent here. Why do you suppose they were not put to death? The others in their families were. Your children, all but the eldest, were slain. How do you account for that?"
Conar stared. Why had no one ever mentioned this to him? His children? Dead? How could Legion have allowed it to happen? How could Liza?
Shalu hurried on, needing to get past the horror of telling a man his children had been slain because of him. No one had wanted to be the bearer of such news, to tell him that his life had been so terribly devastated. Seeing the pure sorrow moving across Conar's face was hard to witness, and if it could have been avoided, Shalu would have done so, but his slip of the tongue could not be corrected. But he had to put Conar's mind where it needed to be.
"Even if only the royal family heads were spared in each of the Kingdoms, why do you suppose the Tribunal deliberately overlooked Sentian? He was a Sentinel to your lady. Belvoir, he's still alive. He was Sentinel to the Queen of Oceania. Hern was your mother's Sentinel. Why did they let Storm and Marsh and Thom live?" He shook Conar. "Think, boy! Why did they let Legion and Brelan live? Teal du Mer? What use would they be to the Tribunal?
"There was a reason each of us was spared. A reason each of us was brought to this place. And that was to be with you." Shalu gripped Conar's chin and forced up his head. "The Tribunal gave reason for sparing the royal Princes and myself. We are to guarantee our peoples' conduct. We are hostages. But that doesn't explain Roget du Mer or the warriors. Why would only those loyally connected to you survive? Why leave only those capable of helping you? Could it be that you needed an incentive to rise above all this, to crush the evil that brought you down? The Tribunal overlooked the warriors because the gods, Themselves, made it so!"
Conar tried to pull away, but the hard hand tightened. "Leave me alone,"
"I'll not let you feel sorry for yourself any longer!" He gripped the tattered shirt and brought Conar's face close to his own. "Your children are dead! That can't be altered. But what you do about it, can! Will you let their deaths go unavenged?"
"No," came the soft, deadly, heartfelt reply.
"How good are you with a sword? As good as Tyne Brell of Chale?"
"I don't know what the hell you—"
"Can you use a crossbow?"
"Of course, but—"
"Can you toss a javelin as well as I? World Champion ten years running?"
"I don't give a—"
"How about the boomerang? Can you throw the metal death-stars and caltrops like Rylan?" Shalu's face blazed as he became aware that his companion was paying attention. He came to his knees and leaned forward. "How well do you swim? As well as Paegan of Virago who learned to swim and dive in the cold, turbulent waters of his homeland? Do you run as well as Chand Wynth? Ride a horse as well as Sentian Heil? Do you have Thom Loure's way with animals? Can you cheat at cards and not get caught like Teal du Mer? Plan strategy as well as his brother, Roget? Wrestle as well as Grice Wynth or Legion A'Lex?"
Conar stared at the Necroman, his mind reeling with the questions and insinuations the dark man was making instead of the grief that had been consuming him.
A deep chuckle came from Shalu's broad chest. "How about diplomacy? Are you as well trained as Legion? Do you have the mathematical skills like Hern, have the ability to plan and execute missions such as this one like Brelan?"
Conar thought he saw a flaw in Shalu's scenario. "Jah-Ma-El?"
"Even that foul-smelling warlock has his place. He knows more about the Domination that any of us. He can teach a variety of things. The properties of metals, the uses of herbs and potions, plants and charms. He can divine water, read the stars. He can help you to bring out the magic that has been hidden dormant in you, Conar."
Conar thrust out his palms. "They took care of my so-called powers!"
Shalu held up his own. "Mine, too, but do you see me bitching and moaning? If the power can be given, it can be taken away. If it can be taken away, it can be restored!" He took Conar's hand and held up the palm. "Do you even know what this is that Tohre placed on you?"
Looking at the raised scar in the center of his palm, Conar felt a moment of fear. He never looked at his hands. "The Seal of the Domination."
"And do you know Chase Montyne has scars like this?" He watched Conar squint. "He does. It is a ban, this vile thing. A ban on your power and his and mine. It is a ban against the use of what powers we were born with and cultivated before we were sent here. But there is a way around it."
"How?"
Shalu laid his palm in Conar's. "Every sorcerer, including Jah-Ma-El—who, by the way, has never been targeted by the Domination—has had this accursed pentagram burned into his flesh. There is, I am told, another who had such a thing done to him, and yet he wields more power now than he ever did. But his power against the Domination is useless without yours."
Conar could feel the brand touching his palm from so long ago and it hurt. "I don't understand what any of this—"
"The Lady Elizabeth, your lady," Shalu began and saw the flinch of agony flit across Conar's face. "Together with her, your power was magnified beyond anything anyone or any being could equal. Without her, you thought you had little power, but when you fought Raphian on that mountain pathway, she wasn't with you. Was she? And when you fight him again—and believe me, you will—she may not be with you then. You never learned to use what was given to you at birth."
"I was afraid to try!"
"I know. She knew. She also knew your power was far greater than her own, and always would be. She tried to show you it wasn't the evil you thought it to be. This Seal was put on you so even the tiniest flicker of magic would be stopped. But together with this man you will meet, your power will be unstoppable!"
"Why hasn't he found me before now? If he needed me to help him destroy Tohre and his evil, why didn't he seek me out?"
"Before now, you would not have understood what true evil could do. This man is the one who devised this pentagram. He used it to stop Tohre and Tolkan, but they turned it against him, instead, and sent him to a living death in this place. But Brelan broke him out when that boy was but twenty-years-old, Conar! Brelan took that man and two others from this place and got them to safety. Tohre doesn't know. He thinks that man is still here, unable to do anything against the Domination. Tohre thinks the disease of that pentagram has laid its inventor low. But if a man can invent a disease, can he not also invent the cure?"
"Has he?" There was a light in Conar's eyes that had not been there for a long time and it rivaled the blaze in Shalu's.
"He resides in the capital at Chrystallus. That is where Brelan aims for us to go until things can be arranged for us to return to our homes. To fight the Domination. It is fitting, don't you think, that one of the two kingdoms that have held out against the Domination is the place where this," he held up his palm, "will be taken away?"
"And will this man do it? Can he? Will he give us back the power we need?"
Shalu made a rude sound with his tongue. "Didn't you listen to anything I was saying, you little snot? All this was predestined years before either you or I were even itches in our fathers' crotches! All these men with unique talents have been gathered together in this place, at this time, alongside you, to do one thing. Teach you! Our journey to Chrystallus is just one more cog in the great wheel. A wheel that will roll over and crush the Domination once and for all!"
"How can you be so sure?"
"If Brelan is correct, in two to three weeks, that sea captain will dock at Tyber's Isle. The crew will trek through the hidden passages in the bluffs and will have weapons and manpower to overpower the guards and inmates. He says he was sent to bring back a certain number of men. I told him it would be three times that many, because that's how many men here are loyal to you." Shalu held out his hand, tightly gripped Conar's. "Come
the day of reckoning, brat, there will be more than forty men leaving this pit for the snows of Chrystallus!"
"You really believe that?"
"That is the way it was destined to be. We stand and fight. Can you do that?"
Conar stood and tilted one of the wash pots. He watched as the water flowed gray and thick from the cauldron. "I can only promise one thing."
"And that is?"
Conar straightened. "If the gods truly mean for me to leave this place and be the man to lead you, They will have to give me a sign."
Shalu felt like knocking down the brat. "What kind of sign?"
Conar shrugged. "A bolt of lightning on a clear day? Snow? How the hell should I know? As far as the world knows, I am dead. I feel dead, Shalu. I feel like a ghost. And a ghost can't fight, only a live warrior can. If you, or anyone else, can breathe life into me, Shalu, then I will do whatever you seem to think the gods have planned for me."
Shalu watched him walk off. What would it take to bring the real spark of life back to Conar McGregor? He was like a lonely little boy, all false bravado, desperately aching to be reassured, but with no self-worth left in him. He wanted to be held, comforted, loved again, not shoved and tortured and tormented. How could they show him he was as much alive now as he was when had been forced into this living death?
* * *
Appolyon sat with his fingers laced together under his chin, staring across the compound where Shalu and Conar sat. The two men were talking! The darkie even had a comforting arm around Conar's shoulder! The fat man opened his mouth to issue an order to have Conar thrown into the Indoctrination Hut for disobedience, but then he thought better of it. Saur was the cause. Saur and his damned interference!
But to intervene in the forbidden conversation taking place across the compound might bring Saur's anger down on his head once more, and Appolyon wanted to forestall that at all costs.
For a reason he could not explain, he was afraid of Brelan. Not just of the power the man wielded, having been given his position of Chief Warden of the guards by Kingly Edict, but by the alliance Saur hinted at between himself and Kaileel Tohre. Appolyon feared Tohre more than anything alive. Or dead.
If Saur was on close terms with Tohre, he was a man to be cultivated, not made angry. That Saur was angry—furious—over Hern Arbra's death, had been apparent when he had burst into Appolyon's bathing chamber and shouted his rage.
"If any of that rabble of yours ever dares to touch what is under control of the Tribunal again without my direct permission, I'll personally slice off his balls! I've ordered Lydon Drake to stand fifty lashes for killing Arbra and you'd better be glad that's all I'm giving your little plaything! I ought to have his asshole stitched closed!"
Appolyon stammered an apology, not even knowing what the man was talking about. He promised not to interfere in Drake's punishment, even though he had no idea what Drake had done. His fat face screwed into a mask of subservience, recognizing noble anger when he saw it, and he begged forgiveness, yet he still didn't know for what.
That had been a week ago.
Now, as the fat man sat brooding, watching Conar—freshly bathed, shaved and barbered—sitting in what passed for a clean, although frayed, prison uniform of dark cord and pale blue cambric, watching the obvious flaunting of his rules by the darkie and Conar, Appolyon grew angrier and angrier.
Saur had taken far too much upon himself. He had even arranged a funereal service for the dead prisoner! Something never before done in the Labyrinth.
Appolyon wasn't even sure Saur had the authority he said he did. How dare a man thrown out of Serenia by the King make threats to the Commandant of the strictest penal colony!
The little pig eyes glowed with hatred and the jowls fairly quivered with outrage. Lydon Drake would be of no use to him for several more days. The man's back was striped with whip marks applied diligently by one of the men Saur had brought with him, a burly old man named Korbit. There was no one else in the entire compound, save the man he was staring at, who met the Commandant's standards and tastes, and Appolyon seethed with inner need.
Throwing all caution to the wind, he bellowed for someone to find and bring the ailing Lydon to him.
Chapter 8
* * *
Lydon could barely walk. His back was a mass of burning welts and cuts from the belt that had been used on him. He ambled through the door and stood, head bowed, more humble than Appolyon had ever seen him. "You wanted me, sir?"
"Get a man you trust, one of ours, and have him take McGregor to the wine cellar. Tell him to have our young man pick out several bottles of good vintage." Appolyon's lip curled. "Being of the noble class, he should know what is a good year."
Lydon stared at the Commandant, recognizing evil when he saw it. "You are planning something?"
"A little surprise for our sweet prince."
* * *
Mister Tarnes' eyes were glued to the leeward. He pulled on his month-old growth of whiskers and turned a wary face to his captain. "I don't know where the hell she came from," he whispered. "The boy just looked out, and there she be."
Holm's face narrowed with worry. "This isn't the time of year for a storm, Mr. Tarnes," he agreed, watching the boiling black sky looming toward them.
"Ain't no storm," a voice said. Both men turned. Belvoir stood facing the oncoming rush of darkness. "That's hell-sent, it is."
"If we can't keep a straight course through these reefs," Tarnes reminded his captain, "we'll wind up broken to bits in this tunnel." He looked out about a hundred feet in the water and could see lighter patches of blue.
"I know," Holm snapped. He turned to Belvoir. "You've seen this kind of thing before?"
"Once. On a mountain pass in Serenia."
"Can't no storm be brewing up in the mountains like that there thing is!" Tarnes scoffed.
"It can if it was brewed by the Domination," Belvoir said a bit louder, for the storm was bearing down and the wind was quickening.
Holm looked to the three men of Conar McGregor's family. "Do we furl the sails and wait it out?"
Coron shook his head. "If you do, that's no guarantee we won't be shipwrecked, is it?"
Holm looked at Belvoir. "We'll keep up the sails and let the wind push us toward Tyber's."
Belvoir nodded. "I have something that might help." He walked to the hatchway, dropping down the stairs.
"We gonna run with this wind?" Tarnes was aghast. "Suicide!"
"It might get us there sooner," Coron put in.
"Where? To hell?"
"Let her ride with the wind," Dyllon said. "I have a feeling it's what was meant to be."
Belvoir limped toward them, held out a pouch. "I have something my lady gave me long ago. There were two like it once. Now, there's only this, as far as I know. Queen Medea said it was a protection if I should ever need it against Raphian."
"Who?"
Belvoir frowned. "It's that thing what brings them kind of storms." He remembered the evil he had seen long ago on a frozen mountain path. He could even smell the thing coming. He pulled the contents from the pouch and held it up to the others.
"Hair," Wyn whispered. "Black hair braided with gold." He looked at Belvoir. "Is it theirs?"
Belvoir nodded slowly.
"Whose?" Coron asked.
"My father's and Liza's," Wyn whispered.
The warrior from Norus Keep held the braid up to the sky. "Protect us, Ladies," he shouted. "Defend us from our enemies. Harness this storm and turn it to our advantage."
A wafting smell of sweet floral drifted past the men. Only one knew the significance of the sensual lavender, just as all Sentinels knew.
Belvoir smiled. "Set your course straight for our destination, Holm. Unless I miss my guess, this wind wasn't just hell-spawned."
Holm gave the orders and by the time the gale-force winds—sixty knots of screaming, blinding fury—hit the Boreas Queen and skipped her along the waters of the Straight of Savannah, Hern Arbra was b
eing laid to rest in a shallow grave on Tyber's Isle.
Chapter 9
* * *
Gezelle brought the little girl's hair ribbons to her mother and shook her head. Brelan Saur's daughter wouldn't sit still to have her hair swept up into a ponytail. Gezelle clucked. "She's sure got the temperament of her Papa."
Liza laughed and gave up trying to braid the thick black hair. "Go play with your brothers!" she told her child.
Liza drew in a long breath. She felt so old of late. Tired and worn out.
"You're worried," Gezelle commented.
"We haven't heard anything for months. I would know if Bre had been hurt, but I can't feel anything about Grice, Chand, and the others." She lowered her head. "It's almost as though they no longer exist."
"Don't say that!" Gezelle warned, a hurting fear running through her heart at the mention of Chand Wynth.
Liza raised her head, was about to say something to calm Gezelle when she saw Robert MacCorkingdale coming through the library doors. She stiffened automatically, hating the High Priest with all her being. "What do you want?" she asked, her voice curt.
Robert smiled, but his face, handsome as it was, was hard with ugliness. "His Holiness wishes to see you in the Temple, Highness. A most urgent matter, he said." He pretended to dust off the sleeve of his robes, a habit he had picked up from his mentor, Kaileel Tohre. "He would not have sent me, otherwise."
Liza hated this man almost as much as Tohre. She didn't know why, but instinct warned her that he had been one of Conar's self-proclaimed enemies. "I don't suppose he told you why."
"No, Highness, he did not."
"Right now?"
"He did say 'urgent.'" MacCorkingdale glanced at Gezelle, dismissing her. His pale gaze went back to his Queen. "Unaccompanied, of course."
"Of course," Liza mumbled as she stood. "Are you to lead me to make sure I arrive?"
Robert's chin came up and he grinned. "I don't care if you go or not." He bowed slightly and turned, walking the path as though he owned the garden.
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