WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (29 page)

"No," Conar answered, snorting in what sounded like amusement.

Sajin locked his gaze with Conar's. "Are you sure?"

A touch of irritation settled on the Serenian's tired face. "Just because I skip my morning meal and get a bit lightheaded doesn't mean the illness is flaring up again, Ben-Alkazar," he snapped.

"Rupine said you were staggering out there." He pointed to the slave depot's main yard.

"You almost got yourself skewered or don't you know that?"

"I tripped!" Conar snarled at him. "Can't a man trip in the fucking sand without having you old women thinking the worst of him?" He threw out a negligent hand. "I saw the damn attacker, nomad. Don't you
ever
think I didn't!"

The Kensetti stared at him for a moment, then looked away. There was more fever in the high flush on the pallid face than there had been earlier that morning when he had gone to awaken McGregor, something that, until that morning, had never had to be done. Usually the man was up at the crack of dawn, rearing to go when there was a raid scheduled.

"You would tell me, wouldn't you?" Sajin asked, his gaze intent on the men scattered about the depot.

"Tell you what?" Conar grumbled in annoyance.

"If you were getting worse?" Sajin turned back to look at his friend. "I would want to know."

For a moment there was no answer, then it was the Serenian's turn to look away. "Why?"

The answer was without hesitation. "Because you are my best friend and I love you."

Conar flinched. He hated lying. He had always hated lying. And until recently, there had never really been a good enough reason to ever do so. But now, now that he felt so bad it was hard just to make himself get up in the morn, now that his right leg constantly felt like rubber and tortured him with an agonizing pins and needles tingle most of the time, now that his vision was so blurred he could not read the finer print on some of the maps nor make out who was speaking to Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 131

him from across a large room, now that his hands trembled and he felt the need to piss with even more frequency, now that he had to speak slowly at times for fear his garbled speech would alert his friends and fellow raiders that he was unwell, he knew lying was the only way he could keep the respect and trust of his men.

"If you love me," Conar finally said, "then have a little faith in me, all right?" He reached out to put a numb hand on Sajin's shoulder. "All right?"

Sajin reached across his chest to cover Conar's hand. "Don't shut me out, McGregor," he pleaded. "Please don't do that. I want to know if ...."

"You'll be the first to know if I start getting worse, nomad." Conar gently shrugged off Sajin's hand. "I swear you will."

It was an oath he had every intention of breaking just as he had every intention of continuing to lie to cover up the failings of his body.

Rachel held his head as he vomited. He had been out of his head for over half the night, alternately throwing up, holding his temples where a horrible ache had settled to torment him.

"Let me call Rupine," she'd begged him, but he had not allowed it.

"Just hold me," he had pleaded, holding on to her with his waning strength. Another violent bout of nausea had claimed him and she had ceased trying to make him listen to reason.

She had simply held him until exhausted slumber claimed his weak body.

Conar turned away from the bright light and scooted up in the bed. The sour taste of bile still filled his mouth and he felt as though his teeth had grown a coat of fur. As the light rap sounded at his door, it brought with it a sigh of resentment and annoyance, but he bid his visitor enter in a voice that was hoarse from a night of throwing up.

"You got a minute?" Balizar asked. He stood framed in the doorway, his hat in his hand, his face somewhat sheepish at having invaded his overlord's bedchamber.

"I'm being lazy this morning," Conar said, knowing Rachel would have given that explanation for his late rising for he had told her what to tell the others.

"I can come back," Balizar said, his face coloring. "Or it can wait until you're up and about."

"No," Conar said in a pleasant, drawn out denial. "We can talk now."

Balizar walked shyly to the bed and stood there, twisting his hat in his hand. "You look a mite peaked," he said, scanning the paleness of Conar's face.

"Rough night," Conar answered, wagging his brows, knowing the aging warrior would think the night passed had been spent in rapturous entertainment of the flesh. Sure enough, the man's ruddy face turned a deeply infused red.

"Well, then," Balizar said, then repeated. "Well, then." He looked as though he could drop through the floor and feel comfortable about doing it.

Conar was having some trouble seeing that morning. His vision seemed more blurred than normal, but, as yet, he hadn't had to get up to piss. For that, he was grateful. He settled back against the headboard and blinked, trying to clear the fog from his vision with little result.

"Spit it out, Arbra," he said in a soft voice. "What's bothering you?"

Balizar looked up. "Ain’t nothing bothering me, milord," he was quick to say. "It's just that I …." He tore his gaze away. "I just …."

"Hern never had any problem telling me what was on his mind," Conar said, amused. "If anything, the man told me things I didn't want to hear." He cocked his head to one side. "Is that Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 132

what you've come to do?"

Balizar shook his head. "I hope not." Reaching around behind him, he pulled out a stack of letters bound with a rawhide thong. He looked down at them, then tapped them against his hat.

"Now that you've brought my brother up in the conversation, I guess I can give you these." He held the stack of letters out to his overlord.

Conar saw a blur of movement coming toward him and, with careful action, lifted his hand to intercept the bundle. "What is this?" he asked, hoping they were letters for that was what they appeared to be once he got them close enough to see. He glanced in the direction of Balizar's face.

"Letters from Hern," Balizar explained. He shrugged. "Some go back as far as thirty years and more." He twisted the hat. "He mentions you in all of 'em."

Surprise, and not a little pleasure, flitted across Conar's heart. He held the precious letters in his left hand and then stroked them gently with his right. "Hern," he said quietly.

"Aye." Balizar moved a bit closer to the bed, encouraged by the soft, wistful way Conar had spoken his brother's name. "I thought you might like to read what he says about you."

Conar's head came up. "About me?" Puzzlement slid over his face. "What about me?"

Balizar extended his hand, pointing at the letters with his cap. "There's all kinds of things he wrote me about you, milord." He smiled with fond memory, then chuckled. "Many a thing he thought I'd like to know about the future King of Serenia in case I ever wanted to come back there."

The priceless bundle in his hands meant more to Conar than he could have expressed to another living being. He suspected Balizar knew how much Hern's letters meant for they no doubt had great value to Hern's brother, as well. But to Conar, they were a material source of a man he had loved like a father, even more than he had loved his natural father.

"I think he would have liked for you to read them," Balizar said.

Conar laid the bundle in his lap, knowing there was no way he could cipher the scribbling that had passed for writing with Hern. Not even had his vision not been doubling. The only one at Boreas who could accurately read Hern's writing had been Cayn.

Sensing that to be the case, Balizar looked down at the floor. "Would you like me to read you some of 'em, milord." He glanced up sheepishly. "Hern wasn't one of the best pensmen around, I'm thinking."

A slow sigh of relief escaped Conar. Here was a way for him to hear what Hern had had to say and not have to admit that he couldn't have read even his own reckless handwriting.

"I'd appreciate it," he said in a choked voice. He returned the letters to Balizar.

Pulling up a chair, Balizar sat beside the bed and slid the rawhide thong from the bundle.

He opened one letter and then smiled coyly. "This one was written when you was about four," he said. Clearing his throat, he began to read.

"My brother:

I blistered his little arse, Bali. Embarrassing me and the Lady like he did. You ain’t never seen no little rapscallion who can think up such mischief 'till you've seen this one. And with a perfectly angelic face, mind you. What did he do, now, you may ask? Well, Bali, I'll tell you!

"We was going to the country fair, the one over to Fehring? Gerren had asked me to take the Lady and the lad and, much as I had to do training them new recruits of his, I agreed although I knew damned well there'd be hell to pay if that wee brat got out of line again.

"Well, anyway. We get over to Fehring and she buys a bunch of silk and satin and the like and we get the lad some spun candy and such to keep him content. Now, that, brother of mine, was a mistake, for the lad got it all over her skirt with his pudgy little hands, wiping them on that pretty satin fabric like it was burlap! I yell at him, as she's always insisted I do to keep him in line, and he Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 133

runs away. Runs away, mind you! I chased that insufferable little booger all over that fairground until I caught him snitching apple dandies from a poor old woman's stall. Well, when I reach out to take hold of him, he starts to screaming that I'm trying to kidnap him! Have you ever heard the like of it? Me, trying to kidnap the Heir-Apparent he tells the whole bleeding world. And what happens to me? I get myself arrested by one of the sheriff's men and they cart me off like a common criminal before the Lady can gainsay 'em!

"When I got out of the jail, I turned his skinny little rump over my knee and beat the daylights out of him. Imagine it, Bali! Your brother in jail! The shame alone was enough to make my hand heavier and my hits harder than I had intended, but let me tell you this—the lad won't be doing that shit ever again! Nor sit down half as well as he did before he decided to play the imp with this Windwarrior!

"Now, you may be asking what the Lady was doing while I walloped her favorite son.

Well, she was laughing, Bali! Laughing at all his caterwauling and playacting like I was killin'

him. She knew I wasn't hurting our boy anymore than he deserved to be. Not that I didn't want to tan his terrible little hide 'til he couldn't sit down for a month of Sundays! She just knew it wasn't in me to ever hurt Conar."

The Serenian prince was smiling when Balizar finished the letter. He looked up. "I remember that. Did he always think I was his son?"

Balizar blushed. "He really did, milord. Nothing could ever have convinced him otherwise."

"Yet he never considered Galen in such a way," Conar mused.

"Your twin wasn't the man you were, milord," Balizar answered. "Hern wanted only a son who he could be proud of. He loved you more than you will ever know."

Conar felt a pang of grief drive through him. "I loved him like a father," he said. He plucked at the cover over his legs. "He might as well have been one to me for all the love he gave me in return."

Somewhat embarrassed by that small confession, Balizar stuffed the first letter back into its envelope and pulled out another.

"Bali," it read.

"I did as you suggested and let him ride that big sorrel. He did well enough, but that beast threw him enough times that he finally got the hint that the steed wasn't ready to be ridden yet. But he won't give up. Not my Conar. We'll just keep that beast out in the corral until the lad's a mite older. He'll break that mean monster, yet. He'll either break that stallion or get his own neck broke in the process. I'll let you know how it comes out.

"Aye, he wasn't pleased with not being allowed to go with me and Gerren off to that skirmish over by the Necroman border. I swear that bastard Shalu, the new King there, has got to be the most ornery son-of-a-bitch this side of Diabolusia. He didn't want to listen to reason, but we finally convinced him. That little snob had no business going over there and insulting one of the Necroman's nieces, but then again, Galen McGregor has got to be as stupid as the day is long.

You'd never catch my lad doing such a thing.

"I surely will miss him when he goes to that Temple, Bali. Me and the Lady are of a mind not to let him go, but Gerren is insisting on it. Mostly 'cause of that bastard, Tohre, the one who's in charge of novices. Tohre assured the Lady that he won't be there for more than two years, but there's something odd about the way that s.o.b. looks at my boy that makes the hair on my arms stand up like I was out in a summer lightning storm. He'll keep the boy longer if he can get away with it.

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 134

"Well, no use in belaboring how I feel about him going so far away from home. He won't be away all that long and maybe by the time he comes back, that stallion will have calmed down some."

Balizar folded the letter and slid it slowly into its envelope. He could tell that what he had just read had caused great pain for the man on the bed and he hadn't meant to do that, at all. He hadn't meant to read that letter, either.

"I'm sorry, milord. I ...."

Conar held up his hand. "It's all right. I knew he hadn't wanted me to go." He laid his head back on the tall head board and stared unseeingly at the ceiling. "Read another one."

Balizar chewed on his lip, trying to decide if he should, then opened another letter. He winced and made to re-fold the letter.

"Read it," Conar said, swinging his gaze to Balizar.