Occultus pointed the sword at Conar's heart. He had one brief burst of fear that his hand would slip and run the young man through. A part of him almost wanted to. To end this before it got out of hand.
"Give him his weapon, Warlock!" the voice commanded.
Grief ravaged Occultus' face. "Do you accept this fate, Conar McGregor?"
Conar grasped the sword's blade with both hands, barely feeling the razor-sharp edges cutting furrows in his palms. "I accept everything the Dark Wind has granted. I am His champion."
Occultus wanted to pierce Conar's heart, for only weapons forged for the Overlord of the Wind could ever kill him, destroy him. He could be hurt by other weapons, weapons that could draw the blood from his body, rend his flesh, but none save the ones forged for his hand, and his hand alone, could take his life. He stared into Conar's raised eyes and knew a moment of indecision. Should he allow this young man to live his life without warmth, or love, or compassion? Should he set loose on the earth a man who was no longer human, but possessed with the power of the Darker Forces of Justice.
"I am the Chosen," Conar told him, reading his thoughts. "There will be no other like me. No other will follow. If I lead, I lead. What's it to be, Occultus?"
Occultus let out a wavering sigh of emotion. "Aye, you are the Chosen." He withdrew the sword from Conar's grip, winced at the bloodstains on the blade, and then held out the sword, extended in his own hands toward Conar. "It is your weapon."
Conar took the sword. The sorcerer retained his own hold on the weapon. One tawny brow cocked in question.
"You must know your weapon, Conar McGregor. You must understand the chilling power you have been given with its possession.
"In the pommel are the stones of power. Crystals placed there by the gods.
"Agate, to strengthen your vision; Rose quartz, to strengthen your hearing; Jasper, to give you the strength you will need to wield this blade; Garnet, to hone your willpower; Adventurine, to increase your perception; Peridot, to give you patience; Tiger Eye, for courage; Bloodstone, to insure you long life; Moonstone, so that your emotions will be balanced; Sodalite, in order for you to know great physical endurance; Smoky quartz, so you may win any challenge; Chrsysocholla, to dispense with guilt and fear; and Rhodocheosite, to relieve you of emotional stress.
"The blade has been forged with the crushed stones of amber so that you can absorb negative energy; Amethyst, to increase your clairvoyant power; Selenite to aid your telepathy; and Tourmaline to attract the cosmic forces to you.
"The obsidian dissolves any illusions you may have. You must understand that you are the Warrior of Warriors!"
Occultus let go of the blade. He turned to the others and motioned for them to stand. He raised his hands in blessing over Conar's head.
"Behold! I give you the Dark Overlord of the Wind! Let no man stand against him! By the right of the Great Ones, by the blessings of the Lost Warriors, by permission of the Master of the Wind, Himself, I consecrate this warrior to the Dark Wind!"
Chase, Shalu, Jah-Ma-El and Brelan winced almost in unison. This was not what had been wanted. Each of the four had more than a working knowledge of sorcery, and the forces instilled in Conar were terrifyingly powerful. A shiver ran down their bodies as they each realized just what an untouchable foe Conar would truly be.
Conar trembled with the power cascading through him. The hair on his head and arms, legs and chest vibrated. His breaths came in ragged cadence to the wild beating of his heart. He could barely see for the tears streaming down his cheeks. He was oblivious to the blade burning his palms. The ruby red blood dripping to the floor meant nothing to him.
"At least the Black Ascendancy has not sent…" Chase stopped, his heart stilling. "No," he groaned, listening to the sound that had blocked his words. "Pray the gods, no!"
A high-pitched shriek penetrated the room. A black shape darted down, swooping with sharp talons extended, and came to land solidly on Conar's right shoulder.
Conar looked into the red glare that seemed to impale him. He felt a quiver of apprehension before the black shape shrieked again, flapped its wings, and folded them around itself.
"No!" Occultus leapt forward, but was too late.
With a suddenness that left Conar stunned, the black shape melded into the flesh of his sword arm.
"Conar, no!" Shalu fell to his knees before Conar. "Oh, god, no!"
Conar felt the searing, blinding, tearing agony and could not stop the scream that bubbled out of his mouth. He pitched forward and lay still, his fingers still clutching the blade.
Brelan came off the platform, Chase at his side, Jah-Ma-El close behind, and the three formed a semi-circle around Conar.
Tears running down his cheeks, Shalu looked into their tight faces. "By all the gods, this is a most evil thing that has entered our friend."
The others began to shift uneasily forward, straining to see, but stilled when Occultus, his voice edged with terror, howled in panic. "Know you not who this is?" His hands shook so badly he had to fold them under his armpits. "The legends named him long ago. This is the Dark Wind. This is Conar!"
Conar's eyes snapped open. Those closest to him—Shalu, Brelan, Jah-Ma-El and Chase—saw clearly in the murky light and drew back with gasps of fear and disbelief.
Shalu moved back from Conar with a look of terror. "You mustn't look at…" Shalu began, but Roget brushed him aside.
Conar's eyes, so brightly blue like the sky on a lovely summer's day, had darkened to a deep, deep sapphire. The pupils began to elongate even as the men watched, stretching like those of a feline, then turned a feral red in the dim light cast from the wheel overhead. They pulsed, glowed, turned a murky, spectral green chatoyancy like a cat's eyes in a sudden beam of light in the dark, and then glowed red again. The green returned, stayed only a second, then the pupils returned to their normal size and the alien colors fled. The dark blue color remained.
More had changed within those frightful eyes than just the color or the shape. A silver fleck of deadly power shimmered in the depths. Each man clearly saw the leashed power.
"Conar McGregor is truly no more," Chase whispered. "This man is the Raven. He has been marked with the sign of the Dark Wind!" He pointed to twin black intersecting arcs on the back of Conar's sword hand. The mark looked like a child's drawing of a bird in flight.
Instinctively, the men edged back as the young man sat up. They watched as he stared at his palms.
The pentagon was no longer there, but two red, scorched lines diagonally bisected the cuts caused by the sword so that a cruciform now scarred his palms. The Seals of the Domination that had negated his powers were gone. In their place was a Seal far more powerful. The X-shaped brand of the Black Ascendancy, Itself.
Conar looked into Occultus' stunned face and smiled, but there was no warmth in that smile, no emotion on his finely chiseled lips. He held up his hands for the sorcerer to view.
"I have what I asked for, Teacher," he said in a deadly voice.
Brelan shuddered. The smile his brother had bestowed on Occultus had frightened that man, had frightened them all. It wasn't a human smile; it was a predatory leer. It was a smile as full of evil intent and revenge as any smile Brelan had ever seen emblazoned on the face of Kaileel Tohre!
Conar turned over his right hand and stared at the black mark on his flesh. His smile slipped away.
"It is the Brand of the Dark Wind," Jah-Ma-El whispered.
Prince Conar McGregor pushed himself up from the floor. He met each gaze for a moment, silently passing his regard from one man to the next until he met Brelan's worried look. He held up his hand so Brelan could see the mark.
"See what betrayal does to a man?" he asked. The deadly smile returned. "It changes him."
Chapter 17
* * *
During the time their leader was concluding his studies with the instructors Occultus had chosen for him, those men who would be making up the phalanx of Conar's troop were undergoin
g specialized training of their own. Occultus made sure they were turned into an elite fighting unit with each man responsible for certain areas of operation.
Brelan would be second in command, answerable only to Conar. He would be in charge of every aspect of military maneuver, overseeing the carrying out of each mission. Third in command was Shalu. His job was to oversee arms and ammunition. Directly under him was Roget du Mer who, as Sergeant-at-Arms, was given supervision over the men who would form the fighting force.
Grice and Chand were put in charge of the physical training of the recruits; Tyne, a swordsman of great expertise, was put in charge of the training of the combat troops. Chase was put in charge of the archers; Rylan was given charge of the special unit that would be part of the covert operations force. Thom had charge of the animals that would move a major force of fighting men; Sentian was given total supervision of the war horses and the training of the beasts plus overseeing the instruction of the riders.
Xander Hesar, along with Johnson Herndon from the Labyrinth, became the Force's two-man medical unit, and would later train nearly a dozen others as assistants for the field.
Paegan and Holm were put to use in re-fitting the Boreas Queen, turning her into a man-'o-war with sails borrowed from the Vortex. They painted the ship jet black once they had scuttled the prison transport, and they gave her a new name: The Ravenwind. Her ensign, a blood-red standard adorned with a screaming black raven, was hoisted up the topgallant and proudly proclaimed the ship the property of the Wind Force.
Ching-Ching and Pearl would be training the troops in hand-to-hand combat; Belvoir was given the job of keeping those troops in line. Storm would train the cavalry and chose two of the men who had joined them from the Labyrinth, Nyles Belyeaux and Kirke Lanier, to help him. Misha was asked to train the troops in signals and code, and Ward would be responsible for seeing those codes were sent.
Jah-Ma-El, loath to do any physical labor, was allowed to do what he did best—create mischief with his magic.
In all, twenty-two men, plus Conar, made up the original force, now known as the Brotherhood of the Wind, but the men called themselves the Wind Force and they were well-trained, well-disciplined and capable. But more importantly, they were ready and eager to do battle with the evil that had destroyed their lives, had scattered and slaughtered their families, and had made them fugitives—penniless, homeless, and madder than hell.
At Occultus' suggestion after the consecration of their leader to the Dark Wind, each of the men took new names, code names, by which they would now be called. Each swore an oath of allegiance, in blood and on the graves of their dead loved ones, to carry out to the best of their ability the total and final destruction of the Domination. By doing so, they took on a challenge that would defy the demons of the Abyss.
"So you will know one another, and those who will join our cause," Conar told them, "I will give you a sign with which to greet one another." He lifted his right hand straight out in front of him and made a fist. He then extended his thumb and little finger outward, then curved them inward. "This is the sign of the Raven."
It became a salute, one man to another.
Emperor Tran had his arsenals opened, his blacksmiths working overtime, and his military training rooms available and at the disposal of the men. Shalu had sent word to his homeland, via the network of spies that regularly transversed the border between Necroman and Chrystallus, that his people were to gather the finest horses, break them, and ready them for the troops that would be converging in his homeland. Craftsmen from the two countries were set to work manufacturing special clothing, tailor-made for the individual warrior. Every important area of military operation was covered.
Within two months, information concerning Kaileel Tohre's doings began to trickle in. Rylan's covert operatives had spread out in the Seven Kingdoms, gathering information, feeding it back through the growing network of spies that the men jokingly called the undercurrent.
With each bit of news, a growing file on the whereabouts of troops, arsenals, shipping routes used by the Tribunal Guards, and prison camps where detainees were kept was compiled. It was passed on to those whose job it was to evaluate the information and give their recommendation to Brelan and ultimately, Conar. Along with the scattered bits of worthwhile information, came a man here, a woman there, who sought to work with the underground resistance force rallying against Kaileel Tohre and the Brotherhood of the Domination.
Each new recruit was checked, re-checked, and checked still again. Most were evaluated by at least three individuals before allowed access to secret training camps throughout the Seven Kingdoms, set up by men personally trained, and vouched for, by one of the original twenty-two man vanguard. No man or woman came searching for the Wind Force without either a noble or valid reason. But if a recruit proved untrustworthy, he disappeared, meeting an end as befitted his deception. Fortunately for the Force, such traitors were few and far between and caught at the beginning of the operation. Those who had proved themselves worthy were given a chance to play a major part in returning things to the way they had been before.
Not a single one of the recruits met Conar. As far as they were concerned, the Emperor Tran, under the directorship of the sorcerer Occultus, was leading the battle force. The men they trained under—Sentian, Storm, Thom, Ward or the others—were introduced as loyal warriors who had fled their homelands to Chrystallus. No one saw the blond man who stood in the room where they were being questioned, for his black outfit hid all but the deadly gleam in his alien eyes. His was the image of an executioner as he stood silently with arms crossed over his thick chest, booted feet wide apart, staring intently at the recruit; and not one potential recruit ever questioned who he was nor did they deem it safe to speculate. Sometimes, though, as in the rare cases of Tribunal and Domination spies, he was the last sight they ever saw this side of the Abyss.
It had been inevitable that word would get back to Tohre that a sizable force was gathering in the mountains of Chrystallus. Spies for the Domination were eagerly awaited, and each new recruit was looked upon with wariness and caution until he or she was proven safe. But such was the Arch-Prelate's ego, he paid scant attention to what useless bits of information were fed back to him concerning the Force. He ordered a haphazard investigation, and when he received word that the troops were ill-trained, outnumbered by his own guard, and poorly outfitted, he took the messenger at his word. Something Conar made sure he did.
Since Tohre had gained no foothold, did not hold any power, in the icy country of Chrystallus nor in the jungle country of Necroman, he was content to let the renegades exist unbothered. There would be time enough to crush them if they ever made it to Serenian soil. After all, he reasoned, what force could stand against his seasoned Tribunal Warriors and Temple Guard?
Not that it mattered. Tohre's fate had been sealed many years before when a six-year-old boy had raised horror-stricken eyes and cried to Alel for help.
* * *
On the night before the departure, a feast was prepared for the men and women who would be making the wicked trek through snow and ice to their final destination—Serenia.
Wine flowed generously. The food was cooked to perfection and was so abundant, come morning the leftovers would feed nearly all the poor inside the palace grounds. Laughter ran through the celebration hall where commoner and royalty mingled for one last abandoned time before they buckled down to their dangerous work.
Occultus sat watching Conar. He had become a force to be reckoned with, this blond-haired warrior of warriors. His natural abilities, his regal bearing and inbred sense of right and might, had come back swiftly over the last two years of training. He had been used to command before Tyber's Isle; he had been accustomed to having authority, making demands and decisions, sure they would be carried out without question. The Labyrinth had tried to steal those qualities, but in the end, he had discovered they were only lying dormant, ready at his command to spring forth.
Leadership had come back as a natural extension of the authority he wielded, just as the authority had come back with the confidence his men had in him. He had honed those qualities of command like he had honed his magnificent body. With determination, with perseverance, and with success. He had become a man for whom other men warily stepped aside.
The icy-steel gaze was cold to those he did not trust or instinctively recognized as foe, lethal to those he knew meant him or his cause harm. The hot stare he could turn off and on like a water tap warned those intelligent enough to realize he meant business, that he wasn't a man you crossed and got away with it.
He was loved, but also feared; he was admired, but treated with caution; he was respected, but left alone. No one really knew what lay hidden in the depths of those cold, alien, sapphire eyes.
Occultus watched Conar smile at something his son said and shivered. That smile was evil, as cold as the ice on the crests of his birth-mountains. And his laughter, when he laughed, was just as cold as his eyes, and as deadly. The sorcerer couldn't shake the feeling that something so vile, so malevolent, so intent, lurked behind that coldness, watching, waiting, yearning to leap forward and destroy, that even Conar could not control it. Should that nameless force ever erupt, Occultus doubted if Conar would even try.
Closely watching his pupil, taking in the way the warrior missed nothing going on around him, the hard mouth, the strong hands toying with his dagger, the restless way he shifted in his chair, Occultus knew the time of the Dark Wind had come. This man was as ready as he would ever be, and only time would see the final solution to his problems.
Leaning back in his chair, the sorcerer lowered his head, saying a prayer for the peace of mind Conar had always been denied. If things in Serenia were as bad as Occultus suspected, Conar would thirst for even more blood and vengeance, and there were helpless ones who would suffer greatly in the pursuit of his goal.
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