WindSeeker (6 page)

spider was tenaciously spinning a web. She flinched and tore her eyes away from the webspinner.

"Her name is Raphaella, Milord. She is a powerful, dangerous woman, but she is not your enemy. That

you resisted her has put you in good stead with her and she will be your champion forever. That, I

swear."

He went to her and would have taken her in his arms, but she sidestepped him and sat on their bed.

She held up her arms to him. "Come to me, Milord Conar!"

There were tears in her voice, and he wasted no time in going to her. She turned into his embrace and

buried her face against his bare shoulder, wincing at the chilled feel of his flesh, trembling as the thought of

his hard flesh turned cold with death flitted unbidden through her mind.

"Hold me, Conar!" she begged. "Hold me as though there may never be a tomorrow!"

"Hush, now. Our tomorrows will be many and long. I would rather die than not spend my life with you."

Sleep was a long time in coming for Liza that night.

She knew her nightmares had just begun.

* * *

Galen McGregor’s dreams were filled with Liza. His waking thoughts were on her lovely face and sweet

voice. His fantasies took him to exotic lands and to the heights of shared passion with her imagined form.

But his realities brought him crashing to earth.

When he had known his twin was miserable, sick that he was being forced into a loveless marriage with

a woman thought to be hideously deformed, Galen had been overjoyed. Never had the golden Prince of

Serenia been prevented from having something he wanted; never had something Conar McGregor held

dear been taken from him as his beloved Liza had been. To have Conar in misery, suffering, even from so

minor a thing as having to marry someone he didn’t want to, had Galen laughing until the very moment the

veil had been drawn from Liza’s pretty face.

From that moment, Galen’s dreams had become nightmares, his thoughts vile and vengeful. His fantasies,

ones of misfortune for his twin. His realities, the knowledge that Conar had won still again, and in the

winning, had claimed the lovely Liza for his lawful prize.

Galen now dwelt in a perpetual state of drunken stupor, his days filled with snarling rage, his nights with

whimpering dejection.

Curse him! Galen thought as he sat brooding in his study within the dank and dismal walls of Norus

Keep. Curse them both, father and son! Once more Conar had escaped the fate he so richly deserved

while he, Galen, had been left to suck hind teat still again. Was there no end to his hated brother’s good

fortune?

If there had been any semblance of love left within him for his brother, Galen thought, it was long gone. If

there had ever been one ounce of compassion buried deep in his bitter soul, it was hidden so deeply even

the gods couldn’t find it. His rancor toward his twin had become a suppurating wound oozing venom

from his heart to flood his system with poisonous thought. He wanted Conar out of his life forever and he

knew only one person who could see that it would be done…

Kaileel Tohre.

Slamming his fist into the paneling of his study, Galen felt a great satisfaction at the physical pain. Pain

was something he understood. It was something he relished on occasion. Not the pain in his heart—that

was unbearable—but the physical pain that momentarily took his mind from the agony rotting away his

soul. He could bear the pain he felt on the outside; it was the pain within him, throughout his entire being,

that haunted him with burning barbs and taloned fists that gripped him with the red-hot sting of jealousy.

That was a pain that could not be eased.

Raking blunt fingers through his dark gold hair, Prince Galen McGregor narrowed his pale blue eyes and

cursed the fates that had made him the second-born of the two. Although he bore a striking resemblance

to Conar, his own hair was much more coarse than Conar’s silky sheen; his face was cast in the same

roundness, but Conar’s was more handsome, more bold; the blue eyes were direct where Galen’s

tended to shift away.

"You got it all, didn’t you, Conar?" Galen hissed, picturing his twin. "You got the personality and the

loyalty; you got the crown." His lips curled. "You got the woman." His anger seethed within him. "Damn

you to the Abyss, but I hate you!"

Shouting for his steward, Galen slumped into his chair and squeezed his eyes shut to blot out the raging

headache tearing at his right temple. He dug a fist into the flesh, pushing the pain as hard as he could,

feeling no relief, but relishing the pressure, for it stopped the image of Conar’s smiling face from

obscuring his vision. The headaches were something new, something Conar had had since a boy, but a

malady Galen had developed only of late, and they were getting worse.

"Aye, Your Grace?" the steward asked, setting a fresh bottle of brandy beside his master.

"Get that damnable sorcerer in here!" Galen demanded, his trembling fingers now rubbing the area over

his eye. Fresh spasms of pain shot through his head. He gagged. "Tell him I need something for this

misery!"

"I have already sent for him, Highness," the servant said, worried, for the Prince’s face was pinched

white with agony.

Galen flung out a hand, the closest he could come to thanking the one servant in all of Norus who was

ever loyal to him. That the servant despised Jah-Ma-El as much as Galen was some consolation.

A vicious sneer formed on his handsome face as he thought of Jah-Ma-El, the bastard brother Galen

refused to acknowledge as his own kin, but took delight in thinking of as Conar’s sibling. It was no secret

Jah-Ma-El worshipped Conar. Nor was it a secret that Conar was the only McGregor who claimed the

wretched man as part of the family. Considering the loyalty Jah-Ma-El obviously felt toward Conar, it

was no wonder the situation of wresting the power from Conar had not been resolved. Jah-Ma- El had

been utterly useless over the past three years. Nothing he had done had worked. Galen hated his bastard

brother more than ever. Jah-Ma-El’s ineffectiveness was now causing serious problems.

Only that morning a messenger had come from Tohre, telling Galen that his brother and Liza were being

honored at a festival to celebrate the third anniversary of their Joining.

"This should not have been allowed to go on as long as it has," Kaileel had written. "You asked to be

allowed to take care of the situation and I, reluctantly, agreed to let you do so. Now, it is of the most

urgent nature that you see the problem solved. I must have Conar within my total control before the

spring equinox. If you can not achieve our mutual objective, matters will be handled here by the

Brothers."

The message had only added fuel to Galen’s impotent rage. To his feelings of inadequacy. Kaileel’s

words were like shards of ice as Jah-Ma-El now crept into the room.

"What kept you, imbecile?" Galen spat. "Give me something for this ungodly pain!"

A stench rose up from the magician’s unwashed body. "I came as soon as I was called, Highness." He

held out his hand and flinched as Galen snatched the vial of painkiller from it.

Galen’s lip curled with disgust. The man looked as though he had been sleeping in his robe; his thinning

hair was spiked in several directions and there was a gray scum covering his hands and neck that testified

to Jah-Ma-El’s reluctance to take a bath. How, Galen wondered, could this unkempt ass be his own

kin?

"I want her, Jah-Ma-El!" Galen snarled, covering his nose to help blot out the man’s putrid odor. "I want

her now!"

"I am trying—"

"If she is not removed from him by the equinox, Tohre will move against her." Galen’s gaze turned hard.

"If anything happens to her, I will see you burned at the stake!" He leaned forward in his chair. "And I

will personally light the rushes!"

"But I have done everything I know to do!" Jah-Ma-El whined. "She protects herself well. I told you

when all this started that she would be a force to reckon with. She is of the Multitude! What more can I

do?"

"You told me you could get her away from Conar!" Galen shouted, pain exploding in his temples. "You

said you could separate her from him so my men could take her. Once I have her here, Conar can do

nothing. He will have lost her forever!"

"I told you I could try to separate her from Conar, Your Grace, but with all the threats you’ve made

against him after the Joining, she has stayed protectively by his side. Together, they are invincible. What is

it you think I can do?"

Galen bounded from his chair and grabbed the front of Jah-Ma-El’s filthy robe. "Conjure up something

she will not suspect. Not something aimed at her, but aimed at that sorry brother of mine. Set it on

Conar! Do you hear? Set the demon on Conar! Let
him
suffer as I am suffering!"

Jah-Ma-El’s face turned white. "I will not injure my brother."

Galen’s eyes nearly bulged from his red face. "Your brother? Your brother?" He struck Jah-Ma-El

across the mouth, staggering the thin, lanky man and making him crumble to the floor in a heap. "Slime

from my father’s prick! You have no relation to this family, filthy bastard!"

Jah-Ma-El looked up, his torn mouth set and hard even though his eyes were afraid and his lips

trembled. "I will do no harm to Conar," he repeated, his chin rising. "No matter what you do to me, I will

never harm Conar."

With his face a mottled splash of rage, Galen bent over and put his face close to Jah-Ma-El’s pinched

one. "The Master wants him, Jah-Ma-El. You and I both know why. He has entrusted me to see this

done and, in the doing, has agreed to let
me
have Liza. He, himself, dares not interfere, for he would be

the first one Conar would suspect."

"Conar will know who’s behind this anyway. Does the Master actually believe Conar will not know?"

Jah-Ma-El cringed as Galen drew back his hand to hit him, but the blow never came. Instead, Galen

stared down at him.

"The Master’s actions are his own. He has reason to stay out of this. It is up to you to bring Conar to

him. If he can not be brought to heel, the Master will have him slain."

All color drained from Jah-Ma-El’s face. "He would not do that."

A hateful smirk settled over Galen’s face. "If you don’t find a way to take her from him, Conar will die,

Jah-Ma-El. I have already given the orders to my man inside Boreas. He has a deadly poison that can

easily be added to Conar’s wine." A slow, evil smile spread over Galen’s lips. "A poison that is

undetectable, untraceable. Conar will never know what he has ingested until he hears the wings of the

Gatherer coming for him!"

Up until now there was never any serious intent to harm Conar, for Galen had set into motion mostly

threat and talk against his twin. Jah-Ma-El did not think the man actually wanted Conar’s death; but love,

such an all-consuming love as the one Galen had for Liza, might cause a man to do things he would not

ordinarily do. Looking into Galen’s obsessed eyes, Jah-Ma-El thought him quite capable of fratricide.

Galen wanted the crown, claiming it as his birthright, and that, combined with the dislike Galen had

always harbored for Conar, and which had now turned to bitter hatred, might well mean that Conar’s life

did, indeed, hang in the balance. Jah-Ma-El could not take the chance that Galen was bluffing.

Galen stared at the man hovering at his feet and knew the precise moment Jah-Ma-El took his threat

seriously. That it was only a threat, that Galen could never bring himself to kill Conar, Jah-Ma-El could

not suspect. If things were to be accomplished on time, Jah-Ma-El had to believe that Conar was in

mortal danger.

"I see you believe me," Galen whispered.

Jah-Ma-El lowered his head. "What is it you want me to do?"

"If she is concerned with his safety, she will be less concerned with her own." He glanced at a portrait

hanging over the mantle, turning his head to the side to study the twin boys who flanked their mother. It

was the day of their third birthday and it had been a happy time for Galen. Conar had given him a present

that Galen still had: an arrowhead of solid amethyst. It was the only material thing Galen McGregor had

ever held dear. It hung on a silver chain around his neck as it had for more than twenty years. He looked

away.

"I want this woman, Jah-Ma-El. I deserve her. She will be a fitting Queen to sit beside me on the throne

of this land. With her dark beauty and my fair, we will be a couple to rival the gods and goddesses. Can

you not see the children she and I will make?"

Jah-Ma-El wanted to tell him that no couple could compare with the one that Conar and Liza made, but

he did not. "Did you ever love him?" Jah-Ma-El asked instead, seeing where Galen’s gaze kept returning.

"Has there ever been any love for him in your heart?"

Galen turned his back on Jah-Ma-El, ignoring the question. "Harm him. Don’t cause permanent damage,

but hurt him enough so he will be out of my way for a time. If she is distraught over him, she will be

careless of her welfare and then my men can take her with ease." He walked to a table and poured a

large amount of brandy into a tumbler. "I will have her, Jah-Ma-El."

With tears streaking down his dirty face, Jah-Ma-El got to his feet and bowed to his master, leaving the

man staring up at the portrait.

Galen lifted the brandy. "To you, my brother. Causing you a little pain is better than causing you death!"