Wyndmaster 1 - The Wyndmaster's Lady Read online

  Fanning herself, Celeste fled to the safety of her bed and sat down. She was breathing so quickly she felt lightheaded and reached out to wrap her hands around the tall mahogany four-poster column. “Oh, my,” she whispered again.

  Was that what all men and women did together? she wondered. How would she ever know when no one could—or would—explain to her what went on behind the closed bedchamber doors of a man and his lady?

  Celeste had never known her mother—Lady Alinor had died giving birth to her only child—and those women with whom she came into daily contact rarely spoke to her unless Celeste initiated the conversation. The women certainly never answered the questions she asked. The healer her father had hired to care for her over the years was a woman and it had been from her Celeste had learned of certain taboo subjects about which her parent otherwise would not have spoken. Had it not been for Madame DeAnce, Celeste would have believed herself bleeding to death the day her menses had begun.

  “It is natural, child,” the healer had said with a tsk-ing sound. “Do not be afraid. It happens to all women of your age.”

  “My chest is getting bigger, too!” Celeste had complained.

  “As it should,” Madame replied. “Soon, there will be hair where hair has not been before. Do not be alarmed. That, too, is natural.”

  Forbidden to speak of certain topics—such as what made women different from men and how children came into being—Madame DeAnce could not answer many of the questions Celeste had. What she had done, though, was hint that there were things that were natural to the world that Celeste’s father thought inappropriate for his daughter to learn.

  “He would keep me a child forever!” Celeste had complained to the healer.

  “Aye,” Madame had agreed. “I believe that is so.”

  “Is it wrong for a man and woman to be together?”

  “No, child,” Madame stated. “It is a beautiful thing between the right man and the right woman. Love is a wondrous gift given to us by the gods.”

  And so Celeste stayed ignorant of many things her father did not deem decent for her to know. He kept her a virtual prisoner in a satin-lined tower and away from all that might corrupt her.

  Her suite of rooms—one floor up from her father’s—occupied the massive tower with its sweeping three hundred and sixty-degree view of the surrounding countryside. Restricted to that room, Celeste was only allowed down the stairs when accompanied by her father—which of late was infrequently the case for he was often away on Federation business since the war with Emaria had deescalated. Her meals were eaten in her luxurious suite but she dined alone, aching for company and something more she could not rightly define.

  On rare occasions, her father would take her riding in his buggy for a breath of the sweet country air and especially so when the leaves upon the trees on the mountains were changing color. Even then, she neither saw the groomsmen who had readied the buggy nor the guards at the gate who allowed them to pass over the drawbridge.

  “Where are the guards, Papa?” she’d once asked.

  “You have no need to see such coarse individuals, Anna Celeste,” her father answered. “Nor do they have the right to see you.”

  Not once in her eighteen years had she ever spoken to any man other than her father. Though from time to time she’d spied the male servants going about their business on the estate, she knew her father would not approve of her intently watching them and she had not, until today.

  She lifted her head and looked at the window beyond which temptation was drawing her. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her hands shaking as she slid down from the bed and made her way slowly, hesitantly, to the window. With her lower lip tucked between her teeth, she climbed up on the window set and cautiously looked down.

  Fascinating by what she was seeing—although she knew it was wrong and should she be caught, punishment was a certainty—Celeste knelt there on the window cushion and watched. Her heart was pounding so furiously in her chest, she was getting a headache from it but nothing could have torn her away from her spying. She knew in some untutored part of her mind that she was observing what men and women did with one another and the revelation was exciting. When the lad shuddered then collapsed upon the maid, Celeste held her breath, waiting for what might come next. She was unprepared when the lad rolled off his paramour, his lips pulling free of the maid’s bare breast.

  Gasping, Celeste nearly fell from the window seat as she scrambled away from that sinful sight. Had the lad been suckling at the maid’s breast? Surely not! Was that not an animal thing? Had she not observed one of the stray cats feeding her brood in that fashion?

  Her eyes moving back and forth as she thought about what she’d just seen, Celeste crept back to the window but did not climb up on the window seat. Her face was hot, her breath coming in ragged little gasps of nervousness. She hovered there with indecision for a long time so that by the time she dredged up enough courage to take another look, the lad and the maid had vanished.

  Relieved—yet oddly disappointed—Celeste went back to her bed and lay down. Her head was throbbing unmercifully and she prayed she wasn’t getting one of her brutal migraines. Putting a hand up to rub her temple, she could not get the image of the lad pulling away from the woman’s teat out of her mind. Some part of that image gave her the strangest feeling and each time the picture flitted across her mind’s eye, she would feel a tightening in the lower part of her belly and an odd heaviness between her legs.

  “Stop this, Celeste! You should not be dwelling on such sinfulness,” she cautioned herself and turned over to bury her heated face against the silk of her pillow sham.

  That what she had seen would be a sin in the eyes of her father she had no doubt. Many had been the time over the years when she had sat through his lectures on the evil of men and to what base depravities they could sink.

  “Get down upon your knees and thank the gods that I love you as I do, Daughter,” he had often said to her, “for I shall never let such evil lay hands to you!”

  Of what depravities her father spoke she had no idea and when she would timidly venture to ask, his eyes would bulge, his lips would peel back from his teeth, and he would extend his lecture to include wayward children who dared to question their fathers. She had learned to never ask lest she be forced to endure another hour or two on her knees as her father continued his tirade against the baseness of the male gender.

  Only once had she dared ask her father what would become of her when he left this world. Who, then, she’d asked, would protect her from the evil of men?

  “I shall not leave this world without you being cared for in a manner in which I approve,” her father had declared.

  That declaration did not bear thinking on so she had pushed it from her mind.

  Lying there as her headache subsided a little, she turned over on her side and stared at the wall, her gaze searching for the small imperfection in the plaster that seemed to comfort her when she felt lonely and alone. For hours she would stare at that flaw—the only thing that dared to not be perfect in her room—and focused on peacefulness she did not feel.

  “Why can’t I be like other girls?” she asked so quietly no one save the gods could have heard. “Why can’t I live like other girls?”

  Other girls were courted by gallant young men who swore eternal devotion to them, who went down upon one knee to ask for their lady’s hand in Joining. Joinings were performed in elaborate ceremonies presided over by impressively dressed priests and the marriage was sealed with a gentle kiss.

  Had she not read of such happenings in the books she had managed to sneak out of her father’s library—hiding them beneath her skirts or tucked down in the bodice of her gown? Did she not know of knights and their sumptuous castles, of such gallant warriors being ready to die for the hand of their love? Was not a life of living happily ever after the conclusion of such things?

  Sighing heavily and feeling emptiness deep inside her that hurt her to the depths of
her soul, Celeste wished fate would intervene and send to her such a knightly man to free her from her bower.

  Chapter Three

  Though the guards had informed him several of his men had tried to gain access to him during his imprisonment, Sierran saw no one save the two men who were his jailers. No letter was ever delivered to him even though he’d been told one had been attempted.

  “They crucified him, Commander,” the guard told him. “For daring to try to contact you.”

  “Who?” he’d asked, heartsick at the thought of one of his men dying for such a reason.

  “Barnes, he was,” the guard replied.

  “Barnes?” Sierran had echoed. “Frederick Barnes?”

  “Aye, that might have been it!”

  Grief drove straight through Sierran for Freddie had been his second-in-command and a lifelong friend. To know the man had died in such a loathsome way hurt more than the lash of the cat.

  After the guard had left him with the maggoty bread and foul-smelling water he was allowed, the commander of the Ibydosian Force broke down and cried. It was not for his own predicament he wept—although that was bad enough—but for the loss of a good man whose only guilt had lain in wanting to comfort his friend.

  “I’m sorry, Freddie,” he said, tears cascading down his stubbled cheeks. “I beg your forgiveness.”

  Each day passed as wretchedly as the next with news of more men under his command having met a gruesome fate at the hands of the fanatical general. The bodies of men alongside whom Sierran had lived and fought for ten years littered the roadway into town. Left hanging to rot upon the wooden crosses to which they’d been nailed, as still living food for the carrions circling overhead, those brave men had met an unjust end simply for having been close to Sierran.

  “Enough!” he’d screamed to the gods who had forsaken him. “Take me! Not them! Kill me! I deserve what you do to me. They don’t!”

  But surcease from his torment did not come. The pain only worsened to the point where tears would no longer suffice and he spent his waking hours praying for the souls of the dead and his nightmarish nights walking amongst the Shades, begging for their forgiveness.

  He was lost, alone, and living in a hell not entirely the creation of the man who had sworn to break him. A portion of that hell he had designed and built for himself and he resided there in a kind of numbing limbo that would not allow him to take his own life—though he tried that once. Because he had, his jailers had been given no choice but to shackle him wrist and ankle to the wall at Thurston’s order.

  Death was not to be an option for Sierran Morgan.

  Well into the second week of his captivity, the guards arrived at his cell door with four other men, one of them holding heavy wrist and ankle shackles.

  “They have sent for you, Commander,” the guard who Sierran had learned was named Crotchet informed him. “It’s time for your sentencing.”

  A wry snort came from the prisoner as Crotchet and his partner, Abrams, unlocked his shackles and delivered him into the hands of the other two guards. Sierran had sagged against them, causing one guard to backhand him across the face, bloodying the prisoner’s nose

  “Can’t the bastard walk?” one of the new men asked with a hiss.

  “Does it look like he can?” Crotchet shot back. “He’s been hanging on that fucking wall for nigh on a week!”

  The man with the shackles had snapped them into place on Sierran’s wrists then hunkered down to attach them to his ankles, the bands so tight they pinched his flesh.

  So they had dragged him from his cell, his bare toes scraping over the rough stone of the walkway. He had been limp in the guards’ rough hands, unable to even lift his head as he was carried along. As they took him past windows, he had shied away from the brightness, his eyes no longer accustomed to such intensity.

  The guards halted and he opened his eyes to stare down at the floor below him. From the corner of his eye he saw the boots of other guard and flinched when one said “By the gods, he reeks!”

  A door was unlocked and he was pulled down another long chamber. His shoulders and back were cramping and his head swimming but he kept his jaws tightly locked closed, unwilling to make a sound to let them know they were hurting him.

  “All rise!” Sierran heard someone say.

  The three-member Judicial Panel was seated already when Sierran was brought into the law hall of Wardsgate Prison. He was weak from lack of food and sick from having broken down and ingested the tepid water that had been his only nourishment during his incarceration. His face was gaunt, his glazed eyes watering as he tried to stave off the watery pain that gripped his belly. He did not fear the pronouncement of his punishment—that was a given for two of the members were related to General Thurston and the third was a friend of the general's. What he feared was that he would soil himself in front of the panel. He knew without a doubt such humiliation would surely break what will he had left.

  Casting a surreptitious eye around him at his surroundings, he knew something wasn’t right. No trial would ever be held without spectators or a defense lawyer to represent him. As his troubled gaze swept the room he saw General Thurston there and beside him was a tall, cadaverous-looking man in a long red robe. At the sight of that crimson-clad specter, Sierran’s blood ran cold for he knew who the man was and what his appearance at the sentencing meant. He closed his eyes slowly, knowing he was doomed. This was no legal trial sanctioned by the Federation but a condemning bought and paid for by Thurston.

  “Commander Morgan,” the man sitting in the middle position upon the Judicial Panel spoke. “Did you or did you not disobey a direct order given to you by your superior office, General Thurston?”

  There was no way to deny the truth of the situation and Sierran wouldn’t have even if it would have benefited him.

  “Aye, milord,” he said hoarsely. “I did.”

  The end had come swiftly and without any further debate.

  “You give us no choice, then,” the Primary Judge said. “You are hereby remanded into the custody of His Lordship the Dungeon Master of Dragonmoor until such time as you take your last breath.”

  The sound of a gavel punctuating the Judge’s words cut off all hope Sierran had that there might be justice for him in this world. He should have known better—and did—but hope died quickly and brutally that day for him as he was dragged back out of the law hall and out into the blinding light of day.

  Squinting against the hot, glaring sun, his bare toes stumbling over sharp rocks, he was thrown into the back of an iron box on wheels, unable to keep the whimper from his lips as the flesh of his bare arm and feet touched the metal—heated by sitting hours beneath an unseasonably hot November sun. He knew as hot as the box was during the daylight, it would be just as cold in the frigid evening winds that swept across Placidia’s plains.

  “Do what you wish with him,” he heard Thurston say. “He’s stubborn and needs to learn his place.”

  “Oh, that I shall, General,” Lord Charles, the Dungeon Master, replied. “I like nothing more than a stubborn man with whom to while away the hours.”

  Sierran was too sick at heart and body to even react to the vicious laughter that greeted those words. As the wagon began to roll and the iron-clad wheels jolted hard over what had to be every rock in the road, he lay there wishing himself dead for he knew death would be preferable to the vile things Lord Charles Henry Allen would do to him.

  Long before the sweltering iron box had gone a mile, Sierran lost consciousness from the super intensity of the heat pressing in upon him, searing every breath he took.

  Sierran came to some time later, thrust rudely into consciousness as water rushed up his nose and into his mouth. He had been been pulled from the box, drenched in sweat, barely breathing, and the guards had shoved him face-first into a water trough to revive him. His feeble struggles weren’t enough to make a difference as the guards held him under, laughing as he strove to come up for air. He clawed at t
heir hands until he realized this was one way to end his wretched existence and he opened his mouth to take in the liquid death.

  Realizing his prisoner’s intent, Lord Charles stepped forward, slamming a fist into one guard’s shoulder. “Pull him out!”

  Brought up coughing and sputtering, Sierran felt the vicious hand that buried itself in his dripping hair and yanked his head back. He could not stop himself from groaning.

  “You’ll not die so easily or so quickly, Morgan,” Lord Charles warned. “I have many years to peel the flesh from you inch by inch before I allow you to leave this world!”

  The hand gripping his hair twisted sadistically then slammed Sierran’s forehead into the rim of the water trough. Once more the welcoming arms of unconsciousness reached up to take him and he slid thankfully down into its black embrace.

  “Take him below. Garton, light their way,” Lord Charles demanded, dusting his hands together with distaste. The stench of the prisoner was on his flesh and that was one thing the Dungeon Master could not abide.

  Dragging the limp man from the trough, the guards grunted under his dead weight as they pulled him across the lower bailey and then through the door of the gatehouse, down the long, serpentine steps that led beneath the keep into the very bowels of Dragonmoor. Ahead of them, a third guard held a burning torch, its feeble light doing little to dispel the thick gloom.

  “It ain’t right,” one guard said, shaking his mane of unkempt hair.

  “You keep on saying that and you’ll be joining this one on the Slab,” the other one snapped.

  “This man is a national hero,” the guard mumbled.

  “Aye, well, even heroes can fall. Best you do as Roberts says and shut your mouth,” the man with the torch warned. “These walls got ears.”

  “Do you think the Federation knows where he is?” the guard persisted.

  “Shut your mouth! He wouldn’t be here if they did!”