He covered the distance in two long strides. He collided with her. They steadied each other, barely managing to keep their feet. There was a split second when their gazes connected, when he knew they were both acknowledging things yet to face, but in this instant there was something immediate to deal with.
“What is it? Are you hurt?”
She looked at her fingers, which he could see were reddened.
“It . . . burns.”
Thoroughly puzzled now, he lifted a hand. He felt the same tingling sensation, but nothing more. Shaina lifted her own hand again, and the spark flashed again, and she yanked it back.
“Enough of that,” he said sharply.
He knelt down, picked up a fist-sized rock. Tossed it down the trail.
The air sparked again. And the rock bounced back and landed at their feet. Lyon’s brow furrowed.
“That’s not the main thing,” she said. “You . . . vanished. The moment you went past this, you weren’t there. And I couldn’t see this meadow, the waterfall, none of it. There were just trees.”
He blinked. “Wait,” he said. He walked down until he felt the sting. Took one more step, then turned back.
“Can you see me?”
“Yes,” she said, “but you sound muffled.”
“As do you.” He came back.
“I don’t understand. When I was down there, when you went past that point, I could no longer see you. Nor any of this,” she said, gesturing toward the meadow. “But you can?”
He nodded.
“And once past it, I apparently cannot go back. But you can.”
Lyon drew back slightly, thinking. He turned, searching the area around them. All looked normal, natural. He looked at Shaina, who was watching him.
“I think . . . maybe . . . take my hand.”
She did, although she was still frowning. He started walking back down the hill once more. She came, but when they neared the spot, the screen or whatever it was, she held back, hardly surprising after what had happened when she’d merely brushed it.
“Trust me,” he said.
Immediately she stopped resisting. He felt a tug inside at her instant trust. Her hand in his, they walked through the screen.
She stopped on the other side, staring at him, then back the way they had come. Keeping her hand in his, he led her back.
“So . . . I can come through, but only if we are together?”
“Touching, I think,” he said.
He looked back toward the meadow and waterfall he could see as clearly as if there were no barrier at all. Yet she could see none of it.
“‘The spirits are thick on this mountain, and they only bare their secrets to those who are of the blood,’” he quoted the old man softly.
“Home to myths and legend and magical ideas indeed,” she muttered.
He took her hand and once more they walked through the barrier. He stopped, and stared. “The waterfall.”
“What about the—”
Her words broke off and he saw her remember the old man’s words.
“Just as he described,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
He walked to the edge of the pool at the base of the falls, where the water gathered before spilling over and continuing down the mountain. Shaina joined him, stood beside him staring at the misty fall of water. It dropped a great distance, widening from a narrow stream at the top to a wide cloud of spray at the bottom, where the fall hit a boulder taller than both of them. The huge rock was split, as if the soft spray had been some sort of giant’s hammer, cleaving it nearly in two.
“‘The cavern of the waterfall shall open when the two halves have joined. . . .’”
He was barely aware of having said it aloud until Shaina responded.
“We’re supposed to join the two halves of that rock? How? Either half must weigh more than the ceremonial stone.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not even sure that’s what it means.”
She studied the rock. “It does make sense, if you accept that any of it makes sense. Do you suppose . . . the cave is behind it?”
“It is not uncommon, a cave behind a waterfall. There is one at Lake Geron, remember?”
“Are you even sure this is the place?”
He glanced at her, gave a half shrug. “Yes. Do not ask me how, but I am sure.”
“Well, then.” She shrugged off her pack and looked around. “I think over there is the best place to set up camp.”
And just like that she accepted his word. His Shaina, of most logical and practical mind, asked for nothing more from him than his own certainty. Odd, how he was thinking so much of loyalty and constancy since they’d been on this mountain. Before, he had always taken her presence, even with all her flash and fire, for granted. He should not have. For even now, when the weight of her own future had to be pressing down on her, she was with him in all ways.
Except one . . .
His traitorous mind answered his own words with resounding emphasis. And that swiftly, the ache rose in him anew, until he despaired of containing it. He had thought, a couple of times on the trail when he had turned to look at her, that her face had betrayed a similar heat. But he could not be sure.
Better to be thinking of how they were to be moving the two halves of this real rock, he told himself.
“—the boundary.”
He snapped out of his frustrating reverie. “What?”
“I said we should see if that . . . barrier, whatever it is, is still in place, and check the boundary of it.”
He nodded. “Good plan.”
They returned to the spot, found the mysterious visual and auditory obstruction still in place. They separated and went in opposite directions, testing, until they had reached opposite sides of the waterfall and had determined that the barrier enclosed the entire area from the trees to the precipice the waterfall tumbled over, although they could not tell how far up it went. What they could tell was that anything within that perimeter was both invisible and unheard from the outside, by her and they guessed by anyone not Graymist.
“Do we trust it?” she asked.
“I feel we can,” he said slowly, “though again I could not tell you why.”
“It fits with the rest of this insanity,” she suggested.
There was wry humor in her tone, and he felt a spark of that admiration again. No matter what life threw at her, Shaina would always cope.
They set up in the place she had suggested, falling into old, familiar ways. He built the small fire they had decided to risk, since Shaina lacked the knack—or the patience—for it, while she gathered wood for fuel. A little food, and perhaps even some sleep in the hours remaining before dawn, then in the light of day they would examine the rock. Perhaps some way they had missed in the fading moonlight would be obvious then.
He only wished the rest of their path would become obvious as well.
Chapter 29
“IT’S TRUE, THEN?” Hurcon asked.
Dax looked at the burly Omegan, short, stout, and thickly muscled as most from his world were, thanks to the heavy gravity of the huge planet.
“What is?” he asked as the man slung his bag onto his old bunk. He was the last to arrive, recalled from his home. The call had been voluntary for all offworlders, but every one of them had responded immediately.
“Rox said the Coalition is gathering again.”
“We have a very reliable source. Heard you nothing on Omega?”
“Rumors, nothing more,” Hurcon said. “Although the whisperings did seem more active than usual.”
“Were they being taken seriously?”
“By some. Others called them crazy.” Hurcon looked up at him. “Your source is not, I gather?”
&
nbsp; “He is not.” Hurcon had been with them, in the battle for Galatin, so he would understand, Dax thought. “It’s Bright Tarkson.”
The Omegan’s eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. “Reliable indeed,” he said. Then he frowned. “But I thought he was dead.”
“We all did. Rina found him alive shortly after she arrived on Arellia.”
“Well that bedamned bark-hound,” Hurcon exclaimed. “He could have let us know. I’ve regretted his loss for an age now.”
“As have we all,” Dax said with a grin. “But I decided to forgive him, since he was still alive after all.”
Hurcon grinned back. “I will still give him a load of snailstones when I see him.” He arched a brow, an expression that looked exaggerated on his broad, squarish face. “And Rina found him, did she?”
“Yes.”
“And he is the one who put out this alarm?”
Dax nodded. He didn’t explain further, curiously waiting to see the old warrior’s reaction.
“Then it’s in the vault,” he said with certainty. “I’ll make ready for departure.”
Again Dax nodded, but this time with satisfaction. His men had not forgotten Tark either, and his word, his instincts, were as gold for them.
He left the crew to their preparations, and went up the narrow stairway behind him. For a long moment he stood at the top in silence. He thought of the old Evening Star, and the glory days of flying her. This new incarnation was stronger, swifter, and even better armed. And soon Califa would join him, and it would be a taste of that glory anew.
He couldn’t deny he felt a growing thrum of excitement. He stepped forward. He was on the bridge, most of his old crew was now here, supplemented by Triotian volunteers he’d barely had to ask for. The word had gone out, and they’d been lined up at the skyport doors within hours.
The skypirate would fly again.
“I SHOULD LET you return to your sleep.”
Rina said it more because it seemed polite than because she wanted to leave. If she had her way, she would stay forever in his company. And the thought no longer frightened her; it merely helped her to understand. For years she had watched Dax and Califa, and even the king and queen, with a sense of puzzlement. That they loved, fiercely, was without doubt. She even understood why, since she admired all four of them more than anyone she had ever known—it only made sense that they would feel the same, and the shift from that to their kind of love was not so hard to fathom.
She just couldn’t picture it for herself. For there had never been a man she had even begun to feel that way about.
Save one. And she was with him now.
They had been seated for some time on his cushioned stone bench before the fire he had stirred back to full flame. She had asked him for a more detailed assessment of the defense situation on Arellia. His answers weren’t promising, but she knew they were honest. There were a few hundred, perhaps, who truly believed in the coming threat. A few thousand, perhaps, who would respond quickly when it came. The rest had convinced themselves the Coalition was forever beaten, and had let themselves lapse into a lazy, unconcerned existence.
“I will not sleep now,” he said in answer to her suggestion she leave him to his rest.
“I should have waited until morning,” she said, regretting even more that she had disrupted his sleep, since it seemed he got far too little. She wondered how much of her poor choice had been rooted in her desire to simply see him again. She felt as if she were floundering in uncharted stars. Even an exact navigator was of no use in unknown reaches.
“No,” he answered quickly. “It was good news. At least, as good as any can be, if I am right.”
“You are,” she said.
He looked at her then, straight on. He’d donned the patch, and she had to admit it made a difference. She wondered how long it had taken him to get used to seeing that twisted scar on his own face. Perhaps he had yet to get used to it. Perhaps the patch truly was as much for himself as for the sensibilities of others.
Could she get used to it? Could she ever look at that ridge of thickened, distorted tissue without thinking of how he had once appeared, young and strong and impossibly handsome?
“You put a lot of trust in my instincts.”
“I always have. I always will.” She grimaced. “Well, except for the one that told you to keep the fact of your survival hidden.”
“Rina, I—”
She waved a hand, cutting him off. “I understand. I merely wish you had felt you could trust me. Us,” she corrected quickly, her cheeks heating enough that she was grateful he had turned off the too-bright huntlight.
He looked away, toward the fire. She wondered what he did not wish her to see. “I never doubted I could trust you,” he said softly. “But I did not want your pity.”
“Of all the things I feel for you, pity is completely absent.”
He went very still. Without looking at her, he spoke again, in that same low voice. “Were I a bigger fool than I am, I would ask what those things are.”
She forgot to breathe. She felt as if she were standing on the precipice of the Rift of Rycross, that yawning gap that Coalition explosions had caused in the floor of the Valley of Rycross, southwest of Triotia. She gathered her breath and her nerve, and answered him.
“Since you are no kind of fool, I think you already know the answer.”
“Rina—”
“If you do not wish to hear it, say so and I will leave now.”
“It is not that I do not wish it.”
“Then what?”
“I am . . . afraid of it.”
She was astonished at words she would never have thought to hear from him. “You? You fear nothing.”
“I fear you,” he said.
“Why?” she whispered. “I cannot hurt you anymore than you have already been hurt.”
He laughed, but it was a low, harsh, painful sound. “You could tear me apart,” he said. “You have ever had that power.”
“Me?” She nearly gaped at him.
He finally looked away from the fire. He faced her straight on, and the strain in his face told her it had taken more strength than she ever would have expected.
“You have been, more often than not, the memory that has kept me going. Not memories of victories, or final triumph, but the knowledge that a universe that still had you in it was worth staying in.”
The admission that he had considered not staying, that he might well have turned that dagger he’d met her with on himself, tore at her, set up an ache inside that she didn’t think she could bear.
“And I,” she answered hoarsely, “have been railing at that same universe for all these years, for letting you die.”
“Rina—”
“I have been angry for all that time. I could not even think of you without crying. I could not forget you, no matter how many times Dax or Califa told me I had to let go.”
“They . . . knew?”
“That I was furious with fate? Yes. It is hard to hide when you’ve lost the only person who ever made you feel you were capable of their kind of love.”
He jerked as if she’d struck him. Looked away again. “Be careful where you tread, little one.”
“I know exactly where I walk. It is up to you to decide if I am welcome.”
And odd sort of tremor went visibly through him. “You cannot want this.”
“Do not tell me what I cannot want, Bright Tarkson. You think there were no males on Trios who had interest in mating with me?”
He made a low sound, a sort of snorting chuckle. “I had not heard that all men on Trios were blind and stupid, no.”
The words warmed her, but she didn’t stop to savor them. It was too important to get this out and said. “And yet I wanted none of them.
Could give none of them my heart. Because I had already given it away, the first moment I saw you.”
He took in a deep, shuddering breath. “A girlish infatuation. And even were it not, I am clearly no longer the man you saw that day. You cling to a memory, and it no longer exists no matter how you wish it did.”
“And yet that memory sits before me.”
He turned back then. Reached up and yanked off the eye patch. Faced her straight on. “This is what sits before you.”
She leapt to her feet. With a tremendous effort she spoke carefully. “Does it pain you?”
“What?”
She gestured at the scar. “Does it hurt, even now?”
“No.”
“Good,” she said flatly.
She slapped him. Hard.
He uncoiled with the same fierce grace she had always remembered, and was on his feet in a split second. Unlike most would, he did not put a hand to the cheek she had struck. Perhaps he was inured to the pain of such a small jolt, or perhaps not only skin and tissue had been damaged by the wound, perhaps nerves had been cut, numbed. She let her anger overwhelm the pain that thought caused.
“Good,” she snapped. “If you’re going to insult me again, Arellian, you should do it on your feet.”
“Insult you?” He sounded astonished.
“You dare to accuse me of being so small-minded, so silly and foolish as to hold that scar against you? You truly think it matters one snailstone to me, beyond the pain it caused you?”
He was staring at her, as if stunned. She didn’t care. It was as if a dam within her had been breached, and she could no more stop the flow now than she had been able to stop thinking of him all these years.
“You believe my thoughts so trifling that I would find you less the man I knew because of some small change in your appearance? A change acquired in the most heroic of acts?”
“Rina,” he said, his voice tight, strained.
“Because if you do, then perhaps you are right. I cannot want this. Cannot want a man who thinks so little of me.”
For a long silent moment he simply stood there, staring at her. She could hear his breathing, for it was coming in short, audible pants. Whatever else, he was not taking this lightly, and that gave her hope. He drew in a longer breath before he spoke again.
Rebel Prince Page 21