WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (14 page)

"But not your brothers?" Yuri sneered.

Raine smiled. "There is no need. Each of them has our sire's powers within him." The smile faded. "Though only one knows how to use them to proper advantage."

Catherine stared at the child. "You feel love for this baby, Raine?"

The little boy frowned. "Love is a concept I do not believe I have had the misfortune of experiencing as yet." He shrugged. "It is loyalty to one of my own kind that makes me feel so about your child, milady." He turned his back and began walking again. "That and the fact that she will need my protection."

"What the hell does that mean?" Yuri growled.

"She knows," Raine answered and continued walking.

Yuri turned his angry face to Catherine, expecting to see her brow furrowed with concern, but he found her smiling. He demanded to know why.

"Because young Raine has seen the same future for my daughter that I have," Catherine replied. She risked a glance up at the warrior's set face. "If you think the mother has been difficult....wait until you meet her daughter!"

Raine held the door to his father's room open for the lady and her escort. He peeked around Rupine's broad back as the physician bent over the sleeping man on the bed. Assuring himself there was no need for his assistance, the child softly closed the door and went back to his own room.

"How is he?" Catherine asked as she came to the bed.

"He asked for you," Rupine told her. Conar's wife looked up, surprised. "But he didn't want us to disturb your rest." Rupine moved away so Catherine could sit down.

Catherine took the chair the physician had vacated and, without thinking, took her husband's limp hand in her own. Tenderly stroking the warm flesh, she ranged her attention over his still face, taking in every detail of his handsome profile as though committing it to memory.

"I wish to the Prophetess I'd known he was allergic to tenerse," Rupine sighed.

Yuri looked around at the man. "He is?"

Rupine spread his hands. "I don't guess he even knew it, but Raphaella tells me he has enough residual tenerse in his system to knock out a hundred men. His body can't assimilate the drug so the tenerse has continued to build up inside him. Now, all the doses he has been given have begun to play hell with his health."

"Sadie," Yuri hissed, wishing he could dig the old woman up and bury her alive. "She meant to do him harm and she did." He clenched his fists. "The bitch is probably rolling over in her grave, laughing."

"She was the mother of Joannie?" Catherine asked, remembering a conversation she'd had with Conar soon after he had asked her to marry him. He had wanted no secrets between them.

Then.

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"Yes," Yuri ground out. "And the grandmother of that bastard, Robert MacCorkingdale, who is the new Arch-Prelate of the Domination."

Rupine looked up from his contemplation of the rug. "I thought the Domination was finished."

"For all intents and purposes it is," Yuri answered, "but until every last one of them bastards is dead, there will always be a threat to Conar."

"Or so he believes," Catherine replied.

"I don't agree with what he wants to do," Yuri told her. "I think the two of you need to be together." As his mistress looked up at him, the Shadow-warrior blushed.

"I wish you'd tell him that!" Catherine lamented.

"At first I was angry," Yuri stated. "I didn't even want anything to do with him." His gaze mellowed as he looked over at his Overlord. "But I began to realize he thought he was doing what was best for you, Your Grace."

"At least the man is capable of thought," Catherine snapped. "Such as it is and for it's worth."

The door to Conar's room eased open and the three people turned in unison to see Sajin standing sheepishly on the threshold. He grinned self-consciously and then came in, closing the door behind him.

"Is he still out of it?" Sajin asked, avoiding the look Catherine aimed his way.

"He should be until morning," Rupine replied. "We made a small circular hole at the base of his skull to allow the built-up pressure to dissipate."

"Useless procedure," Sajin mocked. "Trephining was done away with years ago in the Inner Kingdom, Rupine. You know that."

"Yes," the physician answered, "but I was willing to try anything to help him."

"The man could have bled to death," Sajin argued. "Or you could have scrambled his brain." He leaned over the footboard of the bed and reached out to shake his friend's foot.

"Although anything would be an improvement, eh, McGregor?"

"Raphaella is concerned there might well have been damage done already," Rupine said.

"Stroke. Paralysis. The like."

Catherine looked up sharply. "She said no such thing to me!"

Rupine glanced at Sajin. "She didn't want to alarm you, milady."

"Well, we know there was no paralysis because he can move his hands and feet," Rupine was quick to point out. "A major stroke would have caused such things. Minor strokes might alter speech..."

"He wasn't talking all that plain when he came to," Yuri reminded the physician only to have Rupine shoot him a look of rage.

"His speech," Rupine stressed, narrowing his gaze at the Outer Kingdom warrior, "was slurred due to the sedative we gave him before operating."

No one noticed the dark blue eyes that were once again open and shifting from one speaker to another. Because they did not noticed, no one saw the look of bewilderment on the pale face of Conar McGregor as he struggled to follow the conversation. They did not see him straining to see the people standing about him nor did they witness the effort it took for him to shift his unfocused gaze from one to another.

"He's going to be all right," Catherine said, finally looking away from Rupine to center her attention on her husband. She was stunned to see him watching her. "Conar?"

Sajin, who had been arguing with Rupine, looked around and smiled when he saw his Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 64

friend's eyes open. "Did you finally decide to join the living, Outlander?"

He could feel Catherine's hand on his, but her face was blurred. He thought it well might be because the room was so damned dark. He wondered why it was so damned dark, then thought it had probably been made so in deference to the headache that was still throbbing at his temples. He put his hand up to rub his forehead.

He could hear Sajin talking to him, recognizing that Inner Kingdom grating accent, although he couldn't seem to grasp what the man was saying. Some of the words made no sense to him. Not that he cared. A lot of what the nomad often said to him made no sense. But from the few snatches of conversation drifting around him as the others began to question him, too, Conar thought he might be in real trouble. He couldn't seem to understand any of it.

"Are you hungry?" Rupine inquired.

"Huh?" Conar shifted his head toward the speaker.

"Yes," Rupine answered, glancing up quickly at Catherine. "Hungry. Do you want some food?"

"Whuh?" He hadn't understood what Rupine said.

Sajin's brows drew together and he went around to the other side of the bed. Sitting down on the mattress, he reached out to turn Conar's face toward him. As the confused look met his worried one, Sajin's hand tightened on his friend's chin. "Who am I, Conar?" Sajin asked.

"Sajin, really!" Catherine snapped.

"Conar?" Sajin repeated, ignoring her. "Who am I?"

Rupine gripped the back of Catherine's chair as he waited for the answer. He could see the sudden tenseness in Yuri's body and knew both the Outer Kingdom warrior and the Kensetti Prince suspected something was very, very wrong with Conar McGregor.

Conar felt Catherine's hand gripping his and he swung his eyes toward her, tried hard to focus on her hazy face. "Cath.........ren?" he questioned.

"Conar!" Sajin said louder. "Tell me who I am!" He held his breath as that sapphire gaze moved back to him with bewilderment.

"Duhn...uhn...stan," came the piteous whimper. "Duhn...uhn...stan."

"Oh, my God," Yuri groaned. He found himself staring at his mistress, watching the realization setting in, seeing the horror forming on her stricken face. He skirted the bed and pushed Rupine aside, hunkered down beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder and flinched when she turned disbelieving eyes to him.

"I'll get Raphaella," Rupine said.

"Cath......ren?"

Conar's wife tore her gaze from Yuri and dropped to the floor on her knees by her husband's bed. "Yes, my love. I'm here."

"Nuh...nuh..." There was frustration and anger building in the weak voice. "Nuhd...you."

His voice broke on a hitching gasp, then he tried again, attempting to stress each word.

"Nuhd...you, Cath...ren."

"I'm here," Catherine repeated, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm right here."

Raphaella nudged Sajin aside as she rushed into the room. She sat down on the bed, drawing Conar's unfocused gaze to her. She took his right hand in hers.

"Conar," she began, bringing his hand to her chest and nestling it there. "Susta hel exclu lostibe y oders du mus."

Only Catherine knew the woman was speaking to Conar in a language older than time. To the others, the phrases coming from the beautiful woman's mouth was just so much gibberish.

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Catherine understood most of what Raphaella had said, but when she continued to speak, Conar's wife had to struggle with the translation. The words and phrases were more thought than actual speech and meant to be heard with the psychic senses rather than with the ear.

"I want you to listen to me," Raphaella repeated in the ancient language of the Wind Tribes, the root of the Daughterhood's own language.

"Ruh...ruh?"

"Aye," Raphaella agreed, cutting him off as she saw the disgust beginning to blaze across his face. "Pay attention, now. This is important."

"Ruh...phuh...luh," came the hiss.

"He knows her," Yuri whispered.

"You have suffered a stroke, Conar," the sorceress explained to him in the old language.

"Do you understand what I am saying to you?"

"Nuh...stuh...puhd," Conar ground out between his clenched teeth.

"A matter of opinion," Raphaella said under her breath in Serenian. To him, she continued in the ancient speech. "These people can't understand you any more than you can understand them." She glanced at Catherine and knew the woman was attempting to follow the conversation.

"This inability to speak plainly should disappear by morning."

"Whuhf...duhn?" was the immediate snarl.

Catherine looked at Raphaella, awaiting her reply.

"If it doesn't, you'll work at trying to correct it," the sorceress said in a matter-of-fact tone that seemed heartless to Catherine.

"Whuhf...wuhn...cuh...rec?"

"You'll learn to live with it."

Sajin's eyes flared when he saw the fury flash across Conar's face. He had no idea what the woman had been saying, what she could have possibly said to Conar to cause the intense rage and hatred that suddenly came to life in that glazed stare. Even as the sorceress jumped back away from the bed, out of range of a suddenly irate and infuriated Serenian who made a desperate grab for her as she stumbled away from the bed, Sajin could do no more that gape as his friend lunged from the bed, jerking his left hand from Catherine's grasp, and dove for the woman who had angered him.

"Conar, no!" Catherine shouted, scrambling to her feet as Yuri nearly fell in his attempt to climb over the bed to stop the Serenian from attacking Raphaella.

"I didn't do this to you!" Catherine heard the sorceress shouting as she threw up her hands to protect herself. "You know I wouldn't, Conar!"

Rupine was knocked out of the way as Conar tried to get to the woman. The physician's arms cartwheeled as he crashed back against the armoire. His spine hit the edge of the armoire's door and he yelped, sliding down to his rump with a shocked look on his face, his legs splayed out in front of him..

"Stop him, Sajin!!" Raphaella shouted as Conar's hands closed around her wrists and jerked her hands down. He had her pinned to the wall, his hands at her throat, before she could call out for help again. Her strangled cries were awful to hear.

Sajin leapt forward, grabbing Conar's right arm as Yuri took his left. Between the two of them, they were able to break the Outlander's grip on Raphaella and drag him backwards, kicking and making unintelligible threats.

"Damn it, Conar, stop!" Sajin hissed at him as he and Yuri lifted the struggling man between them and slammed him back on the bed, pinning him there.

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"Be careful of his head!" Rupine bellowed, coming to his feet. "There are stitches!"

Raphaella was bent over, gasping for breath, her hand on her injured neck. She could hear the jumbled half-phrases exploding from Conar's mouth and knew the man would have another seizure if not brought under control. Despite not being able to breathe properly and with her own vision blurred, she pushed away from the wall and stumbled toward the bed, coughing.

"Restrain him," Rupine was telling the two men. "For the love of the Prophetess, restrain him before he hurts himself!"

Catherine stared with open-mouth wonder at the enraged man Yuri and Sajin were trying to hold down. He was kicking out at them, twisting so violently beneath their clutches, the sheets had come almost all the way off the bed. She watched Sajin bending over him, anchoring Conar's right arm and leg to the bed with enough physical force to snap the bones in two. Yuri was doing the same while Rupine had gone to the head of the bed to anchor Conar's head to the pillow.