WINDREAPER (38 page)

"Good morning." Legion was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, his chin resting on a forearm. He was looking at Conar, who struggled out of a restless sleep.

Legion's cheerful smile allied any fears Conar had concerning how his brother was going to act toward him. "Morning."

"Hungry? Think you could keep something down?"

Conar nodded.

"Teal?" Legion called. He unwound his massive body and stretched his arms over his head. When Teal opened the door, Legion turned. "Have the cook scramble some eggs for our friend."

Teal grinned. "He's hungry?" When Legion nodded, Teal swung his gaze to Conar. "How are you feeling?"

Conar shrugged, his head aching as he tried to move. For a moment, the room spun crazily away from him and he had to close his eyes.

"A bit woozie still," Teal observed, then left.

Conar eased himself up along the wall into a sitting position, taking a deep breath to still his vertigo. He brought up his hands, scrubbed at his face, and grimaced as the bristly beard scraped his palms. "Do I look as bad as I feel?"

"You're not feeling any better at all?" Legion inquired, frowning.

"I hurt."

Legion nodded. "Marsh says that will pass. You want a bath? And someone to help you shave?"

Conar looked at his trembling hands. "I would appreciate it." He clasped his shaking hands together, attempting to still them.

Legion's brows knit together in concern. "It will be all right."

"Will it?"

"The worst has passed, Conar. It's all downhill from here."

"Like a snowball into hell."

"After you eat, would you like to take a little walk outside in the fresh air? It'd be good for you."

"Whatever you want."

Teal arrived with a plate of scrambled eggs, buttered biscuits, and a tankard of strong tea. The gypsy babbled a mile a minute about inconsequential things that bordered on lunacy, but at least he held Conar's attention.

"Stay with him, du Mer," Legion said. "I won't be gone long. I'll have Sentian and Marsh get a bath ready for him."

"We'll be just fine, won't we?" Teal said cheerfully, then continued feeding Conar his breakfast.

* * *

Legion wasn't the least bit surprised that everyone in the keep knew Conar was on the mend at last. Everywhere he looked, he saw smiles and heard laughter that hadn't been in Ivor Keep since their arrival.

In the library, he sat beside Brelan on the long bench before the fire. "He seems to be well enough, but—"

"Give him time, Legion. He's been through hell these last few weeks. Is it a wonder he's a bit distracted? He'll come around."

"I don't like the look in his eyes, Bre. It scares me."

"You think he might try something again?"

"He might. He's awfully quiet."

"Then we don't leave him alone until we're sure." Brelan draped his arm around Legion's shoulder. "We take care of our brother."

* * *

The walk, like the food and bath, helped make the color rise in Conar's sunken cheeks, or so the others commented to him. His breeches were so loose they had buckled a belt around them to keep them from falling, and his shirt sagged across his shoulders, but the stroll through the crisp winter afternoon refreshed him.

He was unsteady on his feet, but had plenty of help as he ventured outside. Everyone had found a reason to be nearby, it seemed. If they thought they were fooling him with their game, they were wrong. Though he appreciated what they were doing, it meant little to him. He viewed it as one more reason to be in their debt, and that was something he didn't like. He bore no ill toward his men—they had saved his life, such as it was—but he didn't care one way or the other.

Once back inside, he sat on his mattress, easing the ache in his shaking legs. He hung his head with exhaustion; the short stroll had both winded and tired him. He didn't look up as Roget asked if he was sleepy. He merely nodded. But he did look up when Roget asked for his belt and held out his hand.

"Why?"

"Just give me the belt. You don't need it while you sleep." Roget's voice had taken on a stern note.

Sudden understanding hit him. "You think I'll use it to hang myself?"

"Give me the belt," Roget repeated.

Looking Roget in the eye, he unbuckled and drew the belt from around his waist, then held it out. He didn't say a word, only stretched out on the mattress. When he heard the rattle of iron, he looked up.

Behind Roget stood Thom Loure, holding a length of manacle chain.

"You're going to chain me, again?"

"No one can watch you right now and we—"

"You don't trust me."

Roget nodded. "You can't be trusted yet. You have to earn our trust all over again."

Conar's eyes shifted to the chain as Thom hunkered down to attach it to the iron band still around his left ankle. He shook his head, then turned over, his back to the men. When he heard the door close, he ground his teeth. Once their foofalls dissipated, he was at the window, glaring down into the frozen courtyard, grimacing in anger.

"Son-of-a-bitch." He pulled on the window bars that had been installed to keep him from escaping. He was about to stalk back to the mattress when one of the heavy brocade draperies caught his attention. A humorless smile slid into place as his gaze went up the long drapery sashes. He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door and his grin grew wider.

With all his waning strength, he grasped one of the long sashes and yanked until it came free. Staggering back to his mattress, he sat down and began to work with the sash. All the while, the same humorless, vindictive smile played over his mouth.

* * *

A few hours later, Roget came in to check on Conar. The first thing he saw was something dangling from a ceiling beam. His shocked look went from the dangling apparition to the man sitting against the wall, staring calmly back at him. Roget snarled and yelled over his shoulder. "Legion!"

Conar grinned devilishly.

Du Mer glared at Conar, taking in the casual way his legs were crossed at the ankles, at the way his arms were folded nonchalantly over his chest, the way his head was cocked to one side. He fumed with rage.
"Legion!"

Legion burst through the door and stopped, his attention going to the thing swinging from the ceiling. A look of horror passed over his face. "Where the hell did that come from?"

"Him!" Roget jabbed a finger at Conar.

"Roget took away my belt," Conar said. "He was afraid I'd hang myself. He didn't think about the drapery sashes, though. They make rather nice nooses, don't they?" There was a lilt to his weak voice.

"That's not funny!" Legion yelled, the color draining from his face.

Conar chuckled. "I didn't think so, either."

Legion turned on Roget. "Get that damned thing down from there!" Striding to the mattress, he glowered down at Conar. "If you ever do that again—"

"Then don't treat me like a child. I'm not going to do away with myself. I have other plans for my life. Ending it is not one of them."

"And we're supposed to believe that?" Legion shouted, his body shaking.

"Believe what you will. I was weak, I was stupid, I made a mistake. If it weren't for you and the others, I'd be dead now. I didn't realize how much my life meant to all of you. Not until Roget insisted on taking my belt. He said I had to earn your trust again. I realized that was important to me. You cared for me, in more ways than one. It's up to me now to finish what I started. To do what is expected of me."

"When you are well enough, we'll talk about you—"

"Let me show you something, Legion." Conar nodded toward the iron band around his ankle. He squinted and the band popped loose, falling to the mattress. His eyes lifted slowly to Legion's. "I could have done that at any time. As a matter of fact, I have done it many times." His gaze shifted to the window where, after a steady stare, the iron bars fell one at a time, crashing to the ground. "Or I could have done this." One moment Legion and Roget were glaring at him, the next he was no longer in the room.

"What the…" Roget whispered.

When a slight gust of wind flowed through the room, Conar materialized before their eyes and grinned. "See how easily I could have left you?"

Legion's mouth dropped open. Roget let out a pained groan.

"There is no power on earth that is capable of holding me here, Legion. I stayed because I wanted to, not because you made it so I couldn't leave."

Legion snapped his mouth shut. "I like proving you wrong, little boy. There is one power you can't control and manipulate, and it was that power that kept you prisoner."

"I stayed because it was
my
choice."

"You stayed because the power of love kept you here!"

"Your love, not mine. I had no love for myself or anyone else."

Roget looked at Legion. "He thinks we love him, A'Lex!"

Legion snorted. "What he doesn't know can't hurt him, I suppose."

"There is something else, Legion." Conar turned serious.

"What?" Legion growled, obviously still stunned by Conar's ability to disappear.

"It's about Liza."

Legion's tone turned cold. "What about her?"

"She has her powers back. I don't know how, but she does. I am going to need her to do what must be done. It was our combined power that fought Kaileel once before and won. This time, we can finish him."

Legion stiffened. "Liza is—"

"Your wife. I know. But she is still my helpmeet, Legion. I'm not up to traveling yet, but send Bre after her. He can protect her."

"That won't be necessary," Shalu called from the opened door. "The lady is here—and she has your youngest sons with her!"

A frosty hint of anger iced Legion A'Lex's hard words as he spoke to his wife. "What are you doing here?"

"It's been a long journey and I know the children are hungry. When I have fed—"

"The servants will feed them." After turning his cold glare to Teal du Mer, he asked the gypsy to take the two boys into the kitchen.

"It's been a long time since I've been at Ivor," Liza said, as if trying to forestall the scene she knew would be played out between them.

Legion folded his arms across his chest. "Answer me. What are you doing here?" He didn't know if he was angrier at her for coming—although he had never denied her doing so—or at his brother's calm command to have her brought there.

"Is he better?"

"Answer me!" Legion shouted. "You'll get no reply until you do!"

She looked at him. "I am here to help. He needs me, Legion."

The insane part of Legion that feared Liza's old love for Conar plunged an ice-cold blade into his belly and struck the center of his soul. He clenched his hands into fists and ground his teeth to still the urge to bellow his fury. "He has all the help he needs. There's no reason for you to have come. We have been perfectly capable of caring for his needs."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it. I'm not here to see to his physical needs." She blushed, her lovely face turning away from Legion's instant flare of rage. "His powers and mine are needed to defeat Tohre," she rushed on. "Conar knows it, and I know it. When my powers returned, I felt him calling to me."

"He did what? By all that's holy—"

"No!" she snapped. "He didn't call to me in the way you think. That part of him which is still connected to me, to our souls, called out. There will always be that connection, Legion. You can't change what was destined."

"And what if I don't let you see him?" he spat, clutching his fists. "What if I send you back, now, this minute?"

She shook her head. "You can't. There are forces at work here, stronger than any of us, that will see Conar and I together again. Not as husband and wife, for I am truly yours, in that respect, Milord. But as sorcerer and consort. He needs the combined strength of our powers to do what he knows
must
be done. It is time."

"You expect me to believe that? After everything between the two of you, you can be with him and he with you, and not give in to the passion I
know
still exists?"

"Legion," she sighed, speaking to him as she would a child, "I am your wife, your woman. I will never betray you."

His angry shout made the chandelier rattle. "You were willing to face a death sentence to protect him when I discovered he had taken you! He is my brother, but I will gut him if he ever touches you again!"

She put her hand on his arm. "Would you not have protected him? Do you now hate him so much that you would see him hurt for something in which he had no control?" Tears misted her lower lashes. "His life is far more important than mine."

"Not to me!" Legion stepped closer to her and leaned into her face, his lips drawn back in rage. "Heed me well, Madame…there will be no intercourse, magic or otherwise, between the two of you! I will see to that!"

"Legion—"

"Rest a while. Then you return to Boreas."

"I can not!"

"So help me you
will,
if I have to tie you to the pommel!" He stomped from the room, a vein throbbing in his temple, his stomach rolling with fear and jealousy and fury.

* * *

Liza stood in the center of the room for a long moment. Never once in their married life had she disobeyed Legion, but she knew in her heart, this time she would. There was something far more important than her husband's ego at stake. Something far more important than her wifely vows.

"Oh, Legion…why don't you understand?" Sitting on a delicate chair, she covered her face with her hands. "Why
won't
you understand?"

Tears spilled over the rim of her fingers. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs. Her love for Legion was as bright as ever, but there was now a darkness between them—a Conar-colored darkness—threatening to destroy the love they had worked so hard to keep fresh and alive. It pained her to know she would have to hurt Legion in order to meet the obligations higher powers had already decreed.

She knew in her heart the moment he came into the room—even before he touched her shoulder, she felt him. Lifting her head, she looked into his tired, melancholy eyes. Seeing the dark circles beneath the deep blue orbs made her heart ache. He was so thin, pale, she thought with dismay. His hair was limp, lusterless, unkempt as though he had recently raked his fingers through the golden mass to make himself presentable. But to her, he was the most handsome man who had ever lived, and his worried face was as dear to her as the air she breathed.

"You heard?" she asked, her voice soft and whispery.

He nodded and hunkered beside her.

His nearness made her heart thud painfully. "He doesn't understand how it has to be between us, Milord."

Taking her hands in his, he raised them to his lips, kissing her fingers. "He's angry right now, Liza. He'll listen to reason when the time comes."

Liza was shocked at how weak and hoarse voice. She felt the tremors in his hands. Withdrawing one of her own from his light grip, she laid it on his cheek, caressing the scarred flesh. "You are well, Milord?"

"I'm well enough."

His reaction to her touch hurt her. She could see the effort it was costing him not to respond to that touch. His need was there for anyone to see and yet she knew he would do nothing to satisfy it. A quivering smile formed on her lips. "I was worried about you."

He brought up his hand and covered hers as it rested on his cheek. He turned his lips into her palm, kissing the flesh. "There was no need, Milady."

"The Conar I knew would have never done such a thing."

He looked down. "The Conar you knew is long gone."

"I don't believe that." Her hand tightened on his cheek. "He may be hiding beneath the darkness in his eyes, but he is still there."

He looked up. "What is left of him still loves you, Milady."

Liza's eyes misted and she removed her hand from him. She twined her fingers together and laid her hands in her lap, then looked away from the naked hunger ravaging his handsome face.

"Liza, I am sorry. I should not have said that."

She shook her head. "It will always be so with us, Conar. You know that." Her voice broke. "Legion knows that."

"I never intended to hurt you. That night—"

"What was done, was done by a stranger, a man controlled by a drug. I knew when you took me you had no idea whose body it was you touched."

He flinched. "It was not the first time I have abused you so."

Liza refrained from touching him again, although her palms itched to feel his flesh. Her heart ached to take him in her arms and wipe away the misery lurking in his face. "Is that why you did what you did?"

"My lust could not be controlled, Liza. When I was taking—"

"That isn't what I meant. I was speaking of what you did afterward." She watched his head lower with what she knew was intense shame. She automatically reached out to lay her palm on his bent head, but stopped, knowing if she did, she would unleash emotions in the both of them that would be hard to quell. Instead, angry that she could not touch this man with anything bordering on friendship, her words were harsher than she intended. "Nothing is so bad that you have to die for it."

"I have much to apologize to you for, Elizabeth."

"Conar…"

He shook his head. "All these many months, the terrible things I have said to you, the petty cruelties—I can make no excuse for them." He looked across the room. "I can not ask you to forgive me, but I can ask you to try to understand." His voice broke and he got up, striding as far away from her as the room would allow.

Liza bowed her head, wanting desperately to go to him. Wanting to take him in her arms, to kiss him, to feel the touch of his body against hers. She ached with the need of wanting him, loving him still, desiring the lover in him, missing the friend. She knew it was a madness in her soul she would always feel for this man, a god-given desire that would never be sated. She looked up at him as he stood beside the blazing hearth. His back was to her, but she would always know how he felt, how his face looked when he was upset, as he was now. "I have understood, Conar. There is nothing to forgive you for. In the sight of the gods, we are still husband and wife."

"Little good it does us." His voice was hard, full of regret and anguish.

She got up and walked to him, wanting nothing more than to put her hand on his shoulder, to comfort him, to comfort herself. But she dared not. "I have something for you."

He staggered a bit as he turned to face her. When he saw her concern, he held up his hand. "I'm all right."

"Are you sure? You look so pale."

He smiled, the gentle, teasing smile she knew all too well, which had always been intended to reassure her. "Been out of the sunshine for a while."

Her eyes held his, assessing, measuring, assuring herself that he was, if not well, at least mending. She could tell nothing from his bland expression.

"I am fine, Liza," he repeated.

"And would not tell me otherwise if you weren't."

His smile turned boyish. "What is it you have?"

"You were always good at changing the subject, Conar!"

She pulled a long, intricately looped gold chain from within the folds of her bodice. What had appeared to be intertwining loops, was instead two separate chains. Each held a tapered, teardrop pendant. "I had this minted the day you left Boreas." She held one of the chains out to him.

* * *

Conar looked at the pendant, then lifted his gaze to hers, searching, trying to understand. He reached out to take the chain, and as his hand touched her fingers and the chain slipped into his fist, a shock went through his entire body, stunning him. He blinked rapidly and stared at the pool of gold in his palm.

"Do you know what it is you hold, Milord?" she asked.

He felt the warmth of her body still on the pendant, but he felt something more, something tangible, powerful, all-consuming. His body throbbed with the feeling flooding through him. His nerve-endings sang, pulsed, sent a quiver of immense strength through him. He closed his hand around the pendant, gripped it hard, felt the precious metal cutting into his scarred palm. The pressure soared up his arm and settled in his heart. "My marriage bracelet," he whispered in awe.

"Aye." She let out a breath. "I knew the moment you touched it you would know what it had been."

He drew his brows together. "But how? Where?"

A sad smile crossed her face. "Hern found it somewhere and hid it." A little laugh, small and touching, came from her trembling mouth. "He had hidden it only a few feet from where I had hidden mine."

Sudden overwhelming knowledge penetrated the sadness of remembering his old friend. "In the grotto, wasn't it?"

She nodded. "I felt it that night. The power returning, only I didn't know what it was."

He scowled. "That night, you saw me the way I truly am, didn't you?"

"Aye. I saw you as the Dark Overlord."

He cringed away from that knowledge, knowing what terror the sight of his red-glistening, viper-like eyes must have caused her.

"It doesn't matter," she hastened to say. "I don't fear you because of it."

"I never meant to hurt you, Liza," he said, his voice filled with guilt and shame.

"I know." She smiled at him through her tears.

Conar looked away from her lovely face. "I can feel tremendous power in this necklace."

"I had my bracelet and yours melted down, then formed into these two pendants. Your familiar resides now alongside mine, they have mated at last, their dual natures blending. That is the source of the power you are feeling. Now that those powers are combined, there is nothing we can not do."

He opened his fist and stared at the pendant. The chain slipped over his palm and dangled against his wrist.

"Put it on, Conar."

When he slipped the chain over his head, when the teardrop-shaped amulet settled over his heart, his entire body throbbed with the talisman's immense force. He smiled at her. "We are one again, Lady."

* * *

Liza felt as though she would burst into wracking sobs that would destroy her. The hope in his voice had been there, although she knew he had not heard it. She had to stop that hope from blossoming. "I tried to make Legion understand about the force of our powers. He would not."

He turned away. "He sees this with the eyes of a jealous husband, sees me with the eyes of a rival. There is nothing he can do to stop what will happen, Milady. He knows that, and he is afraid." He shook his head. "If you and I are ever destined to reunite, Legion will lose you, and he's not going to do so without a fight."

Her heart slammed painfully against her ribs. "Do you think the gods would do such a thing?"

He looked over his shoulder at her. "Give you back to me?"

She nodded.

"They might. I doubt it, but they might."

She stared at his dear face and wanted to scream at the hopelessness of their situation. Even with the ravaged flesh of his left cheek toward her, she thought him the most good-looking man ever to stride upon the earth and she knew she would always love him, would always want to be with him, consequences be damned.

Here was the man she had loved and lost. Here was the husband who had given her children and pleasure and laughter and more exasperation than any other living being. Here was the lover who had made her a woman, his woman, who had made her whole, who had fought an entire kingdom to keep her at his side. Here was the one man among millions who, with a smile, could turn her knees to water, her body to one giant blush of desire, and with his scathing tongue, transform her into a mindless virago intent on scratching the smirk from his handsome face. Here was a man women fought for, men died for, enemies plotted to destroy, and yet, looking at him as she was now, she could still see the same grinning boy who had taken on a trio of robbers with a careless charm that boggled the mind.