WindDeceiver (2 page)

Yuri nodded. “One of the best.”

Azalon shook his head. “But his magic would be useless in Rysalia.”

“He wasn’t IN Rysalia when he disappeared,” Sajin growled. “He was at sea.”

“’And he who loves the sea, is loved by the sea’,” Yuri quoted.

Sajin nodded. “How soon can we leave?” he asked Yuri

“I will escort you,” Azalon declared. At the others’ protests, he held up his hand. “I feel responsible.”

An hour later, much to Sybelle’s fury, Sajin Ben-Alkazar and Yuri Andreanova rode out of St. Steffensburg with Azalon.

My god, he thought as he stumbled. It is hot. So hot. Hotter than anything he had ever experienced before. The very bowels of the Abyss could not be as hot as the shifting, sucking sands beneath his bare feet. He could no longer feel the pain of that heat on his soles. He had long since forced himself to ignore the agony of that. If he was to keep moving, plowing hopelessly through the unrelenting heat, he could not allow even the hint of pain to capture his attention.

The thirst was bad, he thought. It was draining him, burning his throat, making his head throb with need. There was no longer even any spittle in his dry mouth. He felt as though he were shriveling inside, drying up, and that soon he would implode for lack of moisture within him.

He stopped, drawing his arm over his sweating face, weaving weakly as he did. His flesh felt tight, drawn, and he knew his skin was burning beneath the steady onslaught of the sun’s unremitting rays. His tongue felt swollen, his lips were cracked, and his vision was beginning to play games with me. Dancing, shimmering pools of water would suddenly appear in front of him, but he knew they weren’t really there.

It was difficult to breathe in this ungodly heat and just the act of drawing the overheated air into his lungs was an effort. He was breathing as slowly as his exertion would allow, but still there was not enough oxygen getting into his lungs.

He was beginning to feel lightheaded and his eyes were aching from the brightness glancing off the hot desert sands. If the glare did not soon blind him, it would be a miracle.

“
Caw
!”

He looked up, squinting against the harsh light and saw the buzzard circling again, trailing him as it had been for several hours.

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“I ain’t dead yet, you motherless bastard,” he said, shuddering at the horrible death that creature promised. All it would take was for him to stumble, to fall, and not be able to get back up. The bird, and its mates, would descend on him and tear him apart while he still lived, unable to fight them off.

The thought chilled him and made it possible for him to move forward again, wading through the sand with waning strength and the great desire to lie down and give in to the death that surely awaited him here in this vast expanse of nothingness.

He did stumble now and again, going down and quickly pushing himself up again to move on. But the stumbles were coming closer together, the getting up time taking longer. Soon, he knew, he’d go down for the last time and he would meet his destiny alone in a place where no one would ever know. His bones would be picked clean and he would be just like so many other skeletons he had passed in this hell: nameless and forgotten.

“Caw!

Caws!”

“Lie down, Conar, and let it be done,” the hideous creature seemed to be telling him.

“Go away,” he sighed, swinging his arm behind him in negation of the predator’s demand.

He trekked on into the heartless heat for another hour before he stumbled for the last time, giving up, giving in. He heard the sickening pop as he went down, but he just didn’t give a damn.

He crashed to the white-hot sands, wincing as he did, feeling the heat of scorching his cheek, but unable to make himself get up. Unable to go on. Unable to take one more step.

He lay that way for a moment, his cheek against the sand, staring out over the desert, his exhausted breathing loud in the stillness, his lungs baking inside his chest as he drew in shallow bursts of suffocating heat.

“What’s the use?” the buzzard called down to him. “I’ll get you in the end.”

He closed his eyes, thinking about the hopelessness of his situation, trying to decide if it were worth the effort to attempt getting up, made up his mind that it wasn’t.

“Let it be over,” he thought he head the buzzard say. “Give yourself up to me. I have young to feed.”

He flipped over to his back, gasping with the pain, and glanced up briefly at the sun that was starting its slow descent down through the blue, blue incandescent sky. The buzzard crossed his vision and re-crossed it: waiting, watching, eager.

“It won’t be long now, you ugly bastard,” he told it.

He turned his head and looked out over the sparkling sands. There was nothing for him to look at, to focus on. Not even a bone sticking up out of the sand. He thought if he had something to concentrate on, he might well be able to put himself into a trance that would deny the agony that he knew was coming for him.

Who would have guessed, he thought with some regret, that it would end like this?

“
Caw
!”

The creature circled, landed a few feet away from him. It stared curiously at him for a moment, then hopped closer.

“Are you ready, Conar?”

It will go for your eyes, first, Conar, he told himself, but the certainty of that didn’t seem to matter. He watched it hop closer still, staring into its beady, deadly little eyes with impassive attention.

“Caw.”

“Yeah, right,” he whispered, closing his eyes, not wanting to watch the scavenger coming for him.

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“Caw?”

He brought his hands up and covered his face, wanting to cry, wanting to sob out his hopelessness, but there was no moisture left in his body. Everything was gone. All gone. His body shook once, twice, and then his hands fell away to lay beside his head and he stared blindly up into the cooling sky, awaiting his fate.

“It won’t take long, Conar,” the bird assured him. “I’ll be as gentle as I can when I take your life.”

“Get it over with,” he sighed.

He would never know if it was the sound that caught his attention or the smell. Or both.

Laughter drifted to him on a stagnant blast of heated air and then the pungent odor of camel flesh.

He thought it was just another figment of his imagination.

“Caw!” the buzzard spat at him and jumped up on his left thigh, bringing a yelp of pain from his bleeding lips. It stared down at him as if daring him to fight back.

“What are you waiting for, an invitation to lunch?” he chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, then, have at it.”

The laughter came again, as did the sound of harnesses rattling. A woman’s voice called out, a man’s answered, and there was more laughter.

Conar turned his head slowly in the direction from which the sound had come, paying scant attention to the bird as it lowered its scrawny neck. It pecked at his shirt, hitting the sore spot below his navel where the dagger had entered. He yelped with the pain and drew his right leg up, causing the bird to flap away in irate flutters of his wide wing span.

That smell: camel flesh and camel dung wafted under his nose and he sniffed. Mirages were in the mind, he reasoned, but that scent was real. It poured over him, making his nostrils quiver, and somehow re-awakened in him a desire to live.

Just as he would never know what had brought him back from the deadly quagmire into which he had allowed himself to sink, he would not know from what inner reserve he drew the strength to turn over, lying there for what seemed like an eternity before gathering the strength to push himself up.

He found he could get no higher than his all fours, but that was enough. He began to crawl, dragging his left leg behind him, pulling himself forward on his elbows, his chest dragging against the hot sand as his right leg maneuvered him toward the sound of laughter and hope.

All talk ceased as the child yelled out. Heads turned and looked in the direction the boy pointed. “What is it?” the adults asked while the children ran toward the apparition that had appeared out of nowhere.

Balizar, their leader, walked more sedately toward the group that had gathered. He gently, insistently pushed his way through them and then stood, just as they did, and stared down in wonder at the man lying in the sand.

“Where did he come from?” Asher Stone asked, looking up to Balizar for guidance.

“He is an Outlander,” one of the women said. “Look at his hair.”

“Is he dead?” someone else asked.

Balizar squatted down beside the unconscious man and put a hesitant hand on the sweaty column of the man’s throat. He shook his head. “He’s alive, but just barely.”

He glanced around him and found Asher’s concerned gaze. “Help me lift him.”

Rachel Stone was only a few feet away from the man on the ground and she saw his eyelids flutter open. “He’s awake, Asher,” she told her brother.

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He felt hands on him, lifting him gently. He couldn’t seem to control his body; his left leg felt crippled.

“Easy, son,” he heard a familiar voice telling him. “I think your leg may be broken.”

He grunted with pain as he was shifted. Every step they took with him was a jarring, white-hot agony through his hip and side and he moaned, sagging down between the two sets of hands holding him. His legs buckled under him and he felt the man on his left take his full weight against him.

“Let me have him, Asher,” that familiar voice said and Conar felt himself being lifted into a pair of strong, secure arms.

“Take him to our tent,” a woman called out.

He was so weak, so hungry, so thirsty, he was beginning to see things. He stared up at the man holding him, seeing what could not possibly be. He found a gentle blue gaze glancing down at him, saw a white grin form on the man’s mouth.

“You’re going to be all right, son,” the familiar voice assured him. “I’m going to see personally to that.”

That face, that dear face looking down at him, overrode the pain in his leg and the hunger and the thirst and the terrible weakness that strove to claim him. He stared up into that beloved face, trying hard to understand where? how? when?

“Am I dead?” he asked in a brittle, evaporated croak.

That familiar laugh: booming, dearly loved, highly entertained by the question, barked out of the man. “Nay, son,” he answered, chuckling. “I may look like an angel to you, but I can assure you I am not!”

The sun skipped away and heavy canvas appeared above him. Coolness, shadowy coolness, blocked out the deadly rays.

He gasped, loosing consciousness for a moment as he was laid down on a soft, cool mattress that smelled strongly of lavender. He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out and found himself gawking at that wonderful face as it hovered over him.

“That leg’s broken, son. It’s going to have to be set.”

He could do nothing more than stare as the man moved out of his line of vision and another face, dearly loved, wonderfully there, loomed over him with a gentle smile.

“I will give you something to make you sleep, milord,” she said and put her cool hand behind his neck to lift his head. “Here. Drink this. All of it.”

He let the potion ease down his throat, too amazed to do anything else. He swallowed, licking his dry lips, not even minding the awful taste the potion had brought to his mouth. Almost instantly, a numbing fog began to encase his overheated brain. She gently lowered his head and smiled down at him, reaching out to smooth away a sweat-soaked fall of hair falling over his forehead.

“The potion will help,” she told him, her fingers moving from his forehead to his cheek to caress him.

He stared up at her through the wavering focus of his vision, her lovely face skidding away, coming back for just an instant, then lurching away again. He tried hard to keep that wonderful visage in check, but the numbness kept chasing it away again.

“Can you brace him, Balizar?” a man asked.

He tried to raise his head, wanted to see the man who had gone to the head of the bed and moved in behind him, sitting down on the mattress with great care and who lifted his sagging body WINDDECEIVER Charlotte Boyett-Compo 11

against a firm, hard-as-rock chest, but he was unable. He opened his mouth to speak, but his lips were so parched, his throat so dry, only a moan of helplessness came out.

“The boy’s near dead,” the man Conar reckoned to be a healer spoke as his hands moved knowingly over Conar’s left leg.

“Damned pitiful sight he was lying out there,” that familiar voice answered.

He couldn’t help them, he thought. He felt cold and clammy, his body was beginning to tremble and he flinched as the woman bent over him and put a hand to his forehead. He stared up at her with pleading eyes. “Help me, lady,” he heard himself beg.

“He’s got a raging fever,” she said.

“It’s the heat,” the man holding him informed her. “I’ve seen it before.”

Aye, Conar thought. That you have.

“Keep a tight hold on him, Balizar,” the healer said.

The bone shifted and he screamed, feeling the pain of it all the way to his toes. He passed out for a second, came around almost immediately, then passed out again, or so he thought, but he could hear them discussing him.

“He’s burned nearly raw. Must have been out there a good long time.”

“Long enough to set his foot on death’s doorstep,” the familiar bass voice spoke. He chuckled and Conar could feel the rumble in his chest. “But the boy’s got spunk, don’t he?”

“Spunk can get you killed in Rysalia,” the woman said.

Conar’s heart ceased to beat. Rysalia? Was that where he was? He had almost forgotten.