"None of you old women feel like exercising?"

Shalu laughed. His amused look made Conar livid with rage.

With heavy, purposeful strides, Conar hovered over the seated man. He tossed his sword to his left hand and dipped the blade to the floor. "I'll even fight you with my left hand if you fear the right so much!"

Shalu merely grinned wider. He winked at Roget. "I hadn't noticed how dark his eyes had become, du Mer. Could it be he has enough fertilizer in his head that it's turned them dark?" He looked back at Conar. "Could that be it, s.h.i.t-for-brains?"

Conar's mouth twisted. "Is that why you're the color you are because you're full of s.h.i.t?"

Shalu sighed as though being much put upon. He really didn't want to fight but the insolent child was asking for it. Never let it be said that Shalu Taborn, Necromanian King, was not accommodating. Slowly he uncoiled his ma.s.sive frame and stood towering over Conar, stared into blue eyes now less belligerent and perhaps a tad wary.

"Baby birds shouldn't insult the eagles with whom they attempt to fly," another instructor commented from the weight bench. "They just might get their feathers plucked before they have time to molt. Is that what you want, baby bird?"

Conar was intensely sorry he'd started this. He could see everyone regarding him with wry humor. Unfortunately, his pride would not allow him to back down. He raised his chin. "Aye, that's what I want."

The moment he said it, he realized his stupidity. The laughter only served to increase his anger. Without any caution, he lunged at Shalu. Before he knew what had happened, he was flat on his belly, both arms behind him, Shalu's hard knee in the small of his back.

"Tweet-tweet, baby bird!" Shalu said. "Who'll be the first to pluck his feathers?" "No!"Conar shouted. By the time they were finished with him, he'd been stripped, slathered in oil, then, adding insult to injury, covered with talc.u.m powder. If they could have found tar and feathers, no doubt he would have been covered in that. Leaving him with no clothes, robe, towel or loincloth, they laughed their way out of the room.

Conar sat huddled in the corner, fuming with humiliation.

"Come out, baby bird!" Chase taunted him from outside.

"We got some nice fat worms for you!" Rylan chimed in.

"We promise not to stare at your manly attributes!" Pearl giggled and the others howled.

Conar threw a hateful look at the open doorway. Just how the h.e.l.l was he going to get out of there? He seethed with icy fury as he tried to drown out their mocking laughter and insulting catcalls. He grabbed a handful of hair on both sides of his head and screeched in frustration.

"A warrior must learn humility as well as ability," a gruff voice spoke.

He glowered at Ching-Ching, standing in the doorway, and felt like strangling him. The Chrystallusian seemed impervious to the hard look. "I don't need your G.o.dd.a.m.ned philosophy!"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. I think you learned a valuable lesson today, don't you, baby bird?"

"Stop calling me that!"Conar shouted.

"You prefer s.h.i.tbird, instead?" Ching-Ching laughed and ignored Conar's vulgar response. "I have the right to call you whatever I wish. You call me the monkey man, do you not? Do you wish to fight me, as well?"

"No, thank you," Conar ground out from between tightly clenched teeth.

"I thought not." Ching-Ching sat on the floor beside Conar. "Whom do you wish to fight next? Du Mer? Saur? Brell?

Each of them would be accommodating, I am sure."

"How come you're not speaking in broken Serenian like you always have before?"

Ching-Ching grinned. "Because I have no desire to do so. My speech pattern served its purpose with you. You thought me uneducated, unlearned, a country boy, eh? It was the way I thought best until I was ready for you to know otherwise. Now, when I speak to you, maybe you will listen. You have seen my harder side; now, view the gentler. I speak to you as I would my son, had I been blessed with one."

A derisive laugh came from Conar's lips. "I made a fool of myself, didn't I?"

"You do not fight your allies, fledgling. Save your anger for your enemies. You will have enough of them. You are restless. That is to be expected. Your men know this. They are restless, too. When Occultus decides you are ready, you will begin to take back all that has been stolen from you. Until that time comes...go slowly. There is time. And there is still much to learn."

"Like humility."

"And self-denial. You are descended from a long line of powerful men. Generations of WindWarriors course through your veins. You have inherited their natural abilities, but we have begun to enhance those abilities to the point where no mortal man will be your equal. It is up to you to do what must be done to satisfy your ancestors vengeance against the Domination.

"Learn to control your rage, fledgling. Learn to control it, or it will control you. Learn patience. Humility. These are things I am afraid you have never been taught. In the flick of an eye, a man can die from lack of direction. That man might not be you, but a comrade who depends on your ability to function with a clear head and calm nerves in a crisis."

"I thought I did fairly well in the Labyrinth at controlling my rage."

"The Labyrinth would have crushed a lesser man, Conar. The tortures that were practiced on you have only strengthened you, made you less vulnerable to physical and mental pain. Even your stay in that horrible place taught you a well-learned lesson. You can survive anything! Even the good-natured taunts and pranks your friends played on you today." Ching-Ching's monkey face split into wrinkled lines of humor. "It also taught you that you are not yet as invincible as you thought."

"It also taught me something else."

Ching-Ching inclined his head.

"When to know I am in a losing battle." Conar smiled, a smile touched with sadness. "I owe them an apology."

The wrinkled smile grew wider and the thin lips twitched. "A wise decision, baby bird!"

Apologizing to the men was as hard as Conar had antic.i.p.ated. They joked and made stinging remarks about his anatomy as he made his way to the gym where they had stashed his clothing. He kept his temper under control, knowing they were doing everything they could to antagonize him, but realizing they were shielding him with their bodies from curious eyes as his ungracious, naked walk took him through their ranks.

He took their barbs with a tight smile and strode as calmly as he could into the gym, retrieved his clothing. His ears and face burned from the remarks as he stepped into his clothing and soiled it with the oil and talc.

In his room later, Conar flung off the clothing and plopped into the bath Se Huan had made ready for him. He had viewed her hastily concealed smile, heard the stifled giggle and knew everyone in the palace was privy to what had happened. He lowered himself into the tub and sulked, refusing to answer even her most innocuous questions, for he could see the wry humor in her face.

"He's like a sore-tailed cat, Se Huan." Jah-Ma-El came into the room carrying a tumbler of elixir Occultus demanded Conar drink each night.

The stuff was particularly vile, green and mossy, a potion to make him sleep soundly yet not develop any long-term desire for it. He had resisted drinking it at first. But after having his nostrils pinched shut by Jah-Ma-El, his body pinned to the bed by the others while Tyne poured the mess down his throat, he had learned to drink it of his own accord.

"He is not in the best of tempers, Lord Jah-Ma-El. I shall let him pout. Perhaps after he drinks his bedtime bottle he will be a good baby bird." Se Huan giggled, covering her mouth with her hand as a wet sponge hit her in the backside.

"Get out of here! Both of you! And take that s.h.i.tty elixir with you!"

A wicked gleam entered Jah-Ma-El's eyes. "Se Huan, would you be so kind as to get Shalu and Roget and Sentian-"

"I'll drink it," Conar snarled.

"I thought you would." His brother handed him the tumbler, watching with uncontrolled mirth as Conar gagged on the liquid.

"Conar, you are such a baby!"

"You don't have to drink this s.h.i.t! By the G.o.ds, it grows on my tongue before I can swallow it!" He grimaced, scrunching up his eyes to scrub at his tongue with his bath sponge.

Later, alone in his bathing chamber, Conar leaned back in the water. He wasn't angry at anyone. He wasn't even all that ticked off about having to drink the poisonous concoction.

A faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth, then extended into a full-blown grin. He was a lucky man, he thought. He had brothers who loved and cared for him, friends who needed him and whom he needed, allies who had only his best interests at heart. He had more people looking out after him than anyone else he knew. In his uncle's palace, he was given everything they thought he could desire in the way of food, drink, comforts. They saw to his every need before he knew he had such a need. There was only one thing left that he desired and didn't have.

The smile vanished from his finely chiseled mouth. He stared off into s.p.a.ce. He had almost forgotten what true desire was in the Labyrinth. His existence there was a living h.e.l.l of brutal beatings and forced labor; there was no time for thoughts of creature comforts and desire. No opportunity for thoughts of a woman to give him comfort. Now, his thoughts flew across the broad mountain range that separated him from his homeland.

A fleeting worry tumbled through his mind. Why had no one pressed the issue of Liza with him? Why had no one forcibly sat him down and said, "It needs to be discussed"? Everyone seemed to want to talk to him about her, but no one actually knew how. And that made him wonder.

And it worried him.

Were things so bad, so irrevocable, that his brothers and friends were afraid to tell him? Did they suspect that the knowledge of the way things actually were in Serenia might hurt him?

He thought that might be the case. He knew she had formed an attachment to some man in Boreas. He suspected it might well be one of the knights from the court, but he had no way of knowing for sure. He didn't want to know.

Standing up, he plucked the towel from the stand and began to dry off, his eyes locked on the far wall. He had let Liza slip through his fingers like the hot sand of Tyber's Isle. Try as hard as he could, he couldn't remember exactly what she looked like. He had a vision of long, flowing black hair like Se Huan's, eyes the color of the jade in his aunt's crown, and the innocent, sensual smell of lavender; but that was all he could remember of the woman who had been his reason for living.

With the bitter taste of Occultus' elixir invading his senses, his mind began to dim, to release him from this world. He padded to his bed and curled up on the mattress, thoughts of the distant peaks of Serenia and the treasure they held growing more and more faint until they dissolved.

Sleep claimed him for a time.

Raja watched him from the corner of his room. She stood by the Cheval mirror, where, Webspinner that she was, she blended into her surroundings with the aid of magic. She squinted as she perceived his thoughts. A tight line of anger stretched her pouting lips.

She would take his mind from that b.i.t.c.h if it were the last thing she ever did!

Chapter 14.

The months steamed into summer, cooled to autumn, then plunged into the harsh winter of Chrystallusian snow and sleet. As winter warmed and thawed to spring, Conar's training was at last to end. It had taken longer than Occultus had originally planned; nightmares still plagued the young man and training stalled time and again as he rested a week at a time.

There were still dark circles under his eyes from his lack of proper sleep, and lack of sleep caused a slight, tired droop to his shoulders. But his eyes were clear and bright, and his shoulders were proud and strong. As the last day of his training drew to a close, he, along with those who had trained him and would be fighting beside him, were called in the temple where Occultus held reign.

In the vast reaches of antiquity, the temple of the Great Empire of Chrystallus had emerged long before any other building or edifice. Built as a tribute to their G.o.d, Chrystus, the people erected their own huts and hovels from canvas and rushes. Denying themselves life's luxuries, they fashioned the soaring walls of the finest marble and stone. Carved the most elegant of teak woods for the doors and window sills and archways. Laid down the very best of parquet flooring in patterns so intricate and beautiful they boggled the mind. And studded the statues of their ancestors and their patrons with the most precious of jewels. The altars were cast from pure silver and gold and the chandeliers were hand-blown crystal. Only the best of everything went into the Great Temple of Chrystus.

Through primitive writings and hieroglyphics, the scholars were able to piece together an ancient civilization that had thrived on the land before the Chrystallusians arrived. This people worshipped the fierce G.o.d of the Fire Winds, Mei-la-motep. Such was their faithfulness to the Great One, a deity they worshipped with such devotion and diligence, that it nearly destroyed their culture, that they willingly sacrificed their newborn children and young men and women of child-bearing ages to His hungry altars. Realizing too late their grave mistake, the people began to die out and they knew that without new, vital blood of young men and women to regenerate their numbers, the culture of the Asotek people would vanish.

In the ancient lands that now encompa.s.sed Western Serenia and parts of Eastern Virago, there was at that time a group of inhabitants simply called The People who roamed the land, taking from it only what was needed and no more. They did not wage war on their neighbors; they did not go raiding for goods and food. They taught peacefulness and love, and by teaching their children the wisdom of putting back to the land that which was taken, the race flourished, keeping wisely to themselves and staying away from those fierce tribes of the southern lands, people like the Asoteks, who warred among their own.

They revered their aged, never killed another human unless it was to protect their own lives and the lives of their children. Before killing for meat, they would ask the pardon of the animal about to give its life so that a human could live, and then cry for it as it lay dying. They were a gentle, meek race whose very innocence was almost their undoing.

But when the Asoteks came raiding, seeking fresh blood with which to repopulate their declining number, it was the farmer people of another tribe that came to the aid of The People.

These people were the Chrystallusians. Homeless, wandering from place to place, seeking good land on which to settle. They sought the Land of Plenty promised to them by their ancient G.o.d. Taught self-reliance and self-defense from generation to generation in order to survive, the Chrystallusians helped The People thwart the Asoteks, defeat them, and they finally settled on Asotek lands when the last of that warrior race had died out. The People were glad to have such industrious and peace-loving neighbors among them, for they valued peace above all else.

It was with breeding among this peaceful people, the pure lines of which are now all but extinct, that the people of Chrystallus began to come into their own. The two cultures, quite similar in appearance, demeanor, and values, blended well together. Some of the beliefs and customs of The People were incorporated into Chrystallusian culture, but the Great Temple of Chrystus, with its golden altars, came strictly from the ancient teachings of the G.o.d of the Chrystallusians.

When the last of the pure lines of The People began to dwindle, to become lost in the merging of the two cultures, a great cry went up among The People. Their culture had become so a.s.similated with the Chrystallusian culture, the loss of their own ident.i.ty was fast becoming a real threat. Only a few of the pure warriors of The People truly understood the significance of such a loss, and by the time they did, it was too late.

There were a few warriors who ventured away from their land, seeking to keep themselves and their culture pure. Several women accompanied the men and they fled into the mountains of Serenia, into the plains of Virago, where they set up teps, lodgings made of tall poles and canvas. They traded with friendly tribes along the Great Cous River and set up their own village. The women made themselves available to the men of their tribe and many young came with the first snows of the new year.

Occultus Noire was directly descended from The People. With his raven black hair and piercing blue eyes, the high cheekbones and dusty complexion, he carried within him the finest traits of a race whose numbers had dwindled to less than two hundred.

Occultus had been among the young men who had left their home to try and preserve their bloodline even though he had not wanted to help provide young for their tribe. Why that was, he did not know; he knew only the thought of mating with a woman filled him with dread and distaste.

Because of his reluctance to accept any woman to his pallet, he was designated a hunter and ventured off for days at a time in search of meat with which to feed his people. It was in the wild foothills of the Serenian mountains, while stalking a large elk, that Demonicus, then Arch-Prelate of the fledgling group called the Brotherhood of the Domination, had first seen the young Occultus and persuaded him to come to the Wind Temple at Century.

"You will gain much knowledge and magic with which to help your people."

"But my duty is to mate with one of the women of my tribe and produce young," Occultus explained, intrigued by the notion of going back to his tribe as a holy man.

"Is that what you wish to do?"

"It is what is expected."

"We do not mate with women," Demonicus had told the young boy, smiling at the relief he had seen on Occultus' face. "We do not expect anything of you that you do not expect of yourself. Come and see what it is like at the Temple. If you do not like it, you may go at any time."

But once at the Temple, Occultus did not want to leave. He embraced the concept of the Brotherhood with open and eager arms.

Teaching the boy all he knew, Demonicus was not surprised that Occultus rapidly took to magic and soon outshone his master. Less and less thought was given to going back to his tribe, a ch.o.r.e he had not wanted to pursue, and more and more effort went into learning the runes that gave him power and status among the others of the Brotherhood. Occultus showed ferocity and hunger for that power and it held him in good stead with the sect.

Only one man, a descendent of the Asoteks, a man somewhat older than Occultus, a man named Tolkan Coure, disliked the boy and did everything he could to block Occultus' rise to power. Jealous and envious, Tolkan gathered together a group who felt the same mistrust of the boy and set about to cause his downfall.

On his deathbed, Demonicus handed the power scepter to his young protege and Occultus Noire became the youngest Arch-Prelate to ever accept the mantle of leadership in the sect. Sensing trouble brewing with Tolkan, Occultus set himself apart from the others and devised a way to circ.u.mvent even the most powerful of sorcerers. He drew a pentagram, a triangle within a five-pointed star, set two wavering lines through its apex, and instilled in that symbol a power so great, so encompa.s.sing, that it could all but destroy any power it was set against. By using the Pentagram Seal of the Domination upon his enemies, Occultus achieved a widely respected and feared reputation among the Brotherhood's members. Years later, a power-mad and hungry Tolkan Coure would learn the secret of the Seal of the Domination and use it on Occultus, stripping him of his power and using what influence he had to have the Arch-Prelate impeached.

Since he had many friends among the Brotherhood, and because he was still feared among most, Occultus was deported instead of killed. He was left on Tyber's Isle to die.

Occultus escaped from the Labyrinth only a year after his internment. His map had led Brelan to the penal colony, had shown the way to the secret pa.s.sages. He had stowed aboard one of the prison transports and made his way to Haelstrom Point. From there, he trekked through the mountains until he was once more in the snow-misted land of his birth.

Home, surrounded by members of his tribe, Occultus calmed his fury. He hardened his heart against the Brotherhood that had betrayed him and set about to formulate a revenge so exacting, and so final, the Domination would be destroyed for all time. What he had invented, the Seal of the Domination, that symbol which restricted and nearly erased any power from a man unlucky enough to have it placed within his palms, he knew he could nullify; and Occultus managed to find a way to do just that.

Then, he calmly waited for the champion he knew would one day come... Conar McGregor.

On the evening of Conar's initiation into the final phase of the plan to retake the lands and treasures Kaileel Tohre had stolen, those men of the power structure of his force gathered in the black marble halls of The People's chamber of the Temple of Chrystus. Set aside for the worship of that tribe, the chamber had not changed in more than five hundred years. The influence of the Lost Warriors, as The People were now called by the Chrystallusians, extended no further inside the Temple of Chrystus than the walls of the Wind Chamber, as it was named; but its power could be felt even before the doors leading into the chamber were opened.

The Wind Chamber was to be Conar's launching pad to revenge against the Domination and all that it had done to him and his people. And to Occultus Noire.