WINDHEALER

The beating in the Tribunal courtyard had left Conar McGregor's back numb to the vicious lashings of the guard's whips. The punishment meted out to him in the Labyrinth Penal Colony had severed the nerve endings under his flesh. He lost count of the times he was stretched between the uprights behind the privy ditch and whipped. Such brutality had become a matter of course and he endured it stoically, with detachment.

He resided in a portion of hell few men ever knew existed and from which even fewer man had ever returned.

Pain had become a way of life; mental anguish was his constant companion.

From the very first, he began his lessons in just how cruel the human race could be. In the Labyrinth, he learned more about the agonies of the damned than he ever wanted to know. His captors set out to cripple him both in mind and body—to break him, to humble him, to crush his spirit and bring him to his knees.

"You are nothing here!" he had been told. "You are a prisoner of the Tribunal! Nothing more!"

The only safe haven in his dark-stained world was sleep. Only there could he find any semblance of peace, and that only briefly, for his rest was often interrupted by demons and dreams and memories that tormented him, that left him even more alone in his despair.

From the first day when he had been taken from the Indoctrination Hut to view the Labyrinth, he was worked from sunup to sundown. The only times he was not being worked or kept locked away from human contact were when he was ordered to the medical hut for rudimentary care, or when the barber strapped him in a chair and shaved him, whacking off his thick hair.

"I want to be able to see the fear on your face," the Commandant told him. "I want to see the humiliation!"

Then, he had fought them. He had managed to keep his dignity for a while, at least. He was determined to survive, but it had become harder every day when he was forced to grovel in order to do so. Two days without food, without complaint, might be well enough when one was protesting an injustice, for the very act of deprivation can be strengthening, but combined with physical and mental brutality, it was a luxury a man intent on living could not afford.

So, he was forced to give up a portion of his pride, humble himself, beg, in order to simply have enough food in his belly and sufficient clothing with which to cover himself during the cold desert nights.

But by then they had begun to work on his self-esteem, to plunder his very soul. To deny him the right to even exist.

"You are dead!" The words came at him time and time again. "A dead man!"

"I am Conar McGregor!" he screamed with mindless fury. "I am alive!"

His defiance had brought with it an immediate reckoning which kept him abed in the medical hut for more than a week; the beating had nearly crippled him. When he was well enough to rise, they chained him in the center of the courtyard and warned no one to speak to him.

"This man is dead! He does not exist!"

When he had defiantly denied their vicious words, shouted his name to the heavens, he was gagged.

"Say that dead man's name just once more," the Commandant threatened, "and I shall have your tongue removed!"

That had been in the beginning. Over the next year, he learned to swallow his pride, to make it silently through each verbal and physical abuse with a dogged determination to survive, enduring the cruelty and barbarism with the calm acceptance that this was now the way it would be. He took what they gave and no longer tried to defend himself.

Before long, his pride vanished.

But hate and anger still filled his heart, despite what he had been forced to become. Repeated beatings left him with downcast eyes that shifted nervously away from those who abused him, but they could not put out the fire burning in those wounded blue orbs. It burned bright, insistent, the only part of him totally alive.

All that had been in the first year and a half of his imprisonment when he still knew who he was. When he still had an identity, despite their best efforts to rid him of it.

Now he simply existed.

They long since destroyed his self-esteem and integrity. They destroyed his belief in himself and in the order of things. No longer did he aspire to leave this terrible place. The man he had been was no more. His life was one long tangle of misery.

Even so, he could sometimes feel small bits of encouragement aimed his way: a fleeting glimpse of a smile he caught in passing; a brief flare of compassion for his misery; a tell-tale look of pity on a hard countenance otherwise devoid of life. It was those small touches of humanity that made his days less hopeless, but it did not stop him from eventually retreating into a shell of self-imposed isolation.

As each new month passed, as his self-esteem dissolved, he delved deeper into his private world, tucking his tail between his legs, trying to bury himself within the confines of his mind.

"You are nothing!" they kept reminding him until he believed it.

Now, after six years of captivity, he crawled, slunk like the wounded animal they had molded, into a psychological hole he dug for himself, an insulated haven where the world with all its pain and humiliation could be held at bay. He retreated into a place of his own making, a world where there was still love and laughter, if only in his memories.

"You are nothing!"

But he knew better. He might not be the man he once had been, might not be a man at all anymore, but he was alive.

He did exist.

His loneliness told him that.

His memories told him that…

Eight months before the first of his disbanded Elite Guards arrived at the Labyrinth penal colony on Tyber's Isle, Conar McGregor found himself suddenly alone, far from the encampment, the guards miraculously out of sight. That in itself was highly unusual since he normally had five or more guards watching him, intimidating his every move with taunts and jeers and kicks and slaps.

On that evening, though, he had straightened up from his work of digging a large boulder from its resting place and looked around. There was no one in sight. He narrowed his eyes, puzzled, but he made no attempt to move. He was beyond the bluffs, outside the ring of high stones.

He had been taken here many times—blindfolded—so he could not see the way to the outside. They put him to work on large boulders that were later rolled down to the northern section of the island to be used as a jetty at the as yet unused harbor. He never minded the trek outside the bluffs, for the air was cooler, even though the work was harder and he usually paid dearly with more abuse than normal.

He laid down the heavy timber he had been using to pry loose the boulder and scanned the immediate area. There was nothing but waist-high boulders and scrub. He looked at his leg irons, knew he wouldn't get far if he tried to run, so he just stood, resting.

The full moon rode high in the sky; Conar had just a glimpse of a man's shadow as it moved over his own. He started to turn, to confront whoever had loomed up at him, when his legs were kicked out from under him.

He fell face down in a patch of gravel; his cheek and chin scraped over the rough surface as he slid forward. The air rushed out of him as his belly hit the ground hard. Gasping, he felt his arms pulled tightly as a man put a rock-like knee into the small of his back. He grunted as the man forced his arms up and across his upper back, straining the arm sockets.

"I been biding my time until I could get you alone, McGregor," came a rasping, heavy voice.

The man flipped his captive over, effectively pinning Conar's arms beneath him. Rocks and shards dug into the bare flesh of Conar's shoulders, back and arms; he winced as a large stone gouged into his back.

"Am I hurting you?" the man taunted. He straddled his victim, sitting on Conar's thighs.

Hard knees pressed into the bent crooks of Conar's elbows, nailing them to the sandy ground so it was impossible for him to either roll away or free his painfully constricted arms. Two ham-like feet hooked themselves over Conar's knees, making it equally impossible to buck off the brute. He heard the man's menacing voice and cringed at the hatred in the softly spoken words.

"Hoped you'd never see me again, huh?"

Conar looked past a wide chest and broad shoulders, a bull-like neck, a strong chin, and settled on the man's face lit by an upheld lantern.

Here was evil, fetid, rampant, festering. Utter malice filled the man's stare. His expression was cold, as deadly as a viper's. A stench rolled off the large body like waves of sewage, but it was nothing compared to the unspeakable odor from the man's evilly grinning mouth.

"Like what you see, pretty boy?"

The man was hard with layers of muscles that bunched in his massive forearms and shoulders, rippled over his chest and striated his flat belly. His neck was so thick his head appeared to have been stuck on as an afterthought. Conar couldn't even begin to guess how much the man weighed, but the solid bulk of him crushed Conar's hips and lower belly. Thighs, corded with steel-like muscle, pressed painfully into Conar's sides as the man squeezed him; large hands, fully capable of pressing the life from a normal-sized man, held Conar's head anchored.

His hair was blond, tightly pressed to his scalp in thick waves. A thin goatee dangled from his chin, and oddly-shaped sideburns made his rounded face seem alien and even more evil. There was a thin scar across his right cheek and a vivid tattoo of a dragon on the left.

"You do remember me, don't you?"

Shaking his head had been a mistake; nearly a fatal one. The guard snarled with rage. Before Conar knew what was happening, one giant paw grabbed a handful of his flesh in the center of his chest. The fingers gripped like steel hooks into his solar plexus, then thrust up and under the lower right side of his ribcage with expert ease. Conar felt a pain so intense he screamed as the man gently tugged on the lower ribs.

"Aye, you do, McGregor," the man cooed, tugging again. He smiled at the scream that was cut short by one of the Labyrinth guards who appeared out of nowhere to plaster a hand over Conar's mouth. The fingers spread under Conar's left nostril; he sucked in air, trying to bring oxygen into his lungs. Tight groans of agony forced their way out of him as the man tugged again, but with less vigor.

"Say you remember me," he ordered.

Conar hurt too badly to make a sound as the man's accomplice removed the beefy hand from his mouth. He could only stare up at his torturer.

When his captive remained mute, the man punctuated his next words with sharp tugs on Conar's lower ribs.

"Say…you…remember…me!"

"
God!"
Conar gasped from the intense pain spiraling through his ribcage. Bright pinpoints of light sparkled all around him.

"No, not God." The man laughed. The voice turned childish, then singsongish, as he reprimanded his prisoner. "Say my name. You know who I am."

There was another sharp pull on his ribcage; Conar felt his heart skipping beats. The pain had become so bad he could see nothing but rushes of red light.

"Say it, dammit!" the man shouted, all reason gone.

"I don't—"

"Say my name!"

Tears of intense agony fell down Conar's cheeks. "I can't remember—"

"Say it! Say my name!" Another vicious tug. "Say Lydon!"

"Ly—"

"Tell me you remember who I am!"

"I think…you're—"

"
Tell me you remember me!"

Weakly, "I remember you."

"I didn't hear you." The voice was calm, expectant.

Louder, "I remember you."

"I still didn't hear you." The voice was friendly, pleasant.

With heartbreaking care, "I remember you." Conar looked up, pleading for a cessation to the pain. "I remember you."

"Good," the man whispered. There was a childish smile plastered on his beefy face. He let go of Conar's ribs. Softly stroking Conar's hot cheek with the back of his rough hand, the man smiled. "I knew you'd remember me." The smile vanished. "You won't forget again, will you?"

"No, sir, I won't," Conar whispered.

The man cocked his head. "You know, Coni," he said sweetly, using the nickname Conar's family and friends used, "I like hurting you. It makes me happy inside." He put a finger on the dual scars along Conar's left cheek and traced one silent tear down the ravaged flesh. "Are you crying for me because you put me here? For what you did to me?"

"I'm sorry," Conar managed to say.

"You should be. You know why?"

"No, sir." His lips began to tremble; his shame and humiliation were complete.

The man put his face in Conar's. " Because I'll get you alone again and I'll hurt you again for sending me here."

With infinite care, the man put one grimy thumb into the corner of Conar's mouth, pried apart his teeth, hooked the digit over the tongue, then swooped down like a vulture and covered Conar's mouth with his own. He thrust his thick tongue deep inside Conar's mouth.

Conar struggled, gagging against the vile odor and feel of the man's mouth, the rape of his tongue. He felt his gorge rising. The tongue withdrew; the lips slithered off. In one lithe bound that belied his bulk and weight, he came to his knees and straddled Conar's thighs.

He laughed as his captive twisted violently to one side, doubled over and retched hard. "Just remember what I told you. I'll find you alone again, pretty boy. Make no mistake!"

Conar spat bile from his mouth, snorting it from his nose as the man stood. His vomit was smeared over his left cheek as they pulled him to his feet. His arms had gone numb, and he hung between two guards as his tormentor strode off.

"Walk, idiot!" one of the guard's snapped at him.

Conar did not sleep that night. "Who are you?" he whispered. "Who the hell are you?"

He wasn't sure if he was asking his question of the man who had tormented him, or of himself. One thing he was sure of, though, they had not blindfolded him on the way back into the bluffs and he now knew the way out!

That knowledge might one day prove to be his salvation.

* * *

He strove hard to survive, to put one foot ahead of the other until there was no longer a pathway for him to tread upon.

His body had been honed to perfection with three years of hard physical labor. His chest, once wide and smoothly muscled, was as hard as granite, the pectorals stretched taut against his flesh. His arms became bunched with thick cords of muscles and his stomach was ridged with hard lines.

They kept his hair trimmed raggedly about his shoulders, but since it was rarely washed except during one of the infrequent storms that visited Tyber's Isle, it had turned a greasy, dark golden brown, and often lay plastered to his neck and forehead. His face was kept hairless, the barber shaving him twice a week.

The twin scars pulling at the flesh of his left cheek were vivid purple streaks that told the tale of just how badly the making of them hurt Conar McGregor. His hands were thickly callused. The only thing soft about him was the rare, fleeting look in his pale blue eyes when he managed a brief glance at the men he still cared deeply for and who were also incarcerated in this hellhole.

Despite the fears he had upon learning where he was, the other inmates had not bothered him. His constant physical persecution by one group of guards might well have been enough to satisfy those who wished him ill. Seeing him beaten and tormented seemed to please some of the prisoners, while it bothered others. Such treatment was not doled out to the average inmate. Only Conar received the dispiteous ill-use that was a daily occurrence. If such abuse satisfied his enemies, it conversely served to unite those who were still loyal to him. There were times when he was being tortured that some of the inmates intervened in private, unseen ways to stop the punishment. No one, not even those who hated him, carried tales about those men who had helped.

That was the law of the Labyrinth. To tell meant a sharpened sliver of rock plunged into the gut.

* * *

Xander Hesar, the Labyrinth's imprisoned Healer, despised Lydon Drake. The man was a killer, a rapist, and could be as mean as a rapid dog. Whenever Drake came into the Healer's hut, Hesar had the wild urge to stick a scalpel between the burly man's ribs. It would be a blessing for Conar if Drake simply vanished.

Jah-Ma-El, Conar's half-brother, and Roget du Mer had managed to garner quite a few men still loyal to the royal house of McGregor. Most of the men were political prisoners, much as du Mer had been. No matter how vile the crimes of the others who swore fealty to the young Serenian Prince, there was still a spark of patriotism in their blood, some vestige of pride and loyalty to their homeland, some small bit of allegiance to the ruling family. These men formed a loose phalanx of secret security around Conar as best they could, running interference with other prisoners, beleaguering the guards who took satisfaction in tormenting the Prince, hindering their efforts.

But there were still those who hated Conar. Hated him and wanted to either kill or seriously maim him. Some had been put in the colony by the King, Conar's father, but there were about ten who had been remanded to the colony through the diligent efforts of Conar, himself.

Lydon Drake was just such a man.

Had Captain Holm van de Lar been there, he could have told Conar, reminded him, who the burly man was, what he had done to Holm's little girl. He could have warned Conar to keep as far away from Lydon Drake as possible.

Staring down at Conar as the young man lay lost in the throes of a violent fever, Lydon's face held not a flicker of emotion, no semblance of mercy. "How long is he going to be in here this time?"

The Healer shook his head. "I can't answer that. If you hadn't nearly worked him to death last night, he might not be here at all!"

"Just get the bastard back on his feet!" Drake stormed.

"Stay out of here," the Healer warned, and didn't flinch as Drake stared at him. "Leave him alone. If anything happens to him while he's here, I'll know who did it."

Lydon's glare leapt from the Healer to the patient and lingered. He had a need so great he could feel it boiling. His was a brooding need, a dark, insatiable bloodlust, a hunger to corrupt, to pervert, to totally destroy the young man lying unconscious. The aching urge inside him to cripple Conar grew stronger by the day.

"Get out!" the Healer snarled, seeing the emotion and recognizing it for what it was. "Else I'll have a talk with the Commandant about you!"

A snort of fury blew from Drake's nose. He spun around, slamming the medical hut door behind him, making the walls tremble.

The Healer ground his teeth with hate. "Worthless piece of cow dung!"

He walked to the cot where Conar lay. His face filled with concern. "You're really sick this time, aren't you, son?" he asked in a soft, worried voice. He put a hand on the young man's flushed cheek. The fever was raging; sweat dripped slowly down Conar's cheeks and neck. The Healer pushed aside a lank lock of dirty blond hair.

"Look what they've done to you, boy," he mumbled, scanning the still face.

Conar had been considered one of the handsomest men of his day. His boyish round face with the deeply cleft chin and thick tawny lashes over startlingly blue eyes had made the hearts of many a maid flutter with lust. Now, long golden lashes fanned the red-tinted cheeks, hid the blue of those eyes; the stillness of his face hid the dimple that always appeared in his right cheek when he laughed or smiled.

"Not that I've ever seen you smile," the Healer said sadly as he smoothed back Conar's hair, "but I know that dimple's there."

The door opened. The Healer turned, snatching back his hand from his patient's face. An audible sigh of relief came when he recognized Jah-Ma-El.