WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (35 page)

"What day is it?" Conar asked.

"Saturday, milord," Chaim answered.

"Saturday," the Serenian whispered. "The fourteenth of May?"

"Yes," Chaim agreed. "Is there a significance to this date?" He clucked his tongue over one bruise.

A gentle smile tugged at Conar's lips. "Today is my brother Coron's birthday. He'll be thirty-seven today."

Chaim smiled, also. "I have a brother that age." He worked the liniment into the bruise on the back of Conar's thigh. "Will there be a great celebration at your home, then, for him?"

Conar nodded, thinking of the party he knew Legion would have planned with Gezelle and Meggie's help. "Aye." He laughed softly. "And my brothers will get out what my grandfather called 'the Rod of Wisdom' and beat him with it. One hit for every year of his life plus one to 'grow Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 156

on'."

Chaim's hand stilled on Conar's flesh. "Beat him? Why?"

There was genuine humor in the Serenian's voice. "The famous rod is actually a pine board about six inches wide and an inch thick. It's really a paddle. Every McGregor male has been subjected to the not-so-tender ministrations of his brothers with that paddle for as far back as I can remember. It doesn't hurt all that much but it gets more painful with every hand that wields it."

Shaking his head at such a custom, Chaim resumed his attention to Conar's bruises. "I would think it degrading."

"It is. That's the point. But no one minds it, Chaim."

"You miss your home, don't you?" Chaim asked and could have bitten off his tongue.

"Aye," came the sad reply. "I miss it more and more every day."

Putting away the liniment, Chaim started to leave, but he looked back at the helpless man sitting chained to the pallet in the center of this scorching room. He found himself looking into Conar McGregor's face and felt his heart contracting with pity. Although those sightless sapphire eyes were devoid of light, there was within them an ember that hinted at unspeakable loneliness and such vulnerability it tore at Chaim's soul. Not since the first day, when the blindness had claimed him, had McGregor complained about what had happened to him. He seemed to have accepted it as something inevitable, irreversible, irrevocable, and had decided to make the best of it.

Chaim, however, had not accepted it and still felt immense guilt because he believed himself responsible for the man's affliction.

"Don't forget the water, please?" Conar said, sensing Chaim had not left the room yet.

It took Chaim a moment before he could speak. "I will not, Your Grace." He saw Conar nod, then lay down on the pallet, drawing his knees up, turning his back to the door.

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 157

Another month passed and Conar had grown to tolerate, if not really accept, his silken imprisonment. He realized no one would be coming for him, no one would be looking for him.

The promise he had made Sajin give, not to seek him out should he just simply disappear, had been his undoing. No doubt Sajin thought him safely ensconced in a peaceful monastery, having no idea he was the prisoner of the man's own sister.

Once more, he thought with bitter regret, his journey through life had taken him to a place he did not want to be. He felt lonely and isolated and without hope. He had plummeted into a dark, dank well of despair in which he was drowning. He had always been an assertive, aggressive male, letting nothing and on one stand in the way of what he wanted.

Until the Labyrinth.

Until now.

Now, he was at the mercy of a woman who hated him, who never failed to berate him for all manner of imagined sins of which she'd accused him. But he would never let her know just how much her cold, unfeeling taunts and accusations hurt him. His dependence on her both angered and shamed him, both emotions cutting down to the quick of his already-damaged soul.

And his loneliness was destroying what was left of that battered soul. It sapped his energy.

Draining what strength he had left away. It was almost like being in the Labyrinth again except this time his jailer was not a sadistic slob intent on crushing his spirit. This time, his jailer was darkness intent on destroying his entire being.

Reaching up to adjust the silken scarf tied around his eyes, Conar heard again in his mind the argument he had had a few days earlier with Sybelle.

"You are helpless, McGregor. You have to depend on me for every drop of water, every crumb of bread you put in your belly. Because I follow the teachings of the Prophetess, I am obliged to care for your creature comforts, but I don't have to look at those sightless, milk-glazed eyes. They offend me! Looking at you makes me ill!"

It galled him that he had been reduced to tears by her acerbic insult. He had always been more vain than he should have been and for a woman to find him ugly, distasteful, hurt him deeply.

And it humiliated him that she had laughed at his tears.

"I pity you, McGregor," she'd spat at him.

"I don't need your damned pity, woman," he had told her.

"You need it more than you need the revenge I had planned for you before the tenerse punished you for me!" she'd responded.

Now, he wore the silken cloth to hide his eyes and it was easy for him to tell himself that the loss of his sight was caused by the scarf around his head, not the tenerse that had invaded and crippled his body. He could explain away the sightlessness, but the weakness in his legs was not so easily explained.

She had moved him from the upper floor of his prison to a suite of rooms on the lower level where it seemed cooler and did not smell of mold and dust. Most of the furniture had been removed so he could get about unhindered by bumping into sharp edges and knocking over small fixtures. He had a bed, soft and comfortable; a settee and chair; a copper tub where she allowed him to bathe with either Chaim or Kanan in attendance. He had been provided a table with two chairs at which he sat to eat his meals. There was a small outside alcove, surrounded by a wall Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 158

higher than his stretching hands could reach to find the top, where he could sit in the late afternoon and listen to a fountain somewhere off to his right. With his sight gone, his hearing had become intensely acute. As had his senses of smell and touch.

Sybelle had insisted that he exercise, to try to strengthen his legs, so he walked about the three room suite, counting off his paces carefully, knowing now where every stick of furniture was.

With his hands out, he probed his habitat and soon knew every nook and cranny in his prison.

"McGregor?"

Conar's head came up and he cocked it to one side. He could distinguish the patter of her bare feet as she advanced toward him. He had not heard her enter the chamber, but that was not unusual. She often sneaked up on him trying to catch him unaware.

"I have brought your meal," she said and he heard the clatter of a tray on the table by the outside door. He could smell roast chicken and his mouth watered.

Sybelle turned to look at him and found her heart racing again in her breast as it had for several weeks now each time she saw him with that silken scarf tied around his flaxen hair. The royal blue silk brought out the ripe wheat color and made her itch to tear it from him and run her fingers through that silky mane. Cursing beneath her breath at the folly of such thoughts, she pulled one of the chairs out from beneath the table and ordered him to come and sit.

Pushing himself wearily from the cushions spread out on the floor of the alcove, Conar made his way to the table, sat down and carefully reached for the food she had brought him.

"You look terrible," she told him.

Conar snorted around a mouthful of peas. "So you keep telling me."

"No," Sybelle snapped with annoyance, "You really don't look well." He didn't move as her hand touched his cheek. "You have a fever." She moved her hand above the edge of the scarf, pushing aside the mop of unruly waves that fell over his forehead. "McGregor, you are burning up!"

"Malaria," he mumbled as he shoveled creamed carrots into his mouth. "I've had it before.

You know that." He reached for the tumbler of milk he knew would be there.

"Don't drink that!" she ordered, snatching his hands back. "It will curdle on your stomach."

She took the milk away and went over to the door to call for Kanan, instructing him when he came to see what she wanted to fetch a pitcher of chilled water and a vial of quinine.

Conar ignored her as she came back to stand beside him. He continued to eat, wishing she'd go away and leave him alone. The fever had started earlier that morning, but the chills and delirium would take a while yet to start. His head was already beginning to ache and he wasn't up to having her torment him.

"Why didn't you call someone?' she grumbled.

He finished the last strip of roasted chicken and licked his fingers, knowing his lack of manners would infuriate her. He wiped his hands on his breeches.

"Ill-mannered boor," she hissed, gaining him the reaction he'd been seeking.

"Mean-spirited bitch," he answered as he pushed his chair back from the table and started to stand. He wasn't prepared for the dizziness that gripped him nor the giving way of his left leg as he stood.

Sybelle caught him as he stumbled, snaking her arm around his waist and keeping him erect as he made a grab for the edge of the table. His body, pressed against her own, was radiating heat and she knew he was going to be in for a day or two of debilitating illness.

"Let's get you to bed," she said with exasperation. Helping him walk was harder than she would have thought, for he seemed to be having trouble moving not only his right leg, but his left, Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 159

as well. When they reached the bed, she ordered him to remove his shirt.

His fingers felt numb, lifeless, but he managed to unlace his shirt. Standing there by the bed, wobbling, he dragged the shirt over his head and let it drop to the floor.

"You are not only ill-mannered," Sybelle said, letting go of him to snatch up the shirt, "you are slovenly, as well."

"At least I'm consistent," he mumbled.

"Lie down!" she snapped at him, annoyed with his flippant attitude.

Conar slumped down on the bed and had difficulty pulling his legs up. It angered him that she had to lift his legs for him and he could hear her cluck of annoyance as she did.

"How long have you been having trouble with your left leg, McGregor?" she snapped.

"I don't know," he answered, flinging a hand over his face. "Two, three days, I guess."

Sybelle's mouth tightened and she bent over him, reaching for the buttons of his cords, expecting him to stop her, but he just lay there, impassive, allowing her to undo his breeches. He arched his hips up at her command and let her slide the cords from him.

"You really enjoy stripping me, don't you, Sybie?" he chuckled although he was beginning to feel the onset of the chills that would render him nearly incapacitated.

"You've been told not to call me that, McGregor!" she hissed as she reached down to draw the coverlet over his nakedness.

"How do I compare to your other love slaves?" he teased her then chuckled again at her crude one word reply.

Kanan brought the water and quinine and poured out the dosage his mistress ordered.

Helping the Serenian to sit up, he held the bitter brew to Conar's lips and grimaced at the look of distaste that passed over the sweaty face.

"Tastes pretty bad, huh?" the servant asked. He eased Conar's head back to the pillow.

"Worse than bad, my friend," Conar acknowledged, dragging his tongue over his lips and teeth to rid himself of the taste.

"Do you want me to stay with him, Your Grace?" Kanan asked his mistress, but was told she did not.

Sybelle tucked the covers around Conar's chest then sat down beside him on the bed. "How bad do you think this episode will be?" she asked, watching him tremble.

"You should be able to enjoy watching it, milady," he answered through clattering teeth.

"Generally I get pretty damned sick."

Hours later, Sybelle thought his words an understatement as she stood beside the bed where Chaim and Kanan had had to restrain a thrashing, babbling patient locked in the desperate throes of delirium. She watched with worried eyes as his fever continued to climb and his uncontrollable shivering bordered on convulsion.

"Why don't you go rest, Your Grace?" Chaim asked her sometime toward midnight. "The worst of it seems to be over."

Sybelle shook her head. "I'll stay."

Just past dawn, the quinine finally began to work and the fever recede. The bone-jarring tremors that had racked Conar McGregor for most of the night tapered off to a shiver or two and then subsided. The incoherent mumblings died away to be replaced with an occasional moan of discomfort, a long sigh of weariness.

"McGregor?" she asked him after she had sent Chaim and Kanan to their well-deserved beds. "Can you hear me?"

He turned his head on the pillow. "Liza?" he asked, lifting a weak hand, reaching out Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 160

toward the sound of her voice.

Sybelle moved away from that questing hand and stood up from the bed, looking down at the glistening chest which rose and fell with slight agitation.

"Please hold me," he asked in a wavering voice.

She shook her head. "I'm not Elizabeth McGregor," she retorted.

Conar stretched out his hand, seeking, searching, pleading with her for a moment's affection, a single, reassuring touch of compassion. He was starving for that touch. Weakened as he was by the fever that had invaded his body, he desperately needed to know someone cared about what happened to him. He couldn't remember the last time someone had held him, shown him they understood his pain.