WindSeeker (33 page)

He had stopped thinking of himself in the first person. He no longer recognized the haunted man staring

back at him from the mirror. Who was that stranger with the wild eyes? The bitter mouth? The tight, rigid

spine?

Where had the real Conar gone? Better still—how did he go about finding that other Conar? Was he

lost forever?

So engrossed with himself, he ignored the creak of the ladder as someone began to climb to the loft. He

knew who it was, knew the man had been following, but it didn’t matter. "What the hell do you want?" he

snarled as Hern’s face peered over the last rung.

Hern didn’t answer. He swung a long leg over the ladder top and came to hunker before Conar. He

took in the pallor, the dilated pupils, the tremor, the sweat-drenched shirt, and the hostile tension in the

young man’s body. "Are you taking drugs?"

"What kind of stupid ass question is that?"

"A reasonable one, considering how you’ve been behaving. Are you?"

"
No
!"

Hern knew the boy was telling the truth. "Has Healer Cayn been treating you?"

Conar looked away. "He gave me something to calm me down."

Hern watched his young protégée hunch his shoulders in defense. "It hasn’t worked, has it?"

Conar ground his teeth. "Not yet."

"Then maybe you should stop taking it."

"Maybe I should."

"Why do you need something to calm you down, anyway?"

Conar shrugged.

"Talk to me, son," Hern ordered, softly. "Tell me what’s wrong."

"Nothing’s wrong," Conar said, too quickly.

"I know better. You may be able to hide it from the others, brat, but you don’t hide it from me." He

dropped his knees to the floor and took Conar’s face between his wide, flat palms. "Tell me, son. Tell

me what’s happening."

Conar wanted to scream. He wanted to fight. He wanted to send his fist crashing into the concerned

face staring at him. He wanted to tell the fool to leave him alone. He wanted to do anything but talk about

what was going on inside him, for he truly didn’t know himself.

"Look at me and tell me what’s wrong." Hern commanded, not allowing Conar to pull away.

The young man’s mouth puckered into a vicious, hard line and he ground his teeth together.

There is such venom in those wild eyes, Hern thought with dismay. Such hostility. The boy’s body was

fairly quivering with unleashed fury. He could almost see the rising tide of rage coming to the surface. He

had to stop it from erupting. "Don’t say something you’ll regret."

Perhaps it was the soft words, or the love showing in the older man’s face that stopped him; maybe it

was the worry lines that Conar, himself, had helped put there over the years. It might even have been the

gentle look on the otherwise harsh face that hushed the angry snarl trying to push its way from between

Conar’s clenched teeth. Whatever it was, it brought uncertainty. His mouth softened, his jaw unclenched.

"I don’t know, Hern," he answered, his voice breaking in a cracked whisper of pain. "I truly don’t know

what’s wrong with me."

Hern gathered his prince into his arms and rocked him, sighing at the improbability of a sixty-year-old

warrior, a cold-hearted curmudgeon such as himself, mollycoddling a man a third his age. He could feel

Conar’s tremors and he thought back to a few days after the prince had been conceived when he had

held the man’s mother in much the same way. He tore his mind from the past, his crusty voice deep with

well-remembered pain.

"Tell me how you feel inside." He was asking the same words, he thought helplessly, he had asked

Moira, Conar’s mother.

"I hurt," the mother and son both said. "I hurt inside."

Hern took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He eased Conar away. "In what way, son?"

"In a hundred ways. I ache in every fiber of my being." He bowed his head.

Hern watched the young man, saw tears oozing from the corners of his eyes. He put a hand behind

Conar’s neck and pulled the blond head to his wide shoulder. "Let go of it, brat. Tell me all."

"I have such anger inside me," Conar said on a hitching breath, his tears wetting Hern’s tunic. "There’s

such violence inside me and I don’t know where it’s coming from."

"Anger like when you fought the demon that day?"

Conar nodded. "Only now…now it’s like it’s controlling me instead of me controlling it." He raised his

face, pleaded for understanding. "I think I’m going mad, Hern."

"No, you aren’t."

"Then what’s happening to me? I hurt people when I don’t mean to, and I enjoy it. I say things I know I

shouldn’t. I do things I’ve…I’ve never dreamed of doing." He was crying openly, his voice breaking, his

throat closing, his breath ragged. "I don’t know why I’m doing the things I’m doing and I can’t seem to

keep from doing them! I must be going mad."

"
Don’t say that
!" Hern shouted. He had held the only woman he had ever loved and shushed away her

worries just as he must now soothe the pain of her son. "You are as sane as the next man. Don’t be

saying such foolishness."

Like a wounded, lost child, Conar threw his arms around the older man’s neck and plastered himself

tightly to the thick body. "Help me, Hern. Please, help me! I can’t live like this!"

* * *

He felt a great need to kill something, to maim something. A bird, an animal. Something. There was a

bloodlust in his eyes as he sat brooding at the cook’s table. It was flowing through his veins; it itched to

have free rein at him. With a snarl of rage, he brought the mug of brandy up to his lips and drained it.

"You want more?" Sadie asked, eyeing him from her cook pot.

"Did I ask for more?" Conar snapped, sneering at her.

Sadie shrugged her fat shoulders and ladled some soup into his bowl, his scowls lost on her. She sat the

bowl before him and walked away. She didn’t even flinch as his arm swept the bowl from the table and

the contents splattered her clean floor. She looked at the mess and then back at him.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" he shouted.

Sadie primly folded her hands at her waist, drew back her head, and looked down her nose at him.

"You want anything else, Your Grace?"

He glowered. "Wine."

The old woman didn’t bat an eye. She took the key to the wine cellar from her pocket and opened the

door. Sadie was gone only three minutes before she brought back four bottles, all she could carry in her

pudgy fingers, and gently set them on the table before her prince.

Conar reached for the bottles, two in each hand.

"Anything else, Your Grace?"

He flung back his chair and stomped from the kitchen, banging the door behind him.

"He’s getting harder and harder on the lintels, he is," she sniffed as she heard the wood crack.

* * *

Late the next morning, he stumbled into the keep, raging at everyone in his path. His vulgar curses

bounced off the walls, shocking everyone within earshot. No one spoke to him. No one dared.

He took himself to the kitchen, kicked off his mud-caked boots, hooked a leg over the chair at the table,

and sat.

"I’m hungry," he spat. He looked past Sadie to the far corner of the kitchen where her grandson sat

eating. "What the hell are you doing in here, you little bastard?"

Robert MacCorkingdale smiled. "I often come to see my grandmother."

"Robbie be my daughter Joannie’s bantling, Your Grace," Sadie answered.

"
I know
!" Conar shouted. "Get out of here, you sniveling piece of shit. Don’t let me catch you in my

keep again!"

Robert flinched, hurt deeply by the ugly tone and insult. His smile faded; his pale eyes glazed. From that

moment, the respect he had held for the prince was thrust aside. In its place a smoldering anger began to

form. He stood, shook his head at his grandmother and bowed with seemingly deep respect to his prince.

He touched his grandmother’s cheek and lowered his voice. "Perhaps His Highness would appreciate

some of that fresh chilled milk you gave me, Granny."

Sadie stared at him with confusion, but she saw his slight nod. Her toothless smile filled with

understanding. "I’ll do just that, Robbie. Thank you, son."

Conar ate a large meal. Bacon, eggs, crisp fried bread, poached pears and figs, a ham steak and two

large dollops of cinnamon-flavored gruel. With his meal he drank four tall tumblers of milk and in each

tumbler was not one teaspoon of tenerse, but two!

"It’ll either kill him or drive him mad!" Sadie mumbled behind Conar’s back as she spooned more

tenerse into his glass. At that point, she didn’t care what happened to him.

After breaking his fast, Conar stomped barefoot up the stairs in search of his wife. When he smashed the

door to their room wide open, splintering the lintel and snapping the upper hinge off the portal, Liza let

out a small scream of surprise. She jerked around from her vanity, watching him take a step into the

room, then use his foot to close the door. She could only gape as he spun around and shot the bolt home.

As he turned to face her, the pure rage in his eyes stunned her.

"Where were you last night?" she asked, her heart beginning to pound at her temple.

"None of your business."

Liza laid down her hairbrush. "Has something happened?" He didn’t answer. Didn’t seem to have heard

her at all. She slowly stood. "Milord?"

Something dark moved in the blue depths of her husband’s eyes. Leapt. Stirred. Some spark that turned

his handsome face hateful with a sneer.

"What is it?" she asked, edging away from the coiled tension she could feel in his body. She could

actually smell his anger as he glared at her.

He took a step forward, his hands itching to hit her, to bloody the lovely face. He wanted to hurt her, to

hear her scream with pain.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She slid from behind the vanity bench. She felt perspiration on

her upper lip and flicked out her tongue to lick away the telltale sign of fear.

He had been about to leap on her, to begin her discipline for daring to question him, when he saw her

small pink tongue move sensuously across her full upper lip. He stilled, his head slightly turning to one

side and then a surge of such intensity, a wave of such primitive sexual arousal, shot through his loins that

he grunted with the ache of it.

"Conar?" She was no longer concerned for him. She was afraid of him. The look on his face wasn’t

quite sane.

"You are mine," he whispered with a fierce growl of possession.

"Aye. Yours and no one else’s." Had someone hinted otherwise to him?

His lips pulled back and his nose twitched. He could smell her odor. He could almost taste it on his

tongue. His manhood leapt, and he started forward.

"You are frightening me, Conar."

His hands were on his belt, unbuckling, jerking it free of his breeches. Then his fingers were on his

unlaced shirt, pulling it from his cords. He yanked the shirt over his head, threw it away, and slid his

hands down to the buttons of his breeches. As he ripped loose the pearl studs, Liza was sure of his

purpose.

"No," she said, backing as far away as possible, putting the vanity table between him and herself. "This is

not the time."

He froze, cocking his head, looking at her as though he couldn’t believe she had denied him. "What?" he

asked softly, menacingly. "What did you say to me?"

Liza’s heart hammered. Her breathing came fast and shallow. She swallowed, suddenly no longer just

frightened, but struck numb with sheer terror. She shook her head. "I said no, Conar."

"What are you saying no to?"

"I won’t make love with you when you’re like this."

A smile so wicked and so evil spread over his lips that his face changed before her eyes.

"Don’t tell
me
, no, woman," he said conversationally, advancing on her. "You don’t
dare
tell me, no.

When I want you, I
take
you."

Suddenly he shot forward. He rounded the table and was almost to her. She feigned to her right. He

lunged, only to find her fleeing on the left side of the vanity. She scrambled onto and across the bed and

almost made it across the wide expanse before he caught her ankle in a savage grip and jerked hard

enough to abrade the skin. She kicked with her slippered foot and caught him squarely in the throat,

sending him stumbling back. He coughed and gasped, trying to breathe, his hands at his aching throat.

Liza scurried off the bed and ran for the door.

As she fumbled with the bolt, he kicked free of his breeches and catapulted toward her. Liza turned as

he lunged. She tried to sidestep away, but he snaked out his hand, managing to get a handful of her

tresses. She put up her hands to pry his from her hair, but his fingers twisted in the long strands and she

came up short. A fiery band of agony ripped across her scalp as he pulled her toward him, wrapping her

hair around and around his wrist as he drew her forward.

"Conar, you’re hurting me!"

"You haven’t begun to see hurt yet, woman," he whispered, bringing her face to his. He spread his

fingers across her scalp and anchored her head. "I’ll teach you to say no to me."

He dragged her to the floor, his hand still clutched in her hair. She fell backward, his looming weight

hovering over hers. She dug her nails into his forearms, raked them along his chest, his shoulders, down

his side. She struck at his face with her fists, pummeled his chest, but he didn’t seem to notice or care