WINDKEEPER (30 page)

"How can that be? If the lands are held by your family?"

Conar smiled. "Norus sits on four acres of land that at one time was Viragonian soil. It was seceded to our family at the death of the Outlaw, Syn-Jern Sorn. But it was still held in the Hesar family up until my mother’s marriage to my father."

"So Virago claimed it?"

"Aye. By right, my father, although he was King, could not enter without the King of Virago’s permission and that wasn’t likely to be given for they weren’t on good terms at that time."

"But he did enter." Liza smiled at Conar’s wink.

"He laid siege to the keep." Chuckling, he laid flat on the bed and crossed his hands under his blond head. "That siege lasted nearly twelve days."

"Sieges being a most uncommonly expensive enterprise," Liza commented.

"Indeed. But my father vows it was worth every gold coin he spent."

"What happened then?"

Conar looked at her. "My mother sneaked out of the keep late one night and made her way to the tent where my father slept. I am told they made love that very night and she agreed to marry him."

"He knew she was of royal blood?"

"He knew more about her than she about herself, he has often said." Conar smiled. "Less than a month later, they were wed at Boreas."

"And they lived happily ever after," Liza said dreamily and laid beside her lover.

"Not exactly."

"Oh?"

"Papa can be an obstinate cuss at times and on their wedding night he was less than mannerly in his way of handling the wedding feast. He paid more attention to his cronies than he did to my mother, and he winked one too many times at the servant girls for my mother’s liking. As a result, she gave him an ultimatum. Either quit the banqueting hall and make haste to their rooms, or else she’d leave on her own. Papa had had too much to drink and it had gone to his head. He told her: I am Master here, woman; you are my property."

"Oh!"

"So, taking three servants with her, my mother left the keep and rode out of Boreas in the middle of the wedding reception and somehow wound up here at Ivor."

"Your father wasn’t too happy, I bet."

Conar chuckled. "Not happy, at all, Mam’selle. He took chase and found her here, but she had barred the gates against him." He turned over on his stomach and laid an arm over his lady. "But McGregor men can be steadfast in their approach to their women. He climbed the damn east wall." Conar grinned, thinking of his father’s escapade as a youth.

"You are joking?"

"He nearly broke his neck climbing the wall into this very chamber. When he swung his leg over the windowsill, he saw my mother lying in this bed, gazing at him with a tender smile."

"What did she say?"

"She said: What took you so gods-be-damned long, Gerry? The champagne is getting warm!"

Liza giggled. "She must have been a very wise lady."

"Indeed, she was. He opened his mouth to yell at her, demanding to know what she thought she was about, when she pulled back the covers and he could see she was naked beneath the great fur. He didn’t ask her anything else that eve."

"She had wanted him all to herself."

He nodded, running his hand down her spine. "It would appear that was the case."

"So they spent their wedding night here in this bed?" she asked, snuggling against him.

"Aye, and they made the most of it." He nuzzled her head with his chin.

"How so, Milord?" She listened to the steady beat of his heart next to her cheek.

He moved over her, bringing his face to the nape of her neck to place a light kiss there. "They made me here that night."

* * *

For four months Liza lived at Ivor Keep near Epstein. On occasion she would leave for days, even weeks; once nearly an entire month. Conar came to expect, if not accept, her sporadic departures, seeming to understand her need to go off to herself at times.

After the first few frantic episodes, he even stopped trying to find her, for he realized his attempts would be futile. If Liza did not wish to be found, she would not be.

He would rant and rave when she returned, but always they would end up in wild, twisting passion in the big brass bed, totally lost to what went on around them.

Including the constantly postponed wedding between Conar and the Princess Anya.

The friendship between Liza, Legion, Teal, and Rayle grew in leaps and bounds. Her expertise as a horsewoman, added to her aptitude with dagger and crossbow, had well-benefited them on occasion. Her constant good cheer and wit, her uncanny way with herbs and potions, did much to render her a saint in their eyes. But it was her great love for their friend and brother that made them care so deeply for her.

No woman would ever love Conar the way Liza did.

And if the wedding contract still lay in the Tribunal’s vaults unsigned, then was that not proof the gods had smiled on Conar’s love for the girl? Did it not mean this union had been predestined? Why in six months’ time, had no one spoken out against the young Prince and his ladylove?

* * *

"Highness!"

The warrior shook the Prince again, dodging the flailing arms and clawing fingers. "Highness, wake up! ’Tis the dream again. Wake now!"

Conar came bolt upright in the bed, his face pallid with terror, his body drenched in perspiration. He stared without recognition at the man who hovered over him, whose hands were tight on his forearms, gently shaking him. His breath came in great heaves as he tried to draw air into his collapsing lungs and his hands pulled at the flesh around his closing throat, desperately trying to open the closing passageway.

" ’Twas but the dream, Highness," his rescuer whispered. "Just the old dream."

Conar slowly closed his eyes and leaned into the reassuring arms of the man who now sat on the bed beside him, whose strong arms closed around him with gentleness, protecting, shutting out the demons that had ridden him.

"Don’t leave me, Hern," he begged, burrowing his head against the massive chest.

"I’ll be here for as long as you want me, son," the man said and raised a callused hand to wipe a sweat-drenched lock of fair hair from the young man’s forehead. "Just you relax now. You ain’t alone no more."

Conar could still hear the pounding of his own heart against his ribcage, could feel the blood roaring through his temples. He squeezed his lids shut even tighter and sank into the comfort of the arms.

"Is he all right?" Legion spoke from the doorway. He knew better than to come into Conar’s room if Hern didn’t want him there.

"He’ll be right as rain, Lord Legion." The man turned. "Be back to bed with you, now."

Hesitating only a second or two, Legion knew he wasn’t needed and closed the door behind him, motioning Teal back down the hall to his room. "Hern’s with him."

Teal nodded. No one else would be allowed in the room, then.

As he closed the door to his own room, Legion sat on his bed and wondered for the hundredth time what terrible dreams ripped so badly at his younger brother. He stretched out and stared at the ceiling, wondering also why Hern could still the nightmares that had returned of late to plague Conar. Not since he was a young boy had his brother had such frightening dreams. Now, in the past two weeks, they had returned with a nightly vengeance that left Conar shaken and unresponsive for days afterward.

Only when he slept in Liza’s arms did the dreams not come to terrorize him.

"What could have frightened you so, little brother, that you still keep the pain of it with you?" Legion asked the silent room. He could hear Hern’s soft voice across the hall as he spoke to Conar. "And why can Hern soothe your spirit when I can not?"

* * *

"Lie yourself down, Highness," Hern said gently and eased Conar out of his arms. "Rest yourself, now." He pulled the covers over Conar’s naked chest, tucking them around the young Prince as if he were still a child.

"You won’t leave me?" Conar asked.

"No, Highness. I’ll not be leaving you." He smoothed Conar’s hair away from his eyes. A light frown crossed the man’s rugged face. "You need a haircut, you do."

Conar tried to smile, but his lips felt frozen and his mouth trembled. He looked away from the direct gaze that probed his own.

"When did the dreams come back, Highness?" Hern asked, his big hand turning over so he could run the backs of his scarred fingers down Conar’s fevered cheek.

"Awhile ago."

"How long is awhile, son?"

He had never been able to lie to Hern. "Two weeks."

Sighing, the man put his hands in his lap and stared at the closed door. He wasn’t sure he should say his piece, but his love for the young Prince outweighed any loyalty he had to his informants. "Even after you installed the lass at Ivor?"

Conar looked at the granite-carved profile of his friend. Nothing ever got past Hern and he wondered if anything ever would. "How long have you known?"

Hern laughed. "What you’re really asking is if your Papa knows," he answered. He turned his fathomless gaze to Conar. "He doesn’t. I’ve had no opportunity to tell him."

"How long have you known, Hern?" he repeated, relieved Hern hadn’t told his father yet.

The man’s gaze moved over Conar’s damp face and what passed for a smile stretched the thin, hard lips. "From the very first night you brought her there."

"You’ve known all this time and haven’t told Papa? Why not?"

Hern shrugged his massive shoulders. "I’ve been busy with this and that. The King’s been busy with this and that. I’ll get around to telling him when I think he can handle it."

Conar could only stare at the man. He had known this rugged soldier all his life. Sir Hern Arbra was the Master-at-Arms at Boreas Keep. He was also King Gerren’s best friend and closest confidante. The two men had been suckled at the same breast as babes, Gerren’s mother refusing such an onerous chore. Their loyalty to one another ran deeper than the waters of Lake Myria and the love they bore one another was legendary in the Seven Kingdoms. They had fought beside one another in battles too numerous to list; had shared wine and women and many a drunken song; had shared the same uncompromising love for Queen Moira: one man’s bride; the other man’s only love, unrequited as it had been. Hern bore the lady’s sons the same affection; but Conar, he loved most of all.

A stalwart soldier in King Gerren’s own Elite Guard before that good man had become King, Hern Arbra had taken a quarrel meant for the young Prince and had almost succumbed to the wound. Prince Gerren’s own blood had been fed into Arbra’s veins so the soldier might live, making them blood brothers in fact as well as in deed. What one felt, the other felt, so close was their attachment to one another after the blood-giving.

King Gerren liked to joke that it was royal blood flowing through Arbra’s body that gave the man such a keen insight into Gerren’s own mind. In truth, it was the common bonds of love, affection, devotion, and friendship that made it possible for Hern Arbra to know how his friend felt.

On the day Hern Arbra was knighted, Prince Gerren had wept bitterly. It was an honor he had wished to bestow upon his friend, but the duty had fallen to the young prince’s father, the King. But it was Gerren’s old silver spurs that graced Hern Arbra’s black boots that day; a gift of love that had lasted their lifetimes.

Standing near seven feet in his stocking feet, Hern was a massive man weighing in at close to three hundred pounds. His wide chest, fully thatched with almost snow-white hair, stretched so far across it took a special tailor to make his uniforms. His boots were specially made, as well, and rivaled in size those worn by the Loure brothers, Rayle and Thom.

His thick crop of yellowish-blond hair was always combed straight back from his high, wide forehead and hung in a long queue down his back. His eagle-beak nose between those startlingly pale eyes gave his face the look of unmistakable authority that had shriveled many a young recruit on the training ground of the Wind Warrior Society where Arbra was Master-Trainer. His thin lips were straight with no noticeable curving in the pale pink flesh, and they rarely moved in anything but a grimace of anger.

When those lips did move, a voice that barked like the thunder of bull elephants on the run could shake the ground beneath a soldier’s feet and make the poor young man soil his breeches in fear. And the heavens help any young soldier who did not heed Hern Arbra’s angry words.

Conar, himself, had trained under Hern. Had taken his early training with crossbow and quarrel with the man when he had been hardly big enough to nock the fletch. Had learned to ride his first unwilling pony under the unforgiving eagle-eye of a man whose motto was: if you didn’t break nothing when it tossed you, you can still ride! Had learned how to rub down a horse; how to curry the beast; how to saddle a steed who didn’t want to be saddled; how to get the stuffing knocked out of you by a horse you didn’t handle properly.

He had learned all those things and more from Hern Arbra by the time he was six years old.

He didn’t see the man again until he was thirteen, but time had stood still for the Master-at-Arms. He looked no different than he had when Conar had been taken by Kaileel Tohre to the Wind Temple near Corinth. His hair was the same; his massive build was the same; his sharp eyes were the same. Conar realized Hern must have seen something in his eyes that no one had recognized, for Hern Arbra had become the young Prince’s confidant, as well as, the boy’s second father.

Looking now at the pale blue eyes regarding him, Hern could still see that something in the boy’s face, somthing that had worried him that day six years earlier when the young Prince had come to find him on the training field.

"Do you remember me, Sir Hern?" the boy had asked, his gaze going past Hern’s to a spot off in the distance.

"Aye, I know you still." Hern had crossed his arms and carefully watched the boy.

"If it pleases you, sir, I would like to be taught."

"Is that so?"

"Aye, sir." The blue eyes flickered. "I would like you to teach me all you know, Sir Hern."

"Do you now?" Hern asked him. "What makes you think you’re able to learn what I can teach?"