WINDREAPER

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  * * *

  On the other side of the tunnel, in the antechamber where the horses were tethered, Conar let go of the boy's hand. He looked at the upraised, thankful face and felt a stab of remorse. This was his nephew; flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. He should not blame the boy because of who his father was. The child had been with Kaileel Tohre for years. Conar knew all too well what that was like. It could have changed the boy, but Conar understood that it hadn't.

  He knelt once more before the child. He hesitated, not sure of what he wanted to say. "I need to ask you something, boy."

  "I will answer truthfully, Lord Darkwind. I tell no falsehoods."

  There was no guile in the boy's gaze, no duplicity in the thin face. Conar had started this mission hating the child, wishing he had never been born. But now he was having feelings he had not expected. True, Corbin was his nephew, and he couldn't be held accountable for what his father had been, and his mother was. The boy, like himself so many, many years before, was an innocent. Or had been.

  "Has he touched you, Corbin?" He had to ask. For some reason, it mattered a great deal to him.

  The little head dropped. It was all the answer Conar needed, for his own childhood reared up in front of him. Without thinking, he drew the child into his arms and held him protectively. "He will never do so again, little one."

  Corbin raised his head and looked into Conar's face. "Did he do that to you?" Corbin asked, hesitantly putting up a hand to touch the scars.

  "Aye."

  "When you were little?"

  "After I was grown."

  "After you were grown?" True horror filled the boy's voice.

  "You have nothing to fear from him again. I will see to Kaileel Tohre."

  "Is it because of what he did to you that my mother says you're a hard man?" The little face wrinkled with concern.

  Conar drew in a breath. So the bitch had been communing with her son through the years. He thought as much. Corbin's powers would be small compared to what they would become, and Conar doubted the child could send thoughts over a distance, but he could obviously summon from nearby. He had, after all, heard the boy's call at the monastery. "She told you I was a hard person?"

  "She told me not to be afraid of you, to show you kindness and respect. She said you didn't care for the feelings of others, but that's not true, is it? You cared about me when I couldn't go through the tunnel." Corbin laid his head on the Darkwind's broad shoulder. "You protected me." He shivered. "Protect me from Kaileel, Milord. Please. I don't want him to scar me, too."

  Conar clutched the boy. "What he did to me, he will never do to you. I promise, on my honor. He loved your father; he hated me."

  Corbin shook his head. "He hated my father. He tells me he loved him, but I know he couldn't have. He had him killed." The boy's voice broke on a silent sob.

  "You have nothing to worry about." Conar eased the boy out of his arms and stood. "Will you ride with me, Prince Corbin?"

  Corbin rode behind Conar on the big black steed. His arms clutched Conar's waist, while his face pressed against the wool of his cloak.

  He was going home.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  She had cried herself to sleep that night, but for the first time in a long time, it had been happy tears wetting her pillow. Her joy at having her son home was like a bright shaft of sunlight after a long, gray winter filled with dismal rain. His thin arms had wound around her neck and his tears mingled with hers until he fell asleep, exhausted, in her arms. She allowed Teal to pick him up and carry him to the room next to hers—Conar's old room. She thought it proper that the son should sleep in his father's bed. Both Marsh and Teal slept in that room, as well. No chances would be taken at having Corbin kidnapped again.

  Now, as she lay beside her sleeping husband, something woke her from the sweet dream. She felt the bed dip as Legion rolled over, his heavy arm going around her waist as it almost always did. She smiled and tried to snuggle back into her dream.

  But there it was again, something that played just beyond her hearing. There was a cool breeze across her palm as it lay on the pillow beside her head, then she felt a light sensation of touch on the tips of her fingers. Her eyelids flew open.

  Before she could cry out, his hand came down over her mouth, letting her know to be quiet. She stared at the masked man hovering over her, knew who it was, but the knowledge only frightened her more. Her breath drew in against the restriction of his hand and she felt an odd puckering across his palm, wondering what had caused the skin there to be raised. He gently squeezed her mouth, warning her, then began to withdraw his hand.

  Liza tried to look toward Legion, fearful he would wake and find this man in their sleeping chamber, but the back of Darkwind's hand stopped her face from turning. He didn't push hard along her cheek, but the resistance reminded her he didn't want her to turn away. All too aware of what she had promised him for returning Corbin, she kept still, although her heart nearly burst free of her chest.

  She stared up into eyes as cold as ice, gazing with a detached calm that made her blood run cold.

  * * *

  Through the moonlight falling on her from the window, Conar stared at her. He saw the rapid rise and fall of her breasts just above the silk sheets. His gaze roamed over her lovely face, seeking things he had missed for so long, looking for the love that had once been there when she looked at him, wondering why she did not know who he was. She trembled; he felt the movement on the back of his hand and somehow it pleased him—to know she was afraid of him, of what he might do while her husband, his brother, lay next to her.

  His hand slid down her cheek, her neck, turned so his fingers grazed the column of her throat. He spanned that slim throat with his sword hand, marveling at how easy it would be to snap her neck. His thought must have touched her, for she quivered. His thumb stroked the underside of her chin, touched her full lower lip, then went to her shoulder.

  His fingers moved along her arm, sliding sensuously downward, barely touching her flesh. He circled her wrist with his strong fingers, squeezed just enough to remind her of his strength. His palm slid into hers, spreading her fingers apart with his. He gripped her hand for a moment, then his fingers relaxed, moved back up to her shoulder, caressing, stroking ever so gently. He cupped the smoothness under her arm.

  She gasped. He wasn't at all surprised to find a light covering of moisture on the hairless flesh. He could almost smell her fear.

  Legion moved beside her. Conar's hand stilled, tensed. Liza turned to look at her husband, but he was still asleep. Legion moved closer to her, laying his head on her other shoulder.

  Conar ground his teeth. He cupped Liza's chin, stared into her face with a warning not to look away again. Then, using the backs of his fingers, he trailed a line down her side to just above the rise of her breast. He ran his palm over the taut silkiness of her upper chest, up the frantically beating column of her neck, then fanned his fingers across her lips and started the caress all over again.

  * * *

  His fingers smelled of soap and cinnamon, and they were rough against her lips. When his thumb paused at the center of her lower lip, then pulled it down a little, she felt the hard callus along his flesh. His hand moved again, retracing the earlier route, until his palm rested in the center of her breastbone.

  * * *

  Beneath his fingers, her heart was drumming like that of a captured bird. He could almost count the beats. As he began to edge his palm toward her left breast, he heard her stifled whimper, saw the imperceptible denial in the slight shake of her head.

  It didn't stop him.

  Nothing would have.

  His hand went below the sheet, grazing over the ripe point of her breast before he completely molded her quivering flesh in his palm.

  He kept his hand there—still, possessive. In the spill of moonlight, he saw the sheen of tears on her cheek. He squeezed her a little, gently, fleetingly, wanting to remind her of her promis
e. He moved his thumb onto her nipple. He wasn't surprised the nub was hard, aroused. She might not be aware of it, but he was. With his thumb, he circled the erect point, then released her. He straightened up beside her bed, impaling her one last time with his gaze before turning and blending into the shadows.

  * * *

  One moment he was there, the next he was gone, as though he had been a dream, a nightmare. But Liza knew he had been all too real. She could still feel the heat of his questing, callused fingers on her breast. She jumped as his rasping voice called to her from the darkness.

  "The grotto."

  She lay perfectly still, expecting him to return. When he didn't, she held her husband as tightly as she could.

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  Kaileel Tohre knew an anger the likes of which he had never felt before in his ancient life. His blood seethed with hate, boiled with his inability to have foreseen the taking of Corbin McGregor. Many priests and guards within the Abbey met a horrible fate for having allowed the boy to vanish from beneath their noses.

  Getting his rage under a semblance of control, he started making plans to retake the boy, but he was informed that no member of the Temple Guard, or any other loyal to the Tribunal, was still at the Keep.

  "We can not storm Boreas Keep," Robert MacCorkingdale shouted at the Arch-Prelate. "It's impregnable. Besides, his men would slaughter ours!"

  "I want him back!" Tohre raged.

  MacCorkingdale's lip lifted in scorn. "Your addiction has caused the Brotherhood much grief through the years. The Conclave will not look kindly upon staging an assault on Boreas to feed your habit! We have more important things to worry about!"

  Kaileel stared at the young man, hating him with every fiber of his being. He turned his face, plotting revenge on Robbie MacCorkingdale—a revenge that would be swift and total.

  "The entire palace is manned with the Darkwind's troops, now," Robert sneered. "Because you weren't paying attention to your duty. He has replaced even the priests in the Temple with those who were loyal to the McGregor family. The others have mysteriously disappeared."

  Tohre was stunned to learn the Dark Overlord's men had been systematically replacing his own men, one per day, two per day, over a period of several months. He wasn't surprised to learn, though, that Legion A'Lex knew nothing about what was happening under his own roof. The man was a fool!

  Tohre looked up with surprise. "What of the Tribunal members?"

  MacCorkingdale's face turned hard. "They are dead."

  So hot was the hatred Kaileel felt that he now lay in his bed, a slight stroke making the blood vessels in his head throb. He had nearly died, and that was something he had not anticipated—death was not supposed to happen to him.

  Damning the Darkwind to the deepest pit in the Abyss, Kaileel lay in his invalid's bed and seethed. How, he asked himself a thousand times, could such a brigand have entered this Abbey and make off with the boy unless he possessed great power?

  Sitting in bed late into the night, Tohre stared into the darkness and fumed. He had no doubts about who engineered the plan to take Conar's whelp. Tohre scorned himself over and over for letting the bitch live. He should have seen to it that Elizabeth McGregor had died along with Galen. Now, he would have to find a way to kill her.

  His obsession with Corbin had become all-consuming. The older the child got, the more like his father he became. Even the resistance to the teachings of the Domination was so like his father's that Kaileel relished the day to day instructions that reduced the boy to a cringing, tearful lump, just as they had with his father years earlier. He vowed to succeed with the son where he had failed with the father.

  Thoughts of Conar did not come as often as they used to. Tohre reasoned that was because he had the son. The old dreams of Conar, now rotting away in the brutal bowels of the Labyrinth, had all but ceased. In a way, that bothered Tohre, for he had spent many a pleasant hour thinking of the pain and suffering Conar must be enduring in that hell-hole. Occasionally, Tohre would still wake from sweat-drenching dreams and know the nightmare had been about Conar. But it no longer mattered. What concerned him now was Corbin, and having him consecrated in his father's place.

  He gave little thought to the chaos the Darkwind was causing. Although the man was robbing the Temple's coffers as dry as a bone, killing Temple guards left and right, and upsetting rituals like the one that had been planned for May Eve, Tohre did not care. His only interest was in the boy.

  Tossing in bed, he suddenly realized there was a way to get Corbin back without a drop of blood being spilled. His lips stretched back over teeth too long and too sharp for his mouth. He shook the white-blond hair from his forehead and nodded. His skeletal face with the high cheekbones of his ancestors and the hawk-like nose was as evil as the smile on his bloodless lips. The discolored and loose-hanging flesh under his chin wobbled as the smile became a vile laugh.

  Yes, he thought, there was a way to get Corbin back from his slut of a mother. All he had to do was bring Conar home and trade him to her. And if the woman refused to give up the boy in exchange for the husband she still loved, then the father would do just as well.

  Laughing evilly, Tohre thought of what he would see once Conar McGregor returned to Serenia. The man whom he had sent to the Labyrinth would be humbled, broken, malleable, with no fight left in him.

  Scooting from his bed, the Arch-Prelate ran to the hallway, shouting for his personal valet. He would send a ship this very night to Tyber's Isle.

  He would bring Conar McGregor home!

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  Elizabeth McGregor rose from bed and sat by the window, looking through the trees into the filtered moonlight. Behind her, Legion slept on as though drugged and she wondered idly if perhaps he had not been. His sleep was so sound, so totally ignorant of the masked man's midnight visit, she would not have put it past the Dark Overlord to have engineered some drug into her husband's evening wine.

  Liza ran a hand over her swollen belly when she felt the babe kick. The child was due any day now. How Lord Darkwind could want her, even suggest they have intercourse, was beyond her understanding. She had no intention of meeting him in the grotto, less intention of letting him touch her until the babe came. Oh, she thought with a grimace of distaste, she would give herself to him, but he would have to wait to claim his payment. It would be at a time and in a place of her choosing.

  She was afraid of him. Any man who would so brazenly come into another man's bedchamber as he lay sleeping and fondle his wife, had more nerve and bravura than any she had ever known.

  Save one.

  Her thoughts flew to Conar, lingered a moment, then fled. It was painful for her to think of him and his beloved face, a face she thought to see forever, in her mind's eye. With her memory, she touched his blond hair, so thick and soft and shiny; she could almost feel the glory of it between her fingers. And she could see the same blue of his eyes—legendary among the women of Seven Kingdoms—in the eyes of their son, Corbin. Those things were all she had left of the man she'd loved more than life itself.

  She looked at Legion. She loved him, too, but her love for him was tempered with the pain of her loss. And she knew no man this side of the grave could ever replace in her heart the love she still bore for Conar.

  Sighing, she stood, easing aside the drapes. The moon was so bright, so full, it looked as though it were alive in the heavens. The courtyard was filled with the creamy expanse of pale yellow light. Dark shadows flitted about, and she smiled, thinking of lover's trysts in the garden. That thought made her sad, and she closed the curtain.

  The room was stifling and she had to get out of it, but she was so afraid she would encounter Lord Darkwind, she stood for a long time before her temper got the best of her. No man, not even the Darkwind, would keep her captive in her own home! She threw caution to the wind, gathered up her bed robe, flung it on, and eased out of the room.

  After checking on her chil
dren—a task that seemed to be taking longer and longer, she thought with a smile—and looking in on Corbin—with both Teal and Marsh springing instantly awake at her entrance—she made her way down the stairs. She was careful to make no sound in case anyone, one in particular, was lurking about. She eased open the door to Legion's dark study and slipped quietly inside. An open window blew the lace panels of the under drapes into the sitting area. She shook her head, wondering who had been so lax as to leave it open. Heading for the window, she jumped when a rasping voice brought her up short.

  "You're a long way from the grotto, Queen Liza."

  Liza turned, staring into the darkness. He was sitting behind Legion's desk, his booted feet propped on top. As he raised his hand to his lips, the glimmer of glass shone in the moonlight coming through the fan light behind him. She could not see his face, but saw the pale glow of his flesh when he tilted the glass and drank.

  "You take a great many liberties in this keep, sir!" she told him stiffly. "I don't think your King would appreciate you consuming his liquor." Her voice turned ugly. "Or manhandling his wife!"

  He sat the glass on his knee. "First of all, Madame, he's not my King. Secondly, do you really think I give a damn what he likes? I never have before; why should I start now?"

  His oddly-accented, gruff voice set her teeth on edge. "That's the second time you've made such insinuations regarding this family. You know your way about this keep better than you should. That leads me to think you must have been in our employ at one time." Her spine stiffened when she heard his dry, insulting laugh.