WINDDREAMER (3 page)

Conar sat forward in his chair, took another deep breath, and laid his hands on Corbin's knees. He smiled. "You are
my
son. I should have acknowledged it long before now, but the coward in me wouldn't let me. I blamed myself for what Tohre did to you and could not own up to the guilt. But in my heart, I accepted you as my child the moment your mother told me. If you will allow me, I will make up to you for all the times I have not called you my own."

He sat back and opened his arms to Corbin.

"I
do
love you, son. Can you forgive me for being a coward?"

Corbin flew into his father's arms, hugging him with a fierceness that surprised him. "Papa," he cried, burying his face in Conar's black silk shirt. "I love you, Papa!"

Standing in the doorway, his own eyes brimming with treacherous tears, Regan watched the scene with growing hurt. Not that he wanted the man to hold him in that fashion, or tell him that he was loved. He didn't need Conar McGregor to apologize for having allowed Kaileel Tohre to do evil things to
him
as Tohre had done to Corbin. He didn't need love; he didn't need being held. He didn't need anything Conar McGregor could offer.

Turning and walking slowly down the hall, then running full out, his tears flowing like bitter acid down his face, Regan vowed he needed nothing but Conar McGregor--and now, Corbin McGregor as well--dead and buried.

Kaileel Tohre sat brooding in front of the fire-pit in his conjuring chamber. His hooded gaze bore into the flames, watching images leaping in the fire that only he could understand. His head lay against the high back of his velvet chair, the white blond mane nearly glowing against the black fabric. With his gnarled hands hanging miserably from the carved chair arms, his lean body slumped dejectedly in the curve of the chair, Tohre presented a picture of hopelessness totally unlike him.

The skeletal mask of the tightly drawn flesh over his high brow and cheek brought the prominence of his light blue eyes with their heavy dark circles to the attention of those who came and went about the chamber.

The thin lips, bloodless and pulled down in a hard frown, now and again mumbled incomplete phrases that would make Tohre mentally shake himself out of the self-imposed stupor into which he had placed himself. Reaching up a trembling hand to wipe at the sweat on his face, he trailed the long, talon-tipped fingers to the mottled and discolored flesh under his chin and stroked his small goatee.

As memories stirred in his mind, he sat up straight, drawing in his left leg, crippled by stroke, and massaged his knee. As the memory faded, he slumped back in the chair.

Kaileel groaned.

It wasn't a groan of pain, nor of despair. It wasn't even a groan of fatigue, but of frustration. He was anxious for the final confrontation between himself and Conar McGregor to begin. As yet, the signs were not right; the battle yet to be waged. Shifting in his chair, he turned his head and, with a start, remembered the blonde-haired woman.

Across the room, the Webspinner watched him. A thin, veiled smile stretched over her lips. Raja De Lyle tucked her long, tapered legs beneath her as she reclined on one of the benches scattered about the room, her arms crossed over her ample bosom.

He groaned again, this time with contempt. "Why are you still here?" he snarled, focusing his good eye on her.

Raja raised her arms over her head and stretched, pointing her scantily clad breasts toward the ceiling in an unconscious attempt at seduction. She unwound her body and stuck out her legs, flexing her naked toes toward the fire. "I was awaiting your decision, Holiness. You told me to stay." Her white teeth sparkled behind scarlet-red lips. "Do you not remember telling me to stay?"

Tohre didn't. He detested the woman more than any other, save perhaps Elizabeth A'Lex. If it were not for the fact that he needed Raja,
and
her vile offspring, he would have had the bitch slain long ago.

He frowned. "You may leave. I will inform you of my decision tomorrow!"

Raja smiled her cat-and-mouse sneer that never failed to annoy Tohre. "Time is of the essence, Holiness," she reminded him with a coy pout of her luscious lips.

"Your wiles are useless on me, woman. As are your reminders. I will deal with Conar in my own way. In my own time."

Raja's smile slipped. "And while you are trying to cope with your problems regarding him, Tohre, he is growing stronger by the hour. His powers are strengthening each day he and that bitch are together. Or have you forgotten the prophecy?" She stood and placed her hands on her hips. Her arrogant stance seemed more like that of a man's. "Let him have time to regroup, but you will regret it!"

Kaileel stood so suddenly, his chair toppled behind him with a crash. He staggered, his weak left leg trembling, as he made a grab for the overturned chair to steady his stance. The strokes had made it impossible for him to walk steadily, but though his speech was somewhat slurred, the timbre had not lessened in volume. "I will take care of Conar McGregor in my own way! He will
not
escape the final retribution I have planned for him. I will see to it!"

"Then send Regan the signal. Now! What must be done must be done before Conar is so powerful neither of us will be useful against him. You can feel the power growing, can't you? Did you not tell me you knew the exact moment in which he and that slut were reunited?"

Kaileel's face blanched. He turned from the Webspinner. Aye, he had known. He had felt the passion flowing from Conar to the bitch, a passion that should have come to him, to Kaileel. The moment had been one of the most heartbreaking in his long life.

"Tohre, will you dally while he gains power we can only guess at? They are together again--his power to hers, hers to his. Not only have they mated--"

"
Shut up!
" Kaileel put his hands over his ears. "
I will not hear of it!
"

"It hurts, doesn't it?" Raja cooed, sauntering close. "To know that after all you did, he still wants her instead of you. You hurt him, Tohre. You humiliated him. Did that not satisfy your lust for him?"

Kaileel spun around, fixing her with a glare that should have reduced her to cinders. "You couldn't tempt him, either, could you, bitch? You could not tempt him to your bed, so you drugged him to have your way with him. You stole a child from his loins. Why wasn't that enough for
you?
" Tohre grinned maliciously at the blush that stained her high cheekbones.

"No man turns me down, Kaileel Tohre!" she spat, her blue eyes flashing fire. "I will see him on his knees for casting me aside for that whore in Boreas!"

"You murdered his plaything, or have you so conveniently forgotten that little matter?" Kaileel smirked. "Perhaps if you had told him of his wife's betrayal in a more--shall we say,
delicate
way--he might have come to you for comfort. Had you slain the Chrystallusian bitch in such a way that he did not know
you
were the cause of it, Conar might well have aligned himself with you. But then again, he never cared much for
your
wiles, either, did he, Raja?"

She clenched her teeth and lifted her chin, staring down her nose at the sorcerer. "I could have had him if
you
had not warped him when he was but a babe!"

"It was
you
who corrupted him, bitch!" Kaileel pointed a finger at her. "Why is it he had such a low opinion of women before meeting that whore he calls his beloved?"

The Webspinner's beautiful face hardened, took on the gleam of deadly steel. "What I want, I always get, Tohre. It might take me a while, but I am closer to having Conar McGregor in the palm of my hand than you will ever be!"

"How? Will you ply him with your potions again?" Tohre hands itched to grip the white column of her throat and squeeze until no life remained in the witch's body. He loathed the very sight of her.

"Will
you?
" Raja cooed. "In order to have him, you resorted to drugs and lies and deceit, as well as murder. What difference is there in the way we each tried to take him?"

"I did no murder," Kaileel snapped, waving a hand in dismissal.

"What of his daughter? What of Nadia?"

Kaileel snorted. "That was not my doing."

Raja blinked. "It wasn't?"

"Why would I lie? The babe was of no concern to me!"

"Then who was responsible?"

"I do not know, nor do I care."

She shook her head. "But you drugged him, nevertheless. When he balked at joining you, you had him falsely charged with sedition. You had him flogged, even took the whip yourself when he had not suffered as greatly as you wanted him to." She sneered. "You were the one who scarred his once-handsome face!"

"He deserved punishment."

"Just as he deserved being exiled to that hell-hole?"

"It taught him humility," Tohre reasoned. "It taught him that he was not above the law as he thought."

"Yet after all you have made the man suffer, is your vengeance satisfied?"

"Is yours?"

Raja's face filled with disgust. "Do you think I would be here if my thirst for him had been quenched?"

Kaileel glowered at her. With the insight he had into the darkness of other people's souls, he saw the similarity between this woman and himself. They both wanted the same thing: Conar McGregor. And neither of them could obtain him through normal means. Each had used magic and evil to bring the young prince to them, and each had failed abysmally. Each had pushed Conar farther away in trying to bring him closer.

Raja lowered her voice to a soft croon. "Neither of us will ever have him other than with the combined use of
our
powers to fight
his.
You want him humbled as much as I do. You want his soul, I want his body. We both want his defeat, his ultimate destruction. We have the means in our hands." She held up a fist. "We can crush him, Tohre. We can have him groveling at our feet before we drain the stubbornness from him. Tell me that is not what you want."

Tohre felt astonishment. "You want him dead?"

Raja shook her head, outwardly exasperated. "Not in the sense you mean, but dead to those around him. Once you have taken his soul, what is left will be mine to command. I can make him docile, accepting of his plight. You will have what you want, I will have what I desire."

For a moment, Tohre continued to stare at her, seeing past the smiling, seductive beauty into the pitch-black soul deep within her. He saw her evil as surely as he felt his own. Given other circumstances, he supposed, the two of them might well have been allies, lovers even, had she been a male. He could sense her overpowering desire to destroy the essence of their common enemy, their common love.

"Will you let him win, Tohre?"

"No."

"They have invested that milksop wife of his with the powers of the Wind Force. Her powers--"

"Bah! No woman is a worthy adversary for the might of the Domination!"

"Do not say I didn't warn you, Kaileel! You refuse to see the possibilities of Elizabeth A'Lex's power. It's a failing that could spell disaster and might be your undoing! But if you will not guard yourself against the bitch, that is your business. I will
not
make the same mistake!"

"Do what you will. Joust at ghostlings, if you must, but I will save
my
energy for Conar, alone!"

"Then send the message to Regan! The time is at hand." With a coy lowering of her lashes, she jabbed home the final dagger. "Or are you afraid Conar has become too powerful for you to handle?"

"I am afraid of no man!"

"Then be done with it!" Raja yelled, spittle flying in Tohre's astonished face. "Bring him to his knees! Destroy him.
Now!
"

Warning voices inside Tohre's brain told him to ignore the challenge, cautioned him to restrain and delay, shouted a denial of what he was setting, too soon, in motion. The thought kept tumbling before him that the time was not right, the day not yet come in which to do battle with Conar McGregor.

But the smirk on Raja's face needled him.

"So be it," he spat from between clenched teeth. "I will send the message!"

The rain had not stopped. If anything, it had grown worse. The entire countryside surrounding Ivor Keep turned into a virtual quagmire. Rivulets of muddy water seeped through the old stones of the keep; the entire place stank of mold and mildew. As gloomy and overcast as the sky, so, too, seemed the temperaments of the keep's inhabitants. Many a fight had lashed out among the men, and even among the few serving women. Insults grew commonplace, and since tempers ran so short, words became few.

Alone in his room, with only his thoughts to keep him comfortable, Conar would stare out the window at the falling rain. He had moved from his tower prison to the room he had used as a child when visiting Ivor Keep. In this room, he felt safe.

Often he would go to where Corbin now slept by himself. Since learning of the cruelties Regan had practiced on his older half-brother, Conar placed his youngest boy in a room near Marsh, giving his old friend orders to act as sole guardian to the angry child. When told he could no longer have access to Corbin's room and would be accountable to Edan for his actions, Regan fought and spat like a were-tiger.

"You want to get rid of me, but you can't!" Regan screamed at his father. "You are the reason I am here!"

"And what reason would that be?" Sentian asked.

Regan turned on the warrior, Elizabeth A'Lex's Sentinel. "Go to hell! I don't have to answer to a servant!"

But Conar held firm and exiled the boy to the servant's wing, ordering all access to the keep proper "off limits" to Regan. The boy had been taken, kicking and screaming, to the back of the keep where servants gave him a wide berth. As for Corbin, Conar spent at least an hour of the day with him, getting to know him.

Liza would often find their blond heads bent over a game of chess or dominoes, their laughter ringing out in a keep where laughter had mildewed along with the walls. It was not uncommon to hear them whispering, telling jokes to one another, recounting secrets. Neither seemed to notice the gloom that had settled around the ancient keep like fallen leaves.

Well into the second week of his forced isolation, Regan tried unsuccessfully to gain access to the upper rooms where his brother stayed. Caught sneaking up the stairs, Regan threw a tantrum that resulted in having Conar come to see him.

"Don't try that again," Conar warned, putting his hand on the belt at his waist. "You've been told you can not see your brother."

"Go ahead," Regan taunted. "Beat me. It won't be the first time I've been whipped."

Conar's lids flickered, but he said nothing. When Regan clamped his lips shut and turned his back, Conar sighed. "Just because Tohre tried to make you into one of his own, doesn't mean you have to
stay
one of his own."

Regan turned, glaring at Conar, hating the way his father looked at him. Seeing the pity on Conar's face hardened Regan's heart. He lifted his chin. "I'd rather be one of Tohre's than be here with you!"

Conar nodded. "Before the actual battle begins, I might well send you back to Tohre, if that's what you want. You have no place here with that attitude."

Regan saw distrust and revilement in his father's face, which added fuel to his hatred. His father would keep that lily-livered Corbin with him and send his other son away. "Whatever," Regan snapped, turning from the look of annoyance on his father's face.

Two days later, the Elite who did Tohre's bidding, who had long ago and through devious magic been installed to keep tabs on Conar for the Domination, handed a small slip of paper to Regan.

"How did you come by this?" Regan asked suspiciously, recognizing Tohre's personal seal.

"The Master has his way and I have mine," the Elite answered.

Regan stared hard into the face of the messenger, a man he knew all too well. "You are one of his most trusted."

"Aye, but sometimes all is not as it seems, eh?"

Regan nodded his understanding. "You have reason to hate him, too."

"Be careful, little prince. The Master is counting on you."

Regan took the paper to the window, broke the seal, and stared at the symbol scrawled across its surface. It was the sign for which he had been waiting--a black bird with an arrow through its breast.