Chapter 6.

Shalu sat on the stone bench beside Conar and grinned. "Hard day, fledgling?" Conar glared, a heavy scowl on the scarred face. "Go away." The Necroman chuckled. "You have no sense of humor." "I have a headache. Now, go away." "You're p.i.s.sed at that little fellow."

A sigh of frustration came from Conar. "I'm not going to ask you again to go a-"

"Then don't, because I have no intention of doing so."

"I'mordering you to get the h.e.l.l away from me!"

Here it is, Shalu thought with excitement. He's finally decided to take over. It just took longer than expected for him to start giving orders like the monarch he once was, to start a.s.suming leadership and command. "And if I don't?"

Conar stood. "Then I'll have your black a.s.s in chains before the hour is out!"

Shalu blinked, his lips pursing angrily. "He really got to you, didn't he?"

"Guards!"

Chrystallusian soldiers hurried toward them. Shalu swung his eyes to Conar and was surprised to see a look of pure vindictiveness.

"You called, Highness?" a warrior asked.

Conar's gaze was on Shalu. "Well?"

Shalu nodded. "Have Xander him give you something for that headache." The Necroman stood and walked away, his head high.

Several hours later, Conar finally sent for Xander. The headache had gotten worse. The Healer, accompanied to his room by Brelan, examined him.

"How long has he had these headaches, Brelan?" Xander inquired as he mixed a white powder with a small gla.s.s of water.

"Nearly all his life," Brelan answered. He was seated in a chair beside Conar's bed. "I think they started when he was fifteen."

"Thirteen," Conar mumbled. He was lying on his back, his arm over his eyes to shut out the light.

"I remember." A wide grin pulled at Brelan's lips. "Do you recall how you thought you came by them."

Despite the blinding pain the light caused him, Conar peered out from beneath the weight of his arm at his brother. "I certainly do!" he whispered,then again hid his eyes beneath his arm. Xander extended the gla.s.s of milky-looking water to Brelan. "I wish I'd been able to give him a potion like this at the colony when his headaches plagued him."

Brelan took the gla.s.s. "Need help getting up?" he asked Conar.

Conar managed to push himself up on his elbows enough to let Brelan place the gla.s.s to his lips. He looked at Xander.

"Is this s.h.i.tty-tasting stuff?"

Xander snorted. "What difference does that make? Drink it."

"We've always had trouble getting him to take medicine." Brelan shook his head. "He's just as bad now as when he was a kid."

"I bet it tastes worse than s.h.i.t," Conar allowed Brelan to place the gla.s.s to his lips. He hurt so badly he couldn't bring up either of his hands to pinch his nostrils closed, so he just didn't breathe in while he drank. He felt his tongue go instantly numb as the potion flowed down his throat. He grimaced, lowered himself to the pillow and winced as he took in a cautious breath and tasted something as bitter as bile. "It's worse than s.h.i.t, Xander!"

"But it will stop the headache." The Healer sat on the only other chair in the room. "Tell me what he thought had caused the headaches when he was a boy. I imagine whatever he thought was rather comical."

"Why?" Conar snapped, his head beginning to spin, but it was a pleasant spin, he thought whimsically.

"Because of the way Brelan reminded you and the way you answered." The Healer glanced at Brelan. "And I would imagineyou had something to do with the way he thought?" Brelan chuckled.

"Humph," Conar snorted. He was so wonderfully wrapped in velvet now. Sounds were coming to him from slightly farther away than they had before and he was losing the pain that had been eating at his right eye. His words were slightly slurred. "He got his scrawny a.s.s whipped something fierce 'cause of what he told me."

Brelan shrugged. "He was alwaysso intense as a child. And believedeverything." "Such as?" Xander prompted, eyeing a smiling Conar who was staring at the ceiling as though looking at a beautiful woman. "Such as makin' me b'lieve my brains was bein' gobbled up." Brelan pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. He was watching Conar's face mellow. "Conar and I always had this problem-" "Brehad a problem... I believe it was me." Conar's face screwed up with confusion. "No, I had a problem...and it was Bre."

"You had it right the first time." "I bet youboth were a problem," Xander said. "He just wouldn't leave me alone," Conar grumbled. "I was always trying to get him in trouble," Brelan confessed, "and I was the one who always wound up in trouble.

This particular day, I wanted him to go with me to this old lady's hut." He poked Conar's arm. "Remember old lady Harrelson?" "Mean old b.i.t.c.h..." "That she was." Brelan looked at Xander. "Meaner than snot. I devised this plan to get back at her for something, I don't exactly remember what now, but-"

"She told Papa on you for stealin' apples from Felias Spiel's orchard." Brelan smiled. "That's what it was! I was going to spread pig s.h.i.t on her door handles. I wanted Conar to help me andhe wouldn't."

"Mean trick," Conar admonished with a slow shake of his head. "I said if he didn't, I'd cast a spell on him." "What kind of spell?" Xander asked. "He'd make the gobbledegookins suck out my brains!" Conar said. "What are gobblede-" "Critters, Xander," Conar mumbled, shivering. "Badcritters." Brelan leaned back in his chair. "I invented these things that could crawl into your bedroom at night and slither down your ears and munch on your brains." "Hurt like h.e.l.l, they do," was the barely audible input. "I even showed him one." "Million legs.Real bad critters." "Actually what I showed him was one of those green worms you find on tomato plants."

"Hadhorns and stuff.Bad stuff." Conar held up his finger and made a spiraling motion. "Crawl down and round and round and down in your ear. Hurts like h.e.l.l."

"What I didn't know was those headaches would start that very night and when he woke up screaming about the goobledegookins eating out his brains, pleading with Hern to get them out of his ears, Papa naturally a.s.sumed I had something to do with it." Brelan frowned. "I couldn't sit for a week my a.r.s.e was so black and blue."

"Bada.r.s.e," came the sleepy reply.

"The thing was, Conar didn't believe Hern when he told him those headaches were not abnormal, that other people had them. He couldn't convince Conar that there weren't goobledegookins in his head."

"Theywere there!"

Xander chuckled. "So what happened?"

"Papa made me retrieve the goobledegookins." Brelan shook his head. "I went out to the garden and got four or five of those green scrubs and then went to Conar's room. He still had a slight headache and I told him I'd get the critters out of his ears if he'd promise he'd help me smear pig s.h.i.t on old lady Harrelson's doork.n.o.bs." "And did he?" "Smeared s.h.i.t allover her door k.n.o.bs!" Conar held up his hands as though they were still covered with offensive offal. He wiped them on the front of his shirt. "And I got my a.r.s.e blistered again when Hern caught us. Conar was made to clean the doork.n.o.bs for his part in it and I was on the receiving end of Hern Arbra's belt." "So how did you remove the goobledegookins?" Xander asked. "Cayn gave Conar some of what you must have given him-" "s.h.i.tty-tasting stuff." Brelan laughed. "Aye, and when he woke, I showed him all the goobledegookins." "Badcritters crawling 'round in my head." Conar nodded, a little smile on his puckered lips. "Bre got 'em out!" "And when he got another headache? How'd you explainthat ?" Xander asked. "Fortunately he was wiser by then. He knew I'd lied to him because he went out with the cook's daughter, Joannie, to pick some vegetables one morning and saw those worms crawling around on the plants. He was madder than blazes." "Mad...der...than..." Conar began to snore gently. "You two must have been h.e.l.l in a handbasket," Xander commented. Brelan turned soft eyes on his brother. "We put each other through h.e.l.l, if that's what you mean." He stood and pulled the coverlet up to Conar's waist. "You love him very much, don't you?" "More than he'll ever know." * * *

The headache lasted four days, not an unusual occurrence in the Conar's life, but as Xander later told Occultus, he had not had many headaches while interned at the penal colony and none that lasted more than a day. "That makes me wonder if it wasn't the pressure of his lifestyle that caused the headaches in the first place," Xander remarked.

"His position in the realm, you mean?" Occultus asked.

"Sometimes just knowing there's more expected of you than you think you can deliver will cause tensions. That tension manifests itself in the headaches. The pain is intense, but the headaches are a safety mechanism that releases the pressure inside the sufferer. If he didn't have the headaches, he might not be able to deal with the tension."

After the headache subsided, Conar was once more in the gym, waiting for what he thought had caused his first bout of migraine in more than eight years-Pearl Allegria.

Conar sat in the corner of the gymnasium. Rain fell heavily beyond the opened doorway; thunder rumbled pleasantly in the hills to the north of the harbor. There was no lightning in the gray sky, but the wind twisted the trees in the garden. The smell of damp earth filled the room.

And damp mushrooms.

Conar hated mushrooms, hated them all his life. Mushrooms were sly, sinister clumps of vegetation that he didn't trust to be edible no matter who set them before him, so he simply refused to eat the slimy, earth-smelling gray globs. Mushrooms, even those that tasted well enough to be eaten, could well be poisonous. It was best to leave them the h.e.l.l alone and he did.

He glowered at the dozen or so bushels of the smelly things lining the wall. He had argued with the servants who had left them there, knowing how the loamy smell would permeate the already damp room; but the servants were adamant. It was too far across the courtyard to the kitchens; by the time they could carry the baskets there, the mushrooms would be soaked.

"What the h.e.l.l difference does that make?" Conar fumed. "You got to wash them, anyway!"

But the servants left them along the walls and scurried out into the rain.

"I hate mushrooms," he sniffed beneath his breath, eyeing them as though they would attack him. He moved farther away.

Pearl was late. A half-hour late, to be precise. Conar peered out the doorway. The sky was almost black with storm clouds and the rain poured in slanted sheets across the tiled roofs.

And Pearl was late. No doubt the mincing little twerp didn't want to get his dainty feet wet! Conar thought with a snicker.

With a snort of disgust, he got to his feet and decided to leave. Rain or no rain, Pearl or no Pearl, he wasn't sitting in the d.a.m.ned room with those d.a.m.ned mushrooms one minute longer. He hunched his shoulders, thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his loose trousers, and ducked outside. He gasped as rain hit his bare shoulders, but he took a running jump off the covered pa.s.sageway and headed across the courtyard.

"Prince Conar!"

He recognized that hated voice! He chose not to listen to it, not to let on that he had heard. He kept running, his bare feet making soft indentations in the gra.s.s. He had waited for the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d; let the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d wait until tomorrow to aggravate him any more.

"Come back, Prince Conar!"

"Go to h.e.l.l," he muttered as he zig-zagged around a puddle of water. Pearl's grating, gravelly voice rose again, this time with less volume. Conar grinned maliciously. "You'dbetter give up, you little f.a.ggot! I ain't coming back!"

He had almost made it to the overhang of the guard's barracks when he looked up to see Roget, Brelan, and Shalu standing there, arms across their chests, blocking his path.

"Don't you have a lesson with Allegria?" Brelan asked.

"It's raining!" Conar snapped as though that explained why he wasn't in the gym. He tried to get past Roget, but du Mer stepped in front of him.

"Allegria's waiting for you."

He was soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead, water cascading down his nose and chin. "Let him wait!" he scowled and tried to move between Roget and Shalu. "He mademe wait!"

Shalu stepped closer to du Mer, his eyes hard and unrelenting. "Heis the teacher, you are the pupil.You wait for him, not the other way around, fledgling."

The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds weren't going to let him in out of the rain. He glared at them, saw Chase, Tyne and a few others peering at him from the barracks' doorway, and ground his teeth together.

"Get back to the gym," Brelan said.

With an angry snort, Conar stomped back toward the gym. His footsteps sent splats of water gushing up beneath each footfall. Seeing Pearl standing, hands on hips, in the doorway of the gym, watching him slinking back like a scalded dog, did nothing to improve his mood or the tempo and force of his steps. He stepped up on the porch.

Pearl blocked his entrance.

"Get the h.e.l.l out of..." Conar saw the look of determination on his teacher's face. "What?"

Pearl pointed to his wet, mud-splattered feet. Conar let out a ragged sigh of frustration. In Chrystallus, one did not enter a building with dirty feet. He took his hands out of his pockets and searched around on the tile floor of the overhang for something to dry his feet on.

He saw nothing.

He looked at Pearl. An inscrutable look crossed the man's face.

"May I have a towel, please?" Conar ground out.

"Why, certainly, Highness." Pearl turned, bent to the floor inside the doorway, and picked up the towel he had dried his own feet upon. He extended it to Conar.

The Prince had to hop from one foot to the other in order to dry his feet, for if he sat under the overhang, he would have sat in water. The tile floor was slick with rain. Having to perform such an ungraceful, ridiculous-looking thing with, he was sure, Roget, Bre and the others looking, made his jaw tighten. When he was finished, he dropped the towel to the floor and glared at Pearl.

"You may enter," Pearl said and walked into the gym.

"f.a.ggot!" Conar spat beneath his breath.

The room smelled more like mushrooms than before. The earthy odor was nauseating, overwhelming to a man who detested the things. Conar wrinkled his nose and added that insult to all the others for which Pearl was responsible.

"Ready to begin?" Pearl asked in a voice that always sounded as if the man had a terminal case of sore throat. The voice, like the man, irritated Conar beyond imagination.

"Let's get it over with!"

Chapter 7.

Liza stood with her shoulders bowed, her hands trembling, her soul shattered. She could hear Legion's soft voice, Teal's softer answers, and dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She didn't even flinch when Legion shut the door to their chambers, padded softly to her, and put his arms around her.

"We know Brelan is in Chrystallus," he said, turning her so he could pull her to his chest. The news had come to Boreas Keep by way of secret messengers. Legion had learned that Holm van de Lar had sailed some eighty-odd men into the harbor of Chrystallus' capitol, and only one casualty, Hern Arbra, had been among them. "I've sent word that we need him. If the news is correct, he has brought everyone back safely." He didn't think she needed to know about Hern.

"It's too late, now," she said, all hope gone from her voice. "Tohre left this morning. He has taken Corbin from the Temple to the Abbey of the Domination. Our son is out of our reach now."

"There must be a way we can get him back. The men of the Dark Overlord..."

Liza pushed away from him. She watched his blue eyes squint with fresh pain as he took in her ravaged face.

"Liza, I-"

She shushed him with her fingertips. "You and the others have done all you could." She walked to the window where she had kept a vigil for several days.

Legion took her in his arms again. "There must be a reason why Brelan didn't come back right away, sweeting. He knew how important it was to get Corbin away from Tohre before our son turned six."

That this wonderful man had claimed Conar's son as his own was a good mark next to his name. That he loved Corbin, was another. "He forgot," she said, tears flowing down her cheeks.

Legion could hear the betrayal in her voice. "There has to be more to it than just forgetting." With all his heart, he hoped there was. If Brelan had just simply forgotten about the timeliness of removing Corbin from the Wind Temple at Corinth, he'd slit the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's throat.

"It doesn't matter now," she whispered, her hitching sobs giving way to a torrent of pain. "There's nothing we can do." She collapsed against him.

He picked her up and carried her to bed. "There has to be someone who can help," he said as he laid his wife on the bed and sat beside her.