WINDDREAMER (27 page)

Jah-Ma-El opened the door into the room where generations of McGregor men had been born and had died. It had been the King's bedchamber for as long as Boreas Keep had stood on the violent sweep of the North Boreal Sea. Laughter had rang in these chambers; tears had sprung from grief-stricken eyes; cries of pain had echoed off the damask-clad walls. Many a newborn had lain in the wide oaken bed, thrust from its mother's body and into the world to rule, or be ruled, by the McGregor family. And people had died in that magnificent old bed. The last had been King Gerren. Now, it was into this room that Jah-Ma-El's brother had been installed, those who loved him putting him here, for they wanted no reminders of his lady to prod his grief.

Sitting as still as a marble statue by the great mullion window that faced the dying sun, Conar stared into the fading light. His hands lay in his lap, his right hand cupping his left. His shoulders were slumped, defeated, without hope. He had been this way for four weeks, ever since climbing the steps to this chamber upon his return. He had not spoken, nor acknowledged in any way, the questions or looks aimed at him. It was as though he had withdrawn into his own private hell where company was neither tolerated nor recognized. Little food and water had passed his lips. Neither had he slept for long at a time in the bed, where covers lay spread out welcoming and warm on the thick down mattress. Dark circles of hunger and fatigue rimmed his bleak eyes, and two deep grooves of pain slashed down his unshaved cheeks.

Jah-Ma-El shuddered. His brother was as close to death as any man dying of battle wounds.

A pall hung over the room, and an almost preternatural silence. As the sun set in a burst of purplish-red, the room fell into near darkness.

Sighing, Jah-Ma-El walked to the bedside table and struck a candle, cupping the flame with his hand as he went to the window. He set the candleholder on the window ledge, then hunkered beside Conar's chair.

Conar appeared not to have noticed his intrusion. The unblinking sapphire eyes continued staring out into the gathering dark. Only the rhythmic movement of his chest indicated life existed in his slumped body. In candlelight, the pale oval face remained completely devoid of expression, a death mask placed over the vibrantly alive countenance.

It tore at Jah-Ma-El's heart to see Conar this way. Haunted, in pain, wounded beyond repair, without purpose or depth or understanding. It was as though some demon had come during the time Conar had sat in this chair and sucked the very soul from his grieving body.

"Conar?" Jah-Ma-El whispered, although his voice sounded like a great gong thundering into the silence.

No answer. No flicker of recognition. No movement of the rigid body.

Jah-Ma-El licked his lips, gathering his thoughts. "You're not the only one who's grieving."

Again no sign Conar had heard. A tiny spasm in the curled fingers of his left hand gave the only indication movement remained possible.

Jah-Ma-El had been sent to try talking to Conar. Legion, Roget, Teal, Shalu, even Storm, had all failed. Jah-Ma-El had thought long and hard on what he could say, finding nothing that might help. The words he was about to utter were not his own, but Gezelle's, for she had met him on her way to Amber-Lea's room, where Brelan Saur's distraught bride strove to bring a new life into a harsh world.

"Remind him we love him, Lord Jah-Ma-El!" Gezelle had begged, fiercely clutching the warlock's arm in a grip that surprised him. "Don't let him stew in his juices. He's good at that. Wake him up! Make him come alive again!"

"How do I do that?" Jah-Ma-El had inquired, not sure he was up to such a task, but willing to try.

"Insult him. He hates that."

Now, Jah-Ma-El set aside his normally taciturn ways and hitched up the breeches of his courage. He took a deep breath and made his voice as hard as he could. "If it's your intention to punish those who love you with your silence because you can not deal with your grief, then you are doing a good job of it." He put a sneer in his voice. "We can't help you if you won't help yourself. We feel grief, too. We hurt. We need someone to console us, but you're so damned selfish, you'd rather rot here that lift a hand to comfort someone else!"

A flicker of understanding crossed Conar's face, then was gone as quickly as it had came.

"Damn you, you arrogant son-of-a-bitch! Have you no heart?" Jah-Ma-El shouted. "Don't you give a damn about anyone but yourself? Are you so selfish that you intend to sit there and let us look after you like you're a newborn?" He gripped the arms of Conar's chair. "You self-indulgent bastard! Don't you think the rest of us have anything better to do than to babysit? How selfish can you get? Do you think your lady would approve of your churlishness?"

The sapphire blue eyes wavered, blinked, then finally came into focus. The brows drew together in hurt; the rigid lips parted. Slowly, Conar turned his head toward Jah-Ma-El. The blue gaze locked, fused with Jah-Ma-El's. The lips quivered, but no sound came from the valiant throat that worked in an effort to silence what Jah-Ma-El knew could only be a cry of pain.

Jah-Ma-El groaned with understanding. He moved his hands from the chair arms to his brother's hands, clutching them, encircling the cold fingers, entwining them with his own. "We understand, little brother. Really, we do. But you can't go on like this. You're damaging your health. I know your heart is breaking, but--"

"I have no heart," came the answer in a dry, crackling voice. The lips pursed to still the trembling, then opened against a hitching moan. "Don't any of you understand? My heart is dead, so deeply buried at the bottom of the ocean, that it no longer beats in my chest. The only thing keeping me alive is my need for vengeance against Tohre."

"Tohre's dead."

Conar's blond head jerked violently from side to side. "He's alive somewhere in the Pit. I can
feel
him, can
sense
his frustration and rage." He stared at Jah-Ma-El. "You think me mad?" He pulled away his hands, while his face set into an angry grimace--the first real emotion to cross his face in weeks. "Well, I'm not. Tohre
is
alive. I can
smell
his evil, coming at me in waves."

Jah-Ma-El shook his head. "Tohre drowned in the Maelstrom, little brother. Don't torture yourself with--"

"Torture myself? I have no need to do that as long as Tohre is there to do it for me!" He threw back his head; his teeth gritted together. Through the constriction of his clenched jaw, his voice filled with a strident huskiness that gave Jah-Ma-El chills. "I want to cry, and I can't. I want to scream, and I can't. I want to die, and I can't."

"Conar..." Jah-Ma-El pleaded, his voice thick with worry.

"Not yet. Not until Kaileel Tohre lies broken at my feet." A raging hunger passed over the tired, gaunt face, transforming it into the mask of a bloodthirsty demon. "I sit here and feel his hatred of me. He now hates me with the same intensity, the same kind of loathsome
love
he once professed to have for me. He's so furious, he can barely breath." A bitter laugh came from the rigid lips. "Of course I crushed his larnyx, so he won't ever breathe normally again!"

"This isn't good what you are doing, Conar. I--"

"When a man is that angry, Jah-Ma-El, he begins to make mistakes, and I am going to be there when he makes that last, fatal error. When he does, only one of us will walk away. I intend that it be me!"

"Suppose you're right," Jah-Ma-El conceded, yet still unconvinced. "Suppose he did survive. How would that have been possible? Think! No one could survive that plunge into the Maelstrom."

Conar shook his head. "It's you who's not thinking." He gripped his brother's hand. "Do you know what he wanted to do to me?" He clutched Jah-Ma-El's hand tighter. "He wanted to fuse my soul with his, to transmigrate my soul into his own. That way, he'd have my lifeforce inside him just as he's stolen countless other lives before me. How do you think he's lived this long? It's all the souls he's stolen from men and women, even children, through the years. Whatever lifeforce was in that soul, however many years that soul would have survived, is now locked inside Tohre, giving him the same years of existence that should have belonged to his victims!"

Jah-Ma-El nodded. "I can understand the concept. But what makes you think he's still capable of causing trouble? If he's locked inside the Pit, what harm can he do? All his men are either dead, dying, or imprisoned. He has no one who will follow him."

"He needs no one to follow him," Conar sighed, annoyance heavy in his voice. "He's as powerful as he has always been."

"How do you know?"

"Because I can hear him in my mind taunting me, mocking me, challenging me! I can feel his hatred like a coiled serpent eating away at my gut. He has taken away from me everything I have ever held dear, and now he wants to finish what he started at the monastery. He wants to take possession of my soul. Failing that, he'll drive me to madness!" He buried his head in his hands.

"Not if you don't let him," Jah-Ma-El said firmly. "Sitting in the dark, refusing to eat, to drink, wallowing in self-pity...that's playing right into his hands! What about those who love you? What do we do? Watch you waste away? What of your sons? Corbin is mourning his mother and needs you! Are you so callous that you can sit in self-imposed self-righteousness and leave it to others to comfort
your
child? Will you deprive him of both his parents?"

Conar sighed, closing his eyes to the hard questions, the even harder answers. He dropped his hands, shook his head in denial, his brow crinkling with hurt. "It's not selfishness," he whispered, horrible despair in his voice. "It's numbness. I feel nothing. I don't mean to worry any of you, and I'm not trying to kill myself."

"You could have fooled us!" Jah-Ma-El pointed a thin, tapered finger at the tray of food, sitting on the table beside Conar all afternoon. "You didn't touch what Roget brought up. Or the food Sentian brought you at noon. Or the food I brought this morn--"

"I'm not hungry. I can't eat."

"The hell you can't! You just want to worry us into early graves!"

"That's not my intention at all. It's just that I can see, and hear, and taste everything Tohre does. That one swallow from that vile chalice was all it took to merge a portion of my soul with his. It is that merging, that evil blending, that makes me sick to my stomach. I can't eat for the bile rising in my throat."

"So you just starve to death, is that it?"

"I'll get over it, will learn to ignore it. But for now, I can't. It's as much a part of me as the air I breathe." He turned his head and stared out the window again.

The door opened, saving Jah-Ma-El from making another nasty reply. He sighed with relief, seeing Legion in the doorway, a look of resignation on his face.

Legion frowned at the tray of uneaten food, then looked at Conar. "He still hasn't eaten?" he snarled, coming in and shutting the door.

Jah-Ma-El shrugged. "He says he can't."

Legion's brows shot up. "He's spoken?"

"Don't talk about me as though I'm not here," Conar grumbled.

"You might as well not be!" Legion walked to the tray and stared down in disgust. An opaque film glazed over the congealing roast beef gravy. "Wasting perfectly good food is unconscionable."

"I don't want--" Conar began.

Legion swept the table with his arm. Dishes clattered to the floor; food sprayed the carpet. "Shut up! Just shut the hell up!" He strode forward and slapped Conar hard, ignoring Jah-Ma-El's gasp of outrage.

Conar glared at Legion. "If any other man had dared do that, I'd--"

"I told you to shut up!" Legion leaned over the chair. "If you don't, I'll slap you again. Harder!"

A gleam of malice shot from the depths of the sapphire eyes. "You'd better not."

"You don't want to eat? Fine. Don't. You can starve, for all I care. But you
will
get your ass in that bed and rest. You haven't slept in three days."

"Sleep is the last thing I need."

"If I have to, I'll have my men hold you down while I pour one of Sern's sleeping potions into your gullet! You are dead on your feet!"

"Don't even think of doing something like that. The days of me letting anyone force me into anything I don't want are long gone. Tohre took away my name and my freedom and my country. He took my pride and now he's taken my woman. Because of--"

"Our woman!"

Conar ignored him. "And because of that, I'll let no one else take anything away from me. And that includes my ability to say 'yea' or 'nay' to what is done to me!"

"You won't have any choice."

"Don't push me, Legion." Conar got unsteadily to his feet to face his angry brother. "I have nothing left to lose."

A grim smile stretched Legion's face. "What of your sons?"

There came a slight hesitation, a flickering in Conar's eyes. "I can take care of my sons."

"Like you took care of Elizabeth?"

The vicious words seemed to hit Conar like a lightning bolt. He crumpled into his chair, his lips trembling. "Don't hurt me like that, Legion..."

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Jah-Ma-El spat, shoving Legion away.

The older man stumbled to the fireplace and braced his hands on the tall mantle. He stared into the fire, his face burning as brightly as the coals.

Jah-Ma-El knelt before Conar. "He didn't mean it, little brother. He's just hurting. He really didn't mean to--"

"I know," Conar interrupted, "but the words cut deep, anyway." He turned to Legion. His voice grew hoarse with pain. "Don't you know I blame myself for her death? Don't you understand I always will? There's no need to pour salt into the wound."

Legion flinched, but didn't answer.

Jah-Ma-El looked from one sibling to the other, finding equal amounts of pain on the two faces. A tension of outrageous proportions filled the room, along with a feeling of something having changed forever between the men. Jah-Ma-El let out a long breath, wishing he knew what to say to ease the bleakness of the moment, but nothing came to mind.

"I'm sorry," Legion whispered. "I didn't mean--"