WINDHEALER (7 page)

Six months after Hern's arrival at the Labyrinth, Princes Grice and Chand Wynth, the Hesar brothers, Rylan and Paegan, Sentian Heil, Tyne Brell, and Chase Montyne arrived on Tyber's Isle. It was in the middle of summer, the windless region stifling with heat.

Sentian Heil, along with former Elite Ward Summerall, was assigned to the same barracks with Thom, Storm and Hern, but was kept in the indoctrination hut that first night. The noblemen: Grice and Chand, Paegan, Tyne Brell, Chase Montyne, were assigned to the same hut as Shalu, Roget and Jah-Ma-El. Only one bunk remained empty in the barracks and they were told the bunk was occupied.

"He'll only be here during the day," Roget informed them as he led the men to the barracks. "They allow him five hours sleep a day, between one and six. They wake him up when we're about ready to leave the mine."

"Why?" Grice wanted to know.

"So there won't be any contact between him and us."

"Is that the man we saw being brutalized this afternoon?" Tyne asked.

Roget nodded. "You'll meet him."

"For now," Shalu warned, "you'd better get some sleep. They'll have us up at daybreak."

"I have one question," Chase said.

"And that is?" Roget asked.

"Who does the laundry?"

Du Mer stared. Montyne's face was carefully blank. If Roget had not known this man, known him like a brother, he'd have thought the young Ionarian Prince was serious. "You, of course," du Mer answered with a straight face. "The Ionarians always have laundry detail."

"I thought that was the Viragonians," Shalu remarked.

"No, the Ionarians," Jah-Ma-El corrected. "It says so in the tour guide."

Chase smiled and it was the first smile he had had in a long time. He held out his hand to du Mer. "Just thought I'd check."

Roget looked at the hand. He had hated this man once, had hated him badly, since Chase Montyne had helped put him in this terrible place. But Chase had once been his friend, too. He took the proffered hand. "I like just a tad of starch in my shirts, Montyne."

"But, of course." The Ionarian pulled du Mer into his arms and held him. "Anything else?"

"Aye," Roget said, tears forming. "Take a bath!"

* * *

It was the second day of his internment at the Labyrinth and Prince Grice Wynth was tired. He had never worked so hard, or so long, in his life. He had trained under a tough Master-at-Arms at Seadrift Keep, the capitol of Oceania where he was regent to his father, but that old warrior's tutelage had been nothing compared to the physical labor he had endured in the mine shafts that day.

He trudged out of the mine along with the other inmates and wearily sat on a dilapidated wooden bench near his barracks, bent forward, and hung his head.

"We'll have muscles on our muscles when we get home," Prince Tyne Brell of Chale remarked as he sat beside Grice.

"Where would you put muscles?" Grice quipped, eyeing the effeminate-looking Chalean.

"That's just it," Brell said in a chipper voice. "I figure I'll develop quite nicely while I'm interned." He lifted one slim arm and tried to make a muscle. He couldn't. He shrugged. "They'll pop up eventually." He leaned back on the bench and let out a tired sigh. "I heard Hern Arbra is here. Has anyone seen him, yet? He'll help me beef up."

"He's in the Indoctrination Hut for picking a fight. I heard he's to get out this afternoon."

"What do you think that fellow did to warrant such punishment?" Chand asked as he joined the men. He had not gone to the mines with the others, but had spent the day in the cook tent. When his brother and Tyne looked up, he pointed to the lone man behind the row of huts.

Stooped over, picking beans in the garden, the man paused, straightened, bent backward in an obvious effort to relieve the strain on his muscles, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his arm before bending down again.

"I was watching him for almost two hours while I was peeling spuds," Chand remarked. "They haven't let him take a break." He pointed to the guards who stood close by the man.

"And they won't," a passing inmate said.

"Why?"

The man shook his head. "Because of who he was."

Sentian and Chase joined them at the bench. He looked up at Chase.

"Did I hear you say something about laundry last eve?" He plucked at his filthy, sweat-encrusted shirt. "Do you have any freshly ironed tunics available?"

"Eat shit and die, Wynth," Chase said wearily, sliding to the ground beside Brell's feet. He ran a dirty hand through his equally dirty blond hair.

Sentian Heil plopped down, too. He was more used to physical labor than the noblemen, but he was just as tired. His head ached and his hands were already forming blisters. He looked in the chapped, cracked palms and had a vivid memory that made him look away.

"I'd hate to be him," Chand said. He was still watching the man laboring in the garden. His tender heart was aching for the inmate.

"Must be hard picking beans with one hand," Paegan Hesar replied as he slid to the ground.

"Have they allowed you to see Rylan, yet?" Grice asked. He was speaking of the Viragonian prince, Paegan's older brother, whose foot had been injured when these new men had arrived.

Paegan shook his head. "They wouldn't even let me talk to the Healer."

A loud roar shattered the quiet words. They men turned to see huge boulders crashing down the side of the bluff just beyond the huts where the solitary man was gardening. Standing, they watched with horror as the man glanced up at the careening rocks and tried to dive away from the avalanche. With ear-splitting shrieks, more rocks split apart from the bluff and cascaded into the compound with a thundering crash that shook the earth.

Men and guards ran away, their hands thrown up to protect their heads from falling debris. A massive thud shook the ground as the last large boulder hit. Then the screaming began.

At first, it was a sharp, quick stab of sound, and then another and still another, ripping out of a tortured throat, hanging on the still air. The inhuman cry of unearthly agony pealed out over the stupefied men who had stopped running and turned to stare.

Guards made toward the area where the rocks had settled. Roget du Mer and Shalu Taborn crashed out of their barracks, their faces stricken. Anyone watching them would have sworn their feet never touched the ground as they sprinted toward the pitiful screaming.

"
Wynth! Montyne! Hurry!"
Jah-Ma-El yelled as he ran by, his thin legs pumping furiously.

It was the first time in nearly three years Sentian Heil had seen Thom and Storm. He looked at them, smiling his greeting, but neither noticed him. Their full attention was on a large boulder and what lay beneath it. Storm bent down, digging at the loose sand cradling the rock; Thom fell to his knees, scooping sand away as fast as his big hands could move. Others scrambled down beside Storm: Shalu, Roget, Jah-Ma-El, and a newly-released Hern Arbra. They dug frantically at the boulder partially blocking the trench that had been dug the day before. The screaming still poured from under the rock and the men dug faster as the screaming began to weaken.

The Commandant ran foward. "Get him out!"

Sentian knelt beside Thom and began to dig. He saw Thom recognize him and then the big man began to strive harder to clear away the sand. "Dig, Heil!"

A man's arm, the flesh hanging in tatters from elbow to wrist, could be seen from under the rock as more sand was cleared. The fingers flexed, once, twice, then shook, before going still. A soft keen replaced the horrible screaming, and the keening was losing volume.

Storm drove his hands into the sand all the way up to his elbow. "I have hold of him!"

Roget du Mer and Shalu put their backs to the boulder. Thom scooted joined them. They braced their muscular legs against the side of the trench and heaved. Sweat ran down their dusty faces; veins in their necks, arms, and thighs bulged. Hern added his back to the effort and grunted as he shifted his weight against the rock.

As the boulder moved, a hideous cry tore from under the rock.

The men stopped, afraid to lift the boulder any higher.

"You can't leave him there!" Appolyon screamed. "Drake! Get down there and help them!" At first Lydon Drake refused, turning a sullen, hateful face to the Commandant. "If he dies, you die!"

Cursing violently, the ex-Temple Guard wedged his massive shoulder under the boulder. He took a deep breath and pushed upward, the cords in his thick thighs bunching up like iron pilings.

Blood gushed from a torn artery in the arm beneath the boulder. The fingers flexed once more and then lay still.

"Heave!" Hern groaned, seeing the man's life-blood soaking into the sand.

As the rock eased back, Storm tightened his grip on the victim's shoulder. Thom got down on his belly, reached for some of the tattered bulk of clothing beneath the rock, and pulled at what he reckoned to be the man's hips. He saw another body lying directly under the boulder and guessed that man was dead. He could see only crushed skull and a glob of red ooze.

"
I've got him!"
Storm shouted, pulling with all his might.

Thom tugged hard on the fabric covering the man's hips. The body began to slid toward him from under the massive stone. Others helped him lift his burden from the trench and they laid the man on the ground, turned him onto his back. What Thom saw made him cry in frustration and fear.

"It's not him," Storm whispered, his gaze going to the other body beneath the rock.

It was, in fact, one of the two guards who had been assigned to the solitary prisoner. He was indeed dead, his neck bent at an odd angle. There was utter stillness as the man's identity passed back along those gathered.

"It ain't the boy. It's that Johnny fellow."

No sound, no movement, came from beneath the massive stone. The rock could not be completely lifted out of the trench unless one of the heavy lifts was brought up from the mineshaft, and that would take the entire night. Even as the men watched, the stone was settling in the loose sand and would become the burial vault for the any man who was still trapped beneath it.

"
No!"
Jah-Ma-El screamed, scampering across the sand. Using his hands like shovels, looking for all the world like a thin, mangy dog burying a bone, he began to claw at the dirt. "
No! Get him out!"

Roget grabbed him, Shalu did, too, but Jah-Ma-El surprised them with an inhuman strength that no one would have believed existed in his frail body. He kept digging even as Storm and Thom dragged him away by his ankles. The sorcerer cursed, shrieked at them to let him go. Finally, Roget effectively silenced Jah-Ma-El's wild cries with a short jab to the nape of his neck.

Appolyon's face lost all of its color. His pig-like eyes strained out of his head and he continually ran a nervous tongue over his rubbery lips. His breathing was quick, and there was a noticeable tremor in his hands. His look turned to Roget and what he saw made him back away, a hand up to ward off the murderous glare. "
Not my fault!"
he screeched. Urine squirted down his fat legs as Roget stepped toward him.

Sentian Heil wasn't sure if he had actually heard the soft voice as it cut across the highly charged air, or if he had merely sensed it. He remembered turning toward what he thought he heard and shielding his eyes to the glare of a sun setting on the horizon. He thought he heard a sigh of, what…relief?…thanks?…from some of the men closest to him.

Outlined against the brilliant flare of the sun, a man stood wavering before them. He appeared dazed, shaken, but since no one could see his face because of the light at his back, it wasn't until his knees began to buckle that the men realized he was hurt.

Sentian, the closest to the man, leapt forward, catching him under his armpits as he hit the sand with his knees. Heil heard a gasp burst from the man's lungs, thought he heard his name whispered with regret, then felt the man's head drop against his shoulder. Something wet and sticky stuck to Sentian's cheek as the back of the man's head touched him. He was dead weight in Sentian's arms and Heil almost lost his balance as he half-knelt in the sand with the limp man.

Everything, then, seemed to happen in slow motion. He caught Roget's relieved face, Shalu's mumbled words, the Commandant's suddenly enraged face. Sentian didn't have time to wonder about the sighs or the looks, for one of the guard's stepped forward, grasped the unconscious man by one arm, and started to jerk him upward, out of Sentian's arms.

Hern leapt forward only to be backhanded to the ground by another guard. Storm tried to rush forward, but a drawn sword brought him up short, soliciting a growl from the Serenian's lips that vividly reminded Heil of a snarling wolf.

"Be careful! Can't you see he's hurt?" The Necroman took several steps forward only to have his way blocked by a sharp pike pointed at his chest.

Swinging his head up to those gathered, Sentian could only gape in stunned surprise as the guard named Lydon hurried forward and, together with the guard who had grabbed the unconscious man's arm, hustled him to a nearby upright.

"My god!" du Mer screamed. "You aren't going to whip him?"

"His hand is broken!" someone shouted. "Ain't that enough for you?"

Grice Wynth was totally baffled. The unconscious man's wrists were quickly bound with a rawhide thong, which was then attached to a thick metal spike in the wood. There was a hollow groan as consciousness flowed back to the man. The enrage the Commandant further.

"Gag him! Shut him up! I want to hear nothing from his mouth!"

Hern's snarl of rage came like the snap of lightning as a gag was wedged between the man's lips. "Damn you! Let him go!" he shouted, straining against hands that tried to hold him. He bellowed with a loud grunt of frustration as the prisoner's head slumped forward into the hollow between his raised arms. A single drop of scarlet blood fell to the sand and Hern shrieked as though the demons of hell were upon him. "Don't do this to him!"

Sentian came slowly to his feet, staring at an enraged ex-Master-of-Arms, who was swinging mighty fists at guard and inmate alike. He looked at Storm's set grimace, at Thom's tearful face, and wondered at the loyalty these men were showing the man being punished for having survived the rock slide. He looked at the unconscious man and felt a deep pity run through him, for it was obvious the wound along the man's head had to be a throbbing agony. Blood was seeping down his temple and matting the dirty blond hair that hid his face.