WINDHEALER (6 page)

The boy was dressed in filthy breeches that barely covered his lean hips. His bare chest with its accumulated scars was heart wrenching, but the slavish demeanor and listlessness were the most horrible things Hern had ever seen. His rage soared with his pounding blood. "Conar!" he bellowed.

Lydon grabbed a handful of the dirty blond hair and pulled back Conar's head so Hern could see the boy's scarred face and dead eyes.

"Oh, sweet Alel!" Hern whispered, his knees going weak from grief. He was barely aware that, instead of struggling with the guards, he was now being supported by them.

The Commandant snickered. "You see, my good man, he knows what's going to happen. See how he's resigned himself to it?"

Hern couldn't look away from the Conar's ravaged face. The scars were there, like the ones Kaileel Tohre had given him that day in the Punishment Square, but there were other scars, as well. Faint white lines across his nose, a wavering line over his forehead and down his right cheek, crossing over the thicker scars left by Kaileel's whip, a short, broad line along his chin. Ridges of long-ago breaks of his nose, lines of pain and suffering creasing his still face, scars upon scars all over his torso.

"He knows his place, Arbra." Appolyon nodded to Lydon, who pushed Conar to his knees in the dirt where he knelt, head bowed. "He does what he's told."

Hern took in the dejected shoulders, the posture of subservience, and he knew a raging fury such as he had never known. When the Commandant held his fat hand down to Conar's mouth and the young man kissed the back of it, Hern went insane with fury.

"I'll see you in hell for allowing this to happen to him!" Hern screamed at du Mer and Jah-Ma-El.

Appolyon laughed, "My dear fellow, they have had no say in what I do to my prisoner. If you had listened to them, what will happen now could have been avoided."

Hern stilled. "What are you talking about?"

"The man you called by name no longer exists. He died a long time ago. What you see now is his ghost, a ghost who walks among these men with anonymity. These men don't speak to him, don't acknowledge him in any way. If they should forget—and believe me when I tell you they don't—it is the ghost who suffers, not them." He unfolded his corpulent arms and swept them wide to indicate the compound. "This hell-hole is a grave, Arbra. It is
his
grave!" He turned to Lydon. "Do what you do best, Drake!"

"
No!"
Roget screamed, but he went down when a guard hit him in the gut.

Hern saw Xander stopped by guards, saw Jah-Ma-El struck down with the broadside of a sword. He turned a fearful look at Conar and saw the blue orbs lift to his in fatalistic acceptance.

Whatever Hern expected, it was not the horror that followed. His screams of animalistic fury deafened those around him. He threw himself against his captors with a renewed rage that finally brought him a hard fist to his jaw to silence him. When he awoke, he was chained inside the hut where he had been jailed before.

"You see what they're capable of doing, don't you, Arbra?" one of the guards who brought him food asked. "And you also see why we do not interfere. If you love him, and I know you do, you'll learn to pretend he doesn't exist. That's the only way he'll be able to survive."

"The first chance I get, I'm gonna gut that Lydon!"

"It doesn't matter about Lydon—"

"The hell it don't!" Hern bellowed. "His Grace sent Lydon Drake here. I remember what that vile whoreson did! You saw what he did today! For that alone, I'll find a way to slice his throat!" He shuddered as he heard again in his mind the whip hitting Conar's scarred back. "No one hurts my boy.
No
one!"

* * *

"You can not treat a man as you have treated him and expect him to do anything but crack!" Xander was bent over the Commandant's desk, his face near the other man's. "You can not ravage a man's spirit and expect him to remain untouched."

"I expect you to do your job, Healer!" Appolyon reminded him.

"If he is not allowed to rejoin the human race, we're going to lose him for good!"

"And what do you propose?"

Xander came around the desk and stared down at the man. "You wanted him the way he is. Made him the way he is. Now, with Tohre's edict lying on your desk, you have to undo what you've done. The only way I know to do that is let Conar McGregor exist in this vile world!"

"He may
not
be called by his former title! That is
not
part of Tohre's edict!"

"We don't care about that! The boy never liked to be called by titles anyway. What is important is he be allowed to rejoin the living. Haven't you punished him enough?"

Appolyon did not want to appear weak, even before the Healer. He lifted his pig-like nose. "If you wish, he may be allowed to live with the others."

"In du Mer's hut. With du Mer and the other men."

Appolyon ground his teeth. "He must be called 'Traitor.' Is that clear?"

"I will not accept that."

Appolyon's jowls quivered with outrage. "How dare you!"

Xander pointed at the document. "
That
gives me the right to dare!"

Knowing he was defeated, the fat man turned his head. "No idle conversations. Understood?"

"We'll see."

"No idle conversations!" Appolyon shouted as Xander slammed the door behind him.

Xander's angry footsteps took him rapidly across the compound. He swept his furious gaze over the cage where Conar had slept for five years and shouted at a nearby inmate to tear the gods-be-damned thing apart. "Now!" He wasn't surprised when two men rushed to do as he demanded.

Roget met him at the doorway of the medical hut. "Well?"

Xander slipped past du Mer and stalked to the cot where Conar lay, his body as still as death. Xander looked into the blank eyes that stared back at him without seeing. He placed a soft, gentle kiss on the cool, clean brow. When he raised his head, he glanced at Roget. "You can take him into the hut with you."

"He barely knows he's alive, Hesar."

"Conar has locked himself away where he can't be hurt, du Mer. He's gone deep inside himself. It's a defense mechanism, and he may never come back to us."

"Then, what do we do?"

Xander touched Conar's face. "Show him he is loved."

* * *

Love? Had he heard the word?

There was no word "love" in his world. There was only hate and pain.

Had there ever been such a word in his world?

He thought there might have been once. There was a vague longing in his soul that he could no longer name. That might have been love.

There was a fragment of hope in him that such a thing existed, but even hope was rapidly disintegrating and, with it, that long-forgotten emotion.

If there had ever been love, it was now gone. It was buried so deep inside him that only his battered soul, if he still possessed a soul, knew where it lay hidden. It had been secreted away to a place where no one could see it, touch it, despoil it or take it away. Ever again.

Was it love that had kept him alive all these years? he wondered. Was it that shining light that came in the quiet hours when sleep refused to come, when his body hurt and his heart ached so unbearably and his soul longed for surcease?

Maybe it had been love at the first that kept him sane. Maybe it had kept him from dying despite the many times he had wanted to surrender. Maybe it was still in that secret place and all he needed to do was to dredge it up and hold it in order for it to exist.

But what was it he wanted to bring back into his life? What was the memory that had kept him alive?

Somehow he thought the memory was long and black and flowing. Perhaps it was even green and sparkling. Or was it ivory and coral, rose-tinted and soft?

No, he told himself, a partial memory flooding his aching heart. It had been rich and fragrant…like lavender. The scent filled his senses. He began to cry.

He felt hands on him, stroking, calming, wiping away his tears. He felt tender emotion springing forth from the faces hovering over him. He felt more alone now than ever because he knew the comforting wouldn't last. It never did. It was only there when he was ill. When he was better, it vanished, along with his identity, and he was even more bereft with its passing.

He closed his senses to the world. Shut his ears to his whimpering cries. He didn't want to see the loving faces, for they could not be there. Hern and Thom and Storm and Jah-Ma-El and Roget. They were not in his nightmare world. He was in it alone.

* * *

"What is he saying?" Jah-Ma-El asked.

Roget's face turned white.

"I want to go home, Kaileel," the child-like voice whispered. "Please let me go home." A ragged sob tore through the heaving chest. "Please. I'll be a good boy. I'll behave." The voice turned shy and afraid, conspiratorial. "I won't tell them what you do to me."

"Sweet Merciful Alel," Roget groaned, his voice filling with pain.

"He's reliving his childhood in the Abbey," Shalu said.

"Please, Kaileel," the timid voice said a little louder. "I'll behave. I promise. Just please let me go home. I'll do whatever you say."

His entireties were heart-breaking, made more pathetically so because they were the long-ago words of a lost little boy. One last, gentle sigh of helplessness escaped Conar's lips and he shuddered and lay still.

"I'll kill Kaileel Tohre if it's the last thing I do!" Hern snarled, flinging himself out the hut, slamming the door behind him.

"What if he doesn't get any better, Xander?" Roget asked.

Jah-Ma-El answered for the Healer. "I love my brother more than anything on earth, du Mer, but rather than see him this way the rest of his life, I will end his life myself."

Roget looked into Jah-Ma-El's fierce black eyes and understood. He would feel the same way about his brother, Teal. Death was preferable to the agony of spirit the young man was now suffering.

For more than a week, Conar lay in his cot, his eyes open, staring, blank. He drank what was given him, ate the food spooned into his mouth, went to the chamber pot when it was held for him, but not once in that entire time did he do anything on his own.

He did not respond to the words spoken to him, neither did he speak. The men who cared for him—now numbering nearly two dozen—sat with him, gave him gentle, quiet orders, but did not carry on a conversation with him, no matter how one-sided, for such a luxury was still being denied him. It was at the beginning of his second week of catatonia that Xander could stand it no longer.

"What now, Healer?" the Commandant sighed, annoyed his afternoon tea had been interrupted.

"He is getting no better."

"He's eating? Drinking, pissing? What more do you want?"

Xander ground his teeth together. "You meant to see him the way he is and succeeded. I suppose now that you've accomplished your goal, we can just stop feeding him and let him die." He started to walk away.

"Wait!" Appolyon's fat jowls wobbled as he stood, throwing his linen napkin to the tea table. "He is to be kept alive at all costs!"

Xander eyed the corpulent man with an arched gray slash of eyebrow. "I can't keep him alive in such a condition. He's a burden. It takes eight men to help me care for him." He folded his arms. "I have other inmates to see to, Commandant."

Appolyon chewed on his rubbery lip. "What do you suggest?"

"He is non-productive. Let him die, starve to death, and tell Tohre he died of natural causes."

The fat man gasped. "I thought you cared for him?"

"I do. But I don't like seeing him the way he is and neither do the others. It's bad for morale. After a while, they'll lose interest and abandon him. That will leave his care entirely up to me." He shook his head. "No. No, I can't handle him alone. You'll just have to let him die." He put his hand on the knob but didn't get a chance to open the door.

"Then, do what you have to do! Talk to him, wake the bastard up!"

With his back to the Commandant, Xander smiled. "I'll see what I can do."

* * *

"It's no use," Hern said in a choking voice. "The brat just don't respond to nothing." His wide shoulders sagged with fatigue.

"There has to be something that will bring him out of this!" Thom snarled. He paced from one end of their hut to the other. "Sometimes I just want to slap him as hard as I can. Maybe that would get his attention!"

Jah-Ma-El looked up at the tall, rubber-faced man. "What did you say?"

"You heard me, you son-of-a-bitch!" Thom flung himself down on his bunk.

"That may be the way to bring him around."

"I'll be damned if I'll let anyone slap my boy!" Hern bellowed, striding to where Jah-Ma-El sat. "You try hitting him and see what I do, you vile-smelling warlock!"

Conar's brother angrily shook his head. "No, not physically hit him."

Roget looked around from his place at the open doorway. "I think I see where you're going."

"I don't!" Hern shot back. "If he tries to hurt—"

With a snarl of rage very much unlike Jah-Ma-El, the gangly man stood and glared into Hern's beefy face. "What's the best way you know to make Conar angry?"

"What the hell difference—"

"How did
you
make him angry?" Jah-Ma-El shouted.

So surprised by the backbone this thin, unwashed man had developed, Hern could only gape.

"
How,
dammit?
How
did you make him mad?
How
did you get him to do something he didn't want to do?"

Hern's mouth snapped shut with an audible click. He narrowed his eyes. His stare was meant to quell Jah-Ma-El, but the little man held his ground. "When I wanted him to shape up, I insulted him."

"I don't think that would help now," Storm said. "He's so accustomed to being humiliated, it just might push him deeper into oblivion."

Jah-Ma-El turned. "I wasn't thinking of insulting him."

"Then, what?" Hern asked, his voice tight with annoyance.

"There's only one person we could slur," Storm whispered, "that will make him angry enough to respond."

Hern sighed. "His lady."

* * *

He was sitting up in the cot, hands in his lap, staring straight ahead. He didn't seem to be aware of the men working in the hut. There were three of them, strangers to him, men who volunteered to work in the hut to be near him. They were speaking about inconsequential things, joking with one another, their cheerful voices filled with laughter.

"I hear she's as ugly as they come," one of the inmates said in a conspiratorial voice. "She's so damned ugly, her parents won't let her out in public without something over her head!"

"That bad? No wonder they can't find a husband for the bitch."

"I heard she's deformed."

"That's worse! How the hell are they going to get rid of her if no man will court her?"

The first man looked at the patient. "I hear they got this fool lined up to marry her."

"Who'd marry a ugly, deformed hag?"

"Some noble down around Serenia. McGregor be his name. His parent's set the thing up."

Conar's fingers jerked in his lap.

"Poor fellow. Don't he have no say in it?"

"Likely as not he don't. I hear he sent one of his friends down there to get a look at her and when that fellow came back there was hell to pay! That young nobleman told his papa he wouldn't have that toad frog if she was the last woman on earth!"

Conar's lashes flickered.

"Well, if he don't have no choice, he don't have no choice. I guess he could always stick a burlap bag over the hag's head."

Another flicker.

"I heard he already has a light-o'-love. A choice morsel. One of his many whores, I suppose."

Conar's lips closed.

"The same girl they say rides with him and his men?"

"Rides with his men or is being ridden by them?"

Conar's jaw clenched.

"Bet he shares her. I hear she's kind of partial to one of his kin. Lord Saur, I think his name is. Saur be one of the fool's brothers, I'm told." The speaker cast a look at Conar's face and nearly laughed with happiness when he saw the young man's narrowed eyes.

"I saw her with that one once. They was having a merry old time! That Lord Saur is a handsome cuss. Don't blame the gal for wanting him instead of the fool."

Conar's fists doubled.

"And that nobleman thought nobody knew where his light-o'-love was when she went a'missin', huh? She was out riding his brother, I guess!"

Conar's body twitched; he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, let it out, drew another sharp, quick breath, let it out with a rush.

"The man must have been a blind fool to think that tart was being faithful. He should have stuck with his Toad. At least no man would fool with such a ugly bitch!"

"He'd rather have his whore, I reckon."

Conar trembled from head to toe, his eyes angry, his lips drawn back. He swung his head, found them staring at him. His breath came in sharp intakes of fury and when he saw them laughing, he bounded up and lunged at the closest one.

"She's no whore!" He wrapped his fingers around the man's neck. "She's my wife!" He was only vaguely aware of the arms that had gone around his waist, someone pulling him away from the object of his anger.

"Stop it!" someone screamed in his ear. "You're all right. Just stop it!"

He spun around in the arms holding him, glared into a face he recognized all too well. "They called my lady a whore, Hern!" he spat. "No man calls my lady a whore!"

"And no man in his right mind would let them, either. Are you in your right mind, now?"

Conar stared at him, so furious he was barely cognizant of his surroundings. He gasped for breath; his chest heaved in the constriction of Hern's arms. He caught movement to his right and jerked his head to see Thom and Storm watching. He looked back at Hern.

"Are you in your right mind, now?" Hern repeated.

"He will be," Jah-Ma-El said.

"We didn't mean no disrespect to the Queen," one of the others said.

Conar searched Hern's heavily wrinkled face, wrinkles he knew he had helped carve. "Hern?" he asked softly, not understanding.

"Welcome back, son."