WINDKEEPER (15 page)

"You’ll get used to it," Jah-Ma-El answered and had been rewarded with a miserable look of pure fear from the child.

"He should not hit me." The little chin raised. "Not me."

Jah-Ma-El shrugged again.

"They lied to my father," the little boy muttered.

"It’s a way of life here."

The child started to say something else and stopped, his eyes going up, past Jah-Ma-El’s shoulders. The blue orbs dilated with terror.

A heavy-set man, his shoulder-length brown hair swinging angrily around his shoulders, descended upon the blond boy with a mighty bellow of rage. "So, this is where you’ve been hiding, you little bastard!" He reached out a huge paw of a hand and grasped the little boy’s arm in a punishing grip that made the child yelp. "The Master will see to you!"

Jah-Ma-El had been knocked out of the big man’s way as he dragged the frightened little boy behind him. Standing helplessly by, watching the boy look at him as he was pulled viciously along the corridor, Jah-Ma-El had gazed into tearful, terrified blue eyes that sought his for strength. He willed courage to the boy, wishing with all his heart that there were a way he could help.

He mentioned the encounter to his instructor, Keil Jabyur, that evening. He had been unable to get the boy out of his mind and had worried about the child all day. As he spoke, he saw his teacher’s face pale.

"Stay away from him, Jah-Ma-El." Jabyur ran a hand over his thick face. "The boy belongs to Kaileel Tohre, and Tohre doesn’t want the child near any of his kin."

Jah-Ma-El had been sewing one of the priest’s ceremonial robes, his nimble fingers making an almost invisible repair in the rent hem. At his benefactor’s words, he glanced up. "Kin?"

Jabyur sat heavily on his cot and put his head in his hands. A thick shock of pure white hair, combed straight back from a high, wide forehead, was being threaded through with pudgy, strong-looking fingers. Jabyur shook his head. He was debating with himself whether to tell the boy who the child was. Finally, seeing no real harm in telling, no reason not to, he raised his head and looked into Jah-Ma-El’s confused brown eyes. It was a mistake that ultimately caused the instructor’s untimely death.

"The boy is the little Prince, Jah-Ma-El. He is King Gerren’s firstborn, Conar. He’s been brought here to train for the priesthood." A look of disgust spread over Jabyur’s pleasant, florid face. "But Tohre has other plans for the child."

Jah-Ma-El laid down his sewing and stared at his teacher. "My brother?" he asked and saw Jabyur nod. Jah-Ma-El had seen, but never before met, let alone spoken to, one of his many brothers. He was both thrilled and worried. "Why do you look so upset, Master?"

"He should not be here, Jah-Ma-El," the man answered, getting up and staring into the dark outside his window. "He is the Heir-Apparent. If Tohre needed one of the royal sons, he should have taken the second boy, Galen."

"His father does not know he is here, does he, Master?"

"No, but I have sent a messenger to tell him. The little Prince should never have been brought to this vile place."

Sleep was long in coming that night for Jah-Ma-El. He lay on his cot and thought of the young boy, his brother, sequestered somewhere within the Abbey. He worried that the boy was well, feared that he was not. He willed his spirit to link with the boy’s, but it was no use. The magic he had learned so far from Jabyur was not strong enough to detect the boy’s whereabouts and he was positive his reassurances, sent out through the dark night, never reached the little boy.

About a week before Jabyur’s untimely death, Jah-Ma-El saw boy once more. They were crossing, from opposite ends, an arched footbridge that led from the Training Rooms to the Temple. There was a stiffness to the boy’s walk as he neared Jah-Ma-El and the older boy knew without being told there were probably fresh bruises and welts beneath the brown wool robe that covered the boy from neck to bare toes. Jah-Ma-El halted in the middle of the footpath and waited for the little blond boy to reach him.

The boy was six, no more than seven, yet he walked with the slumped shoulders and lowered head of a man ten times that age. His attention was on the boards over which he walked and he was startled as Jah-Ma-El spoke to him.

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

"I’ll live," was the tired reply.

Jah-Ma-El watched the boy’s back as he kept walking. He had to speak, he had to let him know. "You aren’t alone, Your Grace," he said a little louder so the boy could hear.

The boy stopped and looked over his shoulder. "You called out to me the other night, didn’t you?"

"You heard me?" Jah-Ma-El was amazed.

"I needed your strength just then."

"You will always have it, Your Grace." Jah-Ma-El felt tears in his eyes as the boy tried desperately to smile his thanks, but the tired little mouth would not budge.

"Who are you?" the boy asked. "I would know your name, friend."

Jabyur had strongly cautioned him against telling the boy who he was, but Jah-Ma-El felt a need he could not verbalize to anyone, not even himself. It was an ache, a desire so strong, so clear in his mind; he was blind to anything save the need to reach out to this person who, through the will of the gods, was his brother. Every nerve in his body screamed against him answering, cautioning him, but Jah-Ma-El ignored the warnings. He felt a greater need than he had ever felt to know the warmth of kinship, the balm of brotherhood.

"Your brother," he said at last.

A fleeting smile appeared finally on the sad little face. "Another one?" he asked in a feigned, exasperated voice. "Papa leads a merry life, doesn’t he?"

Jah-Ma-El answered the smile with a flash of happiness. "I’m afraid so."

A loud shout from behind Jah-Ma-El brought both boys to immediate silence. They turned away from one another and began walking again. Jah-Ma-El was startled when a soft whisper of words floated back to him from the far end of the footbridge: "Take care of yourself, my brother."

Spinning around, Jah-Ma-El saw only a blur of brown robe disappearing into the Training Room. His throat closed up with pain.

"My brother," he repeated softly, turning the word over in his mind, letting it flow around his lips. It was a wondrous word, a magical word to Jah-Ma-El that could chase away the very beasts from the pits.

Several days later, on a cold, wintry morning, with snow falling heavily about the Great Abbey, obscuring the tall mountain range upon which the massive black stone monastery sat, Jabyur took ill. His coughs were racking bursts of straining agony; his flesh was hot, his eyes filled with a strange yellow matter. He lingered on for two days, his belly cramping, his flesh becoming clammy and slick to the touch; and on the third day of his sudden illness, he took one shuddering breath and then lay still, his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.

"Need we worry about some illness here, Milord?" one of the priests asked the Healer who arrived to sign Jabyur’s death certificate.

"His tongue caused his death," the Healer quipped. He turned to Jah-Ma-El. "Let that be a lesson to you, boy."

Jah-Ma-El had wept bitterly over the man’s cooling body as the priests prepared Jabyur for cremation. He sat in stony silence as another High Priest, a man named Felix Hebert, came to tell him that he would be sent to train under a new priest. He listened to the High Priest’s smug words with little thought to what his life would be like from that day forward. He had no need to ask; he knew. His life would be a living hell.

He was not disappointed.

Late one night, as his body ached from the rough abuse he had suffered during the day, and shivered from the sadistic, vile attention it had received that night, Jah-Ma-El was awakened by a small hand covering his mouth. He came awake in sheer terror, relief flooding through his soul as he looked up into shiny blue orbs also watering with fear. When the little hand was removed, Jah-Ma-El instinctively reached for it, tightly holding the chill fingers in his own.

"You shouldn’t be here, Your Grace," he whispered, more afraid for his brother than for himself.

"It doesn’t matter," the little boy said. He squeezed the hand holding his. "And don’t give me no gods-be-damned title. My name is Conar, but my other brothers call me Coni, so I guess you should, too."

"They will punish you if they find you here." Jah-Ma-El sat up in bed, surprised when the boy climbed onto the cot beside him, snuggling against the warmth of Jah-Ma-El’s thin chest.

"What can they do to me that they haven’t already done?"

No amount of reasoning could make the boy leave. He stayed for over an hour, his hand clasped snugly within Jah-Ma-El’s larger one. It was as though he needed the same companionship that Jah-Ma-El had craved over the years: the need of brotherly loyalty and love.

Every chance he got, the boy would come to Jah-Ma-El’s cell, creeping in late at night, snuggling close, and they would speak of things outside the Abbey’s black walls. Sometimes the boy would have to be lifted onto the cot, for his body was bruised and battered so badly he could not climb. Sometimes he couldn’t speak at all, for his throat would be raw and hoarse from his screams. At such times, Jah-Ma-El would carry the burden of the conversation, telling tales of their homeland and of their joint ancestry. Sometimes the boy would fall asleep and Jah-Ma-El, fearful of discovery, would gently awaken him and reluctantly send him back to his own cell.

It was during just such a night, a night when Jah-Ma-El had fallen asleep, that Kaileel Tohre entered Jah-Ma-El’s cell and the blond boy had been jerked viciously from his protective arms.

"How dare you!" Tohre screamed at the top of his lungs, his heavy hand slamming painfully into the little boy’s cheek.

Jah-Ma-El had leapt from the bed, his arms flailing at the tall blond man who abused his brother, the man who ruthlessly slapped the little boy so hard blood spurted from his nose.

"Let him go! Let my brother go!" He kicked at Tohre’s shin and was rewarded with a slap that made him hear bells. Jah-Ma-El slid down the wall as Tohre’s heavy signet ring connected with his jaw.

"Don’t hurt him, Kaileel!" Conar cried, pleaded. "I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll do what you say. Just don’t hurt my brother!"

Through a fog of pain, Jah-Ma-El heard Kaileel Tohre’s roar of outrage. He flinched, not from any pain he expected to be visited upon himself, but from the hard hit Tohre gave his brother.

"Your brother? You have no brother, my Prince!" A heavy, sarcastic laugh rang out through the small cell. "You have nothing save what I grant you!"

Jah-Ma-El saw his brother thrust into the arms of another priest and he felt the toe of Kaileel Tohre’s sandal dig painfully into his ribs. He doubled over, gasping for breath, his eyes blurring to everything around him. He flopped about the floor as Tohre kicked him, pummeled him with closed fists about his neck and shoulders. From a distant he could hear Conar’s screams of pleading, but soon all he saw was a red fog of pain and heard nothing but his own whimpers of agony. So severely was he beaten, he urinated blood for nearly a week. He could not stir from his cot, could not lift his arms to feed himself, one having been broken during the beating, and could not lift his head to take a sip of water. He lay at the mercy of one of the Order’s physicians until he could be moved to the stables where he was put to work among the animals to be slaughtered.

Jah-Ma-El’s life became a living nightmare after he was well enough to return to the Abbey Proper for further training. Gone was the protection of Keil Jabyur. Gone was the cruel Trainer who had physically abused him every night. Gone, too, was any semblance of humanity. Tohre turned him over to the men of the Order for their insatiable pleasure.

Not long after, Jah-Ma-El tried to kill himself rather than suffer the horrible abuse visited nightly upon him and the petty tortures performed during the day.

Secreting a length of hemp from the stables, Jah-Ma-El managed to loop one end over a high peg set in the stone wall of his cell. Placing the other end around his neck, Jah-Ma-El thought of his brother. He whispered Conar’s name, tearfully, bidding his brother goodbye, and then he stepped off his cot, kicking away from the wall, and tried to strangle himself. He would have succeeded if Conar had not come running in, having heard his name. Desperate to save Jah-Ma-El’s life, he began to scream at the top of his lungs for help.

Gripping Jah-Ma-El’s thrashing legs with his small arms, Conar managed to keep his brother aloft until help arrived. He watched helplessly as the men lowered his brother to the floor, pushed against the thin chest as they tried to get wind back into his lungs. His childish voice begged Jah-Ma-El not to give up.

"Don’t leave me, Jah-Ma-El," he cried, tears flowing down his cheeks. "I don’t want you to die, big brother. I need you. Don’t leave me in this place all alone!"

Jah-Ma-El could hear the pitiful sobs as though from far, far away. He wanted to ignore the pain in those sobbing words, but he could not. He strained hard to hear, to breathe, to live, and he made a rash promise to the gods he regretted all his life.

"Let me live, Merciful Alel," he pleaded. "Let me live for Conar’s sake. I promise to live for him if for no other."

Even during his initiation, when his soul was taken from him in a ceremony so evil and perverse Jah-Ma-El erased it from his mind, he kept his promise: he had lived for no other reason than because his brother had not wanted him to die. No matter how awful his existence, how horrible the abuse heaped upon him, Jah-Ma-El struggled through each day with the knowledge that his promise to Conar meant the boy would not be left alone with the evil that had become their lives.

Jah-Ma-El left the Great Abbey eleven years later at the age of twenty-three. In all that time, he never once saw his brother again. His last sight of Conar had been as the boy was being dragged away, his terrified face peering anxiously around Tohre’s flowing robes as the door to Jah-Ma-El’s cell had been slammed shut. He knew only that his brother had barely survived a harsh beating of his own for having saved Jah-Ma-El’s life, but other than that, nothing else was said of the little Prince.