Authors: Charlotte Boyett-Compo
“Look at him,” Guil whispered. “Do you believe this?”
Jaleel shook his head, angered by the whole thing. He turned and looked at Belial. “End this,” he ordered.
Belial nodded and reached out for a lever on the wall beside him.
One moment he was holding Jah-Ma-El, keeping his brother from dying, the next he was falling through the floor, instinctively grabbing hold of Jah-Ma-El’s legs. He heard the loud snap, felt the death twitch that told him in his effort to save himself from crashing to the level beyond, he had inadvertently broken his brother’s neck.
He let go of Jah-Ma-El and fell, his scream of denial loud and grief-stricken. Slamming onto his back in a damp expanse of loose sand, he felt the breath knocked from his body and he gasped, tasting blood where he had bitten his tongue in the fall.
Guil joined Jaleel at the opening, studiously avoiding looking at the swaying man dangling between them, and looked down into the hole. A shaft of light from the upper chamber spilled into the cavern below, lighting a five foot circle around the place where Conar McGregor was lying dazed. He saw the confusion on McGregor’s face, then the realization of what had happened, then stark, unrelenting horror, passing across the man’s dirty features.
“The mighty oak has fallen, McGregor,” Jaleel Jaborn laughed. “And the branches are being pruned one by one by one.”
Conar rolled over onto his stomach, still trying to breathe normally. Pushing up on his hands and knees, he hung his head, drawing in steadying drafts of air.
“And do you know what I am going to do when the branches have all been severed, McGregor?” Jaborn taunted him. There was a wicked, vicious laugh. “Then, I’m going after the acorns.”
The Serenian lifted his head and looked up, craning him neck around so he could see the man speaking to him. His face was pinched with wretchedness, his eyes full of pain.
“The acorns, McGregor,” Jaleel shouted down to him. “All four of them: Wynland and Tristan and Regan and Little Brelan! All the insipid fruits of your loins, McGregor.”
Conar stared at the man above him, understanding settling in as Jaborn squatted over the opening through which he had fallen.
“And do you know what I do to acorns, McGregor?” Jaleel Jaborn smiled. His gaze fused with Conar’s. “I crush them beneath my heel, Infidel! I destroy them as I have destroyed the tree!”
Guil Ben-Shanar Gehdrin watched the suffering slip slowly from McGregor’s face. He saw the anguish disappear, the torment fade. He, alone, saw the resignation begin to form; recognized the inherent evil residing in Conar McGregor coming to the forefront and backed away from the opening.
“Jaleel,” Guil breathed, “the man is--“
But he never got any further for McGregor pushed himself up off the sand and bolted, disappearing beyond the light.
“There is only one way out of the catacombs,” Jaleel commented as he got to his feet. “And that way is locked from this side.”
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“Aren’t you going to go after him?” Guil asked, suddenly afraid and not really understanding why.
Jaborn shrugged. “Eventually. I’ll give him a few days without food or water, in the dark of the caverns, then I’ll send Belial after him.”
“He is afraid of such places,” Belial chuckled. “By the time I retrieve him, he should be quite harmless, Your Grace.” He had sensed Prince Guil’s unease.
“Should be,” Guil murmured as he followed Jaborn out of the chamber. He looked behind him at the dead body of McGregor’s brother and shivered.
Conar stood in the shadows, just beyond the spill of light from the opening above him. He heard the crank start and knew they were closing the hatchway through which he had plunged.
Waiting until there was no light, no sound, and no hint of a threat, he pushed away from the wall where he had been plastered.
Down here, he thought, his mind churning with sensations, it was utterly dark and cold. The walls seemed to be closing in on him as his eyes attempted to adjust to the darkness. There was no sound, no sense of direction. He somehow knew he was totally alone in the ebon space of what Jaborn had called the catacombs.
This living hell to which he had been condemned might once have driven him mad with the urge to break free. There had been a time when such a place would have crushed the air from his lungs and set him to howling with terror of the unknown. Closed in places had been a special horror for him since he was a small boy; the dark had always been his greatest fear.
But he was free from the past he knew could no longer hurt him. He had conquered his old enemy and had derived strength from it. He was thankful Jaborn didn’t know that about him.
Sitting down in the sand, his back against a jagged rock, he lowered his head. He forced himself not to think about Jah-Ma-El and Grice and Roget. Nor of Tyne or Rylan. He refused to worry about the others who were still in Jaborn’s clutches or of Catherine and whether or not she was aware of the perfidy done to her by Jaleel Jaborn. He pushed all thought of his comrades out of his mind and concentrated, trying to send one vitally important message beyond the cell in which he sat to someone who might hear.
WINDDECEIVER Charlotte Boyett-Compo 178
It had been the easiest thing Chase Montyne had done in a long time. He and Kharis had simply strolled up to the staggered column of the supply caravan and joined the sweating men leading their camel’s and pack horses to Abbadon.
And no one had even noticed them.
Smiling at Kharis, Chase shook his head. He started to say something, but El-Malick put a warning finger to his lips and cautioned him to silence. Chase nodded. The men in the caravan might not hear them, but the animals would. Despite the protection of the crystals in their pouches, the animals had noticed their arrival. Montyne figured the animal world was immune to Multitude magic.
His first sight of Abbadon was much the same as Conar’s had been. Chase stared with open-mouth awe at the massive structure rising out of the desert sands like a lion ready to pounce.
Sweeping his gaze over those bleak, featureless walls, he could well understand why the fortress was feared so much. The sight of it was enough to put alarm in the stoutest heart.
Meggie pointed her finger and saw that Sabrina had found their Sentinel’s in the midst of the advancing line of men. She looked behind her as the heavy iron-spiked door trembled in its casing and the pulleys beyond the thick walls squealed and clanked to life.
“They will only open the doors just wide enough to allow for the supplies to be passed through from the caravanners to the inside guards,” Sabrina explained. “We have to be quick in slipping through.”
Despite her bulk, Meggie Ruck knew she’d have no difficulty squeezing through the opening. As soon as one basket of goods was handed off to the inside guard and that man had turned to hand the basket to the man behind him, she would slip through and around the men, moving with the quiet grace she knew herself capable of exhibiting whenever the need had arisen.
But she didn’t want to go inside the fortress until the two Sentinels and Sabrina were already in.
“As soon as the door opens, go on through, Sabrina,” she ordered. “I’ll see to our men.”
Sabrina cast the older woman a worried look, but knew better than to argue with Mistress Ruck.
Kharis plucked at Chase’s sleeve and nodded toward the double doors. When Montyne squinted, focusing through the wavering heat coming up off the hot sands, he was finally able to make out the two women waiting for them.
The wide iron doors of Abbadon Fortress began to crank open. The groan of the pulley system shook the very ground beneath Sabrina and Meggie’s feet and caused them to crunch up their faces with the ear-splitting shriek of the chains and flywheels grinding as they turned.
“No one could open those damned doors quietly, could they?” Meggie grumbled.
Kharis and Chase walked away from the caravan and came up to the doors just as the wooden panels begrudgingly slipped apart. A splinter of light shone in the minute crack between the two portals.
“I want you to go in right after Sabrina, Montyne,” Meggie ordered, jerking her thumb toward the doors. “Kharis, you go next. I’ll take up the rear.”
“Any particular reason?” Chase asked, letting his head fall back as he gaped at the thirty foot tall door panels.
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“Just do as she says,” Kharis told him. “I’ve learned never to question a Daughter.” He cast an apologetic look to Meggie. “Especially the older ones.”
“Smart thinking,” Meggie concurred.
Sabrina peeked through the crack between the doors which by then was no more than half an inch. Her forehead creased as her nostrils took in the vile smell coming from inside the fortress.
“That’s death you’re smelling, girl,” Meggie told her, sniffing the scent, herself. “Death and sin.”
The caravan leader halted his men about ten yards away and walked up to the doors. He neither saw the four people standing there already nor did he sense their presence. They heard him mumbling to himself, cursing Jaleel Jaborn’s elaborate security measures, consigning the Hasdu Prince to the Pit and beyond for making them wait out here in the sun before opening the doors.
They watched as he stood there, arms akimbo, and tapped an angry sandal on the hard-packed dirt.
“You’d best have cool water for us to drink, Jaborn,” the man grumbled. “And my gold ready to hand out!”
“What will you if he doesn’t, you braying Jackass?” Kharis laughed.
Chase laughed, too, amused by the little man’s diatribe against the mighty Jaleel Jaborn.
He noticed Meggie wasn’t smiling and nudged Kharis. As Kharis’ gaze slipped to the old woman, he glimpsed his own lady’s face and frowned.
“Do you feel that?” Meggie asked, turning so that she could look through the slit in the door that was now four inches wide.
“I feel something,” Sabrina acknowledged.
Meggie slipped her hand through the opening, well away from the iron spikes which jutted out from the heavy wood. She barely noticed that she was dangling her hand nearly right in the face of one of the inside guards. She flexed her fingers, seemed to be grasping for something floating on the stagnant air coming from inside the fortress.
“It’s faint,” Sabrina said. “Very faint.”
“Aye,” the old woman agreed. Whatever was tickling her senses, she could not quite latch on to it. “Once I’m inside, I’ll be able to get a bead on whatever that is.”
Chase could see the guards beyond the door waiting for the portals to move far enough apart to accommodate handling the supplies being off loaded from the pack animals. He looked back at the caravan and saw several slaves already lined up with boxes and small crates, baskets and rolls of material. The caravan master was barking out orders in an annoyed tone, taking his displeasure out on his crew since he could not, dared not, take it out on those inside the fortress.
“Another inch and I think I can squeeze through,” Sabrina remarked as she positioned herself at the opening.
“Once you get inside, girl,” Meggie ordered, “wait over there by that staircase. The boys will join you.”
“The boys?” Chase quipped, not having thought of himself in that term for many years. He grinned at Meggie’s pretend frown then reached out to tweak her beaked nose.
“Knock it off, Montyne,” Meggie snapped, batting his hand away, but her eyes were twinkling.
“I’m going through,” Sabrina said and sucked in her breath, holding the skirts of her gown tightly to her so the material would not catch on one of the thick spikes.
They watched her slid sideways between the parallel panels and move quickly past two of the guards who had each taken it in their minds to step back at the same moment. Both looked around, seemingly watching Sabrina, puzzled looks on their faces for they had felt the small breeze WINDDECEIVER Charlotte Boyett-Compo 180
fanned by her passing. They turned back and looked at one another, shrugging, then faced the opening doors.
“She’s good,” Meggie cackled. “Damned good.”
“I’m up,” Chase grinned. He waited until the doors had shuddered to a stop, then rushed through, knocking into one of the guards as he passed.
“You son-of-a-jackal!” the guard thundered at one of the other men, thinking it had been him who had shoved him.
“Me?” the man being berated shouted. “What did I do?”
“Kharis!” Meggie hissed. “Go while they’re arguing!”
Kharis nodded and slipped easily between the panels. He thought of reaching out and showing the man who was being chastised for something he neither did nor understood, but he thought better of that idea as Meggie came through the opening and shoved him forward, her hand in the center of his broad back.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she warned him. “We’ve got better things to do!”
Sabrina crooked an admonishing brow at her lover as he sauntered up to her, a cocky grin on his face. “Did you enjoy starting that little tiff?” she asked.
“It got us through, didn’t it?” Chase queried.
“Son-of-an-infidel
whore!”
“Eater of animal offal!”
“Abuser of sheep!”
The guards were shoving one another, their loud shouts drawing attention from their commanders as those men hurried forward to put an end to the commotion.
“See what you did?” Meggie asked in an exasperated voice that belied the twitching of her lips.
“My humblest apology, dear lady,” Chase swore.
Meggie sniffed at his apology. Looking about her, she spied several women off to one side.
They were intently watching the havoc taking place at the doors. “Not a Daughter among them,”
she sighed.