"It's me. Brelan."
"Go away."
"I'm not going anywhere until you unlock this door."
"Then you'll have a long wait!"
"Open the gods-be-damned door!" Brelan rattled the handle. "Did you hear me, Conar?"
"Leave me the hell alone!" Something heavy hit the teakwood door. Brelan guessed it was the empty wine bottle.
Brelan yanked hard on the handle, kicked the bottom of the portal, and grimaced as he realized too late he was barefoot. He hopped on one leg, holding his injured toes, his temper rising. "Damn you to hell, Conar McGregor!"
"I've been there!"
No amount of pleading, cajoling, or threatening unlocked the door. Brelan went away frustrated, worried, and limping. Almost sure he had broken his big toe, he cursed the rule that allowed no footwear in the palace.
"What did he say?" Tran asked as Brelan met him on the stairs.
"To leave him the hell alone! He won't unlock the door. You know what happened last night and every night we were at sea."
"There are some things he can only do for himself; there are some things we have to do for him. All room keys are in the top drawer of the credenza at the head of the stairs. His key is the one with the sunburst medallion. Let him have his privacy for now. When the need arises, then make use of the key." Tran put his arm around Brelan's shoulder. He had always thought of this young man as his son and he loved him. "Conar needs to work things out in his own mind. When he is ready to talk, he will. He has always been one to keep his thoughts to himself, you know. There is no reason to think he has changed."
"I guess you're right."
"One of the absolutes of being a god-like being," Tran said with a perfectly straight face.
Brelan groaned at his uncle's dry wit and bid him goodnight. With one final look at Conar's closed door, he limped downstairs, knowing all too well someone would have to unlock that door before the night was through.
* * *
He was caught up in the nightmare again.
The dream had started the first night he was on board the ship. He had awakened screaming, gasping, violently fighting his brother's and Shalu's hold on him as he struggled in Holm's bunk.
"It's all right!" Brelan had said, trying to gain his brother's attention. "You're safe now!"
Conar jerked, whimpering, writhing, striving to get free. His face had been as white as parchment, a vein throbbing dangerously in his temple.
It had taken a few minutes and a great deal of force to subdue him. At last, trembling from head to toe and breathing erratically, Conar stared up at his brother with pitiful uncertainty.
"Safe?" he breathed. His look was one of confusion, disbelief.
"We're on our way to Chrystallus." Brelan wiped the sweat from Conar's forehead and swept back the damp hair.
Conar looked around, confused even more by the dark paneled cabin. He settled for a moment on Shalu's face. The Necroman smiled, trying to reassure him, but Shalu smiled so infrequently, and with such concentrated effort, the grimace wasn't reassuring at all: it looked suspiciously like condescension, pity. One big hand caressed Conar's bare shoulder.
"Would we lie to you, brat?" Shalu asked in a soft voice.
Brelan sat on the bunk beside Conar. He laid a wet fleece rag on Conar's hot face, ran it down his cheeks, over his forehead, down his neck, trembling chest and shoulders, and over arms stiff with fear.
"It'll take six to nine months to make it to Chrystallus because we're going the long way around the Cape of Diabolusia, then cutting across under the Emirates." He pressed gently on Conar's shoulder and made him lie down. The wet rag continued its journey across Conar's fevered flesh. "Not a particularly dangerous route, but a long one."
"We're not in the Labyrinth?"
"No, brat," Shalu said. "That hellhole isn't even a blur on the horizon, now."
"I'm free?" he asked, searching Shalu's face for the faintest sign of a lie.
"We're all free."
Conar turned his scarred cheek into the privacy of his pillow and wept. "I'm really free."
"Let's leave him to—"
Conar stared at them with terror. "Don't leave me alone! They come when I'm alone!"
Brelan suspected Conar was talking about the nightmares that had driven him to sit bolt upright in bed and howl with terror. "We'll stay with you."
Since then, Conar had never been allowed to sleep alone, for the dream came nightly, without fail. Most of the time, all it took was a gentle nudge when the hysterical whimpering came, a whispered assurance that all was well, a loving arm placed protectively around him.
It was the main reason the Empress sent Se Huan to him. It had been she who had nudged him awake when the nightmare started that first day.
It was also the reason she returned that night; it was her soft voice that had awakened him when the whimpers came and she had stayed to give him the blessing of sexual release.
Shalu was convinced the nightmares stemmed from Conar's first sight of himself in the great Cheval mirror anchored near Holm's desk in the cabin. They had been so careful in keeping him away from mirrors at the Labyrinth, but not so careful once they were on board ship. Neither Sentian nor Belvoir noticed the mirror when they brought Conar to the cabin, intent only on getting him to sleep, getting him out of the wet clothes that clung to him like a second skin.
After they'd gone, Conar had noticed the mirror standing sentinel at the far end of the cabin. Much later, Shalu found Conar standing before the mirror, tears streaming down his ashen cheeks.
Conar had a death-grip on the top of the oval frame and was staring intently at his image in the candlelight. The light cast the lower portion of his face and upper chest into shadows and lit his forehead and cheekbones vividly like the suspended monster image of a severed head, a floating ghoul in a child's dream.
Shalu placed a hand on Conar's tense shoulder. "Come away, brat."
Conar continued to stand there, never wavering from his reflection. He never blinked. His face was compressed into lines of hopeless pain and his chin was quivering, but his pale eyes were still as death.
A long, thin streak across Conar's nose and right cheekbone where Appolyon's riding crop had hit him was a fiery red. Dark circles under the pale eyes only accentuated the sunken and wounded orbs. The face was lean, the cheekbones standing out sharply against the rest of his face. The puckered twin furrows on his left cheek were a dark gray, but looked black and sinister in the candlelight. Along the bridge of his nose, once straight and unmarked, there were lumps and wavering white scars, ridges of torn tissue that had healed and pulled, puckered over the incline of his nose, caused from having been broken so many times over the last six years.
Conar saw a white outline staring back at him for a moment as the afterimage floated in the mirror. He studied at the face looking back at him and did not recognize this man. It was the face of a stranger; the face of a dead man.
In a voice so soft Shalu had to strain to hear it, Conar whispered through his sobbing. "Look at him, Shalu. Look at what Kaileel has done to him." A hitching breath came and went and the voice turned softer still. "Look at what they've all done to him."
Brelan entered the cabin, a look of intense pain on his face. "Conar," he said as he came to his brother's side. "I want you to come away from the mirror." He put one hand on Conar's arm, the other on his back and smoothed the scarred flesh. "Let go of the mirror."
"Who is he?" Conar asked, his tone filled with loathing. "Who is that monster staring back at me?"
Shalu took the young man's forearm in a no-nonsense grip. "Do as your brother says, brat. Let go." His voice brooked no resistance. He tightened his hold and, together, he and Brelan forcibly removed Conar's hands from the frame.
They escorted him back to the bunk, then pushed him to the mattress and blocked his view of the mirror.
"Lie down," Brelan ordered in a voice harsher than he had intended.
It was a tone of voice Cona
r understood, and had learned to obey. He hung his head in abject misery, his blond hair obscuring his face. His shoulders slumped. "Why?" Slowly his head came up as though it pained him to lift it. "What did I do to deserve being marked like this?"
"You didn't do anything!" Brelan answered.
"Why did they have to hurt me in such a way?" he pleaded, looking from one to the other, needing an answer he could understand.
"You've never been vain," Brelan said in an accusing voice. "Are you going to let a few lumps and bruises hurt you? The marks from the riding crop will vanish in a few days."
"And the scars from Tohre's whip?" he asked, lowering his head. "Will they go away, too?" There was such vulnerability, such hopelessness in the voice, that Shalu had to turn away.
Brelan put his hands on Conar's knees. "You know those scars won't ever go away. But they will fade."
Conar looked at Brelan with a strange gaze. "It's been more than six years."
Saur looked at Shalu for help, but the Necroman's back was to them, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Brelan looked back at Conar. "Those of us who have daily seen those scars no longer notice them."
"But what about those who haven't seen them every day? How will they look at me? How will Legion? Teal? Li—?" His voice cut off. "How could she ever stand to look at me like this? How could any woman bear to look at this face?"
"She has seen it," Brelan answered.
Conar stiffened; his face filled with disbelief. A single tear fell down his cheek. "When?"
Brelan wanted to flee the raw pain in his brother's face. "When they were taking the coffins to the ship," he answered, seeing that procession as clearly as though it had been the morning before. "Legion stopped them, demanding we be allowed to see you. Kaileel wasn't going to let us, but she made them open the coffin."
"What was she doing there?" There was hard accusation in the rasping voice.
"She was your wife. It was her right. No one would have dared to deny her." Brelan looked away, searching for the right words. "When Legion and I freed you from that post, Tohre's men took you into the Interrogation Complex and wouldn't let us see you. They told us you had died. I watched them flay the flesh from your body. There was no way any of us could have known you had survived that kind of beating."
"Why did you let her see me like this?" There was anger in the soft voice now. Betrayal.
"You have to understand. They wouldn't let us see you. They wouldn't let us prepare you for burial because they said you couldn't be buried in Serenian soil because you were a—"
"Traitor."
Brelan blushed. "Aye." He looked at the floor for a long moment. "They told us you and the others were to be taken out to sea, denied burial in your homeland as part of your punishment." He took a deep breath. "Legion wouldn't let them take you away without us saying goodbye."
"You should have kept her away!"
Brelan's hands tightened on his brother's knees. "She wanted to see you as much as we did. Probably even more. You were her husband. Her life!"
"You shouldn't have let her see me like this!" he repeated, shaking his head, not wanting to hear the words.
"She didn't run away in disgust," Brelan said. "She didn't cry out; she didn't flinch. She touched you. She kissed you."
"You shouldn't have let her!" Conar shouted. "I asked Legion to keep her away." A look of intense pain crossed his face. "Did she see what Kaileel did? Was she there?"
"No! Cayn gave her a drug, forced her to take it. She was not awake during the punishment."
"What does any of that matter now?" Shalu asked. He was now watching the two men. "To a woman in love, it is what a man is inside that counts, not what he looks like. The only thing that has changed about you are the scars and even they are not worth mentioning."
No?" Conar asked, his voice filled with scorn. "Then why didn't you two want me to see what I looked like?"
"We only wanted to wait until you had time and distance between you and the Labyrinth. We wanted to prepare you."
"For how bad I look?"
"For the way you look!" Shalu snapped. "Those damned scars haven't changed you!"
Conar's voice cut both men to the quick. "They've made me less than what I was. I will never be the same again, will I? Kaileel Tohre made sure of that! There is nothing left of me for any woman to love!"
Conar thrust Brelan aside and laid down, staring at the ceiling. "Leave me the hell alone."
"I don't think you…"
"I haven't told you what to think, Saur! Get the hell out of my cabin!" He flung an arm over his eyes.
Shalu dragged on Brelan's arm. "Let's go."
"He's not going to give me any or—"
"Leave him alone!" Shalu warned. "I'll have Heil get that accursed mirror."
"Let it stay!" Conar said, glaring at them. Even though his voice was soft, it was deadly. "I want it to remind me."
Brelan was furious. "Why?"
"Because then I'll never forget all the things I have lost because of Kaileel Tohre. I won't ever be able to forget why he has to be destroyed!"
Less than an hour later, Brelan and Shalu were back in the cabin, a screaming, struggling Conar held tightly between them. The nightmare that had sent him plummeting into darkness after being rescued from the wine cellar at the Labyrinth had altered itself into a horrifying hell on earth turning his flesh icy-cold even as sweat poured from his body in waves.
Two hours later, the Labyrinthian Fever came calling.
Now the nightmare was upon him once more and his door was locked against the help of his friends. He tossed and turned, caught up in the dreaming agony that made his hands turn to claws rending the silken sheets. He moaned, lost and hopeless whimpers coming from his mouth. His gasps turned to shouts of warning, his shouts to chilling screams of horror.
By the time Brelan and Roget retrieved the key from the credenza, Conar was at the height of his nightmare, gasping for air, his throat closing, his fingers plucking at the tightness there. He was pushing his upper body away from the mattress, his heels digging into the softness, his hips clear of the bed. His arms shot out suddenly to either side of him and his fingers splayed, curved into claws. His legs jerked wide apart as though he were staked to the mattress.
"Conar!" Brelan shouted and tried to lift his brother. Roget reached for Conar, as well. Both were astonished at how rigid Conar's body was, how cold to the touch.
"He's choking!" Roget said, putting his hands on Conar's head, forcing up the head to clear the airway.
Conar couldn't see them as they knelt over him. He couldn't hear their voices as they spoke to him. He couldn't feel their hands trying to help him. He was lost in the glaring darkness of his own self-induced hell.
"What's he mumbling?" Roget asked, holding Conar's whipping head as best he could.
Brelan couldn't answer, for he was struggling to keep his grip on his brother.
"Something about Tohre," Jah-Ma-El said. Both men were surprised to see the warlock standing in the room.
"Get his feet, Jah-Ma-El!" Brelan gasped as Conar bucked.
Jah-Ma-El stared at Conar. "Let him go, Brelan."
"What?"
"It's you holding him down that's making matters worse. Get your hands off him."
Brelan wondered if he was right. It had been the six of them holding him down at the Labyrinth that had set Conar to screaming horribly when he finally looked at them.
"You got a reason for wanting us to let go?" Roget snarled.
"He doesn't like to be held down. No man does."
"He could hurt himself."
"He could, but you might be doing more damage by holding him."
"We're his friends!"
"But I don't think it's you he's seeing."
He was lying in a bed. A huge, monstrously carved black bed with spiraling posts twisted like serpents. The posts, crooked and warped, soared high into the vault of an endless black sky above and he looked at it with such a feeling of
loss and hopelessness, he wanted to die.
On the headboard was a massive carving of a gargoyle head with long sharp fangs and mouth dripping venom and vomitus. The gargoyle's eyes moved, watching him, assessing him, taunting him with nameless horrors that were to come. The room in which he was held prisoner was filled with a red smoky haze and the black abyss of the sky was streaked with blinding flares of running, forking lightning. He could hear the crack of lightning, the rumble of thunder and the bed shook, rattling clear of the floor.
He tried to sit up, but his ankles and wrists were bound to the towering posts by hissing, writhing vipers whose tongues lashed out at him with promise. Their deadly eyes gleamed at him through the flares of lightning and the constriction of his wrists and ankles intensified.
He knew he was naked, could feel the cold wash of frigid air flowing over his straining body and he knew a vulnerability that set his soul to quaking. He was clammy, yet fever-hot with glistening sweat dotting his upper torso and face.
Something moved in the shadows, something dark and infinitely evil. It lurked, just beyond his vision and permeated the room with a stench so vile, so turbid that it was hard to imagine what it was. The scent wafted under his nostrils and he gagged, feeling the bile rising in his throat. The aroma was as hideous as the fear it caused.
A form, black-robed and floating, came out of the haze toward him and he recognized his twin, Galen. There was an evil grimace on Galen's face; his lips parted in a malevolent smile so full of threat, Conar had to look away. A tremor of terror shot through his belly. Lydon Drake stood on the other side of the bed, a grin of vengeance on his thin lips and dead face.
"No." His voice was weak, strained, hoarse.
Another black-robed shape, larger this time, taller and more threatening, detached itself from the red haze and glided toward him on silent feet, feet he was sure did not touch the floor. He felt a groan of fear escape his tightly compressed lips as the shape split apart and became two separate nightmare demons who came to stand at the foot of his bed, one to either side. Appolyon and Tymothy Kullen, their mouths stretched wide with evil laughter, watched him struggling to free himself.
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