"What if he were to die? What would happen to the Queen?"
"Well, he died once before, and she survived." She stirred the sugar in her bowl, then lifted a spoonful of gruel to her lips, lowered it a fraction, and looked Regan in the eye. "I reckon she'd go on like she did then." She smiled. "Maybe Legion would take her back." The smile widened. "If not, maybe Brelan or that good-looking Prince Chase."
"But you wouldn't mourn him?"
"Me? Not in a million years!" She crammed the oatmeal in her mouth and spoke, toothlessly, around the glob. "Not for all the tea in Chrystallus!"
"Me, neither."
"Well, I'd say you got your reasons for hating the bastard, too."
"You think so?"
Sadie nodded. "Look how he treats you, boy! Here he is sending you off to that cold country, cutting you off from your family." She looked at him with pity. "He don't no more care for you than he does that rat skittering about in the corner over there." Her next words hardened his anger. "You're like that little rat, you know? If he were to see it, he'd rid the keep of it. That's how he sees you. Just a little pest to be got rid of."
Regan lowered his eyes, fearful of the woman seeing the deadly intent lurking there. Silently, he stood and made his way to the door.
"Don't let him smother you, boy!" Sadie called. "He will if he gets the chance."
"No, he won't...I'll smother him first."
Chapter 15
* * *
Somewhere near the false dawn, Conar awakened, knowing, instinctively feeling, that he wasn't alone in the room.
He turned his head, strained his vision, willing his sixth sense to penetrate the dark corners. His eyelids felt heavy, scratchy, and he closed them. Sighing, he turned his cheek into the pillow and tried to get back to sleep.
It wasn't easy.
He'd gotten into nasty arguments during the day with both Brelan and Roget, then had snapped at several of his men, who left in a rage over his accusations of incompetence. He'd encountered surly looks from at least three servants on the receiving end of some of his barbs, and their mumbled replies to his questions had set his teeth on edge. He'd even engaged in a shouting match with Grice over so stupid a matter as the way a portrait had been hung in the gallery.
He'd lain awake most of the night, trying to fathom the reason he had been in a foul mood. Thinking back on it, he deduced it was having to deal with Regan at breakfast. Having to send the boy away weighed heavily on his conscience. That could have caused his jitters. But also having Liza so near and yet so far away didn't help his frame of mind. Merely thinking about her had roused him, so he'd sent word to her that when she returned to the keep to keep out of his way. He explained why, and when the messenger came back with a note from her telling him to "take a cold shower," he had almost sought her out. But better judgment had prevailed and--much to his surprise--his overpowering passion left him suddenly in the midst of an argument with Teal.
Sighing again, he lifted his head, punched the pillow, and turned over. He came down hard on the pillow, an exhalation of annoyance issuing from his clenched teeth.
Yes, he knew what was wrong with him. He was horny. He ached for the woman across the hall. Wanted desperately to go to her, to lay with her, make love with her.
"It would not be right," Occultus had reminded him.
Conar turned onto his back, put his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.
What little sleep he had gotten had done him little good. He felt edgy, his nerves fraying. And his manhood throbbed. He tried to ignore it and found he had no willpower. He was so aroused, he ached, and thoughts of Liza kept intruding. He had to dig his nails into his palms to help alleviate the itch in his groin.
"I can't wait until Friday," he remembered Liza whispering as they parted at their doors that evening.
He groaned, thinking what Friday would bring, and wishing it was not Thursday morn.
A board creaked, a rafter groaned, wood popped in the grate. Off in the distance, a horse nickered--high-pitched, unearthly. Conar wondered at its strangeness. The sound seemed almost like a warning. Tensing, he felt a trickling of unease along his spine.
He turned his head toward the window--
And gasped. "What are you doing in here, Regan?"
The boy stood like a marble statue, blazing hatred back at him, hatred so hot it nearly sparkled in the moonlit room.
"Regan? What's wrong?"
Slowly, the boy raised his right hand above his head.
Conar's eyes flared, recognizing one of his own daggers in Regan's upraised fist. The dagger Conar thought he had lost. The curved, serrated crystal blade looked wicked in the child's grasp.
"What are you doing?" Conar whispered, his gaze lowering from the dagger to the child's face. For one frozen moment, they looked at one another--the father who ached for the loss of innocence in a child of his loins; the son with death written on his solemn young face.
Though something in the child's expression warned Conar he was about to strike, he never tried to stop him. Not even as the dagger began its downward curve toward his naked chest. Not even as the blade descended, biting deep into the hollow between his collarbone and shoulder did Conar attempt to deflect the blow.
He could only stare, confused and grief stricken, as the child grunted with the effort and pulled the blade free. He marveled at the boy's strength and purpose. In the back of his mind, he heard a sultry voice speaking to him and tried to distinguish the words, but Regan raised his hand again and the blade stabbed toward Conar.
Once more the tempered crystal dug into him. This time along his left rib cage, glancing off bone, leaving a wicked gash to pulse blood onto the white satin sheets.
Conar put up a trembling hand to halt the dagger's upward pull, for it had buried itself in the mattress beneath him. Snarling in fury, Regan reclaimed the blade. Conar gasped in pain when the edge pulled across his palm, leaving a gaping wound and blood dripping down his fingers.
"Regan?" he groaned. "Why?"
Again, the husky voice cooed to him, and he tried hard to make out the words. But in a flash of agony, the dagger buried itself to the hilt in Conar's side.
Moaning, Conar tried to roll away. The dagger pulled sideways across his side, opening a long cut before the child yanked it free.
"Die!"
The word seemed to pour from Regan's very soul.
Conar knew he wouldn't be able to deflect the next strike as it came toward his exposed back. In his heart, he knew Regan would make it the killing blow. He gripped the bloody sheet under him and tried to drag himself across the bed.
Once more the voice whispered to him and he felt himself slipping over the edge of consciousness. The mattress dipped under his son's small weight, and a battle cry shot from Regan's lips. Conar looked over his shoulder to see Regan kneeling on the bed, arms raised, both hands gripping the bloody dagger. He looked away, unable to endure the horrific sight.
He barely heard the boy's frantic scream of frustration as Occultus grabbed him and jerked the dagger from his fist.
He barely heard the shouts of men, Liza's scream of terror, as people gathered around and tried to assess the damage.
He barely felt the hands turning him over or heard the gasps of shock at all the blood.
What he experienced at last was the familiar, sultry voice speaking to him as though time hadn't moved forward.
In his fading light, he saw the woman's long black hair, flowing in the garden's breeze. Saw the lightly falling snow, felt the icy cold on his bare feet. He saw Raphaella's green eyes, blazing with sensual purpose as she cooed to him in her silken, husky voice.
Her words came clearly...
"Flesh of my flesh,
Blood of my blood,
Thrice the blow will come.
Torn the flesh,
Shed the blood,
Beware the source..."
Conar's eyes rolled back in his head as he whispered to those around him..."
My son."
* * * *
He wheeled his big, black, war stallion and trotted to where she stood. Before she realized what he was about, he bent low in the saddle, grabbed her around her waist, and swung her up before him.
Laughing at her protesting shriek, he kicked the sleek steed into a gallop, and stifled her protests with a firm, unrelenting squeeze around her body. He dragged against him. Her long ebony hair billowed in the wind, teasing his cheeks and curling around his forearms as he held the reins. He felt the soft curve of her bottom, resting along the hard cords of his muscled thighs.
In the rushing wind, he caught the sweet, familiar scent of lavender wafting from her. He breathed deeply. No longer was he aware of the stallion between his thighs or the wind rushing against his face as they flew over the desert sand. No blue sky beamed down from above; no sound of pounding hoofs came from his destrier. All sight and sound, smell and feel, was of the woman he held so tightly against him.
Then the image changed.
He no longer galloped across the hot sand, but found himself buried beneath it. He strained to look up through the rose-colored, suffocating sand surrounding him, but only a faint speck of light shone through the pebbly surface. He felt air being forced from him, and gasped in the scalding, grainy substance that did nothing to inflate his straining lungs. He coughed, gagged, clawed at the confining barrier.
To his horror, he discovered not the hot desert sand under which he had lain, but rough pine wood, scraping his palms, embedding itself under his furiously scratching fingernails. His hands encountered metal, first in one corner, then another, a third, a fourth. Stale air flowed through what appeared to be thin metal pipes, set in the corners of the wooden box.
In the back of his mind he knew plenty of air remained, that he could breathe easier if he'd only stop gasping, stop scratching so frantically at the wood. But the thought of being shut away, being forced into solitude, loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness, made him throw back his head as far as the tight structure would allow and scream. It became an inhuman bellow of despair and frustration, the ageless battle cry of a primeval warrior who has come to realize the fight had been futile, the battle lost.
With a suddenness that shook him to the core, he spiraled out of the box and found himself alone in the heat of an alien landscape. Black columns of smoke rose above high bluffs of dark crimson sand. He put up his hands to cover his ears and discovered his palms bloody, his wrists heavily shackled with thick, black bands. He tried to shake them off, but the manacles expanded, covered his arms from wrist to elbow.
He had never felt such loneliness. Here in the Void he was totally alone. Totally defenseless. There was no sound, no sensations of smell or touch. Cocooned in the vast belly of some timeless, ageless being, he felt the life being sucked from him. Fang-like pinpricks that caused him enormous agony. All he could do was think.
And those thoughts of wanting, of needing, of desiring, of being, of remembering hurt him, for they were something that he understood did not exist within the Void.
"When you enter the Void," he heard his enemy taunt, "the Void enters you!"
He knew Death stalked him, even though he could not smell Its violating stench.
Over and over in his imprisoned mind, he spoke her name, whispered it, caressed it. He struggled hard to conjure in his sightless, limited brain, his imprisoned body and his loneliness, her face and her body and her smile, but most of all, most importantly of all, her love.
Straining with all his might against the insidiously creeping darkness that suddenly began to invade his mind, he realized that even his thoughts were being sucked from him. And he knew when the blackness finally crept over him, when it seeped into his mind, when it filled his body and tainted his soul with poison, he would be forever lost in the Void.
"Liza..."
If he lost contact with her, even through thought and memory of which he was now only capable, he would be finished, deprived of existence except as a shadow in a world filled with shadows. He would endure an unspeakable hell for all eternity, knowing beyond any doubt that even without sight and sound and feel and touch, memory and thought, he would still be alive in his own mind with an intolerable loneliness--his own private hell.
If he allowed the darkness to conquer him, to settle the plains of his existence and take up residence in his mind, he would forfeit all that he had ever been.
"Liza..."
Struggling to keep the creeping, insidious blackness at bay, he forced his lips to move, to speak, to call out. No sound came from him, but he knew his lips moved, knew somewhere beyond the Void, she would hear--
"L...i...z...a...!"
Chapter 16
* * *
"Has the fever broken?" Sentian asked, coming to stand beside Shalu. He smiled wanly at the big Necroman, who leaned over the bed, his muscular forearm resting on the high headboard.
"No," Shalu answered. "He is hotter than ever." There were dark circles of fatigue and worry etched on his dark face. His rumpled hair and wrinkled clothes advertised he had slept in them the night before.
"Is there anything I can do, Milady?" Sentian inquired of Liza.
Slumped against the headboard, her arms wrapped around Conar's shivering body, she brushed away a tendril of sweat-drenched hair from his glistening forehead. She had not left his bedside for more than a few minutes at a time, had even slept beside him, his unconscious body in her arms.
"I'd appreciate fresh water, Senti. We need to bathe him again." She looked at her Sentinel. "The fever will break soon."
Shalu nodded. "It is the Labyrinthian fever more than his wounds that disable him. The wounds were clean and hit no vital spot. He bled more than he should have, but not so much that it has endangered his life." He ran a hand over his tired face. "That little shit chose his weapon well, for no other could have done such damage to Conar."
"He knew that," Sentian snarled. He looked at his lady. "I will bring water only if you will allow me to bathe him. You need rest."
Liza shrugged. "There will be time to sleep when he awakes. I'll not leave his side until then."
Brelan and Jah-Ma-El entered the room, then came to the bed and looked at their brother. What Brelan saw made his heart ache.
The raging fever caused Conar's flesh to glow a dull red. Even as Brelan watched, the convulsions that had gripped Conar innumerable times before, settled on him with a vengeance, and caught him in the throes of a wild delirium.
"Move, Elizabeth," he ordered, pulling her to her feet. He replaced her on the bed even as Jah-Ma-El dashed to the other side. Between them, they held Conar's thrashing arms. Sentian and Shalu sat at the foot of the bed to grip his legs.
Conar jerked, freeing an arm and a leg before the men stilled him. Obviously encased in red-hot waves of agony, he groaned, his eyes fluttering open, and he mumbled.
"We're here, little brother," Jah-Ma-El assured him, freeing a hand to stroke Conar's cheek. He smiled as the unfocused eyes swung his way. "Your brothers are with you."
"Jah-Ma-El?" The word sounded little more than a plea.
"Aye, it's me." He kissed the wet forehead.
Brelan called to him. Conar stirred at the sound, his lips trying to fashion his brother's name, but the unmerciful hands of darkness swooped up to claim him and he sank into unconsciousness once more.
Great spasms shook the bed frame. It took all four men to keep him on the mattress. Though he slept, caught in some unspeakable hell, with each touch of the gentle hands on his body, he whimpered in pain and what could only have been fear. Brelan could not imagine the horrors Conar's unconscious mind had undoubtedly conceived.
He whispered to his brother, taking the iced water Thom brought in to him. He washed Conar's brow, chest, and arms, then turned him and ran the cold rag over his scarred back.
Through what was left of the day, the men stayed with him. None allowed Liza near enough to the bed to sit down, turning aside her protests with gentle but st
ern shakes of their heads. They had formed an unspoken alliance to keep her at a distance while her lover convulsed with fever.
Near dawn of the second day, Conar began to regain consciousness. He stared at the men hovering over him. Brelan wasn't certain Conar recognized him, for it was obvious his pain was too great, the fever still rampaging through his system. His sweat-dampened hair lay plastered to his forehead and the febrile sheen in his eyes gave them a hellish glow.
"We need to change these sheets," Brelan said. He stepped back, allowing Bent to lift the man from the mattress. Conar blinked and turned Brelan's way. "It's all right. You just rest."
The sound of low cursing, spitting, like two tomcats fighting, made everyone turn. An angry and vulgar command came before the door flew open so swiftly it crashed against the wall.
"What the hell?" Brelan demanded, skirting the bed. Chand and Grice blocked the doorway, their backs toward the room. Grice shoved someone away. "What the hell's wrong with you two?"
Grice looked over his shoulder, a look of disgust on his handsome face. "This...this fool wants to enter. I said he couldn't!"
Leaning heavily on a crutch, pain settling on his red face, Legion A'Lex pushed himself away from the wall opposite the opened doorway, wincing at his injured shoulder. "I have a right to see him. If he is so ill, I will know it!"
"Where do you get the nerve to come here and demand anything?" Brelan snapped.
Legion's set and mulish expression brooked no interference. He hobbled toward the doorway, ignoring the way the Wynth brother's blocked his entrance. "He is my brother, too, Saur!"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you told him he was no longer any kin of yours."
"Leave off, Saur! I was angry. I didn't want anything to happen to him."
"You could have fooled us," Grice said.
Legion glared at his old friend. "Let me pass. There are things I have to say to him. I may not get the chance if I wait much longer."
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