WindDeceiver (3 page)

Sweet Merciful Alel! He was among his worst enemies. The thought pushed him over the edge into unconsciousness once more.

Balizar ate his food with little or no relish. There was something about their visitor, that young man lying inside Asher’s tent, that worried him.

“Who do you think he is?” Asher asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Did you see his back?”

Balizar nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “My guess is he’s a runaway.” He sopped up a puddle of gravy with his bread then plopped it in his mouth. “Whoever owned him did not treat him well.”

“Maybe he did something to deserve the beating,” Rupine, the physician interjected.

“No man deserves being beaten like that,” Balizar snarled and tossed his tin plate down.

“Animals don’t even deserve to be beaten like that boy was.”

“He said the strangest thing to me,” Rachel said as she picked up Balizar’s plate. She looked at their leader. “He asked where I had been.”

“He seems to know you, too, Balizar,” Asher remarked. “Did you see the way he kept staring at you?”

Balizar had. He scowled heavily. “I need to talk to him as soon as he wakes.” He got up and dusted off his djebella. “Have someone come get me as soon as he does.”

Asher helped his sister wash their plates, scrape the scraps into a pan. “Something is bothering him.”

“The man in the tent is a countryman of Balizar’s,” Rachel reminded him. “Every time he sees an Outlander, he gets this way, Asher.”

“This one is different, Rachel,” her brother said. He looked toward their tent. “This one is trouble.”

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“I need to apply some more aloe cream to his burns,” she remarked. “Will you help me?”

Asher nodded. “Does he seem familiar to you, Rachel?”

Rachel shrugged. “He looks like--“

“Asher?” Balizar called out from the flap of his own tent.

“Yes?”

“Ask him no questions until I have had a chance to speak with him.” He ducked back inside his tent.

“Why would he ask that?” Asher inquired.

“He has his reasons,” the physician answered. “I would do as he says if I were you, Asher Stone.”

His head hurt and he was feverish, but he didn’t think the Labyrinthian fever had come calling again. He put his hand up and wiped at his face, found sweat and pain, burning pain at his fingertips.

“You’ve got a mighty sunburn, son.”

He turned his head and found that beloved face looking down at him. He smiled, wincing as his bleeding lips cracked open.

“I had the most awful dream,” he said. “I dreamt you had died.”

Balizar stared at him for a good long while until he could see uncertain’ty forming on the young man’s face.

“Who am I, son?” the man asked.

“Hern,” Conar answered. “I might have been out in that heat a goodly time, but I do know who you are.”

Balizar shook his head. “I am Balizar Arbra. Hern was my brother; he’s dead.”

Pain, terrible, blinding, crushing pain settled on his chest and he drew in a hitching breath.

“Oh, god,” he whispered, turning his head away. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”

There had been such devastation on that reddened face, Balizar thought, there had to have been great affection between this boy and his brother.

“You knew Hern, did you?” he asked in a gentle voice.

Conar nodded, too grieved to do anything else.

“I had heard he died. Do you know how?”

He didn’t want to look back around, to see that dearly loved face that was a carbon copy of Hern’s, that had set him to thinking his dreams, no, his nightmares, had been just that.

“Son? Do you know how my brother met his end?”

And the voice! Exactly like Hern’s: deep, just a touch of a lisp about it, an odd accent that Conar had never been able to identify. He didn’t want to hear that voice that cut him so deeply.

He wanted to put his hands over his ears and shut out the sound.

“Was he a friend of yours?”

A friend? Conar thought, tears welling. He had been like a father to me. I loved the man.

“I haven’t seen Hern in forty years, but he was flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I still care deeply for him.” Conar felt the man’s strong hand on his arm. “Anything you can tell me of him, son, will be most welcome.”

He gathered his courage and turned his head back around on the pillow. That face, that face he never thought to see again this side of paradise, was looking down at him with such gentleness, such encouragement, so like Hern’s expression of love, he wanted to scream.

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“He was dear to you, too, wasn’t he, son?” Balizar asked quietly, seeing the naked pain in the young man’s face.

Conar nodded. “I loved him.”

Balizar heard and recognized the great sorrow in the quivering voice. “Can you tell me how he died?”

He searched that wonderful face, drawing in comfort from the wrinkles, wondering what young poggleheaded warrior had put them there. His lips trembled as he answered.

“He died in my arms.”

Balizar sucked in a long breath. “In the Labyrinth? That is where I am told he died.”

“One of the guards--“ Conar squeezed his lids shut.

“Cut his throat,” Balizar finished. “I heard that much. I just don’t know why.”

To protect me, Conar thought with heartfelt guilt, but how did he tell the man that without revealing his own identity. He didn’t think he knew and when Balizar asked his name, he was sure of it.

“There was no identification on you,” Balizar said, asking once more what his name was.

He said the first thing that came into his mind. “Khamsin.” He thanked Sabrina, wherever she was, for putting that name on his lips.

“A good Kensetti name,” Balizar pronounced and saw a flare of surprise enter the man’s strange eyes. “Is that where you have been living since escaping that hellhole they called the Labyrinth?” He narrowed his gaze at the look of shock on the young man’s face. “You are one with the Darkwind.” He pointed to the tattoo on the back of Conar’s sword hand. “I’ve seen that symbol a few times over the years. All the men of the Wind Force have it.”

“Here?” Conar asked, surprised, alarmed that the man knew the symbol. “You’ve seen our men here?”

Balizar shook his head. “In other ports where I took runaways.”

Conar’s brows came together. “Runaways. You mean slaves?”

“We have an underground here in Rysalia. We get runaways to safety outside the Inner Kingdom. The Darkwind’s men have aided us on more than one occasion.”

“Balizar, let him rest,” a woman said and Conar turned his head, stunned once more to find himself looking into another dearly longed-for face.

“This is Rachel,” Balizar explained. “It is her brother’s tent in which you lie.” He held out his hand and the young woman took it. “She has been caring for you.”

She smiled down at him. “You are feeling better?” He could not have explained the irrational fury that gripped him as he glared up into those emerald green eyes, inhaled the sweet fragrance of lavender, and found his gaze glued to the sleek, glossy black mane of hip length black hair that hung down the woman’s slim back. As let down as he had been to find it was not Hern that was before him, he was that enraged that it was not Liza, his beloved wife, who hovered over him now, looking down at him with confusion as he tore his gaze from her.

“Get her out of here,” he said, refusing to look up at the woman again.

Balizar’s eyebrow shot upward. What kind of reaction was this? he thought. He glanced up at Rachel and saw the hurt on her face. “Will you wait outside, sweeting?” he asked and saw the man on the bed flinch as though hot embers had been applied to his chest.

Rachel looked at Balizar and then turned to leave. She had not been prepared for the hot look of hate that had shone her way when only the day before the stranger had looked at her with something akin to love. In his delirium as she and Asher had applied cooling balm to his sunburned flesh, he had held onto to her hand and kissed it, begging her not to leave him.

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“Does Rachel remind you of someone, too?” Balizar asked. That could be the only explanation for the hurt that had now settled on their visitor’s face

“Keep her away from me,” Conar ground out.

“It is her tent in which--“

“Keep her the hell away from me, Balizar!” Conar yelled, drawing everyone’s attention in the camp and causing heads to turn toward Asher’s tent. “You owe me that much!”

“All right,” Balizar said in a reasonable voice. He searched the enraged eyes of the man on the bed. “If that is your wish.”

“It

is!”

Later that evening, Balizar shrugged in answer to Asher’s query of concern. “I have no idea why he reacted as he did. It was almost as though he despised your sister.”

“Who is he, Balizar?” Rupine, the physician asked. “Did you find out?”

Balizar poked a stick into the campfire. “I have my suspicions, but I would rather not say until I am sure.”

“Is he a danger to us?” one of the other men asked.

“I think not,” Balizar answered. “He may even be the answer to all our prayers.”

Rachel sat quietly in the shadows and listened to the men talking. Now and then she turned to look at the tent where the man named Khamsin slept.

“Why do you hate me, Khamsin?” she asked, feeling the depth of that dislike to her very soul.

Her heart, so carefully kept to herself, had gone out to the one called Khamsin. His scarred cheek and ravaged back had touched her deeply in a place she had thought never to feel again. As he had gripped her hand, pressing his cracked lips to them, she had felt a longing that she had feared never to experience again. That he had obviously rejected her when coming to his full senses, made Rachel’s soul ache.

“Who hurt you so, milord?” she asked the darkened tent. “What woman caused you such terrible pain?”

He could still smell the lavender and it made him sick. If he had been able, he would have gotten up and walked out of the tent where everything in it reminded him of the green-eyed vixen that had been placed on earth to torment him.

How could you, Alel? he seethed.

He turned over, burying his face in the coolness of his pillow. His fingers dug into the softness of the fabric and he growled, the muffled sound doing nothing to relieve his anger.

Punishment, he thought. It was another punishment from the gods. Just one more torment to drive him mad.

And you aren’t far from it, Conar, he heard that inner voice telling him.

He flung himself over and threw the pillow as hard as he could across the length of the tent.

“Damn you!” he spat, seeing her face before him. “Damn you to the Abyss!”

It was unreasonable. He knew that. His reaction to her was worse than churlish. It was uncivil. The woman couldn’t help looking like Liza. No more than he could help the resemblance between him and his sons, Wyn and Tris. It was a quirk of fate, a twist of nature, that had caused it, nothing more. And yet for some inexplicable reason, he viewed it as a personal affront. Another attempt to destroy him.

“I won’t let you do it,” he spoke, whether to his gods or to the woman he was thinking of, he wasn’t sure.

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Either way, he meant to stay as far away from Rachel Stone as he could get!

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“How long did you know Hern?” Balizar asked as he adjusted the pillows behind Conar’s back.

“All my life,” Conar answered and could have bitten his tongue.

“So you grew up in Boreas,” Balizar said, pretending he had not heard the slip.

“Aye,” was the stiff reply.

“Did you train at the keep with my brother?”

He saw no reason to try to lie if he could help it. Lies had never set well with him and he didn’t tell them very effectively on the few occasions he had attempted to do so, which had been rare, indeed.

“He was Master-of-Arms at Boreas Keep,” he answered. “Hern trained all the Elite.”

Balizar nodded. “And were you an Elite?”

He’d almost fallen into a trap he didn’t even realize had been set. “No.”

Balizar studied his face and knew that was the truth. He sat down on a small stool and propped his chin in his hand, a habit he had no idea hurt Conar for it was identical to one Hern had had whenever he felt the need to question his young protégé.

“I heard he was quite a lady’s man.” Balizar wagged his thick white brows. “A trait that runs in the family.”

Conar smiled, fondly remembering the many conquests of which Hern had bragged. “He had his share of company.”

“He never married, though,” Conar said.

“Neither have I,” Balizar announced. “Presumably the same trait runs through the family in that regard, as well.” He smiled. “Did he leave behind a niece or nephew for me, though?”

Conar shook his head. “Not that I know of, but he loved children. That much, I do know.

If he’d given a woman a child, Hern would have told the world, had he known of it.”

“He loved the little Princes like they were his own,” Balizar remarked. “He often wrote to me of them when we were still in contact with one another.”

It was on the tip of Conar’s tongue to ask how Hern had felt about one young Prince in particular, but he didn’t think that was wise and the man sitting beside him would certainly wonder why he’d ask such a question.

“Did he ever get after you when you were little?” Balizar asked. At the strange look on his companion’s face, he shrugged. “If you were around him when you were a boy, I would imagine you’d have run afoul of him at some point.”