Rion

by Susan Kearney

  A gust of wind swerved them sideways and missile four missed. Mountains rose through the clouds. Rion could make out trees and a clearing growing in size as they plummeted.

  “Missile five has a lock.”

  Rion closed his hands into fists. “Evade.”

  “Evasion is no longer an option. Engines are down. Chances of survival are less than one percent. Missile trajectory is heading straight at us.”

  He couldn’t change the missile’s path. He couldn’t shoot it down. He couldn’t evade.

  “Cut the chute,” Rion ordered.

  “What?” Marisa clung to her webbing. “We’re going to crash.”

  “Better to crash than take another missile hit,” he explained.

  “Chute cut.” The ship plummeted. “Brace for impact. Warning. Warning. Impact in five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

  MARISA AWAKENED WITH a terrible taste in her mouth. She turned her head and spat out dirt. Dirt? She sat up, stunned, confused. She was sitting in a heap of wreckage in the middle of a forest.

  She blinked. And it all came back. She and Rion had crashed on Honor. “Rion?”

  Her voice came out a croak. She spat more dirt and raised herself from the pile of smoking debris, metal fragments that had once been a magnificent spaceship. She had a dozen scrapes and cuts. Her entire body was one giant bruise.

  Oddly, the scrap metal began to move as if an animal was scavenging among the wreckage for food. Was it Rion? Was he buried and trying to get out from under a mountain of debris?

  If he were buried under there, he’d be incinerated. “Rion?”

  She tried to scramble toward the parts, determined to pull him from the wreckage. Her head swam, and she was so dizzy she clutched a nearby branch to steady herself. Swaying on her feet, she gulped the thin air, tried to keep her balance.

  But her legs collapsed. She sank into the dirt. She was hurt. Really hurt.

  “Rion!”

  Silence was her only reply.

  If she was this hurt, he could be dead. But she didn’t want him to be dead. She wanted him to come walking out of the burning wreckage with that charming grin of his and a remark about how she should have faith in his flashes. Damn it. He’d told her they would survive.

  “Rion?”

  Again there was no reply.

  “No!” It didn’t matter that they couldn’t be together again. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t have a future together. Or that they couldn’t wed. He couldn’t be dead.

  The wreckage moved, began to reassemble. She couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing. But the pieces crawled together as if they were alive and seeking other parts of themselves. Metal fused with metal.

  Was she losing her mind?

  If this insane machine could fix itself, why hadn’t it done so back on Tor? Marisa jerked backward and watched the wreckage in amazement. This really was happening. The ship was growing back together.

  She should be more frightened. Her mind was fuzzy, as if the world were coming to her filtered through a gauzelike curtain. She must have been in shock.

  But she had to pull herself together. Find Rion.

  She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes, willed the dizziness to go away.

  Something sticky slid down her cheek. She raised her hand and her sleeve came away bloody.

  Her head throbbed. Her mind was clogged, not working properly.

  Or she wouldn’t be seeing snow. Only the snowflakes weren’t like the tiny ones on Earth. These were fist-sized flakes that clung to her clothing and quickly covered the ground. Within minutes the snow had hidden the debris.

  If Rion was lying somewhere hurt, he would now be covered, too. God. Was he even alive?

  In a storm, the wise man prays to the Goddess, not to deliver him from danger, but to deliver him from fear.

  —HIGH PRIESTESS OF AVALON

  17

  Not now. Damn it. Why did his flashes have the habit of arriving at the most inconvenient times? Like after a spaceship crash that had left him dangling in his harness upside down. With his straps caught in the tree, and his arms tangled in the webbing as tight as a straitjacket, he could barely move.

  Even if the Unari were on the way to take them prisoner, he couldn’t have freed himself and begun his search for Marisa. He had to outwait the series of images in his flash.

  A man making love to his woman.

  The woman’s belly full and round with child.

  The woman holding the baby boy up to her lover.

  Before Rion could assess details, his flash changed locations.

  A soldier united with his mother.

  Again his vision switched images, so fast his head spun.

  A blue-eyed man called out for “Pendra.”

  What did it mean? The people were unfamiliar. Yet from their manner of dress and language, he recognized they were from Chivalri.

  Rion had too much respect for his gift not to try to remember the details. So he committed what he could to memory—even if all the blood in his body had rushed to his head.

  He’d thought the flashes were over. That he could cut himself from the webbing and climb from the tree. But yet another flash hit.

  Marisa, wearing clothing from Earth, sat on the ground, her back against a tree. Snow crusted her hair.

  Rion hadn’t been able to see her face. Hadn’t seen if she’d been breathing.

  Had she been sleeping? Hurt? Dead?

  Sweet Goddess. She needed him, and he must find her, help her. He wasn’t going to let her die. Not this woman. Not Marisa.

  Rion swore. He twisted in his bonds, straining for his knife.

  But the webbing bound him tight. He had only one way out. Dragonshaping would require using precious energy reserves, but he had no choice. His body expanded to twenty times his human size, and his arms extended into powerful wings. His skin thickened and changed color until dark purple scales covered his body.

  The straps popped as if they were no more than string. His clothing shredded. Free of the harness, he plunged toward the ground. Spreading his powerful wings, he employed an updraft to stop his deadly fall.

  He’d dragonshaped every six weeks during his lifetime to feed on the platinum that maintained his energy reserves. But this time the dragonshaping slammed him with sickening pain. Smoke poured from his nostrils.

  He bellowed in fury.

  Terrible electric shocks zigzagged down his spine and over his wings. Agony cramped his stomach, pounded through his skull.

  He barely landed safely on the ground before he humanshaped. Almost instantly, his shredded clothing repaired itself and, more importantly, the pain disappeared. He gasped in huge breaths, stunned. In dragonshape, every nerve ending had felt as if it had been bathed in acid. His mind took a few moments to clear.

  Then he swore.

  That terrible agony he’d suffered had been due to the Tyrannizer. And the machine projected that pain onto every dragonshaper on Honor. No wonder his people couldn’t break free of the Unari domination.

  Holy Goddess.

  The dragonshapers who’d had to bear that agony for three endless years would have been better off dead. He prayed his parents had not had to withstand such torture. But if any man could endure such agony without going insane, that man would be his father. He couldn’t bear to think of his mother…

  A Unari drone flew overhead and snapped him out of his grim thoughts. Had the search cameras spied him? Would they spot Marisa?

  Staying under the cover of the trees, he battled through the drifts, backtracking to the crash site. He had to find Marisa before the Unari did. Before she tried to dragonshape.

  Rion sprinted through the forest. Thorns scratched his face and tore through his clothing to his flesh, but the discomfort was nothing compared to dragon pain. Nothing compared to his people’s suffering. Or his fear for Marisa’s safety.

  He couldn’t have lost Marisa in the crash. If he’d survived, she could have, too. Dread spurred him on. He r
ecalled the blue heat in her eyes when they’d made love, the sparks that sizzled through the air when she’d stood up to him, the way her skin felt soft and silky smooth under his fingertips—and he redoubled his efforts.

  She could be lying on the ground in the cold snow. Alone.

  He’d brought her here. She was his responsibility.

  He ran through the forest without stopping. Once, he saw movement in the trees. “Marisa?”

  He spied a darthog rooting through the brush. No sign of Marisa.

  Ignoring his tired legs, he got his second wind. He leaped over a stream, climbed past a fallen log. He had to find Marisa and keep her safe.

  She had no one else here but him. His people had no one who could help them but him. His fists clenched in anger. If that meant making war, he would make war.

  His own preference for peace didn’t matter. If it meant sending men into battle to their deaths, he would give those orders. Some things were worse than death—like living under Unari domination. Like losing Marisa…

  “Rion?” Marisa’s soft call sounded close by.

  Thank the Goddess. She was alive.

  “I’m coming.” He headed in the direction of her voice. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She didn’t sound right, and her flat tone scared him more than her words. Again, he increased his pace and scrambled uphill past rock outcroppings, toppled trees, and thick underbrush. “Don’t move. I’ll find you. Just keep talking.”

  She didn’t answer. Fear crawled down his spine. He’d told her he would look out for her and that she would go home after they freed his people. He’d promised himself that he’d win back her respect. He’d lost his aunt and uncle, perhaps his cousin and his parents. He would not lose her, too.

  His breath came in harsh gasps as he struggled up a steep incline. “Marisa?”

  Again she didn’t answer.

  The sight of snapped treetops clued him in to the general crash site’s location. He’d been flung far away. He climbed a rock cliff, using his fingers and his boot tips to scale the mountainside.

  After he cleared the lip, he didn’t pause to wipe the sweat off his brow. The sight that met his eyes rocked him back on his heels. His spaceship’s debris lay scattered in a huge field of grass. Snow floated over the grass and debris, and smoke fluttered in the light breeze like a shroud.

  The ship’s automatic systems had attempted and failed a self-repair. The task had been too great. This ship would never fly again.

  But he saw no sign of Marisa.

  “Marisa?” He shouted and sprinted through the burned wreckage. He looked right, then left, and remembering his own plight, his webbing caught in a tree, he looked up at the few remaining trees.

  He spied another drone.

  Had he really heard her call? Had he imagined her voice because he’d wanted to hear her so badly?

  He turned around full circle and glimpsed a movement at the edge of the tree line. “Marisa?”

  Whatever he’d seen move didn’t move again. He bolted that way. It was as good a direction as any.

  When he spotted her, sitting with her back against a tree, looking wonderfully alive and unhurt, his fear rumbled into aggravation. Why hadn’t she responded?

  Head up, her shoulders braced against the tree trunk as if she didn’t have a care in the world, she sat in the snow between gnarled roots. She’d pulled her knees to her chest. Eyes open and staring straight forward, she didn’t glance in his direction.

  Something was wrong. She was breathing. But still. So still that he curbed his anxiety, lowered his voice, and spoke gently. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

  She didn’t react. Not to his presence or his voice. Since she’d responded earlier, the crash hadn’t damaged her hearing. But now she acted as if he wasn’t there.

  Had she injured her head? Had the stress finally gotten to her? She didn’t have a scratch on her perfect profile. Not one bruise. Yet, something was off and his stomach tightened.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Marisa?”

  She turned her head, blue eyes unfocused and vacant. He gasped as the other side of her face came into view. Blood caked her face. Her scalp was loose, a flap of skin and hair hanging from her skull. Blood and snow matted her lovely hair and oozed from the ghastly wound.

  She seemed to have no idea of the extent of her injury. Or of the reaction he’d failed to hide. He slipped an arm under her and eased her onto her side, facing her wound toward the sky. “Marisa, your head’s cut. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  He needed water to clean the wound. Thread to sew her scalp. As a military commander he’d had rudimentary first-aid training, and he’d need all of those skills to stop her bleeding and close the wound.

  The cold had slowed her bleeding. But if she caught an infection that close to her brain… she could…

  No. He would not let her die.

  At least she didn’t seem to be in pain. But if her shock wore off and the feeling returned before he patched her up… he would have to hurt her even more.

  He hurried to find supplies.

  The wreckage didn’t look promising. Finding a first-aid kit in the strewn ship parts was too much to hope for. However, he did find plenty of sharp splintered metal—nothing with a needle-like hole in one end, but he spied a sliver of metal with a notch that might hold thread, and slipped it into his pocket.

  He glanced into the sky. The drones were gone. How long until they returned to base? He had no idea how much time he might or might not have. Surely the Unari would send someone to investigate the crash site, and he wanted to be long gone before they arrived.

  Rion found no water, no alcohol, no cotton gauze or antibiotics. Instead he trudged past burned plastic, engine pieces, bits of hose, gears, and many objects so badly damaged he couldn’t identify them. He was about to turn back when he heard water trickling.

  There must be a stream nearby. Quickly, he scooped up a broken pipe, ignored the heat to his fingers, and bent it into a U shape. Then he hurried to the stream, where the water ran swift and clear. Kneeling, he drank. It was sweet and clean. He washed out the pipe and turned his attention to his own hands, filthy from stumbles in the forest, climbing the rock face, and searching through the debris. Dipping his hands into the water, he scrubbed his flesh with sand from the creek bottom, then soaked them some more. Then, careful not to get his hands dirty again, he filled the pipe with clear water and hurried to Marisa.

  “I’m back,” he said softly.

  She lay in exactly the same position. But now her eyes were closed. She didn’t appear to have heard him.

  He took comfort in her steady breathing. Holding the water-filled pipe in one hand, he kneeled beside her, then wedged the pipe between a root and the trunk to avoid spillage.

  Quickly he gathered tree moss, kindling, and firewood and stacked these around the pipe. He left her once again to retrieve a burning ember from the wreckage, scooped it into a metal tray he’d found, then fed the ember with moss until it burst into flames. Finally, he transferred the burning moss to his collection of dry kindling and coaxed the tiny flickering flame into a full-fledged fire.

  While the water heated, he shredded the hem of his tunic with a sharp-edged piece of metal, then carefully separated the longest thread from the others. He thrust his makeshift needle into the fire for a few seconds and waved it through the air to cool it.

  These conditions were far from sterile. But he didn’t know what more he could do with the supplies at hand.

  After the water had boiled, he waited for it to cool. Finally, he dipped more cloth he’d torn from his shirt into the water and began to clean her wound. The cut was jagged. Dirty.

  His gentle dabbing reopened the wound, and more blood flowed. But he kept cleaning, eventually resorting to trickling water from the pipe directly onto her scalp.

  She sputtered once, opened her eyes, then closed them again. But at last, the wound looked di
rt-free. As gently as possible, he fitted the palm-sized flap of scalp into place, satisfied he saw no major gaps. Then he began to sew.

  “Ow. Ow. Ow.” She swatted at his hand and thrashed.

  “Easy. Easy.” He straddled her side, using his knees to trap her hands but keeping most of his weight from pressing her down. “This is going to sting a little.”

  “It hurts!”

  Her cry tore at him. “I know. I’m sorry. But I have to patch you up.” He kept murmuring a steady patter as he sewed. “The wound is clean, and you’re going to heal as good as new.” Unsure if she was conscious, he prayed she’d passed out and couldn’t feel the needle going in and out of her scalp.

  But when he sat back to study his handiwork, she opened her eyes. “Are you done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God.” She released a long breath. “Get off me, please.”

  “Of course.” He’d been so focused on the wound, making sure he’d closed all the flesh and left no hair in the gaps, that he’d forgotten he was still holding her down.

  She glanced from the bloody cloths to his fingers covered with her blood. “If you’re done performing brain surgery, we should probably get out of here.”

  Marisa didn’t sound quite like herself, but her attempt at a jest cheered him. Still he felt compelled to warn her, “When the shock wears off, your head’s going to hurt like hell.”

  “But I’ll be okay?”

  “Your brain’s fine—as far as I know. You just had a surface cut.”

  She scowled. “I thought you weren’t going to lie to me anymore?”

  “A large surface cut,” he amended with relief. If she felt up to arguing, he figured she’d be fine. “If infection doesn’t set in, you should heal quickly. And your hair will hide the scar.”

  “Thanks. Sorry, I’m not a good patient. Next time I have stitches, I’d prefer it was under anesthesia.”

  “Let’s hope there is no next time.” He helped her to her feet. She leaned heavily against him and he wrapped an arm around her waist. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Dizzy. Light-headed. Cold.”