He sat back and stared at her. "You are still beautiful. At first, I remembered every inch of your body. I knew every mole, every freckle, every birthmark." His voice was barely audible. "I knew what pleased it, what didn't." The look on his face was one of misery. "But over the years, I let those memories go. It hurt too much to think of them, knowing I might never touch you, never make love to that body again."
She backed away when he stood. He walked around her, taking in every detail of her nudity. He came up behind her, his body barely touching hers.
"After a while," he said, his breath fanning the hair at her nape, "even if I'd had you with me, I couldn't have made love to you."
She drew in a harsh breath when his hands cupped her shoulders. He pulled her back against him. She felt the silk of his black shirt, the coolness of the leather breeches against her. He kissed her shoulder. His lips trailed along the column of her neck; his tongue briefly touched her earlobe.
Liza moaned deep in her throat. "Conar," she whispered, then flinched when his mocking laughter tickled her ear.
His hands tightened on her arms. "Put your clothes on. I have no desire for other men's leavings. I can smell them on you." He let go of her and returned to his chair.
Her heart had skipped a beat at his insult, spoken so softly, like a lover's sigh against her ear. She wanted to fling herself at him, rip out his eyes. Instead, she gathered her clothing, dressed, then moved to the door.
"I didn't give you permission to leave," he snarled.
"I don't need your bloody permission in my home!"
Horribly aware he was lunging out of the chair, she clawed at the door, but he slammed it shut just as she opened it. Swinging around, she tried to get past him, but his hard body blocked her way.
"I wasn't aware this keep belonged to you, bitch!" He stepped in front of her as she tried to move around him. "I was under the impression this keep and everything in it belonged to the rightful heir to the throne of Serenia. That means every stone, every board, every nail—and every whore!"
She drew back her hand to strike him, but he caught it in one steely fist. He brought it down behind her, jerking her violently against him in the process.
"If you ever raise a hand to hit me, woman, I'll make you wish you hadn't!"
"Bastard," she gasped as he tightened his grip. "Let go of me, Conar!"
He released her so suddenly she stumbled. "Call me that name again, and I won't be held accountable for what I do to you."
"Why don't you want to be called by your given name?" she shouted, her bravery making her incautious. "Is it because you've defiled it so badly you're ashamed to hear it?"
He sprang at her, dragging her against him. "The only shame I have is that I can't get you out of my mind!" he yelled into her face. "Do you know how much it infuriates me to see my wife with another man? How much it makes my blood boil to know that man is one I had trusted? I lost so much, including that damned name you spoke, but I had no idea how much until I came back from that hell-hole and discovered you'd been knocked up with Galen's bastard before I had even left!"
"That's not—" Her teeth rattled as he shook her.
"I thought I could win it all back, or take it back, buy it back, and much of it I have, although much of it doesn't matter. But the thing I wanted most, the thing that kept me alive all those years when they stripped the hide off my back, starved me, worked me until I dropped, turned out to be something any man could have for the thrust of his cock!"
"You don't know what you're—"
"You are now one of those things that doesn't matter anymore. Just like that name doesn't matter. That man is gone—he's dead—and you helped kill him! But I'm alive, and I realized that you were not worth having if you could let any man fuck you for the price of the Serenian throne!" He let go of her, shoving her against the door.
"Corbin is not Galen's child!" she yelled, forgetting everything but her desire to hurt him as he had just hurt her.
He viciously wiped his palms down the front of his shirt, as though trying to wipe the feel of her from his flesh. He shook his head like a terrier wet from its bath, then snarled. "Whose pond scum is he, then?"
She slapped him as hard as she could, jerking his head sideways. Before she knew it, he struck back, knocking her to the floor. He straddled her prone body and grabbed a handful of her long hair.
"Whose?"
"Go to hell," she spat, her hair twisted in his grip.
The corners of his sensual mouth lifted in hot challenge. She felt the heat rush to her face. She couldn't back down—not now—and realized he knew it. He bent over and locked his gaze to hers, tightened his grip in her hair.
"Not Galen's bastard? Tell me who you spread your whoring legs for that time! That boy has too much McGregor in him! Was it Coron? Dyllon? Whose bastard is he?"
"Corbin McGregor is no bastard!"
"Whose?"
"Whose do you think?" she cried, tears of pain spilling down her cheeks.
"By all that's holy, bitch, if you tell me you slept with my father, I will slit your throat!" He slapped her across the mouth.
She became hysterical with terror. That he could imagine her sleeping with his father tore into her with steel claws. She struggled wildly. "Not your father's child, you fool! Corbin is your son!"
* * *
Conar released her as though she were a hot rock. Coming to his feet, he could only stare down at her as she sobbed on the floor between his spread legs. Burning with fury, he clenched and unclenched his fists. His gaze pinned her to the floor like a captured butterfly.
"You're lying!" he snarled.
"I was carrying him when they took you away. He was conceived that night in the grotto." She drew her knees up to her chest as she cried.
"And you let Tohre take him?" he whispered, absolutely stunned.
She buried her face in the rug. "I married Galen to keep him safe. I wanted Galen to think Corbin was his, that's why I married him so soon after you left. I thought if Tohre believed the babe was Galen's, he'd leave Corbin alone. I knew he'd try to take your child from me."
He turned away from the pain in her voice. He looked about, not seeing the furnishings of the study, but the dark and evil appliances in the Crypt of Learning at the Wind Temple at Corinth—things he now knew his child had seen firsthand. Had felt and endured.
"I tried to keep him safe, Conar. I would have done anything to keep him safe. He was all I had left of you!"
He heard pitiful screams coming from the darker shadows of the room; he could smell blood and urine and vomitous and spent semen. He shuddered and covered his face with his hands.
Not my son! Sweet Alel! Not my son!
"Galen tried to protect him, Conar. He tried to make everyone think Corbin was his. He doted on the child. He loved him. He was as good a father for our son as you would have wanted!"
Conar felt the flames, the scorch of the birch rods, the stinging astringent applied to broken and bleeding flesh. He felt the ungodly pain of the vile things men did to helpless children who couldn't fight back.
"But Tohre had known all along. He took Corbin while I was in labor with Galen's twins. He snatched Corbin before I could stop him!" Her keening wail became unearthly. "I'm sorry, Conar. I could not protect your son."
He looked down at her. "All I ever wanted was your love. You were all that was left of my life here. I tried to tell myself that I didn't want you, that I didn't need you, that I didn't love you. But I did." Tears spilled down his cheeks. "I was even willing to kill my brother to get you back, woman, and now you tell me this?" He lurched away from her. "You bore my son and you let Kaileel Tohre violate him? Let him do to my child what he did to me? Let him—"
His throat contracted. He stumbled to the door, flinging it so wide that it crashed back against its hinges, splintering the wood.
Conar ran from the room as though the demons of hell were on his heels.
PART II
Chapter 1
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br /> * * *
Kaileel Tohre stared into the flaming brazier hanging in the center of his private conjuring chamber. Thin lips pursed tightly together as seething rage twisted his face. His long stiletto-sharp nails raked across the exposed throat of the sacrificial victim lying on the altar. Bright crimson blood flowed from the gaping wound. After dipping his fingers in the blood fanning out over the alter, the Arch-Prelate smeared it on his face and neck, down the naked expanse of his chest and belly.
The warm blood chilled on his flesh and began to feel sticky and thick. Placing a cup beneath the severed jugular of the newborn girl he had murdered, he gathered the blood as it pulsed from the throat. When the chalice was full, he set it aside and reached for his ceremonial dagger. He sliced through the pitifully thin chest, splayed apart the skin, and tore the tiny heart from the chest cavity.
His lips stretched back in a pleased smile. Here was the essence of his longevity—the spilled blood of a newly born girl, torn from her mother's womb by Tohre, himself, untouched by other hands.
Invoking the primeval Dark-demons that controlled the Brotherhood of the Domination, he offered his service for another century of sinister duty. Raising the tiny heart toward the ceiling, he picked up the chalice and swore eternal damnation for his own black soul, then partook of the unholy communion of flesh and blood.
Energy, dark and primordial, filled Tohre's entire being. Mists of red and green—blending, darkening—flowed over him. Snaps of electricity singed through the room, radiating away from the burning brazier with its sickeningly green glow. Moans of the dead, groans of the dying, piteous screams of the damned, became a cacophony of shrieks and howls that rent the air with their obscene presence. A wind like the fiercest gale force of a North Sea storm whipped through the chamber, rippling Tohre's hair about his face and setting the brazier to swinging on its three golden chains.
Throwing back his head in communion with the dark elementals who slithered into the room through cracks in the stone floor, who oozed from the mortared joints of the walls, Kaileel opened his blood-encrusted mouth and howled defiance to the gods and goddesses of the White Path. With his hands still dripping innocent blood, he lifted them toward the heavens and mocked the forces of good with evil rebellion.
"Alel, hear me! Vestri, hear me! I defy you, oh Powers of the Right Path. I curse you, oh Sentinels of the White Way. Your names are defiled in this place; Your images desecrated. I consign You both to the outer reaches of the universe where You will dwell amongst the lesser gods I vanquished long ago. I send You through the Maelstrom, I imprison You within the Void from whence no light has ever come nor will ever shine!"
Taking the corpse from the altar, he held it over the brazier's flames.
"As innocent flesh is consumed by the fires of the Pit, as untainted blood, never mixed with the pollutant's of a woman's fluid, is drank, and the central core of the innocent's body is defiled, I consecrate my powers of magic to the forces of the Domination. I shed innocent blood! I devour innocent flesh with an unquenchable appetite, and in doing so, I claim the years of this vulgar female child and all the successions of her earthly generating power to produce offspring!"
Turning his back to the brazier, he spoke the forbidden names of the Five Obscene Gods of the Domination, invoking each of Them in sequence according to rank.
"Hear me, Oh Great Ones, Horned Elementals of Fire and Flood, Death and Destruction and Disease! I ask Your help in defeating an enemy who has threatened the power of our race. I beseech you to help me search him out and to destroy his immortal soul once and for all. I was weak in my dealings with him, lax in my vigilance, and I have no excuse as I humble myself before You to be punished as You see fit for my lack of direction in crushing Your enemy. I will scourge my flesh. I will fast. I will deny myself the pleasures of the body, if You will grant me this blessing.
"Help me find him, oh, Demons of the Pit. Help me bring him to his knees to honor You. Give me the way to destroy the one called the Raven—the Dark Overlord of the Wind!"
A blinding light sang through the chamber and struck Tohre directly in the center of his heart, driving him to his knees. Pain, the likes of which he had never known in his ageless lifetimes, burst through him like an erupting volcano spewing ash and lava from the vile brimstone caverns of the Fire-pit. He grasped his chest, fearful his heart would explode. He felt his blood boiling, singeing his flesh, coursing through him as though a million ants were devouring his arteries. He doubled over, gasping as the pain intensified, until he felt nothing but the crushing, burning weight of it. He tasted the metallic dryness within his mouth as he sucked in large breaths.
As one final squeeze of agony ripped through his chest and spread rapidly down his left arm, he slipped beyond the red and green mists of his conjuring chamber and into the black mist of unconsciousness.
* * *
Sometime near dawn of the following day, the Arch-Prelate woke in his bedchamber, serving men and acolytes hovering above him with worried faces. He gazed about the room and was surprised when only one half of his vision still functioned.
He tried to turn his head, and couldn't.
He tried to lift his hand, and couldn't.
He tried to speak and found his tongue thick inside his mouth, his lips unmoving.
His one good eye widened in horror as Robert MacCorkingdale came to stand over him, a tight smile of gloating on his sensual lips.
"You have had a massive stroke, Holiness," the young man said with just the right amount of empathy in his silky voice. "The Prelates are in conference even as I speak. Another shall be appointed to lead us until you are well once more." He straightened, looking down at Tohre with an unholy degree of satisfaction.
Kaileel's mind reeled with the implications of his illness. He was trapped inside a paralyzed body while his mind still functioned with the ease of a youth. If he could not hold the reins of his office, a power struggle, no doubt led by the ambitious bastard standing over him, would see the Cardinals choose another to carry on in his stead. He knew there were none among these rabble were capable of defeating Conar McGregor.
With every ounce of willpower he held, Tohre forced his mangled tongue to work. In garbled words thick with spite, he managed to speak. "I…am…in control. I…need no…movement…to do what must…be…done!"
MacCorkingdale smiled with spite. "How will you fight from your bed? The Order needs a strong man, a man capable of leading."
"Out." His voice turned hoarse from the mighty effort to speak.
"You are through, Tohre. You can not lead from where you lay!"
"Out!"
Robbie bowed with condescension, and smirked of arrogance. "As you wish, Holiness."
Even as his foggy mind battled with the problem of his affliction, Tohre seethed inside his captive body. Now, more than ever, he would see Conar McGregor defeated. He would have the man brought before him in chains, and he, himself, would flay the flesh from McGregor's bones and let him die in agonized torture.
The Five Obscene Gods had never failed him, had never turned a blind eye to his request. He had confidence in Their ultimate evil, and knew They would find a way to bring Conar to his knees before Them.
A movement along the perimeter of his vision broke his musing. He willed himself to focus on a blurred face as it came to hover above him. As his sight grew clearer, he felt bile rising in his throat.
A woman stood above him, her long blond hair lit by the candlelight on his bed table. Her face was familiar, but he couldn't place where he had seen her.
"Who?" he forced his lips to form.
She smiled. He felt the power of a kindred spirit, for her smile was pure evil.
"Does it matter who I am? What matters is that I am here to help." Her ruby red lips moved into a lewd parody of a seductive grin.
"To…do…what?" he slobbered, spittle oozing down his nonfunctional mouth.
Now, a predatory grin stretched over pearly white teeth. "To find and
defeat and then, ultimately destroy, Conar McGregor!"
Then Tohre recognized her—a banished daughter of the outlawed Multitude, an outcast from her own kind. This woman, known among the Brotherhood as the Webspinner, had lent her support to the Dark-demons many times.
Even though his lips never moved, Kaileel Tohre smiled.
Chapter 2
* * *
Conar kept himself away from the main part of the keep since the night he had spoken with Liza, the night he had learned he was Corbin's father. He had his meals brought to his room, spoke little to anyone, and denied Amber-lea access to his chambers. He wanted no female pawing him. He later took up residency in the dank, dismal confines of the dungeon's punishment cells, sinking once more into brooding silences that raised eyebrows among his men and worry among his friends.
Now, snarling at the laces on his shirt that refused to be tied—his clumsiness of late had also become apparent to all who saw him—he threw the offending apparel into the corner of his cell and jerked on a shirt that required no lacing. He was about to pull on his boots when the dungeon's iron door opened. His lips pursed together in an angry sneer. This was one confrontation he had been avoiding like the plague.
"May I speak with you, Lord Conar?" the boy asked.
Conar took a deep breath and nodded, then pulled on his boots.
Corbin stood just inside the cell door. "You would not come to me, so I came to you," he mumbled. His fingers nervously toyed with the end of his tunic. He didn't look up as he continued. "I know you think of me as Galen McGregor's child, but in your heart you know I am yours."
Conar's heart stilled. "Aye, your mother has so informed me."
"I knew the moment I saw you in the Abbey. The veil of mist that had hidden you from my mother, did not hide you from me, Father." His face paled. "I would have known you anywhere, for my heart felt the pull."
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