WINDWEEPER (37 page)

"Brelan?" Teal asked.

Saur looked up from his woodcarving. Teal Du Mer never looked at him with kindness, never smiled at him, but now he was smiling and his face was filled with happiness. "Have you been drinking, du Mer?"

"I've had a quaff or two of some very fine Chrystallusian plum wine."

Brelan turned back to the duck decoy he was carving. "I thought so."

"Aren't you going to ask why I'm here?" Teal looked around at the hut where Brelan spent much of his time of late. The one room shack stood deep in the forest outside the keep, near Lake Myria. It wasn't a bad place, but it smelled of wood chips and damp rushes. Teal found it oppressive.

Brelan shrugged. "I'm sure you'll tell me without me having to ask."

Teal's face lost some of its happiness. "I'm offering you peace."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

Brelan glimpsed up at the man and snorted. "Because you don't like me, du Mer."

"That's because I didn't understand why you hung around Liza after her marriage to Galen."

"And you understand why I did that now, eh?"

Teal nodded. "Legion told me long ago who Corbin's father was. I can see why you wanted to be near her."

"Do you, now?"

"You're not making this any easier for me, Saur."

"Life ain't easy, du Mer." He dug the knife into the tail section of the decoy and made a long, wavering line.

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you what Legion sent me to tell you."

"I didn't think you'd come here on your own," Brelan retorted.

"Liza had your babe this morning."

The blade slipped, ran down Brelan's thumb, and cut deep. He stared at the gypsy. Blood dripped to the rush-strewn floor, stained the wood carving, but he didn't seem to notice. "She…she…" He couldn't seem to get past that one word.

"It happened so fast we barely had time to fetch Cayn. One moment she was standing by the window, the next she was bent over. Legion was going to carry her up to the bedroom, but he got no further than the settee in the library. Legion and Cayn delivered the babe about twenty minutes ago. We sent men looking for you, but I figured this was where you'd be. After a glass or two or three, I forget, of that very fine Chrystallusian plum wine, I came looking for you."

It was the most words Teal du Mer had ever spoken to him. Brelan could only stare at the twin dimples indenting Teal's cheeks. He certainly couldn't have moved if his life depended on it.

"Is she…is the babe…"

"Both doing well. Cayn said it was the easiest delivery he's ever been a part of. Mother and child are sleeping right now, but I would think you'd like to take a peek at your babe."

Brelan felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. He laid the knife and decoy on the table, becoming aware that his hand was bleeding. He looked at it as though it were alien.

"Well?" Teal prodded, "aren't you going to see your new daughter?"

Brelan's head came up. "Daughter?"

"Six pounds or thereabouts. She's got a head full of curly black hair. Prettiest little girl I've seen in a long, long time. Liza named her Ceara." Teal smiled. "I like that, don't you?"

"Daughter?"

Teal laughed. "Go see your little girl, man!" He held out his hand to help Brelan up.

Brelan took hold of du Mer's hand. He felt himself drawn up from the bench, but Teal didn't let go of his hand right away.

"Congratulations, Brelan," the gypsy said.

"Thank you?" Brelan managed to whisper.

"That's usually the correct response, aye!"

On his walk back to the keep, Brelan's mind was filled with wonder. He had always taken extra precautions to keep his seed from ever blossoming in his mistresses, wanting no child of his to come into such a foul world. He had always thought a child would be an encumbrance, an impediment to his carefree style, for he knew if one should ever be born, he would marry the woman. Now he wondered why he had been so careless with Elizabeth.

He stopped still in his tracks.

The Tribunal had set a length of time they had considered appropriate for Liza's supposed mourning of Galen, but when she had become pregnant, they extended that time.

Tomorrow, he thought with sudden, dawning hopelessness. Tomorrow would be her wedding day. Tomorrow she would be forced to wed Legion.

The Tribunal wanted nothing to alienate the populace. Consequently, as far as the people of Serenia knew, the child that had swollen Elizabeth's belly these past months was Galen's.

"You will make no mention of this," Kaileel Tohre had warned him when he was called before the Tribunal. "If one word of the child's true parentage is leaked to the people, you will spend the remainder of your days with the other rebels on Tyber's Isle and the queen will be beheaded. Do I make myself clear, Lord Saur? It doesn't matter what happened after the woman was widowed, although promiscuity is frowned upon as you know. By law, we could have the child taken at birth, but we will not do that. It is in our best interest to let the people think their queen is a virtuous woman." Tohre's hooded lids slitted. "Even though we know her for the whore she is!"

"She is no—"

"Don't cause a scene here. I assure you, we will not take kindly to it." The new Arch-Prelate leaned forward in his chair and fixed Brelan with a cold, hard stare. "You men of the McGregor family lack restraint. Shall we send you somewhere where you may learn it?"

Brelan's blood had run cold. He had to clamp shut his jaws to keep from yelling. He knew these bastards weren't playing games. They were deadly serious.

"What do you want me to do?" he finally asked.

"It's what we
don't
want you to do, Lord Saur," one of the other Tribunalists answered. "You will never claim the queen's child as your own."

Now, standing under the canopy of a huge spreading oak, Brelan took a long, wavering breath. He would go in to see his child, his daughter, but he could not claim her as such.

To the world she was Galen's, just as Corbin was Galen's.

* * *

Legion opened the chamber door and smiled. "They are sleeping," he whispered.

Brelan started to turn away, but his brother took his arm.

"Come and see the baby, Bre."

As unsure of himself as he had ever been, Brelan entered the room, his gaze shifting quickly to the big oaken bed. "I'll come back. I…"

"Brelan?"

The men turned to see Liza watching them, her hand held out.

"I'll leave you two alone," Legion said.

"No," Brelan replied, shaking his head. "She is your lady. You have the right to be here."

Legion dug his hands into his pockets and said nothing, as if he knew how hard this was for his brother.

Brelan squared his shoulders and walked to the bed, smiling gently. "You are well, Milady?"

"Aye." She eased aside the blanket that covered her newborn. "May I present to you the Lady Ceara, Milord?"

Something moved in his soul, and reached out a trembling hand to touch the infant.

"Would you like to hold her, Milord?"

Brelan laid the tip of one finger on the infant's crop of fuzzy dark hair. "I'd better not."

"I wish you would."

He wanted so badly to kiss Liza, to hold her. If not the mother, then the child. He reached for the infant. Liza helped him to lift their daughter and sighed when Brelan settled the babe in his arms.

"She is the most beautiful baby in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms," he declared, his voice filled with awe.

"How could she not be with a mother such as Liza?" Legion commented.

Brelan nodded. His eyes were locked on his daughter, and gently kissed her head. She smelled of her mother's perfume and soap, a pleasant combination that he would forever associate with innocence and promise.

"Ceara," Brelan whispered, then looked at Liza. "It suits her, Milady."

The baby squirmed. Brelan felt wet heat down the front of his shirt. He held the infant away from him a little ways.

"Did she do what I think she did?" Liza asked.

Brelan was relieved when Liza held out her arms.

"Do you want me to change her?" Legion asked.

Brelan turned a fierce expression to his brother. "I can do it!"

"Have you ever changed a baby, Brelan?" Legion challenged.

"I can learn. She's my d…" He stopped, realizing his mistake, seeing the fear on both Liza's and Legion's faces. "My niece…so I had best learn, don't you think?"

Legion started to protest, but Liza stopped him. "The diapers are over there," she said. "Legion, show him what he must do."

As she watched the brothers changing her daughter's linens, Liza settled more comfortably in the bed and closed her eyes. She was tired, her body sore, and her heart aching.

"Nadia," she whispered, thinking of her firstborn daughter and its father.

She opened her eyes and looked at the two men arguing over how the pin should be placed on the diaper.

He would be so amused, she thought, remembering the first time Conar had changed Nadia. The diaper had promptly fallen off the child when Conar lifted her.

She put a hand on her belly and thought of her happiness on the day she had given birth to Conar's daughter. But now that happiness was gone, though being replaced with a quiet contentment that was slowly growing.

Her marriage to Galen had been a travesty. Her marriage to Legion was a blessing in disguise, for she had always been attracted to the stalwart warrior with his wicked sense of humor so like Conar's. Marriage to Legion would not be onerous, not a chore, and it might one day bring the happiness she had lost when Conar left her life.

Though she knew both men loved her, she could give her loyalty to only one. Her one abiding love would always be Conar, but life must go on and her children needed a father to look up to and love.

Legion A'Lex would be that father.

Her gaze shifted to Brelan. She had hurt him, but there was nothing she could do in that regard. Had the Tribunal given her to him, she would have sworn her loyalty just as easily as she had to Legion. But would it have meant the same? she asked herself.

Once more her regard returned to Legion. She wondered, if the roles had been reversed and it was Brelan she had been told to marry, if she would still find her heart doing a funny little flip each time she saw Legion.

She suspected it would. And the future did not seem quiet so unsettled.

Her marriage to Legion was already set in motion. It would take place within the hour. She had tried to argue with the Priest, tried to get him to postpone the wedding for awhile. His irrational display had shocked her more than usual. When he had bent over her bed and took hold of her, she thought he was going to strangle her.

The man was insane, there was no mistaking that. He had taken one man from her and slain him, butchered his children, caused the death of Galen, stolen her son, murdered her parents, imprisoned her brothers. She could not allow him to spread his venom over any more of those she loved. Her acquiescence was the only way to assure no one else was harmed.

Tohre's ugly glower went to Gezelle, who sat with the baby in her arms near the fireplace. A look of hatred crossed the cadaverous features. "A girl-child. Useless. Utterly useless!"

Liza shut out his hated voice. Somewhere far off she could hear the spectral strings of a lyre strumming softly to her. It was the tune that held her captivated; the tune that calmed her. It was "The Prince's Lost Lady." A tune that never failed to bring tears to her. Tears for all that had once been. Ghost-like, the melody came to her in the dead of the night, came to her with the voice of the sea that called her name with such forlorn pain. On moonless nights she could almost see the image of the one who called to her as his shadow floated just out of reach over the ocean's sweep.

"Get that mewling garbage out of here!" Tohre shouted at Gezelle.

Liza flinched, coming out of her self-enforced numbness. She turned to Gezelle and nodded, then glanced at Tohre's smug face. "Is there anything else?"

"No," he snapped and spun on his heel.

She watched his retreating back, her face hard and fierce. "Never again, Tohre," she pledged as the black robes disappeared from sight. "Never again will I allow you to hurt one of mine!"

"One day," Teal du Mer said softly, "one day he will be destroyed, Liza."

Liza looked up with surprise. The gypsy stood in the doorway that connected the King's suite to his Queen's. She knew he had been helping Legion to dress for the ceremony. Her smile was warm. She held out her hand.

He gripped her hand, and brought it to his lips. "I wish there was something I could do."

"There is, old friend," she told him. "Keep me company for awhile?"

He sat in the chair by her bed. His instincts told him she didn't want to talk, so he lovingly held her hand and hummed gently to himself. He would be singing the wedding mass that afternoon instead of Tohre reciting it, as he had at Liza's Joinings with Conar and Galen. The tune he hummed was not from the mass, for he knew she wouldn't want to hear that.

His heart went out to her. The gypsy blood inside his half-royal veins throbbed for vengeance against those who had caused her the grief stamped on her lovely features. He, like Conar and Legion and Brelan and Galen, was deeply in love with her. Her pain touched him in ways he hated to admit.

He doubled his free fist, dug his nails into his palms, taking his frustration out on his flesh. What he wouldn't give for one man capable of crushing Kaileel Tohre!

His thoughts rushed back with a suddenness that made him dizzy, lightheaded. He could see Conar in youth: tall and proud, vigorous and brave, sure of himself, sure of his abilities. The bright flax of his hair would shine in the sunlight, the wind catching it and sending that infernal stray lock over his high forehead. A strong hand would sweep the hair from pale blue eyes and the long lashes would close over the bright sparkle with mirth. The cocky grin from full lips, the lone dimple in his right cheek, always seemed to make him look much younger.

There had been a strength in that man few others had. There had been a true sense of self-pride and capability that came through even when he was angry and upset. There had always been power in those hands, purpose in that handsome face, honesty in his stalwart heart.
That
had been the man who could have defeated Tohre, Teal thought. But that man was gone. Gone all these many years.

Teal felt his throat closing. Would there ever again be such a man? A futile smile touched du Mer's full mouth and his twin dimples stretched with despair. No. There would never be a man like Conar McGregor ever again.

He missed Conar. He would often stray to the whipping post, stand there, and feel the guilt. He had betrayed his friend. He had betrayed Conar's woman. He had wanted to atone for his doubts, his betrayals, but Liza had never given him a chance. She had welcomed him back with arms wide, arms that held no malice, no spite, only forgiveness. She had unknowingly hurt him deeply when she had forgiven him.

He loved Legion A'Lex almost as much as he had loved Conar, but he hated the thought of Legion marrying Conar's woman.

She should have died with Conar, he thought, feeling guilty for the notion.

One more sin for which he must one day atone.