Windlegends Saga - The Windhealer Part 17

"I said enough!" Brelan covered his ears, flung himself on the bed, curling into a fetal position.

"You can't hide from it! If you don't do something, they'll eventually kill him or push him beyond the point, where it won't matter if he lives or dies!"

Chapter 5.

Holm lay in his bunk, praying to every G.o.d he knew that everything he and Brelan Saur had planned would be seen to its completion. As the ship drew closer to the wild tangle of deadly coral reefs blocking the entrance to the island, Holm began to fidget. His eyes constantly roamed the horizon, his ears listening for the change in the wind that was a sign the entrance was near. Tonight as he lay awake in the great cabin of his home away from home, he went over every detail again as though it was the first time. There could be no mistakes, no margin for error. Lives depended on it, even his own.

Only once had they encountered trouble, three days before.

There was no doubt in Holm's mind, as there was in some of his crew's, that they had sunk the prison ship, theBorstal, a black-masted, black-hulled h.e.l.l ship, as it made a deadhead run from Ghurn Colony. They had broadsided the b.i.t.c.h, laid her over, and not a survivor remained to tell the tale. Some of the crew had sworn they had seen a longboat rowing out to sea, but Holm knew better. When he aimed his guns at a ship, he meant business. TheBorstal lay at the bottom of the sea, her crew nourishment for the denizens of the deep.

Holm chuckled. He'd gotten a good look at the captain's face, that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h who ran theBorstal. There'd been fear in that face. It was a fear the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had no doubt seen on many a face he had carted off to Tyber's Isle.

"I bet you would trade places, wouldn't you, you motherless a.s.s?" Holm asked the dead man's screaming face as he remembered seeing it.

Van de Lar put his hands behind his head and grinned at the swaying lantern in the center of his cabin. This was going to be the last trip for him. No more carrying goods halfway around the world; no more lengthy trips away from Mary and Jenny; no more lonely nights spent with a bottle, longing for the comforts of his seaside hut near Ciona. His old bones were starting to feel their age these last few months. He reckoned his eyesight was about useless for reading the s.e.xtant and such. h.e.l.l, he thought with a snort, he couldn't even read his pocket watch! He had almost convinced himself to retire before Lord Saur had called, needing him for this trip. Even if he'd retired, nothing in this world, or the next, would've prevented him from doing this in memory of the Prince Conar.

Nodding, Holm lost his smile.

There was one more thing he and his beloved lady, theBoreas Queen -that regal lady who had taken him many miles and put as many miles on him-had to do before he gave up the sea.

"And we'll do it, won't we, girl?" he whispered to the creaking timbers. "It was our destiny."

In the ship's hold was a special place reserved and respected by all on board. Scattered along the teakwood planking was a thin layer of Serenian soil laid for a special purpose. To cushion the coffin that held the mortal remains of that fine man who had been denied burial in his home soil. In loyalty to the McGregor family, Holm meant to see that coffin carried back to the sh.o.r.es of Serenia and laid to rest, secretly, on the seaside farm where he and his family lived.

"Aye," Holm pledged to the heavens, "home where me and Mary and Jenny can see to him." The image of Jenny laying daisies on the Prince's grave brought tears to his eyes. "Home with us, Your Highness. I'll take you home with us."

"If Lydon Drake comes anywhere near my property again, I'll kill him! Understand?"

Appolyon looked at Brelan with an amused look of disdain. "What is all the problem, Saur? It's not as if the b.a.s.t.a.r.d has never been had!" There was a t.i.tter of laughter. "You do it all the time."

Brelan leaned over the man's ornate desk and fixed him with what he knew had to be one of the fiercest sneers he had ever formed. In a voice deadly quiet, lethal with intent, Brelan explained. "If he so much as comes near him, I'll stake out Drake in the courtyard, gut him myself and pull out his innards, inch by inch. I'll stuff 'em back in and pull 'em out again and again until that son-of-a-whoring-b.i.t.c.h is nothing more than running mush!"

Appolyon blanched. He managed to temple fingers that tried to shake. "I see." "I hope so. If Tohre finds out Conar was gang-raped, and you let it happen..." Appolyon's teeth clicked together. "I let it happen?" "You!"Brelan shouted, his face a flaming suffusion of fury. "He'll be kept away," the fat man stuttered, spreading his hands in apology. "I promise." "And those other maggots!" "Of course." Appolyon stood, following Brelan to the door. "Ah, there's no reason...that is to say, no urgent reason...to, ah, let Tohre know." His face crinkled in worry. "Is there, Lord Saur?" "Keep that mad dog away from my property!" Brelan slammed through the door. He shouted at a pa.s.sing guard to have Conar brought to his hut as soon as the Healer was finished. Appolyon slumped into a chair, fanned himself. He flinched as his door opened. "You let that worthless s.h.i.t scare you, didn't you?" Lydon sneered. "Keep away from McGregor. I mean it!" Drake's lip lifted in taunt. "Wasn't it you who said I could have him?" Appolyon's hands covered his face. "No...no..." "You did! Now that it's been done, you ain't got the stomach to see it through." He glared down. "It was you who wanted him broken in, tamed, wasn't that what you called it? It was your bed you wanted him in, not Saur's." Drake looked out the window and stiffened as he saw Conar walking alongside a guard to Saur's hut. "Aye, well he be broken in, all right. I saw to that!"

"Saur'll kill you," the Commandant warned. A dry, mirthless laugh twisted Drake's mouth. "Not if I kill him first!"

* * * Brelan nodded, giving the guard permission to usher Conar inside. "The Healer said he was still not healed properly." The guard's stare crawled over Brelan with distaste. "He said to leave him alone." Brelan bit his tongue to keep the humiliation and the denial from erupting from his lips. "Stay here," the guard said gently to Conar, then looked at Brelan. "I better not hear of nothing happening." Brelan lifted one thick brow in challenge. "I mean it," the guard spat through clenched teeth. "Them men will pay for what they did." "Get the h.e.l.l out of here," Brelan ordered in as pleasant a voice as he would have used to coerce a virgin out of her burden.

"I don't take kindly to threats and-"

"Take your a.s.s out of my room"-Brelan smiled-"so my brother can get to bed, or do you plan on him standing in the middle of the floor all night?"

The guard's face colored with rage.

Brelan pointed his sword at the guard's chest. "I appreciate your loyalty. However, if he is to be cared for in the way our King-your King-requests, you'll have to let me decide what rumors are flitted about concerning what goes on here. Rumors, I might add, that Lydon started."

"I don't like you, Saur."

"I'm supposed to care?" Brelan flicked his wrist; the laces of the guard's shirt fell away.

A tiny flicker of life appeared in Conar's eyes. He turned toward the guard. Their gazes met briefly and the man saw no fear, only detachment.

"Get gone!" Brelan said with exasperation, waving the sword.

"You'd best remember me, Saur. My name is Daniel Pauley."

"I'll engrave your name in the palm of my hand!"

"Hurt this man, and I'll carve it on your heart!" The guard cast a look at Conar and left, slamming the door behind him.

Brelan tossed his weapon to the settee. He'd been warned about how to handle Conar and wanted to do what was best. He pointed to the bed. "Lie down, Coni."

Conar moved obediently and sat down. He looked up to Brelan for further instructions.

If someone had whacked him with a heavy meat mallet, it couldn't have hurt Brelan more than the one reflexive action that had been ingrained into his brother's tormented psyche.

"I'm not going to hurt you, little brother."

"I know..."

"Then lie down." He watched as Conar stiffly stretched out on the bed. "You won't be comfortable like that, will you?"

Conar drew his knees up to his chest, winced, and clasped his hands between his thighs.

Brelan turned, tense and stiff, staring wide-eyed at the wall. He lit a candle and carried it to the bedside table. "Do you want to undress?"

Conar violently shook his head.

Brelan took off his shirt, tossed it to the chair and walked to the other side of the bed. He sat, pulled off his boots and socks and leaned against the headboard. He crossed his bare feet, wondered when he had picked up this habit of sleeping with his pants on, knew it had been since returning to the Labyrinth, and shook his head. One had to be ready at all times in a place like this. Going about with your bare a.r.s.e waving in the breeze was a limitation a cautious man tried to avoid. He chuckled, felt Conar tense, and stopped.

"I was thinking about when I got caught without my clothes at Sherind's. Remember? Over at Felias Spiel's farm? I'll bet my keep at Ciona that Sentian Heil doesn't know all there is to know about his sweet wife!" Deep laughter spread up out of Brelan's chest. "Wonder what that stiff neck would say if I was to tell him about the games Sherind taught me."

"Better not tell..."

Brelan nodded, pleased that his brother had spoken. "Wouldn't be wise, eh? You're probably right." Brelan yawned, and casually let his arm fall above Conar's bent head. His fingertips touched freshly washed blond hair and he was content to stroke the strands. "But it would do my heart good to tell him about that time when I lost my clothes." He moved his hand into the thick tumble of Conar's hair and watched his brother's lids close. He rested the palm on Conar's head. "Sleep, little brother...just sleep."

After a while, he found himself staring into Conar's eyes. In that brief look, something revealed itself. Brelan recognized it as the certainty of a world gone suddenly, irretrievably to pieces for the man. It was all Brelan could stand.

"It's going to be all right." Brelan drew his brother into his arms, and cradled Conar's head against his shoulder. He wanted nothing more than to protect Conar from the dark recesses that were trying to lay claim to his sanity. "I promise."

The self-denial he had willed himself to endure was centered around Conar, along with the love he had denied his younger brother. It wasn't as hard as he thought to relinquish that part of himself he'd held captive. No one could help Conar but him. Love was the answer, would be the way to bring Conar out of his nightmare and into the soul-saving light.

"We're going to leave this place and never look back," he said. "I'm taking you back to where you belong. We are blood-brothers." His arms tightened. "Two of a kind."

Words from the past shot through Brelan like lightning. He heard them as clearly, saw the characters moving across the stage of his memory, as though he was watching a play.

It had been a stormy day at Boreas. The three brothers-Legion, Brelan and Conar-had been to Ivor Keep and were trying to get back to Boreas before the storm could make roads impa.s.sable. Conar's horse had thrown a shoe. The boys had dismounted, hovering in a shelter of spreading live oaks to get away from the worst part of the lashing rain. Drenched to the skin, sneezing, furious that he would not be in time for supper, Conar had ranted that it was Brelan's fault.

"How?" Brelan, all of seventeen, had bellowed, hostile as he gazed at his antagonist.

"It is!" Conar snarled in his heir-apparent voice. "You're supposed to see to these things!"

"I'm supposed to see to your horse?"

"You are, by birth, my servant!" Conar snapped with the arrogance of a would-be monarch.

"Yourwhat?" Brelan lunged at his brother, knocked him to the ground in a free-for-all that had bloodied both boys' noses, along with Legion's.

It was then all the trouble began. Brelan left Boreas, vowing never to visit again, as long as Conar was heir to the throne.

"I'll never be that twerp's servant!" Brelan shouted.

"The trouble with you two," Legion told Brelan years later, "is you're both cut from the same pattern. You've been fashioned from corduroy: tough and st.u.r.dy, rough around the edges when you get unraveled. Conar is sewn from fleece: smooth, strong, polished, yet durable, finely st.i.tched together as a Crown Prince should be. You're just too d.a.m.n much alike. Your faults are his, and his faults are yours."

Brelan had known that all along, but refused to admit it.

Conar had wrapped his world around Elizabeth Wynth, and when she had been forced from him, his life had been rent apart. The material of his world now lay tattered, dry-rotting in the arid wilderness of the Labyrinth. Brelan's world had revolved around his love for the same woman. The material of his life was coming apart at the seams, just as Conar's, and Brelan wondered if any amount of thread could ever st.i.tch their lives together again.

Aye, he thought, hearing Legion's words again. The patterns were the same: two lives cut from different clothes but coming unraveled in a similar way.

Looking at Conar, at the purple bruise along the right cheek, the rope burns on the wrists, Brelan knew an insane rage that shook him to the very core. It hurt him so deeply he found it hard to breathe. What they had done to Conar, to his flesh and blood, they had done to him, as well.

"I'll protect you, Conar," Brelan swore. "With my last breath, if necessary."

Conar had been so numb, so deep in his own pain, he had forgotten about the danger to those who would dare show him a smattering of kindness. His memory suddenly returned. He pushed away from Brelan, rolled from the bed and stood beside it, swaying, wincing at his pain. His only thought was to put distance between him and Brelan, to protect his brother so he would not be dragged into the same quagmire of misery.

"Come back to bed," Brelan said, gauging the reactions, the emotions flitting like wildfire across Conar's pinched face. "You need to lie down."

Hopelessness played across his face, then fatigue, then loneliness, bubbled to the surface, then fear, confusion, and finally, total despair.

All energy seemed to drain from him. Conar sat. All the light left his eyes, all the life from his tired body. He sat with the backs of his hands on his thighs, his head hanging.

"Lie down," Brelan ordered in a voice both stern and fatherly.

Conar looked over his shoulder. His voice was without inflection. "Let them have me. I'm not worth saving."

Saur wanted to shout, to slam his fist into anything that would give, but he didn't. He put his hands on Conar's shoulders and brought him down to lie beside him, not putting his arms around his brother this time. His voice was measured, a.s.sured. "No matter what they did, they never touched what you truly are. No matter what theyever do, they can never make you any less a man."

The blond head snapped around. The intensity of the blue gaze was probing, needing. "You still think I am a man...?"

"They didn't geld you, if that's what you think."

"They might as well have." Conar turned his head, shutting out the earnest, warm affection looking back at him. "I'm sure as h.e.l.l not a man anymore."

"Tell me what to do, Conar. Tell me how to make it better."

Conar wished he knew, but didn't. He hurt everywhere. He was spiraling into an abyss that loomed ever closer and only knew he didn't want to be sucked into chaos forever.

"Lay down," Brelan encouraged.

Conar tensed, then pressed himself as close to Brelan's as he could get. "Hold me," he pleaded, his gasping breath coming in heaves. "Just hold me!"

Brelan gripped his brother. "I've got you."

A violent shudder ran through Conar. He jerked up his head from Brelan's shoulder and stared blindly. "Tell me...about...home," he gasped, his voice strong, although hitching.

"Home?" It was a word that made no sense to Brelan. He stared into Conar's suddenly bright eyes, saw desperation, felt the need. He swallowed. "Boreas? Shall I tell you about the mountains? About Mount Serenia and the snow? About how cold and crisp it is? And how sweet? Or what about the ocean? Shall I tell you about how blue it is? How when the sunlight hits the waves, they turn to silver and lace? What about the forests? The trees are greener than anywhere else. As green as emeralds. As green as..." He stopped, panicking at where his words had almost taken him. He veered off, knew Conar hadn't been fooled.

"As...her...eyes..." came the gentle rebuke.

"And the palace? Remember how splendid the Palace of the Winds is? The marble and the velvet, the gold and precious gems?" He felt Conar tremble, thought he was crying, but when he looked down, he saw the blue eyes dry, narrowed with pain.

"I'll never...never see...her again."

"That's not true." Brelan had felt a trickle of moisture running down the side of his naked chest, over his ribs and under his back, and he realized with a sinking heart that it wasn't sweat from where their bodies touched. Conar was desperately trying not to cry, and there was a silent, catching movement in his chest that was almost indiscernible.

"It's all right," he said, smoothing the blond hair away from Conar's forehead. He placed a light kiss on the flaxen strands.

A torrent of heart-rending sobs broke from Conar's swollen lips; his entire body shook from the depths of his grief.

Tears. Hurt tears, angry tears, tears of self-pity, of self-doubt, of loneliness, emptiness, misery, hopelessness, burst from him like the walls of a collapsing dam. They were tears he had held for years, tears he'd not shed into filthy bedding, had been unable to voice, that were now being shed because they could no longer be contained.

"Let it out," Brelan cooed, gently rocking him, holding his head as he wept, buffeting him as the hard shudders of grief and pain tore through Conar. "Let it all out."

"I...love...you... Brelan," the wretched, breaking voice whispered.

Brelan flinched. "I love you, too."

Chapter 6.

Hern Arbra was released from the Indoctrination Hut. He stood in the glare of the hot morning sun and stared across the compound to where the other men had broken into small groups to eat their morning meal. His fists clenched as he searched for six men in particular.

It had been too long now, he reminded himself. Too long that he watched Conar undergo abuses and degradation that had become a way of life. Du Mer and Jah-Ma-El had tried to make him understand that it was for Conar's safety to overlook petty torments he had been suffering. Hern no longer agreed. He had spent the last three days chained to the wall, his wrists bleeding, his gut seething with the injustices that were constantly being piled on his former pupil, and now this, this horrible thing that had turned Conar still as death.