WINDDREAMER (12 page)

"He failed!" Raja shouted. "The dagger did no more than minor damage. Conar will be up by week's end and he'll come after us!"

Kaileel Tohre sat in his favorite chair, sipping the intoxicating brandy made in the monastery. He ignored the outburst, leaning his head along the chair cushion, closing his eyes to better savor the pungent burst of flavor.

"Did you hear me? We are doomed, Tohre. Doomed!"

He took another sip of brandy, then opened his eyes to watch her pace. The woman disgusted him; the very sight of her flaxen beauty made him want to vomit. He had grown more than tired of her over the years she had been in hiding at the monastery. Her constant bickering had brought the other priests to his chambers on many occasions.

"Do something about her, Holiness," one of the Cardinals had insisted. "Else she'll wake to find her throat being slit!"

"She used one of the new boys," another complained. "Now, he follows her about with cow eyes!"

Kaileel had frowned at that piece of information. The bitch had every one of her capricious whims satisfied by those older who were willing to appease her morbid, unnatural appetites. Now, she had started on young acolytes brought in for training. Such behavior was unacceptable within the Brotherhood. Having a woman within the confines of a male-oriented society was asking for trouble. Tohre had denied her bringing a female servant, so she had latched onto a young priest whose effeminate manners served her well enough. The two had become bosom buddies, a situation Tohre meant to exorcise as soon as the bitch had fulfilled her use.

And the thought of her death made him sigh.

"You find this funny?" Raja screamed, glaring down at him. "I find nothing about this amusing!"

He grinned, a smile of such pure evil, he could see it unnerved her. She took a quick step backward, her eyes darting about as though she expected Raphian, Himself, to swoop down. Tohre set his brandy snifter on a table and laced his fingers together over his flat belly.

"I find
you
amusing, Raja."

She felt sweat forming in her armpits. When Kaileel looked at her like that, something reared its hideous head and turned her spine to mush. She had always prided herself in not being afraid of any man, living or dead, but Tohre was an entirely different matter. Something infinitely evil dwelt in the man's cold eyes, something outside the realm of darkness, some primeval beast that, if ever released, could shred the world to pieces. Each time those horrid eyes gazed at her, she could see her own destruction lingering there.

"You need me," she reminded him, lowering her voice, forcing a calm to her tone. Her belly quivered when his smile taunted her and the thick white-blond brows lifted in challenge. "Without Regan, you could not have come anywhere near Conar."

"True. Irony is such a subtle revenge, don't you think?" He nodded. "Since his own weapons are the only way to weaken him, what better way than to have his child do it? Weapons forged from his blood, sweat, tears, and semen, wielded by a child formed from his own blood, sweat, tears, and semen. Conar will know the significance of such revenge."

"Regan believed he was to kill his father. He well might have."

Tohre laughed. "If I had wanted Conar dead, my dear Raja, I could have seen to it. The boy was not strong enough to do any real harm, but the blows hurt Conar more for having come from his own flesh and blood."

"He wasn't weakened enough! The brat was to strike for a vital organ, something to debilitate Conar long enough for our conjuring to work." Her lip lifted in scorn. "The little bastard did nothing more than make his father bleed!" Her thoughts went to the many hours with Tohre and his cronies in the conjuring chamber as Conar lay unconscious at Boreas Keep, the supreme evil of what the men were doing turning her stomach as she watched and participated.

Kaileel stood and walked to the great window overlooking his enclosured garden, where several monks usually sat in prayer or communion with the Dark Ones. He looked over his shoulder at Raja. "Do you have any idea how long I have waited to bring Conar to his knees? How long I have waited to have him in such a position that he could never escape?"

Raja shrugged her delicate shoulders, not caring--nor wanting--to know the answer.

Kaileel smiled and looked back out the window. "A very long while. Do you know why I wish to see him brought down?"

"No," she replied, wishing more than ever to escape his presence. The wild, insane look in his frosty blue eyes caused her acute terror. His obsession with Conar McGregor had been brought him to the very edge of insanity, and Raja wasn't sure he hadn't been driven over that fine line.

"I was his teacher when he was five or six, you see." Kaileel sat on the window seat and pushed the shutter wide. "But I had been watching him from the moment of his birth. I was in the chamber with the King when Cayn delivered him." A faint smile tugged at Tohre's thin lips. "There had been no need to strike his ass to make him breath--Conar McGregor came into this world howling. I took one look at him and knew that boy would be the greatest warrior Serenia had ever known." He glanced at her. "He was born with twin crescents in the palms of his hands, you know."

"The Sign of the Wind...I've seen them." Her eyes narrowed. "I have also seen the scars in his palms from Tolkan's revenge!"

Kaileel waved a dismissive hand. "A precaution that, unfortunately, failed in the end." He returned his gaze to the outside scenery. "When he was cleaned up, he was handed to me, as High Priest, to christen. From the moment Cayn settled that squirming, kicking body in my hands, I knew Conar was mine."

Raja snorted.

"He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen." A lover's glow appeared on the priest's face. "His hair was as white-blond as my own, his eyes the same pale shade of blue. When I looked at him, I saw an uncanny resemblance." He gave a sinister laugh. "The boy might well have been purged from my loins, had I been of that bent."

"Lucky for womanhood you aren't..."

"There was a difference in him, though, an innocence in those blue eyes. Trust, awe, respect. Trust of everyone, awe of the priesthood, respect for his elders. As he grew, I watched. Watched him become well-mannered, polite." Kaileel sneered. "His mother's doing. She taught him such useless things."

"You taught him fear," Raja said, but she didn't think the man heard her.

Kaileel leaned against the window jamb, his forehead resting on the stone. "I had a lot to undo where his teaching was concerned. His mother had instilled her brand of morals and manners in him. Such morals and manners a Wind Warrior had no need to possess. He needed to be strong, decisive, calculating--to be a rock among men. All the feminine things she had taught him were anathema to a warrior."

"He still possesses those traits, Tohre, and the people of Seven Kingdoms, warriors included, consider him to be that great warrior of whom you dreamed." She flinched as his head snapped around.

He fixed her with a malevolent glare. "Such things make him weak! He is not as ruthless as I would have him!" He turned toward the window again, staring at a handsome young priest who had lifted his head at Tohre's loud words. Kaileel waved and smiled.

"The very things you want to take from him make him what he is, Kaileel. Make him the man you crave. You have not been able to change that, despite the horror you have put him through."

"The thing was, he was stronger than I had anticipated. It was his bitch of a mother. She meant a lot to him. He listened to her. In his young ignorance, he absorbed the ridiculous ideals she fostered. He stood strong against the things I tried to show him in the Wind Warrior Society." He raked his long fingers through his hair. "I realized that in order to mold him in the correct fashion, I would have to separate the two of them. Break the bond that existed between them."

"By bringing him to this horrid place!" Raja snapped.

"I convinced the King that his son needed specialized training at the Abbey in Corinth. I told the old man Conar had potential that needed to be utilized. It was easy...so easy. Already Conar was showing those powers with which he had been born. Little things, really, like reading minds, or finding lost things. Gerren was in awe of his son's abilities, knowing they came partially from that bitch and her association with the Multitude. By pandering to the King's fatherly pride, I had the papers signed before the woman knew what I was about."

"Didn't Moira know what you were, Tohre? Didn't she suspect?"

He shrugged. "She wasn't as smart or as powerful as people thought. She might have suspected my connection to the Domination, but she could not prove it. As long as a Daughter of the Multitude sat on the throne, we of the Brotherhood were careful with our activities. As far as the people knew, I was a High Priest in the Wind Warrior Society, a prelate at the Wind Temple, nothing more."

"How did you get Conar away from Moira without her causing trouble? Surely she was not pleased to have her favorite son snatched away to the Abbey. Everyone knew that place was of the Brotherhood."

"She, like Gerren, believed he was going to Century, to the Wind Temple. The Abbey is a few miles away, actually in Lakewood. Once the King had signed the guardianship papers, Conar was legally mine." He smiled. "She never knew he was taken from that Abbey and brought here to the monastery. We used such a powerful magic to block her probing that for seven years the woman had no word of her son at all."

"And you don't think she was suspicious?"

Kaileel looked at her. "Oh, she sent men to check on her son, but she didn't know those men were loyal to the Tribunal, and the Tribunal was ever loyal to Tolkan Coure! They returned to Boreas Keep with glowing reports of Conar's progress, and even brought with them notes to his mother, written in his own hand, that he was well." He lifted a thin shoulder. "How was she to know Tolkan wrote those notes?"

"Did Conar not suspect what you were about? Even as a boy he was very astute. Did he not
know
what you intended?"

He sighed a breath of wonder. "Oh, he fought me all the way here! I had to give him something to sedate him. Once here, it became obvious to him that he would receive no help from my priests. He had to be whipped that first night after he awoke from the drug. The brat tried to run away." A merry chuckle escaped Tohre's lips. "He'd never so much as had a palm applied to his backside before that. You can imagine his surprise when I used my belt on his bare rump."

Raja let out a long breath. "You gave him his first taste of fear and pain."

"I taught him what it was to be controlled!" Kaileel disagreed. "Did you not wonder why he never told his father what had happened to him at the Monastery? From that first night, I established complete control over him!"

"You instilled terror in a boy. Not such a major feat. Anyone could do that."

He glared at her. His voice became an unpleasant sneer. "I taught him respect! To humble--"

"You call making a child flinch every time you come near him 'humble'? You did your best to break him and found you could not. Not then, and not since. Conar will never buckle under to you until he is so weak he can not lift a hand to gainsay you!"

"He had to be taught a lesson, and by treating him as harshly as I did, by humiliating him in every imaginable way, by making him do things he found distasteful, I controlled him! The times after that I was gentle with him. I showed him the wonderful side of male love."

Raja's eyes widened. "You showed a six-year-old boy what it was to be shamed. You raped him! Rape isn't love!"

"I had not the time to court him, bitch!"

"Even if you'd had your time to
court
him," Raja sneered, "he would never have embraced your perverted pleasure. He would've fought you as he has always fought you. It is that spirit that has kept him sane all these years!" Raja had a vision of a young boy, lying tearfully on her bed so very long ago, shamed by what had been done to him, afraid to let a woman touch him for fear she would hurt him in the same horrid way.

Getting up from the window seat, Kaileel seemed to stagger a bit from his memories. His face had become white, and a slight tremor played along his thin lips. "It was that spirit, as you call it," he said in a wavering voice, "that brought him to the notice of Tolkan Coure." He turned bleak eyes to her. "If Conar had only given in, if he had not caused so much grief for me within the Monastery, Tolkan would never have taken note of him. As it was, he had me bring 'the troublemaker' to his chambers one eve. Tolkan questioned Conar, and it was the boy's answers that brought about what happened to him later."

"Don't put the blame on Tolkan! You had the same plans for Conar. You just didn't want to share him!"

Kaileel's face filled with rage. "I did not! I would have brought him around eventually. I would have made him see reason. If it had not been for him meeting that ill-spawned Jah-Ma-El and having Tolkan take an interest in him, Conar might well have listened to me."

"What did Jah-Ma-El have to do with it? The man is ineffectual, at best."

"Conar gathered strength from that skinny runt! They communicated. Jah-Ma-El has more power than we give him credit. When he tried to kill himself, Conar saved him." He closed his eyes. "And garnered for himself a beating that almost cost him his life."

"And brought him to the point of trying to take his own," Raja said.

A look of despair crossed Tohre's face. He walked back to the window, bracing his hand on the stone ledge. "It was the hardest thing I had ever been forced to do. Tolkan was furious after Conar's beating. He said the time had come to initiate him. I tried to stall, to tell Tolkan the boy wasn't ready, that the initiation wouldn't take, but Coure wanted Conar a part of the Brotherhood by the first of the year. Against my pleas and warnings, Tolkan had the ceremony arranged for the next week, as soon as Conar could get up from the beating. I watched them prepare the ceremonial coffin, the drugs and instruments. They brought him to the chamber, kicking and screaming, struggling so violently he fainted against them." His eyes grew dark. "An initiate has to be beaten first, to remind him that the Brotherhood has always been persecuted. Conar's back was still raw from the beating he'd received for saving Jah-Ma-El's worthless life, but they woke him anyway and beat him until he fainted a second time. I, myself, lifted him into the coffin, a physical reminder that he would always be alone in his quest to the higher powers of the Dark."