WINDKEEPER (31 page)

The boy flinched, but he held his ground, his sight still locked on something only he seemed to be able to see. "I will do my very best, sir."

"And just what is it you wish to learn, boy?" Hern’s voice was gruff.

The young Prince seemed to force himself to look up and in that young face was a disquiet, a pain that went far beyond his young years. "Teach me how to be a man, Sir Hern." His voice turned husky with some inner agony. "I need to know I can be a man."

Hern remembered standing there on the training field under a broiling August sun that was turning his armor to a molten pit of discomfort and taking the boy’s measure.

The lad had been thin, almost to the point of emaciation, pale, already beginning to turn a faint red from the merciless sun that beat down on his golden hair. Hern had always thought the boy’s hair his most handsome feature, but on that long-ago day, the lad’s golden locks were gone, the hair shorn so close to his scalp Hern could see flesh. The boy looked fragile, feminine, with his big blue eyes haunted by something that seemed to be eating at him like a ravaging beast. The little body trembled as the men about the field shouted at one another. The lad kept looking nervously about him as though he was afraid of being caught up by some beastie from the pit.

Hern had made a decision that he had never once regretted. He had reached out to put a hand on the boy’s thin, slumped shoulder, not at all surprised when the lad jumped away. "A man always stands his ground, brat," Hern recalled saying. "He don’t back away from nothing." He put his hand up again. The boy quivered, moved away from Hern for a split second before settling. "Or no one," Hern had finished and then laid his heavy, chain-mailed hand on the fragile shoulder. It was all Hern could do not to flinch, himself, as he felt the bones thorough the young lad’s clothing.

The boy’s chin came up a fraction. "Will you teach me, then, Sir Hern?"

Hern squeezed the thin shoulder in his huge hand. "Aye, brat. I’ll teach you."

"I’ll not let you down, Sir Hern."

What passed for a laugh rumbled out of the wide chest. "I know that, brat. If you do, I’ll send your scrawny ass to the kitchens to bide your time peeling spuds for my next meal!"

Hern turned his back on the boy, dismissing him. He let the young Prince walk a few steps away before calling him back.

"Aye, sir?" Conar faltered, fear showing on his pale face.

"You’ll get no special treatment just cause you was born on the right side of the sheets." He fixed his sharp gaze on the lad. "You’ll be treated like any other raw recruit."

The boy nodded sagely. "I expect no special treatment, sir. I am not accustomed to it."

"That’s good." Hern walked away. When he had looked around, he could have sworn there were tears in the boy’s eyes, but he dismissed that. Princes did not cry.

It was later that night when Conar had moved his few allowed belongings into the barracks beyond the sporting and game fields that the bond between teacher and student cemented itself. Despite his vow to see the young Prince got no special treatment, Hern had, nonetheless, given the lad a room to himself; a room near his own.

The boy’s terrified screams had awakened the others that night, but Hern had sent them back to their rooms, posting a guard at Conar’s door so no one could enter. He had brought the boy out of the demon-ravaged nightmare that had threatened to suffocate him; his strong arms had held the boy close to his chest, whispering to him to calm him. His deep, bass voice had been as soothing as any nanny’s; his callused fingers and fighting hands tender as they stroked the back of the sweat-dampened head.

" ’Twas only a dream, brat," Hern said, deep worry etched on his rugged face. "Dreams can’t hurt you."

"They hurt me," the boy cried, tears streaming down his ashen cheeks as he clung to the big man. "They hurt me."

"But they’re only dreams, son."

"Don’t leave me, Sir Hern," the boy begged as though he had not heard. "Please don’t leave me alone. They’ll come back for me!"

"Nay, brat," Hern assured him. "The dreams be gone this eve. But I’ll not leave you. I am right here."

Hern had made the boy lie down and tucked the covers over his painfully thin chest, shaking his head at the crisscrossed lines that marred the boy’s shoulders, thinking them bramble scratches until he got a closer look. It was then he realized it had not been dreams that had hurt this child.

"Who whipped you like this?" he growled. "Who dared do such a thing to you, Coni?"

"Please don’t tell Papa," Conar begged him.

"He should be told, brat," Hern snapped.

"Please, Sir Hern," the boy cried, clinging to the man in fear. "I could not bear him knowing what was done to me."

" ’Tis not your shame, brat. You have no—"

"Hern?"

Hern mentally shook himself from the past, coming back to the present with a jolt. "Aye?" he asked gruffly.

"Who told you about Liza?" Conar had to know. His whole life depended on it. He couldn’t risk having his father find out about her.

Hern was aware he had said these same words before, long ago. "He’ll not find out, Highness. You have no need to be worrying. If you don’t want him to know of this, I won’t be telling him. Your secret is safe with me. You have my word."

Conar relaxed. He trusted Hern Arbra more than any man alive. He had learned almost all he knew from the man: swordplay, fighting, wrestling, riding, archery, battle strategy. But most importantly, he had learned honor. Hern, and Hern alone, knew what caused the dreams, and he knew why Conar had never told another living soul.

"Does the lass know?" Hern asked, standing and leaning one huge forearm on the headboard of Conar’s bed.

"I don’t have them when I’m with her."

Hern nodded. "I would think not." He ran the backs of his fingers along the young man’s high cheekbones. "Can you sleep now?"

"I think so." Conar knew Hern would settle in the chair by his bed and not leave until morning came to chase away any dreams left over from the night.

"Good eve to you, Highness," Hern said, settling his bulk into the overstuffed chair that sat beside the smoldering embers in the fireplace.

"Good eve." Conar turned over and couldn’t help but smile. It had been "brat" until the day he had bested the old soldier at archery. Then it became "boy." On the day he had outdistanced Hern’s mighty bay war-horse it had become "son." On the day Conar had thrown Hern Arbra to the ground in a well-timed flip during wrestling practice, it had become "Milord." When Hern was deeply affected by something, it became "Coni."

"And don’t you be waking me no more tonight, Coni McGregor," he said as he drew a cloak around his shoulder. "Do you hear me, now?"

"Aye, Sir Hern," Conar whispered. "I hear you."

With his nightmares gone for the night, Conar thought of Liza. Her laughing, smiling, seductive face was the last thing he saw before drifting into a dreamless, easy sleep.

Morning brought with it a punishing rain that struck with hammering fists of hail and staggering winds. The sky had turned a dull gray, and thunder boomed across the courtyards like cannon shots. Lightning speared the grounds beyond the keep and lit the storm-laced day with eerie white flares of brightness. Howling in the eaves like an invading army on the loose, winds buffeted the arched windows of the study and shrieked down the chimney to attack the fires with invisible feet meant to stamp out the heat.

A shutter banged, and a hapless servant was sent to see to it in the strumming pelt of rain. Shingles flew from the roof, pinged against the window panes like gunshots and set on edge the nerves of those who were forced to listen to the racket.

"You will not be riding out in this foul weather and that’s final!" King Gerren shouted at his son and snapped shut the book he had been reading. "What the hell ails you anyway, Conar?" He took off his spectacles and fixed his son with a steely-eyed glint. "When I tell you no, I mean just that! Are you having trouble understanding my words, boy?"

Conar let out an angry hiss. "I can’t abide these stone walls! They close in on a person." He flinched as a jagged snap of lightning hit outside in his mother’s garden. The loud clap of thunder shook the panes in the window beside him.

"Come away from that gods-be-damned window before you’re toasted like a meringue!" the King shouted. "Don’t you have sense enough not to stand in front of a window when ’tis lightning, fool?"

Stepping away from the window, Conar plopped into a chair near the fire. "I’m not a child, Papa."

"Nor are you a gods-be-damned adult, either, it would seem!" his father qualified. "You can sit there the whole day and pout like a babe if you wish. You are not leaving in this weather!"

Barely able to contain himself any longer, Conar heaved himself out of the chair and stomped off, muttering dire predictions under his breath. His boot heels rang on the marble as he slammed out into the main hall.

"What ails him, Hern?" the King asked, turning his attention to the other man in the study.

Hern glanced up from his book on the Burning War and gave his King a blank stare. "I am not his keeper, Highness."

"Highness?" Gerren questioned. Was it that bad?

"Have you asked your son what ails him?"

Exasperated with the whole situation, for he and Conar had been going at their argument all morning, King Gerren met his friend’s inquisitive stare with a frosty glare. "You know he wouldn’t tell me a gods-be-damned thing; but you know more than you tell, now, don’t you, Arbra?"

Hern looked down at his book. "If I did, I wouldn’t tell." He licked his finger and turned a page.

"The demons take you and that wretched son of mine!" Gerren hissed and snatched up his own book, angrily turning to the place he had lost along with his patience.

Silence weighed heavily on the room even as thunder and lightning wrecked havoc outside the mullion windows. Blue-white flashes of light cast the frescoes on the ceiling into sharp relief and made the shadows of furniture and inhabitants swell along the whitewashed walls. Logs cracked in the fire, an occasional snap of pine knot exploding in cadence with the boom of thunder.

"Is he still seeing the girl at Ivor?" the King asked, his spectacles perched precariously on the tip of his nose as his head lowered and raised while he scanned the page.

"What girl might that be, Highness?" Hern inquired, marking his place with a wide thumb and giving his companion a steady look.

Gerren looked over the tops of his spectacles. "You do not have the monopoly on knowing things, my good friend." He smiled and returned to his book. "I, too, have spies at Ivor Keep."

"Isn’t that nice?" Hern quipped and continued with his book.

* * *

They were riding for their lives.

A cloud of sun-streaked dust followed close behind them as they made their way into a copse of trees, ducking under low-hanging branches and around thick live oak trunks, winding through the forest and beyond to the slithering stream that flowed behind the old stone abbey at Rommitrich Point. Water splashed up as the flying hooves sped over the cobblestones in the riverbed and dug into the soft silt at the water’s edge as they crossed on into the old lands that was the abbey’s gardens.

Skirting the weed-grown formal gardens, they cut to a switchback trail and found the meandering stream again, urging their mounts into the water and deeper into a tributary leading off from the main stream. With their horses following the curves of the shallow rock-strewn riverbed, they managed to elude the angry mob of merchants who had caught them stealing goods from a street bizarre in Dulwitch.

Laughing and teasing one another, the group of thieves stopped at the ruined abbey and dismounted, hiding their horses deep inside the tumbled-down nave of the caved-in sanctuary. Keeping their mounts quiet with a hand to the heaving nostrils of the steeds, they listened intently as their pursuers galloped past, close enough to hear the straining horses as they snorted. No one breathed easy until no sound came from the roadway.

"Damn! That was close!"

"Too close for my liking!"

"And mine!"

"No more wagers. We damned near got caught this time!"

They gathered together the spoils of their raid that had nearly cost one of them his left hand and went to sit by the still-intact fountain in the middle of the old nave. Cold, fresh water flowed from an artesian well and fed the fountain with sweet, clear, icy water.

"Where’s the wine, du Mer?" Conar dug into his saddlebag for the great hoop of cheese he had pilfered, holding it up to Liza.

"Well done, Milord!" She laughed.

"Have no fear, my sweet Prince." Teal smiled as he pulled five bottles of red wine from his own saddlebag. "Not a one broken, thank you just the same." He turned to look at Rayle, who was contemplating his left hand. "By the gods, Loure, that baker near lopped off your widget when you grabbed for that last loaf! I thought you were going to be nicknamed lefty for sure!" He bit the cork from a bottle and passed it to Rayle.

Rayle looked away from the ugly bruise on his wrist that was turning a most interesting shade of purple. "I thought so, too, du Mer. Luckily he hit me with the handle and not the blade of that slicer!" He took the bottle from Teal and passed it on to Legion. "Hurts like the very devil, it does."

"You should have been quicker, Loure!" Legion laughed. He held up a whole baked ham still dripping with juice. "Ain’t she a beauty? Near to ten pounds, I would imagine!" He took the bottle and handed it to Conar.

"That’s two pounds a piece for us, then." Liza laughed, taking the bottle of wine from Conar. "Thank you, Milord."

"And where is your loot, Mam’selle?" Conar asked before he took a second bottle from Legion and pulled a mighty swig of the red brew, then wiped his lips on the back of his hand.

A secret smile spread over her features. Liza reached inside the voluminous folds of her cape. Soon apples, pears, pomegranates, oranges, apricots, bananas, figs, peaches, grapes, persimmons, tangerines, and even a small honeydew melon were stacked on the ground with the other booty. She beamed with pride as the men whistled. "I think I did well enough." She smirked at Legion’s wink.