WINDREAPER (36 page)

Teal looked up as Roget slammed through the kitchen door at Ivor Keep, muttering dire predictions, then shouting for a servant boy to fetch him a raw beef steak. Teal smiled, lowered his head, and continued to eat his eggs and bacon. The table shook as Roget sat heavily in a chair beside him.

Roget grabbed Teal's tankard of milk and drained it. "You know what he needs?"

Teal kept his attention on his plate, afraid if he looked at Roget, he'd laugh. That was the last thing his brother needed and it could well be a potentially lethal mistake. He hid his mouth behind a napkin. "What?"

"He needs his ass kicked, that's what!" Roget grabbed the raw steak from the servant boy and slapped it on the purple bruise forming beneath his left eye. He glowered at the boy, whose grin vanished as soon as Roget hissed. But the boy sputtered laughter as he ran from the irate man.

"Ill-mannered little piece of dried snot!" Roget bellowed after the retreating boy. It was his favorite epithet for anyone who displeased him.

If he hadn't caught Roget's woebegone expression, Teal wouldn't have laughed. As it was, the look on Roget's unsmiling face was so comical, so unlike the self-possessed, stoic Roget du Mer, Teal laughed, spraying eggs and bits of bacon over the table.

"I'm so glad you find this amusing, Tealson. I do not!" Roget's palm painfully cuffed the back of Teal's head.

"Knock it off!" Teal sputtered, ears ringing, head aching. He scooted out of his chair. The raw steak sailed past his head. "Roget, enough!" A banana flew past his ear. "Enough, I say!" He sobered as an apple hit his shoulder with enough force to bring tears to his eyes. "Damn it, that hurt!"

"Aye, well his left hook hurt, too!"

Roget's heavy scowl sent Teal into a fresh spasm of laughter.

"You despicable shit!" Roget shouted.

Scraping back his chair from the table and sending it crashing to the floor, Roget ran after Teal, who made tracks down the hallway and into the keep proper.

* * *

Shalu Taborn watched Roget sprinting after his brother and grunted in sympathy. He gingerly fingered the lump on his jaw, knowing exactly how Roget felt. Sentian Heil did, too, he thought. That one had a broken nose!

"Good morning, Shalu!" Jah-Ma-El called cheerfully from the library door. He carried a huge tome of poetry under his arm. "Have a good night's rest?"

The Necroman turned a fierce glare at the warlock. He was not a morning person and Jah-Ma-El's unfailing good cheer annoyed him. He trudged into the kitchen where he shouted at the servant boy to stop the infernal laughter.

* * *

Jah-Ma-El shook his head. Everyone was like a cat with a sore tail in a roomful of foot soldiers with spiked boots. If someone wasn't speaking to someone else, they were shouting. If they weren't shouting, they were glaring. After only three days at Ivor, a killing might well take place any minute.

Sighing, the sorcerer lifted the book of poetry closer up his side. Since he didn't have duty until six that evening, he planned to spend his leisure time as far away from everyone else as possible. Opening the door to the drafty solarium, he heard a loud crash overhead.

He winced. It was going to be another one of those days.

* * *

Legion stood in the doorway and watched Brelan, Sentian, and Marsh struggle to hoist Conar onto a bare mattress in the center of an equally bare room. Marsh held both of Conar's ankles together while Brelan and Sentian each held a wrist.

"Damn you, Conar! Be still!" Brelan bellowed. When he heard Legion's snort, he craned his neck. "You think this is funny?"

"Do you see me laughing?" Legion looked at Brelan's soiled clothing and deduced what had happened—Conar had thrown the contents of his chamber pot over Brelan and, more than likely, made a mad dash for the door before Sentian and Marsh caught him. Conar's screaming and cursing had caught Legion's attention and he came to investigate.

"Get him down on the gods-be-damned mattress!" Sentian shouted. "I can't hold him all day!"

Snarling under his breath, Brelan yanked hard on Conar's right arm as he bucked and twisted. Wearing piss and offal was doing nothing for his humor. "I'll break your damned wrist if you don't stop it, Conar!"

Heaving Conar onto the mattress, Sentian and Brelan opened his arms wide and forced them to the corners. The soiled, overly-ripe smelling mattress rested on the floor instead of a frame, and they battled to slip his wrists into manacles nailed into the floorboards.

"Let me," Legion spat. As Brelan held Conar's right wrist to the mattress, Legion slipped the manacle in place, locking it.

"Son-of-a-whoring bitch!" burst from a spitting-mad Conar.

"Takes one to know one," Legion quipped.

As Sentian restrained Conar's hand long enough for Legion to lock that manacle, Conar managed to free one of his ankles from Marsh's hold. Conar's foot caught Marsh in the center of his chest and sent him crashing to the floor.

Legion chuckled as Edan came to his feet in a clumsy, painful crouch.

Conar up drew his legs and kicked at both Brelan and Sentian. His heel caught Brelan on the shoulder. A gleam of triumph lit the midnight eyes. But his revenge was short-lived. Sentian and Legion lunged, pinning his legs to the mattress, spreading them apart while Marsh rushed forward to manacle them to the floor.

"Cowards!" he screamed. "You sniveling, backstabbing turds!" He bucked against the chains, arching his back, and head off the mattress. The flesh on his wrists and ankles was already raw and bleeding from earlier attempts to get loose. He started hurling horrible obscenities at them, at their mothers, parts of their anatomies. He hissed and spat like a fighting feline. "I'll get you for this!"

"Not any time soon," Brelan said.

"Get out!" he screeched, his voice breaking with the force of the yell. "Get out and leave me the hell alone!"

Legion headed out the door, the other men following. Once closing the door behind them, Legion leaned against the wall, listening to the vile curses coming from the room.

"The anger will leave sometime tonight or tomorrow," Marsh said. "That is when the real ordeal will begin. Right now, he has his anger and frustration at what he feels is being unjustly done to him—that anger is overriding the withdrawal pains. When the anger dies, his cravings will set in." Edan ran a hand through his hair. He shook his head as a vitriolic curse toward him rang out from the other room.

"What do we do when his real pain starts?" Sentian asked.

Marsh let out a long breath. "You'll have to be strong. Believe me, it won't be easy. He'll beg. He'll make promises. He'll humiliate himself in order to get you to free him, to give him something for his pain. You'll have to ignore it. Be stronger than you've ever been, because it's not going to be easy to witness, nor easy to deny him."

"It's just so hard to see him like this," Sentian said in a hurt voice.

"The real horror hasn't even begun."

He no longer knew if it was day or night.

The pain in his gut grew intense, and the position in which he lay made the agony worse. He was twisted to his left side, his knees drawn tightly to his chest. His arms were flung wide, secured to the floorboard, and he was unable to rub the aching, cramping belly. His eyes squeezed shut, and tears escaped from beneath the lids. He was wet with perspiration, oily from it, and smelled terrible.

There were times when the pain was so great, he wet himself with his bodily fluids and excrement, and fought the helping hands that came to clean him. He howled his anger, or laughed hysterically as they fought to control him. He flung his body about, making contact with an unsuspecting nose, jaw, shoulder. He kicked out and sent someone grunting to the floor until they could secure his legs.

But that had been yesterday, he thought.

Or was it the day before?

He didn't know.

He didn't care.

All there was in his universe was excruciating torment.

He didn't recognize any of the men. Their faces were blurred, distorted. He heard them calling to him, speaking to him, commanding and demanding of him, but he couldn't understand their words.

Didn't try to.

Didn't want to.

Had no intention of doing so, either.

All he wanted was for them to unshackle him so he could find the flask that would take away the pain. He groaned at the thought of the seeping sweetness flowing down his throat, calming him, soothing him, taking away the godawful agony in his gut, salving the furious rash on his body.

He jerked against the iron bands around his wrists, wanted to unlock them with his magic, knew in his mind that he could, but forced himself not to. He flinched as a hand touched his brow, hissed at the man, called him an obscene name and lashed out with his feet. But the man had no doubt anticipated such a move, for he stepped nimbly out of the way. Frustrated, he tried to kick again, only to have his legs grabbed by hands that materialized from out of the darkness of his pain.

"
Get your filthy hands off me!"

"Should we chain him again?" someone asked.

The question penetrated Conar's red-hot pain. The thought of being secured spread-eagle while burning agony ate at his exposed stomach terrified him. "
No! Don't chain me again!"

"It will hurt him the more, but it has to be done," someone else remarked. "No one will be able to get near enough to restrain him in a few hours. The drug is leaving his system faster now and his pain will be worse."

"
Don't chain me!"
Protests did him no good, for the men dragged his legs apart and slipped his ankles into the manacles. He shouted his fury.

* * *

"He doesn't understand what we're doing," Sentian said. "He thinks we're torturing him." Easing his hands from Conar's legs, he sat back on his haunches. "And maybe we are."

Marsh shook his head. "You can't look at it that way. If you do, you'll weaken. He needs you to be strong."

"I don't know how much more I can take." Legion reached out to caress his brother's face, only to have a string of filth erupt from Conar's mouth.

"Ignore it," Brelan sighed, putting a reassuring hand on Legion's shoulder. "You can stand as much as it will take for him to get better."

"We all can," Teal agreed. "What we have to endure is nothing to what he's going through."

* * *

Conar struggled against the tight bands around his ankles and wrists, willing them to open. He felt one slip, the lock easing past a jagged tooth of the cog that held it together, and he screamed in rage. He used his waning energy to close the lock again, unintentionally making the restriction around his flesh tighter than it had been, but welcoming the new pain in the hope it would temporarily block out the greater agony.

The excruciating torment being forced on his helpless body was soul-shattering. He was utterly lost in a white-hot maze of pain that gripped him with vicious claws. Horrible cramps squeezed at his gut and doubled him over as much as the shackles would allow. His body shook with bone-jarring convulsions that left him weaker, even more defenseless against the ravaging talons tearing at his vitals.

His throat was raw from screaming and cursing and begging and shouting, his lips bitten in several places that oozed blood. Unable to control his bodily functions, the humiliating wetness of his urine and excrement soiling his breeches and the mattress became an agony unto itself.

His left wrist jerked free of the manacle. He twisted himself over the griping, lurching pain in his belly. In his agony, he couldn't think rationally, he couldn't remember why he was being hurt as he was.

"Why are you doing this to me? What have I done now?"

He placed his hand over his mouth to keep the cowardly words from escaping. Pressing tightly against his lips, he willed the hovering scream to sink back down his throat.

He was nearly oblivious to the comings and goings around him most of the time. He could barely hear the words of encouragement, of devotion, of coaxing. Could hardly feel the hands that cared for him with soothing caresses and tender strength. He saw only blurred faces of ogres bent on torturing him to his horrible death, felt hands on his wrist, pulling his arm to the mattress, securing it again.

"Don't," he begged weakly.

"How'd he get that hand free?" a disembodied voice asked from somewhere behind the man bending over him.

"It must not have been locked tightly."

The rubbery face faded from Conar's line of sight. He jerked his head from side to side, seeking someone to talk to, to beg, to curse, but he was alone again.

"Can't you stand to see what you're doing to me?" he called, hoping someone would answer.

No one did.

Intense, prolonged pain flooded back through his gut. He had to endure it alone, he thought wildly. No one could take away his pain; no one could make it stop. He had to wait it out.

But that wasn't easy.

He heard his pitiful whimpers, then listened with clinical detachment as he screamed in agony. Someone came in, looked down on him, touched him, but the face looked the same as all the others; one man's voice was identical to another; one man's touch felt exactly the same as all the others before him.

"Tough it out, little brother," the man said.

"Who are you?" Conar asked, but the man was already leaving.

Nothing seemed to penetrate his unbearable loneliness as he twisted and turned. His begging fell on deaf ears, even when he whimpered or screamed out his pain. Nevertheless, Conar hoped this man would listen to reason. The pain wasn't nearly so unbearable when he could draw up his knees to his chest. "Please let me pull up my legs."

"It puts more restriction on your chest. Marsh said that wasn't good."

"It hurts more when you tie me down!" he croaked, his voice dry and hoarse.

"It just seems that way."

Conar heard the man speak, but the words had no meaning. The tone of gentleness had registered, though. "Unchain me, please…I'll be good," he whispered, his voice childlike and lost.

Another man cleared his throat. "You can't, A'Lex."

"Maybe it does hurt him less…"

"Edan knows what he's talking about. Just leave him alone. He'll exhaust himself sooner and later and go to sleep."

Both men jumped as Conar's coarse, sneering words flooded the room.

"I hate you, you fucking bastards! You chicken shit sons-of-bitches! You want to break me, but you won't. Better men than you have tried and failed!"

* * *

It was sometime later that night that Conar managed to get free.

Sentian had come in to sit with him and had Legion's reluctant permission to unshackle Conar's feet and one wrist.

"Just be careful, Heil," Legion had cautioned. "He's so tired he's bound to drift off, and when he does, shackle him again."

Sitting with Conar was a chore Heil didn't relish. He kept his face averted from the man who sat on the mattress, knees drawn up to his chest. Conar's left arm was wrapped around his upraised knees, while his other was firmly secured to the flooring. He rocked back and forth, mumbling.

"Can't you sleep, Milord?" Sentian asked, risking a look at the petulant, sullen face that turned toward him.

"Eat shit and die."

An hour passed before Conar laid down, his body curled in a fetal position. His soft snores were almost immediate and Sentian breathed a sigh of relief.

The next thing he remembered was Brelan shaking him, saying Conar had been caught trying to mount a horse in the stable.

"Who caught him?" Sentian asked, his face hot with shame.

Brelan ran a hand over his sweaty face. "Me and Bent. Bent and Thom are bringing him back by way of the bath house."

* * *

Crashing came from the stairway. Curses and a string of filth echoed down the hallway as the sound of scuffling feet neared the door.

A strangled gasp of pain rose above the general din. Jah-Ma-El's voice rang out in a whimper. "Conar, that really hurt!"

Pushing past Legion, Bent and Thom came through the door, dragging a struggling Conar between them. Bent smelled none too good, and Thom had a red mark along his cheekbone. The men forced Conar toward the mattress and pushed him to his knees. Bent took both of Conar's hands while Thom and Marsh motioned for Brelan to help them. They flipped over their prisoner, drove him down to the mattress on his back. Legion stepped forward to help Bent restrain Conar's arms.

He bucked violently. Struggling in vain, he screamed. "Please! Please, don't do this to me again! I'm begging you. Don't do this! It hurts worse when you chain me down! Please don't do it!"

"It's necessary," Marsh said when Legion hesitated. "Don't listen."

Legion pursed his lips and snapped the iron band around his brother's wrist. When he saw the wounded, terror-filled face pleading with him, he stopped, his hand still on Conar's wrist.

"I'll do anything you want," Conar said. "I will. I will. I'll do anything."

Bent and Thom had moved away from Conar, but Legion remained on the mattress beside him. Marsh knelt on the other side, his gaze steady on Legion's face. "Don't do it. He can see you weakening. Don't listen."

Legion was aware of the others staring at him. A wealth of shame riveted him to where he knelt. He reached out a shaking, gentle hand to tenderly stroke back the wet, matted hair from Conar's forehead. "It's for your own good."

Conar's expression was pitiful, helpless. He nestled his cheek into Legion's outstretched hand, similar to the way a humbled dog nuzzled the hand of the master who has beaten him. "I'll do anything you want…"

"I just want you to get better." Legion placed a light kiss on his brother's brow. "Just get better." He watched trembling hope come into Conar's face.

"I'll let you do anything you want to me. Anything."

Legion grimaced in shock.

"You can do anything you want to me if you'll just unchain me."

"Legion," Marsh warned, touching his shoulder.

A'Lex violently shrugged off the restricting hand.

"Legion?" Conar asked as though the word had no meaning. "Just tell me what you want me to do." His voice was eager, childlike, subservient. "You can take me if you'd like. I can…"

As though the hounds of hell nipped at his heels, Legion lurched forward and gripped the manacle. Fumbling rapidly, he began to unsnap the band. "Get these damn things off my brother! Did you hear me?"

Marsh stopped him. "You can't do this. Look at him. He's counting on your guilt to release him."

"Get these damned manacles off him!" Legion yelled, shoving Marsh aside.

The others reluctantly unsnapped the bands and stood back. Legion picked up Conar and clasped him to his chest. Conar's arms went around Legion's shoulders, hugging him back. Tortured cries of pain and pity came from Legion as he rocked his younger brother against him.

"Get out of here," he ordered. "I'll stay with him. And have those damned chains removed in the morning."

"Legion, that's unwise…" Marsh began.

"You heard me!" Legion shouted. "I'll not see him chained again! I'll not have him degraded before any of you!"

Obviously angry, Marsh nodded. He pushed himself up from the mattress and left.

* * *

Outside the room, Marsh met Sentian's gaze.

"He was raped, you know."

"Kaileel?" Marsh asked, not really caring.

"Among others."

"The wages of sin, eh?" Marsh mumbled as he thrust his hands into his pockets.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Sentian challenged.

"What goes around, comes around."