WINDKEEPER (22 page)

"She said nothing to us, Your Grace," the innkeeper answered for his people without being asked. "I did not hear her leave."

"We’ll help you look for her, Your Grace," Meggie told him.

"Thank you, Madame Ruck," Conar said in as calm and pleasant voice as he could muster, "but I can travel faster on my own. Stay here, Mam’selle," he said over his shoulder to Gezelle.

"You’re going after her?" Gezelle called.

Conar turned on her as he reached the door, his face ugly with rage. "What do you think?"

"I think you won’t find her, Your Grace."

"Oh, I’ll find her," he spat, yanking open the door. "I’ll find her if I have to take this gods-be-damned kingdom apart stone by bloody stone!"

He slammed the door with a loud bang.

* * *

Sometime toward dawn of the following day, Gezelle awoke to hard pounding on her door. When she opened the portal, she drew in a sharp breath as she took in the appearance of the man standing on the threshold.

Conar’s eyes were haunted; his face was pallid with worry; his mouth was set in a hard grimace. Dark circles accentuated the dullness in his eyes, the tiredness of his face.

"How did you know I wouldn’t find her?" His voice was hoarse as though he had been shouting the entire time he had been gone.

She took a moment before she could answer. The hurt look worried her and she didn’t want to add to his misery. She was trying to decide how best to tell him her news.

He solved her dilemma.

Conar pushed past her and stalked into the room. "If you know something, Mam’selle, you’d best tell me now. I’m in no mood for equivocating."

She took a deep breath as she watched him sit impatiently on the edge of her bed. Letting out her nervousness along with her breath, she met his gaze.

"That last eve at Norus something strange happened, Your Grace. You sent me after the wine for the lady but when I brought it to her, she didn’t want it. She let me have it." The girl ducked her head in embarrassment. When she looked up again, she could see he was struggling to control his rage and no doubt his desire to do her bodily harm.

"It, it made me real sleepy. I’ve never had wine before and I don’t wish to sample its wonders ever again." She bit her lip as he growled with anger. "I remember someone coming to the door before I fell asleep. A man came. I think it was Sir Belvoir, the Master-at-Arms, but I was so sleepy I couldn’t truly see him all that well. I heard him speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words because he was talking so low. He seemed very upset and when the lady answered him, she was as mad as I’ve ever heard a lady get."

"What the hell does any of this have to do with where Liza went?"

"If you’ll be patient, Your Grace, I will tell you!" Gezelle shot back amazed she could speak in such a manner to her Overlord. Obviously he was, too, for he looked at her with an expression of surprise and admiration. At least she thought it could well be admiration and took heart that he hadn’t thundered at her again.

"I heard her tell this man that she would take care of everything, for him not to worry. Then she said she would be sure to tell her mother of his kindness."

"Her mother?" Conar’s eyes flared with surprise. "How would the man know her mother?" He thought back to the Master-at-Arms, at the way Belvoir looked with his black hair and green eyes. He remembered the black dagger stuck in the top of the knight’s boot, a dagger similar to those Liza carried, and grimaced in speculation. "Could they be kin?"

"I truly don’t know, Your Grace. All I do know is she told him to get word to the keep that she was on her way to Boreas with the Prince Regent. She told him to be careful whose ears heard that message and then she closed the door and went to the fireplace."

"Then she must know Belvoir." His mind was working as he pondered the possibility of Belvoir and Liza being from the same place; but where the hell was that?

"I think she must know him, Your Grace. He seemed too concerned with the lady’s welfare for him to be a stranger."

"Aye, that he did." Conar ran a distracted hand through his tousled hair and stood, his hand still locked in the thick gold tresses. "What happened then?"

"The lady knelt by the fire, staring hard into the flames, and then she began to rub that black stone she wears around her neck."

"The rune stone."

"Aye."

He walked to the window and eased away the curtain with his knuckles. Squinting into the rosy glow of the morning sun, he combed his fingers through his hair and then let his hand drop. "Then what?"

"She spoke to the fire, Your Grace." When he glanced back at her with surprise, she nodded to assure him he had heard correctly. "She spoke the Old Language. It’s the language my old granny used when she talked to the animals and such."

"A foreign language?"

"No, Your Grace. The language of the Great Lady."

"You speak the language of the Multitude?" When the girl shook her head in denial, he snarled, "Then how the hell do you know it was that particular language?"

"My granny taught me some of the protective words. Words to ward off ills and the like."

"And just how did she know this language?" He couldn’t believe the girl was telling the truth. How did a servant come by such knowledge?

"My granny was a maid to one of the Daughters long before my mother was born. She was one of the Handmaidens of the Lady Moira Hesar before she left Virago."

Stunned disbelief hit him and he let go the curtain. "She was one of my mother’s women?"

"Before she married her first husband, the gentleman who died. When your mother married your father, our King, my granny came from Virago to Serenia with the new Queen."

"If your granny knew the protective words she taught you, then she was no mere handmaiden, Mam’selle. Was she?"

"I don’t know what her position was with the Queen. All I know is that when my granny got too old to work, she moved to the little cottage by the King’s game preserve and then my mother came there to birth me when she was fourteen. I never knew who my father was, but I think he was a gentleman at the court because that is where my mother was born and where she held a job as a seamstress."

He could not have cared less about the girl’s parentage. He was interested in knowing how Liza had come by her knowledge of the Multitude’s language. Was she, too, a handmaiden to a Daughter? "What happened when she spoke to the fire?"

"The room became very, very cold, Your Grace. The fire in the hearth leapt and sputtered, but the room was like a freezing January day. I thought a window might be open, for a wind was whistling." Gezelle shook her head as though to deny what she was about to say. "Then I thought I saw things in the fire. Things that made little noises like cats purring. The lady was purring, too, except she was purring in that strange language."

"Cat things," he said in a flat, disbelieving voice.

"I know it sounds odd, and I know I was sleepy, but I swear I saw them, Your Grace."

"So she spoke to these cat things. What did she say to them?"

"She was chanting a protection spell. I don’t know what the words mean, all I know is they have great power to ward off the beasties from the night. My granny used to sit before the fire on the eve of the Windless Night and chant them over and over."

Conar hung his head with exasperation. Would the girl never finish her tale? "What happened after she said the incantation?"

"She was angry, Your Grace, very angry. When she got up, that same man was waiting at the door for her and I heard him tell her he would take her to the place where her man was being kept."

"Her man?" Conar ground his teeth. "And what man was that?"

Gezelle flinched at his tone. "I don’t know, Your Grace."

He returned his attention to the window. Had there been a man at Norus waiting for Liza? Who could he be? Could all of this have been planned, his meeting Liza?

"So he took her to meet this man?" Conar snarled.

"No, Milord. She told the man it wasn’t necessary for him to go with her. She said her love would take her there." Gezelle saw his shoulders sag with defeat and felt a hurt go through her like nothing she had ever known. "She loves you, Your Grace."

"Aye, so she said," he said bitterly.

"I believe it with all my heart."

"I found no trace of her horse in the stable even though I had saddled it myself not five minutes before I came in to get her. There were no hoof prints leading away from the tavern and there should have been hoof prints in all the mud. The stable boy didn’t leave until he heard all the commotion in the tavern. He neither saw nor heard that mare leave nor did he see anyone enter the stable." He leaned his head against the cool window glass. "How could that be?"

"What did her note say?"

He blinked. "Damn! I haven’t read it!" He pulled the parchment from his leather jacket, smoothing the paper on his knee. He scanned the writing once, twice, three times then hissed, tossing the note on the bed. "She didn’t say anything at all to you?"

"We were on the stairway, Your Grace. She was behind me and I heard her stop. I looked back at her and she was looking behind her, over her shoulder as though someone had called her name. I saw her trembling as with the ague. I thought something ailed her, but when I asked her what was wrong, she just shook her head.

"She looked down at me with the saddest expression I have ever seen and then she reached into her sleeve and drew out the note, telling me to bid you goodbye for her. I asked her where she was going. She just smiled, but that smile never reached her eyes, Your Grace. It was as though she was smiling with her lips, but her heart was breaking. I looked at the note, and I swear to you, Your Grace, by the holy name of Alel, when I looked up again, she was gone. She had vanished on the stairs."

Gezelle seemed to truly believe what she was telling him, but Conar found it hard to accept. He stared at her for a long time, seeing the worry in her eyes, feeling her own bewildered pain at Liza’s sudden departure. A slow anger began to seethe in the blue depths of his eyes. Emotion after emotion grew until he looked away.

"Get yourself ready, Mam’selle." He pushed away from the window and strode heavily through the small room. Flinging open the door, he told her, "You and I are going to Boreas, with or without her. But I swear to the gods, Gezelle, if it takes the rest of my life, natural or otherwise, I will find that woman!"

Gezelle could hear his hissing words even as his booted heels thumped down the stairs.

"And I will make her rue the day she ever, ever played me for a fool!"

Gezelle glanced at the crumpled note lying atop her disheveled bed. She had never learned how to read and she was glad she couldn’t. Whatever had been in that note had taken the heart out of Prince Conar McGregor.

* * *

When Meggie Ruck changed the linens in the room where her two females guests had slept, she saw the note lying in the cold ashes of the fireplace. Picking it up, she read the missive, but the message made no sense to her. Wadding it up again, she tossed it into the fireplace.

"What did it say, Meggie?" Harry asked his wife that night as they prepared for bed.

"Didn’t make no sense, Dearling. I thought it might have had a clue as to where the lady took herself off to. But all it said was: the journey’s done."

"What journey?" Harry yawned.

"I don’t have the faintest notion, Harry!" Meggie said with exasperation.

But as he rode ahead of Gezelle on the road to Boreas, Conar McGregor thought back to that message contained in the note and a fierce gleam came into his cold blue eyes. He had promised himself to Liza for the journey to Boreas.

"Well," he thought, rage filling his heart, "I didn’t say the gods-be-damned journey was over!"

"Your Grace?" Gezelle was trying desperately to keep up with Conar’s long stride as he stomped through the main hall of Boreas Keep. Her shorter legs were pumping furiously beneath her light muslin gown as she tried to gain his attention.

"What?" he shouted, never breaking his stride.

"Your brother sent me to find you, Your Grace. The last search party you sent out has returned." She almost plowed into his broad back as he stopped suddenly, spinning around to glare at her.

He knew even before he asked that the searchers had come back as empty-handed as he had. "And?"

Gezelle bit her lip before answering. She hated to see him so hurt. "The men found no trace of her."

"How the hell can that be?" Blazing fury replaced the hope of a few moments earlier, etching deep lines in the sun crinkles at his temples. "I don’t understand! How can she just disappear without a trace?"

It had been two months since Liza had left them at the Briar’s Hold Inn. Conar had sent out mercenaries, soldiers, members of his own Elite, even men he had hired to cross borders into the neighboring countries, both friendly and unfriendly, to ask questions. None of the men had brought back even one clue as to the girl’s whereabouts. What was more, not one had been able to gather any encouraging word concerning the girl’s existence. It was as though Liza had never been.

"Did we dream her?" Conar asked Gezelle one night as he sat brooding in the keep’s formal garden. "Was she some succubus, a NightWind who happened along to ensnare me, ’Zelle? If so, I would gladly sell my soul to the demons of the Abyss to have her back."

"Come inside, Your Grace," she pleaded with him. "It is too cold out here." Snow sifted through the branches overhead.

"Not as cold as my heart," he said miserably.

"We will keep looking, Your Majesty."

"I will find her, ’Zelle."

"I wish I could help. I have tried talking to some of the women here, but none of them admit to knowing any lady connected with the Daughterhood of the Multitude. Many of them have chastised me for speaking of the Multitude’s existence."

"They’d better not cause you trouble," he said, a militant gleam crossing his features. "If the bitches so much as say one wise word to you, I’ll have them banned from this court!"