WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (16 page)

"I'm finished," he said, bringing Cat back from her reverie. He sat down on the edge of the bed and shivered, his nakedness finally penetrating the fog in his mind. He lay down and flung the covers over himself.

"Could you eat something?" Catherine asked, taking the chamber pot to the door. She sat it down on the floor.

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"Aye," Conar answered. "A lot of something." He propped the pillows behind his back.

"Feed me, wench."

Catherine grinned. "You're normal again." She started to leave, but he called her name and she turned, one thick dark brow lifted in query.

"Are you still mad at me?" he asked. He sounded much like a small boy whose mother had been displeased with him.

"I have every right to be, don't you think?" his wife countered.

"Aye," he mumbled, looking down at the coverlet. "You do."

Catherine paused with hand on the doorknob. "Is it still your intent to leave me in St.

Steffensburg?"

He looked up at her, his face dark with guilt. "Catherine...," he began, but she put up her hand.

"Never mind," she told him. "You just answered my question."

Before he could respond to the chill in her tone, she had left him, closing the door firmly in a manner that said she would never discuss the matter with him again.

Conar squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head, cursing beneath his breath at the necessity to push the woman he loved away from him. He brought his hands up and drove the heels of his palms against his forehead as though he could press the pain of his decision away. His lips pulled back over his teeth and he spat out a vulgarity, the hiss of his anger sounding loud and unpleasant in the still room.

"Why?" he growled. "Why does it always have to be this way?"

There was a light bump against his door and his head came up, his gaze going to the portal.

He squinted, trying to see through the dimness of the room. When the door opened, the blurred outline of a woman appeared on the threshold, but he knew it wasn't Catherine. There was a strong scent of lilacs that pulsed into the room.

"I brought your food," Raphaella told him.

He scowled, his mouth dragging down at the corners as the sorceress advanced to his bed.

She held a tray in her hands which she placed over his lap.

"I knew you'd be hungry when you woke," she said, straightening up. She saw him rubbing his forehead. "Is your head hurting again?"

"No," he answered like petulant child. "I'm just dizzy."

Raphaella's face filled with concern. "How dizzy?"

He looked up at her from beneath his hand. "Dizzy enough," he spat.

The woman's mobile mouth tightened. "That's probably because you haven't eaten in two days."

He lowered his hand and looked down at the food on the tray. There was a thick ham steak, fried potato wedges, a heel of freshly-baked bread glistening with warm, creamy yellow butter, and a mound of baked apple slices. Steam wafted up from a mug of hot tea. He lifted his fork and knife and began to score the meat.

"Is the child I saw our son?" he asked as he speared a square of ham and forked it into his mouth.

"Raine," she answered as she sat down in the chair by his bed. "He will be three in the fall."

He looked up at her as he tore a piece from the bread. "Has it been that long?"

Raphaella nodded. "He will come to see you when he's ready." She clasped her hands in her lap. "Provided, of course, you wish to see him."

Conar paused with a wedge of potato at his lips. "Why wouldn't I?"

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The sorceress shrugged. "One never knows with you, Conar." She met his hurt look. "You could feel the same way about Raine as you did Regan. Both were stolen from you and both are the sons of women you hate."

Conar crammed the potato wedge into his mouth and spoke around it. "I don't hate you, Raphaella. I just don't like you."

"Most men don't like their mothers-in-law," she replied.

"Most motherin-laws don't seduce their son-in-laws, either," he shot back. He chewed on the potato, popped another inside his mouth. "Come to think of it, it wasn't seduction, it was out and out rape." He frowned. "Rape and thievery, Raphaella."

Her lips twitched. "If I didn't know you better, beloved, I would think you were bragging instead of complaining about what I did to you."

"Stop calling me that," he grumbled. He shoved a large forkful of apples slices into his mouth.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better," she told him. "When you insult people, I know you're yourself again."

He didn't reply, but continued to fork food into his mouth, chomping on it with what did not appear to be relish. He slurped at his tea, making Raphaella wince, and she knew he was deliberately trying to antagonize her. Most likely in the hope she would leave. Something she did not intend to do.

"Despite myself," she told him as she settled back in the chair. "I find I rather like Catherine." She almost laughed at his immediate response to that statement.

"You leave her the hell alone, Raphaella!" he told her, jabbing his fork in her direction. "I mean it."

"Do you love her?" she asked, tilting her head to one side.

"That's none of your damned business," he growled, raking his knife through another section of steak.

"She certainly loves you," Raphaella commented. "If looks could kill, I'd be moldering in my grave by now." She smiled as he glanced up at her and scowled heavily. "She is jealous of our relationship, Conar."

"We have no relationship, Raphaella," he told her. He angrily shoveled the remainder of the apple slices into his mouth.

"I spoke with Sajin," she answered, making him stop chewing. She saw suspicion forming on his face. "Aye. I've had him and although he is no where near as good as you in bed, he does know how to pleasure a woman quite well."

Conar snorted, disgust making his exhalation of breath a wordless insult. He stabbed a potato wedge on the end of his fork and pointed it toward her. "Is there a man alive who you can't get to, Raphaella?"

"You," she said on a whimsical sigh. "I can use magic to bring you to my bed, but you are the only man who has ever successfully resisted me, beloved."

"Fancy that," he sneered. He drained his cup of tea.

"How is your vision this morning?" she asked, changing the subject.

Conar shrugged. "Still blurred."

"It may remain so," she said softly and saw him lift his head to look at her. She could see that thought had already occurred to him and was worrying him. "Your sight may not be as sharp as it was before. Eventually, I would think you'd need spectacles ...."

"No!" he bellowed, his vanity stung at the thought. "I will not!"

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"As I was saying," she told him, "you might need spectacles when you need to read something." She watched his face relax. "Your father did, as I recall."

"Old men usually do," he grumbled.

Raphaella hid a smile behind her hand. "Aye. Old men."

He glanced up, looking to see if she was patronizing him, but the woman was only smiling blandly at him. He cursed and sopped up what was left of the ham juice with the remaining piece of bread.

"You want something else?" she asked, standing up to take the tray from his lap.

"My wife," he mumbled. He really wanted to get out of bed, but he didn't feel all that well.

He was still dizzy and he had to pee again so badly his bladder was aching, but he didn't want Raphaella to help him with that problem.

"Sajin wants to come in to see you, but I'll tell Catherine you want to see her." Raphaella balanced the tray on a table by the door as she opened the portal. She glanced down at the chamber pot then craned her head around to look at him. "Do you have the need to relieve yourself?"

"Aye," he snapped. "But I don't need you to help me do it!" He thought she'd frown at him, but instead he saw her lovely face fill with worry.

"I'll let Sajin handle that," she said.

It wasn't five minutes before the nomad came striding cheerfully into his room, but he had been the longest five minutes of Conar's life. As soon as he realized his visitor was Ben-Alkazar, he demanded the door be closed and locked.

"Will you bring that damned pot over here?" Conar ordered. "I feel like I'm going to fucking explode."

Sajin grinned as he threw the dead bolt, then stooped down to pick up the pot. "Raphaella said you might be needing to piss."

Conar threw the covers back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The moment he did, the room canted away from him and he had to reach out to grasp the edge of the mattress to keep from falling. "Shit!" he gasped, seeing brilliant flashes of light zapping across his dark vision.

"What's the matter?" Sajin questioned as he hurried to his friend. "Another headache coming?" He sat the chamber pot on the floor.

"I'm so damned woozy I can't see straight," Conar complained.

"Here," Sajin said, as he reached down to help Conar up. "Can you even see the pot, McGregor?"

Conar couldn't answer for his bladder was so full and so painful, he started to urinate before he knew if he would be hitting the pot or not. Luckily, he did. He threw back his head, wincing at the tug on the lower part of his skull where Raphaella and Rupine had worked to relieve the pressure inside his head, and he sighed as the urine flowed out of him.

"Another minute and you would have exploded," Sajin joked. He stood there supporting his friend's body, frowning at the slight pallor that still clung to the Outlander's face.

When he was finished, Conar stumbled as he tried to sit down and he had to be helped back in the bed. "God, I can't believe how dizzy I am," he complained.

"You've always been dizzy, McGregor," Sajin said dryly. "That's what attracted me to you in the first place."

"I mean it, Sajin," Conar said, trying to blink away the fuzzy image of his friend.

"Something is wrong here."

Sajin carried the chamber pot to the door and set it down, opened the door and placed the thing out in the hallway for Sonja to empty. He shut the door then walked back to the bed. "What Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 74

do you think's wrong?" he asked as he straddled the chair by the bed and sat down.

"I don't know. I can't see all that well," Conar answered. "And I've never been as dizzy as this before." He put his hand up to his head and rubbed his right temple. "Never."

Sajin was not pleased to see the slight tremor in Conar's hand. Raphaella had asked him to look for just such a thing.

"Try not to arouse his suspicions, but see if you can find out if he has any weakness in his legs when he stands," she had also asked.

"When you stand up," Sajin said in a conversational tone, "do you feel like you're going to fall? Like your legs are going to give way beneath you?"

Conar looked over at him. "Why?"

Sajin shrugged away the rush of the question. "Well, if you're dizzy and your legs feel weak, then it's most likely hunger."

"I just ate," came the miffed reply.

"Yes," Sajin reasoned, "but the food hasn't had time to provide you with nourishment, yet, Conar." He crossed his arms over the chair back. "
Are
your legs weak?"

"Aye," Conar mumbled.

The Kensetti lowered his chin to his hands and studied his friend. "I'm thinking you're going to have to stay here awhile until you get back on your feet." When his friend started to protest, Sajin held up a hand. "Look, McGregor. If you can't even stand up without wobbling around like a goose with a broken neck, how the hell can you accomplish anything in Rysalia?

How do you even think to lead a raid if you have to stop every ten minutes to take a leak?"

"I don't want to stay here!" Conar argued much as a child would.

"Tough titty," Sajin quipped. He pushed back in the chair. "I don't see you have any choice in the matter."

"I don't want to stay here," Conar repeated.

"I doubt Cat will let you be moved," Sajin warned him. "By the way, what the hell did you say to her this morning to make the woman cry?"

Conar's brows drew together with concern. "She was crying?"

"Like a Chalean bannie," Sajin replied. "She came running past me as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me to, and I quote: 'eat shit and die, nomad." Sajin sighed. "That's when I knew the woman had been in to see you."

The Serenian Prince leaned his head back on the headboard. "Will you go talk her, Sajin?"

"I can try," Sajin answered. He got up from the chair and swung it away. "But I don't think she's in any mood to listen right now."

"Just try," Conar asked.

The Kensetti nodded. "You want anything before I go?"

Conar looked up, his face stamped with apology. "A fresh chamber pot?"

"Again?" Sajin asked.

Later, on his search for Catherine, Sajin encountered Raphaella in the kitchen. The woman and her son had their heads over a bubbling beaker of orangish liquid and neither looked up as he spoke.

"Has he developed a problem with his bladder because of that tenerse?" Sajin inquired.

Raphaella added a small vial of clear liquid to the beaker and the contents inside the glass turned a deep, scarlet red. "The malady caused by his allergic reaction to the tenerse can cause urgent and frequent urination," she answered.

"We are working on a potion that will help," Raine answered. He handed his mother a Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 75

purple flask.

Sajin shuddered. He'd never get use to witches, he thought with a grimace. "Have either of you seen Cat?"