From experience with his teachers, Conar knew better than to argue. Muttering obscenities, he stomped to the rope and began to lever himself up once more. He clenched his jaw to the pain in his hands, but managed to gain the top, taking longer than the first time to get there. He didn't bother to ask what he was to do, but climbed back down again, wincing as new blisters burst and bled, making the rope slick with blood. Not bothering to walk to the man, he stood, rope in hand, anger on his face and turned around to stare at the monkey man. He wasn't surprised when the thumb jerked upward and the monkey man's black eyes regarded him with placid indifference.

"s.h.i.t!"He grasped the rope and dug one booted foot into a crack in the cliff. He would be d.a.m.ned it he would let the b.a.s.t.a.r.d get the best of him. He'd been tortured by the best, had known pain far greater. Although his face was set in surly lines of contempt, his brain screamed with pain. He strained up the rope and stood, hands on his hips, blood staining the fabric of his breeches, staring out toward the mountain range, his back to the beach. He took deep, calming breaths, his mouth set and hard. Once he was able to regain composure, he looked down at the beach.

The monkey man was gone.

Livid with outrage and furious with the fates that were playing him for a fool, Conar cursed the monkey man, all his ancestors, all his animals, and anything else that might even be remotely connected to him.

The next morning, his hands hurt him so much he could barely shave. He had wound strips of ointment-coated linen around his palms and there was a light pinkish, yellowish fluid already coming through the fabric as he crimped his fingers as tightly as he could in order to hold his razor.

"You're to go to the beach again today," Brelan told him, sticking his head in Conar's room.

"For what?"

"Same beach, same instructor." He closed the door with a snap.

Conar gawked at the closed door. "d.a.m.ned if I will!"

But here he was. Same beach, same monkey man, higher cliff.

He held out his bandaged hands. "See this?"

The thumb jerked upward.

"I can barely move them!"

The thumb jerked upward twice more.

Three times up, three times down. Conar's hands looked like raw meat. He had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out that night when Se Huan bathed and re-bandaged them with a foul-smelling, stinging concoction that made Conar leak in his breeches when it was applied.

"That hurts worse than the rope burns!" he screeched, but she only looked blandly at him.

In the days that followed, six in all, he climbed progressively higher and higher cliffs until he could scale an eighty-foot rock face with ease. His hands had callused over, although they still hurt so badly it brought tears to his eyes when he gripped the rope each morning.

On the seventh morning, the man was sitting at the foot of the first cliff. Puzzled, Conar nevertheless shrugged his broad shoulders and walked there.

There was no rope.

Dropping his head to his chest, he sighed. "I suppose I'm to climb all these cliffs nowwithout the rope?" When there was no answer-the man had yet to speak even one word to Conar in all the time he had beeninstructing him-he dug his hands into whatever purchasing point he could find and laboriously scaled the cliff. Going up was a h.e.l.l of a lot easier than coming down. He nearly fell twice, losing his footing more times than he could count. He sc.r.a.ped his shins, tore a hole in his breeches, and gouged hands that began bleeding again. When he finally put his booted feet on the beach, he didn't bother to ask for instructions, he just started to climb the same cliff again. Up three times, down three times as he had every day prior to that.

"Next," a gruff, clipped voice snapped.

Turning to face the monkey man, Conar could only stare. He felt as though he would drop in his tracks and it wasn't even eight in the morning yet.

"You want me to climb each of these d.a.m.ned cliffs today?"

With an angry shake of his head, the man spat: "One day, two cliff."

"Two day, four cliff, huh?" Conar snarled.

"We see if little bird make up two cliff. If satisfactory to teacher, maybe two cliff more tomorrow." The monkey man leveled that same inscrutable stare at Conar. "If not, same two cliff."

"If satisfactory to the teacher..." Conar murmured as he stalked to the next cliff. Looking up at the thirty-five-foot rock face, he mentally groaned. More of the man's antecedents joined in the virulent curses Conar had reserved for him and his family.

What followed was ten more days of exasperating attempts to please the man. The third and fourth cliffs took eight days to master to the teacher's satisfaction. With sc.r.a.ped elbows, broken fingernails, bruised shins, knees and forearms, ruined breeches and boots, Conar managed on the eighth day to ascend the fourth cliff for the third time.

The monkey man was gone, a sign the work was at least acceptable. If the monkey man had still been sitting there, Conar would know the same two cliffs would be scaled the next day and the next and the next until he was content that Conar could do it well enough to suit.

Unfortunately for Conar, the ninth and tenth days were horrible experiences. The fifth formidable cliff proved to be the worst. He had gotten only ten feet up its face when the rock he was holding let loose. He lost his grip and fell, gouging a long furrow in his right forearm as he tumbled downward. He landed in a crumpled heap at the base of the cliff and lay there gasping, for the air had been knocked out of his lungs.

A shadow fell over him. He looked up into the monkey man's face.

"Not good," came the gruff remark before the man ambled off.

"N...not g...good?" Conar gasped. "Not...good?" He glared at the man's retreating back. He had never felt such fury. "Go...to h.e.l.l you...little son of a...b.i.t.c.h!"

The next day found him stony-eyed and sullen as he crossed the span of beach before the monkey man and started up the cliff. No matter how hard he strove to gain the cliff in the time he knew he was expected, he fell short of the mark by at least twenty minutes. He would gaze across at the sixth cliff, easier in his estimation, and blow out hot breaths between gnashing teeth.

By the end of the tenth day, he was ripe for a fight. His frustration at having been constantly sneered at by the monkey man as he descended the cliff for the last time that day was enough to make him clench his fists and stomp away before he could be told to ascend once more. He half-expected to be called back, but only sly, contemptuous laughter followed, making his ears burn.

As luck would have it, he encountered Brelan and Roget as he tramped back to the palace. Their good-natured remarks made him even madder, for he felt they were laughing at him, too.

He turned an enraged face to them. "The two ofyou can go to h.e.l.l, too! And take that f.u.c.king little ape with you!"

Turning to one another with confusion, both men decided to see what could have caused Conar to be so out of sorts, so they followed him to the beach the next day. It was a good thing Conar didn't know they were watching from the safety of the first cliff, because both had scaled it, without a rope, with ease, in half the time Conar had taken on his first trywith the rope.

The monkey man was sitting at the base of the fifth cliff and calmly watching Conar approach. Both Brelan and Roget felt him scrutinizing them, yet he didn't turn his head to acknowledge their presence. Even from the distance at which they sat, they saw one dark slash of a brow go up as Conar came to stand over the man. To his credit, the man didn't even flinch when Conar began his angry shouting.

"I will not climb that d.a.m.ned cliff again!" He stood with his hands on his hips and glowered. "Do you hear? If you want me to climb that last cliff I will, but I won't climb that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h there!" He jerked his thumb toward the fifth cliff.

For what seemed like hours, the man stared up at Conar with indifference. No words were spoken from the tight, uncompromising lips. None were needed. The displeasure and cool a.s.sessment was written plainly on the pinched face. Finally, one thin hand raised in the air and the thumb came up.

"I won't do it," Conar whispered, squinting.

The thumb jerked toward the cliff.

"No!" Conar screeched. "I will not do it!"

The thumb jerked. Viciously, insistently.

In a quiet, carefully controlled and modified voice, soft and deadly, Conar leaned over the man. "I said no."

The thumb jerked once more.

"I told you, no!"

One moment Conar was bending over the man, and the next, he was lying a good six feet away, flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him. The man hovered above him, then bent with his face close to Conar's and placed a wickedly jabbing thumb painfully into Conar's midsection.

"Little s.h.i.t hasbig mouth. If little s.h.i.t's effort was as big as his mouth, he could have climbed six cliff in one day!" The thumb pressed harder, making Conar groan. "Something little s.h.i.twill do before I through with him is learn he does not sayno to teacher!"

Conar lay gasping, his midsection on fire as the hard finger jabbed into it. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d couldn't weigh more than seventy pounds soaking wet, yet here he was keeping a man almost three times that weight down on the ground with a single scrawny thumb. And he had tossed Conar about like a straw in the wind. "How the h.e.l.l did you do that?"

The man twisted his thumb. Conar thought he would faint from the pain. But then the thumb withdrew. The man straightened, crossed his thin arms over his chest, and stared at his pupil.

"If little s.h.i.tbird want to know, he climb cliff to satisfaction of teacher.Then, he might be taught." The monkey man sat on the beach and crossed his legs. "Teacher make no guarantee." The thumb went once more into the air.

Conar struggled to his knees, wavering, holding his stomach. In the distance he heard the roll of thunder. He saw towering gray clouds scudding low overhead. "It's going to rain," he said sullenly, rubbing his belly.

"Rain. Shine. Cliff still be there."

"Aye and they'll be slick with rain, too! I could break my d.a.m.ned neck!"

The monkey man made a rude sound. "Little s.h.i.tbird think war fought only in sunshine?"

Knowing it was useless to argue, Conar started to climb. Something caught his attention and he turned toward the first cliff. Seeing his brother and du Mer, knowing they had witnessed his humiliation a few moments earlier, he clenched his teeth together. With every rock he grasped, he visualized the monkey man's neck in his hands.

Perhaps it was the anger or the shame at being humbled, or merely the fact that he didn't relish being caught on this seventy-foot cliff in the coming rain. Whatever it was, he made it to the apex of the cliff in well under the required time. He turned a triumphant smile down at the man just as the first drop of hard, stinging rain struck his head.

The monkey man was gone. So were Roget and Brelan.

Throwing back his head, Conar howled to the sky. He had never been so angry or frustrated. He stood on the cliff, getting soaked, barely flinching as lightning began to crackle around him. His hair was plastered to his forehead in lank strips. It was in a near rage that he descended the cliff, started to walk away, looked up at the cliff's forbidding face, and began to climb again.

Three times up, three times down.

The little man watched from a section of overhang not more than fifteen feet away. The rain obscured most of the rock face from view, but he could see enough to know the boy was making the climb again. A gentle, proud smile puckered his thin lips. He nodded as Conar descended a second time and then automatically began another ascent, although now the rain was so hard it had to be painful in the boy's face. His third ascent was faster and done with much more finesse and expertise.

"Little bird may learn to fly yet," the little man sighed as he ventured out into the rain.

He sat on the sand in front of the sixth cliff and crossed his legs. There was a dull gray sky overhead and the rain would surely come again by noontime. With any luck, they would be finished and inside by then. He sighed and tried to ignore the aches in his bones, the slight tingle in his fingers. He shifted uncomfortably on the wet sand and cursed the advances of age.

Turning in the direction of the palace, he frowned. His pupil was late. He, too, had been later than usual since he had to report on Conar's progress to Master Occultus. Young people had no sense of duty, no sense of honor in these times.

Something plopped down beside him. A small round pebble glistened on the wet sand. The teacher picked it up just as another glanced off his hand, and another bounced off his shoulder.

Though fully understanding, he clamped a tight control on his lips where a ghost of a smile threatened to steal over the wrinkled countenance. "Little s.h.i.tbird well today?"

"I've got a cold," came the nasal reply, accompanied by a sneeze.

"What comes from playing in rain." He looked up to the sixth cliff where Conar sat, legs dangling over the side, arms crossed over his chest, a satisfied grin on his full lips.

"What now?" Conar called down.

"Little bird can safely say he has pleased his teacher. If he climb down, he will be taught how to fight Chrystallusian-style. Think little s.h.i.tbird can be taught to fight this way?"

Conar laughed. "Do I have a choice?"

What pa.s.sed for a smile on the teacher spread across his face. "Little s.h.i.tbird should know by now he does not."

Conar started his climb down the cliff. As he reached the ground, he was surprised to see the man standing at the base of the cliff, his hand held out. Warily, he gripped the thin, delicate wrist.

"I am Ching-Ching. I have been waiting a long time to train you, Conar McGregor."

True to his word, Ching-Ching, warrior and advisor to the Emperor of Chrystallus and one of the three men Brelan had risked his own life to rescue from the horror of Tyber's Isle many years before, began to teach Conar to fight in the style of his ancestors.

It was a rigorous, grueling training, but it was deadlier than any other known form of self-defense. The spinning, flying kicks, the acrobatic maneuvers, tumbles, flips, were ch.o.r.eographed like the steps of an intricate dance. It was a fighting skill of great beauty and grace and yet painfully lethal. The weapons used in such fighting, pointed star-shaped throwing implements with razor-sharp cutting edges, long wooden staves with sharpened points, iron lengths of round pipe attached to heavy chain, were all instruments designed to maim and kill instantly and with little effort.

But also there were breathing exercises, meditations, exercises that seemed totally out of sync with the rest of the fighting skills, yet that firmed and controlled the muscles in ways ordinary exercise and muscle-building could not.

As Brelan and Roget joined Coron, Dyllon, and Wyn on the cliff that day, they watched as Conar strove to master the intricate steps and kicks, the utilization of the deadly weapons. It seemed that the things he was learning from Ching-Ching came faster and easier than a mortal man should be able to achieve. It was then that they began to suspect there was more involved than just the capabilities of a mere mortal.

There was magic at work. Magic of the most potent kind.

"Did yousee that?" Roget whispered as Conar struck out in a vicious kick that decapitated a straw figure on the beach.

Brelan had heard of this particular form of fighting, but had never seen it employed. It was fascinating, and unnerving. "He'll be formidable by the time they're through. No one will be able to stand up against him."

"Isn't that the idea?" Coron asked with a sidelong glance.

Brelan was worried. He knew Conar's training was meant to be used in their war against the Domination, but the ease with which his brother used his new and deadly skills chilled him.

"He'll use these things wisely," Dyllon commented, "if that's what you're worried about."

"Aye, but sometimes anger makes a man do things he wouldn't ordinarily do. When he has abilities his opponents do not have, he might be tempted to do away with them altogether when only a beating would suffice."

Roget looked at his friend. "Conar wouldn't do that."

"There's so much anger in him." Brelan glanced at Roget. "And more anger to surface, and you know it."

"Do you blame him for being angry?" Dyllon asked. "After everything he's been through?"

"I don't think you have to worry about Conar," Roget put in. "He'll take that anger out on only those who have caused it." "That's what I'm worried about," Brelan admitted gravely. "There are some who have caused him grief that he doesn't even know about as of yet."

Coron laid his hand on Brelan's shoulder. "You mean Legion and Liza?"

"I have tried a hundred times to talk to him about it, and a hundred times he's stopped me, which is just as well...since the knowledge of it just might kill what's left of his soul."

Chapter 13.

The men turned as Conar stormed into the weight room, cursing Ching-Ching, his horse, his family, his hut, his clothing and even his hair. There was a livid bruise on Conar's left cheek, a nasty-looking sc.r.a.pe on his chin, and dried blood under his nostrils. He withdrew his sword from its scabbard and hurled the sheath into a far corner. He faced the men, scanning them with blue eyes that held a malevolent challenge. When no one rose to the bait, he raised his lip.