Free WINDHEALER by Charlotte Boyett-Compo Page A

to go home, Kaileel," the child-like voice whispered. "Please let me go home." A ragged sob tore through the heaving chest. "Please. I'll be a good boy. I'll behave." The voice turned shy and afraid, conspiratorial. "I won't tell them what you do to me."
    "Sweet Merciful Alel," Roget groaned, his voice filling with pain.
    "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
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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, pissing? 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 knob but didn't get a chance to open the door.
    "Then, do what you have to do! Talk to him, wake the bastard 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-bitch!" Thom flung himself down on his bunk.
    "That may be the way to bring him around."
    "I'll be damned if I'll let anyone slap