"He's reliving his childhood in the Abbey," Shalu said.

"Please, Kaileel," the timid voice said a little louder. "I'll behave. I promise. Just please let me go home. I'll do whatever you say."

His entireties were heart-breaking, made more pathetically so because they were the long-ago words of a lost little

boy. One last, gentle sigh of helplessness escaped Conar's lips and he shuddered and lay still.

"I'll kill Kaileel Tohre if it's the last thing I do!" Hern snarled, flinging himself out the hut, slamming the door behind him.

"What if he doesn't get any better, Xander?" Roget asked.

Jah-Ma-El answered for the Healer. "I love my brother more than anything on earth, du Mer, but rather than see him this way the rest of his life, I will end his life myself."

Roget looked into Jah-Ma-El's fierce black eyes and understood. He would feel the same way about his brother, Teal. Death was preferable to the agony of spirit the young man was now suffering.

Chapter 5.

For more than a week, Conar lay in his cot, his eyes open, staring, blank. He drank what was given him, ate the food spooned into his mouth, went to the chamber pot when it was held for him, but not once in that entire time did he do anything on his own.

He did not respond to the words spoken to him, neither did he speak. The men who cared for him-now numbering nearly two dozen-sat with him, gave him gentle, quiet orders, but did not carry on a conversation with him, no matter how one-sided, for such a luxury was still being denied him. It was at the beginning of his second week of catatonia that Xander could stand it no longer.

"What now, Healer?" the Commandant sighed, annoyed his afternoon tea had been interrupted.

"He is getting no better."

"He's eating? Drinking, p.i.s.sing? What more do you want?"

Xander ground his teeth together. "You meant to see him the way he is and succeeded. I suppose now that you've accomplished your goal, we can just stop feeding him and let him die." He started to walk away.

"Wait!" Appolyon's fat jowls wobbled as he stood, throwing his linen napkin to the tea table. "He is to be kept alive at all costs!"

Xander eyed the corpulent man with an arched gray slash of eyebrow. "I can't keep him alive in such a condition. He's a burden. It takes eight men to help me care for him." He folded his arms. "I have other inmates to see to, Commandant."

Appolyon chewed on his rubbery lip. "What do you suggest?"

"He is non-productive. Let him die, starve to death, and tell Tohre he died of natural causes."

The fat man gasped. "I thought you cared for him?"

"I do. But I don't like seeing him the way he is and neither do the others. It's bad for morale. After a while, they'll lose interest and abandon him. That will leave his care entirely up to me." He shook his head. "No. No, I can't handle him alone. You'll just have to let him die." He put his hand on the k.n.o.b but didn't get a chance to open the door. "Then, do what you have to do! Talk to him, wake the b.a.s.t.a.r.d up!" With his back to the Commandant, Xander smiled. "I'll see what I can do." * * *

"It's no use," Hern said in a choking voice. "The brat just don't respond to nothing." His wide shoulders sagged with fatigue.

"There has to be something that will bring him out of this!" Thom snarled. He paced from one end of their hut to the other. "Sometimes I just want to slap him as hard as I can. Maybe that would get his attention!"

Jah-Ma-El looked up at the tall, rubber-faced man. "What did you say?"

"You heard me, you son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h!" Thom flung himself down on his bunk.

"That may be the way to bring him around."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll let anyone slap my boy!" Hern bellowed, striding to where Jah-Ma-El sat. "You try hitting him and see what I do, you vile-smelling warlock!"

Conar's brother angrily shook his head. "No, not physically hit him."

Roget looked around from his place at the open doorway. "I think I see where you're going."

"I don't!" Hern shot back. "If he tries to hurt-"

With a snarl of rage very much unlike Jah-Ma-El, the gangly man stood and glared into Hern's beefy face. "What's the best way you know to make Conar angry?"

"What the h.e.l.l difference-"

"How didyou make him angry?" Jah-Ma-El shouted.

So surprised by the backbone this thin, unwashed man had developed, Hern could only gape.

"How,dammit?How did you make him mad?How did you get him to do something he didn't want to do?"

Hern's mouth snapped shut with an audible click. He narrowed his eyes. His stare was meant to quell Jah-Ma-El, but the little man held his ground. "When I wanted him to shape up, I insulted him." "I don't think that would help now," Storm said. "He's so accustomed to being humiliated, it just might push him deeper into oblivion."

Jah-Ma-El turned. "I wasn't thinking of insulting him."

"Then, what?" Hern asked, his voice tight with annoyance.

"There's only one person we could slur," Storm whispered, "that will make him angry enough to respond."

Hern sighed. "His lady."

* * * He was sitting up in the cot, hands in his lap, staring straight ahead. He didn't seem to be aware of the men working in the hut. There were three of them, strangers to him, men who volunteered to work in the hut to be near him. They were speaking about inconsequential things, joking with one another, their cheerful voices filled with laughter. "I hear she's as ugly as they come," one of the inmates said in a conspiratorial voice. "She's so d.a.m.ned ugly, her parents won't let her out in public without something over her head!"

"That bad? No wonder they can't find a husband for the b.i.t.c.h."

"I heard she's deformed."

"That's worse! How the h.e.l.l are they going to get rid of her if no man will court her?"

The first man looked at the patient. "I hear they got this fool lined up to marry her."

"Who'd marry a ugly, deformed hag?"

"Some n.o.ble down around Serenia. McGregor be his name. His parent's set the thing up."

Conar's fingers jerked in his lap.

"Poor fellow. Don't he have no say in it?"

"Likely as not he don't. I hear he sent one of his friends down there to get a look at her and when that fellow came back there was h.e.l.l to pay! That young n.o.bleman told his papa he wouldn't have that toad frog if she was the last woman on earth!"

Conar's lashes flickered.

"Well, if he don't have no choice, he don't have no choice. I guess he could always stick a burlap bag over the hag's head."

Another flicker.

"I heard he already has a light-o'-love. A choice morsel. One of his many wh.o.r.es, I suppose."

Conar's lips closed.

"The same girl they say rides with him and his men?"

"Rides with his men or is being ridden by them?"

Conar's jaw clenched.

"Bet he shares her. I hear she's kind of partial to one of his kin. Lord Saur, I think his name is. Saur be one of the fool's brothers, I'm told." The speaker cast a look at Conar's face and nearly laughed with happiness when he saw the young man's narrowed eyes.

"I saw her with that one once. They was having a merry old time! That Lord Saur is a handsome cuss. Don't blame the gal for wanting him instead of the fool."

Conar's fists doubled.

"And that n.o.bleman thought n.o.body knew where his light-o'-love was when she went a'missin', huh? She was out riding his brother, I guess!"

Conar's body twitched; he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, let it out, drew another sharp, quick breath, let it out with a rush.

"The man must have been a blind fool to think that tart was being faithful. He should have stuck with his Toad. At least no man would fool with such a ugly b.i.t.c.h!"

"He'd rather have his wh.o.r.e, I reckon."

Conar trembled from head to toe, his eyes angry, his lips drawn back. He swung his head, found them staring at him. His breath came in sharp intakes of fury and when he saw them laughing, he bounded up and lunged at the closest one. "She's no wh.o.r.e!" He wrapped his fingers around the man's neck. "She's my wife!" He was only vaguely aware of the arms that had gone around his waist, someone pulling him away from the object of his anger.

"Stop it!" someone screamed in his ear. "You're all right. Just stop it!"

He spun around in the arms holding him, glared into a face he recognized all too well. "They called my lady a wh.o.r.e, Hern!" he spat. "No man calls my lady a wh.o.r.e!"

"And no man in his right mind would let them, either. Are you in your right mind, now?"

Conar stared at him, so furious he was barely cognizant of his surroundings. He gasped for breath; his chest heaved in the constriction of Hern's arms. He caught movement to his right and jerked his head to see Thom and Storm watching. He looked back at Hern.

"Are you in your right mind, now?" Hern repeated.

"He will be," Jah-Ma-El said.

"We didn't mean no disrespect to the Queen," one of the others said.

Conar searched Hern's heavily wrinkled face, wrinkles he knew he had helped carve. "Hern?" he asked softly, not

understanding.

"Welcome back, son."

Chapter 6.

Six months after Hern's arrival at the Labyrinth, Princes Grice and Chand Wynth, the Hesar brothers, Rylan and Paegan, Sentian Heil, Tyne Brell, and Chase Montyne arrived on Tyber's Isle. It was in the middle of summer, the windless region stifling with heat.

Sentian Heil, along with former Elite Ward Summerall, was a.s.signed to the same barracks with Thom, Storm and Hern, but was kept in the indoctrination hut that first night. The n.o.blemen: Grice and Chand, Paegan, Tyne Brell, Chase Montyne, were a.s.signed to the same hut as Shalu, Roget and Jah-Ma-El. Only one bunk remained empty in the barracks and they were told the bunk was occupied.

"He'll only be here during the day," Roget informed them as he led the men to the barracks. "They allow him five hours sleep a day, between one and six. They wake him up when we're about ready to leave the mine."

"Why?" Grice wanted to know.

"So there won't be any contact between him and us."

"Is that the man we saw being brutalized this afternoon?" Tyne asked.

Roget nodded. "You'll meet him."

"For now," Shalu warned, "you'd better get some sleep. They'll have us up at daybreak."

"I have one question," Chase said.

"And that is?" Roget asked.